A Drowned Whelp

Chapter 1

The sickening crack of muscle and bones filled the room for a brief second before a body fell to the floor with a heavy thud. There was silence for a moment before movement. The second person in the room quickly searching the man he had just killed before finding the key to his handcuffs and unlocking them. The metal came off with a sharp click and dropped to the ground. Grabbing the now dead man's gun, he moved out of the room carefully. There were bound to be other guards and he wasn't sure where he was at the moment.

It was night. The grey metal of the ship lit by harsh orange lights. It was mostly quiet, ignoring the sounds of the waves gently crashing against the side of the ship and creaking of metal. The ship swayed gently in the water and the man along the deck to the side of the ship.

He was outmatched here. Captured by slavers without backup. He knew they had put him under for a while. He wasn't where they had started. Even in the haze, he had been aware of the changing of night and day. At least he was on the same planet. The ship was definitely a seafaring vessel and not a space one. Not that Thomia was a safe planet. There was a reason slavers existed here. A shame for them, he wasn't going to be easy to sell unless they knew where to look. He was from Thomia technically and that gave him freedom by their laws, both official and unofficial.

A grim smile unfurled on his face as he looked off the ship and saw just where he was. The city of New Babylon shone bright in the night.

"So I'm back," he breathed, letting himself pause for a moment. Maybe the slavers had known who he was after all. Things always seemed to come back to New Babylon. The place of his birth and where he was fated to die. Sounded corny but he knew it to be true in his bones and he would not have it any other way. "I guess, then. It's time for me to die," he mused, pulling his gun out and shooting a man trying to sneak up on him. "Shame," he exhaled, yanking the man's jacket off him.

He was Jonah Hill. An enforcer for the planetary committee and Thomian by birth. Only instead of succumbing to the gang lifestyle that run amok in the mining slash trade city of New Babylon, his mother had sent him far away to become something more. Only bloodshed was in his soul and he ended up going into the enforcers. Worse yet, he ended up as an undercover agent and learned rather brutally that his birthright as a slum pup was always going to catch up with him.

Last time Hill had been here, he had almost lost everything. The enforcers has yanked him out of undercover as soon as they had found him. By then it had been far too late. Hill had been too tangled in the politics of the underworld of New Babylon. Too lost in vengeance over the death of his childhood friend. Over the attempted assassination of the mob boss in had sworn himself too.

His heart had been caught and he was compromised by the world his mother had tried so hard to keep him from. When he was outed, Hill had almost been heartbroken. He couldn't have stayed in New Babylon then, not when people knew his face. It was dangerous.

So he completed the final mission and left. Hill destroyed the man who had killed his friend, who had caused enough destruction in the city to make the enforcers sent someone there. He had killed him and stuck his head on the plate of offerings to the Dark one in the centre of the city. An action which everyone knew had been him but no one could prove either way. Still, the enforcers had forced him to see a therapist for a while after that action. They didn't understand but the people of New Babylon had.