Sean-Michael Argo - Ghost Faction

“Hold it, Bright Eyes,” whispered Ranec, who suddenly appeared just to her side, his strong arm locking around her waist, stopping her momentum, “Whatever you’re seeing is over and done. Nothing you do here will change that.”

Jada stopped in her tracks as Ranec held her. For a moment, he wasn’t her lover, but Samuel Hyst giving her the order to fire and the last of whatever innocence she’d clung to was gone.

She turned with a snarl, though when met with Ranec’s deep brown eyes, the heat boiling in her brain abated somewhat. She took deep breaths that started as a gasp. After several seconds, she was able to banish the memories, dissipate the hallucinations, and return to full control of her mind and body.

“Never seen you go that deep,” stated Ranec as he slowly relaxed his grip on her and stepped back.

“Caught me by surprise is all,” said Jada. She shook her head and squared her shoulders, nodding to Ranec. “Thanks. See you aboard.”

The merc looked over his shoulder at the Tasca operative, Ellis, who was walking aggressively towards the pair. Ranec turned back to Jada and shook his head.

“Slaver filth,” he spat as he clapped Jada on the shoulder and turned to walk towards the dropship boarding ramp.

“You got something you wanna say to me, merc?” asked Ellis, who walked directly in front of Jada and looked up at her, intentionally ignoring how much larger she was. “You’ve been eyeballing me ever since the briefing, so I figure you either wanna get off or grapple. Which is it?”

“Either would leave me wanting,” scoffed Jada, unable to stop herself from lashing out with her words and yet pleased that at least it wasn’t her fists.

“This is neither the time nor place, Ellis,” snapped Najib in a distinctly Grotto accent that took Jada by surprise, given that so few Grotto citizens ever left the corporation. As he moved to intercept the man, the two of them stared daggers at each other, until Ellis looked away and stepped back from his superior.

“I don’t need a bunch of stone cold killers looking down on me for slaving is all; it ain’t like their trying to hide it,” growled Ellis with anger brimming in his voice and his fists clenched. “I got mouths to feed, same as anybody.”

“Let it go, son,” said Najib as he placed his hands on the slaver’s shoulders, holding the man’s gaze. “Prep the nets and help Jean calibrate the cage. We aren’t hunting humans this time anyway, so I don’t think these good people will suffer temptations to shoot us in the back.”

Ellis threw a final defiant look at Jada and spun on his heels, heading towards the launch deck where the other Tasca operative assigned to Raid Alpha was tinkering with what Jada recognized as a stasis cage. It appeared to be heavily modified from the versions that she’d seen during her violent encounter with them back when the Reapers spent most of their time operating scrap wagons and picking the bones of void battles.

“You must forgive my associate; he is temperamental even on his best days,” apologized Najib as he turned to face Jada, his weathered face revealing a smile even though his eyes were some of the coldest she’d ever seen. “He’s one of the finest huntsmen in the cartel, even if he is somewhat new to the profession, hence his oversensitivity with regards to the opinions of others. I assume you do not approve?”

“The Merchants Militant are the finest killers money can buy, and our loyalty is always to the contract,” answered Jada as she fought through a wave of pain that crackled up from her spine to her neck, indications that her serum booster treatment was beginning to take effect. “We are weapons to be hired and we do what must be done to honor the contract. I know I cannot pass judgment on other professionals of violence, even if I personally find your chosen field to be particularly vile.”

“You kill people so that your employers can control their resources. We capture people so that our employers can turn them into resources. I find there to be little functional difference in the morality of our professions,” observed Najib, the smile never leaving his face as the two of them watched Ellis and Jean cranking the high-velocity nets through the spools of the casters. “Each and every one of us, from the lowliest salvage marine of Grotto to the most resplendent warrior of Errol, is a party to oppression. Moral relativism is the only way to maintain one’s sanity in this new, dark, age. I can hear the Grotto upbringing in your voice, so I am sure you know all about doing what must be done to keep your mind in one piece.”

“That sounded awfully rehearsed, do you have this conversation often?” asked Jada, allowing herself a grim smile as she went about checking the seals on her armor while they talked.

“All the time,” laughed Najib while the other Dire Swords of Raid Alpha began to finish their pre-drop checks and make their way to the dropships, “Slavery is a vital component of most economic models and an inconvenient truth. Even if some corporations choose to use penal codes or acts of war to re-classify those human resources, all of them work hard to keep it out of sight. Working alongside high-end slave hunters like us, well, that forces people to acknowledge it, and reminds them that they are party to it.”

“It reminds me of something my father said once, about his time in the Baen penal legion,” commented Jada while she checked her magazine and the safety of her sidearm before re-holstering it. “If you pay taxes, then you are part of the system and you have a share in every victory and every tragedy. I never gave it much thought until I became a Reaper; now, I can’t tell if I have PTSD or if everyone else does.”

“The universe is a hard place, and humanity hasn’t yet discovered a way to live in harmony with itself. In the meantime, we must each make our way,” agreed Najib before placing his helmet over his head and affixing the seals. “You can wrap yourself in platitudes and hope for the best, or you can open your eyes and see that only the strong survive. Nobody gets away clean, this is the job.”

“I’m not going to shoot you in the back, Najib,” said Jada as the two of them started walking towards the dropship. “That’s not part of the contract.”

The slaver laughed out loud, his shoulder shaking from it, and Jada found herself wondering which of them was worse, the slaver, with his threadbare philosophies about survival, or the mercenary, who killed for coin. She didn’t even have anyone she was taking care of, no loved one she fought for, and very little to do with the wealth she’d acquired.

At least the brash operative, Ellis, claimed to have people who were reliant upon him to get paid; she didn’t even have that flimsy excuse for the atrocities she inflicted upon the universe. She understood that if it wasn’t her standing with the rifle then it would be someone else, and she might as well fight and earn, but that line of thought, too, was threadbare.

We are the ghosts of good people, thought Jada as she looked upon the other members of Raid Alpha who had already boarded the dropship and strapped themselves in, fit only to fight monsters and tread upon the grey wastes of necrospace. Let those like Samuel Hyst convince themselves that they’d earned their peace. Jada growled inside her mind; this violent life was at least an honest one.

Perhaps that was why Najib’s cheap musings had struck her so profoundly. Out here on the bleeding edge, in the company of slavers and mercenaries, a person could wear their trauma on their shoulder and be met with understanding by those around them. There was no place for judgment in this vast nightmare of space, only the acknowledgement that they had all gone too far to come back.