Silent Fury

The sky burned with silent fury as the shuttle arched its ascent into the dark spaces above the sea of dunes. With any luck, it will reach a planet like Quidos, unload more passengers, refuel, and continue traveling to safer planets unopposed.

Mara watched the vessel streak ever heavenward, the white-hot thrusters becoming as infinitesimal as the stars they raced towards, until nothing was left to suggest that the shuttle had ever landed on Tetrax Minor at all.

Nothing except Mara herself.

Mara hoisted her rifle over her shoulder as she got on the crawler, an industrial-made speeder shifting to the shade of coppery rust attached to wheels and caterpillar tracks for all-terrain transportation. It was the only vehicle offered to her that could survive the terrain. All it required was a simple code, and the machine would roar to life.

Mara plugged in the correct numbers in sequence. The monitors flashed a healthy green, the crawler rustled as a plume of smoke burst from the exhaust, and yet not a sound was uttered; a storm without thunder.

Mara revved the thrusters and sped forward towards Tetrax Minor's only community town. The silence wrapped around her like a cloak.

Tetrax Minor was a desolate planet for a quarter of a billion years--its gravitational pull made it too far from its sun for most years, and then suddenly way too close for the other years. The conditions were too harsh for any kind of life to realistically survive, so it lived its existence more as a rock than a planet. That was, until humanity had decided that a few terraformers could reinvent Tetrax Minor into a planet not only sustainable, but accommodating for human life, and serve as one of the many planetary outposts of the growing territory.

It would only be three standard years after the first Tetrax Minor community was established that people would discover the planet's only domestic life. Months after that discovery would lead to the complete desertion of the settlement.

It was that very settlement that Mara would first begin her search.

'Talking Town' was nothing more than a circle of pre-fabricated homes, metal crates with symmetrical cut doorways bolted in the sides, lined dutifully at the sides of a massive dirt path given the inspiration to be a road. As Mara rode through the town, her eyes kept trained on the doors, expecting any one of them to swing open and reveal...any number of people she expected.

A sheriff.

A vagabond.

Even him.

She knew he wouldn't be here, wouldn't live a mile away from the only spaceport on the planet, much less live anywhere nearby a living soul that could see his face and match it to the bounty boards.

It wouldn't be that easy, and she doesn't want it to be easy. She could feel her palms burning like pokers as she gripped the handlebars of the crawler; the burn in her hands was only an ember compared to the inferno inside her mind, a blood-red plain filled with violent delights for one Darson Kode.

Darson Kode. A spark lit inside her chest from the name, the ember of cold fury transmuting into something explosive, something primal, something hungry for blood.

Darson Kode was the one who unmade her and left the pieces that would reshape themselves into the hunter Mara had become.

One of the doors slid open. Without the familiar, grinding noise of the rusted metal hinges rubbing against each other, even something as simple as an opening door made Mara's heart quicken its pace. She reached for the pistol on her hip. It couldn't be him, it was too easy--

An old face peered out the door; too old a face, more wrinkles and grey hairs than smooth cheeks and an unbothered brow. The old man stared at Mara for a few moments of an eternity. Even from afar, she could see his eyes focus on the scars around her neck. Confusion, not recognition, flashed against his face at the jagged cuts, but he dared not ask.

It was not Darson Kode.

Mara revved the silent crawler and drove on; the dusty trail was all that was left as she rode through the dustlands.

Tetrax Minor was known to be one of the "Bermuda Triangle" territory of planetary exploration. As Mara drove her crawler through the dustlands, it was not uncommon for her pass the remnants of long-lost vessels protruding out from the sands, jagged metal hulls shredded from rust and gravity to resemble the rib cages of some massive beast left out to dry in the sun. Sandstorms on the planet were infrequent and were prone to cause machine failure, but that wasn't the fatal condition of Tetrax Minor.

It was the Silence. Pure, unbroken, dominant silence.

Tetrax Minor's harsh climate made it impossible for any indigenous life to survive, save one. Microscopic organisms numbering the quadrillions, floating harmlessly in the air, absorbing any and every soundwave they come across as some form of sustenance. The effect of their feeding was that any soundwave traveling four centimeters away from its source was instantly absorbed. Silence was their name and their proof of existence. A solitary life to be spent unheard and unseen.

It was a condition Mara could relate to quite well.

Mara worked hard to be unseen, a healthy skill to have when one's in the bounty hunting business, but she had no choice in being unheard.

Darson Kode had made that choice for her, right after he chose that she should be an orphan. A knife's edge came across both her throat and her father's throat. It had taken his life, but spared hers.

The cold, lethal fury in her soul bristled in anticipation when it was time to repay its mistake with justice.

The sun gleamed behind her neck as she stood over the isolated hut. Mara had to give credit where it was due; it was the perfect spot for someone to build a home. Nestled comfortably between the steep cliffsides of a forgotten canyon range, only two clear entrances and exits that did not involve breaking your neck trying to scale down the canyon. Water pumps dug next to a small patch of tilled earth suggested it was also the only place for miles outside of town where one could find water. If a person kept their business to themself, routinely grew their own food, they could spend the rest of their life hiding in a cabin like that.

Mara's scar prickled on her skin, forcing her to rub her neck carefully as she took out the rifle.

The front door opened before a man stepped through the frame, keeping a casual pace as he made his way to his homemade farm. Broad-shouldered, a burly frame far unlike the older man Mara had seen in Talking Town. This man was younger, the prime of his life, mysteriously wasted tilling the hard earth of a silent world.

The fury in her heart paced like a tiger that had smelled blood. It must be him. Who else would--

Mara shook such premature thoughts out of her head. She had to be sure. Could be any number of lonesome people looking for the most desolate place to live and die. She didn't want to kill a man who resembled Darson Kode; she wanted to kill Darson Kode.

All he had to do was turn to her direction. Let her see his face. Let her see the scar...

Either God or karma heard the silent prayer of Mara's soul and delivered upon her the reckoning she so desired.

He turned to face the direction of the sun. Even through the thick, black muzzle of his beard, the shiny skin of the scar on his cheek reflected the light of the sun.

It was him.

She knew it even before she had to look. Her own scar pulsed and screamed in its own way, a dull reminder of the white-hot pain it felt when his knife tore at her skin.

She felt her rifle at her hip. Now was the moment. Now. While he was standing around, a sheep waiting for slaughter. She could see it happening--she lines his chest within her crosshairs, her finger clutches the trigger with ten years of vengeance, her rifle shudders as crimson light explodes from the barrel, Darson Kode jerks from the impact, his scum rid from the universe before he... Cold realization killed the pleasure of her fantasy as it flourished in her mind.

He would never hear it coming.

He'd never see the glint of her rifle, never realize she was the one who came to collect his penance for his crimes. He probably wouldn't even feel his death until it took him from his body.

Her throat itched like a beehive stung across her neck. Her father's crumpled body, riddled with bullets and stab wounds glossed in her eyes, his mouth agape as his dying words fled with his own soul.

She shook those tears away before they took her eyesight from her.

Darson Kode didn't deserve a silent death. He deserved to die slowly and screaming. Screaming was impossible on this planet, but she could imagine it. And he would know his death came from her hands alone.

The door opened again. He had a friend? Mara's brain shifted through all the scenarios to deal with two opponents up close. It wouldn't be easy; the ideal plan would be to pick them off from afar, but distance killing is not what Kode deserves--

A small figure with dark hair, thin shoulders, and shoes too big for his feet ran towards Darson Kode, his lips moving, but the words were impossible to make out, even if the planet had sound in the first place. Not that what he was saying mattered to Mara; his presence alone was enough to shatter her world.

A son. A child. No older, maybe even a little younger than she was.

No. No. No. No. No.

Her heartbeat thumped so loudly it nearly drowned out the tinnitus of the silent plains. Her neck ached so badly she wanted to clutch it and scream for eternity.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. It couldn't be this way.

Her chest heaved back and forth, her insides felt like they were being cooked alive from the anger, the fury.

She saw Darson sprawled all over the floor, lying in a growing pool of his own blood. That was how it was meant to be. She saw herself, wiping the blood off his own blade after slowly stealing the life away from him. That was how it was meant to be. She saw herself finally free of the past, the weight of it slipping off her shoulders like old clothes. That was how it was meant to be!

And then she saw the boy. Young, innocent, pure. Alone.

The fury churned inside her, a volcano bursting from its rim.

She saw the poor boy watching his father die for no reason he could understand, murdered by a woman who had no means to explain the monster his father truly was. She saw the boy burying his father alone, surviving alone, trapped in a world of perfect silence, unable to scream his pain free from his chest.

Mara saw herself, an echo of her past, standing on the knife's edge of a perfect, silent repetition.

The fury was climbing into her throat, her scar throbbed from the pain, the heat. It was too much, it was all too much.

No one would hear her, no one could see her. The fury exploded from her throat in the form of a primal scream--silent, raw, and unending. She screamed against the silence until her throat chafed, the tears from her eyes silently trailing to the earthy ground, and her lungs exhaled the last semblance of air from her body. The silence ate her screams, her pain, and her fury. The silence devoured it all.

When Mara finally took her next breaths, they felt like the beginning breaths of a new life. She felt her new heart beat strongly--anger burned in there, raw and bright. Grief lurked just behind it, a cold boulder that would never move from its home. And yet, just another surface below all of it, lay relief.

Quiet, but not silent, relief.

An echo of a promise that the pain would heal if she dared to let it.

Mara didn't bother to look back at Darson Kode, to see if he went back into his house with his son, forever wondering who would track him down and make him answer for the crimes he had committed, forever hiding the monster he was before he became a father. In fact, the more Mara thought about him, the less she wanted to think about him at all.

Her mind settled on the relief hidden in her heart as she climbed back on the crawler and began to make the journey home.