“All right, here we go,” Letho said.

As they strode over to the guard, Letho tried to adopt a slouching lope, his shoulders sagging, head hanging under his heavy hood. But he felt foolish, not at all like the scrubby scavenger he was attempting to portray. Finally he gave up,and took on his usual gait as they closed the distance between themselves and the beckoning guard.

ELEVEN - Bazaar

“State your business here,” the Mendraga guard said, eyeing Bayorn with a look of contempt upon his face. Letho found it amusing. This person who had become part of Alastor’s fold, accepting his gift of eternal life, had probably never had a negative thought about a Tarsi during his time on the Fulcrum station, yet now he regarded the Tarsi as a mortal enemy, and he didn’t even try to hide his disdain.

“We caught this feller trying to escape. We’re returning him in hopes of a reward,” Letho said. The sentry laughed at this.

“You’ll get a reward all right. A pat on the back and a kick in the ass.” He turned to the sentry on the other side of the gate. “You, over there! Take these two down to the Tarsi camp and get this one back where he belongs.”

“Why do I have to do it? I took the last one,” the other sentry whined.

The first sentry, who seemed to have zero patience for these shenanigans, and most likely most all shenanigans in general, took two menacing steps forward. The second guard backed down before his superior officer could take another.

“All right, all right, fine. Let’s go.” He moved to gather up the cords that held Bayorn, who roared and threw his arm up and away. For a moment Letho feared that Bayorn was going to bring both fists down on the Mendraga’s head, crushing it like an overripe melon. It was all coming apart. For some foolish reason Letho had thought they might just let them go on to the Tarsi encampment without a guarded escort.

But Bayorn played his part. He dropped his arms to his side and bowed his head, casting a glance at Letho.

What do we do? the look appeared to say.

Letho shrugged and tried to compress just go with it, we’ll figure it out later into a facial expression. Bayorn glared at Letho, and the look told Letho that his lack of faith remained. But Letho didn’t know what else to do. Start a fight with armed Mendraga right in front of the gate, with bad guy backup most likely a uCom call away? And who was Bayorn to judge his decision anyway? This mission was his own, by Je-Ha, and he wasn’t about to back down when he was so close to seeing Hastrom City with his own eyes, seeing what Abraxas really had in place.

“You!” the whiny Mendraga pointed at Letho. “What are you doing talking to this stupid Tarsi? He a friend of yours?” The Mendraga eyed Letho with suspicion. His hand dropped to his rifle, and Letho thought about making a move to grab the weapon. It would have been so easy—the Mendraga wouldn’t know what hit him. But then he looked at Deacon and Saul, and even Bayorn. He couldn’t guarantee their safety, and he didn’t have Saladin to feed him battle scenarios and statistics.

“Hey, take it easy. I just got to know him a little on the trek in. He’s not a bad guy, you know. Besides the fact that he’s a dirty slave bear, of course,” Letho finished.

The Mendraga spat at Letho’s feet and scoffed. “Dirty slave bear lover,” he said. “You make me sick.” Then he turned his attention to Saul. “You, the man of few words. You come with me. I ain’t taking this big bastard down there myself.”

Saul looked at Letho, who nodded assent. “Sure,” Saul said. “No problem.”

“You other two, you’re free to go, just don’t cause any trouble. We don’t have no patience for dumbass colonists coming into our fair city wrecking things.”

“You don’t have to worry about us,” Letho said. “We’re just going in to look for some power converters,” Letho said.

“Off you go, then.”

Saul and the Mendraga guard left on their mission to return Bayorn to the Tarsi camp that he had “escaped from.” Of course, that escape had been much more elaborate than the Mendraga guard realized—involving an incursion into the enemies’ own ship and through a time-bending vortex. Letho queued up his uCom and tapped out a text message to Saul:

Don’t panic. Meet up out front of Abraxas’s temple.

“So now what, old friend?” Deacon asked. “Shall we go do a little sight-seeing?”

“Yes. Let’s.”

****

Neon, holoscreens, and intrusive audio blurbs assaulted Letho and Deacon as they headed into the heart of the only known, still-functioning city on the entire planet. The screens and decorations had been grafted onto buildings that had been eroded over time, slowly whittled away by the razor grains blasted upon them by sandstorm after sandstorm. That is, until Abraxas and his army had raised the protective walls around the heart of the city. This was done, Letho imagined, not only to keep the sand out, but also to keep the others—the ones with the extra limbs, razor claws, and seemingly no regard for the Eursan race—at bay. Having had a front row seat at a news production outfit in his former life on the Fulcrum station, Letho was no stranger to the way that those in power occasionally tweaked news reports to assuage or terrify their viewers, depending entirely on what their motives were. He wondered how much the people inside the wall knew about the mutant threat that lurked outside their walls even now. He also wondered whether, when the proverbial waste hit the fan, the walls would be able to repel the hordes.

The people they passed wore very similar clothes to those that one might see on a Fulcrum station, meaning that most of them were wearing their Fulcrum jumpsuits, which by now had become worn and threadbare. Many had added ornamentation, like plated shoulder guards, headgear, bracelets, and anklets. Most had presumably been cobbled together from scavenged scrap, taken from the ghostly sentinel skyscrapers that stood outside of Abraxas’s little circle of light. The center of the city was like an overgrown campfire in the midst of chaos, pushing back the shadows so that the citizens could live with a relative level of peace.

And then there were the Mendraga citizens, who seemed to float above the rest, though their feet never actually left the ground. Their adornments were more sophisticated and complex, many of them wearing headdresses that extended a full foot or more above their heads. Their bodies were covered in form-fitting material that puffed out in places, augmenting musculature that simply wasn’t there, for the Mendraga condition didn’t always lend itself to robust physique. Letho and Deacon made sure to give them all a wide berth, so as to avoid detection. Letho had no idea what their scent capabilities were, so he certainly erred to the side of caution in that regard.

Many of the buildings that had once been enclosed retail stores had since been converted to open storefronts, with carts offering wares such as broiled rodent on a stick, offered on plate with a side order of dry tubers of various lengths and girths. Thankfully Letho’s belly was full from his lunch under the overpass earlier that afternoon, and he had no desire to fill his stomach with unknown low-dwelling creatures prepared by vendors whose hygiene could be best described as questionable.

They continued down the main thoroughfare, assaulted by full-length holoscreens urging them to purchase all number of items in order to enhance their stay while at Hastrom City, and warning them that their enjoyment of their time may in fact hinge entirely upon said purchases. Letho didn’t feel particularly inclined to hire someone to do facial reconstruction to make his face look more chic, nor did he feel the need to buy boots that changed color to match his mood or his ensemble. Letho preferred functional clothing: lots of pockets to stow things, and enough room to run, jump, and squat. The trappings of a man of adventure. Color or style was of little to no concern to him.