pistol, attempted to kill me, and ended up cradling a sprained wrist while contemplating why so many hours went by and why his head became so foggy.
As it turned out, the rampaging brawl of his bar provided cover enough to start a variety of, as the claims company described it, “incendiary incident,” though not entirely accidental. By mentioning the enigma of Ivan in his report, it shifted the focus away from any fraud investigation to the company’s hotly-debated policy on Ivan-related claims. Eventually, the meager sum was paid out.
Tempted, though I was, to tattle on the elderly buffoon, I felt satisfied his quality of life remained in the realm of filth, decay, and rotting teeth. Prison might have been a step higher.
In either case, the old man’s mind had transformed to a festering crock in his sunset years, and I gained nothing worthwhile save for a near miss and an impressive stench which clung to my clothing long after.
I suspected this unpleasant odor became the reason for my next failure. My contact, meeting on Dei Lucrii XXII, handled my company for five minutes before finishing with, “Yeah, nothing else turned up. It smells awful here, so I’m gonna go.” It was another failed inquiry into the prominent Ivan rumor of involvement at Caldonis and New Prague.
My subsequent flight was spent reading some manner of holy documentation. Not yet desperate enough, I decided against an encounter with one of the several Ivan-related religions.
His reputation born of Atropos Garden dragged dispute into who and what he could be. For some, the devastation was thought not to be created by man, instead considered an act of divine retribution. This meant, to them, Ivan himself was an agent of the almighty. It seemed too absurd, so I continued to avoid it.
Bloodsport and gladiatorial combat as entertainment developed almost fresh leads. Two dozen individuals over the last eleven years had claimed the Ivan mantle, for publicity reasons, and a few had seen lucrative success. Thanks to thorough scrutiny, the GSA eliminated each as a real candidate.
My stop and chat with former gladiators was more of a long-shot attempt at locating Traverian Grey, as it seemed he blew through the combat on a number of occasions. Still nothing; no one remaining had the slightest notion as to where he retired or even if he remained alive.
Frustration mounting, I passed over opportunities to speak with individuals about Ivan’s apparently amazing scientific research. The same applied to his varied presence in popular culture, including music, film, and literature references. As with everything else, these areas adopted the name with no referential knowledge of the reality.
Ivan was the boogeyman, a frightener of children, and denizen of a thousand successful heists of every shape and size. He fought armies and slaughtered millions. He built orphanages and blasted them to fragments. His legendary physique crippled feminine inhibitions, his strength could move mountains, and he could build a starship out of his teeth. He was a pure-blood human without synthetic taint, he was a robot, a demon, and God himself.
I made one other stop. It was a small story, unsubstantiated but largely ignored due to a lack of fantastical or devastative nature. Something about it rang true for me.
The middle-aged man was crippled with traumatic brain injury, only fragments of his memory remaining, shifting and changing without his lucid recollection. The onset of this damage was similar to my own: a dock working accident. Perhaps that was what piqued my interest.
His tale was not a tale at all. Details slipped from him over the years, and his lack of finances provided little opportunity to repair the damage done by his experience with the icy death of nothing.
The man told me in person, as I drew curious enough to hear it firsthand. The story lasted two minutes as the former blue-collar highlighted the accident and his rescue. A coworker, a gigantic bear of a man, went EVA without protection for thirty seconds to retrieve his coworker from certain death.
Hospitalized and comatose for many months, the injured man never received a chance to thank his savior. “He called himself Ivan,” the man croaked from his bed, respirator gently pumping air into his lungs.
I asked, “Are you familiar with Atropos Garden?”
“Who?” Confusion enveloped his features, and upon further prodding it seemed he’d never heard of Ivan as this master of brutality who plagued the galaxy. Though possible his scrambled memory had picked up the name somewhere and inserted it as his personal savior, it didn’t feel like that to me.
There was one other piece that the bed-ridden man provided. “He had a thing…” the man swallowed, wheezing against his respirator. “He had his own cutting torch. It had a… a name, but I don’t… I don’t remember what it was.”
I had a strong inkling.
Whether or not the tale had any truth, it still didn’t provide particularly useful data or leads to follow. Intriguing and technically possible, Ivan must have suffered grievous injury from the action. True or not, knowing Ivan leapt out into the deathly nothing to save a fellow human didn’t tell me where he was hiding, but it did suggest more to his behavior and moral standing.
Either way, I became weary of chasing the tiny myths and silly stories. If I was going to waste my time, at least I could do so with Ivan’s biggest legend.
Chapter 8: Ivan Planet-Killer
It was time to investigate this matter’s heart.
No fame, no notoriety, not even the slightest whiff of his current reputation would exist for my quarry if not for this one event. No matter the truth behind any other rumors, no matter how many brilliant victories in battle, crime lords destroyed, or shocking heists, Ivan’s successful career and legendary status was created by his supposed destruction of the colony at Atropos Garden.
The Garden was a beautiful world on the rim with the highest concentration of diverse flora and fauna ever seen since the toxification of Old Earth. It became a haven of evolutionary study and exploration towards the greater meaning of existence. Thus, it housed a prominent research facility. Galactic Central Government- sponsored, it was protected and secretive, one of the last remaining pieces of actual clout politicians retained in a galaxy ruled primarily by corporate interest.
Until the colony was vaporized.
The situation was kept quiet with very few details granted to the public. Even still fourteen years later no one but specific GCG officials knew what happened. However, most conjecture suggested that the damage, whose range was from full-colony crater to entire planet cracked in half, was caused by something which no one had ever seen before. Some new manner of technology.
No one I had spoken to in my long search retained any notion as to why Ivan, for the last fourteen years, had been accused of this crime. Near anyone could say who caused the incident; it was common knowledge with no backing.
The only thing tying Ivan to the Garden, indeed one of the only pieces officially acknowledging his existence excusing my painstaking information-hunt, was a GSA-created bulletin stating Ivan was wanted for questioning on that matter. Without a full name or a picture, it gathered no success.
