MERCS: Crimson Worlds Successors (29 page)

“I have seen it.”  It was a woman’s voice, and it came from behind him.  There was a haunted sound to it, as if the speaker was recalling past horrors.

Darius turned to see Catherine Gilson standing just inside the door next to Roderick Vance.  Her shuttle had just docked with Eagle One, and Cain had left orders for her to have the run of the ship.

“And your father did too, Darius.”  She paused, as if she didn’t want even to utter the words in her mind.  “The Shadow Legions.  They killed all their wounded, just to keep them from falling into our hands.”

Darius stared at her silently for a few seconds.  “But the Shadow Legions were destroyed.”  Another pause.  “And my father killed Gavin Stark.”

“Yes, he did, Darius.”

Cain took a deep, slow breath.  He looked back at Gilson, then at Vance. “These forces can’t have any connection to the Shadow Legions, can they?  Or to Stark?  How is that even possible?”

They both returned his gaze, but neither said a word.

“They don’t look like clones,” Darius said.

“No, I don’t think they are clones,” Vance said matter-of-factly.  The Shadow Legions only had a few genetic strains, and within each they were virtually identical.  The bodies here are all different.  This is not the same thing we faced thirty years ago.”  Vance looked up at Darius.  “I have no idea who they are.”

“I don’t either,” Cain said grimly, staring back at his two companions.  “But I’m damned sure going to find out.”

Epilogue

The prisoner stood silently, staring up at the single, tiny skylight on the ceiling, ten meters above.  It was covered most of the time, denying him even the faintest reminder that there was a universe outside his cell.  But today it was unblocked, and a few faint rays of sunlight poked down to the hard stone floor, lighting his hellish little world.  He wondered why it existed at all.  Perhaps because one needed to be reminded of something from time to time to experience a true sense of loss from its absence.

He had been here a long time, though with no day, no night, he had lost touch with the passage of time.  Years, he knew, must have passed, but he had no idea how many.  For all that time he’d fought off the forces that had conspired to break him.  The loneliness, the pain of constant beatings and torture, the boredom.  The boredom…in some ways that was the worst of it.  He had been an active man, and the countless days and nights—weeks and months—sitting in the endless darkness with nothing to do had come closer to destroying him than anything else his captors had done.

He heard the familiar sounds, the room’s only door opening slowly.  It was one of the few regular routines, and he’d come to depend on it in ways…even though it often signaled another beating.  But it also meant food—on the days they chose to feed him.  And a glimpse of a guard delivering a bowl of gruel, or even an enforcer come to administer another unexplained beating, was a form of contact, a connection to the world outside.

“How are you today, my friend?”  The tone was pleasant, but the prisoner knew it was just mockery.  This visitor was his favorite, the man he suspected was responsible for his captivity…the focus of his seething anger and craving for vengeance.  Visits from the Tyrant were rare.  Indeed, though he had no true frame of reference, he’d have guessed the last one had been more than a year before.

He glared at his adversary but said nothing.  The prisoner did not speak to his captors.  He would not give them the satisfaction.  They could beat grunts and howls of pain from him, but he would not answer their questions, nor converse with them in any way.

“Still silent after all these years?”  Every word from the Tyrant’s mouth was a mockery.  Years before, the prisoner would have lunged at his nemesis, willing to risk death for a chance to kill the man he blamed for his misfortune.  But his body had been so battered over the years, it no longer had the strength to fight.  Indeed, his legs had been broken and haphazardly mended so many times, he could barely stand.  So silence was his last line of resistance, and he’d sworn to himself he would maintain it, no matter what.  He knew it was all that held him together, that if he relented it would destroy him.

“I just wanted to pay you a visit, to let you know that after all the years of housing and feeding you, the time has come for you to serve a purpose.”  The Tyrant leaned down, staring into the prisoner’s eyes but still maintained his distance.  This had been a dangerous man, and even now he still remembered the fiery madness the captive had shown when they’d first brought him here.

“Don’t worry, though.  It will not be too strenuous on you.  Indeed, you will not even know it is happening.”  The Tyrant smiled mockingly.  “But don’t worry…you will be a great help to my plans.”

He turned and walked back the way he had come, pausing at the door and looking back.  “I almost forgot the best news.”  His eyes glared at the prisoner, revealing a hatred his voice did not convey.  “Once this matter is over, you will no longer be useful.  We can finally put you out of your misery.”  He looked around.  “Though I don’t know how we’ll get this cell cleaned after so many years of your rotting carcass befouling it.”

The Tyrant laughed, a brutal, mocking sound, as he walked out slowly, and the heavy door slammed behind him, leaving the prisoner again in his endless solitude.  A few seconds later, the cover slammed over the skylight, and the captive was again plunged into total darkness.

But for all his suffering, for the torture and the endless, agonizing passage of so many years of brutal captivity, the prisoner was not broken yet.  He’d ceased to struggle, curbed the urges to fight back, to lash out at his tormentors, accepting that physical resistance was something his broken body could no longer sustain.  But deep inside, in the place in his mind that made him who he was, the flame of defiance still burned.  It was less fiery, perhaps—colder than it had been.  But it was still there. And it was fed by memories—recollections of another life, one taken from him.  One he silently swore he would one day reclaim.

He stared at the closed door, still seeing the Tyrant’s hated face, and in that place where the part of him that was still himself dwelled, he clung to a tenuous existence…and a single thought burned.

One day I will kill you.  And I will laugh as I spit on your corpse
.

Also By Jay Allan

Marines (Crimson Worlds I)

The Cost of Victory (Crimson Worlds II)

A Little Rebellion (Crimson Worlds III)

The First Imperium (Crimson Worlds IV)

The Line Must Hold (Crimson Worlds V)

To Hell’s Heart (Crimson Worlds VI)

The Shadow Legions (Crimson Worlds VII)

Even Legends Die (Crimson Worlds VIII)

The Fall (Crimson Worlds IX)

Tombstone (A Crimson Worlds Prequel)

Bitter Glory (A Crimson Worlds Prequel)

The Gates of Hell (A Crimson Worlds Prequel)

Gehenna Dawn (Portal Worlds I)

The Ten Thousand (Portal Wars II)

The Dragon's Banner (Pendragon Chronicles I)

Upcoming

The Prisoner of Eldaron

(Successors Book II)

Spring 2015

Into the Darkness

(Crimson Worlds: Refugees I)

(June 23, 2015)

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