[Sci-Fi/Fantasy] Prologe Critique

Length, Draft: 2116, 1.0
Brief Summary: A man returns home from a long hiatus after tragedy befalls his family, and is confronted by an old enemy
Sub Genre & Keywords - Sci-Fi, Fantasy, action, adventure, drama
Known Issues – Some poor sentence structures and ideas. Weak fight scene
Critique Requested – Conveyance of ideas, fight choreography
Critique Tolerance - As tough an you need to be
Experience & Goals - Written a handful of novels, revisions never completed. Trying to get this one past the first draft atd published.
Anything else? violence, explicit language

It was almost noon and the sun was warm on the back of Von's dark suit. He sat down in the clothed seat the funeral home had provided. The cherry wood coffins, one of them child sized, lay gleaming in the light. He stared at them, feeling an emptiness in his chest; An ache as deep as the hole that had been dug for the departed. But his eyes and cheeks remained dry. He wasn't sure he could cry at all, even as friends and strangers approached him and apologized for his loss. How ridiculous a custom. It wasn’t their fault his lover and child had caught the fever and perished before they were administered the cure. It was his. If he hadn’t had wandering feet, insisted they stay rooted to their home planet while he toiled across the galaxy, he would have been there to take care of them. There wouldn’t be pair of coffins awaiting burial, or a reason to mourn.
Back at the civilian complex, a modern structure of plastic and metal where his family had lived, always awaiting his return, the mourners ate and conversed. He sat apart from them, unable to find an appetite for the spread of delicacies. Except for those that knew him or recognized him enough to apologize, nobody came to speak with him. All the better, he figured. He didn’t want these people here, amongst the deceased’s memories and affects. He wanted solitude, time alone spent with the ghosts of regret and guilt and grief. His cane was taken in hand as he stood and shuffled out the front door, which was in fact a steel enforced hatch powered by hydraulics. It reminded him of the space vessels he had worked on throughout the last handful of years.
Outside, day had turned to night and the planet’s twin moons were full, hovering chunks of glowing red rock on a deep violet backdrop. There were no stars out but there was a gentle breeze that carried the scent of sea salt. There was a beach a few feet from the complex, and the tip of his cane shifted through sand as he approached the pink-foamed ocean. Usually bluish orange waters were black and shiny in the darkness and a pod of daephels darted through them. He could see the wide, flat heads of the playful sea mammals bobbing in the surf.
Struck by a sudden urge to swim (perhaps vigorous work and pounding at icy cold water would drive the ache inside him away), he began to undress. Expensive silk suit lying in a crumpled pile in the sand, he was in his undershirt and briefs when the shortish figure came down over the nearest grassy incline and towards him.
“If that ain’t Zakary Von Dy, then I ain’t nicknamed The Rat,” came the hoarse voice. “You old gufe. And I ain’t kidding when I say old. Look at you. Grey hairs?” The man puffed out his cheeks and let out a huff of air, like an exasperated dog.
Without the warmth of the suit, the wind was freezing. Zak wrapped his arms around himself and shivered, gaze going to the strands of hair that hung over his forehead and inhibited his vision. They were a faded ginger color, shot with streaks of grey and white. Perfectly matched with the triangular tuft of hair below his bottom lip.
“Cedric?” he asked and couldn’t stop his teeth from chattering.
Hunched over, his gait slow and awkward, the man referred to as Cedric stepped closer. He too held a cane, and Zak could see he was garbed in mismatched merchant’s clothing. Short, dusty black peacoat pinned with baubles and rare gems and stones. Loose, baggy drawstring pants. And a small cap that ended in a point, a long, green feather pinned in it. Black hair tied in a ponytail framed a narrow face, the nose long and hooked, the lips thin with a hint of buck teeth poking from underneath. His black eyes were set wide apart, both filmy with cataracts.
“Who else, you dumb, braying quamal,” the man shot back, but he was grinning. “Zak, my boy, it’s been too long. I see you have a few more battle scars.”
Von was in no mood for conversation. Especially with Cedric The Rat, the once crowned king of all thieves, crooks, swindlers and cut throats of the planet. Even on his good days, the man was not much of an alluring conversationalist, nor to be trusted. His presence always meant there would be something wanted of or from you. Von knew this because he had been his partner once. When he was young and rash and could still move like the acrobats in the circus the aristocratic families took their children to see, and used those abilities to perform quite the thieving feat. Cedric was just as talented in the art of the con, and with watching each other’s backs, they managed to build a reputation in the city of Zeal. They were invincible, the men you came to for all your underhanded needs. Their operation flourished, recruited and grew to planetary proportions, challenging the abilities of the military’s law enforcement. And then, very suddenly, Von found their partnership terminated. But that had been a long time ago. It was best to keep those memories locked away and the key hidden.
With a shrug, he turned away towards the shoreline, hobbling along the sand with the aid of his cane. He was still intent on a swim.
“The leg.” Cedric followed, huffing again as he caught up. His voice had gone softer. “It’s fake, ain’t it?”
How the man could see such detail beyond the milk white blotches smeared across his eyes was beyond Von. But he stopped all the same. The pale stretch of flesh tapering from the leg hole of his briefs to his knee was real enough, all his own. But beneath that the skin had a looser look, as if there wasn’t any muscle mass, and it was thinner then his other leg. He sighed and struck it with his cane, producing a muffled thudding noise.
“Lightweight metal,” Von explained. “Couldn’t afford one of them fancy polymeric procedures at the time. It functions well enough, providing I don’t get into any serious scuffles.”
Cedric sucked his lip against his teeth, squeaking like his namesake, a gesture Von recognized as the man’s curiosity being piqued. But he refused to answer any more questions as the man pressed him about how he’d lost the limb.
“Leave me be, Cedric,” Von growled, touching a toe into the water and gasping. It was just as cold as he imagined it. With another thought, he added, “There’s still food and drink at my old quarters. Go up and help yourself. If anyone inquires about your presence, tell them I sent you.”
To his surprise, the hunched man shook his head.
“Nah. I came to find you and here’s where I’ll stay.”
Waist deep in icy waters, Von couldn’t summon a reply. Goose flesh peppered his skin as he stood trembling, and it was only by tremendous strength of will that he took the next few steps. The water rose to his neck as he swam out a krave or so, the ache in his chest replaced by the searing cold. But at least all his thoughts were drowning beneath it. It wasn’t so much he got used to the water temperature as that he craved that chill, its fingers snaking up his veins, cradling him in its grasp. A curious daephel started to dart in his direction, fanned tail sluicing back and force and causing a mini wake. But then suddenly it cried out and leapt back the other way. Puzzled at the reaction, Von turned to see if something on shore had spooked it. Perhaps even Cedric himself. The man was a sight, even to a daephel.
If his blood hadn’t already been chilled from the cold waters, it would have frozen. Arm extended like an arrow, Cedric held a gun in his long-nailed hand. It gleamed as black as the ocean, the barrel’s mouth gaping like an infant’s toothless mouth. Without asking he could tell it was an illegal weapon, for this town. But the hunched man held it without wavering, and his expression was as cold as the rodent’s he so resembled.
“I knew you’d have to come back eventually,” dead panned The Rat. “Didn’t think it would be this long, but you would come back. Takes a death for you, eh, you selfish piece of shit? No matter. The only two people you cared about are dead, and soon you will be too.”
Cedric’s grip tightened on the trigger. Von didn’t move, his breath hovering stuck in his chest like an ant in molasses. He considering diving, making himself a moving target. But he couldn’t guarantee something that high tech wouldn’t do damage even under water, and he couldn’t run forever. Von was too old and slow to dodge or outlast a modern chamber round of bullets.
“You’re going to kill me now, after all this time?” he found himself asking, voice wavering with the cold. “I’m a wary, worn out man, Cedric. Not only might you be doing me a favor, but it would hardly be a challenge.”
“You expect me to believe that from an old conniving weasel like you?” Cedric hocked up a wad of phlegm and spit in the sand. “Don’t care, anyhow. None of that is a concern of mine. You’ve finally come back, and that’s what matters. I finally have my opportunity at your head.”
Von’s eyes narrowed, the water rippling around him as he kept himself afloat.
“Then shoot me,” he said in a voice that was a hissing whisper. “Go on and get it over with, if that’s what you so want. Swear by six, I wont even move. You can bring me down with one shot.”
“No sport in that.”
Pain bloomed and blossomed down Von’s collar as the initial bullet caught the side of his throat.
The water around him went red, clouded and murky with the spewing blood. It was a specialty round, he realized, as the cold within was stabbed with blades of fire. It was agony like he’d never felt before, not even when he lost his leg, and he came up out of the water thrashing. Another bang of the hammer, and the second bullet took a chunk from his shoulder. Von cried out and didn’t realize he had made it to shore until he felt the flashing torture of grit entering the wounds. His undershirt was rosy pink, the stain of blood eating away at the material. Fresh blood dribbled from him onto the sand, staining it dark as oil, leaving a trail as he crawled forward. Where the hell had he left his suit? He found the pile of clothing, his belt laying like a snake coiled atop it, and managed to pull the foot long hunting knife from the sheath he kept attached to the leather material just as Cedric’s boot caught him under the chin. His teeth clacked together, clamping down on his tongue. He felt the bite go through the tip of it, and his mouth flooded with hot copper taint as it was severed, the debris knocking against his teeth. He screamed wordlessly, fury and pain propelling him to his feet.
Cedric was close. No more then a foot away, a gloating smile painted on his face. Von didn’t have time to note that the satisfaction didn’t seem to reach his eyes before he rushed him.
The knife was thrust out. Cedric had been right. It seemed Von had some will to live, after all, as he felt the blade rip through clothing and slip through flesh; Felt it sliding through a pulpish mass of muscle, tissue, and organ.
He twisted it sideways, the serrated edge pointing upward, and double-gripped the handle.
And just as he forced it upward in an arc towards Cedric’s sternum that sent a vile concoction of blood and fluid raining down, he heard T he Rat’s gun go off one last time.
Von’s body went taught as the throbbing began deep in his viscera and exploded outward.
And then he was falling. Falling with Cedric, towards the dark, bloody sand.
And someone not far off, perhaps near one of the complexes, was calling his name. But the blood in his throat was choking off his answering scream, and his eyes were fluttering shut.
Then there was nothing but the cold.

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