The Stargazer's War - Chapter 30

Chapter 30: You Again

[Quick note: This chapter directly follows up on events from a chapter I intend to add but haven’t written yet. All you really need to know is that shortly after the void horde attack, Arthur takes Cal out for drinks. There, two goons accost Arthur for information on his sister Clara, who’s fled from a smalltime criminal that’s infatuated with her. Cal beats them up and they go on there merry way. I hope the following isn’t too confusing. Enjoy!]

One day and precisely zero flashes of divine inspiration later, I awoke to something far more troubling: a missed call.

Okay, maybe that on its face isn’t that troubling, at least until you account for the realization that the call came from Arthur—someone who’d called me a grand total of twice—at approximately four-thirty-two in the morning. Confused, groggy, and so far only a little bit worried, I took the obvious next step. I called him back.

Call failed.

That got me to sit up. I scowled at the message, mind scrambling for a reason the call might’ve failed. Arthur’s shift at the reception desk started at six. He should’ve been downstairs by now, chilling behind his desk with little to do but answer calls. Maybe he’d taken a personal day? The kind he’d call me at four AM to warn me about?

I dismissed that thought before I even finished it. Either Arthur had some kind of family emergency, or those goons had finally stepped over the line. By the time I’d worked my way out of bed and into my uniform, a nasty feeling had settled in my stomach.

I grabbed my sword on the way out.

My next clue appeared the moment I mounted the stairway down to the lobby, from the top of which I had clear line of sight to the reception desk. No Arthur. Wilma, her scowl even deeper than usual, stood in his place, her eyes dark and baggy, remnants of a night shift that’d left its mark. I made right for her.

“Wilma! Wilma, Wilma, Wilma. How are you this fine morning?”

“What do you want?” She half growled half slurred the words, like an angry alcoholic or a very tired rottweiler.

“Where’s Arthur? Isn’t it his shift?”

“He never showed. I’m stuck here waiting while they find a temp to replace him.”

I furrowed my brow. “That doesn’t sound like him. Did he say what happened?”

“Not to me, not to Saul.”

Saul’s the building manager. Don’t worry about him. He’s not important.

My heart rate sped. “He didn’t call in?”

“No.” Wilma snapped. “If he did I’d have given him a piece of my mind. Do you know where he is?”

“I don’t,” I answered, swallowing back a knot in my throat. “But I think I might have an idea. Thanks, Wilma.”

She grunted at me.

Fighting back my urge to ridicule the use of a grunt in lieu of actual words, I left the reception desk behind, tapping away at my holopad as I made for the transport platform.

Xavier, at least, actually picked up. “Hello?”

“Xavier! Where are you? Actually, nevermind. I need your help. Arthur’s missing.”

“Arthur…?”

“The receptionist,” a feminine voice groggily drifted over the comm link.

“Oh, good morning, Charlotte,” I greeted her, opting not to wonder how exactly they’d gone from storming off yesterday to waking up next to each other today. “You’re together. That’s perfect. I need your help tracking him down.”

“Why do you need our help tracking down your receptionist?”

“They’re friends,” Xavier said.

“I know they’re friends,” Charlotte hissed. “Friends don’t track each other down.”

“I think he’s in trouble,” I explained as a transport pod arrived and I stepped in. “He called me at four AM this morning, didn’t leave a message, and now I can’t get through to his holopad. Worse yet, he’s awol from work. Poor Wilma’s been stuck here something like eleven hours. I think those guys from the bar might’ve pulled something.”

“Cal, that was half a year ago,” Charlotte said. “He was probably out late and overslept. He can’t have been sober if he thought you’d answer his call at four in the morning.”

“That’s why I want you to check his place. Maybe he’s there. Maybe there’s something—or someone—that can tell us what happened. I’m heading to the Pony, see if I can pick up a trail there.”

“We’re on it!” Xavier committed before Charlotte could protest.

I grinned. “Thanks, guys. I really appreciate it. Arthur appreciates it!”

“Try not to get yourself killed,” Charlotte warned. “There are dangerous people down in—”

“Oh, whoops, looks like my pod’s arriving. Thanks for the help, bye!” I hung up before Charlotte could lecture me further. If my hunch was correct and this was about Arthur’s sister, I’d scuffled with these guys before. Based on my prior experience, it wasn’t exactly the most professional outfit.

Droe Lane was an entirely different place during the day. Sunlight banished the evening gloom, reducing the glare of the few beat-up screens and neon signs still plugged in to little more than a dull glow. The dissonant mess of adjacent nightclubs leaking their music into the street had vanished entirely, leaving a sense of eerie quiet as workers cleaned up the prior night’s revelry.

The foot traffic too had transformed. Gone were the partiers and the prostitutes and the chem dealers, replaced by the horrid trundling specters of the hungover on their walks, shameful, prideful, or both, from wherever they’d spent the night. Had I an idle mind, I might’ve enjoyed guessing which had found beds and which had spent the night somewhere less… intentional.

The starkest change to Droe Lane in the light of dawn wasn’t its populace or its clubs, but its filth. No more did a mass of pedestrians or evening murk disguise or distract from the grime of the place. The remnants of a dozen dropped meals and spilled drinks littered the street, a veritable minefield of mess just waiting for a misplaced shoe. The air reeked of vomit and urine, whether from the street itself or those that still walked it, I couldn’t tell.

Dark stains and chipped paint characterized the buildings more than anything else, their unkempt facades no obscured no more by the glare of their signs and backlit screens.

The city itself was hungover, and like any addict, it’d take but a few hours to clean itself up and get right back to it.

The Three-Legged Pony was no exception. Its door hung open, allowing exit for the—I counted three—patrons who yet slumbered at their tables. A middle-aged woman stood outside, wiping down the window with rag that may have once dreamt of being white, but lived a reality of unflinching gray.

“Excuse me.” I approached her. “I’m looking for a man named Arthur Kent. Yay high, medium weight, short, black hair. You seen him?”

She didn’t even look at me. “Nope. I haven’t seen anything.”

“Are you sure? What about two taller gentlemen, buzz cuts, arms the size of my thigh, about twelve brain cells between the two of them?”

She didn’t answer.

“What if I told you their names are meathead, and meatshoulders? No, wait, those are their nicknames. Their name names are Dennis and Humphrey.”

The woman froze for a moment before continuing her window washing. “You can tell Victor I didn’t see anything.”

“Lady, look at me. I’m a cadet with the Dragon’s Right Eye. You really think I’m working for Victor?”

She finally turned to face me, lowering her rag-carrying hand into the pocket of her apron as she sized me up, most notably the rank icon on my breast. The hollow circle denoted me as somewhat of an anomaly—a cadet that hadn’t formed his core. The insignia was, of course, wrong, but she didn’t know that. The only question was whether she concluded I was a special case, or that the uniform was fake.

I cut to the chase. “Look, my friend is missing, and I think this Victor guy had something to do with it. Where can I find him?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t see anything.”

“Yes, yes, I know you didn’t see anything. You’ve been clear on that front. But you either know Victor, or you know enough about him to be scared of him. Does that include where he might be?”

“I’m sorry, sir. I can’t help you.” She turned back to her task.

I squinted at it. “That window is clean! Look, I just need to know…” I sighed. This wasn’t getting me anywhere. I wasn’t going to talk her out of being afraid. I did have another option, but it was one I loathed to implement. Unfortunately, the ticking clock left me little choice.

I put on my aviators, leaned in close, and cycled my sense meridian. “I get it. Victor’s a scary man. He has goons. I’m sure you pay him a tidy sum to keep this place safe. The thing is, I’m pretty sure Victor’s taken a friend of mine, a friend I would very much like to see again. If you’re afraid of what Victor will do if you talk…” I lowered my sunglasses to reveal my black and star-filled eyes staring directly into hers. “Imagine what I’ll do if you help him keep my friend from me.”

“Gordon Street,” she whispered the name. “There’s a flower shop. Victor works out of the back.”

I returned the dark lenses to my face and flashed her a smile. “See, that wasn’t so hard. Thank you kindly.”

“You won’t—” She gulped. “You won’t tell Victor I…”

“Don’t worry,” I said as I turned to go. “Victor won’t be the one asking the questions.”

I left her with that, heart pounding in my chest as I mentally fawned over how badass that felt. Yeah, I felt kind of guilty about threatening that poor woman, but there was no getting around that Victor had already done the same. Only way to get her talking was to convince her I was just as scary, something my scrawny ass had never actually managed before. Ten points for spooky space eyes.

I rode that high for about eight steps before I had to pull out my holopad to look up where the hell Gordon Street actually was. As it turns out, spooky space eyes: badass. Confidently walking off in the wrong direction: not so badass.

Xavier called as I navigated Droe towards where it met with Gordon. I walked as we talked. “Anything at his place?”

“He’s not here,” came Xavier’s reply. “Cal, this place is a nightmare. Arthur’s entire apartment is smaller than Charlotte’s bed.”

“How did you think the mortals lived? Square footage is pricy. Anything leap out at you?”

“Wednesday is laundry day,” he answered. “There are five sets of dirty—”

“Xavier!” Charlotte’s voice interrupted. “Priorities. The door was kicked in. Either someone searched his place—”

“Or he was taken,” I finished. “Shit. Okay. I think I have a lead on where. Something about a protection racket running out of a flower shop on Gordon Street. I’ll bet that’s where Arthur is.”

“A flower shop? They’re extorting people from a flower shop?”

“It’s more intimidating with the two goons out front,” I answered as the shop in question came into view. Sure enough, Dennis and Humphrey flanked the entrance. “In Full Bloom, on Gordon,” I confirmed the name.

“You’re there?” Charlotte asked. “Cal, wait for us. We’ll be there in fifteen.”

Right on schedule, a muffled yet distinctly identifiable scream echoed from somewhere beyond the storefront, one not of rage or terror, but of agony and desperation. Neither of the guards even flinched. “No can do,” I muttered into the holopad. “It sounds like they’re working him right now.”

“They’ve had him for four hours, Cal. He’ll make it another fifteen minutes.”

“He might.” Another scream rang out. I wrapped white knuckles around the Shiver’s hilt. “But I won’t.”

“Cal—Cal, listen to—”

I hung up. One of a very small group of people on Fyrion who’d been nothing but friends to me was being tortured in there, and I’d be damned if I waited around outside any longer than I had to. Besides, I’d gone up against tweedle-dumb and tweedle-dumber before, and while this time they saw me coming, I wasn’t the same fighter today as I was back then.

And this time I had a motherfucking sword.

“Meathead! Meatshoulders! Fancy seeing you here,” I announced my presence as I approached, arms out and palms up in a friendly gesture.

“He came!” Dennis snapped at Humphrey under his breath. “I told you he’d come.”

“And I told you, this time I’m ready.” Humphrey pulled up his teeshirt to reveal a piece of black metal shoved down his pants.

I stopped short still some twenty feet away. “A slug thrower? Seriously? You’re gonna punch a hole in the hull with that thing.” I made a point of lowering my gaze to waist level. “Then again, with where you’re keeping it, the hull might be the least of your worries.”

Simultaneously hilarious and convenient as it might’ve been, Humphrey managed to avoid shooting his dick off as he tore the gun from its ill-advised holster. He didn’t manage to get a shot off.

Not before I did.

I pulled enough qi from my newly formed core to cycle all twelve meridians at once. My skin hardened and turned deathly cold and pale. My bones indurated, my thoughts quickened, and, most critically, my muscles thrummed with power.

The world moved in slow motion as I rocketed forward at superhuman speed, my footsteps falling into the familiar step I’d drilled over and over again for closing in on a distant enemy: The Dragon Descends.

In hindsight, the goons had never stood a chance.

Humphrey’s pistol still pointed at the floor by the time I reached him. His arms, easily triple the size of mine, moved like putty in my hands as I yanked one to the side and wrenched the gun from the other. Grasping it by its muzzle, I resisted the instinct to slam the butt of the pistol into the bruiser’s head. Asshole or otherwise, he didn’t deserve to have his skull caved in.

Of course, my qi-chilled mind didn’t really care what he did or didn’t deserve, but the math worked out in his favor. Anyone else probably would’ve gotten away with it, but my position at the sect was tenuous enough to slot murder firmly in the “bad idea” category.

So I dislocated his shoulder instead. It was startlingly easy. I simply tugged on the wrist I already held in my left hand, sending him tumbling to the ground as a distinct pop reached my ears.

Dennis hadn’t even moved. His brother in goonhood had gone from drawing his gun to laying on the ground with his arm bent in the wrong direction before he’d even had time to take a step.

I raised an eyebrow at him beneath my aviators. “You heard him. This time he came prepared.”

Something about my corpselike skin, skeletal features, and voice entirely devoid of emotion scared the absolute bejesus out of Dennis. Well, either that or the fact I’d dispatched his colleague in under two seconds.

He ran.

I squinted at him as I watched him sprint away, oh so nobly leaving Humphrey alone with me and his dislocated shoulder. “Damn,” I muttered. “I didn’t even get a chance to use my sword.” I glanced down at Humphrey. “You up for a round two?”

Humphrey groaned.

A second scream echoed from somewhere inside the flower shop.

I tossed the clip from Humphrey’s weapon in one direction and the pistol itself in the other in the off chance Dennis had taken all twelve brain cells with him and Humphrey got it in his head to follow me. For good measure, I stomped on his left forearm, leaving a nasty bruise as I crushed the implanted chip that drove his holopad. Victor would receive no warning from him.

I moved for the entrance.

The door was locked.

Was.

Okay, sure, I suppose technically it remained locked even after I knocked it from its hinges, but come on. It wasn’t even difficult. With qi still running through my muscles like an ice flow, all it took was the base of my palm slamming against the hollow aluminum to tear the screws right from their holes. The door landed a few feet from its frame, learning nearly upright against an innocent orchid and a lily that was looking at me all shifty-eyed.

I stepped around it.

In Full Bloom reminded me in a lot of ways of Nick’s dorm room, a veritable forest of potted plants crowding up a cramped and gloomy space. At least this place had the excuse that the lights were off. I didn’t bother turning them on. The artificial daylight blaring in from the street more than satisfied my qi-enhanced eyes, even behind the dark lenses I wore.

The shop was empty. No henchmen rushed me, no ringleader tortured my captive friend, and no friendly old lady tried to sell me flowers. I scowled. Somebody had to have heard me break the door down, right?

I vaulted over the counter, shattering a terra cotta vase in the process, and made straight for the door marked employees only. This one they hadn’t bothered to lock, saving me both the effort and element of surprise as I burst through to find… nothing. A tiny back room complete with sink, wire shelves of sod and supplies, and little else greeted me.

I surveyed the space, drinking in the little details in a torrent of information as I made sense of it all. In the near blackness of the unlit room I searched, standing stalk still as my eyes flitted from wall to wall. The sink caught my eye, a deep and rectangular thing built large enough to fit multiple pots or vases or watering cans or whatever flower shops needed water for. I’d seen the like before in a janitor’s closet back on roofie.

Except this wasn’t that. Its spout was at the same level, and its basin was roughly the same dimensions, but instead of ending at the bottom of the sink to expose the plumbing beneath, the basin’s walls extended all the way to the floor. I knelt down and ran a finger along its base. Sure enough, it wasn’t actually attached, sitting ever so slightly above the cold concrete.

I pushed.

With a muffled crack confirming that I’d broken some mechanism or other, the entire sink receded into the back wall, exposing a metal ladder down into some dark passage. I hopped right in.

I landed with a gentle clang onto a catwalk of sorts, some kind of suspended walkway comprised of sheet metal attached to the ceiling. It extended far into the distance to both my right and left, well past the point at which the gentle curve of the tunnel broke my line of sight. Behind me, a metal wall closed off that entire side. Ahead, a matching one lasted for all of twenty feet in each direction before disappearing, exposing the empty air beneath the catwalk.

From the right, a deep rumbling reached my ear, rapidly crescendoing as its source drew nearer. The catwalk itself quaked beneath my feet and a rush of air blasted across my face.

And then it passed. The noise fade, the shaking ceased, and I realized exactly where I was.

The transport tubes. Victor had his very own access point to maintenance tunnels for the gods damned transport tubes. Threads, he could probably get anywhere in the city from down here. A scream sounded to my left, muffled no more as it echoed through the empty passage. A voice followed.

“I am not a patient man, mister Kent. Now are you going to tell me where my dear Clara has gone, or do I need to get serious?”

“She’s not your dear,” Arthur growled. “And I’ve already told you. She’s gone. Offworld and not coming back.”

“Yes, yes, you’ve been clear about that. Offworld where?”

I rounded the corner to find two men, one wielding a pair of pliers, the other tied to a chair, on the middle of a catwalk that crossed over the tunnel proper. Victor did not look remotely as intimidating as he sounded.

The ghastly pale glow of the cheap LED lamps fell upon a small and pudgy man, no more than five foot five yet easily over two hundred pounds. Greasy hair more gray than black circled a bald spot atop his head, leaving him looking more like everyone’s least favorite uncle than the head of a protection racket.

“You heard the man.” I announced my presence in the inhumanly even tone my barely-breathing lungs produced. “She’s not your dear.”

“Cal,” Arthur breathed with audible relief.

“What do you want?” Victor asked. “The sect has no business here.”

“Neither does he.” I nodded towards Arthur. “And yet here he is.”

Victor didn’t move. He didn’t speak. He stared at me in silent stillness as if evaluating the situation, coming up with a way to talk himself out of this.

But he couldn’t hide from me. I heard the pounding of his heart. I saw the little twitch in his eye. I caught the tension in his right arm as it moved ever so slowly behind his back. The faint rumble of an approaching pod echoed in the distance.

By the time he burst into action, Shiver was already in my hand. Before his knife could even reach Arthur’s throat, I was upon him.

“Come any closer and I—”

The threat died on his lips. His arm fell limp into Arthur’s lap, severed at the elbow before it could deliver on its promise of violence. Not even the roar of the transport pod below us could mask the man’s scream.

Victor fell to his knees and clutched his stump to his belly, stemming the bleeding as best he could.

I looked down upon him, this fat, greasy, weasel of a man, and pulled the sunglasses from my face to reveal that black and starry eyes beneath. He gazed into them transfixed, adrenaline and horror clashing with an unexpected wonder on his face.

As the roar of the transport faded into the distance, I delivered my message. “This man and his sister are under sect protection. Do you understand?”

Victor nodded.

“Good. You’d better get going then. You don’t have long before the blood loss starts to take effect.”

Victor scrambled to his feet and took off, racing desperately away until he disappeared around a corner. I let him leave. Hopefully the threat would stick, and if it didn’t I supposed I could always come back. Killing him might’ve been simpler, but it also might’ve gotten me kicked out.

I slipped my glasses back on to cover my eyes as I turned my attention to Arthur. “Can you walk?”

“I… I think so.”

“Good.” Three swipes of my blade sent the cords binding him falling to the catwalk. “Let’s get you out of here.” I grabbed his wrist to help him up, bypassing his mangled hands in the process. He shivered at my touch.

I called in a medical transport as we walked back towards the flower shop. I climbed the ladder first, reaching down to again pull Arthur up by his wrist. We made it out to the street just in time to find Charlotte and Xavier browbeating a frightened Humphrey, who, in my absence, had managed to make it to his feet and lean against the storefront.

“Cal!” Charlotte greeted me. “Are you okay?”

“Of course he’s okay! He has a warrior’s spirit!”

“He’s white as a ghost and covered in blood.”

“Not mine,” I explained. “Medics are on their way. Victor did a number on Arthur’s hands.”

Charlotte paled before my eyes as she glimpsed the damage. “And Victor is…?”

“Gone. Now doubt he’ll be back extorting again with a shiny new prosthetic in a few days, but he’ll leave Arthur alone.”

“Good. Good.” She looked me up and down. “You should go.”

“Charlotte, I can’t just leave—”

“We’ll take it from here. If the medics see you like this, there’re going to be questions.”

I exhaled. She was right. Why did she have to be right? “Okay.” I wiped Shiver on my thigh—what was a little more blood when you’re already covered in it?—and returned it to its sheath. I turned to Arthur. “You’ll be alright?”

He swallowed and nodded. “I’ll—I’ll be fine. T-thank you. If you hadn’t come, I don’t know what I would’ve—”

“Best not to think about that.” I stopped him. “And you’re welcome.” I gestured down to my sect uniform. “What’s the point of all this if we can’t protect our friends?” I looked to Charlotte and Xavier. “Take care of him.”

And with that I left, strode right down Gordon Street with a sword on my back and somebody else’s blood down my front. Only once I’d turned the corner, disappeared from Arthur’s line of sight, did I cease the flow of qi through my meridians.

Color and warmth and horror returned to the world. I stumbled as the coppery stench of blood reached my nose, no longer a single detail in a panoply of scents as it overpowered my unenhanced senses. My heart pounded. My stomach churned. For a few moments I stopped short, strongly considering giving up on that morning’s breakfast.

But then I kept walking.

Arthur was okay.

He’d need a few days to recover physically and probably a few years to recover emotionally, but he would, in time, recover.

I was okay.

My nausea would pass, and though I had brand new traumatic experience to heap onto the pile, I knew it wouldn’t slow me down.

Everything was going to be okay.

If anything I felt vindicated, justified in working myself to the bone day in and day out to advance my cultivation, hone my skills, and grow all the more lethal in the process. For all I wanted to learn and to prove myself, for all I waxed poetic about flailing against infinity, this was what it was all about: the power to protect those I cared about, to change things for the better even in what tiny ways I could.

For the first time in my already long and arduous cultivation journey, I’d come against those that would do harm, and actually been able to do something about it. Even harrowed and bloodstained and sick to my stomach, I couldn’t deny the other emotion welling up within my chest: Pride.

I’d done good. I’d helped my friend. And sure, it might’ve been against a bunch of mortals who hadn’t stood a chance, but I’d finally tasted that glorious victory Xavier never shut up about.

I think I could get used to it.