"Fate´s Choice" by Emma-Jane C. Smith

Nathan stood there for a moment, running his fingers over the cold hard cash. Then he looked over at the man whose life was soon to be extinguished. He lay on the floor unconscious, tied and with blood trickling from his nose. At around forty years old, there was a small amount of grey hair appearing at his temples. Nathan took another deep drag of his cigarette before flicking it from his fingers and crushing it beneath the heel of his boot.

“Who is he?” Nathan asked.

“Don’t ask questions. If you want the cash, do it. If not….” Robert made as if to leave.

“No, no. I’ll do it.”

Robert turned back and pressed a blaster into Nathan’s other palm.

“Make sure you dump the body where no one will find it.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Nathan waited until Robert’s footsteps had receded before walking over to one of the chairs that furnished the secluded observation dome. Above him the stars sat lazily in the sky, oblivious to everything around them. Nathan pocketed the money, sat down, and rested the blaster in his lap while he lit another smoke. He’d known Robert for years now. A hard one to bargain with but at least he trusted those he gave tasks to. He even paid well.

Can I do this? Nathan asked himself. Up until now he’d only been a thief who occasionally dabbled in drug smuggling. Murder was a whole new ball game, not to mention serious jail time if he were caught. He speculated as to what the man had done to piss Robert off and came to the conclusion that it was probably best not to wonder. A fact that niggled the back of his curious mind.

Nathan sat there for a while, mulling over what he was going to do as he ran his fingers over the blaster’s lifeless black casing. Kill or not to kill, that was the ten thousand credit question. Nathan waited until the ash made its way down to the filter of the cigarette, before he made his decision. Finally, he leant down and crushed the cigarette butt between his fingers and the hard cement of the floor.

“Time to let the cosmos have her way.” Nathan quoted quietly to himself, a habit he had picked up in his childhood.

He stood, stretching until his back cracked loudly several times, and then made his way over the still unconscious man. He rested the blaster’s mussel against the guy’s temple and powered it up. The sound echoed ominously through the building. All he had to do now was pull it. Pull the trigger and it would all be over. Clean, quick and painless. The man would never know what happened. He would never wake. Nathan took a deep breath and slowly increased the pressure on the trigger.

The man’s eyelids twitched. Nathan stumbled back cursing, the man was coming around. He had to think fast. Would he do this or not? His mind garbled to itself of the consequences of each action he could take. It was like listening to a flock of squabbling birds. He had to work out what he was now going to do, and he had to do it quickly. More agonising decisions. Once he took the path of a murderer there would be no going back.

Finally Nathan decided to hit the man with the butt of the weapon, rendering him unconscious again. That way he could get on with what he had to do. Nathan couldn’t get rid of thoughts of the money. He raised the blaster ready to strike. He couldn’t kill a conscious man. Nathan’s determination tightened like a boa constrictor around its victim.

The man’s eyes opened wide, and at seeing Nathan holding a blaster, began to scream the best he could through the silver electrical tape over his mouth. Nathan rocked back on his heels. Damn it. He thought. Nothing on this damn space station is going my way!

In one swipe he’d ripped the tape from the poor man’s mouth and then he helped him into a sitting position. He’d let the guy speak for himself. He owed him that much. Secretly he prayed that the man had been some sort of bad criminal. Someone the world would be better off without.

“Who are you?” Nathan asked, his tone deadpan and serious.

“A-an accountant. I s-swear I’m nothing but an accountant!” the man stammered, his voice set to the high octave of panic.

“So what did you do to piss these guys off?”

“N-nothing. I s-swear. I live on the economy deck…. have a normal job. All I can remember before now is being hit on the back of the head as I went to get some credits from the ATMC.”

“Sure… you’re just a guy with rotten luck. Wrong place, wrong time.” Nathan said, shaking his head in disbelief.

Nathan was unconvinced but he still couldn’t detect any lie in the man’s voice or mannerism. Usually he was pretty good at spotting fallacies. He studied the man some more, and he picked up a deep worry the man had for someone in his life, denoted by the slight trembling at the left side his bottom lip. It wasn’t only his life that he was worried about.

“What’s you’re name?” Nathan asked.

“William Redcliffe.”

“Do you have a wife? Kids?”

“A daughter. My wife left me six years ago.” William answered.

“Why did she leave?”

William gave him a scared snort, which was no doubt was meant as a rueful laugh.

“She thought me too boring. She ran off with one of those serpentine Retcantwoes.”

“And how old is your daughter?”

“Seventeen.”

“Ten years younger than me…” Nathan muttered, taking a deep breath.

He could remember back to when he was that age, trying to find his place in the world, grappling onto anyone who would show they cared. Without parents life seemed just as awful as it actually was. Nathan smiled for a moment, remembering that at seventeen he had kissed a girl for the first time…. as well as fired a blaster. It had been one hell of a year.

William seemed nervous but hopeful that he could persuade Nathan to let him go. Nathan sat himself down on the chair to think. Thoughts of the money drifted into his mind. If his failure to shoot William was ever found out it would cost a large sum of money to get himself off the station and hidden. In fact he’d have to take Will and his daughter with him into hiding and they’d only be able to use the ten thousand credits he had in his pocket. It would never be enough for three. Then again, if it were only him… and if he didn’t have to run because he had completed the job….

Nathan agonised for a few more minutes before he shook his head to clear his mind. There was only one way he could solve this dilemma. He fished into his pocket for the good luck charm he carried around, it was an ancient earth coin called a quarter. He then proceeded to flip it into the air, catch it, and place it on his arm, underneath the palm of his hand.

“Heads or tails?” Nathan asked.

“Heads.” William chose, swallowing and then wiping his hand over the dried blood under his nose.

Carefully Nathan prised back his fingers to see what fate had decided for them both. His expression hardened instantly. Tails.

Nathan stood.

“Wh-what was it? Heads or tails?”

Nathan rested the length of the blaster against his own forehead for a moment, his eyes scrunched tight. He had to psych himself up, gather the courage to do Fate’s bidding. Finally Nathan lowered the weapon and wiped away the droplets of sweat from his forehead. He turned, walked over to the nervous man. Nathan put the blaster’s mussel to William’s temple and the doomed man dissolved into tears.

“I’ll give you anything! Anything you want! Please, just spare my life! Please, please, please.” William begged, tears streaming down his face as he pleaded for his life. “Think of my daughter, she needs me. My daughter, Claire.”

William broke off into sobs, unable to believe that the hope he only just been able to grasp had just as suddenly vanished. Fate was a cruel mistress. Nathan fought the voice inside of him that screamed to let the poor sobbing fellow go. Ruthlessly he squashed the feeling down, threatening it uselessly with false promises should it rise again.

But he was about to kill a human, a real person who had loved, and lived in the same universe he had. Nathan reviled the thought of seeing William’s daughter getting a knock at the door. And the inter space station police telling her that her father had been murdered, shot callously through the head. He could see that seventeen-year-old crying her eyes out, sobs wracking her body. And then the emptiness. The emptiness that Nathan knew would then settle. The one that would take her life from her. He saw her expressionless face as the police took her away from the apartment she had known and loved, and taken into foster or android care.

Nathan struggled not to relive his own memories of his own childhood, and see William’s daughter being dealt a similar hand to his own. He thought of his parents, so drugged up and drunk that he had been taken away from them when he was a young boy. He had then run away from his foster family, and became a kid on the ‘streets’. He had hitchhiked and stowed away on any vessel he could. And then he remembered when he was a teenager. Young Maree, the first girl he ever kissed, her body lying on the cold cement. Her face bruised, bones broken. She had been ripped away from him to join the dead.

Nathan’s knuckles were white as they clutched the blaster’s handle. It shook slightly, betraying him. Finally he managed to get his mind under control, to stem the tide of memories that raked so painfully at his heart.

His heart wrenched at seeing William sob, fear so raw, death so near. And it pained him to understand what might become to the man’s daughter… but the coin had been tossed, Fate - the cold hearted bitch - had made her decision.

Suddenly, there was a scraping noise. Nathan turned to see a man in a dark suit enter the observation dome, which was meant to have been locked. His eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses; he carried a briefcase and wore leather gloves.

“Who are you? What do you want?” Nathan asked, and then realised he was still holding the blaster on William.

Nathan was caught. He stood up, hiding the blaster behind him. Someone had witnessed what he had been about to do, he had just been holding a weapon to another man’s head! Nathan tried to control his frustration along with all his other turbulent emotions. Even pangs of fear threatened to overwhelm him. With one card as yet unplayed, he turned to confront the stranger.

“What are you doing here? Get out!”

The man continued to walk over to them. Nathan was puzzled at the man’s cool manner, the man refused to stop even when Nathan took aim at the stranger with his blaster.

“I’m warning you…” Nathan glowered.

Nathan couldn’t take the chance that this newcomer would talk. His finger began to squeeze the trigger.

“Stop, Nathan!” the newcomer demanded, holding up his free hand.

Startled, Nathan lowered his weapon.

“How do you know my name?”

But before there was any response, the stranger had pulled out his own blaster from its holster and fired. William’s head shot back, a fire bolt landing in the middle of his forehead. Instantly limp, the corpse fell to the ground and William’s eyes stared glassily, straight up into the blackness of space. Was I really going to do that to him myself? Nathan thought, his blood running cold. Revulsion at the sight filling him. His mind flashed back to the memory of Maree lying dead and he fought to control himself… and the situation.

“What the- What the HELL did you do that for?!” Nathan yelled, turning away from the sight of blood and brains splattered on the floor.

“It’s my job,” came the assassin’s unremorseful short reply.

The man holstered his weapon and removed his sunglasses. His eyes were icy blue, cold, hard and unforgiving. They sent shivers down Nathan’s spine. It was over. He didn’t have to make the choice; he didn’t have to pull the trigger himself. Nathan let the tension slowly leak out of his muscles.

“Here, give me your blaster, you don’t need it now and I can get rid of it safely for you. There will be no trace it ever existed.”

The assassin’s voice was light and yet there was a hint of a warning. The assassin expected to be obeyed without question. Nathan instinctively held the blaster tighter. How could he trust a man who had just murdered someone in cold blood? He could see that this assassin was a very unlike himself. Although they had been officially hired to do the same job Nathan knew he could never deprive himself so fully of all emotion. It was emotion that gave him the ability and strength to do crime in the first place.

“No… I think I’ll hold onto it for a while longer.” Nathan countered.

The assassin shrugged as if it didn’t matter, but a sudden steeliness in his eyes betrayed him. Nathan didn’t trust this man, how could he? And yet Robert trusted him… if it had been, in fact, Robert who had hired him. Nathan couldn’t help but think that something didn’t add up. Something wasn’t right…

“Then you’d better help me move the body,” the man ordered, placing his briefcase on the ground.

Nathan nodded, tucked his blaster into the back of his trousers and walked slowly over to where William was lying. The smell of fresh blood was as potent as it was awful. It turned Nathan’s stomach and so he tried, unsuccessfully, to breathe without using his nose. He began to calm his mind, leaking emotion from it like water through a strainer. It was a trick he had used a few times, but never very successfully.

Suddenly there was a flash of light, his body gave a shudder, and then the world went black. When Nathan woke, his head was pounding, and his eyes were reluctant to work. He realised the assassin must have shot him with a Stinger, a high-end stun weapon. Nathan’s heart began to pound wildly, as he looked carefully around without daring to move anything but his eyes. There, in the corner of the room, standing over William’s body, was the assassin.

Nathan cursed himself for being so careless… and then began to wonder why he was still alive. The assassin’s eyes flickered towards him and he hastily began to feign unconsciousness.

The man lifted Nathan’s limp hand, placed the blaster in it and then proceeded to guide the mussel of the blaster into Nathan’s open mouth. It took a moment for Nathan to realise what the assassin was planning. Just as the stranger went to press the trigger, Nathan reacted instinctively. It was strange to Nathan but the jolt of electricity seemed to have invigorated him, speeding up his recovery rather than debilitated him. Perhaps the stun weapon wasn’t on the right setting…

Nathan brought up his legs and kicked the assassin away from him before rolling and gaining his feet. Nathan clutched the blaster in his hand, his breathing quick and laboured. He could feel the strange sensation of adrenaline pumping through his body. The hormone was trying to get his already over excited nerves to work in overdrive.

“You were trying to kill me!” Nathan stated incredulously.

He was determined not to let the slippery eel of a man catch him unawares again. Nathan’s mind came into sharp focus, pushing his large headache to the back of his mind.

“Orders are orders,” the man replied huskily, his voice changing to what must have been its natural sound.

“Who sent you?” Nathan barked, turning back to his assailant, the murderer.

“Who do you think? Robert knew that you wouldn’t do it so I was sent to clean up the loose ends. Unlike you, I can pull the trigger.”

They circled each other like tigers. The assassin seemed almost to want Nathan to make the first move, to shoot him.

“You seem awfully confident that I’m not going to kill you.”

“I can read men, Nathan. I know what a man is capable by observing their expression, mannerisms, body language. You’re an open book to me. And that’s what makes me confident that you’re not going to pull the trigger.”

“Beware Readers who try to read a Reader better then they.” Nathan quoted to him.

He smiled at William’s murderer, and saw the assassin’s eyes widen slightly in recognition of the quote. Nathan could see his uncertainty. In a flash the stranger leaped, kicked away Nathan’s blaster and had drawn his own from his ankle holster. Nathan put his arms in the air, surrendering immediately. He knew he had no chance of escape… but he might have a chance to outwit.

“Who taught you?” the assassin asked, betraying curiousness.

“I’m just a natural. How long have you been in the business?”

“Too long perhaps.”

“You’re name?”

“We don’t have names, Nathan.”

“I seem to have a name.”

“One that betrays you. You are not an assassin.”

Nathan almost smiled at the unintended compliment before giving a silent prayer to the heavens and lunging forward. They looked almost like school boys as they tussled on the floor, each trying to desperately gain control of the blaster. Punches and kicks flew, and Nathan was glad this assassin had been less than an expert at close range fighting.

The blaster went skittering across the floor, knocked out of the assassin’s hands. They both gained their feet, running to clasp the victory in their hands. It was certain that the loser would die. The assassin shoved Nathan forward, causing him to miss the blaster. The assassin’s hands grasped it, his chest heaving with exertion.

The blaster fired. Nathan let out a scream. He was covered in warm blood, fresh from a fire bolt wound. Tried not to faint, as he fought waves of pain and shock which flooded his body. Nathan looked down at himself, blood seeping onto his shirt. He’d been shot in the side.

The assassin walked over to him, his footsteps echoing ominously through the observation dome. The world went burred… hazy. He looked into Nathan’s face, his cold eyes trying to express something, or perhaps try to answer a question.

Nathan fought to keep his eyes open as he began to feel drowsy. He let them close for one instant and opened them to see that the assassin was no longer standing in front of him. The sounds of sirens echoed off the walls. And the assassin was fleeing. Nathan saw something in the corner of his eye… it was blaster lying innocently on the floor. He stooped slowly to pick it up.

In a daze Nathan turned to the fleeing assassin, aimed, and fired.