Sulla Is Inevitable - Chapter 7

 Sulla Is Inevitable

By David Billiot

Copyright 2026: All rights reserved

Chapter 7

It had all happened very fast. Before Darkness even knew a fight had broken out the Imperial had killed eight people. It didn’t matter that the station was outside of Imperial domain. It didn’t matter that the Imperial was just a visitor and not the local police. Imperials are arrogant and believe their law should be followed everywhere in the entire universe. 

The system was just a trading outpost that was a space station in orbit around a red dwarf. It was controlled by merchants from Ziot.  The Empire and the Republic both sanctioned each other and had trade embargoes against each other in their never ending war of arguing but not shooting.  What trade did happen between them happened through Ziot all while Mahmet pirates were trying to steal as much of it as they could get their hands on. 

Darkness was working as ship crew under Captain Tzuda. He was a Republic Ally but had a license to leave his system for the sole purpose of transporting goods for the Republic. Tzuda had a Ctype called CT-9FF because she was number 2559 of her batch. He kept her for cleaning and allegedly other things. 

Captain Tzuda was expecting to get a big payday so he treated all the ship’s crew to an evening out.  CT-9FF came along. She made some kind of mistake. Or maybe Tzuda just wanted to hit her. He often hit her but she was a Ctype, no different legally from a door or a bulkhead. 

This was a bit of a grey area. Ziot didn’t ban Ctypes but also wouldn’t enforce ownership over one. If a Ctype ran the Ziot guards would shrug. If the master forcefully took it back, then they also just shrugged. However, the Imperials had a different view of things. 

There are several things anyone who is in the same room as an Imperial needs to know in order to not die. 

The first was that if an Imperial hits you, you can not hit them back. 

Second, if you do hit an Imperial, and he doesn’t hit back, you had better stop right there. 

Imperials live by very strict rules that only they fully understand. The gist is that for an Imperial, if you don’t want to take the beating for it, then don’t do it. Also, it is treason punishable by death for an Imperial to surrender. They fight to the death, no matter how small the matter. If an Imperial hits you then it is a beating because the Imperial has judged that you did something wrong. So he expects, and even demands that you take the beating for it. If you hit back, it means you reject their judgment and are willing to fight to the death for your honor. 

The third thing everyone knows about Imperials is you never want to fight one to the death. They’re crazy. They train their children from the time they can lift a sword to fight.  In Imperial society there are two classes of people. There are Imperials and Dependents. If a child can make it all the way through their training then they are a full Imperial with a position in the military and can fully participate in the political process.  If a child can not complete the training then they are a dependent. They are never allowed to hold office or any kind of responsibility in society but all the military Imperials will fight to the death to prevent any and all harm coming to a dependent. 

And the last thing that you need to know about Imperials is you never hit a woman in front of them. That carries the sentence of beheading in the Empire. The Imperial who saw Tzuda hit CT-9FF in the bar didn’t care that she was a Ctype. He saw a man hit a woman and he was going to administer a beating for it. When Tzuda and the other crew of the ship fought back the Imperial slaughtered them. It all happened in an instant and the Imperial made it look easy.

Ziot police showed up and the Imperial stood there over the bodies, ready to be questioned. Darkness was hiding under the table while his former captain’s dead eyes looked at him. He was so scared he couldn’t control his breathing. 

Darkness was taken by the police and he was sitting in a room by himself. He had to sit and wait there for over four hours. When the police finally came in they showed him the video of the incident. They had already typed up moment by moment what happened. They asked Darkness to read it and sign it. 

“Are you going to let me go?” Darkness asked. 

“You need to stay here to testify.”

Darkness nodded. “Ok.”

“Let me just ask, did you know Max?”

“Who?”

“This guy. The Imperial.”

“Never seen him before.”

“You didn’t come here to meet up with him?”

“No.”

“You don’t fly with him or nothing. You’re the only one he left alive.”

“I don’t know. I never seen him before.”

“Alright. Like I said, you’ll have to testify, so don’t leave. Your ship’s in impound.”

“I don’t have a ship.”

“The Adora.”

“That’s Captain Tzuda’ ship.”

“You can’t fly it?”

“I don’t know how.”

Darkness could leave but found himself with nowhere to go.  He couldn’t go back to his bunk on the ship and he had no money for lodgings. He ended up standing outside of the police station.  The night was becoming morning according to the station’s cycle clock.  The bars were closing and a place that served coffee was opening up. Darkness shuffled over. He had a lot on his mind. What was he going to do? Where was CT-9FF? Was he going to be paid? He didn’t even have anyone to call. His parents had died in the Social War against the Republic.  

Oh, no. That brought up another problem. Darkness only had permission to be off planet because of Tzuda. With him dead if any Republic personnel find him here by himself Darkness would be in deep trouble. 

Darkness ordered coffee and sat.  He didn’t know what to think.  He didn’t know what to do. The woman serving coffee and doing the other tasks to open the shop turned on the monitor and the news was playing. The murders in the bar the night before was the headline. Darkness asked her to change it but she ignored him. 

The next segment was sports. Feuru was the red team and Tersud was the white team.  Red won by 22.  

“Nice.” the woman said over by the counter. 

“Did you bet on the battle?” Darkness asked her. 

“I just made a hundred Pezims. I would have made two if the victory was by over twenty five. But oh well.”

The way a Ctype battle was scored was by counting the number of survivors. Feuru and Tersud were both Allies of the Republic. This meant no one outside the Republic could attack them without consequence. However, that didn’t stop the Republic itself from attacking or another of the Republic’s Allies. Whenever there was a dispute between two Allies of the Republic, war was often the answer but for a long time there were rules to it. Instead of sending actual people to fight, each system printed up ten thousand Ctypes.  Then, the two armies would be put on some barren moon and marched into battle. Whichever side had a survivor at the end of the battle won. Footage of the battle was entertainment in the Republic so both Feuru and Tersud could earn some money that way. Drones flew over the battle capturing details to be edited into a spectacle. 

Ctypes had been illegal to have or bring into the interior of the Republic since the Servile war.  All Ctypes were to be destroyed on sight. However, the populace of the Republic enjoyed watching these battles.  

Darkness was sitting and waiting. In his head he was trying to figure out how much 500 Republic Recoins would get him in Ziot Pezims. And then he wondered how long that would last if he couldn’t leave. 

From the corner of his eye Darkness saw a flash of light.  The front facade of the police station exploded and was on fire. In case someone didn’t know, a fire on a space station means bad news. Darkness instinctively got low and then hesitantly looked up just enough to see out of the front glass of the shop. The Imperial, the one the police named as “Max”, was escaping and he didn’t care how many police officers he killed on his way out.