Soul of a Gambler

Part X - "Backup Plan"

If you asked a killer of any stripe if they remember their first kill, the answer would usually be yes. In fact, the answer is probably always yes. They might lie to you, tell you that they've forgotten either on purpose or that the mirror of memory has been fogged or stained or broken somehow, but their heart will always remember.

If you asked Jax Davis the answer would be yes. Of course it would be yes. What he would tell you, though, is that his first kill was a Blackwatch transit guard who found him stowed away on an outbound cargo transport sealed in a crate of survival supplies. It would be the truth, too. He killed him with a can of beans applied liberally to the forehead, messy work.

But to Jax, that wasn't his actually first. To Jax his first kill wasn't truly his own. The first tally mark, the first notch, the first of many came when the doctors at the Saint David Medical Center pronounced his mother, Susan Davis, dead of blood loss. Her true killers, the Blackwatch who took his father and forced his mother down the spiral path that led her to a nameless knife-wielding drifter who skipped town to deny the next of kin his revenge.

After these two, the rest seemed to blend together in a long ribbon of crimson. Even Cosmo who he had shot by accident not ten minutes earlier had already been forgotten, not to mention Jacobson who's body had been thrown from the trench toward the bow by Four Arms. Those memories thrown out in favor of freeing up precious brain power to focus on securing his new prize. It wasn't about freedom anymore, once the ship was secure they would have their freedom. Now it was about the heist.

"You two!" He pointed to Stalky, who blinked his tall eyes, and the Tarrian.

"Close the door and watch it. If you start seeing sparks coming through then open the door up and start shooting, don't ask questions, okay?" He tried to be as simple and direct to the aliens, the Tarrian even helped him out by repeating his directions in Stalky's language.

He pressed the button on the right armrest that powered up the projection-window and his eyes went wide at what he saw. The flank of the KNIGHT ERRANT only two hundred and fifty kilometers away according to the projection-window's highlight. Not only that, but the bright blue contrails of a smaller vessel heading toward it, identified by the window as SQUIRE, the distance number rapidly increasing as the shape got smaller.

That's gotta' be Calhoun. He can't get to that ship, he'll sink us! Jax thought. Then something occurred to him. This ship, unlike just about any other Blackwatch vessel was equipped with shields.

He turned his head up to where he guessed the shipboard AI was listening. "Hey! Bring the shields online!"

"Pass authorization code!" It chimed In hapless response.

He pressed the intercom button, even if he didn't know the code, he knew someone who could find out.

"Arna! Dig through the AI's memory and find me the auth-code!"

"Can do! Also, Jax, it looks like I was right! This ship is equipped with a directed EMP device!"

His lips pulled away from nicotine stained teeth as a sinister grin cut across his face. "Get that cookin' too. I want that ready to go, there's another Blackwatch ship out there!"

Had he not killed Cosmo, he might have had someone around who could have worked the shielding system. Hell, he wasn't even sure what Cosmo's skill set even was--he put her on Engineering to fill a slot! Now he would never get the chance to find out. Had he not killed Cosmo, the back of his mind might not have been trying to pull his conscience back and force it to see what he did now at the worst of times.