Steven Montano: Black Scars

And there was the damn camel, wandering across the wastelands. It looked none the worse for wear. It had somehow been shed of its pack — likely tundra nomads or scavengers had helped relieve it of its burden — and it didn’t look terribly happy when Cross ordered the Bloodhawk to set down, but for some reason it didn’t run, and it waited, chewing and snarling and standing there with its dual humps and its horrid teeth. It bore no markings, so there was no way that Cross could actually identify it, and yet he knew it was his. If nothing else, there couldn’t have been that many solitary Bactrian camels wandering around the Reach who’d stand still and nuzz at Cross while he landed, approached, and coaxed the creature into the ship’s hold.

“ Really?” the deck officer asked as Cross brought it aboard.

“ Absolutely,” Cross said with a smile. “He’s part of my team.”

Thornn was as he remembered it, which was good considering it had been some months since he'd been there. It was difficult for Cross, sometimes, to go back. So many memories attached him to the city, memories of people he'd lost.

Cross stared out of the Bloodhawk’s window as they approached Thornn. He saw the city's arcane wires and sandstone and its iced outer walls as the ship circled and made its descent. Pillars of blue-white flame burst forth from industrial chimneys and lit the dawn like funeral pyres. Thick concertina wire electrified with pale crimson energies surrounded the city like steel brambles. Obelisk towers made from black iron bore automated chain guns that rotated back and forth and ensured clear skies. Gargoyle sentries floated through the blood red air like enormous birds.

Cross remembered the gargoyles of Krul, and before they'd even touched down he was shaking.

The Bloodhawk landed on the platform atop the massive hospital headquarters of the Southern Claw military that were stationed in Thornn. The sky was filled with islands of menacing red clouds, and the air tasted of industrial smoke and the particular ice-dry odor of the Reach.

Rotating lights caught Cross, Black and Kane in flashes of yellow and white as they stepped off of the ship. It was still dark enough that shadows wreathed their faces.

Cross stepped to the edge of the building and looked out over the city. He peered into canyons of tall and dark buildings, a network connected with wires. He saw homunculi fly through the air with missives or messages, trying not to crash into birds or each other. He saw telescopes and antennas, clotheslines and stargazers on balconies, all protected by armed gargoyle sentries who perched on strategically placed towers, motionless in their classic statue stances. He saw small armored dirigibles float over the space between the buildings, lightweight vessels manned by Gol aeronauts and equipped with silvered harpoons and bags of holy water. He saw the farms positioned along the northwestern section of the city, fields of green and orange and red shielded by reinforced arcane glass and patrolled by Doj sentries. He saw squat guard posts armed with mounted flame cannons and packed with sandbags filled with blessed soil. He looked down into the narrow city streets and saw the silhouettes of vendors and merchants and homeless as they stirred with the morning light.

Once, that place had felt like home. He wasn’t sure what it felt like now.

“ Hey!” Kane said from behind him. The cargo door stood open, and the deck sergeant stood there with their fourth team member. “What do we do with the camel?”

“ So let me get this straight,” Pike said from the other side of the meeting room table. His voice was so gravely it sounded like he chewed on glass.

He was a tall and lean man with a stony jaw and pale stubble that matched his stark white hair. Elias Pike, a Southern Claw officer in charge of special assignments and the closest thing that Cross had to a direct report, lit a cigarillo and stood up. He offered one to Cross, who refused. Pike knew well and good that Cross had quit a few years ago, but he always offered anyways, because he was of the opinion that all soldiers should smoke. He argued life was too short to worry about dying early. Pike's hair had gone white not because of age — he was thirty-four — but because he'd been mostly drained of blood and infected with vampirism in a field skirmish with Ebon Cities regulars a few years back, and it had only been the timely intervention of resident Thornn surgeon Phil Rikeman that had saved him. Rikeman, in turn, wore a metal brace on one leg that kept an unidentified magical disease that had permanently latched to his knee-bone from eating him alive.

Cross had lived through something similar, but the disease he'd carried had ultimately detonated a pyroclast bomb that killed his sister, and if not for the unexplained sacrifice made by his old spirit, it would have left him dead, as well.

Everyone has scars. And yet here I sit, scarred and beaten…and coming back for more.

“ You want me to revoke your status as a Southern Claw officer,” Pike said slowly, visibly clenching his teeth at the words, “but to retain your services as an operative for the Alliance.” He took a drag from his cigarillo. “So, in essence, you want to become a mercenary, working for us.”

“ Working only for the Southern Claw,” Cross added quietly.

Pike laughed, and blew out a stream of smoke. Dank afternoon light fell through the tall windows of the sandstone chamber. Cross heard the moans of patients in the medical wing, a massive network of bed-filled chambers located beyond the reinforced wooden door across the hall. The air was dry and cold and filled with dust and cobwebs, and unnaturally thick shadows clung to every corner of the hospital, lending the entire structure an exceedingly ominous atmosphere. Graves used to joke that the hospital looked more like a place to party with vampires, not fight them.

“ If that's the case, why not just stay?” Pike said. There was a hint of anger to his tone, but that was more or less a given when you talked to Pike. He was an excellent field commander, but not much of a people person.

“ I’d consider it, if you’ll take on Danica Black and Mike Kane.”

Pike laughed quietly again.

It’s better than him chewing me out, I guess.

“ I read their files,” Pike nodded as he smoked and paced around the table. Cross kept his eyes forward. “Kane is a criminal and thief, and he was a gladiator at Krul. Black is a long-standing member of the Revengers, an organization that we have tenuous relations with, at best.” He paused. “You know we can’t do that.”

“ The Southern Claw allowed my sister to join my squad,” Cross said, trying to contain the bitterness in his voice. “So they can allow a couple of seasoned fighters — who, by the way, helped destroy a major threat — to join the Southern Claw as special operatives.”

Pike finished his circle of the table, and stopped.

“ It’s unlikely to happen, Cross.”

Cross nodded.

“ Then you know my decision. You gave me the option whether or not to stay on when I returned from Viper Squad’s last mission.”

“ And you never really gave me an answer,” Pike said.

“ I am now. Sir…the Southern Claw uses mercenaries all the time. Give my team the shit jobs — we’re used to it. You know we’re capable. We’ll be a much bigger help as freelancers than we will as part of the regular army, anyways.” He saw Pike raise his eyebrows as he pondered the possibilities. Everything Cross said was true: while the Alliance didn’t like to talk to about it openly, they made use of quite a few mercenary bands to act as backup for undermanned Companies, or else to do routine investigating or carry out patrols in understaffed areas. It had been a mercenary outfit — the so-called Storm Riders — who’d helped bail Wolf Company out of the fire when they were ambushed by Ebon Cities regulars at Blackmarsh. “Most of the mercenaries that the Alliance uses aren’t reputable,” Cross continued. “I’m offering you the services of some that are.”