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You know the story -- the Evil Galactic Empire kidnaps an innocent youth and forces him to serve in its Army Of Darkness, until he rebels and restores freedom to the universe. Of course, sometimes things don't go according to script...
Repatriation The ship landed just outside the pastures, scaring a number of barnyard animals and flattening the soft amber grass. It waited for a few moments, as the engine’s roar died to a barely audible high-pitched whine, and then the belly hatch hissed open, a ladder stretching down out of it in a way which was very slightly obscene. Three people came down the ladder. One was wearing a crisp new military uniform – very new, as the military to which it belonged didn’t exist, legally, before a year ago. The others wore simple civilian clothes – very simple, as they were the products of barely-industrial manufacture. And, thought one of the men in the clothes, they itched. He didn’t remember them itching. Then again, he thought, I don’t suppose I’d ever worn any clothes back then that didn’t. As the saying goes, fish have no word for water. Twenty Years Earlier.... “Run! Run, Davon! Run!” It was his mother screaming. They were coming, marching through the town, trampling, burning. The star men. The Emperor’s men. The men from beyond. The devils. Whatever they were called, their passage meant only one thing – doom. Two dozen of them walked purposefully and quickly through the village of Alandill’s Retreat, and a dozen more swooped around on the backs of black metal birds, birds which screamed fire and death down on the hamlet. The men on the birds laughed as homes burned and fields were razed, and the walkers laughed too, laughed and jeered and pointed. Davon ran, looking back, to see all that he knew consumed by fire and terror. He saw the old merchant who always gave him a piece of fresh fruit being beaten and kicked by laughing soldiers. He saw the park where he had spent many fine summer nights (some, since the recent passing of his fourteenth year, very fine indeed!) ablaze. And he saw…. Jareth. Jareth had fallen, or had tripped on some rubble, or had just moved too slowly – Jareth always was too slow – and two of the walking men had reached him. They were faceless, implacable, looking not so much like men but walking statues of obsidian bordered with lines of silver and gold. One picked up Jareth like a sack of flour and held him as he struggled. He appeared to be saying something to his comrade. Davon’s mother was calling for him. Davon didn’t care. He spun and ran, bellowing in inchoate rage. He leapt towards the first of the men, trying to knock him down, trying to give Jareth a chance to escape. He failed. Hitting the man was like hitting a building. He felt his shoulder bone crack under the impact. The second man grabbed him, lifted him trivially. It wasn’t possible, Davon thought. I am not as light as all that, not so light any man can lift me in one hand like I lift a cat! Impossible or not, though, it was being done. He saw the barrel of a gun, one of the great grey weapons which shot blue flame, the guns which were turning his town to ash. He stared back at it. He would not flinch from death. The first soldier, the one holding Jareth, spoke some words. Later, years later, he’d remember this time and know what was being said. “Hang on, Kran. This one’s got some spunk. We’ll take him too.” “The one you’ve got gives us quota. Why bother with one more?” “Why not? Could be there’s a bonus in it.” “Whatever. Fine, I’ll tag the squirming little backworlder.” Then Davon saw the gun being lowered, while he still hung there, squirming. The hand which had held the gun now held something else, some other device of metal. It was pressed to Davon’s shoulder. There was a burst of pain and the world turned off. Today... Davon unconsciously rubbed at his shoulder. It was still there, of course. They’d offered to remove it before he came back, said he shouldn’t have to bear the mark of shame and indignity any longer, but he demurred. He’d told them it was fine, he wanted to remember, he wanted the people of his old world to know what he’d been, where he’d gone, what he’d done. They’d nodded kindly, thinking they understood. They didn’t,. Jareth was with him now, too. He was breathing as if he had never breathed before. “Smell it, Davon! It’s wonderful!” Davon inhaled. “Smells like sheep shit. And wood burning. And untreated sewage. And more sheep shit.” Jareth looked downcast. “We’re back, Davon. After so long…we’re finally home.” Davon sighed. “Yes. I’m afraid you’re right.” The woman spoke then, her voice formal and bored. She recited the litany she’d learned and memorized and had recited far too many times before for her taste. “’As per Executive Order 12 of the Reformed Democratic Planetary Alliance, all citizens impressed into Imperial service or otherwise removed from their homes, stripped of their dignity, or forced to labor against their will far from the place of their birth and the homelands of their families, are hereby repatriated, the wrongs against them rectified but not forgotten.’”. She paused. “Welcome home, gentlemen.” She made it clear she didn’t think it was much of an honor. Jareth walked down the ramp, took one step into the fields, and stopped. He savored it, the soft grass beneath his boots, the feeling of warm earth instead of deckplating. Davon didn’t move. The woman looked at him. “Go on, get moving. I’ve got 50 more to dump off on this rock alone. You’re home. Scamper. Be free.” Davon’s stare drilled through her. “Do you have any idea who I am?” She nodded, then droned. “You’re a victim of the prior imperialist regime, stolen from your homeworld and degraded for decades. I know the drill. Look, what do you want me to do? Grovel and beg forgiveness for something my parents did to you? I’m sure you’re all full of righteous fury and all, but give me a break. I’m not the one enslaved you. I didn’t do anything to you.” “Not until now,” Davon sneered, and walked down the ramp. The village had changed little in 20 years. All signs of the old burning were long gone; the same old buildings had been rebuilt, fired clay and timber and straw as always. There were, Davon noted, a few signs of change….a tachyon relay tower had been erected just outside the main grazing green. It was currently a ruin of twisted metal, garlanded in flowers. From the looks of it, the damage had been recent. A crowd was gathering. Hundreds of them, dressed in the usual garb. Browns and greys, mostly, wide brimmed hats to shield out the slightly-blue sunlight, thick shoes clotted with mud, farm implements to hand. To wield in futile defiance… An old man strode forward. He looked at Davon and Jareth, smiled, then looked back up the ramp and frowned. There was a murmuring in the crowd. Davon’s brow furrowed. I don’t know what I expected, but not this. What’s going on here? The old man – Davon finally recognized him as Fra Talok, probably Akfra Talok by now….the old Akfra must have been long dead – spoke up, his Galactic badly accented. Davon couldn’t help wincing. The old man sounded so…backworld. “War as ta rust?” The woman stared, incomprehending. “Ta rust! War as ta rust?” Davon smiled in understanding, and turned back to the woman who was giving him his freedom. “He wants to know where the rest are.” “Oh!” she said, the smiled as broadly and patronizingly as she could, and began speaking slow-ly and clear-ly. “These…are…all…from…this…sector..uh….this part of space. There…are…no….more.” The Akfra translated loudly, to the crowd, which erupted in a chorus of anger. He gestured for them to be quiet and spoke again. “On….t’zand. On t’zand tacken.” Devon turned back. “He says…” “I understand him. He says there were a thousand.” She then spoke to the crowd. “This…is all…who…survived.” Again, the translation. Again, the anger, this time more visceral. The crowd began to surge forward, despit the Afra’s efforts to keep them calm. A few phrases in Galactic could be hear among the Calonian din. “Promised us…” “all lies, all lies from the sky people” “my daughter, my daughter, please, my daughter….” The woman stepped back, her hand slowly drifting to her pistol. “I am…sorry. This…is all…please…we apologize for….the crimes of…the emperor…but…I…must…leave…” Something clicked in Davon’s mind. In Calonian, stumbling over word he hadn’t used in fifteen years, he shouted to the Akfra:”Ask her about the right of confirmation! Say it now! Right of confirmation!” The Akfra, faced with an angry mob behind him, seized at this branch of hope. He spoke the words. “Ritt…uv…confah-mashun! Confah-mashun!” The woman turned white. Davon grinned. She glared at him, genuinely wounded. Why was he picking on her? Jareth smiled too, and spoke to Davon in Calonian. “Of course. Davon! Of course! They have the right to know the fates of all those stolen, all those not as lucky as we. We survived, Davon! We’re home!”
Twenty years earlier... Davon had never been in a room this large. It seemed the entire village could fit in it, sheep pens and all. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he understood this was just one room in some sort of immense sky-demon craft, and that there was nothing outside of it at all. He was wearing a grey coverall with a symbol on it. He did not know what the symbol meant, but they were all wearing it. Jareth was there, too, and hundreds others – a dozen he recognized from his own village, perhaps a few hundred from elsewhere on Calonia, and then…the others. The room was a babble of languages, of small crowds milling in fear and confusion. Some were crying, some were raging, some were just staring in shock. Davon was trying to keep Jareth calm. Jareth hadn’t stopped talking since they’d both woken up naked and shaved among a dozen other naked and shaved conscripts. The coveralls had arrived soon, and then men with sticks that caused agony had driven them, like cattle, to here. “Do you think they’ll eat us?” Jareth asked. Davon rolled his eyes and controlled his tongue. “No, Jareth. I doubt they’d bother to dress us if they were going to eat us.” Jareth pondered this, then nodded. “Then what? Why are we here? Why did they take us?” “I don’t know.” Jareth paused. “They got you because you came for me.” “You’re my friend, sheep-brain. I wasn’t going to let them take you.” “But they did.” “Yes, well, my plan wasn’t nearly so cunning as I thought it was.” Jareth, relieved of the prospect of being dinner, looked around. “Look, those are from the south isles…you can tell by the eyes. And there’s a couple from Calgrad, I’ve heard they worship strange gods…but the others…Davon….some of them aren’t from our world! He looked around some more, cataloguing every wondrous grouping of strangers, then he gasped. “Davon…Davon, I don’t think that one’s even human!” Davon looked where his friend was pointing. “Yes, the four eyes are a bit of a giveaway. Some sort of demon race.” Jareth frowned. “Wearing the same clothes we are, though. So the sky-demons enslave other demons….interesting…’ His voice trailed off, his mind drifting into one of the places only Jareth’s mind seemed to go, then he suddenly came back. “Look, there, the door is opening!” In walked twenty men garbed in the same black, hard, armor he’d seen before. At least, Davon assumed they were men under there. He realized, suddenly, that he couldn’t be sure. The twenty split up and began herding them into clusters. One approached the group which held Davon and Jareth. He walked up to them, walked around them, then grabbed one, a boy Davon thought he might have seen at the market once or twice, and with a single sharp move, broke his arm. As the boy screamed and collapsed, the armored man drew out one of the pain-sticks and beat him with it several times, each time drawing louder screams of anguish. Finally, when the boy was curled into a sobbing, twitching, ball, he shoved him aside with a foot and turned to the rest. He spoke gibberish, but after he did, a second voice, one which sounded dead, spoke in Calonian. “You may be wondering why I did that.” There was a low, scared, murmur of assent. “I did that….for no reason at all.” He let that sink in. “Now then…imagine what I might do if one of you actually does something wrong.” The black helmet showed no expression, but Davon felt there was a grin behind the implacable mirrored surface. “I…am Sergeant Kal, and you will love me, because I am the only hope you have of getting off this ship alive. It is my job to turn you into worthy servants of the Emperor, His Majesty Forever.” He looked over the crowd again, and this time focused on Davon. Who are you?”, the cold voice sneered. Davon’s own voice stuck in his throat for an instant. “Davon Quala….” He burned. The stick had touched him, and his entire body was aflame. He fell to the ground, twitching. Kal nudged him with his boot. “Who are you?” “Dav…” A sharp kick in his stomach had him spitting blood. “Who are you?” “What..do you wan…” This time the kick was to his throat. He gasped for air. “Who are you?” Davon’s mind tried to work out the answer, tried to figure out this riddle. AS he thought, the man slammed the pain-stick down again. “Who are you?” Trying to think…what had he said…there had to be some answer…something… An armored foot came down on his hand. Davon heard bones crack. “Who are you?” “Servant….servant of the Emperor…” There was no painful rebuttal. Instead, there was a string of gibberish, this time not translated, and someone, a man in a white uniform, ran up. Something cool and soothing was sprayed on his hand, and he was helped to his feet. Kal then walked over to Jareth. “Who are you?” he asked. “A servant of the Emperor!” Jareth answered with well-feigned enthusiasm. Davon sighed. Jareth always was better at doing what people wanted. One of their number…the son of a Fra, Davon thought…refused to say the words. No matter how many times he was beaten or hit with the stick, he kept denying Kal. After the tenth time, Kal shook his head, drew his gun, and fired. There was nothing left of the defiant one’s head but a dark smear on the metal floor. “Now that all of you have graciously accepted his Infinite Majesty’s generous offer of welcome into his service….we shall see if any of you are worthy of it.” Today... Davon left the milling throng behind, feeling some small joy at the predicament of the poor Lieutenant. He supposed she was hardly to blame for the actions of her government, but by that token, neither was he, but he had been sent here anyway. Jareth followed close behind, running slightly, his short, stubby legs struggling to cover the same ground as Davon’s long-limbed military stance. “Do you…do you think anyone we know will be still alive? Our families, our old friends? Will they even know us? Davon, it’s been so long…” Davon shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably, Twenty years isn’t that long, even on a backworld like this…I figure some of those left behind managed to avoid drowning in pig shit.” Jareth seemed shocked. “Davon! This is our home! We should be happy to be back.” Davon stopped dead. “Why, Jareth? Why should we be happy? From now on, the closest I’ll get to the stars will be standing on top of Hollvan Hill, and that’s not very close at all.” He kicked at a clot of dirt. “Not that it matters. No room for me in the shiny new order, anyway.” He looked around at the rock and wood buildings that clustered together to form the town, noted that spots, here and there, which had marked some outpost of the Empire, some flash of the larger galaxy now reduced to ash. A thick rope dangled from a tree. It was unoccupied, but Davon was sure this emptiness was a recent occurrence. Once it became clear that no reprisal would come for murdering servants of the Empire, their life could be measured in nanoseconds. So what of me, he wondered. Have I come home only to become that rope’s next occupant? He heard rushing footsteps behind him. That was quick, he thought. Here comes the mob. “Davonil! Davonil!” His eyes widened suddenly. He turned, to be met with a rushing tackle. He desperately fought back his instincts so that he didn’t snap his mother’s neck. “Davonil! Oh, my Davonil, you live, you have come back to me! Oh, praise to the Alliance, Davonil! They did it! They freed you as they said!” Davon tried not to wince. He briefly toyed with the idea of telling his mother she had the wrong man, that she’d mistaken him for her lost son in her grief, but he decided against it. Just as well, since Jareth was speaking. “Tullisha! Mama Tullisha! You survived! I worried for you, I did!” Tullisha reluctantly let go of her son. “Jar…Jareth? Jareth Falan? Is that…is that you? Oh, you have grown so big!” A side effect of twenty years in the mess halls, thought Davon. Then her eyes glistened. “Oh, Jarethil, I am so sorry…your mother…the red sickness took her, not two years past.” Davon sighed. “The red sickness” was something so trivial that it was controlled by the low-level antibiotics pumped into the fleet’s water, along with the prophylactics and psychotropics. Only on this mudball would it kill anyone. Jareth’s face collapsed. “I…I didn’t really think she might still be alive..but only two years…” Tullisha hugged him again. “I know. I grieve with you. But at least you brought my Davonil home!” Twenty years earlier... “By the seven go…I mean, by the Emperor’s Beard, Jareth! You’ve got to keep at it! You know how they think! The more backworld you are, the more they kick you around! Every time you open your mouth, I want to cry!” Jareth sighed. “I know, Davon, I know, but I have no gift for this like you do! You’re so much better at it than I am!” “Whatever. I got myself enslaved trying to save you, so I’m going to make sure you at least make it to somewhere other than the mines! Come on!” He shifted to Galactic. “Real meat is a treat you can’t beat.” Jareth tried to pronounce it properly. “Rill mit is a trit yeh…” Davon tossed the datapad aside. “No! Jareth, focus!” He smashed his fist down on the small table which was the only furniture shared by the eight men assigned to the tiny quarters. This unbalanced the jug of carefully brewed and hidden alcohol, splattering it everywhere. “Veegaid hinet mool!” shouted out Jareth. “Whore who sleeps with pack beasts!” Davon stared in astonishment, both at the degree of profanity and the fact Jareth had pronounced the Galactic curse perfectly. Jareth seemed to realize what he did and blushed. “How..how can you manage that and not a simple phrase?” “I…I don’t know, Davon. Maybe…” He managed a weak smile. “Maybe I can only speak it properly when I curse?” Davon smiled. “Well then! Think of every word you speak in the Conqueror’s Tongue as a curse!” Jareth nodded. After that, it got easier.
Today… They gathered in the tavern. It was cold and drafty and smelled more of sweat and shit than of alcohol and roasting meet. A large crowd had gathered, larger than normal, to welcome home the two lost lambs. Among the congratulations, though, there were questions, and sometimes more. Why you, and not my Zalath? Did you see Ravin? Did you? What did you do there? Did they make you kill? Davon ordered a flagon of the watery, tasteless swill which passed for beer here. His mother looked, for a moment, shocked, then seemed to remember her little ‘Davonil’ was now a fully grown man, and she smiled at him half-toothlessly. He took the drink to the booth and sat down. Fifteen years earlier… The bar was crowded, with beings of every species and gender elbowing each other out of the way, at least those who had elbows. Davon made sure to strut through the door; Jareth followed in his shadow. “Davon are…are you sure we should be here?” “Sure! Look, there’s Miklo and Tarn, from our unit.” He waved and called their names; they waved back. “This place is known for being friendly to those in the service…even cooks.” He smiled at Jareth. “At least…at least it’s a fleet position. Better than a ground pounder.” “You’ve got that right! And besides, we’ve both finally earned enough loyalty points for free leave, and I’m going to enjoy it! All those months of saying ‘Praise the Emperor’ and ‘Glory To The Eternal’ after every sentence are finally paying off!” He thought a moment. “Of course, the part where I nearly die once a week I order to smite the Emperor’s foes might also be part of it. Huh. But how did you ever prove your worth? I guess you cook up some good slop for the brass, huh?” “I…I suppose. But, uhm, if this place if friendly to the Fleet, why am I wearing Goldo’s civilian clothes? They barely fit me.” Davon smiled. “Let’s sit down, and I’ll explain.” They found a set of stools. “Here’s the thing. Look, Jareth, you’re my friend and all, so I’ll be honest…you and the ladies, well, you know.” Jareth blushed. “So then – you see her?” Davon pointed down the bar. Working a complicated machine was a black woman. Not the deep brown sometimes called black, but jet black, the color of onyx, the color of deep space. Her obsidian skin was set with hundreds of tiny bright lights, and when she moved, constellations walked through the bar. “That Allenal. She’s nuts for fighter pilots. I’ve heard they call her ‘Landing Bay’, since she’s had so many pilots dock on her! And tonight, you are one!” “One what? A pilot?” “It’s simple. I’ll make sure to set you up as some hotshot flyer when she’s nearby. She’ll practically break your legs dragging you into the back room.” Jareth turned an even deeper red. “Davon…I….that’s you, not me! You’re the one who took out that destroyer! By…by the Emperor’s Beard, Davon, they’re calling you the best pilot on the Wrath Eternal! I’ve heard…I’ve heard some saying they’ll waive the core world requirement for you!” Davon blinked. “You…you have? But they…I never…” A voice, husky with promise, spoke behind him. “A destroyer? In a fighter? Oh…is that true?” Arms much warmer than their void of space décor would indicate fell around his shoulders. Jareth just nodded. “It is! I saw it all from the Wrath! Davon…” As it turned out, Davon found the back room of the bar to be rather roomy, all things considered. Today… Davon lay on lumpy mattress beneath a scratchy blanket, and looked out a dirty glass window at the now-unreachable stars. It was his old home, the only place he had to stay. A number of the older men had talked about giving him work, finding him some job despite his lack of apprenticeship experience. Davon had contemplated joining the local Watch, or maybe heading to Calithan or Galithon to see if the Guard in those larger cities needed anyone…but he decided against it. Then he thought of seeing if any of the outlying farms were for sale, as he’d been allowed to cash out his savings in local coin…but the thought of staring at the backside of a plough mule for the rest of his life made him sick. On the hill, just at the edge of his vision, was the spaceship. It would be there for another day, maybe two, as the overworked Alliance officer struggled to prove to each and every supplicant that, yes, their little Ilanna died of the pox in an Imperial whorehouse sixteen years before, that sweet little Andarril was butchered in the mud of some backworld in rebellion, dealing with the denial, grief, and anger of a thousand desperate relatives. The thought was giving him less and less pleasure. She’d be gone, soon. He turned his eyes from the spaceship and looked up at the stars… Ten years earlier… The stars blurred as Davon struggled to keep his ship both approaching his target and avoiding its guns. Another system tearing itself away, another rebellion to put down. The home guard fleet, sent by the Emperor to keep the system safe from raiders, had been turned into a hostile force, its loyal officers murdered and the traitors raised to command. Davon tried to control his anger. Fight in calm, see the dawn. Fight in rage…never age. He took a quarter second to check his sensors. Golov was on his wing, as he should be, but Mallak… “Mallak! Form up on my six! Now! Maintain formation until we get in optimal range!” There was silence. “Mallak! Reply and form up!” “You’re mad! We can’t break through their cover fire! They warned me! You’re a damned suicidal backworlder from a pig farming cesspit trying to prove he’s more Galactic than the Coreworlders! Well, I’m not dying so you can have whatever’s left of you shipped to Throne in a box! Come on, Golov, we can pull back before it’s too late! Let this one die!” Davon took a moment to smile coldly. “Congratulations, Lieutenant Mallak. You managed to go from insubordination to mutiny in two sentences.” Without taking his eyes off the rapidly growing rebel frigate, Davon tapped a few buttons on his control panel. “I suppose you were unaware that with all the problems the Eternal has been having lately, trusted Commanders have been given both the dispensation and the tools to deal with rebels. No matter what pig-farming cesspit they were born on.” He tapped one button. A missile detached itself from the wing of his ship. It aimed itself at Mallak’s fighter, broadcasting a shield shutdown code in a broad wave ahead of it. Mallak barely had time to notice the object on his scanners before he was vapor. “Golov? Do you have any criticisms of my battle plan you’d care to voice?” “No…no, SIR! On your wing, SIR!” Davon smiled. “Then let us show these turncoats how loyal soldiers serve the Emperor!” Today... Davon stared at the congealing porridge. His mother looked at him eagerly. “You…you always liked this, Davonil. I…I never thought I’d see you eating it again.” If I had my wishes, you never will, he thought, but he forced a spoonful down his throat anyway. Imperial rations were only slightly better, after all. He noticed his mother was being unusually quiet. Though he thought he should enjoy it, he was curious enough to risk asking why. His mother looked away, then said quietly. “Some of the others…the ones who are trying to find out what happened to their children…they say that the Alliance woman says you…” “What?” “Well, that you weren’t… just a slave there. That you…” “Were an officer? A Commander in the Fleet, a fighter pilot, wearer of the Silver Crown?” She blanched. “It’s true? They made you… made you kill people?” Made me? He thought. At first… but the fact is, mother, I discovered I was very good at it and I liked it. “I killed people, yes. We weren’t taken to pick flowers in the park. The Emperor had his press gangs because he needed soldiers.” He tossed the spoon down. “Those who didn’t cooperate were killed. Those who had no skill were turned into raw meat for the grinder. I found I had a talent, and I used it to keep myself alive. Your little Davonil is here, and a thousand others taken are not, because he was much, much, better at killing than they were. Tell your gossiping friends that.” She was trembling. “But…but Jareth…Jareth, he…” “I kept him alive! Every favor I earned, every officer I impressed, every bit of pull a Backworlder could get, I spent on saving his life, keeping him with me as I moved from fleet to fleet, making sure he got non-combat posts on the support vessels in the back…and he doesn’t even know it. All he knows is that he was ‘lucky’, so very, very, lucky. Should I tell him?” “No…no. Davon…what are you going to do? Where can you go?” Davon looked out across the town. “I’m not sure…” Two years earlier… “Hold the line! Hold it! Damn it, you cowards, you traitors, you backstabbers! Hold the whorespawned line!” It was no use. There were simply too many of them. The only cold comfort Davon had was that those who ran were cut down as quickly as those who stayed to fight. The sky was turned to fire around him, fire and molten metal and frozen corpses. His cockpit flared red, then went black. Desperately, he pounded the controls. Nothing. Total power loss in every system. The rear half of his fighter was gone, sliced away, and somehow the feedback hadn’t killed him. He yanked the ejection lever. Nothing. Not even a trickle of power remained. Calmly, he waited for death. He played a game…trying to guess which of the rebel fighters would shoot him. That one? No…it zoomed by. That one, vibrantly green? No, it was crippled, returning to its base. An hour passed. Then two. And then, only then, did he feel fear. He looked like debris, he realized, dead metal, the ruin of a ship. No one would waste power shooting rubble. He would sit here in a metal coffin until his air gave out and he slowly suffocated, dying not in battle but cold and alone in the void. He was drifting in and out of unconsciousness when he felt the grapples strike the ship. Today…. The mood had changed in a day. The welcoming crowd, happy at the return of their stolen sons, had grown bitter and hostile. There was the unspoken and unthought resentment, the unfairness that he had live when others had died, and it seemed the rumors…the all too true rumors… that he had been more than a helpless slave serving under the lash of the Emperor were getting around. Wherever he walked, the people parted and muttered. The parting he liked – it showed respect. The muttering, though, he could have done without. Jareth was doing better. No one had ever really liked Jareth, except for Davon, but he was also not feared. Merchants offered him gifts, and all offered him condolences on the loss of his family. There was talk of offering him positions on many of the surrounding farms, and the innkeeper thought he could use a new cook… provided he didn’t make any of that foul sky-demon swill. Davon smiled faintly. Jareth, at least, was where he belonged. Home safely. He’d do well, maybe even find some wife (despite being over a decade past the accepted age for marriage) and raise a crop of babies. Inside of a week, he’d probably forget how to work a light switch. Me, on the other hand… There’s really only one choice. A month earlier… “Prisoner Davon 467-Calonia, please step forward.” Well, thought Davon, that’s that. Sentence, execution, trial, in that order. At least the Emperor rarely made such a fuss over eliminating enemies of his regime. He never felt obliged to pretend the process was fair. Resigned, he stepped forward. The man seated behind the high desk, the new Alliance symbol still smelling of fresh pain, looked bored and tired. Davon was fairly certain he’d been a judge under the Emperor, as well. The Alliance just kept the old bureaucracy in place, once they’d purged anyone loyal or competent. “You are Davon 4 Calonia?” No, he thought. I’m someone else who decided to die in his place. Idiot. What he said, though, was “Yes, Sir. Do you wish to see my ident, sir?” “No, no, it will be checked later. Go to room D, down this hall.” The judge then returned to his screen and prepared to call another name. He was surprised to see Davon still there. “Yes? Is there a problem? Room D.” Davon glanced around at the guards surrounding every other exit. Great, he thought. I am expected to escort myself to my execution. I wonder if I’ll have to shoot myself, too. Ah well. From farmer to slave to officer to prisoner to corpse. Hm. No matter what path one takes through life, it always ends at the same place. He walked to room D. “Jareth?” Jareth, wearing a simple grey jumpsuit little different from their old slave garb, leapt up and hugged him. “What are you doing her Jareth? You’re a cook! This is insane!” Davon looked around for a guard and found one. “You! You there! Look, whatever the addled lackwits who run your so-called ‘democratic alliance’ might think, this man is harmless! He’s a cook! Let him go!” The guard looked at him curiously. “Your both being let go, Backworlder. Repatriation. You are being freed of your forced service to the Emperor.” “Repat….” “It’s astounding, Jareth! We’re going home! We made it! We survived!” Davon realized, suddenly, that while he had steeled himself to face death – indeed, he had faced it a hundred times or more – he had never once prepared himself for the possibility of returning home. “Home.”, was all he could say. Today They shouldn’t have done this, he thought. My record was clear…more than clear! I was a hero of the Empire, I should have been given the dignity of a military execution. It made no sense; the more Davon pondered, the more he couldn’t believe he’d slipped the net. Of course, he’d denied any crimes against sentience and danced the usual ‘Pity a poor backworlder caught up in the Empire’s net’ dance – he’d survived his enslavement by telling his captors what they wanted to hear and had never lost that skill. But he knew it was going through the motions. He never expected it to work and didn’t really want it to. I’ve really only got one option, he thought. I just wish I had a better plan. Later... It was dark here at night, darker than any planetside surface Davon had seen in twenty years, though not nearly so dark as the wonderful cold of space. Worst of all possible worlds, he thought. The sky isn’t lit up with the fires of technology, and the atmosphere hides all the glory from me. The landing craft was a dark silhouette on the hilltop. It would be lifting off tomorrow, the ritual finally complete. Then no ship would visit. Calonia would be left to ‘follow its natural course’, with ‘the rights of the original settlers to live within the bounds of their colonization compact’ left fully intact. One way or another, Davon thought, there’d be one less pig-farmer on this world in a few hours. I call for access. She comes down. I stab her. I steal the ship. The only real kink in the plan is the part where I have a worn kitchen knife and she has a milspec caseless autopistol. He smiled. I have a half-damaged ‘Voidrazor’ starfighter. She has a destroyer. Let’s see if I can do this twice… He tapped the intercom. Again. And again. Finally, a sleepy voice answered. “Go away! I don’t know where Bavil or Davil or Zavil is! I’m sorry, they’re dead! Just get over it!” Davon spoke. “It’s Davon. I think I left some possessions on board. I am supposed to leave the village tomorrow, so this is my last chance to retrieve them.” There was a string of profanity. “Oh…augh! Fine! The last thing I need is any reminders of his mudball stinking up my ship!” A minute later, the hatch opened. Davon lunged. The woman’s eyes widened, but she was a trained combat specialist, and she reacted by instinct, leaping aside. The blade cut a shallow gash along her lef side. “What the hell? You lunatic!” She was wearing her sidearm. Damn. She might be Alliance, but she had been trained by the Empire, and failure to be armed if you were supposed to be (or being armed if you weren’t supposed to be) was usually punished by torture. She kicked herself over the rail of the landing ramp, tumbled perfectly into a shooter’s crouch, and brought the gun up, locked on Davon’s head. He tensed to roll away, trying to tumble forward to get back in knife range, but he knew he couldn’t. It was over. There was a flare and a flash and she tumbled to the ground, thin smoke trailing from her back. Jareth was holding a gun. Davon wasn’t sure which was surprising him more. That Jareth was there, that he was holding a blast pistol (for they were incredibly rare), or that he’d managed to hit a target. Then it all made sense. He nodded and spoke to Jareth. “I’m still back in Alliance prison. I’ve just gone mad.” Jareth shook his head. “No, no, you haven’t, but I did underestimate your resolve a bit…I was sure you’d waver another hour or two and I’d be gone. Getting soft. Now then, where do we go from here?” Jareth’s voice spoke Galactic with not even the subtlest hint of accent, much better than Davon’s own speech. This made no sense..no…maybe it did. “You’re not Jareth. A surgical copy?” Jareth smiled and shook his head. “No, it’s me. You’re just seeing something few people get to see. The real me.” “No… no, sorry. I’ve known Jareth all my life. He’s…. he’s my friend, and I like him, he’s funny and loyal and friendly, but he’s not you. You just shot a woman in cold blood, perfectly. He couldn’t kick a puppy without tearing up and would have trouble hitting a battlecruiser if he was standing inside it.” Davon began to grow angry. “Were is the real Jareth? Where is my friend?” “Standing in front of you.” “No. I spent my whole life protecting you…protecting him…you’re not him.” Jareth lowered the gun, but did not holster it. He took a step forward. “You mean, for example, when we were both six, and Gillin kept throwing things at me and then blaming me when the Akfra came to see what was going on?” “Yes. I hated him for bullying you like that. I recall I beat him but good. Was that supposed to impress me? You could have ripped every thought from Jareth’s mind in a dozen different ways. Why you’d impersonate him, I don’t know, but…” Jareth ignored this. “What happened to Gillin?” Davon thought back, far back…”The creek…he slipped on some rocks…drowned…stupid idiot, he deserved it.” Jareth smiled. “I agree. He did. So did Tommon, Kollan, Baleth…” Davon tried to dredge up those names. One was gored by a wild pig. One had suffered a lethal reaction to the communal stew. One had just gone missing in a winter storm… “You’re not saying…” “I am.” Jareth sighed. “Oh, don’t get me wrong. I really am grateful for all your attempts to help me, unnecessary though they were. I did what I could to pay you back. You made it into flight school when hardly any backworlders did, you got that exemption, you were always assigned to my fleet so I could keep an eye on you…” “No…no…I did things for you.” “Ir seemed letting you think so would make you happy.” Jareth sighed and spoke a word. His skin rippled. Cobwebs of light appeared, stretching over his face, and down his chest, across his arms, an intricate pattern of blues and greens, glowing all over his skin. Davon’s mouth opened. He gurgled once, then coughed, then managed to speak. “The…mark of the web…But…so large…so many….” Jareth nodded. “I was clever. The Emperor’s agents were cleverer…or at least better trained than I was at fourteen. They watched me early on, saw some things, then tested me in subtle ways. I was pegged for the Web early on. Half the time I was being 'punished' for some failure or another, I was being pumped full of memory drugs and learning, learning, learning. It took a lot to turn a backworlder with a talent for being more than he seemed into an agent of the Emperor, but, well, here I am.” He kept talking. “You would have been happy here, Davon. You would have found a wife, ran a farm, lived your life, died a content man. I…would not. I would have been outcast, lonely, and miserable, eventually probably killing myself. I was lucky they caught me that day, though I didn’t know it. There was nothing for me here, nothing a man of my gifts could accomplish…the Emperor took a seed from the barren rock and planted it in fertile soil. I’m not going to wither and die here.” “Why a cook?” “Why not? People ignore servants. We can hear anything, go anywhere. We’re invisible. Besides, do you know how many tasteless poisons there are?” Davon looked down at the gun. “So now what? You will make it seem that the Alliance officer and I killed each other? Or perhaps she just killed me, then flew off, and Jareth – without friends and family – will eventually be forgotten?” Jareth cocked his head. “That’s one possibility.” “One.” “Do you know who the Emperor was?” “The Emperor! Of course!” “He didn’t descend from the void in a chariot of fire, you know. Half a millennia ago, he was a soldier in the Navy Of The Stellar Concordance. He was of lowly birth, from a minor fringe world. He saw opportunities and he took them, and when the Concordance was weak, he moved to seize control of a few key worlds. Everything after that was anagathics and propaganda.” “You know this… how?” “It’s my job to know things. Especially things people aren’t supposed to know.” He didn’t say anything else. He just watched Davon. Davon watched him back, then laughed. “It’s a ludicrous plan.” “So was showing up to steal a spaceship armed with a breadknife.” “There’s only the two of us!” “There will be more.” “We’ll most likely die.” “We’ll die anyway. It’s just a question of whether you want to die here…or out there.” “What if I say no?” “I can find someone else, but I’d rather work with someone I know and trust. That’s a pretty small set of people.” “You wouldn’t want the throne for yourself? I mean, if we ever managed it?” “Davon, would we even be having this conversation if I was the type to be blatant about wielding power? You get the throne, the power, the women… I get to be certain you know who keeps you there. If, as you say, we ever managed it.” Davon thought a moment more, then pointed to the officer's corpse. “Right. Roll that onto the ship, we’ll space it when we hit orbit. From here…” “Zonvazar 6. There’s a class-3 dreadnought there, with a loyalist crew, thinking of piracy. I think we can direct their targets. A war hero like you ought to impress them enough to get a posting. Besides,you’re bringing along a talented cook. The current captain will appreciate that.” They walked up the ramp, dragging the Alliance officer’s corpse. “So, Jareth, how many tasteless poisons do you know how to make?” “Seventeen.”
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Fiction 
