Old Hate - Chapter One

Old Hate

Chapter One

by David Pidgeon

Sarah watched as the stranger entered the saloon. He came to the bar, bought his usual bottle of whiskey and took it and a glass over to his usual seat in the corner. He was a tall man, and lean but he tried to hide that under the thick coat that he wore despite the sweltering heat. He sat in the corner and, as the day wasted itself away, slowly but steadily depleted his supply of liquor. He watched everything, she saw from behind the bar, with a fierce intensity. He studied the face of each person that entered. He was looking for someone. It wasn't for the ambience or the watered down whiskey that he'd been coming here for over two weeks. He was hunting someone and he wouldn't leave until he had found them.

She busied herself with cleaning up, hoping to avoid the ire of Emmett again. Her face was still sore from the last time he'd been unhappy with her work. She tried to make herself busy enough to forget the man in the corner.

She almost had, when he spoke.

“Are you Harmon Merriweather?” he asked, in a low and quiet voice.

She looked up and saw that there was a man standing at the bar, looking at her. He wore an extremely faded grey coat, the kind Sarah knew from the war, and a military style cap. His eyes glittered as he heard the man speak and a grimace came across his face. He turned, slowly and spent a good long moment studying the man in the corner.

“I reckon I am” he said, a drawl to his voice.

“I'm Jonah Walsh and you killed my father”

Sarah sensed, not saw, the man's surprise and saw the movement as his hand reached for the gun at his belt. He had barely touched it when a gunshot rang out, deafening Sarah and leaving a loud ringing in her ears for quite some time after. Harmon Merriweather staggered backwards one step and fell heavily against the bar before falling to the ground with a thud. Her eyes flitted to the man in the corner who remained seated but now his right hand held a smoking pistol. He kept it trained on the downed figure until he was certain there was no remaining threat and then neatly holstered it again in one simple but elegant movement.

He reached across, picked up his bottle of whiskey and stood with a slight stagger to his step. He tipped his hat to Sarah, spared a glare at the body on the floor and walked out.

The decision was instantaneous and unplanned, even to her. She threw her cleaning rag down and rushed around the bar to the body of Harmon Merriweather. She pried the pistol from his rapidly cooling hand and rushed outside, hot on the heels of Jonah Walsh.

She spotted him sauntering down the side-walk as if nothing had happened. She called his name and he turned, as she closed the distance between the two.

"My name is Sarah and I want you to take me with you, please"

His eyes gazed deeply into hers and there was only a moment's hesitation. He nodded and gestured for her to follow him. She followed closely.

They rode out of town, the two of them on his roan stallion and they made camp in the ruins of an old house as the sun began to sink beyond the horizon and night crept in.

They sat in silence for a long time before he spoke.

"The man you work for, he hit you?"

"Yes. Often and hard. He wasn't happy with me working there, but he couldn't find anyone else and I had nowhere else to go so I dealt with it"

He nodded.

"How long since... your father?" she asked

He stared into the fire.

"Before I was born. He was trying to flee with my mother and they came for him and killed him. He gave up his life in order that she and I, although he did not know of me at the time, would live."

"What of your mother, where is she?"

"She passed"

"I'm sorry"

"You needn't be, it was some time ago. A few years now. Now it's just me and the horse"

She nodded and they both sat in silence again for a while.

"Who are they, the men who killed your father?"

"They were soldiers. Well, they called themselves soldiers but they were just murderers. Border ruffians outta Kansas, trouble-makers who didn't really care for following orders. My father was an officer in the Union who made trouble for them and they didn't take too kindly to it. They hunted him across a few states and eventually pinned him down when he was with ma"

"What are you going to do now?"

"There's still a slew of 'em out there for me to kill. Jameson and his whole bunch of bastards. Still at least five, by my count. Merriweather wasn't the worst of them by any account, but he was the easiest to find. I've got a trail on Kent, one of them, and I intend to follow it west come sun-up tomorrow"

She nodded

"You don't have to stay with me, if'n you don't want to. I can drop you somewhere safe, I can give you some money"

She nodded again, but he knew then that she wouldn't allow herself to be dropped off anywhere at all.

They settled down to sleep and the stars wheeled overhead, mute and ever-present witnesses to their dreams, their rotation through the heavens heralding the coming of the sun for one more day and a day that would see the continuation of Jonah Walsh's campaign of revenge.

Old Hate - Prologue

Old Hate

Prologue
By David Pidgeon

1865

She barely heard the sound over the pouring rain, a rap against the glass of the window that caught her attention when it was repeated. She looked up from her book and could see only darkness outside. Putting the book down, she stood and walked across to the window. She hesitated before it. The noise came again and without making the decision, she unlatched it and opened it. As soon as she did, a figure entered from outside. It was a man, dripping wet. She drew in a breath to scream or shout or make some sort of noise, but he spoke.
"Jane" came his voice, hoarse but familiar.
"Hiram?"
He looked up at her, that familiar face and those same green eyes. She threw her arms around him and held him tightly to her, ignorant of his sodden clothing. He embraced her briefly before pushing her away slightly.
"Jane, I am terribly happy to see you but I am soaking wet. Do you have a something to dry myself with?"
"Hiram, what are you doing here?"
"I told you I would return, did I not?"
Tears came to her eyes and a smile to her lips, as did a scolding tone to her voice.
"Hiram, you know it isn't safe"
"I told you I would return. I gave you my word. Something dry, my love?"
"Get out of those clothes Hiram. I've still some of yours stored away in the closet"
He began to undress and in a moment of awkwardness, she turned away from him.
"I've missed you"
"You've no idea how I have missed you"
She opened the closet and moved things about in the bottom of it, pulling out the stored clothes.
"We have to leave, Jane. Tonight"
She turned to look at him, forgetting her bashfulness of a moment ago as he stood naked before her. He stared intently at her, with a look she knew.
"You know that I cannot argue with you when you look at me like that my Hiram, but why must we leave?"
"They know that I am coming here. I believe, also, that they would do you harm to get to me. I cannot have that."
He stepped forward to hold her, free of the wet clothes. He was warm, despite the rain outside and she let herself sink into him. Her lips found his, her clothes were lost and they fell onto the bed and melted together.

They lay together in the bed when he heard it, the low rumbling sound of several horses galloping.
"We must leave now" he said and stood.
She simply nodded at him.
"I'm afraid you will not have time to pack" he said, as he began to dress.
She nodded again, trying not to be afraid.
Fully clothed, he began to root through the small pack he'd carried in with him. She studied him as he did so, admiring the man she loved. He was short but had long arms and legs for his height, an unusually rangy frame. He had jet black hair and glittering green eyes, his usually neatly trimmed beard was starting to grow out. He looked tired, she thought.
He turned to look at her and could not help but smile as he saw her watching him. Then his look became hard.
"You must dress now Jane, and dress for travel."
He removed his hand from the pack, holding in it a pistol that gleamed dully under the lantern light of the room. He checked that it was loaded and, satisfied, hung it over his shoulders from the leather thong that was attached to it, leaving it swinging close to his hip on the right side.
Jane was dressed quickly and stood before him ready.
"We cannot go back out the window, we must go downstairs and hope that we can leave through the back."
She nodded.

As he opened the back door of the hotel Jane lived in, there was the crack of a gunshot from across the street and the doorframe near his head suddenly splintered. Hiram sprang backwards, keeping Jane behind him and closing the door into the street
He looked at her and she saw fear in his eyes.
"Jane, they have us surrounded."
Tears rolled down her cheeks.
A voice boomed in from the rain.
"Come out Walsh, we know you're in there" hollered one of the men outside, "come out now and we won't hurt your woman. She's free to go".
Jane shook her head. Hiram placed his hands on her shoulders and stared at her.
"We have no choice, my love. I had no choice in coming back to you and I have no choice in saving your life."
"Please, no. Please Hiram, I can't lose you again. Please" she said, weeping and grabbing tightly on to him, as if trying to hold him there.
Tenderly but firmly, he took her hands into his and pulled her to him in a crushing embrace.
His breath moved her hair as he whispered into her ear "I will always love you, in this life and the next" before releasing her.
She slumped to the floor, weeping.
Hiram opened the door.
"I'm coming out"
Through the tears she could barely see him go.

The Dead Man of Space - Chapter One

The Dead Man of Space

Chapter One
By David Pidgeon

Corman Antrus awoke on a metal slab in a sterile room. The room was white in colour but glowing with a faint blue luminescence from a source he couldn't identify. He couldn't remember how he got there, what had happened before. He barely remembered that his name was Corman Antrus. He tried to lift his right arm, but couldn't. He couldn't move at all. This instilled a faint quiver of panic in him which then caused him to notice something else. Normally when panicked, despite his hardy mental makeup, his pulse rose and his respiration sped up. But there was nothing. He was not breathing, his heart was not beating, there was no blood pumping through his veins.
"I'm dead!" he thought, struggling to beat down the wave of existential terror that came with such a thought.
Desperately, he threw every effort he had into moving the fingers on his right hand.
Nothing.
It remained still, there wasn't even any perception of effort. He tried again, aiming to do nothing more than wiggle the furthest extremity of the little finger of that hand.
Still nothing.
He heard a sound, all of a sudden, the whoosh of an automatic door opening and footsteps entering the room. He sensed more than saw movement above his head and then a figure walked into view.
Gaunt, skeletal and pale was the man. He was dressed in white laboratory clothing with a lab coat to complete the image. His eyes were sunken and hollow, more like black recesses in his skull than a human eye. His lips were thin and cold and blue, curved up into what Corman would later discover to be a permanent sneer.

"Hello, Mr Antrus" he said. His voice carried the effect of the sneer, it was high and reedy and sounded excruciatingly arrogant and pompous.
"No, no, don't get up" he added and snickered to himself, all the while staring down at the man on the table.
He pulled a small remote out of his pocket and said "this should make the conversation more interesting" as he pushed a button.
Sensation, or at least a faint whisper of sensation, flooded back into Corman's body. Instantly, responding as he had been preparing himself to do, he launched up off the table and threw himself at the interloper, intending on tackling him and getting a few answers out of him.

Before he laid a single hand on the man, there was a tremendous flash of light and a distant sensation of pain. He felt himself smash back against the metal slab on which he had been lying, before tumbling to the floor.
"I expected as much Mr Antrus. After all, you are a 'man of action' as it were. However my personal shield is more than adequate to keep me from harm, particularly at the brutish hands of one such as yourself.
Regaining his composure, Corman finally asked the man "what am I doing here?".
"Well Mr Antrus, there's quite an interesting answer to your rather simple question. To put it quite simply, I have returned you to life and imbued with you with increased and enhanced capabilities, for the purposes of you working for me."
"You? I don't even know who you are, how do you know I will work for you?" returned Corman, beginning to find himself angry.
"Oh you will, believe me. You'll quite simply have no choice in the matter. My name is Gardos, Mr Antrus. I am the creator and owner of the Gardos Agency which is, to put it bluntly, the last group keeping order in the universe".


Several minutes later Corman was dressed, having been directed to an appropriate suit of clothes by Gardos. They were seated in Gardos' office, facing one another across the desk which was a massive dense slab of some marvellously black and polished substance.
"We found your escape capsule, Mr Antrus, drifting through space some three centuries after you had launched from the doomed spaceship Achilles. You yourself were dead, having succumbed to the radiation of deep space after the capsule drifted through a particularly energetic cloud of particles. Due to conditions in the capsule, which we honestly know little about, your body was preserved perfectly. It was entirely intact. In the time since your death, there has been quite some research and development going on in the field of psychic energies, to the point where many of our citizens are possessed of psychic abilities far beyond those even thought possible in your time."
Corman slumped into his chair as Gardos continued talking. Three centuries, it was too long a time to fathom. And the fact that he had been dead. Sure, Corman has come close to death on more than one occasion, but to consider the fact that he had finally succumb was almost too much for him to grasp. Almost. But there was no choice other than to accept it and confront it.
"How is then, Mr Gardos, that I have come to be sitting here? And am I truly alive? My heart does not beat, my lungs do not breathe."
"It was an amazing process Mr Antrus, the first of its kind. First of all, we had to capture and restore your 'psychic imprint' as we call it, the thing that makes you unique. What used to be thought of as a soul. Once we had done that, we were able to transform your body into a vessel for said imprint. As you were dead, you no longer had any need for your internal organs. We removed them-"
"You removed my organs?!" shouted the dead man, leaping to his feet.
Gardos calmly regarded him, not reacting. "Of course we did, there was no need to keep them, you didn't need them and wouldn't be relying on them for function. It was quite simply necessary. Now, sit down and let me continue"
Corman sat, still glaring angrily.
"We removed your internal organs and replaced them with a variety of devices. In your cranial cavity, where your brain was, we placed a Psychic Field Generator. This device had several purposes. It would contain your psychic imprint and it would give that imprint control over your body. It would also give your formidable pyschic abilities. But, more importantly than that, it can generate a null-field. Within a null-field, no psychic abilities can take place.
You see, there are people who naturally generate a null-field, but they have no control over it and can never acquire psychic abilities. You on the other hand, can turn the null-field on and off and are already able to perform many psychic feats."
Corman's look had softened into one of astonishment.
"I'm psychic now?" he asked.
"Did I not just finish explaining that Mr Antrus? We have several capable trainers and psycho-scientists here who will be able to help you understand and make use of your newfound abilities. But that will come later.
Now, the next thing we did was install a small radio-nucleic generator into your chest, which powers all of your other abilities. This generator has enough power to run a spaceship and will last you for many years. It is as compact, powerful and rugged as we could possibly make it and given the scientific abilities of me and my organisation, that's saying quite a bit.
We also installed various weapons and sensory systems into your body. You can now emit offensive beams from your hands, you can hear and see with the greatest sensitivity, you can hear radio and see magnetic fields. You have a projectile weapon in your mouth. You are quite thoroughly armoured and armed, Mr Antrus. None of this has been activated yet, for your own safety and my own."
"I'm a walking weapon" said Corman, looking down at his own hands as if they weren't his own."
"There's one more thing" added Gardos. "You aren't just a walking weapon. The radio-nucleic generator in your chest has certain safety features that can, in extreme circumstances, be overidden manually. You are more than a walking weapon Mr Antrus.
You are a walking bomb, the destructive power of which has rarely been seen".