by Nick Cole
“I had a feeling something like this would happen.” Keel shook his head. “You just never know what you’re going to get when dealing with the Republic nowadays. I guess you guys are pretty serious about all this, huh?”
“Ninety-two percent,” Ravi called down from the ramp.
Keel understood his navigator at once. Ravi was telling him the likelihood the legionnaires weren’t bluffing. These were the go-getter type, determined to ignore basic shipping procedures on the off chance they might uncover a clandestine smuggling operation—or the two missing rebel VIPs. Things would have been so much easier if an officer had been handling the transfer instead of these front-line troops. Still, it wasn’t as though he hadn’t planned for this possibility.
“So I need to come up with two more bodies, huh?”
Ravi’s lip twitched in understanding at his captain’s meaning. He contrasted the position of the legionnaires’ rifles against Keel’s blaster, factored in Keel’s reflex and fire time—which was considerably faster than most humanoids in the known galaxy—and filled in the legionnaires’ reaction time using the average reflex time of the Republic’s foremost shock troopers. Multiplying by 1.09997543 to account for the potential injuries sustained by the silent legionnaire in his dive to avoid being crushed by the landing ramp, he computed the odds.
They weren’t great.
“Thirty percent.”
Keel hissed, boring holes into the legionnaires, his every muscle and sinew primed to draw and fire.
The legionnaires shared a look before turning their attention back to Ravi.
“Thirty-seven percent,” Ravi said.
“Still not enough,” Keel said, hoping the legionnaires would do something to better his odds.
LS-19 pointed his weapon at Keel. “What’s he talking about?”
“Ten percent,” said Ravi.
“Shut up!” The legionnaires swung their weapons toward the hologram.
“Sixty-six point nine percent.”
Like the whip-tail of a gungrax, Keel’s blaster was up. He fired at the black synthprene bodysuit exposed at the neck beneath the nearest legionnaire’s helmet. The heavy red blaster bolt blew through the trooper’s neck and hit the visor of the second trooper’s helmet. Both legionnaires clattered onto the rock-strewn landing zone, smoke rising from their bodies.
Keel smiled and holstered his weapon. “One shot!” He shook his head, impressed at his own marksmanship.
“Yes,” Ravi said. “And if you were to be taking two shots like I suggested in case of this situation, you would have had much better odds.”
Keel shrugged, still all smiles. “I already knew I could do it in two shots.” He looked over at the stunned rebel prisoners, their mouths hanging open in surprise. They, at least, ought to have been impressed at his shooting display. “One shot!” he crowed.
The rebels looked unsure what to say.
“Oh, like any of you could’ve done better.”
Keel walked down the row of rebel prisoners. They seemed afraid—probably imagining their coming execution. “Listen up,” Keel said, gesturing to the two dead legionnaires behind him. “I’m going back on my ship. Without you. Take the legionnaires’ weapons and set up a defensive perimeter for when the rest of the Republic’s force shows up. I’m going to wait for the Republic to transfer me my credits, then I’m taking off.”
A rebel with captain’s insignia spoke up. “Surely you don’t mean to just leave us?”
Keel pretended to consider for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, pretty much that’s exactly it.”
“What the—” The helmet-filtered voice belonged to a legionnaire who had just reached the landing zone. Keel looked up in surprise, swiveling his blaster toward the newcomer, who had lieutenant bars on his armor. The legionnaire quickly looked from Keel to the two dead legionnaires, then turned and ran, frantically keying his bucket comm. “LS-87 to Liberty-Actual!”
Keel gave a half frown. The legionnaire’s communication wouldn’t go through; the Six had begun jamming the L-comm network from the moment Keel took his shot.
The legionnaire ran in zigzag patterns across the terrain in an effort to… dodge? Keel raised his blaster with the indifferent posture of a barfly playing a casual game of darts, and squeezed off another bright red blaster shot. The bolt hit the trooper between his shoulder blades, sending him tumbling end over end. He came to a sudden stop against a crimson boulder.
Keel holstered his blaster and addressed the prisoners. “You can have his weapon, too. Good luck. You’re gonna need it.”
The Six’s ramp began to rise as soon as his feet touched it.
On the ship’s monitors, Keel watched the rebel prisoners. They stood, dumbfounded, then ran to grab the N-6 blaster rifles. They began to liberate one another from the bindings on their wrists with a vibroknife taken from a legionnaire’s chest webbing.
Keel switched out his blaster’s charge slug, then scowled at the back of his navigator’s turban as he followed him to the cockpit. He flopped into the pilot’s bucket and began flipping switches, running through the ship’s takeoff sequence. “What was that?”
Ravi raised an eyebrow, his own hands moving across the control console, the shipboard computer activating switches as the holographic fingers hovered over them. “What was what?”
“That.” Keel pointed a thumb to some vague place outside the ship’s hull. “There were three? You couldn’t have warned me?”
With a shrug, Ravi reached up and diverted additional airflow into the smuggler’s hold. “I am thinking the ship would have told me if you had not ripped out so many of her comm wires and such.”
Keel looked at Ravi blankly, unable to argue the fact.
Ravi continued to cycle through the pre-launch checklist. “Shields online.”
After keying in a 140-character passkey, Keel leaned back in his chair to watch his monitor. The spinning credit symbol from his off-moon bank account rotated as a secure connection was established. “Ravi, with the money I just got for unloading these prisoners, I’m going to have Olivet Systems do some R&D on how to shoot and kill a hologram.”
“Yes, this is a wonderful use of resources, sir. I am wishing I had—”
The screen flashed, then began to play the animation for a lost connection: bold red arrows moving toward the four corners of the screen.
Keel knitted his brows. “Lost signal? That’s not s’posed to happen unless the Sharon moon explodes…”
BOOM!
The ship rocked violently, sending Keel out of his chair and onto the deck. He looked up at Ravi, whose holoprojectors rendered him steady, though the cockpit lurched around them. “Who’s shooting at us, Ravi?”
The hologram frowned as he looked at sensor screens. “It would appear that the Republicans found a way to get a main battle tank to the landing zone after all.”
04
On their way to the Jaris Cantina to find the dangerous bounty hunter Tyrus Rechs, Prisma and KRS-88 dodged squads of Republican legionnaires. In the swirling nepenthe of the skies over the port, landing transports full of armored legionnaires and specialized units shuttled down to the surface to clear out resistance hot spots and support mop-up operations now that a full interdiction was under way.
“Young miss,” announced KRS-88. “We are in clear violation of several local and Republican laws. I advise we surrender immediately so that your safety—”
“Not listening, Crash,” called Prisma over her tiny shoulder as she darted away from the looming servitor bot her father had assigned to her. “We have to find this bounty hunter. He might be just what we need.”
“Do we, young miss?” the bot intoned deeply in automated condescension.
“Yes, Crash! We need a… hero! I need—”
“Young miss,” interrupted KRS-88 as they hid in the shadows of an alley, waiting for a squad of nearby legionnaires to finish blasting away at a group of Gomarii slavers farther down the street.
The sq
uad clanked off at port arms to pursue the fleeing slavers.
“Young miss…” began KRS-88 once again. “Bounty hunters are not heroes. They are dastardly criminals. Reckless murderers even. Why, they’re—”
“That’s what I need, Crash. I need someone like that. I need a murderer too.” She stumbled. Halted. Stared hard at the ground beneath her giant, ill-fitting shoes. “I need… justice,” she whispered.
Justice wasn’t what she wanted. But it was the only thing left to her.
“I’m only trying to protect you, young miss. That’s what your father would have wanted me to do. That’s all.”
She knew the bot could sense her emotional levels. It had learned to gauge ranges in order to be of better service. And, of course, it had been there. It had recorded everything that had happened.
Prisma stared coldly at KRS-88’s seven-foot black metallic frame. She set her mouth hard against anything that might come from it. Anything that might betray her. Anything that might cause her to break down once again.
“As you wish, young miss,” murmured the bot.
***
At the Jaris Cantina they found bodies. Twelve Gomarii slavers. Discarded blasters everywhere. The smell of burnt ozone lingered in the air.
Only a potbellied bartender remained, forgotten broom in hand, staring in disbelief at the carnage and wreckage that surrounded him. He looked stunned, and Prisma could understand why. His place of business was shot to pieces, and it seemed many of his customers were dead.
He stared at the shining credit Prisma had set on the bar. “That bounty hunter come in here all quiet-like,” he said.
He sighed, with a wistful expression that seemed to acknowledge the vastness of the galaxy from end to end. Then he took up the credit and turned it over and over, as if in some kind of trance.
“He just come in all silent. But I knew, and everyone else did too, that he was real trouble. Bad trouble. Wearing that old-school legionnaire armor. But all marked up from times before. From the tribes. Didn’t even take his helmet off. Carried a big old piece of slug-throwing iron on his thigh. Like back from the Savage Wars. Not a normal blaster like everyone carries. Why, look at the holes he put in Deke Cansain alone! Fifteen of ’em. There’s nothing left of the poor man’s face. On second thought, little girl, you really shouldn’t look at that. That’ll just make you old before your time. Who in the hells of the Arcturus Maelstrom uses a hand cannon like that anymore? Recoil and all, and he’s still putting slugs in everyone light speed fast. Smoke and blasts like an old shotgun I seen once on a dorbi hunt. Killed ’em all and then asked where…”
The bartender got real quiet all of a sudden. Then, as if remembering where he was, he started pushing the broom idly, for all the good it didn’t do.
“Go on,” Prisma prompted.
The bartender, his face twisted from radiation, stared at the credit again.
“You don’t see too many of those lately,” he said, indicating the credit. “Republic wants everyone on the net. They can keep track of your money there. This… this is a lot of money. Real money. I can do a lot with this. But it ain’t worth telling you where he went. I’d have to leave Ackabar if I let you know where.”
“So you told him where to go next?” asked Prisma.
The man’s mouth worked silently for a moment. As though he were chewing his words over and over, again and again. Fearful they might cause him to choke.
Then, stuttering, “O-of course. H-he stuck that cannon right in my face. So I had to. Had to.”
“Well,” said Prisma she climbed up on a stool next to the bar and leaned into the man’s tormented face. “They’re probably all dead there too now. Know what I mean?”
The bartender looked around at all the corpses. Whatever had happened here… it had clearly left him shaken. There was just so much damage and destruction. The look on the man’s face clearly communicated that he’d snapped.
He nodded slowly, then whispered, “Junga’s.”
“What’s a junga?” asked Prisma.
“Who. Junga is a who. The who. Runs the crime syndicate this parsec and a few others. Probably ‘ran’ is more correct. But maybe not. Junga had some heavy lifters working for him. But I won’t lie—that bounty hunter moved like a Xanthan eel. But you know… faster. If that’s even possible. That one’s dangerous. Everybody-gets-killed dangerous, to be real clear about it. Really, listen, kid. If I was you, I’d go in the opposite direction of Junga’s. Seriously.”
***
But of course Prisma wouldn’t. And didn’t. Despite KRS-88’s numerous protests, including the ones with his biggest words, she followed the trail of mayhem and bodies that shadowed the bounty hunter.
Junga’s hideout was deep in the Breakers. Way back amid the wreckage of a thousand years. A place where people who didn’t have business, didn’t go. The Breakers was the area of Ackabar where old ships were broken apart for salvage and spare parts. In a way, it was a museum of the history of space flight. Freighters from twenty years ago lay alongside old light huggers from a thousand years gone. Big bright colony ships were like the skeletons of beached whales now. Only the ribs and transportation spines remained of what had once been the height and hope of technology for the first optimistic pilgrims that took the outbound trek.
Before jump drive came along and changed everything.
Junga’s fortress was a like a massive pirate’s treehouse cobbled together from forgotten starships and odd bits of junk. It climbed the superstructure of an old colony ship; bunkers and walkways led up along the spine to a looming tower hanging underneath the main ventral spine of the ancient derelict. The tower looked foreboding and dangerous, like a stand of trees in a forest one steers clear of on a winter’s day.
“Miss…”
“Don’t, Crash. We’re going up there. We have to.”
At the entrance to the catwalk, crossing out into the fish bones that remained of the ancient starship’s superstructure, lay the bodies of two dead Gomarii mercenaries in full battle plate. The lone eye that wallowed in each misshapen head was milky and unfixed.
Prisma knew that, inside, she would find the man who would make everything right again.
She was wrong about that.
05
The bounty hunter Tyrus Rechs didn’t always use a slug thrower. But when he did, he left a lot of big smoking holes in anyone who stood between him and his target.
The bounty for Junga Dootabanu wasn’t anything special. He was just another lizard slithering across the edge of the galaxy on vice, corruption, and graft. Just another bottom-feeder the locals were paying to put down, since the Republic was probably too busy getting a slice of the action to do the job themselves.
That should mean something, thought the man inside the ancient legionnaire MK1 armor. The well-made kind from back in the Savage Wars, not the mass-produced reflective junk that looked slick but didn’t even stand up to blaster fire. Just a shiny uniform for kids to get killed in and feel like they’d done something noble for a galaxy that was anything but.
“What?” he asked himself. “What should mean something to me?”
He did that a lot lately. Talked to himself. But he was all he had, so he did.
Live long enough, and it’s just you.
Someone he’d once known, someone important, had told him that. Or had it been a warning?
He was threading the maze of Port Authority passenger corridors that would lead to the lift hub and then down to the city of Ackabar. The Republic hadn’t shown up to ruin everything yet. That would be in about five minutes. But that didn’t concern him. He had a job to do. That was all that meant anything anymore.
And he had two tails.
Two of Junga’s thugs, most likely. Blasters who watched the port. Probably more of them all around. But the two that were obvious were what concerned him at this moment. Were they interested for the sake of being interested? Or were they waiting?
The bounty hunter was carryin
g a heavy blaster, charcoal-dusted to keep down reflection. It was the same heavy firepower issued to at least one member of every legionnaire squad—the kind that put out thirty blasts in four seconds. The kind that was wildly inaccurate even if you knew what you were doing. He used it to keep everyone’s heads down. A kind of crowd control.
Then there was the big old hand cannon on his hip. He used that for terminations. And captures; clients frowned on disintegrations.
This was a termination.
Fifty thousand credits. All of it sitting in a bank vault on New Kessia. IRL. Not digital. Proof of death, and collect in real life.
Does that matter?
What?
The credits. Do they matter?
“Hey!” shouted one of the tails.
In an instant, the look on his mean little face changed from the smirk of the smoothest outlaw this side of Dalore to the wide eyes of a startled murder victim.
The bounty hunter had turned down a maintenance corridor and screwed on the big fat blaster silencer he kept in one of the armor’s many cargo pouches. He didn’t like using it. Not unless he had to. It didn’t suppress all that well for all that long. Limited shelf life. Totally illegal.
But he’d had to.
He ventilated both of the tails in the blue shadowy depths of the maintenance passage. Like some Vulcar tyranasquid, luring its victims down into the shifting dark blues deep beneath that violent sea and greeting them with death.
Someone might have heard a series of low metallic hisses. If they did, and they were military, they’d know exactly what the hisses were. But most people didn’t.
A half second later the bounty hunter left the maintenance alley alone.
He switched on retinal tracking inside his suit’s HUD and started a redundancy scan. No doubt the tails had a handler. If the same face appeared in the next few passages more than three times, that would be the handler.
Sure enough, a Hool—hulking, psychotic—revealed itself within the time it took him to double back through a few of the major passages. The Hool was trying to discreetly hide its poisonous spines beneath an old gray traveler’s cloak that had seen better days.