Chapter One: Begin
“You would think it’d be easier to find a moving city,” Sorrin muttered as he banged on the side of the machine that held his radar sensor. It was old, definitely not one of those fancy new ones that worked all the time and never caused anyone any trouble, but it was what he had. If he’d stayed with the Queen’s Men, then he’d have had access to more delicate equipment, but Sorrin didn’t need delicate. He didn’t need fancy, either. Hell, most of the time, he didn’t even need completely functional. He just needed it to point him in the direction of the floating city when it showed up.
And it would show up. Sorrin knew that well enough. Creatures like the Camadors didn’t just vanish into thin air, never to be seen again. They were sadistic and cruel, and they liked to play their games. They would destroy a place and then leave for a while, probably picking out some new and different place to wreak havoc on in their downtime. But they would come back.
Sorrin meant to be ready for them.
Though he was a member of the Dirnamen clan and had been born on planet Shor, Sorrin hardly considered himself one of them anymore. Part of taking up the mantle of being one of the warriors who served any member of the galactic Senate was leaving behind the ways of your past and embracing who you were in the present. At twenty years and some days, Sorrin had been more than ready to do that. His family had cautioned against it, of course, joining any warrior band was a dangerous thing, and some Senators weren't above using their warriors as living, breathing meat shields, determined to make sure that the warriors kept them safe one way or another.
Senator Halphia hadn't been anything like that, of course. Unlike her fellows on the Senate, she'd been kind and open to embracing the ideas of the people. Her warriors would have died for her if only because that was the kind of loyalty she inspired.
For all they were still using the warrior method of battle and protection, they actually lived in a rather advanced society. The city of Gollen Par had been something of a mixed bag, calling people from all over the galaxy to it. There truly had been something for everyone there, from job opportunities to better housing to all kinds of culture. It was a new city built on the bones of an old one, and it had been ever expanding.
When Sorrin had taken the job working for Halphia, he'd brought his family to live there. The squalor they'd been living in back on Shor hadn't been worth staying in, and he wanted the best for them.
Unfortunately, that had gotten them killed. Should have just stayed on Shor.
All his thoughts usually circled back to that, and he gave himself a mental shake and turned his eyes back to the sensors. They were black screens that were monitoring the space around the planet and just outside of it. Ever widening green rings indicated distance, and a softly pulsing yellow line showed where there was nothing. If the floating city showed up, the line would turn red, and then Sorrin would know.
But it had been years of nothing. Hundreds and hundreds of days of nothing, and honestly, it was starting to make him go a little mad. All he wanted was a blip. A little sign. Something.
He knew he wasn't wrong about this. If someone else had defeated the Camadors then he'd have heard about it. His personal tablet and communication device was set up so that any major news stories with 'Camador' or 'floating city' in the article would ping an alarm and he'd see it. Over the years there'd been very few pings. So they weren't dead. Which meant they were out there somewhere in the vast recesses of space. Biding their time. Waiting.
"Are you still looking at those screens, old man?"
Sorrin sighed and rubbed his fingers over his head. Back when he'd been a warrior, a proud one, his dark hair had fallen into his eyes and just over his collar. Now it was buzzed short, just the softest bristly strands still on his head, and sometimes he still made the motions of raking his hands through his hair in frustration, only to find air.
"I'm not old," he muttered, turning to see Caldir, a young man who lived in the building. Sorrin wasn't old, and he wasn't even that much older than Caldir, maybe five years at the most, but the boy seemed younger by virtue of his inexperience. Or maybe it was just Sorrin's experience that made him seem older. Either way, the relationship between the two of them was what Caldir had called 'fondly antagonistic' before, and Sorrin couldn't exactly argue. He didn't have a problem with the boy, but he was always underfoot, and managed to catch Sorrin in more moments of weakness than he would like. "What do you want?" he asked, hoping to speed this along.
But Caldir had that look on his face. The one that was all mischief and said it was going to be a cold day in the fire pits before this was a short, easy to deal with conversation. Sorrin sighed.
"Just on my way back from work," he said. "Saw you up here and thought I'd say hello."
"And now you've said it," Sorrin said, going back to his work. He aimed a kick at the side of one of the machines and watched as the screen flickered and died. Void take it.
"You can't just kick this old tech around," Caldir said, stepping closer from where he had been leaning against the door to the roof. Strictly speaking, they weren't supposed to be on the roof of the building, but people came up here all the time, and there had never been any consequences, and no one ever really held Sorrin to those sorts of rules anyway. One of the perks of being a washed up former hero, perhaps.
"So I should get new tech and kick that?" he muttered, running his fingers across the touchpad in frustration.
"No," Caldir replied. "And anyway, there'd be no need to kick new tech. Look, let me have a peek, okay?"
Sorrin looked at him mistrustfully for a moment before he sighed and bowed out of the way, leaving the space open for Caldir to move into.
He was much shorter than Sorrin's seven feet of height, topping out at maybe five feet at the most. But Caldir was a Presha, and that was how they were built. Short, stocky, and slightly reptilian, they did most of the manual labor required to keep the Colonies working.
Gollen Par had been the city at the center of it all, but it wasn't the only one. Jotul, Fairgran, Bil-Dor, and Luz were all cities in the Colonies, spread out across two planets and operating under their own government, the galactic Senate. Each of the Colonies had something going for it, something they brought to the table, as well as some reason they wanted to be separate from whatever planet the city had been a part of originally. Each city had a Senator in residence, and each Senator had a warrior band that was responsible for the protection of the people and the Senator of that colony.
Where Sorrin had lived and served in Gollen Par, the shining jewel of the Colonies, his shame had driven him to the outer edges to Luz, the colony furthest from the center. He'd thought about leaving altogether, of course, going back to one of the planets that had rejected the Colonies idea and still operated as a single unit, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. It was said that once you moved out to the Colonies it was hard to reintegrate back into life elsewhere.
And Sorrin was having a hard enough time just living these days. So he'd stayed.
As Caldir worked whatever magic he had with machines, Sorrin leaned his arms on the high edge of the wall that ran around the roof, keeping anyone from toppling off of it. He looked out at the city. Luz was no Gollen Par. It wasn't shiny and beautiful or even that modern. Instead it was some mixture of Fairgran's industry and the poverty he'd seen back on Shor. The Senator here was one of the ones who was mostly concerned with himself, and Sorrin could remember Halphia ranting about him and his carelessness while his people suffered. She'd be gratified to know she'd been right.
"You're quiet a lot, you know," Caldir said, and Sorrin didn't turn around.
"I know." Because what was there to say? Anything he said would eventually come back to what had happened to him, and he relived that enough in his own head to not want to talk about it with other people.
"You don't have to be like this, you know."
Now Sorrin did turn around. His eyes were narrowed, eyebrows drawn down. "Excuse me?"
Caldir looked up and sighed, shrugging a thick shoulder. "I'm not trying to..." He trailed off. "Look. I know what happened to you. Everybody knows by now. And we still talk to you. I know for a fact that Amalda from downstairs has tried to invite you for dinner no less than seven times this cycle. And you keep turning her down."
"Because she is looking for something I can't give her," Sorrin said. Surely even Caldir knew what Amalda wanted.
"Okay, granted," Caldir said. "But she also just wants to be nice to you. People are always nice to you, and you keep them at arm's length because...I dunno. Probably because you get off on this whole curmudgeon act."
Sorrin scowled at him. "Would you like to rephrase that?" he asked, in his best no nonsense voice. It had led to confessions from people with more mettle than Caldir.
But apparently Presha didn't scare easily because Caldir just looked at him flatly. "No," he said. "I don't. No one blames you for what happened. No one thinks you're worthless because of what you went through."
"I do," Sorrin pointed out.
"Yeah, I know. And you keep everyone away from you because you think they're gonna feel the same way. Which isn't really fair, when you get down to it."
"How is it not fair? To who? You and the other strangers who want to involve themselves in my life for some reason?"
"Sure," Caldir said. "To us. And to yourself. People weren't made to suffer alone, Sorrin. I don't care what clan you belong to or what you are, people aren't built that way. You ever wonder why there's not just one colony? Probably the first people who wanted to break away could have done that on their own, right? They could have started their own colony and existed independently."
Sorrin furrowed his brow. He'd never really given it much thought. "Or they assumed that they would be taken more seriously in a bigger group," he said, shrugging.
"Maybe," Caldir said. "But you know what I think? I think the first ones were scared to do it alone. I think they wanted company. And look at how good everything is for them. Luz might be a bit of a hole sometimes, but it's better than being under the thumb of some dictator or warlord on another planet."
"What is your point, Caldir?" Sorrin asked. Because he was sure this had to be going somewhere.
"I'm just saying that some things are better with other people. Sometimes you have to ask for help or whatever. Something like that." He motioned Sorrin closer. "Turn this on for me."
The screens were keyed to only respond to his touch to turn on, so Sorrin did as he was asked, laying his hand flat on the screen and watching as it lit up to read his biometrics before it flared to life in earnest.
Caldir smiled. "Good to see I'm useful," he said. "Thanks for letting me help."
He turned and headed back for the door, and for the first time in the entire time Sorrin had known him, he seemed fully mature. Fully in command of himself. It was odd.
"Oh, and Sorrin? Amalda's made a big pot of something, so she'll be knocking on your door either tonight or tomorrow night. You might give what I said some thought. Okay bye."
And with that, he was gone, leaving Sorrin behind with very little idea what had just happened. He wasn't used to getting words of wisdom from Caldir of all people. The world was a strange place.
Time, as it was wont to do, always passed quickly. Sorrin contented himself with doing odd jobs for people who weren't worried about using a former warrior for things he had never been trained for and training himself. Just because he wasn't a warrior anymore didn't mean he wasn't going to keep himself in shape. The Camadors would be back one day, and it wouldn't do for him to be floppy and out of shape when it happened. He needed to be at his prime, both mentally and physically, ready to act when it was necessary. Because it would be.
He spent his days alone for the most part, preferring to keep to himself. Caldir had a point when he spoke about keeping people at arm's length. It wasn't that Sorrin didn't trust people. It had never been about that, to be honest. He trusted plenty of people to do right by him and he trusted the intentions of everyone who had ever claimed to want to help.
He just didn't trust himself.
Sorrin was responsible for the deaths of so many people, and he never wanted to find himself in a position like that again.
So he didn't let people get close. Didn't let himself need anyone, and didn't let anyone need him.
His apartment in the building he lived in was sparse when it came to personal effects. He had the things he needed to survive, the things he needed for basic comfort, and the things he needed to train and to track the Camadors. That was about it. His bed was serviceable and unadorned, just a frame that came out of the wall with a mattress on top, sheets and a blanket. Standard issue, no frills. His couch and chairs were similar, designed for function rather than comfort.
Most of the living room was condensed into the smallest space possible to make room for his workout equipment, and it was a good thing there were vaulted ceilings because he was currently doing pull ups on a bar, biceps bulging as he pulled his considerably muscled frame up and then lowered himself again. He'd lost count of how many he'd done at this point, but he could feel the burn in his arms and knew he still had a ways yet to go.
As he worked out, he thought. Sorrin let the faces of the dying keep him motivated. His second in command as the light bled from blue eyes, the heads of the three squads under his leadership, taken out by a single blast. His parents, whose faces he hadn't seen, but he could remember the charred husk of their home when he'd gotten to it. He could taste the ash in the air, and knew what it felt like to be a failure.
Before he was even considering being done for the day, there was a knock on the door. Without even looking, he knew who it would be. Most of the other people who lived in the building were content to leave him alone most of the time now that they knew that was what he preferred. Only Amalda seemed to have trouble with that.
Sorrin sighed and let himself hang from the bar for a moment before he dropped to his feet and went to the door. He was sweaty and it showed. His shirt was thin and sleeveless, showing off his skin with its light silver blue tint, and the sweat that ran down his arms. The tattoos he had were visible too, thick lines in a dark color that wrapped around his arms and led up to his chest.
When he pulled the door open, Amalda stared.
And stared.
And then, for good measure, stared some more.
"Did you need something?" Sorrin asked briskly after she'd just been looking at him for a good two minutes.
She shook herself and licked her lips, giving him a warm smile. "I just wanted to see if you'd like to come down for dinner," she said. "I know you're going to say no, but I made my famous casserole, and I can't eat it all by myself."
"You shouldn't have made so much, then," Sorrin said bluntly. It was rude, but he didn't see how else to get her to take the hint.
"You're right," she replied. "But I always do, and it would be a shame to let it go to waste."
Sorrin sighed. "You should ask Caldir," he said. "He probably has trouble feeding himself and would benefit from it more than I would."
"Oh, I don't know about that. You look like you could use someone taking care of you."
Sorrin arched an eyebrow and Amalda flushed a dark red. It wasn't that she wasn't pretty. As far as Iglins went, she was lovely. Tall and slender with a lovely face and green tinted skin. If this had been before the incident, he wouldn't have thought twice about taking her up on the food and whatever else she wanted to offer.
"Not that you don't take care of yourself," she was spluttering. "I mean. That's not what I meant at all. I-." She cut herself off forcibly.
"Amalda," Sorrin said. "I appreciate it, but I'm not interested." Before she could say anything else he was saying his goodbyes and shutting the door lightly. Not quite in her face, but hopefully she would get the message this time.
He moved to go back to his workout when the sound of a chime from his comm device made him stop. It could be a message, but it had been months since anyone had bothered to message him. No one would call, and it wasn't the right noise for that anyway. That only left...
Sorrin practically ran to it.
He unlocked the screen, and there it was. Two hits in one news bulletin. The floating city had been seen.
Someone had found the Camadors.