Epic Death

by Mike Doom

  Arturis Central Kigh Nightly News

  Reporter: Ari Swansong-Deathtoll

  Ari Swan here, I am outside the last vestige of Kuznetsk in the Outer Rim. Here on Walis, three extremely well known bounty hunters have captured the top four members of the Kuznetsk gang, one of the six Lords of Orii were amongst the members captured.

  The Lords of Orii are the leaders of the six gangs which fifteen years ago bought Orii Station and the Orii System itself, a system which has fallen into lawlessness. The Federalis have attempted to re-establish the rule of law, which in part was laid on the Hunt.

  Rankings of current hunters are often inferred, but the highest ranked hunters, the Omega list, who is known for handling the S-Class calls, has ten known members. Of those, three were contracted here in Walis. Peppermint White Ninja, Baby Doll Judah Stardust, and Epic Death are the top of the top. Holding, themselves, several million rico bounties for various crimes.

  The yellow? An entire gang of six thousand members. Six thousand members just here on Walis. And they have been busy, this isn't the only crime scene scorched nearly to the ground, this is just the only one today. Hitting sixteen dens like the one behind me in as many days, the three hunters did what GovNet and the Federalis could not, they drove a Lord of Orii into a corner. And, according to ours sources, killed him where he stood.

  “Wake up you dumb cunt!”

  “What?”

  “Wake up.”

  “I—“

  “You dumb cunt.”

  “Oh.”

  “I am not going to carry you anymore. Either start walking on your own or to the bottom of the crevasse with you.”

  It takes Last Chance about five full seconds to get her wits about her, look down off the path they are walking on, and see what a ‘crevasse’ could possibly be. She then juts into movement and jumps backwards for the central wall.

  “What ship is this?”

  “We’re on a freighter headed for Hess.”

  “Why?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Um…”

  “I’m supposed to take you there. I am also supposed to leave a trail so your boyfriend follows us.”

  “What?” Last mutters, her eyes searching for other people. Someone to help her, to make sense for her, to do something for her as she is obviously incapable of structuring her own life. The compartment they are in is very long, filled with oiled and steaming tubes and thick arteries of fluids and fuels. Drums bubbling with fluids, steam coursing above and below them. “This ship is…”

  “A deuterium mining ship. I needed something I could make a scene with without the Federalis doing too much shooting.”

  “You hijacked an entire mining colony ship?”

  “The crew was on Torch taking a much needed vacation. Let’s just say that they will get a longer one now. Well, except for the onboard crew. Got about six hundred creamed in the back, but I figured let them live for collateral or something. ” Stardust tells Last matter-of-factly while walking away and down the service platform. Mining ships tend to run on extremely long voyages which often happen in regular time for exploration purposes, which means cryogenic sleep is the best way to keep your ship in top shape. AI can do all the driving, with only a small crew required to be active for maintenance and what not.

  “Who are you?”

  “A hunter, darling. Luckily for you, you aren’t on my menu.” She laughs back, opening a large metal door leading to another walkway; she pauses briefly and turns her head slightly to the right. “Baby Doll Judah Stardust, “and she walks through a large door, leaving Last to her thoughts.

  Last attempts World access, expecting it to be blocked. However, they are on a standard line and she gets access to the ansible network easily. With her rigging, she is capable of a full dive. Last is too short sided to see that this is the ‘trail’ Stardust was speaking of. She is too busy finding a good place to park her body while she runs for help.

  Slightly farther down the thin composite metal platform, she finds a descending staircase that leads to a monitoring station. Last sees the desk, metal like everything else, littered with polyfilm displays and tablet notepads. A larger terminal dominates the desk, with a big monitor with hooks for this and that probe uplink. Mostly unused as that sort of system is hundreds of years outdated, and only kept as a precaution. Last sits on the swivel chair, and pushes some notepads back, the screens bursting to life with colors and holographic diagrams of pipe fissures and valve pressure number lines. She puts her hands on the table, and puts her head onto that. She closes her eyes as her bones start rumbling.

  Last opens her eyes and she is in a lavishly decorated sixteen bedroom bungalow by the beach. Last bought the deluxe package for herself a few years back when she had scored a short lived series on extended ansible. Something Something Vampires of the Deep, very short lived series. In the show she played the plucky neighbor girl who just happened to be a frankenstein. The whole show was filmed in full senses, and marked the point where Last went fully wet. To commemorate, she moved beyond the high-rise studio she kept in the World, and bought herself a beautiful piece of real estate on Isis’ virtual planet.

  “Coco?” Last yells, completely unnecessarily, her eButler wouldn’t be out of earshot if she was on another planet. Coco appears on the stairs, she had been upstairs doing whatever the situation programming of the house demanded. Several NP-Servants are wandering around the bungalow, mopping the floor, dusting, etc. The luxury of luxury is in the details of the expense, and non-sentient workers that clean dust that falls on a preset schedule, that weed a garden of plants that grow based on the actual climate of Isis, that wash windows that do not even actually exist, is all part of the milieu one pays to have. Last spent a good two weeks after the show was cancelled, just watching the maids keep other ‘people’ off of her private beach. The effect so convincing, that when Imanaj had those earthquakes two years ago, Last logged onto her account just to be sure the maids were boarding up the windows. They were.

  “Yes, Miss?”

  “I need a car pulled around front. I need to see someone quickly.”

  “Yes, Miss.”

  A small black teardrop appears in front of the house shortly thereafter; wheels pour from the bottom and fill themselves as the car takes on weight. The front end distends down and forward, bubbling upward as it becomes the hood of an old-world style Jaguar. Last cycles through a few outfits in a nearby closet, picking a flowing red dress that clings harshly to her chest, but allows amply room for her legs by floating out ethereally in ruffles and wisps of thin mesh.

  “Where are we off to?”

  “I need to speak to Toro Abobo.”

  “Excuse me, Miss?”

  “Take me to the space station, immediately.”

  Epic Death pushes the last of his hangers-on down the escape tunnel at about the moment he knew that making it down from the building wasn’t going to be as easy a prospect for him. With his bangs and bruises, a good run through a collapsing building would probably not be medically approved. Epic stands for a brief moment judging his horizons. The building is going down in under twenty seconds; there are no new projectiles to worry about as far as Astral Strafetm can see, but there is a lot of dust being thrown up. The street is full of people running erratically, fires bursting here and there, the occasional car crash. The building directly across from him seems pretty sturdy, but the building he is on isn’t lurching forward like he would like it to. There is a medium level likelihood that he wouldn’t make the jump across, at least before dropping a dangerous number of floors.

  “Fuck.”

  Epic backs up to the window of the apartment, three paces and a vault. Nothing going. Time wasting. No chance. Time wasting. Epic scratches the back of his head, thinking that his name would be hyperbole forever. A truly boring end to an interesting life. “Bullshit.”

  Epic dashes and vaults the metal b
alcony enclosure, making a good twenty feet laterally, but losing altitude too quickly. He readies himself to land on the traffic below. Killing yourself is at least taking charge of the situation. Epic grins to himself and wishes he had a cigar or something to smoke. A last bit of vice.

  Out of the corner of his eye, a hover picks up speed and dashes his way. Epic looks at the plates, but Threat Assessment™ isn’t giving him anything useful. The car dashes past him, and then dives back towards, trying to match speed. Only a couple more moments to take it in. At least the in-flight is interesting.

  The passenger door opens vertically, an older model hover. Epic decides to at least try for it and aims his descent into the door, landing horribly and cracking a rib. His hands manage to clutch at the door latch and he hangs there as the hover slows their plummet to a reasonable speed. It is at this point that Epic sees inside. And loses his grip.

  “Whoa!” Epic rolls backward off the door and lands on the roof of a slow moving passenger vehicle, the top padded with every possession of the occupying family. A woman screams from inside. A man gets out of the car, the car is barely moving in the traffic, so he walks along side. Screaming obscenities at Epic, who is in too much pain to understand him. The driver of the floating hover is yelling back at the man, who decides to get back in the car.

  “Peppermint White Ninja, you filthy son of a bitch.” Epic laughs, clutching at his right side. He orders a downer program from his eButler.

  “Epic Death. You really do pick the shittiest jobs.”

  “Did you find your bitch? She was with me for a while, but I’m not sure she can handle-“ Epic leans up on one elbow, his back digging into a pair of skis. His left hand gesturing in a circle. “This whole fuckpocalypse.”

  “I think she’ll be okay. She’s a smart girl.”

  “Yeah, but she’s with Truckee Dumpstar.”

  “The drag queen?”

  “Transexual, I think.”

  "Is that different?"

  "Yeah."

  "Oh."

  “Can you get the fuck off of my car?!” The man is back.

  “Can’t you see that I am having a motherfucking conversation?” Epic pulls a gun on the man, who falls on his ass and ends up almost getting hit by a kid on a bike. Epic turns back to Pepper, who is leaning out of his window to talk.

  “Get up here. We need to get back to the capital.” Pepper lowers the hover closer to the ground. Epic stands, wavering on top of a awkwardly packed bag of clothing and shoes.

  “I don’t like leaving them here. Someone is shooting rockets.” Epic grunts as he pulls himself into the car.

  “Yeah. My son’s here.” Pepper says, moving his dreads out of his face.

  “No joke?” Epic says with raised brows.

  “Yeah. I should never have allowed myself to have kids. I knew what would happen.”

  Epic touches his side tenderly, his eButler running biometric diagnostics, at least one broken rib, but no hindrance to lung capacity. He orders his healing nanobots to work, his left femur rumbling as various systems start to work, his side throbbing even with the pain relievers running through his nervous system. Two hours and he’ll be back to business, assuming that two hours are in the cards at this point.

  “You… fuck… you couldn’t have known what he’d become while you were gone.” Refresh after the 'incident'.

  “His mother should have been proof that he’d be a liability if nothing else.”

  “And that is why we don’t share girlfriends anymore.” Epic says out the window, he is using his gun sight for a binocular. Trying to see if there is anything worth worrying about. Someone seems to be having a bit of a firefight to the left, but only flashes and disturbances in the smoke movement can be seen from this distance.

  “Yeah, because you still like the fuck-ups.”

  “Good in bed. All I’m saying.” Epic shrugs.

  “Got it right on that one.” Pepper laughs, throwing the hover around a building quickly to avoid oncoming ambulance traffic.

  “So Vii’s here. That explains a little.”

  “There is something very large going on here. I can’t quite place it.”

  “They are selling that jewel thing here. I intercepted a message.”

  “It is what I figured. There is supposed to be some sort of big meeting sale shit in the capital tonight.”

  “Which is where we are going?”

  “Yes. Even though I am sure that it is some kind of trap.”

  “Which is why we didn’t pick up Sunshine?”

  “Correct. I am trusting someone I cannot trust to do exactly what they would do.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Long story.”

  “I would guess so. Where have you been? Sunshine said that you sent her ahead here, but everything seems to be going down here.”

  “Yeah. I never planned on that. I think someone wants us here.”

  “You can’t be that stuck up. Sure, you and me are probably top ten hunters. Sure. But hawking the jewel solely to get us on some backwater for the sole purpose of exactly what?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is that my sex robot was sending out a constant stream of data the entire time we were together.”

  “Right.”

  “I was using her as a decoy to lure out Stardust.”

  “Oh. Is she here too?”

  “I don’t think so, but with her, you’d never be sure.”

  “She bought your ruse?”

  “I think so. I lead her in the wrong direction.”

  “But Sunshine got kidnapped on her way to where you were sending her.”

  “Right. I’m lucky you bumped into her.”

  “You’re lucky Truckee wanted her saved, and that I have a thing for damsels in distress.”

  “Where did you find her anyway?”

  “Dub-x.”

  “Fuck.”

  “I know right.”

  “Who had her?”

  “Some space ninja. Hired by Blam Machinist I think.”

  “Location?”

  “Unknown. He is probably not off the table.”

  “Random, noted, but probably just in it for the reward. But, anyway, the robot said some weird stuff. She has odd programming loaded for an off the shelf model.”

  “Like?”

  “She can use several types of guns and fly a scram.”

  “That isn’t right.”

  “She also never betrayed me. She helped us escape. If she wanted me dead...”

  “She could have?”

  “Hey, even I have my off days.”

  “Something just isn’t right about that.” Epic mutters.

  “No. It’s not. There is some strange encrypting going on. It obviously points to my son.”

  “Which isn’t surprising, you two were never close.”

  “But he doesn’t plan like this. He would never do something this backhanded. He would come at me guns blazing if he wanted me dead.”

  “I can tell.” Epic says, his right hand doing a circling motion in the air.

  “He is a man of purpose.” Pepper chuckles.

  “Just like his mother.”

  “Exactly. Which leaves Toro.” Pepper says, looking Epic in the eye. Epic’s eyes show momentary confusion, like if Pepper had randomly switched languages mid sentence.

  “As in that Toro?”

  “Yes. His encryption was in there too. A routing address that lead to him kept appearing in the background of pings.”

  “Okay whatever.”

  “But he’s not that sloppy. He’s not as good as us-“

  “Natch.”

  “But he’s not this. Toro has the kind of rico that make a slip up like this seem planned.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Someone wants us to think it’s Toro, but why? Why hide it in a double ruse? So they incriminate my son first, anyone who knows me would know that I wouldn
’t take anything for granted.”

  “Reason why you will always be number three, boyo.”

  “Taken, but they gave it to me knowing my proclivity for thorough investigation.”

  “Over-thorough. Excessive-thorough. Like serious, what the fuck levels of-“

  “Swallow my laundry, Epic.” Pepper makes a few quick stroking motions with his right hand aimed at Epic’s face. Epic laughes.

  “So they want him dead.” Epic offers.

  “Exactly, but why this way?”

  “Yeah, hire me; I’d have it done in a day.” Epic says modestly.

  “That would probably include travel time. Killing someone that easy to find would literally be about getting his schedule off the tabloids and just showing up.”

  “Or Stardust, she’d do it in two.”

  “She did always like her pre-assassination drinking binges.”

  “Mmm… better make my estimate two days as well.”

  “Hell, make the price right, and I’d do it. I would make an exception for Toro.”

  “You know there is only one thing that ties the three of us to him.”

  “Exactly, but what the hell does that have to do with anything?”

  “Yes?”

  “I have someone at the front desk asking for you, sir.”

  “I am in the middle of something in Actual. Who is it?”

  “Last Chance, Sir.”

  “Pardon?”

  “A supermodel by the name of Last Chance, sir.”

  “Eslex in the hiring department should handle inquires of that nature.”

  “As I am aware, and have related to Miss, here. However…”

  “What does she want?” Toro attempts to remember if he had ever had sex with a supermodel by that name. Sadly, no files exist, but that doesn’t exactly disprove anything. Paternity suits are quite the hassle, Toro writes in his LJ to send this woman’s data to his secretary, just in case.

  “She says she wants to sell information in exchange for protection.”

  “I see, had she mentioned from what she needs protecting?”

  “She hasn’t said.”

  “Superb. Send me her data.”

  “Sending.”

  Toro allows himself a brief moment, closing his eyes to view the LT his eButler sent with her information. Her dossier is relatively thin on professional records, and a lot higher on more ‘colorful’ records. Tabloid coverage of a horrible downward spiral after a particularly atrocious indie sense-vid. Several run-ins on Isis for drunken disorderly, mostly in the Hinter. Photo-bombing of a movie awards ceremony on Arturis Central Kigh. Dropped charges of molestation charged against her by several teenage sense celebrities at the Teen Select Awards. A long, and excessively videotaped, affair with one of the plaintiffs of said class-action assault-suit. A vicious, and allegedly one-sided, rivalry with Sunshine Apocalypse. Toro’s eyebrow rises slightly at that.

  Recently, she’s been live streaming her trip to Torch with…

  “Send her to my office; I’ll dive in a moment.”