“Eogan.”
The boy looked at his father, sprawled on the bunk of his cell. It was the first time the old man had spoken since the boy had carried him back from the morgue. His voice, though weak, was surprisingly clear.
“He’s coming.”
“Who is?”
“Radique.” With what seemed like tremendous effort, Artagan Truax lifted himself up onto his elbows and faced his son. “Coming … to … kill me.”
“But I thought you saved his life.”
“Doesn’t matter.” The old man shook his head. “Since I helped the Zabrak summon the Bando Gora here …”
“But—”
“Quiet, boy.” Artagan’s voice grew firm, edged with a vestige of its former strength. “There’s something else … I need to tell you. Something I’ve never said before.”
Eogan waited.
“Before you were born … your mother and I were … both part of the Bando Gora. Thought they held the secrets of the galaxy. It was the wrong road, but … we didn’t know it at the time. Even when …” Artagan took in a shuddering breath. “Even after she died. I stayed with them. You were just a baby. There was no way out.”
There was silence in the cell.
“The day came, sixteen years ago … I heard them plotting to kill Radique. To ambush him, hijack his weapons shipment. Radique was powerful, even then. I saw my chance for both of us. I thought if I broke with the Gora at that moment … saved Radique’s life … earned his trust … then at least you’d have an advocate, somebody to watch over you …”
Artagan broke off into a coughing fit, then gradually regained his voice.
“At first the plan worked. When the shooting started, I had a ship ready. We got away with Radique. He left us at the first spaceport—promised he’d be in touch. To repay his debt. But …” Artagan drew in a sharp, painful breath and released it. “I didn’t hear from him for years. We traveled … you and me. Holding fights for money. I knew it couldn’t last forever. Kept waiting to hear back. Finally, years later, a message arrived. It was him. Told me that he could help us. Here …”
“So you brought me back,” Eogan said. “To this place.”
The old man nodded. “When we first got here, I sought him out. And I found him—or he found me. Within the first month, he made contact. Offered me a job helping him build weapons here. He offered me protection. For myself, and for you. All I had to give him … were my eyes.” Artagan shook his head. “I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t be blinded for him. So he disappeared again. Until now. When I sent for … the Bando Gora. And now. He’s coming … to finish me.”
Eogan stood up.
“I won’t let him.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m … already dead anyway.”
“Not like this,” Eogan said, taking his father’s hand and squeezing it.
“Sorry, boy,” a voice said behind him. “But it’s going to be exactly like that.”
Eogan turned around. A half dozen inmates—humans and non-humans alike—were standing there blocking the entryway. It took less than a second for Eogan to register that none of them had eyes. How had they found their way up here?
Then he saw the birds. One of them opened its beak and let out a shrill, croaking caw.
“Mr. Radique sent us,” the blind man said. He was clutching two long shafts of sharpened steel in both hands, long and gleaming like a pair of homemade machetes. All the others were similarly armed. “To deal with the old man for summoning the Bando Gora to the Hive.” He shook his head. “Our actions have consequences, don’t they? Just as all rivers lead to the sea, their paths may differ, but the end result is never in doubt.”
“No.” Eogan stepped toward them. “You can’t—”
The blind man loosed a keening shriek and flung himself at Eogan, both arms spinning. Eogan ducked and lunged for the man’s knees, and felt a wave of muscle slam into his cheekbone, driving him to the floor. His thoughts sucked down a star-shot funnel of half-conscious agony.
Feet were trampling him, stomping him down. From somewhere on the other side of the cell, his father was trying to talk, struggling to make himself heard. Eogan put up his hand. It was hopeless.
“Father, no!”
Lifting his head, Eogan saw them surrounding his father, swinging the blades down onto him, flinging up great gaudy fans of blood as they hacked away at what remained of his body. They attacked like animals, as if their lack of sight had somehow blinded them to any sort of human mercy.
In the midst of it all, the Zabrak’s words comparing him to his father echoed through Eogan’s mind: You don’t have his heart … you’ll never be half the man he is.
Eogan shook his head.
Not anymore.
Something changed inside him, something deep and final. Without even being aware that he was doing so, he leapt forward and felt his body—his muscles and his adrenaline and the very blood in his veins—flying into motion, launching into a series of lightning-fast strikes.
Every part of him was in motion at once, fists and feet swinging out, delivering a blizzard of punches and kicks that seemed to connect with the six blind men simultaneously in a blur of speed and shattering bone. They were falling at either side of him now, their blades clattering to the cell floor, and Eogan knew that up until this moment, if he’d ever attempted such an assault, he almost certainly would have died. It was nothing like what he’d imagined—as if he’d given up his body and had been brought back to life by something profoundly faster and more powerful than himself, resurrected for a singular moment of triumph.
When it was over, he dropped his fists to his sides and stood gasping amid a pile of bodies, his arms soaked in blood to the elbows.
A voice from the middle of the pile: “Eogan?”
“Father.” He came forward and yanked one of Radique’s men to the side. The old man’s body was there, horribly chopped and hacked, but somehow still clinging to the last scraps of consciousness.
Artagan held up one bloody hand. He was smiling.
“The Fifty-Two Fists,” he managed.
Eogan felt the walls of his throat swelling. He couldn’t speak.
“I’m so proud of you.”
The boy dropped to his knees and embraced him. Even now, there was thunder in the old man’s chest, the battered heart pounding defiantly even as it came to the final moments of his life.
He held the old man like that until the thunder stopped.
Some uncertain amount of time later, he heard footsteps again, entering the open hatchway. Looking around, Eogan saw Jagannath standing there. The Zabrak was staring at the pile of bodies strewn throughout the cell, the makeshift weapons and slowly drying blood. At last the eyes of the red-skinned inmate came to meet Eogan’s.
“You did all this?”
The boy said nothing.
“Your father—”
“Dead,” Eogan said.
The Zabrak nodded, as if he’d expected nothing less. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“The cargo bay.”
Eogan frowned. “The—”
“I have unfinished business there.”