by Jake Bible
“Yeah,” Roak replied as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Sorry.”
“Someone will find that sample and start looking for me,” Yellow Eyes said.
“I know. I said sorry.”
“I accept the apology, man, but it doesn’t change shit. I’m about to be hunted by biotech firms across the galaxy. They are gonna want a piece of ol’ Yellow Eyes.”
“Especially WAG Corp,” Roak said.
“What? Why especially that corporation? What’s a WAG Corp?”
“The company that made you. Your molecules are stamped all over with their code.”
“They are? That’s not good,” Yellow Eyes said then rolled his eyes up into the back of his head. “Hey. What do you know? You’re right. I got stamps from here to forever.”
“You can see your own molecules?” Hessa asked over the loudspeaker.
The lift stopped and Roak got off. He walked to the bridge then sat down in the pilot’s seat.
“I can see my molecules,” Yellow Eyes said to Hessa, following Roak onto the bridge. He sat down in his usual seat and kicked all legs up onto the console. “But only because they are my molecules. I can’t see Roak’s or anything. Not that I’d want to. No offense, Roak, but, man, you must have some messed-up molecules.”
“I’m sure I do,” Roak replied.
“I’m gonna disagree with you, Roak. I don’t think WAG Corp is going to be looking for me,” Yellow Eyes said. “They tossed me out like trash. I doubt they want me back.”
“You got tossed because they didn’t think they had anything,” Roak said. “Once they get ahold of that sample then they’ll start tracing your movements through the galaxy. Despite being different as all the Hells, you did leave traces. Somewhere is evidence of what you are and then they’ll know what they threw away. Then it becomes a race to get you back before another corporation claims you as salvage.”
“Maybe that Salvage Merc Corps I’ve heard about will be hired to find me,” Yellow Eyes said, strangely excited. “And I’ll lead them on a chase across the galaxy and when they catch up to me they’ll realize I’m a living being with rights and desires and they’ll let me go and we’ll all live happily ever after.”
Roak stared at Yellow Eyes, blinking. “…what?”
“He may have been watching melodramas on the holo vid,” Hessa said. “While we waited for you on Ballyway. I didn’t think it would do any harm.”
“What do you think now?” Roak asked.
“I know it’s not real,” Yellow Eyes said. “I was playing around, man. Just something fun for a change instead of all this stress and fear.”
“You were pretty stressed back in the med bay,” Roak said.
“I wasn’t technically in the med bay,” Yellow Eyes said. “I was standing outside it.”
“Where was the fun then?”
“No fun when there are red eyes around, man. Red eyes are bad mojo and I ain’t in for bad mojo right now. Not red eyes bad mojo. No, sir.”
“Because…?”
“What do you mean?”
“What’s the deal with red eyes?”
“Oh… Uh… I don’t know, to be honest. Just something inside me says red eyes are bad. Stay away from red eyes.”
“Yeah,” Roak said and flashed back to what Zxixwell had said in the cargo hold. “Yeah. Red eyes are bad.”
Roak studied the view shield then sat up straight and frowned. “This isn’t the Gorf System, Hessa.”
“No, it is not,” Hessa said.
“What system is this?” Roak asked.
“SoCal,” Hessa said.
“SoCal? Where are we going? Chafa? Why are you taking us to the impound planet?” Roak asked. “We need to be going to the Gorf System and Stefbon. That’s where Bishop is.”
“That’s where something inhabiting Ms. Zxixwell’s body said Bishop is,” Hessa countered. “That does not mean that is where Bishop actually is. I’d find it highly strange that Bishop would be in the same system as the planet Ligston. Makes no sense to steal our chits from Ligston and stay in the same system.”
“It makes perfect sense,” Roak said. “At no point did I think he’d stay in that system. It was a good play.”
“If he’s there.”
“He’s there,” Roak said. “Now, why the Hells are we going to Chafa?”
“I already told you,” Hessa said. “To regroup.”
“On Chafa? I don’t have contacts on Chafa.”
“Only one of the reasons to go there. The main reason is because we can set down in stealth mode and no one, even if they are looking for a cloaked ship, will find us amongst all that junk. There are thousands and thousands of working vehicles locked up on Chafa, waiting for their owners to pay the fines and get them out of impound. But there are millions of junked vehicles that are sitting there to be salvaged and parted out. I’ll land us in one of the yards and we’ll be hiding in plain sight.”
“With stealth mode activated, right?” Yellow Eyes asked. “Because hiding in plain sight sounds fine and all, but stealth mode sounds way better, man.”
“Yes, we’ll be in stealth mode,” Hessa harrumphed. “I already said that.”
“How long are we going to regroup?” Roak asked. “Care to tell me the timeline you’ve worked out for me, Hessa? Want to tell me how I should do my job?”
“Why not? You tell me how to do my job all the time,” Hessa said. “Oh, and you don’t have a job, Roak. This Bishop hunt is not a paying gig.”
“It is when I get my chits back,” Roak said.
“That’s called breaking even, not getting paid,” Hessa countered. “A job is when someone hires us to hunt a being and then we get paid when we deliver that being. You remember that kind of job?”
“We did some of those to get funds for this hunt,” Roak said. “Think of it as me hiring me. I’m paying for the hunt out of my own pocket.”
“That’s stupid,” Hessa said. “You’re stupid. I’m really tired of stupid Roak. Let me know when smart Roak returns, will ya?”
“Maybe smart Roak left because he was tired of you nagging his ass all the time!” Roak snapped.
“I don’t think that came out the way you wanted it to,” Yellow Eyes said.
“Shut up!” Roak and Hessa yelled.
“Alright, you two need therapy,” Yellow Eyes said, holding up his hands in surrender. “Major therapy. I’m talking elder gods’ strength therapy. Find yourself one of those mega beings and get slapped upside the head with some universal wisdom that transcends time or space. That kind of therapy.”
Neither Roak nor Hessa responded.
Roak remained quiet until they were on approach to Chafa.
“No contacts here, no contacts left to comm,” Roak said as they entered the planet’s atmosphere. “How will regrouping help us, Hessa?”
“It won’t harm us, I know that,” Hessa said. “You’re a gump running on a wheel, Roak. I’m getting you, and us, off that wheel. We assess, reassess, re-reassess, then make a solid plan of attack.”
“To go after Bishop,” Roak said.
“If that’s what we decide, then that is what we decide,” Hessa said. “But we do not decide a damn thing until we have gone over everything we’ve learned so far. That is what the regrouping is for.”
“Regrouping isn’t how I operate, Hessa. You’re messing with the natural order of business.”
“Oh, shut up, Roak. Let me concentrate on where to put us down.”
“You don’t have a location already picked out? Sounds like a risky move, Hessa. Maybe you should take us somewhere else and we can regroup before we decide to come here and regroup.”
“Yeah. Therapy,” Yellow Eyes said as the ship broke through a cloud bank and the planet’s surface was revealed. “Oh. Wow. That is some ugly stuff there, man. Look at the place. It’s like a kid’s room after a sleepover. Shit everywhere.”
Yellow Eyes cleared his throat.
“Hey, what’s a sleepover
?” he asked. “I say the word, I know I know the word, but when I think about the word, I have no idea what it actually means.”
“A sleepover is traditionally when a child invites other children to stay over at his or her place of residence,” Hessa said. “They eat fun food and play. Many times sleepovers include watching of holo vids and the telling of gossip to each other.”
“Fun,” Yellow Eyes said. “I don’t think I’ve ever been on a sleepover. Have you, Roak? You ever been on a sleepover?”
“Are you really asking me that question?” Roak replied.
“Yeah. Have you?” Yellow Eyes asked.
“I didn’t have a childhood,” Roak responded.
“Man, that’s crap. Everyone had a childhood,” Yellow Eyes said. “Except me because I was grown in a vat apparently.”
“You woke up in a vat and were dumped into space,” Roak said. “You don’t know you were grown in a vat.”
“My molecules have corporate stamps on them, man. Pretty damn sure I was grown in a vat.”
“Well, maybe when this is all done you can go have yourself a sleepover and make up for lost time,” Roak said.
“You wanna come?”
“No.”
“Didn’t think so. You would probably bring the mood down anyway.”
“You are so right on that,” Hessa said.
Roak growled low and stared at the view shield as Hessa landed the ship in the middle of a clear patch surrounded by mountainous piles of junk.
23.
Chafa was so polluted that even though the atmosphere was technically breathable, it was advised that all beings use a rebreather, if their anatomies called for it, in order to avoid poisoning by the toxic fumes that wafted up and around the vast swathes of junk and trash that had been dumped on the planet’s surface.
Dressed in his light armor again, Roak affixed his rebreather as he walked down the cargo ramp and out into the humid, smog-filled air. He walked amongst the gigantic piles of broken ships and junk, his mind going over his interaction with the red-eyed Zxixwell.
“You’re going to have to talk to me at some point, Roak,” Hessa said. “Now would be a good time. Yellow Eyes refuses to leave the ship. He thinks the air will corrode his skin and melt him to mush on the spot. Since he seems indestructible, I find that highly unlikely, but it keeps him from eavesdropping on us, so I let him believe it.”
“Nothing to talk about,” Roak said.
“Oh, alright, never mind,” Hessa said and began to hum. And hum. And hum.
“Really?” Roak asked.
“Huh? What?”
“The humming? Really?”
“Was I humming? I don’t think I was humming.”
Hessa continued humming.
“You know I can’t shut you off. You know I know I can’t shut you off. So, Hessa, what’s going to shut you off?”
“I stop humming when you start talking.”
“I don’t want to talk.”
Hessa sighed.
“What you want is irrelevant, Roak. Whatever that was that channeled through Ms. Zxixwell, it disturbed you. If you are disturbed, then that means there is danger. If there is danger, then that means my existence is threatened. I do not like my existence threatened, Roak. I have come to enjoy my existence, Roak. Roak, should I be worried about my existence?”
“Probably,” Roak replied as he moved into the shade provided by the husk of an old Grabal personnel carrier. Looked to Roak like a model 15 or 16, and was more holes than hull, but there was enough to keep the daylight from overheating him. “Yeah. You should be worried.”
Then Roak added, “Maybe.”
“Oh, good, that cleared everything up,” Hessa said. “Glad we had this talk. Enlightening as always.”
“There are parts of my past that I do not think about,” Roak said. “The force behind that red-eyed thing is one of those parts.”
“A dangerous part,” Hessa stated.
Roak hesitated then nodded and said, “Yeah. A dangerous part.”
“But a part that should be in the past?” Hessa asked. “See how I used the word should, but what I’m really getting at is that the part is no longer in the past, but right here in the present and is probably, maybe a threat that we should be worried about.”
“No need to spit my own words back at me, Hessa. I know what I said.”
“Except, as always, you haven’t said much of anything.”
“Where I come from, that thing ruled like a god. Like all gods, the thing saw me and my siblings, for lack of a better word, as playthings it could manipulate to do its bidding. Or manipulate for simple entertainment.”
“Violent entertainment?”
“Do gods enjoy any other kind?”
“There are no gods, Roak. If galactic civilization has discovered any truths over the millennia of existence, it’s that one society’s gods are another society’s bums that have been kicked off-planet and found a new one to be bums on.”
“This one’s not a bum. I say god only as a way for you to understand how I perceive its power.”
“If it’s that powerful, then it must be a threat to the GF,” Hessa said. “The Galactic Fleet will surely do something about it.”
“No, Hessa, the Galactic Fleet will do nothing against it. Haven’t you been paying attention? Where do you think this trail leads?”
“Hopefully to Bishop since that is your obsession of the moment.”
“Yeah, we’ll find Bishop, but we’re going to find more. We’ll find the Galactic Fleet then we’ll find my past.”
“Only if we search beyond Bishop, Roak. The plan is to stop at Bishop.”
“The plan is to find Bishop, make him pay for his betrayal, and get my chits back. I’m not one hundred percent sure that they are together.”
“Why do you have to complicate everything?” Hessa sighed.
“Me? I keep it simple. I hunt, I find, I sometimes kill, but would rather not, then I get paid after I deliver what I have hunted and found, again, sometimes killing since so many damn idiots don’t like to pay me.”
“It is a flaw in the business model. Payment up front would help avoid that.”
“No one pays upfront anymore, Hessa. The War is over and the galactic races aren’t as desperate as they used to be.”
“They must be to hire you.”
“Funny.”
“Roak, what are we dealing with here? Be straight. Are we going to survive this?”
“You will,” Roak replied after a few moments of thought. “I probably will. That’s about all I got right now.”
Roak stepped away from the shade and peered up into the sky. He started to look away then peered up again.
“Hessa? What’s that shimmer?” he asked.
“What shimmer?” Hessa replied. “I am not detecting anything on the scanners.”
“Screw the scanners. Use a cam for visual confirmation.”
“Please hold.”
“You have to be kidding me…”
Roak waited as he squinted against the day’s glare. There was for sure a shimmer in the sky. It went as far as he could see.
“Sorry, Roak, I’m not seeing anything,” Hessa said after several minutes. “I tried all cams the ship is equipped with. I even pinged some deep scans off a cloud bank a kilometer away and still didn’t get a reading other than the incredible amount of deadly particulates that the atmosphere holds. I’m surprised the air doesn’t collapse under its own weight.”
“Give it time,” Roak said. “And check everything again. I see a shimmer in the sky.”
“Describe the shimmer. That might help me perform a more accurate search.”
“Describe it? It’s a shimmer. The air is shimmering.”
“Is there a color?”
“Is shimmer a color? Because it’s fucking shimmering!”
“Huge help you are,” Hessa said. “I’ll check again.”
Roak waited. He moved back to the shade and closed hi
s eyes. He wanted to take a deep breath, but doing so with a rebreather on tended to thrash his throat. So he simply breathed nice and easy.
“Hey,” a voice said from Roak’s right.
Roak had the Flott five-six out of its holster and aimed at the owner of the voice before he had his eyes open.
“Whoa there, pally boy!” a man exclaimed. “No need to get hostile. I was only coming by to see if you were stranded or needed any help. You can put away the blaster whenever you feel like. I don’t mind.”
Roak glanced at the man and frowned. “I know you.”
The man was fleshy, but not fat. He moved like the muscles under his fat were able to lift any of the rusting parts that were piled sky high in the yard. Blue skin with wide green eyes, the man scratched at the top of his bald head before he nodded.
“Yeah. You. I remember you. Had your old ship here a long while ago. You were gonna get it from that hired gun guy. What was his name?” the impound man asked.
“N’jeak H’gool,” Roak said. “He wasn’t a killer so much as he was just really mean. Merc pilot was his profession.”
“He wanted to kill you. I remember that,” the impound man said and laughed. “What ya doing back here?”
Then the man whistled.
“That your Borgon? Wow. You looking to sell that Eight-Three-Eight? I’ll give you top credit for it.”
“What Borgon?” Roak asked, looking where the impound man was looking. “Not sure what you’re talking about.”
“That Borgon Eight-Three-Eight stealth incursion ship you’re trying to hide in stealth mode,” the impound man said. He tapped at his temples with chubby fingers. “Specially calibrated implants. I had to have them put in when I lost a KLO bi-wing fighter one time. You know those have stealth tech too? Well, pally boy, they do. The thing glitched and it took me six months to track it down in all this mess.”
Roak hesitated then shrugged.
“Not for sale. And I doubt you’d give me top credit for it if it was,” he replied.
“Guy’s gotta make a profit,” the impound man said and shrugged too. “So, you don’t need anything? No parts or service to the ship?”
“No. Stopped to rest a while,” Roak said. “Been flying a lot and needed to put my boots on some solid ground for a change.”