The Book of Zar, Part 6

I was almost done packing up the crate full of grenades when I heard the doors to the warehouse open. It was dusk and so most of the others should have been to sleep by now, with the night watch going on duty and the few select personnel attending to some final tasks. I was one of these people, and so was quite surprised at someone coming in. I was not expecting any patrols coming this way for another hour, so this entrance aroused suspicion in me. I had a plasma pistol at the ready and prepared for a fight. As I rounded the corner of some stacked crates, however, I quickly found Verth before me. He, it seemed, had healed completely from the injuries he had sustained in that assassination mission on that Zarid planet some weeks ago.
“Still hauling supplies around, brother?” he asked, clad in shiny new armor.
“Yes,” I said. “You should get going, nonessential personnel should return to barracks.”
“Ooh, you’re almost done.” Verth ignored my suggestion, instead moving to examine the crate of grenades I was almost finished with packing. I moved quickly to the open crate, where my presence compelled him to stand aside. I went back to my work. “I wanted to see how you were doing, brother.” Verth crossed his arms and leaned against a particularly sturdy stack of crates, although it did not appear so to me. I eyed his position suspiciously as I closed the crate I had finished filling.
“I received a more thorough lashing of the tongue from En’Geddon not long after he extracted us. Once we were back into Banished space proper, he informed me that he had sought Atriox’s advice on this matter. Apparently my activities were severe enough to warrant such a move.”
“Oh my, it is never a good day when Atriox has to involve himself in petty matters.”
“Indeed. I was lucky not to have been executed.”
“Still, they stripped you of command, gave me control of Bronze Team. And now they’ve exiled you to this existence.”
“Indeed they have. I have yet to complete my penance.”
“Perhaps you shan’t seek atonement for long.”
“Eh?” I paused my commencement on the final crate of grenades I needed to pack up. “What do you mean?”
“I mean to say that I’ll do what I have to, to try and get you back in the field.”
“Oh, you don’t need to do that.”
“I must. You saved me back on that frozen planet, and surely neither of us would have made it off that world had you not acted quickly.”
“En’Geddon was right, though. I didn’t have a good reason to set those explosives back in our hideout. I almost killed our contact, but spooked him: apparently we had to give him quite the large bribe to keep him quiet, and add a bonus to keep him as our man.”
“Oh… you made Atriox waste resources.”
“And I still am infinitely grateful that somehow En’Geddon convinced him to not have me beheaded.”
“Which means he has you doing his bidding.”
“And since he brought me into the Banished, I have been his responsibility ever since the prison break. My... blunder thus brought a stain on En’Geddon’s image in the eyes of Atriox, and so he takes it out on me. This is but one of the milder tasks I am to perform.”
“No better reason than to free you from this limbo.”
“You need not go so far for me, Verth.”
“Nonsense, brother. I will help you, for you saved me. Shall I not at least repay my debt to you? Or do you forsake belief in reciprocity as well? Is your nihilism truly boundless?”
“It’s not nihilism, and you don’t even know what that means.”
“Ah, so my true colors as a warrior are revealed. How revelatory.” Verth spoke sarcastically, of course.
I lifted up the last crate and opened it. But as I put the lid down, I stopped and sighed, and looked squarely and sincerely at Verth. “I do not wish to see you risk life, limb, or career for me. I still remember Thon, how he was my responsibility, and how I so ruinously failed him. My recklessness further showed when I detonated those charges. Once again, that was for no gain, and I risked our contact, a relationship that had to be repaired at high cost. No, I don’t want the stain of my failures to arrest your destiny, brother. Go on, lead Bronze Team to more glory.”
“It will not be the same without you Zar. You are my brother, and I cannot fight properly without you. It will be as if a part of me is left behind.”
I looked at Verth softly for quite some time, trying to find the suitable words. I struggled, but worried, feeling that too much time had elapsed. I quickly said, “We made a good team.”
“We still could, brother. Just give me some time.”
“It still won’t be the same without Thon,” I reminded.
“I think Thon would want us to move on, yes?”
I paused once more, dwelling on this. Replacing Thon was a prospect I had thought about in those brief moments between our extraction and my demotion. But he was like Verth: a brother to me. Replacing him was almost like replacing family.
Family. Quite a strange word, I thought at first, when describing my comrades in the Banished. We were simply fellow warriors, coming together under a shared employer from disparate backgrounds. But as always, battle forged strong bonds between us. We found ourselves a new family, amongst one another. We made our own family out of necessity.
But what are those words? “Family.” “Brother.” I… I had not felt anything, not thought of anything, of those words. They were… words, to me. They had the weight of the paper they were written upon. I felt no particular affection towards Verth. Indeed, and admittedly, when I looked upon him at certain days, I saw little more than a figure who would sometimes speak with me. That is all. Yet another figure I had to interact with in order to see the end of the day. Of course, the rush of battle forced everything into focus, but outside of that, in the base, there was… nothing. Acknowledgements of existence and the issuance and execution of orders was the expected extant of my interactions between myself and others.
But with Verth, I felt a certain… capacity for openness. I spoke to him more, shared with him more information. I told him about my past, and he knows of my background. He alone knows me the most among all the Banished. Well, he and Thon.
I returned myself to that question of Thon. “Yes,” I answered. “I think Thon would not want us to idle and atrophy in the past. We honor his memory, and find someone worthy to succeed him.”
“Ah, ah,” cautioned Verth. “That task falls upon me, I believe.”
“Right. My penance.”
“Of course, brother. I’ll leave you to it then. And I’ll try and fight for you, yes?”
“Thank you, brother,” I said, nodding. Verth responded with a quick nod of his own and a smile and then left the warehouse.
Category:The Weekly