Or: The First Time I Killed

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A note... "Arch" is pronounced "Ark."

And as for the setting... the story physically takes place in the near future from where VO is now. The events described occur around our time, and focus on the illegal and shadowy Valent/Axia conflict. See the VO wiki for more info.

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A young man pushed open the door to Lucy's Restaurant on Verasi Industrial, an Axia commercial station. The place was one of the original establishments when the station was first opened, but had since devolved from a family oriented diner into the dirtiest (yet busiest) bar in the station. The man wrinkled his nose as the smell of the place reached him, but stepped in all the same. He wore a thick black leather coat that hid a pistol, not that he needed to worry about concealment. As the man looked around the bar, he saw a number of filled holsters, and even a few guns simply sitting on tables. In the darkest corner sat another man by himself, just over fifty, though he looked far older. His sagging posture bent him over the table, and over his large drink.

The younger man took his time, slowly making a path through the crowds towards the corner. As he reached the table, he coughed quietly.

"Sir, if I may ask, for I have been looking for quite a while, but, sir, are you Arch Tatre?"

The old man grunted noncommittally.

"Oh Mr. Tatre, it is indeed a pleasure. Please let me introduce myself, my name is Maxwell Mann. And...if I seem a little flustered, I apologize, but you are a hero of mine."

Arch took a long drink. "I'm not much of a hero, boy. You should get outa..." As Arch turned to look at Maxwell his words faltered. Maxwell's face, split in a wide grin, was so overpoweringly familiar that Arch lost his train of thought. He was, of course, a complete stranger. Arch knew for a fact that he had never seen this young man before in his life, but his face was so...enticingly familiar...that his usual terseness faded. "Take a seat, Maxwell. What brings you looking for someone like me?"

Maxwell sat across the small round table from Arch, still smiling. "Please, call me Max, and I'm here because--"

"Max! Max Mann! Hah!" interrupted Arch, with a bark of laughter.

"Yes, I get that a lot... uh... as I said... I'm here because you're something of a hero. And quite an interest professionally to me right now."

"And how is that?"

"Well, I grew up on an Axia station... not this one of course... and we always heard tales of the brave people who gave up their lives to help Axia covertly take down the thieving scientists at Valent Robotics. I've given my life to learning about and documenting the exploits of those men and women. Of course, the whole thing is very secretive even now.... I only found your name a month ago but have been searching for you tirelessly since."

"And?"

"Well... I was hoping you could tell me about your life!"

Arch stared back at Max for a few minutes before speaking. "As I said, I'm no hero. You grew up with lies in your ears," he spat, taking another drink as his dark mood returned. "My whole life has been about secrets, and now you want me to open up just so you can... profit off of it like a dirty leech? Thanks but no thanks, don't come back." He leaned back against the bench as he said this, and turned his gaze back down to the drink in front of him, apparently hoping to ignore Max away.

But Max did not leave, he sat with a slight frown on his face and kept his gaze locked on the older man. Finally he stood, and pulled the pistol from under his coat, setting it in front of Arch.

"This is my job, Mr. Tatre, and I am here to hear, with good reason. You can get off your chest what I'm sure are some painful memories, or you can pull the trigger."

Arch picked up the pistol and looked it over, pretending to be studying it while he considered the boy. Making ultimatums and pulling guns, the lad had seen too many movies. He finally looked up at Max, at the familiar face and the brighter than bright eyes, and gestured back at the bench.

"Thank you," said Max, sitting back down. "I have a general idea about what sort of work you've done and all, pieced together from Axia records over the last month. I've done my research. What I want to know is your perspective, and how it all started if not out of altruism. It never sounded like hell when we heard stories growing up, so it's up to you to explain that."

"Get a drink Max Mann, this is going to take a while..."

**** Told from Arch Tatre's perspective ****

My life started on the rocky path. You grew up hearing about me, I grew up hearing about the pirates. This new era of space privateers started during my teen years, and I wasn't the only one who wanted to be like them. The trouble is, the names you always hear, tramshed and Mystic Rogue and such, those are the ones who don't get caught. The ones who started it, and could always stay a step ahead of the law just by being the pioneers they are. People growing up though, people like me, were following their trail just like the law getting mooned every night, and we didn't fare so well. I bought a ship at nineteen, a real gun at twenty, and thought I was set. I was small time, doing what I had to to survive and not much more as the stories poured in every day about more and more busts. I made it a solid five years in fringe systems and gray, taking obscure places to wait. And then they got me. Broke down my door in the middle of the night, badges flashing, and picked me up in under a minute.

When someone's trying to talk about something harsh, you usually hear a comparison to Serco prisons. Well, I never saw a Serco prison, but I can't imagine it worse than what the UIT have set up for pirates. A cell barely big enough to lay down, certainly not tall enough to stand in, and a single bedsheet. A meals a day, if lucky, and that was it. No other human contact, nothing to do but sit. I was their for two years when I got a visitor. Normally they don't allow it, but this guy was big time. The guard brought him down to outside my cell, and left. This guy, I never got to know his name, was wearing a suit cleaner and nicer than anything I had seen in years. He had a thin mustache with a slight curl and a trimmed tuft of a beard under his lip. He had to be younger than I was. Anyway, he just stood their looking down at me with a stupid grin and I just looked back with a stupid grimace. Finally he says, "How would you like another life?"

I swallowed and coughed, trying to get my voice back. I had practiced my talking at the beginning, but after a year you kinda lose the spirit. It took me a few tries, but finally I got out a word. "Yes."

And that was it, the kid calls back the guard, shows him a paper, and my door opens up. The suit offers a hand and pulls me to my feet. I stumbled a bit, but he's got a strong grip and keeps me up. He tosses the guard a credit chip and takes me out into his ship, an effing trident. Once inside, he starts tells me the deal.

"I'm with the Axia Technology Corporation. We're having some trouble with Valent Robotics. Need some things...taken care of. Under the table. We'll give you jobs, and we'll pay well. For now, I've transfered a hundred thousand credits into your account. As far as the world is concerned, you're Arch Tatre, a low level employee of Axia and you have a room at our station in Dau. Just go there and take a few days to get your sanity back. I'll leave instructions on how you'll be contacted."

Then he stops and turns to look at me, finally getting that damn smirk off his face, and says, "But don't forget, Axia is doing this for you for us. We picked you because you can do the jobs we need. If you try to back out, or don't want to do something we ask, you'll go right back where you were. Don't forget, you'll have pissed off the people that pulled you out of a high security UIT prison no questions asked."

And with that, he dropped me off in Dau, and my new life began. I'd come to this bar, sit at this table, and wait until my assignment was dropped off on a datachip taped to the bottom of the table over there.

****

"Wow!" said Max. "Just like that?"

"It's not quite that sudden when you're actually living it."

"I bet. What's the first assignment you really remember?"

"I remember all of them, kid. Every delivery, every smuggling run, every time I took the batteries out of some damn piece of junk in a Valent station. But the first one that really mattered, that was about two months and six jobs into my new life."

****

It seemed pretty easy until then. Fly to a Valent station, do something sneaky but low risk, and find my credit total had just had another zero tacked on the end. Until this one day. I knew it would be different the second I saw him, the kid who got me out of prison. He poked his head through the door of this place, caught my eye, and backed out. I immediately went to the booth where I'd find my job drops, felt under the table, and this time got a whole envelope. I tucked it into my coat and left right away. Outside, I expected to see his fancy suit, but he was gone. But he left a note on the opposite wall. "Don't forget."

I got back to my apartment, and opened up the envelope. The first thing I saw was a face, and a name, and I knew right then exactly what was gonna be on the piece of paper under it. This guy was an Axia scientist, who decided the money wasn't good enough and started selling secrets to Valent. Eventually, he accidentally reached one of our spies in their camp, and now he had to be taken care of.

It was quite a moment for me, sitting on the edge of my bed just staring at this guy's picture. Yeah I had been a pirate, but I had never actually taken a life. Traders either escaped or paid up. I had always assumed that in the heat of the moment, it would be easy to pull the trigger and finish someone off, but I never found out. But sitting there, knowing that I might be responsible for making this guy cease to exist... that's a pretty different thought. At first, I figured I wouldn't do it. But then, I thought about the note my contact had left, and about what he said the night I got out of prison. So I started thinking of ways to get to this target, but maybe save him somehow. Sneak him out, give him some credits to hide or whatever. The brief told me exactly where I could find him, and mentioned how much they would pay me. It was a lot, much more than anything I had earned up to that point, and I decided right then to kill this sucker stupid enough to go against Axia.

It was easy enough to get him. Every week, this guy would make a run planetside from the station to visit friends and family. That part was tough for me to think about at first, until I thought about the money again. I took out his engine two thousand meters from the station, and pulled him unconscious out of his crippled ship, leaving him locked in the back room of my Warthog. I flew a few sectors away, pulled my gun, and went back to finish him.

When I open the door, he's still sitting on the chair where I left him, still passed out. I aimed, right at his head, ready to become even richer than I already was. But then, I just stood there. I thought about the money, but that wasn't doing it. Finally, this guy comes to, and looks up at me pretty dazed. He's tied up, but doesn't know it yet, and tries to move his arms. All of a sudden, things became a lot clearer for him. He straightened up on the chair, and looked pretty scared. I still remember word for word everything that happened.

"Please," he whispered, "please, don't do this. I'm sorry, I got stupid. I just wanted a better life, but that was stupid! I should've stuck it out, I know, I know that now! Please, please just let me go and I'll never let anyone know I'm still alive! I know how Axia works, they don't need a body, you'll still get your money!"

Then he broke down, his head fell, and he just started crying and saying "Please, please!" over and over. And I still was just standing there, pointing the gun at him. I couldn't do it, not when it would be so easy to just let him go. The guy was a genius, he'd know to stay quiet.

But still I wasn't moving. He just kept sobbing and begging, and occasionally pulling on the ropes around his wrists. And then, out of nowhere, the message comes back to me. "Don't forget." And right then, I remembered. The years in prison, the years of horrible, crippling, nothingness. And I knew that maybe this guy could live his life, and I could be rich, but that maybe it wouldn't work out, and it just wasn't worth the risk. I realized my arm had slacked; I lifted it, and like a string was attached this guy's head comes up too. He looks at me, and finally shuts up. In his eyes, it's pretty damn clear he knows what's gonna happen, and it's pretty damn clear that he isn't ready.

So I pull the trigger, and just like that I didn't have to look into those damn eyes any more.

****

Arch finished, his eyes narrowed and his jaw set. He looked down at the table, staring into it for minutes, before he finally looked back up at Max and took a sip of his drink.

Max was watching Arch, but again was frowning slightly, as though disappointed by the story Arch had picked.

"When you pull the trigger on someone," said Arch after a few more drinks, "it all becomes pretty clear. It's never about the money. It's about something more, for every person that kills, something that's more important to them than another man's life. For me, it was about keeping whatever I had been given that day in the UIT prison."

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This is just Arch's first story, and there will be more.

I bloody well hope so!

you need to write for a living you have the most vivid imagination ive ever seen. hope too read more soon