[Vox Astra] Part 10

Rory stood in the shower, not entirely there, as the cold water rushed down his face. Once he realized that he had already washed himself, he turned off the shower and grabbed a towel from just outside. Once he was satisfied with his level of dryness, he dressed himself; his mother had dropped off a set of ‘good clothes’ for him to wear to court.Unfortunately, he didn’t have access to a mirror with which to look at himself to make sure that he was presentable.‘Just do what Jodie tells you, and don’t talk out of turn’, his mother had told him; Jodie was the family attorney. He hoped that that would be enough for him to avoid a harsh sentence without having to take some kind of plea bargain.A few minutes later, an officer arrived with a bailiff in tow to retrieve him from his cell. He pressed a few buttons on the control panel, and the whirring noise coming from the door ceased. They placed shackles on his wrists and ankles; he was still able to walk, but he wouldn’t be able to move his feet more than a foot and a half apart.To his surprise, when he was led outside the vehicle waiting for him was not an armoured car, but a regular squad car.I guess Jodie or Felicity pulled some strings somewhere. For someone who apparently helped kill cops, they don’t seem all that worried about me killing them and/or escaping.The police officers did not talk at all during the ride to the courthouse. They led him into the building, where Jodie, Felicity and his parents were waiting. He could have sworn he saw Iolanthe among the spectators, but she didn’t seem to acknowledge him.Court passed by in a blur. When he was sentenced to guard duty in the nearby town of Tragurion, he wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to feel defeated or relieved. It was a place he hadn’t even heard of despite its apparent proximity to Orikos. The judge said that he had to either serve for one month or kill one hundred ‘desert runners’, whatever those were.At least he didn’t get the death penalty.The drive to Tragurion felt much longer than it was. He was transported in an armoured car with several other prisoners whom he did not recognize; they were likely from jails all over the city. When they stopped at the first post just outside Tragurion, he felt the heat from the moment the officer opened the rear doors and began ushering them out.From the looks of things, none of them had anything more than the clothes on their backs, and Rory’s clothes in particular were ill-suited to any place that didn’t have air conditioning.The difference between Orikos and Tragurion was like night and day. Much of his time in the city was spent confined to suburban enclaves and heavily populated urban centres. The town of Tragurion was not nearly as dense as Orikos; it seemed like a hybrid of a village and a military base. The climate was hot and arid enough that Rory could already feel his lips start to crack.They had been dropped off just outside what looked to be a barracks of some kind. The front door opened, and a grizzled-looking man holding an assault rifle stepped out.“Line up!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. His tone was the perfect imitation of the classic asshole drill sergeant. He was wearing clothing that looked to be made of a lighter fabric than what many of the prisoners had, plus sunglasses and a flat bill cap. As a result, he didn’t look bothered by the heat at all.“All right, you pricks, you’re here for guard duty. There’ve been quite a few sightings of the local desert runners, and they are more than venomous enough to kill weakened humans. You know, like children, the elderly, and the immunocompromised. You will be provided with armour, an energy spear and a rifle. If you lose or destroy any of those, you will be expected to reimburse us! If you attempt to escape or to rebel, you will be executed! Now suit up!”A group of people exited the barracks carrying large metal crates. They set them down against the wall and opened them one by one. Inside was the equipment that they were promised. Immediately, everyone swarmed the crates and grabbed the first things they could get their hands on, as if there was a limited supply and they would be left unarmed if they did not act fast.Rory waited until they cleared away before grabbing his gear. He walked away from the crowd and donned his armour; it was similar to the duprium set that he had bought from Holz-Calder, but slightly weaker. Nonetheless, it was enough to protect him from desert runners.Damn it, am I gonna get all my gear back when this is over? Did they give it to my parents?He activated the spear with the press of a button set into the crossguard and tried a few swings to acquaint himself with it. Once he was satisfied, he stowed it in his inventory alongside the rifle.“Looks like you’re all ready to go,” the drill sergeant said. “You are situated at one of the entrances to Tragurion; your job will be to prevent desert runners or any other hostile creature from breaching the perimeter. This is a task that anyone capable of using a weapon should be able to accomplish, so do not fuck it up!”Rory took a deep breath and steeled himself.“Oh, and one more thing!” the man continued. “Any loot you get from your kills? We keep it until you finish your sentence!”Of course.He took a post close to the barracks and pulled the rifle out of his inventory. There was a small pit lined with a metal rampart-like structure that seemed purpose-built for trench warfare.Is this all really necessary for these desert runner things? I thought they weren’t dangerous to healthy, adult humans? No, there’s got to be something more dangerous out there that warrants a goddamn prison labour program to protect the townsfolk.Another man sat beside him in the pit and readied his rifle. He looked to be at least ten years older than Rory.“Hey what’s a kid doing here?” the man asked.“I’m not a kid, I’m eighteen,” Rory replied.“Still, aren’t you a bit young to be sent out to a shithole like Tragurion?”“I shot a few cops,” he muttered. “Long story.”“Shit, you’re a cop-killer, at eighteen? That’s rough.”“Hey, technically I wasn’t the one to kill them!” he retorted. “That was someone else. I just shot them.”The man burst into laughter.“The judge must’ve loved you, man! How long are you stuck out here?”“I gotta kill a hundred of these desert runner things, or stay out here a month. How about you? What are you in for?”“I drove drunk and killed a few people. Two months, or two hundred desert runners.”Rory could feel his facial expression harden despite his best efforts. The man looked down at his own feet.“Yeah, I know,” he said. “I’m dry now, man. Have been for a month now.”“That’s good,” Rory replied.He saw movement out of the corner of his eye, and his head swivelled to one side.“You see something?” the man asked.Rory held a finger to his lips.“Think so,” he whispered, just loud enough for the man to hear.They both rested the barrels of their rifles on the edge of the pit. Rory looked through the scope, which amplified his view distance twofold.“You think it’s a runner?”“Probably a pack of ‘em,” Rory muttered.The Adrasteian desert runner resembled a desert mouse crossed with a scorpion. They were approximately twenty inches tall at the rare moment when they weren’t hunched over, looking for insects or small reptiles to eat. Their tiny forelimbs were useful for few things, but they compensated for their lack of reach with long prehensile tails tipped with venomous stingers.One scurried out from a bush and sniffed the dirt, apparently having caught on to a possible source of food. It kept its head low to the ground as it gradually moved closer to the trench.“Do we shoot it now?” the man asked.“Best wait a moment for it to come closer. Don’t want to spook it when its so close to a place where it can hide.”I could really use a grenade launcher right now, like the one Zac has. Would be nice to just light everything on fire.They waited and watched as the runner crept closer. Once it was close enough for Rory to hear the little squeaks it made, he exhaled and prepared to pull the trigger. For a moment, he hesitated; he had never purposefully tried to kill anything that had never posed a genuine threat to him before. Nonetheless, he fired.Three bullets flew out of the rifle; two hit the ground, but one struck the creature in the head and either killed it or put it on death’s door. Rory looked over the top of the scope and bit his lip.“Is it dead?” he asked.“Looks like it, man,” his new companion replied. “Hurry up and get that loot.”Rory ran out towards the bleeding carcass of the desert runner; he made sure to take his rifle with him in case something caught him by surprise. He grabbed the scraps of fur and chitin that it had dropped and brought them back to the trench.“Anything good?”“No. Maybe if I scrounge up enough of the hard stuff, I could get armour made out of it, but I don’t really wear fur.”They quickly made a routine of it; kill the runner, send one person out to retrieve the loot it dropped, rinse and repeat as necessary. Killing them was not a test of strength, or speed, or skill, but rather patience. There were far more of them than there were humans capable of killing them, and they had a fondness for attacking in packs. Eventually, they split up, and Rory faced off against one alone; the rest of the guards were occupied elsewhere.He looked into the scope again and surveyed the landscape after having killed five runners and giving their loot to the prison warden for safekeeping.I’m going to really miss everyone. I better get killing so I can get out early.But the desert of Tragurion was unmoving. There weren’t any signs of life beyond the humans behind him in the base. Rory pulled his head back from the scope and blinked a couple of times before clamping his eyes shut to flex the muscles in his face.When he opened his eyes again, he did a double take at the strange moving thing he saw in the distance. It wasn’t a human or a desert runner, or any other creature that he recognized.The beast had to be larger than a human, at least twice the size by Rory’s estimate. It was some kind of large cat, with sharp horns jutting from its forehead and leathery, bat-like wings. The image of it seemed to bend from the heat.Part of him knew that he had to notify command, but he was afraid to take his eyes off of the beast for even a moment. He shook the cobwebs out of his head and looked around frantically for other people, to no avail.Shit. I really don’t know what to do. If desert runners are dangerous enough to kill people, I don’t want to think about what something like this could do to the town.The creature suddenly took flight and began approaching the base. Rory gulped and peered through his scope at it. On closer inspection, its forelimbs ended in surprisingly human-like hands, complete with opposable thumbs.Rory stood up and sprinted back towards the barracks, rifle in hand. He looked through every window and tried every door he could find until he entered a building full of important-looking people with medals on their chests and stars on their shoulders.“There’s an emergency! We’re under attack!”For a split second, they looked at him like he had grown several extra heads. That passed quickly, and they rose from their seats.“How many?” The oldest-looking man asked. He was a square-faced brick of a man with bushy grey mutton chops and a prosthetic left eye.“It’s a creature I don’t recognize, sir,” Rory said. “But it’s a lot bigger than a runner.”“Understood,” the man said. “Show us, please.”/r/kxdouglaswritesJoin the Discord via /r/redditserials https://ift.tt/33SuHyf