Hard Luck Hermit

There were no functional elevators left in the city of Sumontsa. Kamak didn’t mind taking the stairs. It gave him a little time to decompress. He marched up a dusty stairwell until they reached the roof of the building, and Kamak took a seat on a long-dead air conditioning unit. Vatan was right behind him, winded after marching up the stairwell. Kamak let her catch her breath.

“So. What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Vatan said. “It was after you sold the Hermit. She went to see it and...stopped. Whatever spite or regret was keeping her alive just stopped working. She was dead a few weeks later.”

Kamak rubbed a hand over his brows.

“What’d you...do?” He asked. “Bury her out on the farm, or…?”

“No. Stellar.”

Vatan pointed up at the sky, on a trajectory far away from Tannis. It was one of the few thing Catay had ever been clear about. After she was gone, she wanted to be sent to fly forever.

“That way, I think,” Vatan said. “I’m not sure where, exactly. They said in about three-hundred years she’ll pass near Kan-1 station’s orbit.”

“Where she met Orvan,” Kamak said. Catay had met Vatan’s father on that far flung station, as she and Kamak rendezvoused with the other members of their first assignment. “She’d like that.”

“I guess so,” Vatan mumbled. Catay had never told her anything about her father or how they’d met. “I tried to call you, Kamak. You never answered.”

“Had you blocked,” Kamak said. “Per Catay’s orders. She and I agreed it’d be best if we didn’t see each other.”

“And me?” Vatan said bitterly. “She just got to make that choice for me? Like every other fucking choice in my life?”

Kamak had heard plenty of people in mourning throughout his life, and only now did he realize that Vatan was not mourning. There were regrets, certainly, but there was also anger. Lots of it.

“Vatan, your mom was trying to take care of you,” Kamak said.

“Take care of me? She wanted someone to take care of her,” Vatan said. “She got a live-in nurse and a reminder of her dead boyfriend, I got to grow up with no friends, running maintenance on carbon-capture tubes and wiping my mom’s ass.”

Vatan stood and grabbed at her arms, digging fingernails so deep it left divots in her skin.

“And now she’s gone, and I have nothing,” Vatan continued. “She spent the last of her money blasting her corpse into space. If the people in this office hadn’t taken pity on me I’d have starved to death on this fucking rock.”

She kicked a discarded piece of metal across the rooftop, and it clattered against another piece of rooftop detritus. The sound of colliding garbage echoed across the rooftops of an empty city.

“Piece of shit,” Vatan mumbled under her breath. In a rare occurrence, Kamak considered his next words carefully.

“Look, your mom made some mistakes,” Kamak said. “But she loved you.”

“If this is what her love got me, I wish she’d hated me,” Vatan said. “Look at you! She hated you, and you’re rich, and famous, and you’ve got a crew, and you’ve traveled the universe!”

“And I’ve been shot seven times, so don’t act like I’ve got an easy ride,” Kamak said.

“Sun above, I would get shot right now just for the novelty,” Vatan said. “I have spent my entire life in this wasteland, with nothing but my bitch of a mother for company.”

Kamak almost jumped to Catay’s defense again, but he held his tongue. Nothing he could say was what Vatan wanted to hear right now.

“You’ve had it rough, kid,” Kamak said. “I won’t bother arguing. But you’ve got your life now, and a hell of a lot of it still in front of you. You can do what you want with it.”

“What I want is to leave, but I can’t,” Vatan said. “I never went to school, I get paid barely anything, and I have no connections.”

Vatan turned around and locked onto Kamak.

“Except you.”

The force with which Vatan grabbed him by the shoulders nearly bowled Kamak over.

“Get me off this rock,” Vatan pleaded. “Take me with you.”

“No.”

Kamak brushed her off and stood up without a moment’s hesitation.

“That would’ve been a bad idea before, and it’s worse now,” Kamak said.

“Please, Kamak,” Vatan begged. The rejection was bringing her closer to tears than talking about her own dead mother.

“Vatan, I came here to warn you for a reason,” Kamak said. “There’s trouble, as bad as it was with Morrakesh, maybe worse. Someone is going to come after you, and they’re not just going to scare you the way Morrakesh’s goons did.”

“All the more reason for you to take me with you,” Vatan said. “You kept Corey alive through that entire mess, I can’t possibly be worse than some Uncontacted kid.”

“You can, actually,” Kamak said. “Corey was just an idiot. You’re naive.”

“Naive?”

“Naive and an idiot,” Kamak clarified. “You think my life is you way out of trouble? Out of misery? Maybe I managed to stumble my way into money, maybe I ‘kept’ Corvash alive, but the list of people I let die is a hell of a lot longer. Orvan. Vidus, Epper, Stav.”

Vatan stood silent. She recognized every one of those names, from the stories of bounty hunting Kamak had told her on his rare visits.

“Do you need me to keep going? I’ve got dozens,” Kamak said. “Kiz Timeka. Apall. Ghul. Quid. Those are some of the more recent ones. All dead, and all with one thing in common: meeting me.”

“Kamak...that’s not your fault.”

“Well it can’t be a fucking coincidence, now can it?” Kamak shouted. “I’ve seen the pattern for a long time, Vatan. That’s why my best friend is a bulletproof monster, because he’s the only person in the fucking universe I can count on to not die!”

Kamak’s shout echoed off the empty rooftops. Hearing his own voice bouncing back at him made Kamak realize how far off the rails he’d gone. He cursed under his breath, turned his back on Vatan, and pulled out a datapad.

“What are you doing?”

“A transfer,” Kamak grunted. He pressed the final few buttons. “There. Enough money to buy yourself a ticket offworld and whatever else you need to start over.”

There was an innate temptation to check her bank account right away, but Vatan resisted it. She had other priorities.

“There’s a contact set too,” Kamak continued. “If you’re in danger, call. And no, it’s not mine. Some government freaks who are watching my back. They’ll probably save your ass if you’re about to die. Don’t bother calling for anything else.”

“And what about your contact?”

“You’re not getting that,” Kamak said. “I came here to warn you and leave. There’s your warning. Now I’m leaving.”

Vatan froze for only a moment, and then let out a caustic grunt that sounded like a crude mix of a chuckle and a sob.

“All that,” she scoffed. “And then you run away.”

“Better for both of us,” Kamak said. He held his datapad in a clenched fist and headed for the stairs. “Take the money and run. Lie low. Maybe change your name.”

The decaying door squeaked on metal hinges as Kamak threw it open.

“And don’t ever come looking for me.”

The door’s slam echoed as Kamak vanished. Vatan stayed on the rooftop for a long while, all alone again.

***

As he stormed down the stairs, Kamak took his datapad and punched in a very recent contact.

“Kamak-”

“You should’ve told me she was dead, you cunts,” Kamak spat.

“Ah. Our apologies,” the Voice said. “We didn’t think you’d take it well, coming from us.”

“Oh, thank you for the consideration of my feelings,” Kamak said. He felt like he was going to throw up again. “You owe me for this, assholes.”

“I imagine you’ll accept our protecting the girl as repayment.”

“Yes,” Kamak said, with some reluctance. “Someone good. Not any fucking beat cops.”

“We’ll have one of our more experienced agents keeping Vatan safe, Kamak,” the Voice said. “Would you like updates on her status?”

“No. Just...keep her safe,” Kamak said.

“And keep her away from you.”

“Same thing,” Kamak grunted, before hanging up.