The Knight, Death, and the Devil

Chapter 1: Breathe In

Chapter 1: Breathe In

When you lived out on the edge of space, with your nearest neighbor fifty miles away and the nearest starport ten times that, self-reliance wasn't a matter of pride—it was a fact of life. As Torin stood in that crowded compartment, fingering his rifle and blinking the sweat from his eyes, one thought passed through his mind:

Gods, help me. Someone help me.

The compartment trembled and creaked, a low roar audible through the metal bulkheads. A faint orange glow filtered in through the slatted windows situated on the upper quarter of each wall, waxing and waning in intensity as they passed through the clouds. Sometimes the change would be accompanied by a violent rocking of the transport, a sign that some bomb or munition had nearly come close enough to punch a hole in the side and suck them all out into the stratosphere.

One—breathe in.

Two—breathe out.

Torin looked to his left, then his right. Dozens of soldiers stood on either side of him in tightly packed rows, shoulder to shoulder in the cramped metal box. Soldiers may have been a generous term—they were wearing plasteel armor and cradling blaster rifles in their shaking arms, but that hardly made a soldier. Not that Torin was any different. Before a week ago, he had never touched a blaster. As for the armor? It should have been comforting, but the weight of the breastplate hung over his shoulders only seemed to remind him how out of his element he really was.

He ran a hand over the smooth surface of the plate covering his chest, feeling the scratches and blast marks that it had incurred protecting whatever poor bastard had worn it last. Would some other young man be handed this and marched onto a troop transport after it was scavenged off of Torin's corpse? Or maybe when they landed it would be incinerated with Torin in a rain of orbital laser fire, and that would be the end of that little saga.

"Landfall in five minutes!" The commander at the front of the transport walked back and forth at the front of the troop formation, holding onto a railing to steady himself as he repeated the announcement up and down the line. Would he be charging off of the transport with them?

Of course not.

One look at his armor marked him as a naval officer. When they'd put Torin and the others on here, there was no briefing, no real mission. They weren't soldiers—they were cannon fodder. Their job was to bury the empire in a human wave while Republic military did the real work—capturing comm centers, destroying forward operating bases, disabling anti-craft emplacements. All that the men here were expected to do was die.

"Can't wait to kill some Imps!"

An elbow jostling him in the side prompted Torin to swivel his head to the right. The man next to him wore a strained smile, beads of sweat collecting on his forehead before dripping off of his brow. Torin took a moment to process his words, then tried to force a grin that would project some degree of confidence. He couldn't see his own face, but the man's reaction told him that all he exhibited was sheer terror at what was to come. The man swallowed, and both turned back to face forward towards that ominous door spanning the entire forward wall of the transport.

The man to his left bumped into him, and Torin stumbled slightly as the transport rocked. The man was shaking like a leaf, and in Torin's attempts to steady himself he felt a soft slap as his boot hit wetness on the floor.

Lovely.

The transport shook, and he had to push off of the soldier in front of him to steady himself. The dull, constant roar outside the ship changed in tone, signaling that the rockets had kicked in to slow their descent—they were almost there.