Kost – Aspatrian Nightmares

Xachery hated leaving the arcology. Inside, the world was a clean, comfortable, and relatively safe environment where one could easily forget their troubles and live a care-free life; out here, in the smog and filth, even the act of breathing was undesirable. The Aspatrian travelled with two armed guards, their laser rifles held ready at all times. In the old, weather-beaten ground car one sat in the shotgun seat, the other facing backwards in the passenger cabin.
The vehicle growled to a halt, though the driver kept the engine running. Xachary waited for his guards to wave him out before crossing the yard towards the factory gate. Behind him a large, black-iron fence kept the unwashed masses from trespassing. The city's smog tinged the buildings on the far side of the road a dull, rusty orange. The instant the doors opened, Xachary's ears flicked sideways in a defensive reflex against the harsh rattle-bang of the sifters; vast industrial machines placed inside a maze of conveyor belts. He took the earplugs offered to him by the site foreman, though they only marginally helped, and followed the orange-furred male towards his office. He gave only a fleeting glance towards the work force as they busied themselves picking at the conveyor lines, or hauling barrows of ore about, or one of countless other tasks the factory performed.
The office door clicked shut, adding an extra layer of sound-dampening, but the sounds of industry were still ever-present. The thin, cheap windows rattled every time the nearest piston hammer slammed down.
“Welcome, sir. May I offer you a drink?” The foremen asked, keeping his head low and gaze averted. His name was Jeshop, an orange-furred Aspatrian who had mastered the art of brown-nosing at a young age. It was a trait that served him well. 
“Water. Cold. Filtered.” Xachery replied. His eyes and nose were beginning to itch from the permanent cloud of dust that filled the factory. He briefly wondered if it would be worth the time and effort to upgrade the extractor system, a thought that crossed his mind every time he had to visit this damned place. Ultimately, he always decided against it – the air outside wasn't much cleaner.
Jeshop offered the glass to his guest before retreating behind his desk. “I have the ledgers ready, sir. All good and proper, as you'll see. “
A stack of papers was slid towards him. Papers. Xachary smirked at the word; “Paper” was made of pulped wood. What the foreman had offered him was, in fact, a composite of powdered soft-stone from their own heaps, mixed with repurposed by-products from a nearby chemical plant. Genuine paper was a luxury item not to be wasted on such trivialities as monthly reports. With a shake of his head, Xachary dismissed the silly musing and turned to his briefcase. Placing it on the desk and popping the clasps, it opened to reveal a machine covered in collapsible antennas, which he unfolded one at a time. Once properly arranged, he turned the machine on and the room filled with a dull hum that was unpleasant to the ear, but a necessity for proper security. To speak openly without a jammer was an act of recklessness, especially when your discussions were not, strictly speaking, legal.
What's our output this month?” Xachary asked.
“It's all in the file, sir.”
“I know what's in the file, you idiot! I want the true numbers!”
Foreman Jeshop squirmed in his seat. “We're six percent under target on our high-grade fines, and nine percent under on semi-precious. Twenty-three under on precious. B-but everything else is above target!”
Xachary's lip curled in disgust. Most of the factory's output was dirt by any other name; heaps of sand, gravel, and crushed stones of varying grades and qualities. The most important output by far were its relatively tiny metal-extraction, where little chips of valuable ore were sifted out, boxed up, and sold on for further processing elsewhere. A single shipping container of rare metal turned a higher profit than the multi-story mounds of crushed rock outside. “Why have you allowed this to happen?” he snarled.
“I-it's not my fault, sir! We can't find what's not in the shipment!”
“Your workers must be stealing it off the belt!” Xachary snapped back.
“They're not! We check!” Jeshop raised his paws to ward off the accusation. “last time someone tried it we flayed his back in front of everyone! They'd never dare!”
As much as Xachary wanted to throttle the simpering fox in front of him, he knew his protests were likely true. He eased back into his chair and let his temper cool. “So, it's happened at last. The quarry's seams have run dry.”
“Must be, sir!”
“Shut up.” Xachary stared at the jammer beside him, looking through the machine as his mind worked away. “The high-grades don't matter; there's been no demand for those ever since the plans for Arco-2 were scrapped. We have a reserve of metals, yes?”
Jeshop looked at the jammer himself before answering, as if needing confirmation it was indeed still active. “Yes, sir. We can cover the semi shortfall, but it'll take almost all we've got hidden away. The precious metals though, our reserve will barely make a dent.”
“Then cover the former. It'll make keeping the tally-man sweet that much easier. For your sake, Jeshop, next month had best show marked improvement – if heads roll, it won't be mine on the block.” He shut the jammer down, folded it away, and carelessly tossed the official output reports on top. A bad day all round, Xachery thought.

The Tally-man could at least be met within the arcology itself. He was a tall man, and while he was Aspatrian he seemed to have more in common with a weasel than a fox; a short muzzle, beady eyes, and a permanent hunch to his posture. It was infuriating to have to show reverence to a man that looked ready to piss his pants at the first loud noise, but show it Xachary did.
“Now, let me see, there is a discrepancy, yes?” The Weasel-man muttered as he flicked through the documents Xachary had provided.
“The quarry is to blame. Their shipments produced a twenty-three percent shortfall in precious metals.” It was always important to front-load failure onto someone else. Xachary tried to stay calm and composed, but the overlapping buzz and hum of two competing jammer-systems made his teeth itch. Neither man trusted the other's equipment, not when their livelihoods, and perhaps even their lives, were at stake.
“Quarry, quarry, quarry,” Tally-man mumbled on. “Their outputs... ah! Here. No, their outputs seem correct.”
“Those outputs are bulk, unsorted ore. They express raw tonnage, not type or quality.”
“Even so.”
“This is incompetence on their part.” Xachary pressed. “They are not accurately identifying what they ship out.”
The Tally-man shook his head. “I find them to be quite efficient. Yes. Quite accurate, very meticulous, in point of fact.”
Xachary had to suppress a growl of frustration. “How much is it going to cost to deal with this little... oversight?”
“Oh, well, it's a problem. You're not the only one looking to resolve this sort of matter, you see.”
“What's that supposed to mean?” A sick feeling began to boil through Xachary's gut at the other Aspatrian's words.
“It's not just the local quarry, you see. The one up in the hills, that's been on a downturn as well. Torge's mines, well, you know they closed last year, but the new excavations aren't turning up nearly as much material as hoped.”
“Where is Torge now?” the question came out at a whisper.
Even the Tally-man shivered as he answered, “summoned away.”
The response made Xachary want to vomit. The euphemistic phrase was a gross softening for a truly brutal reality. At best, Torge and his family would be outcasts now, stripped of all their worldly possessions and cast out into the smog-choked slums of the city as punishment for their incompetence. At worst... well, the worst simply did not bear thinking about. “Make this go away,” he rasped. “I don't care how much it costs, make it go away.”
“It will be expensive, you understand?”
“I can pay it.”
The Tally-man nodded, slow and deliberate. His thin lips moved silently as he performed the mental calculations of time, cost, and risk to fudge numbers, shift materials, and reallocate blame. “I will need forty-thousand up front, at the very least. The very least, you do understand?”
It took a legendary degree of self control not to punch the tax-taker out cold there and then. “It will be in your account tomorrow morning,” he snarled.

When he was free of the bastard, Xachary pursued solace in burning spirits. Forty-thousand to conceal a single month's short-fall!
The whisky sloshed about in his glass, rattled by a trembling paw. It wasn't just a month's short-fall, was it? Last month they'd only hit targets by dipping into his hidden caches, which themselves he'd not been able to properly top up for half a year. The black market trade in unregistered goods, once so rewarding, might now be his only way to stay afloat. The bastards would be selling him back his own factory's output at an extortionate markup!
Xachary's eyes gazed out of the bar's vista window. The world beyond was an amber haze, with the dirt-caked rooftops of taller slums and factories poking up from the cloud. In the distance, visible only by the black shadows billowing out of them, were towering chimney stacks of a rival's yards. Ironworks, weren't they? Scrap-iron. They had mountains of the stuff, piled fifty feet high, all rusted and corroded. Scrap metal was one of the few businesses guaranteed to thrive on Aspatria. It was why those who had such operations guarded them jealously.
What would he do when the quarries ran dry? Even if others could be opened, it would take years for them to reach output. He had to find a way to plead his case, to reduce targets, to make his masters understand their demands could not be met.
He gulped the entire glass in one swig, flinching as it burned his throat. Such thoughts presumed his  betters were reasonable men – a delusional idea if ever there was one. If he didn't reach his quotas, they'd replace him with someone else, someone who'd likely suffer the same fate by next quarter.
“Another whisky!” he roared at the bar. His fury made the other patrons look up in surprise, but none said a word. He was a factory owner, after all. For now, he had the right to be abusive. “Leave the bottle,” he added in a lower tone once the underling had finished pouring. He downed this glass as well, and poured himself a third.
There had to be a way to turn this all around, Xachary told himself. He had to be resourceful, ruthless even. The high and mighty respected that, for it was the only language they truly understood – ambition, and those with the will to pursue it. He just had to properly lever his assets. Assets. What assets did he have? A factory falling below targets, an apartment on the upper-mid tenement level of the arcology, a half-rusted car...
...and a laser pistol.
The thought formed in his mind, clear as crystal. A laser pistol. Unregistered, and utterly illegal for one such as him to possess. Just another form of security. He'd obtained it in the early days, back when the factory was producing twice the demanded output, back when the black market deals had filled his pockets with dark money. He'd bought it in a fit of paranoia, a way to feel safe against whomsoever might come to investigate. The power cell had twenty shots, give or take. He hadn't been able to secure a spare.
Twenty shots. Enough to kill twenty people, if you were good enough.
Xachary's eyes fixated on the distant, smog-shrouded chimneys of the ironworks. The fumes they belched out seemed to shiver, as if sensing his dark intent. He sipped his drink, his paw no-longer shaking, and coldly considered the lengths survival demanded of him.

The penthouse level had its own guards, but their checkpoint was just a carbon copy of the reception desk used at every level's access points. The two Aspatrian men loitering at the desk wore rust-red fatigues over old, scratched body armour. Their rifles were likewise older models, likely given to the old soldiers precisely because nobody ever thought they'd need them. One didn't bother to look up from his book as Xachary stepped off the elevator. The other glanced over, idly scratching his jowls with one paw while the other was hooked into his belt in a manner he likely thought was intimidating. Up until the elevator doors opened, the plan had been simple; in Xachary's left paw was a briefcase full of banking notes worth more than the two dullards made in the last ten years. He was going to put it on their desk, open it up, and walk away. Then he was going to deal with ironmonger Weiss, his family, and anyone else who got in his way.
The laser pistol let out a sharp crack as the invisible pulse of energy super-heated the air in front of the barrel. By the time the sound wave reached Xachary's ears the shot had struck the standing guard in the right eye, which popped as the wet tissue was flash-boiled. His brain remained intact just long enough to process the image of a rising pistol before it became a billowing plume of pink vapour. The body jolted backwards, limbs spasming as random signals ran down his spine. He was dead long before bounced off the desk and sprawled onto the floor, by which time Xachary had shot the second guard. It had been aimed at the chest, but he rose from his seat more quickly than anticipated and the shot instead hit him in the gut. The hit bent him in half, the laser pulse having obliterated his liver. He lay sprawled over his toppled chair, twitching and gulping like a fish pulled from its tank, the reek of blood and filth mixing with the harsh tang of burning cloth and fur. Two more shots through the back put the poor bastard out of his misery.
Tucking the pistol into his belt, Xachary recovered the better looking of the two rifles and a handful of spare magazines for good measure. He hadn't originally planned on killing those men, but he'd realised on the way up he might need more than twenty shots to finish the job.

The bar Kost sat in was much like the one where Xachary had planned his coup, just slightly older and approximately ten thousand miles east-south-east. He stared at one of the fox-like females until she met his gaze, whereupon she became intensely fascinated with her own feet while tip-toeing over. She had thick orange fur with a white trail down her chest and stomach, and he knew this because she wore absolutely no clothes at all. “I want a beer,” he said.
She trembled softly at the question. “Khe'vac?”
“Beer. Be-er. Stuff you drink!” the older man next to him replied, adhering to the traditional belief that being foreign was the same as being deaf.
“Bjor, let me handle this.” Kost raised a paw to silence his companion before turning to the Aspatrian. “Arvol T'ai. Cha... vess... rek? Rek?” he raised two fingers for emphasis. The female nodded and retreated from their table.
“What did you just ask for?”
“Two beers, I think.”
The waitress returned with a pair of amber coloured drinks. Bjor took the first sip and scrunched his muzzle, recoiling from the beverage. “How long as this piss been sat in the pipes? Someone needs to teach that soft bint how to work the bar!”
“I've drunk worse,” Kost said with a shrug.
“Of course you have. You drink the fucking drip tray!” He tried a second pull and decided against it. “Right, I'm getting a proper drink if I have to hop the bar and take it myself!”
“I'll have yours then.” Kost took the rejected pint and helped himself to a large gulp. It tasted of sour piss, but it was mildly alcoholic. You'd get drunk if you downed enough of it. With a pint in each paw, Kost leaned back and craned his head to listen to the Captain's discussions in the back booth. He was sat with an Aspatrian, one with darker fur than most, and who was important enough to come flanked with muscle. Pretty standard stuff. Sadly, they were both well-versed in the art of having private conversations in public, so Kost got nothing out of his eavesdropping.
Bjor returned with a bottle of something promising in his meaty grip. As the cork popped, Kost recalled some half-heard story about magical spirits that lived in old bottles. These spirits smelled at least 80-proof. “Soo,” the older man purred, making the extra 'o' clear as day.
“No,” Kost answered. He didn't need to hear the rest of the question.
“Those lasses don't look that bad, do they? Plus they're already undressed!”
“They've only got two breasts.”
“You've only got two paws!” Bjor grinned at his own worldly wisdom.
Kost put down one of his beers so he could take the spirit bottle. “Yes, and mine are full. Go on and grope without me if you like.”
The whisky hadn't touched his lips before the Captain barked his name. “Bjor! Kost! Kal! Oras!” The four summoned Kyyreni jumped to attention, or what passed for it. The overlapping plates of the Captain's boarding armour clacked and clanked as he moved, accompanied by the rattle of dozens of fetishes he kept hanging on thin chains about his person. His eyes, so dark brown as to be near-all black flicked from man to man. “The client and I have reached and agreement. You four should be more than enough to get this done. The mark, Xachary, has got ideas above his station. He needs to be reminded that there are consequences for stepping out of line.”
“What consequences would they be, sir?” Bjor asked. The man was large and bullish, half a head taller than his captain, yet he seemed to shrink before him.
“Xachary has a wife and three children. Reduce that count. Client wants it memorable.”
A familiar pounding began in Kost's head. A low, tinny whine began to dull the edges of conversation as Bjor and the Captain finalised the details. He knew the briefing was over when the Captain made a dismissive flicking motion with his paw, and he was quick to turn and gulp some of the whisky down before they walked away from the table. Its burn did little to loosen the pressure on his chest.
They took a shuttle, one of their own, straight to from one arcology to the other. The dark Aspatrian came with them, flanked by his bodyguards. Kost knew there were only eight souls aboard – the pilot and seven passengers, all crammed in wherever they'd fit – but he couldn't shake the feeling there was an eighth, sat just in the corner of his vision. The eighth man wore thick grey woollens, carried a shepherd's crook, and had a face of sun-bleached bone. Kost could see him even with his eyes closed.

Xachary's security knew they were coming. More importantly, they knew who to side with; they looked ready to piss themselves when the four blond, wolfish pirates charged down their shuttle's ramp with rifles raised, pinning them to the wall and barking orders they couldn't understand. Once they were face-down on the landing pad and deprived of their weapons, the client calmly advised them to stay there.
The pounding in his head was getting worse. Normally, it would have eased by now, the tension breaking charge being an escape from his own mind. Today, perhaps because the operation was bloodless so far, it only worsened as they wound through the alabaster interior of the arcology. Nervous eyes peered from condo entrances as they passed, the well-to-do of the city reduced to simpering kits in their presence. Or, perhaps, the presence of their client.
Oras had the access code to Xachary's living space. That put him in the line of fire. The pressure finally popped as a thunder-crack and flash of harsh light announced the door's opening. Oras, an old man of thirty-nine, was just a little too slow sidestepping the moving door and had a chunk of bicep blown off. He tumbled sideways, howling and clutching as the ugly wound. Someone, likely Bjor, roared a profane curse. Someone, likely Kal, was urging the group to hold fire.
Someone else was charging through the door with a boarding gun raised. They pulled the trigger, sending a cone of buckshot into the penthouse. The steel balls sailed right over Xachary's shoulder, across the foyer, and blew half a dozen holes through the laminated glass doors leading to the balcony. The shooter pumped the gun, trigger still clenched, and slam-fired a second shell full of shot that flew high and further right, slicing the tip off Xachary's right ear and detonating a marble pillar. The third ripped long gouges into top of the granite table the Aspatrian was hiding behind before hammering yet more holes into the decorative supports.
Then the shooter was vaulting the table, coming right over on top of Xachary. The Aspatrian had a laser rifle.
A bolt of laser fire seared the collar of the charging Kyyreni and set a small fire in his fur before blowing apart a light fixture. At the same time, a point-blank shot blew a hole in the laminate floor, burying slivers of faux-wood into Xachary's cheek. Then a boot came down, stamping on the fox's arm and pinning it to the ground at a painful angle. The attacker was still holding the trigger as he went to chamber another shell.
“Kost!”
Kost felt the boarding gun wrenched aside. He blinked, twice, then slapped the fire out of his fur. Bjor was stood in front of him, holding the barrel away from Xachary. “What the fuck was that?”
“I wanted him to stop shooting us,” he replied. In truth, he wasn't quite sure what had compelled his headlong charge. He wasn't even sure how he'd done it, though the more he thought about the action, the more his mind fixated on the sensation of high-energy discharges boiling the air around him. As he backed away, it took all his will not to look around for the Shepherd. Someone had been supposed to die today, Kost felt certain of that; why else would the soul-fetcher have come along? Did that mean he had somehow cheated death, impressed the Shepherd so much as to earn a reprieve? Or did it mean this wasn't over, and someone's death yet awaited?
By the time his focus had returned, Xachary's family had been rounded up and made to kneel in the middle of the living area. The client invited Xachary to join them, sitting the man down in a chair opposite where his wife and three children knelt. Bjor met Kost's eye as he drew a long knife from his belt. “Blade work,” he said. The ringing in Kost's ears came back. Numb fingers placed the boarding gun on the table and swung his looted Bat'leth round. He could feel his pulse throbbing in his digits as he took a tight grip on the ornate, curving blade.
He followed as best he could, but his Aspatrian was still less than fluent. Not that he truly needed to; everyone present had full awareness of what was taking place. Bjor had the daughter gripped in one paw. Kal had the youngest son. Kost had the oldest in front of him, kneeling. Oras, pale and shaking from pain and bloodloss, clutched his hastily bandaged arm and acted as a translator. “Xachary has to choose one child to die.”
The sobbing man spoke a name. The client gave an order. Oras spoke a name. “Bjor.”
A terrible howl rose from the mother as her daughter slumped forward, her neck slit. Dark, arterial blood pumped out, more than the ornate rug could readily soak up. More words followed, and through the haze of white-noise Kost understood that a second choice was being made. “Kal.” Another kit slumped to the ground, life extinguished. His grip loosened on the Bat'leth, and he dared to breathe again.
“Kost, come over here,” Oras' words stripped away what little relief had come to him. He was beckoned towards the grieving parents and directed to stand beside the mother by a gesture from Oras' bloody paw. More Aspatrian words were exchanged. Kost knew enough to recognise what was required of him, though he still waited for the order all the same.
“Do it.”
He swung the Bat'leth. The intent had been to deliver a clean decapitation, but the angle was wrong; the blade embedded in her neck, jamming on bone. She couldn't cry out, but her wide-eyed horror spoke volumes to one steeped in death. The pain she felt was no doubt a fleeting concern; her limbs shivered and went limp. All that was keeping her upright was the blade. Panicking, Kost kicked her free of the weapon. She fell onto her back, mouth gulping for air, eyes reddened with tears. A swift, double-handed strike cracked her ribs and pierced her heart. The client smiled, likely believing the fuck-up was an intention display of brutality.

Kost did not remember leaving the arcology, or the planet for that matter. He remembered the wet sounds of metal slicing flesh, the crunch of bone, the wails as parents watched children butchered, and the cries of the children, and the awful silence of the two that would never cry again. And the mother, with her dying gaze, asking “Why us?” It looped in his head, over and over. His own brush with death barely registered any more.
His knuckles were sliced to bloody ribbons. Why? Glass. Broken glass. Xachary had a liquor cabinet. Kost had punched it to retrieve the spirits within. That was why. When? He had no frame of reference – all time between deployment and dust-off was a looping repeat of screaming and sobbing children.
“Murderers,” he slurred his words as he staggered through the narrow passages of the ship. The deck seemed to sway beneath his feet. “They killed. People. Lots of people. Client said so. Xacharysamurderer. Whole family. Murderers. Gotta be.”
An empty bottle landed on his foot and bounced away. He dimly recalled it had contained something that tasted of aniseed. A few steps further along he fell sideways through an open door, banged into another, and watched a latrine bowl swing into view. Once he'd done retching up he soldiered on, cursing the bob and weave of the ship's deck until he found a familiar little nook down towards engineering. He went to sit on his cot, missed, and crashed into his storage locker with a cacophonous bang.
By the time Bubbles came in, Kost had found more alcohol. He turned his bloodshot eyes towards the amphibian male framed in the doorway and slurred out a string of nonsense that he'd intended as a greeting. “Rough job?” Bubbles asked in reply.
“I justwandrink,” Kost growled in reply. He tried to swig his beer, but only managed to smack himself in the nose. He got it on the second attempt. “I want them to go away!”
“Who?”
“The voices!” He roared, throwing the bottle hard at the wall. Bubbles flinched away from the flying glass. “They won't stop, Bubbles! They never stop!”
“Okay, okay! Let's see if they stop when you're in bed, yeah?” the amphibian struggled to get the larger, heavier male up off the floor, only succeeding on the fourth attempt when Kost finally chose to cooperate.
Once his face hit the cool pillow, Kost's breathing slowed. He rolled against the bulkhead behind his cot, wobbling eyes fighting to stay focused on the anxious man who'd helped him. “Try to sleep, okay?”
“I can. Can't. Not. They won't leave me alone.” Kost mewled in reply.
“I'm sure the voices will be gone by morning. I'll get you some water, that'll help.”
“What'dyou do today?” Kost sprang the question as Bubbles turned for the door.
Turning back, he asked is own question. “Excuse me?”
“You did some today things. You said it th'smorning.”
“I've been reinforcing the EPS relays. The ones we have weren't designed for the high-grade Warp Plasma our core outputs, so-”
“Magnets!” Kost blurted out. “You fixing with magnets!”
The interruption left Bubbles a little flustered. “That's right. I'm going to use an electromagnetic confinement system to reduce wear and tear on the conduits. How did you know?”
“You tol' me. I remem. Remember.” Kost's eyes scrunched closed, his teeth gnashing as other memories sliced through his skull like hot shrapnel. “T-tell me about... about your magnets!” he whined as he tried to beat the memories out of himself with a blow to his own temple.
“Easy! Hey! Stop that!”
“Just tell me about magnets... please?”
Bubbles looked down at his friend's sad, pathetic face and sighed. “Sure, Kost. Where should I start?”
“W-where... Warp Plasma?” the drunkard slurred into his pillow.
The amphibian allowed himself a smile. “Well, it starts with the warp core. By accelerating molecules of deuterium and anti-deuterium towards one another, and colliding in a reaction chamber, we generate energy. Using a dilithium crystal...”

When Kost awoke, he was cold sober. He was also in an entirely different bed. He flicked his tail up behind himself, expecting to feel a bulkhead wall there. Instead, he just found empty air.
“Bubbles?” he called in a child's voice. “Bubbles!” he cried again, louder.
“Mm?” a shadow shifted next to him. His senses focused, revealing a familiar amphibian shape. “Kost? What's wrong?”
“Sorry. I had a bad dream, that's all.”
“Nightmare?”
Kost nodded, even though he knew Bubbles couldn't see the gesture. “Yeah. A nightmare. For a minute I... I thought you weren't here.”
A grateful tear welled up as Bubbles shuffled over to rest her head upon his chest. “I'm here,” she whispered, and settled back to sleep.
Kost let his eyes drift closed once again and tried to focus on the warm comfort of his friend, and the steady sound of her breathing. It almost, but not quite, drowned out the screams of the ghosts in his head.