Honourable Enemies

I. On the Run On the independent rim world of Maciste, a man was running through the warren of grimy backstreets and dark alleys that made up the less savoury parts of the capital Cabiria. He was no longer young, his reddish hair and neatly clipped beard liberally threaded with grey. His eyes were a watery blue and his body was stocky, packed with muscles rather than fat. The man was clad in the standard spacer’s garb of synth-leather jacket, shirt and utility pants. A blaster was strapped to his thigh — a high-grade model, Republican military issue — that clashed incongruously with the rest of his appearance. In his regular life, he was Colonel Brian Mayhew, deputy commander of the Special Commando Forces, the elite military unit of the Republic of United Planets. But here on Maciste, he was just a spacer, captain of a tramp freighter, a man with a fake name and an equally fake identity. He’d come to Maciste to take out Rick Santerna, one of the local crime lords, only to find that Santerna had sent assassins to take him out first. Lucky for Mayhew, the assassins had no idea whom they were really dealing with, and so he had been able to dispatch them, quickly and efficiently, if not exactly tidily. But there were more where those assassins had come from. And so Mayhew was on the run. He darted into an alley to shake off his pursuers. It worked, too — well, almost. For one of Santerna’s goons — too clever for his own good — had followed Mayhew into the alley. The man should’ve just shot him in the back and be done with it. Quick, clean, efficient. Not exactly honourable, but who the f**k cared? But the goon had other ideas. Either he had a sense of honour — unlikely, but stranger things had happened — or a grossly inflated sense of his own fighting skills. At any rate, he drew a knife, a nasty vibro-blade, and launched himself at Mayhew. Bad idea. Mayhew side-stepped the goon’s first lunge easily and drew his own blade, a standard Republican combat knife. He didn’t much care for edged weapons — blasters and shocksticks got the job done faster and more efficiently. But unfortunately, the rest of the galaxy did not agree and so Mayhew knew how to handle a knife just fine, even if it was not his preferred method of fighting. The goon drew blood on his second lunge. Nothing serious, just a gash on Mayhew’s right arm. And Mayhew drew blood, too, a stab to the abdomen of his opponent. Nasty, but it wouldn’t kill the man. And if the thug gave up now, turned tail and ran, he could still have walked away from this. After all, killing a nameless goon wasn’t what Mayhew had come here for. But of course the goon was stupid. Or maybe loyal or persistent or foolhardy. At any rate, he attacked again, weakened though he was from blood loss and the wound in his abdomen. This time, Mayhew grabbed the man by his knife hand and slammed him back against the wall of the alley with a strength and speed belied by his appearance. The goon wasn’t even half bad. At any rate, he managed to hold on to his knife, even though Mayhew repeatedly tried to wrest it from his grasp. Finally, he gave up and just let the goon take a stab or two at him, while Mayhew plunged his combat knife right into the man’s heart. The goon slid down the wall, quite dead, an expression of surprise frozen on his face. “Idiot.” Mayhew spat out a mouthful of blood and sheathed his knife. From a pocket of his jacket, he withdrew a small vial containing a shimmering powder. DNA dissolver, one of the many miracles to come out of the labs of the Republic’s Scientific Council. Mayhew held his breath, opened the vial and sprinkled the powder onto the body of the dead goon. The powder would break down any organic matter it came in contact with to its nucleotides. Mayhew wasn’t entirely sure what the Scientific Council had originally intended the powder for, but in practice it was extremely convenient for disposing of a corpse without leaving a trace. He strongly suspected that whatever passed for the police in a place like Cabiria wouldn’t particularly care about the dead body of a known gangster found in an alley, but you never knew. So better be safe than sorry. Mayhew did not stick around to watch the DNA dissolver do its job. He knew what it looked like and it wasn’t pretty. So he just turned around and walked away, a little slower than before. His own wounds were aching. The goon had gotten him in the arm, the shoulder, the abdomen and the thigh. The abdominal wound was the worst, but none of them were truly dangerous. Indeed, Mayhew could already feel the military grade medical nano-agents coursing through his bloodstream do their job and repair the damage. But even nanos needed time to work and for now, the wounds still slowed Mayhew down. He needed to find a place to lay low for a while and let the nanos do their job. Mayhew sighed. Damn it, he was getting too old for this s**t.