WARLORDS OF ANDROMEDA

Chapter 1

It was a three penny world he could barter for at least twice that, considering his silver tongue, then again, maybe not. There was positively no reason to be here, short of as some purgatory for the soul. Maybe if he was in more of a repentant mood.  

"You sure you want me to leave you here?" The dirthian pilot looked more suited to this world than the rock next to him, rising above the ground a good six feet like an indigenous weed. Dargan saw no reason why he'd be so anxious to leave. His face was as pale and pockmarked as the rugged desert terrain. He didn't look like blood ran through his veins so much as formaldehyde and alcohol, which might explain why he needed the wind to keep him upright; it was buffeting him from two directions, front and back.  

"Ordinarily I'd slit your throat just for considering it." Dargan sighed as he surveyed the terrain one last time. "But as it so happens, I'm supposed to meet someone here who will explain the meaning of all things. Let's hope he can talk fast before the sun finishes baking my brains." 

"Buddy, if it's answers you're looking for, I'll save you the trouble. The answer is: we're all fucked." The pilot may have been an unrepentant sinner of the first order with zero redeemable qualities, but he was growing on Dargan.  

"True enough, my friend. Maybe I'm just a masochist for wanting the picture drawn in with a little more detail."  

"Have it your way. I'm sweating out all the intoxication I worked so hard to acquire. I'll be damned if I stand here a moment longer." With that, he turned his back on Dargan and hiked back to the dirthian two-person transport. Dargan watched as his long straggly, hair-that grew as if his own body couldn't wait to rid itself of the heavy metals stored in each follicle-was tussled by the wind. His black smock, dusty and faded, flapped behind him as if he might be a dignitary from a long forgotten underworld, if only he himself could remember what rung of Dante's hell from which he'd escaped.  

"I never did get your name!" Dargan shouted back at him, not really knowing why he'd picked now to up the ante in civility, a quality foreign to both of them. 

The dirthian pilot stopped briefly to chortle. "Shit, if it makes you feel any better, I won't remember you or what sorry world I dropped you off on five minutes from now. If it was a round trip you had in mind, better get to dying and being reborn in a hurry." 

It was Dargan's turn to laugh. He watched the dirthian transport fire up, like some semi-fossilized predatory bird that had been wrangled by the man-with-no-name into doing his bidding. From all the groaning and screeching it was doing trying to get off the ground, the protests of a living creature would probably pale by comparison, thus ending the analogy. Still, it had a secondary mode that was compelling enough. It could jump space like nobody's business, and that it did as smooth as Capueran silk.  

And then the dirthian transport was just gone-and with it any hope for being rescued from the mind numbing monotony of the landscape. Not that the landscape was much to look at in the first place but, between the glare of the sun and the dust kicked up from the wind, it was becoming an even greater exercise in minimalism.  

He hiked for what seemed like days. Hours or days, weeks or months, who could tell? Delirium had no doubt set in long before he landed.  

Ripping out of the earth in front of him was a serpent big enough to take him down if he was of a mind and eat him whole. Though, no doubt, it would have had to sit around for a week digesting him; not a smart move in this desert. He readily grabbed it in his hand, tore the head off, along with a foot of length, and walked casually on. The snake's flesh and juices would revitalize his spirit, if nothing else.  

He could go months without eating, thanks to the nano-infested body. The nanobots would simply commit suicide in successive waves to keep him going, converting their own body parts into sustaining nutrition. The added strength they gave him in the meanwhile also explained why the serpent didn't have much of a chance. Honestly, he rarely remembered the upgrades, anymore. It was outdated tech, several generations old, that he'd never bothered to enhance as it seemed more than adequate for his purposes. If immortality or playing superman had been more his thing, well, they had better nano for that, for a price of course, always for a price. The devil had become superfluous to the business of selling souls.