Killing Ground

'Who?'

'It doesn't matter,' giggled Ha

Daron Nisato was a handsome man in his fifties with sharp features, quick eyes and dark skin. His hair was tightly curled and had turned to grey at the temples at an early age, giving him a distinguished look that had served him well when he'd been a commissar in the Achaman Falcatas.

'You want a drink?' asked Ha

'Of raquir? No, I think not. I don't think you should have any more either.'

'You're probably right, Daron, but what else is there?'

'There's duty,' said Nisato. 'You have yours and I have mine.'

'Duty?' barked Ha

'Keep your voice down, Ha

'Or what? You'll arrest me?'

'If I have to, yes. A night in the drunk tank might do you some good.'

'No,' said Ha

'What's that?'

'This,' said Ha

Nisato was instantly alert. 'What are you doing, Ha

Ha

'You still keep your medal?' asked Ha

'I never received one,' replied Nisato. 'I wasn't there.'

The medal ceased its rotation and lay flat on the greasy surface of the bar.

'Lucky you,' said Ha

'See who?'

'The burned ones… The ones… The dead?'

Ha

You were there.

'Oh no… No, please…' he sobbed. 'Not again.'

'Ha

The patrons of the bar rose to their feet, clothes ablaze and faces transformed from surly and hostile to molten and agonised. Like some monstrous host of fiery elemental, they marched towards him, and Ha

Daron Nisato was oblivious to the flaming carnage filling the bar, looking at him with an expression of worried concern and pity.

Ha

He heard Daron Nisato's voice, but the words were lost to him as he saw a horrifyingly familiar form emerge from the smoke and fire, a girl child, no more than seven years old.

Her dress was ablaze and her arms were, as always, held out to him, as if seeking his affection or rescue. Her skin bubbled and popped, meat and fat ru

'You were there,' said the little girl, her face a searing mass of bright flame that ate through her skull and into her brain-pan. A dreadful, spectral light filled her eyes, all that the fire had not yet dared to consume.

'I'm sorry,' said Ha

He drew in a deep breath and in the blink of an eye the inferno of the bar, the melting child and the burning men vanished. All was as it had been moments before. Ha

'What the hell was that?' demanded Nisato beside him, completely unaware of the nightmarish things that Ha

'No,' wept Ha

'You can't,' agreed Nisato. 'That's why you need to come with me now.'

'No,' repeated Ha

Ha

PART ONE

REBIRTH

'I should never have believed that death had undone so many.'

ONE

Do people shape the planets they live on or do the planets shape them? The people of Mordian are melancholy and dour, the folk of Catachan pragmatic and hardy. Is this the result of the harsh climes and brutal necessities required for survival, or were the people who settled the planets in ages past already predisposed to those qualities? Can the character of a world affect an entire population or is the human soul stronger than mere geography?

Might an observer more naturally attribute a less malign disposition, a less frightful character, to those who walk unconcerned for their safety beneath the gilded archways of a shrine world than to those who huddle in the darkness of a world torn apart by war and rebellion?

Whatever the case, the solitary heaths, lonely mountains and strife-torn cities of Salinas would have provided an excellent study for any such observer.

Rain fell in soaking sheets from the grey, dusky skies: a fine smirr that hung like mist and made the quartz-rich mountainside glisten and sparkle. Flocks of shaggy herbivores fed on the long grasses of the low pastures, and dark thunderheads in the east gathered over the looming peaks.

Tumbling waterfalls gushed uproariously down black cliffs and the few withered trees that remained on the lower slopes surrounding a dead city bent and swayed like dancers before the driving wind that sheared down from the cloud-wreathed highlands. A brooding silence, like an awkward pause in a conversation, hung over the dead city, as though the landscape feared to intrude on its private sorrow. Rubble-choked streets wound their way between blackened buildings of twisted steel and tumbled stone, and ferns with rust and blood-coloured leaves grew thick in its empty boulevards.

Wind-weathered rock and spars of corroded metal lay where they had fallen, and the wind moaned as it gusted through empty windows and shattered doors, as though the city were giving vent to a long, drawn out death rattle.

People had once lived here. They had loved and fought and indulged in the thousands of dramas, both grand and intimate, common to all cities. Great celebrations, scandalous intrigues and bloody crimes had all played out here, but all such theatre had passed into history, though not from memory.

Hundreds of streets, avenues, thoroughfares and roads criss-crossed the empty city, wending their way through its desolation as though in search of someone to tread them once more. Open doors banged on frames, forlorn entreaties to a nameless visitor to enter and render the building purposeful once more. Rain ran in gurgling streams beside the cracked pavements, flowing from grates and gathering in pools where the land had subsided.