Mocha started screaming, and Regis closed the gap between them in less than a second, using his right hand to clamp down on her mouth to muzzle her cries. With the last of his stored charge, he sent another electroshock current through his hands and into her body. Mocha convulsed for a few seconds before slumping back onto the sofa, completely passed out.
“Stupid prosties,” Regis muttered under his breath while checking his internal battery status. Having used up his reserves as well, he would have to wait for an hour before going back to full charge again. His colleagues were waiting for him in the back corridor near the exit, and all he had to do now was deliver the goods to them.
The sound of applause coming from behind him made the bounty hunter turn around in surprise. Regis’s mouth hung open at what he saw.
Strand was sitting up around a pile of blankets as he stopped clapping. “That was a hell of a show there, pal. I was going to ask if you wanted to join up with my crew, but seeing as you’re not very good with women, I’ll have to rescind that offer.”
Regis was still in shock. “H-how? I thought y-you were out.”
Strand smiled. “I would have been knocked out for a long time, that’s for sure. That damned prostie gave me enough of a dose to take out a riwwr three times my size.”
“T-then how?”
“I took a universal antidote just before my fun time. It’s kind of a standard operating procedure just in case I get a communicable disease or something like that,” Strand said. “Even then her double dose of sedatives and hallucinogens still overwhelmed me, for a while anyway.”
Regis finally got his head together. He figured he could stall this pirate while his batteries recharged. Tapping with his fingers on the base of his palm, he sent a silent com-link message for reinforcements.
Strand shrugged his bare shoulders. “Then again, the worst thing I was expecting was these ladies robbing me of my cash while I was asleep. Imagine my surprise at finding you when I woke up.”
“You’re wanted,” Regis said. “You’d better come along quietly, or else.”
“Or else what?”
“This,” Regis said as he reached back beneath his long coat and tried to draw out his pistol, but his right hand only clasped an empty holster at the side. He looked down towards his hip in surprise. His weapon was missing.
Strand chuckled as he aimed the stolen laser pistol back at him. He had filched it from the cybernetic bounty hunter while being carried a few minutes before. “Looking for this?”
Regis cursed as he moved sideways to his right, engaging his cybernetic legs for an enhanced burst of speed, hoping to get behind the back of the sofa to use it as cover. Strand fired ahead of his target, the quick, blinding flashes of laser fire aimed at the bounty hunter’s legs. The ablation burned through the lower part of Regis’s duster and damaged the servos in his knees, making him lose his balance.
The bounty hunter fell face first just before reaching the back of the sofa. The forceful impact on the hard floor broke Regis’s jaw and momentarily stunned him. Strand stood up and readjusted the pistol’s settings to use a more powerful burst as he aimed for a better shot.
With an effort born of desperation, Regis sat up and used both his arms to pick up the couch and threw it at his opponent, the unconscious Mocha and numerous cash cards falling to the floor all around him.
Strand cursed as he ducked down, just in time for the sofa to fly past his head before it smashed into the bed with a loud crash. Keeping his eye on the target, he fired another series of short bursts at the wounded bounty hunter.
The laser fire tore into Regis’s chest and shoulders, shorting out his remaining systems. The bounty hunter slumped backwards and closed his eyes while undergoing circulatory shock, small wisps of smoke emanating from his damaged cybernetic appendages.
Strand walked over to where his clothes had been laid out and began putting them on. Glancing at the incapacitated bounty hunter, he snorted in contempt. “Damned cybers. I was planning to enjoy myself for a few more hours and you had to ruin it!”
As he knelt down and began picking up the cash cards strewn on the floor, Strand was startled by a series of knocks coming from the door, followed by the sounds of plasma cutters. Oh crap, it’s his backup team, he thought. Checking the laser pistol, he realized there wasn’t enough charge left in the weapon’s battery for an extended fight.
Looking around, he realized his only other way out was through the balcony. Scooping up the remaining cash cards closest to him, Strand sprinted towards the large window while pocketing the money. He opened the old-fashioned panes just as the door behind him caved in from repeated cybernetic blows and cutting torches.
Strand ducked behind the side of the window as another bounty hunter burst into the room. Reaching back inside, he fired a short burst in the general direction of the door, using up the last of the laser pistol’s charge. The lead bounty hunter ducked behind the bed before aiming a gauss submachine gun and opening fire.
Wincing as the glass pane beside him shattered from the burst of enemy fire, Strand flattened himself along the wall of the building and began to shift sideways, hoping he could reach a window to another room before they could get a clear shot at him.
The lead bounty hunter’s metallic scalp poked out from the edge of the balcony as he aimed his weapon at Strand, who was completely exposed, climbing along the side of the estate. “Give up right now or you die, pirate scum!”
Strand glanced over his shoulder before throwing his hands up. “I give up, you got me!”
The bounty hunter watched incredulously as Strand fell off the side of the building, dropped close to fifteen meters and landed in the waters of a deep swimming pool beside the manicured grounds below.
Despite going in feet first, the impact of the water nearly knocked him out as Strand’s shoulders bumped against the bottom of the pool. A woman swimming around in a mermaid costume looked at him in shock; he had narrowly missed falling on top of her. Strand swam up to the surface, but not before flashing her an embarrassed smile.
Pulling himself out of the pool, he ignored the panicked shrieks of the nearby naked youths lounging by the waterslide and ran into the adjoining garden. Carefully manicured terrestrial hedgerows were shaped to make the whole area resemble a maze of some sort, where amorous customers looking for the unexpected could bump into and take whoever they came upon.
Strand’s clothes were dripping wet, and the cold breeze gave him little comfort as he began snaking inside the organically walled labyrinth, hoping to find a way out towards the other side. He could hear the sounds of the bounty hunters coming closer, and he figured there were at least two of them in his immediate vicinity.
Keeping low, he stealthily ambled along a winding corridor of shrubbery, trying to listen for the telltale sounds of his pursuers.
“You take that end, I’ll take the other,” one of the bounty hunters said. “He didn’t look armed, but don’t take any chances this time. Just kill him.”
“Okay,” said the other.
Scowling, Strand crept carefully through a twisting path, hoping to evade them. It was his own fault for not bringing a weapon. The bordello’s reputation was impeccable, and it had lulled him into a false sense of security. Next time I do some R&R, I’m going to bring along a battle suit just in case, he thought.
As he rounded a corner, he came upon a pale teenage girl wearing nothing but a transparent silken scarf around her neck. She smiled at him. “Hi. Looks like you found me. What would you like to do?”
Strand gestured at her to keep her voice down. “Could you please show me a way out of this maze?”
The slender girl stretched her arms up in the air, posing like a forest nymph. “What’s wrong, you don’t want me?” She pointed to another path. “If you’re into boys, there’s one down that way, or I could tag along if you want a threesome.”
“I don’t want anyone,” Strand whispered. “I know there’s a secret path workers like
you take to get into your positions—could you please guide me that way?”
She looked at him uneasily. “I’m sorry, we’re not allowed to do that.”
Sighing, Strand pulled out a pocketful of cash cards he had taken from the room. “Look, I’ll make it worth your while.”
The girl remained hesitant. “I-I could get into trouble over this.”
Strand gave her a disarming smile as he pulled out even more cash cards and offered them to her. “I’m not looking for trouble. I just want to get away from here as fast as I can.”
“Why?”
“My, uh … my wife found me,” Strand said. “She saw me run into the maze here, and she’s got a weapon.”
The girl smiled as she took the cash cards from his hand and hid them underneath a small container embedded at the bottom of a shrub. Once the lock on the canister engaged, she pointed towards the corridor he had just come out of. “You need to move back and then take the path down the left lane. Once you’re there, look for a pink rose that juts out along your way. If you follow each lane with that colored flower, you’ll eventually make your way to our dressing rooms. Stick to your right, otherwise you’ll end up in the center of the maze, which is a giant gazebo with beds in it.”
“Got it, thanks,” Strand said as he turned around and dashed back from where he came.
Running through a pathway, he kept his eye out for the pink rose. Sure enough, when he made it to another intersection, he spotted the flower and began moving into the path it indicated. Hearing an electronic alarm across the grounds of the estate, Strand figured either a staff member or one of the bounty hunters must have tripped it in order to evacuate the guests and workers. The police would no doubt be on their way too.
Running past a half-naked, terrified boy cowering behind a faux Greek pedestal, Strand spotted another pink rose at the junction to his right. Just as he was about to sprint into it, a voice called out from above. Looking over his shoulder, Strand raised his eyebrows in surprise.
One of the bounty hunters was standing over the top of the hedgerows, long cybernetic stilts replacing his feet as he towered over much of the maze, giving him an overhead view. The mercenary aimed a laser carbine at him. “Give it up, pirate.”
Strand threw himself onto the grassy floor and rolled sideways, keeping low and hiding by the corridor of shrubs at an angle. The bounty hunter began firing at his target’s last known location, using short bursts as he aimed where he might have ducked into. The barrage of laser fire burned numerous holes through the thick walls of plants. The bordello owners had made sure the shrubbery was properly tended to and spared no expense to keep the place as green as possible. Even though the bounty hunter was gouging out massive chunks of fern, the burned-out plant life failed to ignite.
The youth tending the nearby area ran away in terror as the bounty hunter continued his relentless firing at the plants around him until his battery pack ran out. Compressing his stilted legs, the bounty hunter edged lower as he began reloading the carbine, using his cybernetic eyes to see if he could find the body of his target amongst the smoking piles of burned shrubs.
Poking his head into one of the burned-out pathways, the bounty hunter was caught by surprise as Strand leapt out from his cover and grappled him from behind. The bounty hunter dropped the rifle and tried to use his metallic arms to pry the pirate from his back, but Strand was able to press the reset button behind his ear just as the mercenary was about to crush his neck.
The bounty hunter’s whole body convulsed as the reset mode sent a powerful surge through his neural system. Strand threw himself onto the ground as he grabbed the laser carbine and fired it at the mercenary, just as his enemy had recovered his senses. The laser fire tore into the bounty hunter’s head and chest, and the cyber went down.
Strand stood up while cradling the carbine. He shook his head. “And here I was thinking you cyber mercs were tough.”
A flechette round struck him in the leg, just above the knee before exiting. The shock made Strand drop the rifle as he fell back onto the ground, yelling in agony.
The second bounty hunter emerged from an adjoining pathway, the submachine gun aimed squarely at Strand’s head. “You took down a lot of my friends, pirate. I’m going to see you suffer before you die.”
Strand could barely catch his breath as the blood seeping from his wound began to stain the grass around him. The numbness in his arms slowly increased, and he sensed the end was near. “Oh well, I … had a good run. As far as the pain goes … I’m not feeling much. Sorry to disappoint you.”
The bounty hunter hunched forward, his right eye using the weapon’s holosight for a more carefully aimed shot. “I’m gonna splatter your brains now.”
A growl coming from behind made the mercenary look over his shoulder, and his eyes grew wide when he saw what was behind him. The bounty hunter turned and tried to bring his weapon to bear, but it was too late.
Commander Creull Bonecrusher leapt at the surprised mercenary and bit hard into the screaming man’s skull, her powerful jaws clamping down with such force that it was enough to crumple metal. The bounty hunter’s skull was reinforced with damage-resistant nanocarbon, but his chin was ordinary bone, and his jowls instantly shattered from the impact. The Nepenthe’s executive officer also used her front paws to tear at the hapless mercenary’s shoulder, completely separating the neural ports attaching the cybernetic limbs altogether. In less than ten seconds, the bounty hunter was a mass of individual artificial appendages writhing around a bloody carcass.
Duncan Hauk ran over to where Strand was and quickly began to administer first aid, slapping a sealant patch over the lieutenant’s gaping leg wound and administering anti-shock drugs into his circulatory system. “Hang in there, LT. The other spacers are coming to pick us up.”
Strand made a hoarse chuckle as Creull made her way towards him. “You sure got here pretty fast, Commander.”
Creull made a low growl. “You idiot. I was a client in this bordello too, just like you.”
Fighting through the pain, Strand raised an eyebrow. “What?”
Creull pointed a clawed finger at a side mansion overlooking the hedge maze. “The estate beside yours caters to riwwr. When I heard the commotion, I immediately assumed it was because of you and so I headed over here. Naturally, I was right.”
4 The Aspiration
At first glance, the Shakak system seemed to be nothing more than a red dwarf star surrounded by a large asteroid field and a half dozen lifeless planets. Shakak Alpha, the closest planet to its parent star, remained an airless world of solid rock, its jagged surface periodically jolted by the sudden appearance of volcanoes erupting from its molten core. Despite the entire location’s apparent unimportance, it remained a closely guarded transit point in Concordance space, officially claimed by the xtid as part of their administrative territory.
Prime Gizzt’s long, cylindrical torso swayed back and forth slightly as the structure he resided in experienced another recurrent seismic quake. Shakak Alpha had always been tectonically unstable, yet it was this unpredictable characteristic that made it a priority for underground construction. Deception was a hallmark for his species, and what better place to hide a massive underground base than in a supposedly dead and inhospitable planet.
Using his four legs, Gizzt shuffled forward until he got close to the opening and then made a short jump past the exit and into the tunnel. The interior of the base consisted of cavernous, sphere-shaped rooms, with gimbaled platforms containing high-tech control equipment. Imported creeper plants and vines adhered and thrived along the circular walls, while floating balls of light and embedded lamps provided a murky illumination.
Gizzt entered the next spherical chamber and gripped his wiry toes along the sides as he made his way towards a distant platform. The more they try to make it like our homeworld, the more I miss the actual one, he thought.
When he got to the largest platform, a long, thick vine uncurled beside him
and audio began to emerge from its hollow end. “Prime, Zytll is on his way to meet you. Shall I let him pass?”
“Yes,” Gizzt said. “Tell him I am at the sacred terrace. Eighth chamber.”
“At once, Prime,” the voice from the plant said before the vine tip reattached itself to the surrounding flora once more.
Gizzt stared at the holographic altar in front of him. His four eyes regarded an oddly shaped standing stone, and he rotated it back and forth using the interactive menu, its smooth contours reminding him of an artifact he had recently examined during his last stay on the homeworld. For a long time, all he could do was look in awe at the minute traces of tool marks on the obelisk’s surface, his sense of wonderment unabated.
After a few minutes, Zytll entered through one of the branching tunnels and hopped from one platform to another, the planet’s light gravity greatly aiding his pace. The younger xtid was a tad shorter, his crimson body sheath of a paler hue.
Gizzt sensed the younger one’s presence, but he continued to focus on the holographic projection. It was dangerous to keep his back to one of his own kind, yet Gizzt was supremely confident he was protected.
Zytll stood a respectable few meters away, waiting silently to be acknowledged by his superior. In the olden times, no xtid ever turned his back on another, for their carnivorous killer instincts would likely take over.
Blowing out chlorinated air from his lungs, Gizzt finally turned and stared at the young male. “So, you have returned.”
Zytll bobbed his head up and down, indicating greeting. “My prime, I have some news.”
Gizzt folded the two pairs of arms below his neck. “Go ahead, speak.”
“There have been some intel reports from the Hidden, but they have yet to pass them on to the Concordance Unified Command,” Zytll said. “Apparently, there was a pirate raid in a Union mining outpost in their rear sector.”
Gizzt wasn’t surprised by the news. The Hidden, a master spy network, was created by their symbiote allies, and they were very good at their work. “A pirate raid on a rearward mining planet? Those buccaneers must be getting desperate.”
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