Traveller Vignette 053

He didn't look like much when we finally caught up with him, not for a man we'd spent half our lives hunting. A tired old man in a cheap apartment, the money he'd fled with long spent trying to throw us off his trail. There were six of us left by then, though dozens more sent money to fund us when they could, or passed on leads and rumours.

Jahns sat on his couch, blood on his mouth from a knocked-out tooth; he'd had an old gun under the cushions, and Dobry had smashed him in the face with his pistol when he'd gone for it. He was sitting very still despite the pain from the tooth, because the hook that replaced Carter's right hand was about an inch from his left eyeball.

Carter lost the hand to a cut gone gangrenous in the camps, and he'd never been able to afford a replacement, or even a good augmetic. He probably could have, if he'd given up the hunt and settled down to a steady job, but that hadn't been an option for him, or for the rest of us. We were all old now, and none of us had children, families, or homes. Ironically, Jahns had received the best juvenat treatment available back when he had power, and didn't look much older than we did, despite being twice our age.

We were the ones who couldn't move on or rebuild our lives, which is why we'd spent thirty years trying to gain some measure of justice for what had been done to us. I slid back my left cuff, to let him see the barcode tattooed on my wrist. There wasn't really any need; he knew who we were, even if he didn't know our names.

“Do you remember how they executed people in the camps, when they were too sick or too weak from starvation to work?” I asked him. “Down on your knees”

“Why should I?” His voice was still smooth, like the pict-recordings I'd seen. “You are going to kill me whatever I do”

I smiled, thin-lipped. “We are. But if you do what we say, it'll be clean. Several of my friends would prefer your death to be a lot longer and more painful than a bullet, and if you don't co-operate, we'll do it their way”

He slowly nodded, and knelt on the apartment floor. “If it takes away any of the sweetness of your victory, I was tired of running” he told me

“It doesn't” I said, stepping next to him with the old pistol I'd taken from a dead guard three decades before in my hand. “Abraham Jahns, once First Citizen of the Monodominate of Kashan, you were sentenced to death in absentia by the resistance council in 1077 for the crimes of genocide and complicity in torture and mass murder. In the name of those who died.....”

(Author's note - This vignette obviously shares a common background with Vignette 42 (the old Aslan) showing two divergent approaches to surviving a terrible experience; other responses will appear in future vignettes.

This is also a potential scenario seed - hunt your enemy across a significant expanse, following clues and taking side jobs to pay your way as you do so.

Finally, it might make a useful campaign starter - what do the people in this vignette do with the rest of their lives, now they've finally achieved the vengeance they devoted their lives to? They still have to make a living, they've acquired a lot of skills and quasi-legal contacts along the way, and they don't really have anybody but each other. Besides, they'd be about the right age for most traveller groups :-)