The journey itself, is freedom
by Ainzfern
18
The secure staff car park outside the hulking fabrication factory on the outskirts of Midas was deserted at this late hour. With his head more than just mildly buzzed on the few good scotches he had enjoyed in his office after the day had closed, the factory's manager, Karden Maxx, slouched unhurriedly towards his vehicle.
He was bull-shouldered and heavy set man, graying and running towards fat as he neared middle age. Of course, a somewhat over-indulged lifestyle – too much rich food, too many little luxuries and not enough physical activity – had probably accounted for much of that. He was, of course, still strong enough in a brute force kind of way, his general genealogy granting him that in the shape of a long reach and huge powerful hands. But he was no longer as fast with them as once he was.
Lazy men tended not to be.
Behind him the factory continued to work, the night shift crew stepping in to fabricate and process the factory's standard line of mid-market range household goods throughout the dark hours.
As he fumbled in his pocket for his keys, Karden smirked grossly and shook his head.
Night shift. Double time and award conditions.
What a fuckin' crock...
Since that damned Katze had turned into a fuckin' libertarian a couple of years back, marching into the factory and telling Karden that all the Pets on the books were being released, Karden's personal profit margin had tightened considerably. No more free labor meant less fat for him to skim off the top and sides. He wasn't quite skilled enough at diddling the books to keep covering the size of his private embezzlement with the convenient cover of unpaid Pets 'drawing' maintenance costs. Thus his own unofficial income had dwindled.
He was still doing okay, but...
Well, it was a bitch; that was all.
And, on top of that, without Pets on the premises much of the entertainment factor had gone out of the job as well. Karden, like most of nature's born bullies, generally preferred a target that was not capable of putting up much of a fight. It was nowhere near as much fun pushing folks who pushed right back... or worse, formed a union and reported your ass the Syndicate.
Karden snorted gracelessly, unlocking his car door on the second attempt.
"Karden Maxx?" a low and oddly rasping voice asked from directly behind him.
Startled, Karden jumped a little, scowling as he whirled around and glared through the dim light of the car park. "What's with you, buddy?" he snapped, his muzzy scotch-warmed mind attempting to size up the man in front of him. 'Big' was about the best description he could come up with. "Sneakin' up on a man in the fuckin' dark." His frown deepened. "Listen, if you're one o'them assholes from the safety department, you can just tell your boss that—"
"Are you Karden Maxx, Sir?"
Karden peered at the stone faced expression on the man before him, suddenly seeing the other little details more clearly.
Military bearing.
Elite security uniform.
Killer's eyes... not crazed nor wild, but professionally distanced and cold. Eyes that spoke far louder than words. If this man wanted you dead, then you were dead.
Instinct and a sudden surge of caution did the work of several cups of coffee. Karden, very aware of how important it was for a man in his position to keep well on the good side of the Elite caste, nodded and attempted to straighten his appearance. "Yes, Sir – I am," he confirmed in reply, his tone abruptly obsequious. "And how can I be of assista— Umphh..."
The first blow took him in the solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him in one guttural grunt. The second connected right between the eyes, filling his ears with ringing and his vision with bright flares of light. Both punches were good ones; effective delivery of stunning force with minimal wastage of energy in follow-through. Professional strikes that felled Karden Maxx like a tree.
Landing in a heap beside his car, Karden clutched at his bloody nose with one hand, gasping desperately for enough breath to curse his assailant. A booted foot landing on his neck, pinning the side of his face firmly into the gravel however, dissuaded him from any overt display of rebellion. Karden Maxx, while not perhaps the most clever man on the planet, nevertheless had very strong survival instincts.
The man standing over him had him beaten... and he knew it.
Real fear seeped through the last dwindling layers of alcohol. Trembling now as much from fright as he was from pain, Karden stopped struggling and bent what wits remained to him towards getting out of this mess alive.
Had an Elite sent this guy to kill him?
Had Katze? Or the bosses now running the Ceres market in his place? Karden had undercut a lot of other operators in his time and he'd personally never been opposed to paybacks when it was him dealing out the retribution for some real or imagined slight against him.
What if it was his turn now?
Shit.
"Listen... listen," Karden spat out a mouthful of dirt as he struggled to speak. "I got cash, see? Whatever they're payin' you, man, I can—"
"You have no idea, do you?" that ruined voice, as calm as you please, asked Karden quietly. The boot across his neck increased the pressure, slowly and inexorably, impeding his ability to speak or even breathe all that well.
"And yet, here I am," the man continued in a pensive tone. "Punishing you. Hurting you. Why? What exactly did you do to deserve this?"
Pushing weakly against the ground, Karden grunted a soft and desperate query.
"Not a nice feeling is it?" his assailant asked him. "I could torture the living hell out of you if I wanted to and I could do it with complete impunity. I could beat you; or maybe let a bunch of my buddies rape you... I could even kill you. Who would stop me? Would anyone step forward to protect you?"
Terrified, Karden gasped out another strangled sound, tears coming to his eyes and tightening his throat.
"Hmm," the pressure on his neck did not let up. "Don't worry though, Maxx. I'm not actually going to do any of those things to you. I'm simply delivering a long overdue message on behalf of a mutual acquaintance."
The boot wedged against his jaw eased back a little and the now thoroughly cowed factory manager grasped at the chance to speak. "Please," he gasped out. "Please..."
"Please?" the man standing over him stepped back a pace, glowering down at him like he was something nasty stuck to the sole of his shoe. "I wonder how many times you heard the word 'please'. I wonder how many times you listened."
Suddenly the stranger was on him again, hunkering down to loom over him, those terrible ice-burning green eyes mere inches from his. Gripping Karden's hair with one hand, the big man wrenched him up into a sitting position, forcing him to look directly into a hard-hewn face that was filled with disgust and a tightly controlled rage that nevertheless bordered upon hatred. "I will be watching you, Maxx," his attacker hissed. "Step out of line just once... exceed the speed limit, spit in the street, even look the wrong way at the wrong time and I'll have you. Give me one single excuse and I will cover this factory with so many auditors from the Syndicate revenue office that you'll have to scrape them off to see the brickwork."
Karden felt his eyes bulging in panic, the full import of those words hitting him with dreadful clarity.
"Yes," his assailant's eyes flashed dangerously, "I can imagine that worries you. The Ceres black market, as a general rule, isn't too forgiving of members who draw the wrong sort of 'official' attention to their operations. They don't like the embarrassment, you see... or the bribes that must be paid to various Syndicate contacts to keep everyone nice and quiet."
Swallowing hard, Karden lifted his hands in entreaty. "Look... look," he choked out, his swelling nose and tear-clogged throat distorting his words; "you don't need to be hasty. I can—"
The look on that harsh featured face turned murderous. "Shut your mouth," the man released his grip on Karden's hair and smoothly stood again, glaring down at him. "I'm not here to cut a deal with you and I don't give a good God damn about anything that you have to say. Just understand that you have made an enemy out of me."
Karden stared up at him. "But I don't even know you!"
"I know you don't," those unforgiving eyes narrowed into malevolent slits. "But you hurt an innocent man, Maxx. Badly... and the worst part is, if I told you who, you wouldn't even think that you had done anything wrong. For that alone, I will never forgive you."
With that, the big stranger simply shook his head, turned his back on Karden and walked away. He disappeared into the shadows at the edge of the car park as silently as he had arrived, leaving Karden Maxx to climb shakily to his feet. Karden had to admit, as he opened the driver's side door with a trembling hand, he was a little fuzzy on the whole gist of the attack, but he knew this much...
He would be watching his step and looking over his shoulder for a very long time to come.
Sitting once again in the passenger seat of Mace's vehicle Enif looked out the car window at the pitch darkness beyond, stifling a yawn.
It was about thirty minute or so before dawn, and Mace was driving the young ex-Pet into the Tanagura foothills to the south of the city. Enif was still a bit baffled as to the significance of this trip, but he had picked up enough from Mace's original invitation to understand that it was important to the big man that he at least made the effort. Mace had been almost mysterious upon leaving Enif's apartment the morning after he had rescued him from Midas security, only telling him that he would return the following morning at around four AM to collect him.
Now, literally swimming in the fleece-lined jacket that Mace had lent him – that was to say, Enif corrected himself, that Mace had insisted he wear – the young ex-Pet turned away from the window and towards the rugged profile of the man driving the car.
"So... will you tell me now?" he tried again.
Mace grunted a soft negative, changing gears as the vehicle easily took the first incline road up into the foothills. "Patience is a virtue, Enif," he replied in his roughened voice. "You'll see for yourself soon enough."
Enif sighed. "Okay. Fine. Will you at least tell me how you found this 'place', then?"
For all that his expression did not change the green eyed gaze that flicked his way was clearly amused by Enif's snippy little tone. There was even a slight light of approval there, as if the gruff security chief was glad to see that there was still a spark of fire in Enif, however small. "Training run with my team," he explained, succinct as always.
"Ah." Enif nodded and sat back, snuggling unconsciously into the warm and wooly interior of the coat, noting absently that it smelled like Mace.
Quite a nice smell, really, Enif decided.
Turning off the main road, Mace followed a dirt track for a few more moments, before braking in flurry of gravel and cutting the engine. "We're here," he muttered, nodding shortly at Enif to get out of the vehicle.
The early morning air was chilly against Enif's nose and cheeks as he alighted from the car and he immediately shivered, shoving his hands into his pockets and feeling glad that Mace had been so adamant about the heavy jacket, even if it did dwarf him quite a bit.
Mace gestured toward a low incline ahead of them, jerking his chin forward in a curt signal for Enif to follow him. "Stay close by me here," he instructed softly as Enif neared him. "There's a look-out point just above a cutaway that drops off into a gorge... so I want you to watch how you tread up here."
Enif nodded, falling into step with the security chief, being mindful to stay level with his stride and not get ahead of him.
As they reached the top of the incline, Mace held up one hand. "Here will do." He came to a standstill, almost unconsciously settling into an 'at ease' stance.
Ahead of them, Enif could see the deep and dark outline of a gorge several hundred feet below them. It was close to two hundred feet wide and extended off into the distant hills. On the far side of the gorge, opposite to their look-put point, a sheer wall of layered rock faced them squarely and, beyond the gorge itself, the Tanagura foothills stretched on as far as the eye could see. In the pale color-leeching light of the tail end of nighttime, the landscape was every shade of silver-grey and black in the spectrum. The air was cold and clear and the silence of the place was intense.
No cars, no neon lights or shuttle services or commuter's voices, just the sigh of the breeze and the distant sound of waking birdsong.
"What are we waiting for?" Enif whispered, lifting his hands to his face and huffing breath on them to warm them, the profound stillness of their location seeming to demand that he use an appropriately hushed tone.
"Dawn," Mace answered, just as softly. He looked around with an oddly satisfied look on his face as the steel-grey sky gradually grew lighter and lighter, with the emergence of the sun over the distant horizon only moments away. "This is the Demarkke Gorge," he explained, tilting his jaw towards the rock wall facing them. "Named for one of the city's original architects, just in passing. The rock walls look very much like any others in the foothills but, very uniquely, there is a high quantity of jewel-quartz in the cliff face."
"Jewel-quartz?" Enif frowned, the name unfamiliar.
"That's its colloquial name," Mace replied. "It's a crystalline mineral. Not particularly valuable, or useful structurally as a building material... but it does have one outstanding attribute."
"Which is?"
Mace nodded serenely as the light over the horizon glowed brighter, his mouth curving up briefly at one corner. "It shines," he answered, pointing towards the far wall of the gorge.
Still vaguely puzzled, Enif obediently followed the direction of Mace's pointing finger with his eyes.
And the sun rose.
As the first clear rays of morning light touched the face of the cliff on the far side of the gorge, the jewel quartz within caught them, refracting them into a million blazing sparkles of diamond-white light. It was as if the gorge were suddenly full to overflowing with all the stars in the heavens. It was dazzling, almost blinding, the light filling the gorge from end to end, shifting and changing, almost seeming to dance with the altering angles of the rising sun.
It was the most amazingly stunning thing that Enif had ever seen, and he felt his jaw drop, his eyes widening and a great lump coming to his throat as he was filled with a pure sense of wonder for the first time in his life.
The display so incredibly designed and implemented by nature did not last long. The rising sun moved above the correct trajectory and the vast glittering wall faded back to an innocuous appearance once more, looking no different to any other stone cliff face along the foothills. Sighing quietly, oddly sorrowful at the passing of the moment, Enif turned his head to find Mace staring at him, a shrewdly calculating look on his weathered and hard bitten face. The ex-Pet arched a curious brow at that expression, a silent question as to the meaning behind it.
Mace tilted his head, his demeanor changing becoming serene, contented. "You enjoyed that," he remarked, his voice unusually gentle, almost in deference to the pristine surroundings.
"I did, yes," Enif slipped his hands back into his jacket pockets, gazing back towards the gorge with a tiny smile curving his lips.
Beside him, as patient as the stone wall itself, Mace simply waited. The big security chief made a soft sound from deep in his chest, an auditory acknowledgement that he was listening.
Enif shrugged. "I've... I've never seen anything like that before."
Mace vented another soft sound of acknowledgement. "You never had the chance before," he noted.
"No," Enif drew a small line in the dirt with the toe of one shoe. "No, I never did." The smile faded from his face and he looked back at Mace once more. He felt a little wistful, but for a change he wasn't sad.
He was actually quite surprised by that. Honestly, it had felt to Enif like he been filled with sorrow for so long that he'd forgotten how liberating it was just to have a reprieve. "Mace?" he asked at length. "Why did you bring me here?"
For a moment Mace stood in silence, his scarred face thoughtful as his considered Enif's question. "Well," he replied after a moment or so, "I thought that you might appreciate knowing that there is beauty to be found on Amoi," he lifted one solid shoulder in a brief shrug. "If you know where to look."
Enif considered it. Then he nodded slowly, accepting Mace's statement. "You're right," he murmured, "I am glad to know that."
"Good." The grim-faced security chief ran one hand through his short iron grey hair, squinting up at the rapidly ascending sun. "Well, the day is getting started," he noted brusquely as he turned back towards the path that they had followed up to the look-out point. "Time for us to head back." "Sure." Falling into step with Mace, Enif was oddly unsurprised to realize that the man's terse manner no longer intimidated him. He could accept it now for what it was... simply Mace's manner, and not some deliberate attempt to keep Enif off balanced or submissive. It did not define Mace any more than Enif's past life defined him. It was an element of his character, to be certain. But it was not the sum total of the man. Not by a long shot.
Because Mace was kind. Such a fact was utterly incongruous with the grizzled man's appearance, but it was undoubtedly true. It wasn't evident in a warm smile or a tender tone, nor did it manifest itself in material gifts or poetic words.
It was in Mace's actions, in the things that he did.
Point in case... he had brought Enif here this morning to make him feel better. As they walked back towards Mace's car, Enif hid an almost knowing little smile. As much as Mace might like to say there was an inherent lesson to be gleaned from the morning's outing – such as a renewed perspective on beauty – the bottom line was that the idea to do it had been motivated by kindness.
The ex-Pet couldn't deny that he was deeply touched by the notion... and the gesture. Enif had not enjoyed much kindness in his young life.
Quite frankly, he was more than ready to embrace a little of it now.
He cleared his throat as they reached Mace's car, absently noting the warmth of the new day's morning sun touching his face. "Mace?"
The big man paused in the act of unlocking Enif's door, one dark silver brow lifting.
"Would you..?" Enif heaved a sharp sigh and shrugged. "Would you like to have dinner with me? Tonight? I'm not much of a cook, but I can toast a pretty decent sandwich."
Mace looked levelly at him for a moment.
Enif grinned almost ruefully, holding up one hand in a placating gesture. "Just dinner. Promise."
Mace's mouth twitched into a slow half smile. "What time?"
"Seven thirty?"
Mace nodded. "You're on. I'll bring the beer." He opened Enif's door and gestured into the car with a little flourish. "Now, get in. We've both got jobs to go to."
Chuckling soundlessly, Enif did exactly that.
The journey itself... – chapter 17 << >> The journey itself... – chapter 19