((NOTE: Bit darker than my usual stuff, I'm not yet sure if this is canon for N'maro. Call it an experiment and of course, leave feedback))
// Subject Access Request - A33 - 3G98 - Makari //
// Recordings - Entry 3 //
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"You hear a lot of sentiment from stories about killing. Those bloody Gallente holos seem to be the worst offenders, lot'a sobbing, regret. They seem to have a thing for the tragic warrior image. Pft.
Thing with killing another sentient, it's an unstoppable force of nature. Only people who kill by accident have the privilege of clean regret. Others, duty-focused people, soldiers, cops and the like get twisted, never quite know how they'll look coming out the other end... Then of course there's sadistic bastards who get off on it, less said there...
Of course none of that applies to capsuleers, fuckin eggers. Cruel irony that the universes greatest killers are best protected from being killed. Anyway, the fourth group you get is trained, purpose-built killers. Different from sociopaths and such, though few can say how. They don't need war-cries, they don't need to be beaten into shape. Another ironic twist, probably the least body count of the last three groups combined. Probably because we get to know every intimate detail involved in ending someone.
'Bout 27 years ago, there's me. Green as hell, gung-ho little shite to boot. Just gotten out of training and couldn't wait to crack some skulls. Idiot.
Four of us there were, running our show from some craphole on what would become the Hek trade hub. We ran a vice op, generously termed. What it meant was busting organised crime in-system, no questions, minimal oversight, any means necessary. I tell you, rookie's goddam wet dream.
About 5 months in we get a call, a mark we'd been watching, some prick named Zaakhev was making his move, getting his product off-world. Mostly 'livestock'. Nasty piece work. This was before the Cartel started muscling in of course, with their particular brand of bad fucker. As it was told to me, he lured folk like refugees and homeless out with promise of work in the frontier systems then, well... there's never a nice way to describe how someone becomes a slave.
I remember being so fuckin' angry, gritting my teeth the whole way to the intercept. That whole lack of oversight thing, well, it mean that all the methods of ending this bastard I was coming up with, I might actually get the chance to make them happen.
We come up to this warehouse, dingy little front operation. No guards, which made us a little suspicious. But out front there's this kid... couldn't have been older than 15, Sebbie I think. Only living thing there as far as we could see.
I shot her, let's just get that said first. The trafficker clans got famous in later years for getting scared kids to soak up bullets. She pulled a flaylock while our guard was down. Just kept pressing the trigger. Two of us went down, and I did the only thing I'd been trained to do for the situation. Two shots, centre of mass. And that was that.
I'd killed before. You don't end up a Valklear for unpaid parking fines, true enough. But that hit me. Maybe cause she was a kid, maybe because she looked so terified, maybe cause she killed my squadmates, maybe that was the one to just push me over... but that force I told you before, it gut-punched me. I didn't cry. I didn't shout out in rage, I didn't swear some blood oath. Nothing so dramatic. I just stared. I still remember the exact pattern on her shirt, how the red just spread, erasing it. Time seemed to stop.
The other shooter still breathing in my squad, she sees me, I'm sure as hell not seeing or hearing her. Comes up and slaps the shit out of me. I don't remember a lot of what she said, lot of swearing as you might expect, but one thing stick out. 'armoured front, step forward, expend munitions.'
Nice little bit of philosophy wrapped up in tactics there. It was basic close quarters stuff, drilled into us from day one in training. Keep your most protected side facing forward, keep walking towards the engagement, keep the firefight going. Maybe she meant 'get up and finish the mission', or maybe she did think I was a useless bastard needing basic directions. Who knows.
We enter the warehouse and that's exactly what I did. I just focused on the routine, the doctrine and the feeling faded to numbness. It was almost clinical; target sighted, armoured front, step forward, expend munitions until engagement closes. We cleared that warehouse, room-by-room. I barely remember Zaakhev. He tried to flank us, came around some shipping crates, tapped him right in the skull. Job done.
I think back to that a lot recently. That's when I became that fourth kind of killer. Over 20 years of service, and I remember cold, surgical details of each person I ended. But no regret came. Or not until recently at least.
Capsule combat is detached enough that it's just numbers. That kind of face-to-face brutality is not something I've been well-practised in these past few years. It's like a sudden quiet, and that lets things slip through. I remember that warehouse... that kid... more frequently than I should. What kind of killer am I?
These days I'm not so sure."
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Author
Topic: Short Story: Clean Kill (Read 931 times)