Sean-Michael Argo - Ghost Faction

The man was dressed like a ganger from Downspire, with brightly colored patchwork clothing and spiral tattoos on his face and neck. His chest was covered with the cheap riot plates typically worn by cor-sec officers of the former Vorhold enforcer corps. He was armed with a cor-sec small caliber pistol and from his neck hung the accursed whistles carried by the Stalkers that Jada recalled all too well.

Whoever he was, there was no doubt in Jada’s mind that he was hard meat, for no common man would have been able to get his hands on one of those whistles, much less figure out how to command the worms. She’d been right all along: this was predator against predator.

Pistol rounds whipped through the air around her and one managed to tear across her ribs before Jada’s own burst of fire caught her opponent in the chest and sent him hurtling backwards in a blossom of blood and shattered armor. Jada landed awkwardly on the ground just outside the building, her fall somewhat broken by the body of the worm, which had indeed expired moments after its escape.

Jada grunted and rolled onto all fours and brought her rifle up as she rose to a crouching position. The ganger, wounded and frenzied as he was, sprang out of the hole moments later wielding Jada’s gory boarding knife. Jada let out a measured breath and punched a round through his forehead just as he emerged. His head snapped back but his momentum carried his corpse to the ground next to his killer. Hard men died hard, thought Jada as she wiped the boarding knife on the man’s clothes and returned it to the sheath, but they still died.

The merc heard the sound of running feet just around the corner of the building, and she hugged the wall before risking a look down the broken avenue beyond.

A woman with the same ganger look about her was fleeing through the street, a pistol in her hand and what looked to be a hatchet strapped across her shoulders. It seemed that she had decided the bottom line wasn’t worth fighting for after what had just happened to her partner and their worms.

Jada did not hesitate to raise her rifle to her shoulder and take aim. Battle had been joined and this was still a combatant, even if one in retreat. The merc squeezed the trigger once and watched through her scope as the round slammed into the ganger’s back. By the peculiar way the woman jerked before collapsing in a stiff heap, Jada was relatively certain that her bullet had struck the hostile’s spine.

Despite her surge of chemical induced strength and energy, Jada could already feel the crash coming. Now that the fighting was done, everything felt as if it was getting numb, her senses dulling by the second, and she knew that she had to hurry. Her body was already knitting itself back together, but the wound on her leg was not only severe, it was being exposed to all manner of pollutants and toxins from the environment. Jada knew she was going to have to pay the steep costs for emergency medical attention once back aboard the Far Rider. They could stabilize her and manage the various infections and pollutants until she could return to Sword Base for a full recovery.

Jada popped in a fresh magazine and consulted her nav-unit before limping as swiftly as she could towards the debris pit.

It did not take her long to reach the coordinate and it had been an arbitrary one anyway. Once she stood on top of the heap of rubble around the pit, she could see down into it to the bottom, a few meters down the slope of rubble. The explosions had done their job well, as had the professional salvage crews, and the freelance scavengers who came later. Only those students of obscure military history would ever know about the men and women who fought and died here, on all sides. Progress had left this world behind.

Jada fingered the ring that hung from her neck, and walked down to the bottom of the pit. It was just sand and broken pieces of buildings, but now that she was deep enough to be out of the wind, it felt as far down as the bottom of the world. This was the black hole in her universe, the crushing singularity that filled her waking hours with angst and her sleep with nightmares.

Jada pulled her hood down from her head, ignoring the increasing fatigue in her battered body and then removed the re-breather.

The fetid air stung Jada’s lungs, but it was a familiar miasma and strangely comforting. The merc knelt down in the dust and drew her boarding knife from its sheath. With her other hand, she removed the necklace from her throat and wrapped it around the handle of the knife.

Tears suddenly began to streak her face. She held the razor sharp blade before her for a moment, considering its sturdy construction and the dull gleam of the ring now affixed to the hilt. There were only two paths from this point, that much she knew, and for what seemed like an eternity, she remained still, the knife gripped firmly in her hands.

Then, her decision made, she pulled the pin loose that held her hair in a knot at the back of her head and let it fall in a tumbled mass around her shoulders.

The Reapers had never much cared about having regulation hair policies and marines could keep themselves groomed how they liked so long as it did not interfere with their helmets or their duties. The Dire Swords were much the same.

George had loved her long, silky hair.

She raised the knife to her head and pressed it against her skin.

Jada’s hair fell almost to her waist and the weight of it helped with the cutting. Blood ran down Jada’s face as the blade bit into her scalp in a few places despite how carefully she rasped the edge over her head.

Before long, the ground before her was covered with a mound of long, dark hair splattered with drops of blood. When she was finished, Jada held the knife up once more, taking in the sight of the ring.

“Enough, now,” whispered Jada, kissing the ring. Then she raised the knife in both hands and drove the point of the boarding knife through the dark locks and into the ground.

Then the merc stood up and unslung her rifle just in case there were hostiles lurking out there thinking they could make easy prey out of a wounded interloper. The fight would certainly have attracted the attention of any scavengers or hunters in the area, though the carnage would likely repel more than it attracted. True predators rarely attacked prey that might cost them a pound of flesh in the taking of them.

She climbed up the slope and out of the pit so she could consult her nav-unit then began limping towards the landing craft.

She did not look back.

Jada reached the landing craft without further incident and knew that the crew inside were watching her approach through the security feeds. They had been given explicit instructions not to leave the ship and had no doubt taken notice of the firefight earlier.

Jada approached the hatch and punched in her access code as she slung her rifle and lowered her hood so that the feed could get a good look at her face. The pilot checked her code and upon seeing that it matched, he lowered the boarding plank. The merc entered the airlock, and once the hatch closed behind her, she removed her cloak and stripped off the disposable body glove. Once those were stuffed into the small incinerator unit, she stepped under the de-con showerhead and let the scalding hot solution of water and neutralizing chemicals cleanse her of the last remnants of Vorhold.

The water shut off and gusts of air dried her skin in seconds. The shower had stripped off a thin layer of skin, giving her elegant body a dull gleam. She padded over to a locker next to the shower and pulled a simple one-piece flight suit from the rack. While the Praxis Mundi exploration craft had been incredibly expensive to lease, it offered the kind of amenities that made this journey possible.