Planet Leviathan

^{Chapter 4} Hobbes

Stacia wasn’t in the habit of taking orders from random people she didn’t know, but the man had been so polite in his threat to blow up her skull that she decided it couldn’t hurt to do as he said. As soon as she made it clear that she had no intention of resisting them, the eight soldiers with the guns lowered their weapons. The stoic expressions on their faces had given way to wonder and respect as they all took a moment to appreciate the massive beast they had just witnessed Stacia take down. That was sloppy of them, and it took much effort to keep her disgust of them from showing on her face. Their armor clearly marked them as former Galactic Marines, sentenced to live out the rest of their lives on the planet just like her, but they had obviously been out of the service long enough to forget their training. They should have never lowered their weapons in the face of a potential threat. And if Stacia had just proven anything, it was that, even when armed with only a single knife, she was still a threat.

I’m pretty sure I could kill all of them in under forty seconds, Stacia thought. Except for the one with the leather parchment. The way he held himself suggested he hadn’t forgotten as much of his training as the others. Even though he didn’t appear to have a weapon, Stacia pegged him as the biggest threat in the group if for some reason this all devolved into a battle.

She went to grab her knife, but one of the soldiers aimed her rifle again and shook her head. Stacia stopped and let the leader grab the knife first.

“All arms on Leviathan are property of Lord Commander Lexton. You will be assigned better weapons after you’ve sworn the oath.”

Stacia had no intention of swearing to anything, yet again she came to the conclusion that it would be more advantageous to watch and wait. She wasn’t entirely sure what she’d been expecting, but already she could say that this wasn’t it.

“Your name, soldier?” the leader asked as she stood up.

“Stacia X-79.”

“Your real name. No need to use bullshit designations anymore.”

“That is my real name.”

Unlike the guards on the ship, this one immediately knew what that meant. Stacia winced as he gave a low whistle.

“My, that is quite unexpected.”

“You must be relatively new to the planet, if you’ve heard of me,” Stacia said.

“A year and a half, as we measure things locally. I’m Maxwell Faust.”

Stacia nodded. She actually knew that name. Roughly three years ago in Earth time, there had been quite the scandal involving a number of Galactic Marines and a significant number of vanished weaponry. Although most of the trial had been conducted in secret, Stacia’s connections had at least allowed her to learn the names of many of the people involved. Faust was one of those names.

Although those involved had been convicted, rumors were that the weapons had never been recovered.

Stacia looked at the armaments around her with renewed interest.

“Mind telling me what you’re doing here?” Faust asked. He must have given some subtle signal that Stacia hadn’t seen, because several of the soldiers again brought up their weapons.

“Same thing as you, I’m assuming. Life sentence.”

“But I know who you are. I’ve heard of your record. I know who your mothers are.”

Stacia took several steps toward Faust, completely ignoring the weapons that tracked her and the trigger fingers that got tighter the closer she got to him. “Let’s get one thing very clear. Our association may be brief or it may be long. But at no point do you ever mention my mothers again. Do you understand?”

Faust made a shrug designed to show disinterest, but Stacia could tell from the look in his eyes that he was impressed with her confidence. “Fine enough. But the point stands. The Two Who Must Not Be Named have influence. It’s difficult to imagine you doing anything that would get you sent here before they were able to sweep it under the rug.”

“I unloaded a whole 808 into General Borealis.”

No hiding his true emotions this time. Faust made an audible choking sound. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not.”

“Not possible.”

“And yet I did it.”

“No one gets the drop on Borealis.”

“That’s her reputation. And yet I did it.”

“You’re serious? You actually killed Borealis?”

“I didn’t say I killed her. I said I filled her with bullets.”

“You must be a terrible shot.”

“I’m not. Every single bullet hit its mark.”

“And she survived?”

“Trust me, no one is more pissed about that than me.”

“But why? You just decided to turn around one day, forget about a lifetime of duty, and just use a commanding officer for target practice?”

“She was asking for it, after everything she did to me.”

“And what exactly did she do to you?”

“None of your business.”

“So what now? You’ve got some delusion that you can get off the planet and finish the job?”

“I know that nobody leaves Leviathan. Not for any reason. So I intend to make sure that’s one hundred percent true.”

He seemed confused by this for several seconds before it dawned on him. “Stanton Borealis.”

“Yes.”

“You can’t kill the general, so you’re going to kill her son?”

“Yes.”

“That’s cold, even for Leviathan. And trust me, you haven’t even begun to see what there is to see on Leviathan.”

“Does that mean you’re going to try to stop me?”

“I said nothing of the sort. In fact, I’m pretty sure the Lord Commander would be more than happy to help you out. After you pledge fealty to her.”

Stacia grunted something that wasn’t quite agreement and yet not quite a refusal. Faust seemed to be satisfied with that. He gestured at the soldiers, who immediately took up a guarding pattern around Stacia.

“Let’s go, then,” Faust said, starting a march in a general easterly direction. “We actually came here to salvage your pod, but since you’re alive, I suppose we should get you back to the city, first.”

“You sound like you didn’t expect me to live.”

“It all depends on where the drop pods land. You landed right in dominatrix territory.”

“Dominatrix?”

“That thing you killed.”

“Why do you call those things dominatrixes?”

“Because of those whips that they can bind you with in their fifth leg.”

“I take it that taking one down is uncommon?”

“No, not at all. When you have a gun. When you’re only armed with the knife you’re given at sentencing? Let’s just say that any time we inspect a drop site in the barnacles, there aren’t any people there anymore.”

“The barnacles?”

Faust indicated the tree-like structures. Stacia noticed that they had taken up a path that led them right along the line between the trees and a wide-open prairie. The “grass” was abundant here, although the further away it was from the trees, the patchier it got.

“So you’re not going to find a dominatrix outside of the, uh, barnacles?”

“They’re the top predator among the barnacles, specially evolved as far as we can tell to live among them. Their height protects them from the side effects.”

“Side effects?”

Faust stopped just long enough to indicate dominatrix blood and fluid covering her armor. “Notice anything there?”

It took Stacia several seconds to even realize what she was looking for, but when she did, some things suddenly made sense. Most of the gore was still wet from her fresh kill. In some places, however, it had dried far faster than it had any right to. And those places all happened to be where she had touched the barnacle on her way down from the corpse. The barnacles must absorb moisture. That was why she felt strangely thirsty.

“You didn’t seem too concerned about walking among them,” Stacia said.

“For brief periods of time, it’s okay. Don’t get too close to them, and avoid the denser clumps, and you can forage among the barnacles just fine. Stay too long, though, and you might as well be in a desert. If you’re feeling dehydrated, we can fix that in Hobbes. After you’ve—”

“Sworn my fealty,” Stacia said. “Yeah, I’ve got it.”

By Stacia’s best guess, it took them about an hour to reach their destination. That seemed kind of odd, considering how quickly Faust and his stooges had shown up at her drop site, but it made more sense the longer Stacia paid attention to her environment. They had probably reached her by going a straight line through the barnacles. Now, though, they followed the wandering and meandering line between the barnacles and the prairie. Although she wanted to ask why they didn’t just go further out into the prairie if they wanted to avoid the barnacles and another dominatrix, she kept her mouth shut. She’d already asked more questions than she felt comfortable with. Stacia had known from the moment she’d been sentenced that it would be a horrible mistake to trust anyone on Leviathan, and Faust had already gleaned more information about Stacia than she was comfortable with. Anything she said or asked could only give him more information.

“There,” Faust finally said, pointing at something slightly further out on the prairie. “Welcome to Hobbes, the capitol city of Leviathan.”

The “city” didn’t have any true right to that word, but it was the first sign of anything like civilization that she had seen so far. It was more like a village with all its buildings of poor construction and random size. The closer they got, the better she could see that it had been constructed mostly out of repurposed drop pod pieces, along with the occasional organic wall that looked like it had started out as the leg armor of a dominatrix.

She would have expected the soldiers to be less tense as they moved away from the barnacles, yet a hush fell over them all as they walked out onto the open prairie. They kept scanning the tufts of grass, and Faust had them pause anytime anyone heard more than the slightest rustle.

There’s something out here more dangerous than the dominatrixes, Stacia thought. Good to know.

The soldiers relaxed again as they got to the city’s edge. There was a wall surrounding all of Hobbes, but Stacia failed to notice it until she tripped over it.

“Watch your step,” Faust said.

“…the hell?” Stacia asked. She looked down to get a closer inspection of the wall. It was only about ten centimeters tall, yet it very clearly ran the entire perimeter of the city. It appeared to be metal, probably also scavenged from drop pods, and was in much better repair than anything else she’d seen of the city so far. The people of Hobbes must have taken great care to keep it maintained. “Want to explain that?”

Faust waved dismissively at her. “Someone can tell you all the ins and outs of Hobbes later. There will be plenty of time once you’re officially sworn in as part of the Lord Commander’s army.”

Stacia raised an eyebrow at that, but didn’t ask anything more. Instead, as they left it behind them, she turned back to get one more look at the tiny peculiar wall. There was something about it she hadn’t noticed on first glance: the grass around it. On the inner city-side, the grass grew at its leisure. On the outer prairie-side, the ground was bare, like it had been denuded by some kind of weed-killer. She filed that particular piece of information away for later.

The city of Hobbes, as far as Stacia could see right now, was abandoned. There were plenty of shacks and lean-tos peppering the landscape, a small number of larger buildings, and one or two the size of closets that Stacia suspected might be outhouses. The closer they got to the center of Hobbes, however, the more she could hear the rowdy and raucous noises coming from one building in particular. It was definitely the largest of all the structures in the city, both in length and the fact that it was the only one with two stories. This building seemed to be in better general repair than everything else around it, and the attempts to decorate it in something resembling architectural aesthetics gave her the impression that it must be the seat of government.

That made it all the more surprising when Faust opened the door onto what appeared to be a strip club.