Faust led her down the hall to the last door, then indicated that she would need to go in without him before turning and heading back downstairs. Stacia waited until he was out of sight before checking the door thoroughly for traps. Once she was satisfied, she opened it to find an office. It looked ratty and cramped by any other standards, yet on Leviathan, Stacia was sure this room would be considered the lap of luxury. There was a desk and shelves, all of them piled high with inked leather scraps like the one Faust had been carrying when he’d found her. There were two chairs in the room, as well, one on each side of the desk, and they too were upholstered in leather.
After what the woman had told her, Stacia did her best not to look at all the leather with disgust.
She was so busy contemplating how many Skins had died to make this room that Stacia didn’t even take note at first of the woman sitting on the other side of the desk. That was sloppy, Stacia knew. A Galactic Marine, whether she was allowed to call herself one or not anymore, was supposed to be able to take in their whole environment in an instant. The young woman’s words had upset Stacia more than she was used to, and she needed to keep a firm hold on her feelings if she was going to get what she wanted out of this meeting.
At first glance, the woman didn’t appear to have a face. She was sitting with her left side to the door, and that entire half of her face was gone, replaced with a fused patch of sickly pale skin where her eye, nose, mouth, and ear should have been. The illusion was likely on purpose, a scare tactic to keep anyone new to Hobbes on their toes. Stacia didn’t react. After several seconds, the woman turned, showing Stacia the other, perfectly average half of her face. She was old, probably older than any other person she’d so far seen on Leviathan, yet there was nothing about the way she carried herself that implied weakness. Now that she was standing here before this woman, Stacia remembered the name Faust had given at her crash site. It was a name she probably would have reacted to earlier, if she hadn’t been so preoccupied.
This woman was infamous, after all. She was the first person to ever be sentenced to life on Leviathan.
“Hello,” the woman said in a gravelly voice. Despite the fact that she was missing half her face, there was no hint of any speech impediment. “I am Lord Commander Alena Lexton.”
“It’s an honor,” Stacia said. It really wasn’t. “But you’ll forgive me if I doubt that. There’s no way Alena Lexton could still be alive. She would be somewhere in the vicinity of a hundred and fifty years old by now.”
“My, has it been that long?” Lexton stood up from her chair and offered Stacia her hand to shake. Stacia stared at it, wondering if this was supposed to be some kind of test. After several seconds of nothing, Lexton chuckled and withdrew her hand. “Just checking.” She gestured for Stacia to take a seat in the other chair, which Stacia did with some reluctance. “I do that with everyone who enters this office. Anyone who actually shakes my hand is killed immediately.”
Stacia nodded. Shaking hands was an old custom, often attributed as originally being a way for someone to show the person they were meeting that they were unarmed. Whether that was the real origin of the custom or not, Galactic Marines wouldn’t do it. The last thing a marine wanted anyone to think was that they were unarmed. Even if they didn’t have a gun or a knife, the marine was still a weapon in and of themselves. Anyone who showed up on Leviathan and accepted an offer to shake hands obviously had never been a Galactic Marine, and if they were here it was for some reason other than to serve their sentence.
“You’ll have to forgive me for not knowing the protocol in meeting you for the first time, but if you’re really Lexton, then you should be dead.”
“Maybe I should be, considering everything I’ve faced on this planet.” She indicated the missing side of her face. “This happened on my first night. First contact with the local fauna. Or maybe local flora. Honestly, there aren’t a lot of scientists around here to make those distinctions.”
Stacia assessed the woman’s armor and realized that, yes, it’s make and age did imply someone who’d had it for over a century. It looked like it had been heavily modified though, with the armor plates looser around the joints. Stacia wouldn’t be surprised to find that Lexton could remove her armor when she wished, with a body underneath covered in borrowed skin.
“Do you know why you’ve been asked to see me?” Lexton asked.
“Faust repeatedly said something about swearing fealty.”
Lexton chuckled. “Well, yes. There is that. Faust can get rather enthusiastic about his loyalty to me. But that isn’t the only reason. I wouldn’t have asked you to my office alone if that were the case. I would have gone downstairs and had you swear your oath in front of everyone else.”
Stacia nodded. “So this has something to do with Stanton Borealis?”
“Yes. Faust told me that you intend to kill him, although he was a little vague about why.”
“I have some revenge I need to get on his mother.”
“Still doesn’t seem like a very civilized thing to do.”
“So is that why you brought me here? Not only do you want my oath of loyalty, but you want me to give up the idea of going after him?”
“Oh no, not at all. You’re here because, after your oath, I need to know what equipment and information you need to wipe that little shit-stain off my planet.”
Stacia raised an eyebrow. “And may I ask you why you would want me to kill one of the citizens of your planet?”
“This is my planet, yes, but he’s not one of my subjects. You’ve heard all about him, I’m sure. Does he strike you as the kind of person who would swear loyalty to me?”
“A pretentious, self-righteous piece of shit like him? No, I’d guess him more as the type trying to organize some kind of hostile takeover of your territory.”
“All of Leviathan is my territory.”
Stacia doubted that. Leviathan was a big planet, and Lexton was only one person, even if she was the original human inhabitant. Not that Stacia would dare say that, not when Lexton was practically offering everything she needed on a silver plate.
“But am I right?”
“Right enough. You’re aware he wasn’t even sentenced to Leviathan, right?”
“He couldn’t be. He didn’t follow in his mother’s footsteps to join the Galactic Marines. My understanding is that he was never more than a low-level politician, an activist.”
“Yes, and the bastard is still a politician even here. The asshole crash-lands here by accident when poking his nose where it doesn’t belong, and then when he finds he can’t leave any more than anyone else, he starts spreading ideas.”
“What kind of ideas?”
“What does it matter to you? Ideas I don’t like. Your role is not to question me. Your role is to obey. And if you do, you will be rewarded.”
“Rewarded with what?” Stacia did her best to sound disinterested, as though she didn’t already have a clue about what Lexton was going to say.
Lexton pointed at Stacia’s armor. “We can have that removed, for one thing.”
Play this carefully, Stacia thought. “Really? You can do that?” She made sure her words held equal parts disbelief and interest.