The Sac'a'rith Read Online Free Page A

Narcion was still faster and more nimble than me by far, but I was slowly gaining ground on him. Any thought of leaving when my year was up had vanished long before that time came. I could not explain it, but I instinctively knew that serving with him was where I was meant to be.
    Over the years he spoke very little about anything other than study. If I raised a question, he would just say, “Zah’rak, you must focus on your training. There is not much time left,” and leave it unanswered. This was mildly frustrating, but nothing that a lifetime of slavery had not taught me to deal with.
    He did occasionally disappear for short periods, leaving me with exercises and other work to do. I could not work out what he did while he was away, or where he went, since our ship was nowhere near any stations. He simply vanished.
    One morning, however, Narcion surprised me. “No training today. We have a job to do,” he said.
    “A job?” I repeated, surprised.
    “Yes; it will be a great opportunity for you,” he said.
    “How so?” I asked.
    “You will finally get to see the real reason I am out here, and if you do well, you can move on to serious training,” he said, going to the bridge to lay in our course.
    I wondered what he meant by “serious training”, because the last few years had surely been no walk in the park. When I reached the bridge he said, “Strap yourself in; we are about to jump.”
    Once we had cleared jump space, I saw in front of us a large, obsolete-looking space station. I guessed it to be a remote trading outpost, no doubt with exactly the sort of inhabitants whose company Donovan would have enjoyed.
    “Where are we?” I asked.
    “Petra 37c, an old mining outpost,” he replied.
    “But I do not see anything to mine,” I said.
    “They mined it all out and moved on. The station has become a storage depot run by the local government,” he said.
    “So what’s the job then?” I asked.
    “That station has a problem we are being paid to solve,” he said as he punched some codes into the communications array and began to approach the station.
    Narcion slowly drew close to the station and connected to one of the docking arms. As we docked I felt a cold chill run down my spine. I involuntarily reacted to it, and Narcion said, “That is a good sign.”
    I could not think of any way in which I would interpret that reaction as a ‘good sign’, but decided to wait and see what he was up to.
    “Follow me,” he said as he made for the exit hatch. Once there he donned his full battle gear, which told me something major must be going on because he almost never wore armor, even into battle. He complained it would slow him down.
    As I got my own gear ready I said, “Before we go out there, I’d like to know a little more about what we are up against.”
    “This is one of those cases where the less you know beforehand the better off you are. Let’s just say that on this station there are some creatures we need to remove.”
    “Creatures the military could not handle?”
    “Yes, but we can. Come,” he said as he swiftly clicked on his helmet and left the ship.
    I followed him off once I had my own helmet secured and drew my weapons. I had no idea what I was walking into and needed to be ready to react. He paused at the bottom of the exit ramp and said, “They are close. They know we are here, but they do not yet know who we are. This is good.”
    “Where?” I asked.
    “In the corridors and heading towards us. This area is too open for a fight. Let’s find a more secure position,” he said and rushed off.
    My massive legs and superior gait made it easy for me to match his raw speed, but his agility made it very hard to keep up with him through the twists and turns of the corridors. Soon he found a narrow corridor with a dead end and quickly set up some devices all around the area.
    “This spot will work perfectly,” he said. He walked a short distance away from the area and stood there,