The Fractured Empire: A Tale of Downfall

Chapter 10

(five days later...)

"Geez..." Alannah breathed as we both flopped onto a simple bed, "Our luck is really something else, isn't it?"

"Tell me about it," I replied, wrapping an arm around my wife and pulling her closer, "Morrison gave Jackson an abandoned outpost near Bauvarak, and its generators weren't as fucked as Boreas initially thought. The mere fact we have electricity and a bed to sleep on is a miracle in of itself."

"Y'know, we can do more than sleep..." Alannah purred, running a hand across my chest.

"Maybe later," I began, too weary to do the dance of love at the current moment, "We may have gotten lucky with the location of our new base, but work still had to be done. Hate to disappoint, but I'm too sore right now..."

"Yeah...can't argue with that," she murmured, kissing my jaw as she got comfortable.

After I readjusted so I wouldn't have a crick in my neck, I started to reflect on the past few days. True to what I had said, Nathaniel Morrison did in fact give us an old outpost that was roughly ten miles away from Bauvarak. Even though it had more than its fair share of cobwebs and problematic wildlife, the main building and small landing pad served as a perfect starting point for Jackson's guild of bounty hunters. Ever since Horner and his men were thoroughly repelled, my crew spent a fair bit of time cleaning up what could be considered our new home.

In addition to this, I found myself searching for more information on my latest dead target. Since Boreas busted into Djarek's systems back when we raided his office on Versalio, he had backups of every file that was on the Grand Chancellor's computer. Naturally, I started perusing there, and I've continued my research up to the current moment. While I'd rather not learn about my targets, seeing the picture of Horner and his wife made me curious. What would cause a man to leave that life behind and wind up, as Vi'karac has said, 'a defunct experiment?'

I sighed and ran a shaky hand across my face. Damn...Let's also forget about about everything my crew and I managed to find on the other planets in this system...

I shuddered in response, only to feel Alannah squeeze my torso.

"You okay?" she whispered.

I sighed. "Yeah...just trying to wipe the events of the past few days from my mind."

"Yeah...I don't blame you," Alannah murmured, resting her head in the crook of my neck, "When Horner talked about using villagers for a 'project,' I was expecting human experimentation and what have you. While I'm glad that wasn't the case, I'm still horrified he used people to mine resources in...rather harsh conditions."

I grunted in response and squeezed my eyes shut. On one of the neighboring planets near Sylkiir V, my crew and I–along with a small detachment of Jackson's forces, raided several colonies and found a different scene in each. The worst of which were the mining colonies: we found people chained to one another–and it wasn't just the men who were forced to work.

Horner wasn't picky...

Feeling another shudder rack my body, I reminded myself we got those people out of the countless hellholes we found ourselves in. So much for sleeping...

I felt Alannah squeeze my torso again, and I turned around to face her.

"You need sleep, mister," she stated, booping my nose as she spoke, "Jackson may have been running circles around everyone else trying to get this old rust bucket in working order, but you've probably done the most out of everyone else–you've certainly gunned down an admirable amount of Federation troops, so now's the time to rest."