Blaze of Glory

In life, even in the far future, two things are certain. Whilst death can be circumvented through various arcane means, taxes remain a dominating factor, though as always where there are taxes; there are those that will stop at anything to paying them. Various illicit organisations exist to aid such individuals or groups of individuals, one of the most successful being Midas Touch Security Solutions.

On the surface, MTSS presents itself as any normal security firm would. Pristine receptions, pristine receptionists, and pristine receipts ready to present to any discerning tax collector, those in the know however all it takes is a password to gain access to all seedy services available.

From extortion, to racketeering, to blackmail to “competitor disincentivising”, MTSS offers it all with the promise of a discreet golden touch.

At the galactic headquarters, in an office on the third floor, many peons worked away tirelessly at desks. Fabricating records and finding loopholes in galactic tax codes to ensure all clients were able to hold onto as much of their money as possible. In the corner office, the most successful of these individuals was a Vect, going by the name of Blaze.

As with all vects, they chose their own name. Though in the many years of service rendered to MTSS everyone had wondered why Blaze had not chosen to adopt a name more suitable to their role in life. Until a fateful day when Midas’s activities caught up with them…

A smart dressed man and two android police officers walked down the plush carpeted corridors all the way to Blaze’s office, where they were still diligently working away on ensuring taxes were not paid.

“Mr Blaze, we are here to place you under arrest.” the smart dressed man said, flanked by the android police with their hands on holstered phasers “You have the option to come quietly, or my friends here can deal with you”, smirking at the vect still silently working away.

It took a while until they finally decided to respond. “If you please,” they said, “in accordance with Planetary Law AJP232P, can you read the charges to the suspect?”. The left android simulated a sigh before taking out an official-looking document.

“The first charge,” he said, “is for aiding and abetting tax evasion. This is the definition of the crime; however, you are being charged with three-thousand-four-hundred-and-twenty-three counts in this case.”

“The second charge is for the murder of planetary tax officials. Again, this is the definition of the crime, and you are being charged with four counts.”

“And the final charge is…” the android paused, flashing a puzzled expression and turning to his colleague, whispering, “Uhh… is this right? Do they have… y’know?” The other officer shrugged before the reading of the charges resumed, “the final charge is for… public indecency… only one count.”

Grinning, the smart dressed man said, “Oh, what a pity, that all amounts to life in prison… and a ten gold fine for the indecency thing,” he approached the desk slowly, with a menacing gait. “Now, are you coming quietly, or is this going to be difficult?”

Another pause settled between the parties in the room before Blaze reached down and placed a hand on their desk.

“Come get me, punks.”

With that boast Blaze used their hand on the desk to push it over, knocking prone and pinning the smart dressed man beneath it. As the police officers drew their phasers, the hand not on the desk had reached down for an explosive device and threw it as they ducked behind the toppled desk as makeshift cover.

So focused on drawing weapons the two androids did not notice the explosion device hurtling towards them, detonating mid-air and spreading burning goop all over the office as the shockwave shattered all the windows both out and inward facing. The flaming formula stuck to their uniforms and slowly consumed them, screaming as they tried to pat each other out.

Seeing an opportunity for eliminating them; Blaze reached for a swarm pistol they had stored in one of the desk’s drawers. Holding the foregrip tight and taking aim, they fired two short bursts, one per officer, to put an end to both their suffering and existence.

Now the vect’s focus turned to the man still pinned under the desk. “Who is your source?” they asked.

The man coughed, struggling to try push the desk off himself, saying, “Go to hell you tax dodging bastard!” In response, Blaze fired a quick burst of fire into the man’s right hand, before leaning down closely and asking the question again. “…your boss,” the man said, “Knox Knave.”

“Thank you for your co-operation.” Blaze said, reaching for another bomb and placing it gently into the breast pocket of the smart dressed man’s suit, ignoring the pleas for mercy as bloodied hands struggled.

Blaze went over to the safe in the corner of their office, unflinching as a person was turned into chunky salsa behind him, and retrieved its contents. These included an outfit suitable to the seedier side of the universe, a laser claw, and all the tools and reagents they would need to keep on making bombs.

Up on the forty-fourth floor Knox was relaxing in his office, letting his amoeboid body drape over a plastic-wrapped sofa, and enjoying a cold drink.

That was until he heard screaming, explosions, and blaster fire ringing through the wide corridors. Instinctively he scurried over to his large ornate desk to press the button for calling security, barely reaching it, and pressing the button before an explosion ripped the double doors off their hinges.

“Knox, it is time to pay, you slimeball!” Blaze said, striding through the smoking wreckage of the door.

“Ahh, Blaze, buddy!” Knox said, pressing the security button a few more times, worried no one has turned up yet.

“They are all dead Knave. Everybody is dead Knave.”

“All the security guards?”

“Everybody is dead Knave.”

“All my elite security too?”

“Yes Knave. They are dead. Everybody is dead Knave.”

If amoeboids could sweat; Knox would have turned into a puddle of slime by now, as the vect approached him, swarm pistol in one hand, the other free to reach into a bag filled with dangerous explosives.

“S-surely we can work something out!” Knox said, surveying the room to see if there was a vent he could try escaping into. “Money? Weapons? A better office? Anything you want!”

Standing but a few feet away from their boss, Blaze only had one question: “Why did you sell me out?”

“Eh, well, you see…” Knox said, trying desperately to both find a way out and a good story to cover his, before sighing, and saying, “it’s just the cost of doing business, I had to bribe some bigshot tax admin to ensure MTSS stays afloat, I threw you in as a way of sweetening the deal with them!”

Blaze stared for a moment, processing this new bit of information, and after a while they said, “Thank you for telling me. You can die now”. With those words they lunged over the desk and grabbed Knox tight, making sure they could not slide out of the grapple.

Knox tried to struggle and began grovelling harder than before. “Please! Stop!”, he said, “I told you why, we can just start afresh somewhere, you can be my second in command!”

This time, there was no pause in what Blaze needed to say. “I will not do business with someone who is a proven snitch.”

Reaching into the bag of bombs Blaze grabbed and primed a shrapnel-based device, shoving it right inside Knox’s gelatinous body before throwing him across the room, watching as the force of the initial detonation and the fragments that came after it tore him asunder, splattering purple ooze all across the opulent office.

Knowing better than to leave an amoeboid unattended; Blaze bided their time until they saw the chunks of their former boss tried to reform, taking the opportunity to use their swarm pistol to permanently end any last vestige of life.

“Add one more count of murdering a tax official, and eleven more counts of homicide.”

Inspiration

First off: I’M BACK BITCHES!

Okay, that is a bit crass, but this is my first original work in over a month. I’m still dealing with burnout, demotivation, and a laptop keyboard with several malfunctioning keys which doesn’t really help anything, but hopefully over the coming weeks I can inspire myself back into action.

This story is a bit off the wall I’ll admit, it’s supposed to serve as a backstory/inciting incident for my character in a Dark Matter game. During character conceptualization I was definitely leaning towards the robotic Vect race, for some of their racial feats and how they interact with the graft system.

After that, I looked at the Dark Matter included backgrounds and found “Exile”, which seemed quite interesting. On the list of crimes included is “tax exile”, leading to the very silly idea of a robot using themselves to aid in committing tax fraud.

Then came deciding on a class, which is where I got hung up for a while. I initially had wanted to go barbarian, as I play a dexterity/wisdom based character in Marieya and wanted to see what the more aggressive side of things would look like (plus, I could’ve beaten people over the head with a giant wrench).

Upon suggestion from some of the other party members, I decided to go with a class also made by the people who make Dark Matter: Mage Hand Press, and the Alchemist class.

Alchemists seem really cool, this is going to be my first time playing an intelligence based character and there seems to be a lot of creative potential in the bomb formulae sections and the potential discoveries to take. Combining this with some of the Vect racial feats, I have the potential to make a really fun character.

Now, the story itself, which, as I’m typing, dawns on me has some similarities to Marieya’s inciting incident: both Blaze and Marieya start their major arc/journey based on murdering a lot of people and using fire/explosions to do so.

The main difference here is that Blaze is going through this more like an action hero, rather than enduring terrible trauma. Action film tropes definitely inspired a lot of this story, from the tactical moves pulled off by Blaze to the cheesy one liners they say upon doing things. And yes, that is a poor attempt at a Red Dwarf reference near the end, thank you.

One final thing to note, I’ve been using they/them pronouns for Blaze throughout the story, and will be using them if I decide to write any future stories. There is some inner conflict there, as I feel I’m falling into the mainstream trope of “nonbinary character is robot/shapeshifter/fey” a little bit.

At this point in time I haven’t really decided what kind of gender identity Blaze has, I’m not even sure if I want to say “pronouns are they/them” and instead just use those for writing convenience and run on the assumption that Blaze just accepts all pronouns.

Either way, I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this short story, and I hope to be back to making the content I love properly soon enough.