The Wanderer by M. L. McCortney
A deserter crash lands on an alien world and has a crisis of conscience.
If not for a sudden cold breeze, Gaensyn might have slept forever. Even with his eyes still closed, his head throbs along with a dozen cuts and bruises and burns scattered over him.
Gaensyn's eyes flutter open. He hangs upside down in his pilot's chair. Where there used to be viewport glass, there is now only sand and glass fragments, the ship having planted into the ground. Control screens on the console are broken and dead, leaving the only light to leak in from cracks in the ruined hull.
Where am I? He tries to trace back time, but his mind throws up walls of splitting pain. He remembers gunfire, blood, screams. Yes, he remembers deserting. How could he forget? It's only been a few days since then. The green blood crusting the slate-gray skin of his hands remains a testament to how close he came to dying at his former comrades' hands in doing so. But everything after that is a haze: setting a course for... somewhere, far away. Running out of fuel. Spinning through an atmosphere.
Gaensyn reaches for the release to his harness. He falls to the cold sand. Glass shards under him tear at his fatigues, grinding against his scarred body armor. He rolls to his chest. Blinding white daylight peeks through a gap before him.
With nowhere else to go, Gaensyn crawls.
Some twenty minutes later, Gaensyn is still adjusting to the light outside. Sand blows on the wind, rough against his face. Before him, the military transport fighter he stole is charred and twisted, its debris spread over a few hundred meters on the flat desert plain.
He crosses his arms and shivers. The sun burns bright in the blue sky, but on this distant world, the wind is cold.
For a while, he leans against the side of what's left of the ship, breathing in the alien air. The world's moon is a green crescent at the horizon, but otherwise, most of what he can see is featureless desert. This must be Lubaan, he realizes. A world so isolated and uninteresting that back home - thousands of light-years away - it has a reputation as the most isolated, the most uninteresting world in the whole galaxy.
And for the first time in days, Gaensyn allows himself a small smile.
He's done it.
Never again will he have orders to kill and terrorize. Never again will he hear villages called 'targets', civilians called 'dangerous.' And never again will he have to force himself into his father's cruel mold, the mold of a soldier, then an officer, and then someday, the man who takes his father's place as the Supreme Leader ruling over trillions.
Eventually, Gaensyn staggers off. Still half-dazed, he picks a direction and walks. Every few steps, he unbuckles a piece of his body armor and lets it fall to the cold sand. The gray metal does nothing in the cold, and he won't need it anymore.
The last piece of his old life to go is the ceremonial revolver and its holster on the small of his back. It was a gift from his father, complete with bullets. Gaensyn's hand hovers near the straps for it, suddenly shaking.
It's his only weapon left, and Lubaan is a lawless world, in a lawless region. Better keep it, he thinks. Not just as self-defense, but as a reminder.
No, he'll never be able to leave his old life behind. Not entirely.
Gaensyn walks on and on. Each step forms an unsteady rhythm that lulls him into a waking, shifting dream. He forgets about food, water, sleep. The long day stretches on. As he wanders, so too does his mind.
Back in his father's house, perched high in a building of steel and glass, they had a servant. A slave, really - but a girl of Gaensyn's age. They were of different species, but Gaensyn could never quite wrap his head around how they were so outwardly similar. Her skin was blue instead of gray, her black hair thick and wavy, her face narrow instead of blocky and geometric. And yet, beyond this, they were more or less the same. Arms, legs, hands, eyes, hearts - between the son of a Supreme Leader and the slave girl that cleaned his home, so little was different, unlike his father's propaganda would have him believe.
But now, alone in the desert, Gaensyn can barely remember her face, her strange accent. His father didn't let them talk, having discovered them playing together once as children. They still spoke from time to time, but she was afraid enough to mostly obey Gaensyn's father, and Gaensyn himself was loyal enough to not even let himself cry over it.
He cries now, a few silent tears soon blown away in a heavy gust of cold wind. How didn't he see? How didn't he understand? His father owned a person, ruling over a nation where that was the norm. Until recently, he scarcely thought of it as wrong. What must be wrong with him to go along with it for a quarter-century? Wrong with him, and the trillions of his people that hail his father's name every day?
Gaensyn's foot finds something, breaking his rhythm. He trips and falls. When he rises slowly, he realizes it's getting dark, the sun nearing the horizon. It'll get even colder soon.
But the desert isn't empty anymore.
Before him, there's a twisted carcass of a ship. It's just big enough for one person, with wings torn up and melted.
The cold wind biting at his skin, Gaensyn climbs through what used to be a hatch. Inside, it's cramped and dusty, the lone pilot a horned skeleton hunched in its chair. A wave of tiredness and hunger and thirst finally hits him, and he falls to his knees.
"We will share a fate, old friend," Gaensyn says to the skeleton, his voice hoarse.
Only the wind answers him. Gaensyn laughs a little. Talking to skeletons now, are we? But the thoughts only make him laugh again, leaning his head back against the old bulkhead.
As darkness settles in, the part of Gaensyn still living in reality searches the ship. All things considered, he's lucky - he finds a warm cloak with a hood, a respirator and goggles to protect from the sand. He finds water packs, old universal rations, a long-gun and its ammo.
I should leave the gun. He has six bullets, and maybe, he only really needs one. But something about weapons always spoke to him, and this one's no different. His soldier's instinct aches for something bigger than an ancient revolver, and the long-gun's barrel is almost two meters long, lined with rifling magnets. Maybe it'll make a decent walking stick.
Gaensyn tries it out the next morning. The gun makes a horrible walking stick - too heavy, too long. But he slings it over his shoulder anyway, at least something to keep his gray cloak from billowing behind him. Enough rations bulge in his pockets to last him a few days, and that's as far ahead as his mind is willing to think.
Not like I'm going to last that long, anyway.
As he walks on, eastern mountains grow nearer. Boulders and spindly bushes start to rise out of the sandy ground. Gripped by the sudden desire to not think of his past for once, Gaensyn searches his surroundings for something, anything of note. Above him, the clouds are icy streaks, too simple for his mind to weave into shapes or visions. But nearby, flies buzz around an area smelling of death. A huge bird has fallen from the sky. Most of its innards are gone to scavengers, but its glistening turquoise feathers remain.
Gaensyn picks a feather from its back, longer than his forearm. It glints in the sun. Beautiful.
There was a time when he wouldn't think it was beautiful. When 'beauty' was a word reserved for ingenious military maneuvers, rousing speeches, columns of soldiers marching in formation.
Shaking his head, Gaensyn tucks the feather inside his cloak and moves on.
When hills rise to either side of him, Gaensyn hears alien voices on the wind. It's getting dark again, the sky turned pink and orange.
From the sandstone cliffs to either side of him, a small town starts to materialize. The buildings are squat and low for residents not much more than a meter high. They're Igdans, gathered around one of the larger buildings, a hundred of them at most. Tan furs and knitted shawls cover much of their translucent gray skin and hairless heads.
Gaensyn makes to walk by them, paying them no mind. His people fought a war with the Igdans centuries ago, one deadly enough not to forget.
Smooth Igdan voices raise in argument, but soon, out of the edge of his vision, Gaensyn notices a shift. Some of them point at him, yelling at each other. Gaensyn keeps walking.
But one of them runs over and stands in his path.
Barely rising past his waist, the Igdan's biologically genderless body is thin and narrow. They watch Gaensyn with large eyes, starry and black, set in a smooth face.
The Igdan says something. Gaensyn stares at them blankly, not understanding a word. Another Igdan comes over and tries in a different language, but again, it isn't one Gaensyn knows.
Lastly, a third comes over and says with a heavy accent, "Can you help us, wanderer?"
They must think I'm not Detzokan, he realizes. After all, Gaensyn's isn't the only species to speak his language. Why would they even talk to him, otherwise?
Gaensyn shakes his head, eyeing the ground. "I don't think so."
He tries to keep walking, but the Igdans move to block him. "Are you sure?" the one says. "Perhaps you've seen something in your wanderings, something of value? Please, our mine is depleted, so we have nothing to trade for when the food merchants come. Yes, perhaps you have seen something? Something to salvage, yes?"
Gaensyn freezes, only staring at the three diminutive aliens. When he speaks, his voice is weak and mechanical, muffled even further by his respirator: "There are two crashed ships off to the west, but the second one from here is quite far off." With hands unsteady for a reason he can't place, he reaches into his cloak and pulls out the shining turquoise feather. "And this. I don't know if it's worth anything to you, but there's a bird. A giant bird, dead, but its feathers are intact."
One of the Igdans takes the feather from Gaensyn's hand. They turn to the others to discuss, a new sparkle in their eyes that could be the reflection of the sunset, or could very well be hope.
But by the time they turn back to Gaensyn, he's already walking off. Some call back to him, but he ignores their voices.
"Be careful of the marauders that way!" shouts the one who speaks his language. Gaensyn ignores them, too.
He leaves the town on the other side, spends some time making sure no curious soul followed him, then lays down beneath a sandblasted rock to rest. And as he does, something settles in his heart. Something he can't name, something he's never felt before. Perhaps those people will find nothing of use, and starve anyway - just another turn in the life of forgotten people on a forgotten world.
Gaensyn cannot understand why the hope in their eyes brings stinging tears to his.
A few days later, Gaensyn comes across another town, this time a corpse of one. At the top of a low hill, a few houses huddle together, their mud-brick walls charred, their thatch roofs turned to ash. There are no people to greet him, no supplies to be found.
But there is life.
A fence clings to the back of one of the houses, penning in some animals. They look like giant lizards, but covered in shaggy woolen fur that drags over the ground. They look thin, lethargically crawling over to where Gaensyn stands.
They must be starving, with nobody left to feed them. A few of them look up to Gaensyn with beady eyes. He goes over to the rickety metal gate. With a creak, it opens. He stands aside, and the small herd of animals passes him by, heading down the hill toward a patch of bushes.
Gaensyn doesn't follow them, nor does he stay in the shelter of the ruined town. Someone must have destroyed it, and they may yet return. With a hand on the strap of his rifle, he walks off.
Would it be better to starve in the desert than live a comfortable life on the back of somebody else? Gaensyn doesn't know, and the fact that he doesn't know twists a dark coil in his stomach. He should know, shouldn't he?
And yet, he still carries his father's pistol on his back. It seems to weigh a thousand tons.
More long days and nights pass, enough for Gaensyn to suspect that a full day-night cycle on Lubaan must take at least thirty-six hours. It leaves him waking up in the darkness and sleeping in the day, his body refusing to adapt to a world it was never meant for.
One such night, Gaensyn follows a narrow stream in the dark until it passes a wooden barn, uneven and patched with sheet steel. One of the windows is just a rectangular hole in the wall, large enough for Gaensyn to climb through. Inside, darkness envelops everything, but thatch covers the dirt floor. Finding it soft enough, Gaensyn lays down and drifts off.
The next morning, shouts and gunfire jolt him awake. Sunlight beams through cracks in the roof. More gunfire sounds, punctuated by the thrum of plasma weapons. Gaensyn rises to a crouch, pulling about his rifle. Assorted supplies take up most of the room in the barn, but he ignores it all, only hurrying by to peer out a window across from where he entered.
Outside, battle engulfs a small town. It's a shallow imitation of the war footage Gaensyn's seen, but nevertheless, a local militia puts up a wavering defense against a marauder group.
Gaensyn stares. The fighting hasn't reached him yet, so there's still time to slip away. But something glues his feet to the spot, aiming down his rifle's sights. Something refuses to let him go. The voice of the long-forgotten servant girl from his childhood insists that his time hasn't yet come, he must stay, he must wait...
Fists pound on the barn's wooden door. A moment later, it collapses inward, broken down by a marauder's armored shoulder. Three of them burst in. They're too tall to be Igdans, but masks and helmets hide any other hints toward their species.
But it doesn't matter. They see Gaensyn - hood down, slate Detzokan skin visible, something as alien to this world as it is to him - and freeze.
Gaensyn doesn't freeze. He levels his rifle and gets to work. For a moment, he slips back into the time when he was a loyal servant of his State, a soldier marching in lockstep.
Outside the barn, Gaensyn pulls his cloak closer around him. Marauders lie dead at his feet, in his sight - five, ten, fifteen. Despite his old rifle, they were no match for him. Not for a real soldier, a real killer.
Slowly, the village militia leaves cover. Civilians follows soon after. They're Igdans, just as well-covered as Gaensyn in the cold desert sun. This time, he doesn't give them a chance to speak. They let him pass as he walks away, the wind whipping his cloak.
But at the edge of their circle, he stops and turns. Something in his heart stings, worse than it ever has, worse than when he deserted - and not because he's killed again. No, part of him insists that he wait. That he think. He's more than just a killer, isn't he? Can't he prove it to these people? Gaensyn wants to, but words elude him.
Silently, he hangs his head and sets off to wander once more.
Alone in the desert again, Gaensyn walks with his eyes closed - there's nothing on the cracked ground to trip him and nothing ahead to see.
But with his eyes closed, he still sees. He sees himself back in his childhood room, looking out a huge window at the sparkling city that sprawls beneath him. The servant girl cleans the window with a wet cloth, her blue skin reflected like a ghost in the glass.
And when Gaensyn speaks, his words aren't from the past at all. "Do you think I helped them?" he asks her.
Not stopping her work, the girl says in her soft, accented voice: "You'll never really know."
"Then what would you have me do?"
She pauses, turning to look at him sidelong. "Stop wandering and start working."
"What?"
"You heard me. You're in my debt, and you know it. Why else do you think you have such an urge to help people out here, but you're still so ashamed that you can't even talk to them? You have a debt to me, my people, the universe. You lived on our backs for twenty-five years, so now you have twenty-five years pay us back for it."
Gaensyn eyes the spotless floor, tears welling up in his eyes. "How?"
The girl returns to her work. "You're a fighter, a killer. You should use those skills for good."
"But..." The tears fall down Gaensyn's cheeks. "Is that even possible?"
With a free hand, the girl pulls her hair to the side, revealing a dark blue brand on the back of her neck. Gaensyn recognizes the symbol: a hooked talon, the symbol of his father's house.
"You tell me," she says.
Gaensyn opens his eyes. The silhouette of a small city wavers on the horizon. If I must fight... I swear I'll make it up to you... With a shaking breath, he realizes that it's not just the march of time - he can't remember the girl's name because he never asked her for it.
But if this is his debt, his destiny, then he also has a duty to change.
He takes his rifle and pulls out the ammo clip, putting it with the rest in the deep pockets of his fatigues. He has the urge to toss the clips in the sand, but he'll need something of equal value to exchange for stun rounds when he gets to the city.
And without another thought, he reaches into his cloak and undoes the leather holster on his back. The revolver inside hits the ground with a quiet thunk.
Straightening, Gaensyn leaves it there and never looks back.
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Gaensyn's eyes flutter open. He hangs upside down in his pilot's chair. Where there used to be viewport glass, there is now only sand and glass fragments, the ship having planted into the ground. Control screens on the console are broken and dead, leaving the only light to leak in from cracks in the ruined hull.
Where am I? He tries to trace back time, but his mind throws up walls of splitting pain. He remembers gunfire, blood, screams. Yes, he remembers deserting. How could he forget? It's only been a few days since then. The green blood crusting the slate-gray skin of his hands remains a testament to how close he came to dying at his former comrades' hands in doing so. But everything after that is a haze: setting a course for... somewhere, far away. Running out of fuel. Spinning through an atmosphere.
Gaensyn reaches for the release to his harness. He falls to the cold sand. Glass shards under him tear at his fatigues, grinding against his scarred body armor. He rolls to his chest. Blinding white daylight peeks through a gap before him.
With nowhere else to go, Gaensyn crawls.
Some twenty minutes later, Gaensyn is still adjusting to the light outside. Sand blows on the wind, rough against his face. Before him, the military transport fighter he stole is charred and twisted, its debris spread over a few hundred meters on the flat desert plain.
He crosses his arms and shivers. The sun burns bright in the blue sky, but on this distant world, the wind is cold.
For a while, he leans against the side of what's left of the ship, breathing in the alien air. The world's moon is a green crescent at the horizon, but otherwise, most of what he can see is featureless desert. This must be Lubaan, he realizes. A world so isolated and uninteresting that back home - thousands of light-years away - it has a reputation as the most isolated, the most uninteresting world in the whole galaxy.
And for the first time in days, Gaensyn allows himself a small smile.
He's done it.
Never again will he have orders to kill and terrorize. Never again will he hear villages called 'targets', civilians called 'dangerous.' And never again will he have to force himself into his father's cruel mold, the mold of a soldier, then an officer, and then someday, the man who takes his father's place as the Supreme Leader ruling over trillions.
Eventually, Gaensyn staggers off. Still half-dazed, he picks a direction and walks. Every few steps, he unbuckles a piece of his body armor and lets it fall to the cold sand. The gray metal does nothing in the cold, and he won't need it anymore.
The last piece of his old life to go is the ceremonial revolver and its holster on the small of his back. It was a gift from his father, complete with bullets. Gaensyn's hand hovers near the straps for it, suddenly shaking.
It's his only weapon left, and Lubaan is a lawless world, in a lawless region. Better keep it, he thinks. Not just as self-defense, but as a reminder.
No, he'll never be able to leave his old life behind. Not entirely.
Gaensyn walks on and on. Each step forms an unsteady rhythm that lulls him into a waking, shifting dream. He forgets about food, water, sleep. The long day stretches on. As he wanders, so too does his mind.
Back in his father's house, perched high in a building of steel and glass, they had a servant. A slave, really - but a girl of Gaensyn's age. They were of different species, but Gaensyn could never quite wrap his head around how they were so outwardly similar. Her skin was blue instead of gray, her black hair thick and wavy, her face narrow instead of blocky and geometric. And yet, beyond this, they were more or less the same. Arms, legs, hands, eyes, hearts - between the son of a Supreme Leader and the slave girl that cleaned his home, so little was different, unlike his father's propaganda would have him believe.
But now, alone in the desert, Gaensyn can barely remember her face, her strange accent. His father didn't let them talk, having discovered them playing together once as children. They still spoke from time to time, but she was afraid enough to mostly obey Gaensyn's father, and Gaensyn himself was loyal enough to not even let himself cry over it.
He cries now, a few silent tears soon blown away in a heavy gust of cold wind. How didn't he see? How didn't he understand? His father owned a person, ruling over a nation where that was the norm. Until recently, he scarcely thought of it as wrong. What must be wrong with him to go along with it for a quarter-century? Wrong with him, and the trillions of his people that hail his father's name every day?
Gaensyn's foot finds something, breaking his rhythm. He trips and falls. When he rises slowly, he realizes it's getting dark, the sun nearing the horizon. It'll get even colder soon.
But the desert isn't empty anymore.
Before him, there's a twisted carcass of a ship. It's just big enough for one person, with wings torn up and melted.
The cold wind biting at his skin, Gaensyn climbs through what used to be a hatch. Inside, it's cramped and dusty, the lone pilot a horned skeleton hunched in its chair. A wave of tiredness and hunger and thirst finally hits him, and he falls to his knees.
"We will share a fate, old friend," Gaensyn says to the skeleton, his voice hoarse.
Only the wind answers him. Gaensyn laughs a little. Talking to skeletons now, are we? But the thoughts only make him laugh again, leaning his head back against the old bulkhead.
As darkness settles in, the part of Gaensyn still living in reality searches the ship. All things considered, he's lucky - he finds a warm cloak with a hood, a respirator and goggles to protect from the sand. He finds water packs, old universal rations, a long-gun and its ammo.
I should leave the gun. He has six bullets, and maybe, he only really needs one. But something about weapons always spoke to him, and this one's no different. His soldier's instinct aches for something bigger than an ancient revolver, and the long-gun's barrel is almost two meters long, lined with rifling magnets. Maybe it'll make a decent walking stick.
Gaensyn tries it out the next morning. The gun makes a horrible walking stick - too heavy, too long. But he slings it over his shoulder anyway, at least something to keep his gray cloak from billowing behind him. Enough rations bulge in his pockets to last him a few days, and that's as far ahead as his mind is willing to think.
Not like I'm going to last that long, anyway.
As he walks on, eastern mountains grow nearer. Boulders and spindly bushes start to rise out of the sandy ground. Gripped by the sudden desire to not think of his past for once, Gaensyn searches his surroundings for something, anything of note. Above him, the clouds are icy streaks, too simple for his mind to weave into shapes or visions. But nearby, flies buzz around an area smelling of death. A huge bird has fallen from the sky. Most of its innards are gone to scavengers, but its glistening turquoise feathers remain.
Gaensyn picks a feather from its back, longer than his forearm. It glints in the sun. Beautiful.
There was a time when he wouldn't think it was beautiful. When 'beauty' was a word reserved for ingenious military maneuvers, rousing speeches, columns of soldiers marching in formation.
Shaking his head, Gaensyn tucks the feather inside his cloak and moves on.
When hills rise to either side of him, Gaensyn hears alien voices on the wind. It's getting dark again, the sky turned pink and orange.
From the sandstone cliffs to either side of him, a small town starts to materialize. The buildings are squat and low for residents not much more than a meter high. They're Igdans, gathered around one of the larger buildings, a hundred of them at most. Tan furs and knitted shawls cover much of their translucent gray skin and hairless heads.
Gaensyn makes to walk by them, paying them no mind. His people fought a war with the Igdans centuries ago, one deadly enough not to forget.
Smooth Igdan voices raise in argument, but soon, out of the edge of his vision, Gaensyn notices a shift. Some of them point at him, yelling at each other. Gaensyn keeps walking.
But one of them runs over and stands in his path.
Barely rising past his waist, the Igdan's biologically genderless body is thin and narrow. They watch Gaensyn with large eyes, starry and black, set in a smooth face.
The Igdan says something. Gaensyn stares at them blankly, not understanding a word. Another Igdan comes over and tries in a different language, but again, it isn't one Gaensyn knows.
Lastly, a third comes over and says with a heavy accent, "Can you help us, wanderer?"
They must think I'm not Detzokan, he realizes. After all, Gaensyn's isn't the only species to speak his language. Why would they even talk to him, otherwise?
Gaensyn shakes his head, eyeing the ground. "I don't think so."
He tries to keep walking, but the Igdans move to block him. "Are you sure?" the one says. "Perhaps you've seen something in your wanderings, something of value? Please, our mine is depleted, so we have nothing to trade for when the food merchants come. Yes, perhaps you have seen something? Something to salvage, yes?"
Gaensyn freezes, only staring at the three diminutive aliens. When he speaks, his voice is weak and mechanical, muffled even further by his respirator: "There are two crashed ships off to the west, but the second one from here is quite far off." With hands unsteady for a reason he can't place, he reaches into his cloak and pulls out the shining turquoise feather. "And this. I don't know if it's worth anything to you, but there's a bird. A giant bird, dead, but its feathers are intact."
One of the Igdans takes the feather from Gaensyn's hand. They turn to the others to discuss, a new sparkle in their eyes that could be the reflection of the sunset, or could very well be hope.
But by the time they turn back to Gaensyn, he's already walking off. Some call back to him, but he ignores their voices.
"Be careful of the marauders that way!" shouts the one who speaks his language. Gaensyn ignores them, too.
He leaves the town on the other side, spends some time making sure no curious soul followed him, then lays down beneath a sandblasted rock to rest. And as he does, something settles in his heart. Something he can't name, something he's never felt before. Perhaps those people will find nothing of use, and starve anyway - just another turn in the life of forgotten people on a forgotten world.
Gaensyn cannot understand why the hope in their eyes brings stinging tears to his.
A few days later, Gaensyn comes across another town, this time a corpse of one. At the top of a low hill, a few houses huddle together, their mud-brick walls charred, their thatch roofs turned to ash. There are no people to greet him, no supplies to be found.
But there is life.
A fence clings to the back of one of the houses, penning in some animals. They look like giant lizards, but covered in shaggy woolen fur that drags over the ground. They look thin, lethargically crawling over to where Gaensyn stands.
They must be starving, with nobody left to feed them. A few of them look up to Gaensyn with beady eyes. He goes over to the rickety metal gate. With a creak, it opens. He stands aside, and the small herd of animals passes him by, heading down the hill toward a patch of bushes.
Gaensyn doesn't follow them, nor does he stay in the shelter of the ruined town. Someone must have destroyed it, and they may yet return. With a hand on the strap of his rifle, he walks off.
Would it be better to starve in the desert than live a comfortable life on the back of somebody else? Gaensyn doesn't know, and the fact that he doesn't know twists a dark coil in his stomach. He should know, shouldn't he?
And yet, he still carries his father's pistol on his back. It seems to weigh a thousand tons.
More long days and nights pass, enough for Gaensyn to suspect that a full day-night cycle on Lubaan must take at least thirty-six hours. It leaves him waking up in the darkness and sleeping in the day, his body refusing to adapt to a world it was never meant for.
One such night, Gaensyn follows a narrow stream in the dark until it passes a wooden barn, uneven and patched with sheet steel. One of the windows is just a rectangular hole in the wall, large enough for Gaensyn to climb through. Inside, darkness envelops everything, but thatch covers the dirt floor. Finding it soft enough, Gaensyn lays down and drifts off.
The next morning, shouts and gunfire jolt him awake. Sunlight beams through cracks in the roof. More gunfire sounds, punctuated by the thrum of plasma weapons. Gaensyn rises to a crouch, pulling about his rifle. Assorted supplies take up most of the room in the barn, but he ignores it all, only hurrying by to peer out a window across from where he entered.
Outside, battle engulfs a small town. It's a shallow imitation of the war footage Gaensyn's seen, but nevertheless, a local militia puts up a wavering defense against a marauder group.
Gaensyn stares. The fighting hasn't reached him yet, so there's still time to slip away. But something glues his feet to the spot, aiming down his rifle's sights. Something refuses to let him go. The voice of the long-forgotten servant girl from his childhood insists that his time hasn't yet come, he must stay, he must wait...
Fists pound on the barn's wooden door. A moment later, it collapses inward, broken down by a marauder's armored shoulder. Three of them burst in. They're too tall to be Igdans, but masks and helmets hide any other hints toward their species.
But it doesn't matter. They see Gaensyn - hood down, slate Detzokan skin visible, something as alien to this world as it is to him - and freeze.
Gaensyn doesn't freeze. He levels his rifle and gets to work. For a moment, he slips back into the time when he was a loyal servant of his State, a soldier marching in lockstep.
Outside the barn, Gaensyn pulls his cloak closer around him. Marauders lie dead at his feet, in his sight - five, ten, fifteen. Despite his old rifle, they were no match for him. Not for a real soldier, a real killer.
Slowly, the village militia leaves cover. Civilians follows soon after. They're Igdans, just as well-covered as Gaensyn in the cold desert sun. This time, he doesn't give them a chance to speak. They let him pass as he walks away, the wind whipping his cloak.
But at the edge of their circle, he stops and turns. Something in his heart stings, worse than it ever has, worse than when he deserted - and not because he's killed again. No, part of him insists that he wait. That he think. He's more than just a killer, isn't he? Can't he prove it to these people? Gaensyn wants to, but words elude him.
Silently, he hangs his head and sets off to wander once more.
Alone in the desert again, Gaensyn walks with his eyes closed - there's nothing on the cracked ground to trip him and nothing ahead to see.
But with his eyes closed, he still sees. He sees himself back in his childhood room, looking out a huge window at the sparkling city that sprawls beneath him. The servant girl cleans the window with a wet cloth, her blue skin reflected like a ghost in the glass.
And when Gaensyn speaks, his words aren't from the past at all. "Do you think I helped them?" he asks her.
Not stopping her work, the girl says in her soft, accented voice: "You'll never really know."
"Then what would you have me do?"
She pauses, turning to look at him sidelong. "Stop wandering and start working."
"What?"
"You heard me. You're in my debt, and you know it. Why else do you think you have such an urge to help people out here, but you're still so ashamed that you can't even talk to them? You have a debt to me, my people, the universe. You lived on our backs for twenty-five years, so now you have twenty-five years pay us back for it."
Gaensyn eyes the spotless floor, tears welling up in his eyes. "How?"
The girl returns to her work. "You're a fighter, a killer. You should use those skills for good."
"But..." The tears fall down Gaensyn's cheeks. "Is that even possible?"
With a free hand, the girl pulls her hair to the side, revealing a dark blue brand on the back of her neck. Gaensyn recognizes the symbol: a hooked talon, the symbol of his father's house.
"You tell me," she says.
Gaensyn opens his eyes. The silhouette of a small city wavers on the horizon. If I must fight... I swear I'll make it up to you... With a shaking breath, he realizes that it's not just the march of time - he can't remember the girl's name because he never asked her for it.
But if this is his debt, his destiny, then he also has a duty to change.
He takes his rifle and pulls out the ammo clip, putting it with the rest in the deep pockets of his fatigues. He has the urge to toss the clips in the sand, but he'll need something of equal value to exchange for stun rounds when he gets to the city.
And without another thought, he reaches into his cloak and undoes the leather holster on his back. The revolver inside hits the ground with a quiet thunk.
Straightening, Gaensyn leaves it there and never looks back.
from FICTION on the WEB short stories https://ift.tt/GLfErI4
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