Faren sat, and he waited. His grip tightened on the gnarled piece of dead wood he’d appropriated as a cane; slowly, his strength was returning to him, thanks in no small part to the generosity of his desertkin hosts. The alloy layering over his skeleton was warped and cracked and his muscles were burned and scarred where the bolts of his assassins had burned through his body, and they would remain so until he received highly specialized medical treatment. As he partook of the water and meat that the Red tribe had offered him, however, his strength ceased to wane. The artificial muscle-fibre woven into his being packed the strength of a charging bull into each of his undamaged limbs, and small redundant oxygen filters embedded into his lung gave the untouched organ enough efficiency to compensate for the shredded one, for the time being. All he needed was enough blood, enough energy, to keep it all running. A few more days and a few more hearty meals, and he’d be strong enough to deal with whatever awaited him back on Rudan Prime, whatever that may be.
As he stared out into the desert vista, a wry smile cracked on his exhausted face. He was the top of the line, once. In their darkest hours, the scientists and engineers of the Solont Defence Force had asked themselves just how far a perfected genome and a host of machines could raise a man’s limits. Faren himself was one of the answers the they had come up with. He counted himself lucky that his progenitors had not gone so far that he couldn’t live as a man; those very same aggressively invasive augmentations would have made him an abhorred outcast, a monstrosity and an abomination, in the Radiant Empire. That he had kept it a secret from everyone for those past two decades was, perhaps, what ended up saving his life in the end; after all, anyone who really knew what they were trying to kill would have aimed for the head.
It was always nice to have one’s diligence rewarded.
Brilliant bonfires burned brightly, casting glowing embers into the sky which was itself ablaze with the oranges, reds, and purples of dusk. Efend had been surprisingly helpful and cooperative; allowing Faren to use their radio, assisting him in luring the Legion down to the surface, and even having some of his brethren mark out a landing pad with bonfires was above and beyond mere hospitality. He supposed he could understand the logic of it. For the cooler heads in the tribe, the promise of a peaceful resolution to their problems was enough to sway them; for the more bloodthirsty, the possibility of a very personal and intimate revenge against the one who had slighted them was all the incentive they needed to cooperate.
He only hoped their intended guests proved so amicable. From what very little Captain Greizon knew about the Boundless Legion, they seemed like quite honorable folk. Honor went hand in hand with pride, however, and Faren had deliberately slighted theirs. He only hoped they’d have ears to listen.
“There they are,” Faren said, and pointed towards the horizon for the benefit of Efend and the other desertkin who’d gathered to watch. A streak of light, too slow and too long-lived to be a meteor, rose from the horizon and painted a long arc across the sky as it swung towards them.
