EXCERPT: Mad Dahl [sci-fi thug mm]

Title: Mad Dahl (tentative title)
Author: Harper Kingsley
Genre: science fiction, action/adventure, thug, mm

Raised on the streets after leaving the orphanage at fourteen–the legal age on Helphion 5–he had learned how to survive. Even still, there had been the occasional setback, the occasional gropey handed predator that had stolen his innocence a bit at a time.

He was driven to survive–it was his nature, genetically scribed on his very bones. He learned to trust his survival instinct, to fall into that primitive mindset of “I will survive through everything.”

He ate garbage, picking through the bins for the freshest bits. Once he found a hidey hole of his very own–a small crack in a demolished building–he took to catching rats and roasting them on spits over a flickering candle flame.

He did what he had to survive. Which eventually got him in trouble.

He hadn’t meant to kill anyone, but they were coming at him quick and violent. He was sixteen years old when he killed his first man, and sixteen when he was sent to his first Slam. It was an education in pain and suffering. All he could think about was getting out. He couldn’t survive a twenty year stretch.

He escaped. Ran as fast and far as his wits could take him, then hopped his first ship offworld.

He’d only dreamed of seeing other planets, but it was nothing he expected to do. He’d figured he would live his life in his tiny corner of Helphion 5 and maybe someday he would have enough to eat and clothes to wear.

That trip to Helphion 6 was a wake up call. He’d thought his city-slum existence was hard. Now he had to learn how to handle nature. Trees and wildlife and being out so far that there was nothing to even scavenge–he had to save himself.

He taught himself about medicine–how to treat his own wounds, find clean water, and what plants he should attempt to avoid. He wanted to live, so he learned fast, watching the animals around him, lurking on the outskirts of the human settlement. Still, he would have died that first year if he hadn’t met Santana.

Santana was a hard man with a thick accent. He’d learned Standard, but he’d been raised with some regional dialect, gutter Russian and country French. It made him hard to understand and there were times when he seemed to struggle with his words. There was a cruel intelligence behind his dark eyes, a greedy shrewdness that showed itself in his actions when in private.

Santana wore his hair loose, a little shaggy, but attractive to a certain type. He’d let the whiskers grow across his cheeks, then only trim them back. He reserved a clean shave for the few times he visited civilization: Port City. Otherwise he adopted a dangerous charm and went about his life as he wished, toadying up when he had to, or treating those around him with a casual contempt.

There was a meanness in Santana; it was the way he was built. But he also took care of what was his.

It was nearly a relief when Santana owned him. There was something pleasant about knowing where he belonged. He was still a kid then too; he wanted to be taken care of.

He slept in Santana’s bed, brought Santana pleasure when he was bid, and in return he received food, shelter, and a warm place to sleep as winter raged outside.

He became Santana’s boy and it wasn’t so bad. He learned how to fight, how to haggle, how to operate around other people. He followed Santana’s orders and learned a trade.

And when Santana built up his trading empire, Dahling was Santana’s most trusted man. The young lover that grew into a merciless thug. Dahling gained a reputation for not being someone to mess with.

Traveling the solar system on Santana’s business or holding down the Port City office, Dahling became a young prince.

It wasn’t something he realized at the time–he was ridiculously young then, new to the world–but the knowledge eventually sunk in that he was Santana’s second-in-command. He was the man on the ground, the one that made Santana’s half-incoherent orders into a profitable reality.

He returned to Santana filled with his newfound power, and from that day things began to shift.

Dahling showed his impatience, his sudden ambition, and all Santana saw was greed.

Dahling couldn’t explain the pain he felt when Santana betrayed him. When the mercs dragged him out of his favorite restaurant with everyone watching and took him back to prison on Helphion 5.

He spent that whole trip in chains, his dangerous reputation working against him. Those mercs tormented him, hurt him in ways that didn’t leave physical scars, but that still broke him.

By the time he was locked in his cell at Bengala Prison, he’d formed a lifelong hatred of mercs. He didn’t like them, didn’t trust them, and worst of all, he feared them.

He was twenty going in to Bengala Prison. He was young and terrified, and he had a newly formed aversion to physical contact, one that eventually faded but never entirely went away. Bengala Prison made everything worse. He developed deep-seated psychosis that took root inside him. His mental hurts festered untreated until they became permanent scars in his mind.

Mercs and prison, the concepts went together hand-in-hand. One inevitably led into the other, and both were things he was determined to avoid.

It took two years for him to escape Bengala Prison. In that time he was victim and victimizer. He did things he’d spend the rest of his life trying to forget. He killed a lot of people in prison and during his escape. Later he would kill even more to keep his freedom.

He gained the name Mad Dog Dahl, later shortened to Mad Dahl. The reward for his capture went up and up, until that magic tipping point was reached. Suddenly he was worth more dead than alive.

That was when Dahling went to ground. He retreated to the back end of nowhere and dug in, determined to survive.

He went to Helphion 9.

/END INTRO

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SPOILER!Alert

Edwin “Dahl” Dahling — He was named at the orphanage, the “Cherry Tree Home for Children.” A not-so-bad place that he hated while he was there, then was wistful for after he was turned out at 14, legally an adult.

Helphion 1-2-3 are the Core Worlds. They were first settled and have the best technology.

Helphion 4 had technology, but there’s some wild areas.

Helphion 5 is industrial. Sweat shops, slums, a big crime element. There’s enough technology with a corruptible amount of law to make it a thieves paradise.

Helphion 6-7 have cities built around Port City, but are mostly settlements elsewhere.

Helphion 8 is largely uninhabitable. A bleak desert world with large carnisoids roaming around.

Helphion 9 is a still wild planet. Further out from civilization, there are only 3 large settlements, and other than Port City the rest of the planet is wild.

The Helphion System is 2 years transit from the Tempus System, and 5 years from Earth.

The system was originally terraformed with launched probes. Helphion Prime was the original planet settled.