Mistrunner 3 - Chapter 34 - The Bad Guys (Patreon)

I think it’s important to see the good in the world. Sure, evil’s out there. Bad things happen all the time. But to me, happiness is a choice we have to make every single day. Focusing on the negative will do nothing but make that choice harder and harder until it’s just not an option anymore.

Patrick Ward

The round hit Alistaris directly in the forehead, the momentum behind the shot sending him flipping backwards into the ship’s control console. Still, I wasn’t surprised when, a moment later, he pushed himself to his feet, brushed imaginary dust from his jacket, and said, “Now, that was just rude.”

“You’re the one who broke into my home and snuck up on me,” I said, still aiming Ferdinand II in his direction. I’d never intended the first round as anything but a warning shot; after all, the moment he had appeared, I’d sensed the powerful Mist shield enveloping his body. It wasn’t quite up to the level of what Nora had used back in Nova City, but it was plenty powerful to absorb the impact from my least powerful weapon.

Things might’ve turned out differently if I’d brought the Dragon to bear.

But my shot hadn’t been the result of simple pique. Instead, I’d had a good reason – or reasons, as it were – to do pull my weapon and fire. First, I was annoyed. It was one thing to corner me out in the middle of an unfamiliar city, but it was something else altogether to infiltrate my home and surprise me. I didn’t know how he’d bypassed the ship’s innate defenses or my Bastion ability, either, which had sent my level of frustration through the roof.

However, that wasn’t even the biggest reason I’d shot him. Instead, ever since our first meeting, I’d longed to test his defenses. So, as I’d fired, I had paid close attention to the energy level of the Mist shield. The ripples were subtle, and the dip in power was barely noticeable, but the fact that had been affected at all was a good sign. If that hadn’t been the case – meaning that if the shield hadn’t even wavered – I would’ve been at a loss as to how to solve my gnome problem. But that little ripple gave me hope. I couldn’t overcome them yet – not with my current skillset or arsenal of weapons – but that wouldn’t always be the case.

He continued to brush imaginary dust from his jacket, then ran a hand through his thick mane of white hair before saying, “Suppose you have a point. You’ll forgive me a little drama, though, right?”

“Remains to be seen. What do you want?” I asked. Pointedly, I still hadn’t lowered my weapon. It couldn’t get through that shield, but it could still be effective in throwing him off balance.

“Oh, put that little toy away. We both know you have no intention of trying to kill me,” he said.

“I’m still on the fence about that,” I stated.

“And what if I brought my friends along?” he asked. “You could be surrounded right now, and you might not even know it.”

That was true. Or at least, on the surface, it seemed to be. However, I wasn’t convinced. For one, our previous meeting had been much more dangerous for everyone involved, so it wasn’t surprising that he’d have brought extra manpower – or gnomepower, as it happened – along. But this meeting was different, and so, I thought it was a reasonable expectation that he’d come alone. Or maybe with an extra soldier or two.

Second, I didn’t feel anything amiss. If I’d been looking for it, I felt certain I would’ve felt Alistaris standing in the middle of my Bastion ability. My mistake was that I’d let my guard down because no one had ever bypassed the Leviathan’s security. Now, though, I was aware and alert, and I felt nothing. There wasn’t the slightest ripple in the Mist, which suggested that Alistaris and I were all alone.

But most of all, I knew that if he’d brought a bunch of gnomes along as security, they would have reacted to me shooting him. The fact that no one had told me that Alistaris had come alone.

Taken by themselves, none of those factors would have been enough to make me certain, but when they all came together, they painted a pretty good picture of the situation. Besides, even if I was wrong, he’d obviously come for a reason, and I trusted that to keep him from reacting too harshly.

Or maybe I was just trying to justify my own impulsive stupidity by assigning reasons after the fact. Either way, it was already done, and I needed to act accordingly.

“You didn’t,” I said with confidence that suddenly seemed like it had been built on shaky ground. “And anyway, you’re fine. Didn’t even muss your hair. So, tell me what you want so I can refuse and we can both move on with our lives. You can go back to being a creepy stalker – or whatever it is you do for fun – and I can get back to –”

“You won’t refuse,” he stated with all the confidence I wish I’d felt.

“Didn’t even refute the stalker comment, huh?” I said. “Says a lot about you, really. Do you just pick random women to creepily follow around? Or do you have like a list or something? Also, do you just get off on watching, or is there more to it? You know, the popping up out of nowhere thing? Or are there a bunch of little gnome bodies buried in your little gnome basement back home? I mean, I’d apologize for jumping to conclusions here, but really, you’re not doing yourself any favors here.”

“That’s not –”

“Seriously – how did you think sneaking into a woman’s home was going to go? You didn’t go through my stuff, did you?”

“Enough!” he yelled, slapping his hand on the arm of the pilot’s chair. “I was not…it was just to prove to you that we can get to you at any time. And we can. That’s it. There was nothing…creepy about it.”

“Maybe you didn’t mean it like that, but that’s definitely how it came off. Just saying.”

I let out a groan of annoyance, and I considered shooting him again. Maybe multiple times until I made it through that Mist shield of his. It had limits – I’d already seen them – and I felt positive that I could find them. Still, the potential consequences of following through with that line of thinking brought me up short. If I pushed him too far, he would get serious. And if nothing else, I knew I didn’t want to see that.

So, I switched gears and said, “Just tell me what you want, okay? We’ll put this little embarrassing incident behind us.”

He started to respond, but then thought better of it. After that, he smiled. “Not bad. Putting me on the back foot, controlling the conversation – you’re not terrible at this kind of thing.”

“Wish I could say the same,” I said. “But the whole creeping around other people’s –”

“Don’t act like you haven’t done the same thing,” he said. “But I’m not here to debate the morality of infiltration. I’m here to give you a job.”

“And if I refuse?”

“You won’t.”

“Humor me.”

“Fine – if you refuse, we’ll part ways, and I’ll come back with something else when I encounter a situation where your talents can be best applied,” he stated. He held up one small finger. “But – if you continue to refuse our offers, I’ll take that as you reneging on our deal. Then, we’ll have to take things in another direction.”

“You’ll kill me.”

“I will. Personally. Then, I’ll kill everyone else that had a hand in that little fiasco of a heist,” he stated. “You. Your pilot. The man with that ridiculous hat. The half-elf. Those two you went to for help. Perhaps I’ll destroy that whole city, just to be certain I got everyone.”

“If you know who I am, then you know that kind of threat isn’t going to sway me. I was presented with that kind of choice once before. You can go visit Nova – or what’s left of it – to see how that turned out.”

“Perhaps. But the promise remains. Do with it what you will,” he said. “In any case, I believe I know you well enough to –”

“You don’t know me at all.”

“Don’t I? You’re not so difficult to figure out. A little girl who was thrust into a situation she couldn’t control, then had the rug yanked out from under her – you responded by focusing on the one thing you think you can accomplish. But once you had your revenge in hand, you were confronted with the cost of your actions. You couldn’t handle that. Not alone. So, you went off the rails, engaging in a host of self-destructive behaviors until, at last, your partner returned. Since then, you’ve tried to pretend you’re not the same broken little girl you’ve always been. Usually, you resort to posturing – like shooting someone – or flippant comments to distract yourself from how doomed you really are. And right now, you’re considering shooting me again just because you don’t like what I have to say.”

He wasn’t wrong. Not about the being tempted to shoot him part, at least. The rest of it was just armchair psychology based on incomplete – and ultimately surface-level – information. Still, it hit close enough to home that I just about decided to shut him down, then and there, consequences be damned. But I managed to wrangle my annoyance into submission and say, “Tell me what you want me to do.”

“Good choice,” he said. “And not just because it’s smart. I think you’ll also like what I have to say.”

“Just tell me what you want me to do and leave,” I said. Indeed, I was already tired of the interaction, and I wanted to hear him out, shut him down, and then go back to my previous plans. After all, I still needed to peruse the information packets I’d gotten from Gala and Kith before beginning my surveillance of the elves.

“Very well,” he said. “There are some Rifters I want you to eliminate. They’re called the E’rok Tan, and they’re some of the most detestable people you’ll ever meet. I want you to kill them and destroy their mining operation.”

“That’s it?” I asked.

“That’s it.”

“What’s the catch?”

I thought it was a valid question. It wasn’t so different from what I normally did; I’d made quite a lot of money off of raiding alien mining operations. So, I didn’t immediately reject the mission like I’d expected to.

“No catch.”

“Oh, come on. There has to be a catch. You have plenty of people to do this yourself,” I said. “Anything I can do, you can probably do better.”

That hurt to admit, but it was true. Alistaris and the Dingyts had already proven that they had superior technology, and I suspected that many of their warriors were higher-leveled and much more powerful. Sure, I probably had higher potential, but that didn’t count for anything in the present.

“You must have figured it out,” he said, looking slightly disappointed.

I shrugged. “I sometimes need things spelled out,” I said. “So, start spelling.”

His shoulders drooped, then he said, “I expected more from you. Oh well. Disappointment is a part of life, I suppose. It comes down to culpability. If we attack the E’rok Tan, we’ll be in violation of the system’s laws. It will ignore a few small mining expeditions – especially if they at least pretend to be in hiding – but when we start fighting among ourselves, it starts paying closer attention.”

“But it’ll let you hire someone to do your dirty work?”

“Indeed. Call it a loophole. It’s no different from the other humans who have been working for various factions since the very beginning,” he explained.

That made sense – at least on the surface. After all, people who’d thrown their lot in with the aliens was one of the first things my uncle had warned me about. So, what Alistaris was saying tracked with everything I already knew. Still, I was suspicious, so I asked, “And these Rifters – what makes them so bad?”

“Well, they have a taste for humans,” Alistaris said. “Apparently, their planet was originally home to two dominant species. The E’rok Tan and a race of humans. Inevitably, there was conflict, and the E’rok Tan won. By the time the Mist enveloped their planet, the humans had been domesticated. I’ve never seen it, but they’re kept as livestock. Horrible and barbaric practice, but it’s part of their culture. In any case, the ones who came to Earth are far removed from their home planet – most of them have probably never even been there – but they still see eating humans as natural. So, if they’re allowed to remain until the Integration, they will likely attempt to expand their human ranches.”

“Expand? You mean they’ve already started domesticating people?” I asked.

“They have. It’s a small operation. Perhaps a few thousand humans, most of which were born in captivity and have never known anything else, but…well, it’s still a disgusting practice, I’m sure you’ll agree.”

I ground my teeth. The very notion was indeed disgusting, but I wasn’t certain I was the right person to solve the problem. What was I going to do with a few thousand people who’d been kept as livestock, anyway? They’d need to be taken care of, and I was ill-equipped to make that sort of commitment. Even so, now that I knew what was going on, I certainly couldn’t just ignore it, either.

“Why?”

“I just told you why. With their history, the E’rok Tan see humans as cattle, and –”

“No – why do you want them gone? And don’t tell me it’s altruism, either. I might be ignorant of the wider universe, but I’m willing to bet that you don’t care about a few humans. So, what’s your real beef with them?”

“Beef?” he asked, cocking his head to the side. Then, recognition dawned on his face as he said, “Ah. The translation was a little slow there. Curious expression. In any case, the answer to your question is simple: we have a longstanding conflict with the E’rok Tan, and we have no desire to share a planet with them. If you refuse to do this, then we will attack their operation as soon as the Integration dawns.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said.

“They will be prepared for it, then. At this very moment, they are building defenses. If we let them dig in, removing them from Earth’s surface will be very difficult. Likely, it will spark a war that will sweep across the entire planet,” he explained.

I could see his strategy unfolding. First, he appealed to my emotions, casting the E’rok Tan as enemies of humanity. Then, he doubled down on that by explaining the stakes. If these aliens were allowed free reign, what was to stop them from enslaving the entirety of humanity? They had done it on their own planet, so it was a distinct possibility.

And I believed that Alistaris was telling the truth, too. He didn’t need to lie.

After the emotional appeal, he’d thrown the consequences of inaction at me. If I didn’t act, war would come. And that war would ravage the planet I called home, killing countless people in the process. I could stop that by simply taking the mission and doing Alistaris’ bidding.

But just because I could recognize his manipulative tactics didn’t mean they weren’t effective.

“If I agree to do this, I’m going to need something from you,” I said.

“I already said we would pay you for you trouble.”

“No. Not that. I don’t care about the money,” I stated. “I’m talking about the people. Those…livestock you were talking about. If I kill the aliens, they’ll need help. I want your agreement that you’ll do what you can to rehabilitate them.”

“That may not be possible.”

“Then take care of them somehow. I don’t know what is and isn’t possible, okay? But I know we can’t just leave them…”

“It may be more humane to simply euthanize them,” Alistaris suggested.

“More humane? Or cheaper?” I asked.

“Both. You have to understand that –”

“No. You need to understand that this is the cost of my acceptance of this mission,” I said, cutting him off. “I kill the bad guys, you save the victims. That’s it. If that means euthanization, then fine. But that’s a last resort. I expect you to try everything else before you get to that point.”

Indeed, I had no interest in helping those people myself. I wasn’t equipped for the job. But that didn’t mean I was okay with abandoning them. After all, I hadn’t forgotten the scene of my first Rift, where the aliens had enslaved the local humans. Back then, I had been forced to kill those victims when they attacked me. I didn’t want to revisit that same situation.

“You’re asking quite a lot from me,” said Alistaris.

“Same,” I pointed out, banking on the fact that he needed me. Or rather, he needed the E’rok Tan gone. Perhaps he’d told me the truth about his reasons. Or maybe he hadn’t. But the fact was that he wanted them dead, and I intended to use that leverage as much as I could.

He ran a hand through his wild, white hair, then said, “Very well. We have protocols for situations like these. We can remove the implants and overcome the conditioning. The people will never fully recover. They have been fundamentally altered at a genetic level. Mostly, they’re meant to be docile and dull, but they are a bit bulkier than normal humans. In any case, we can transfer them to our main facility where they will be given jobs, homes, and food. They will be as comfortable as we can make them. Assuming you hold up your end of the bargain. Do we have a deal?”

“I believe we do,” I said, already mentally preparing for the job ahead of me.