The Starhawk Chronicles

by Joseph J. Madden

  “Thom tried to locate my relatives, but couldn’t find any. So he took me back to Kasandra II and raised me with his family.”

  “Have you ever tried to find any family on your own?”

  Podo sighed, a sad, quiet sound. “Jesse and I tried a few years back. No luck. Besides, Jesse is my family.”

  “Pretty testy part of the family, don’t you think?”

  Her regret for making the crack was immediate. She felt she wanted to kick herself, as the fur on the Podo’s ears bristled, but just as suddenly, the flash of anger was gone.

  “Like I said, Jesse’s got a lot on his mind.”

  She could tell that there was more to Forster than Podo was telling, but she did not want to press too hard for fear of offending him any further. She would just have to seek her answers elsewhere.

  *

  Once docked aboard the Windward, the crew set about repairing the damage to the outer hull. Kayla descended the boarding ramp to the docking bay. Nebula Dancer’s escape pod sat discarded in one corner, the damage from the collision with Starhawk clearly visible. The sight depressed her to no end. The Dancer had been her home for the past three years, now all that was left of her beloved ship had been cast off like so much space debris.

  Turning away from the sight, she made her away around the Starhawk’s underbelly until she came to where the worst of the battle damage could be viewed up close.

  Malcontent’s missile attack had left a gaping hole more than a meter wide across the lower hull section. Had the shields not been in place, the ship might have been cut in half by the blast. Podo and Morogo, along with two members of the Windward’s crew, worked from inside, while Kym and K’Tran began to patch up the breach from the exterior.

  “Need an extra pair of hands?” Kayla offered.

  Kym looked up from her work and wiped an arm across her sweaty brow, leaving a trail of grime in its wake. She grinned at Kayla. “Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated.”

  Kayla stood back a moment, assessing the damage before grabbing a welding torch and helmet. “Took a pretty nasty shot.”

  “Would have been a lot worse had you not come along,” K’Tran replied. Stripping off his welding gloves, he held out his hand. “Much obliged for the timely assist out there. Only sorry you had to lose your ship in the process.”

  Kayla shook his hand quickly, then pulled on her own pair of gloves. “It’s nice to see some people on this crew have some sense of gratitude. The way Forster’s been acting toward me, you’d think he’d be happier working with the Nexus Gang against me.”

  K’Tran chuckled. “Pay him no mind, Miss. He doesn’t mean anything by it. This hunt just has him a little more on edge than usual. That’s all.” Taking a laser torch in one hand, he began cutting away some of the jagged hull plates.

  “Is he always so on edge?” Kayla asked.

  Kym paused a moment before answering. “This is a tough hunt for us. Hunting the Nexus Gang is not exactly our idea of a fun job.”

  “I know you guys had to capture them once before, so it must be tough having to face them again so soon,” Kayla said.

  “In more ways than you can know,” K’Tran answered. “We lost a damn fine member of our crew the last time out.”

  The conversation paused, Kym and K’Tran sharing an uneasy glance. “Lohren,” Kym added quietly. “My sister.”

  Kayla looked on the Starhawk’s engineer with genuine sympathy. “I’m sorry.”

  Kym nodded her appreciation, her eyes moist but she fought them back. “It hit us all hard, but not as badly as it did Jesse. He was devastated. He kept saying that he thought that would be his last hunt. He wanted to retire and marry Lohren. They had plans to buy a ranch on Phale III and start a family. After Lohren died, the hunt was all he had left.”

  Kayla felt a sudden rush of guilt and found herself unable to look either of them in the eyes. “I had no idea this was so personal to him. I’m sorry I interfered.”

  She was surprised when K’Tran laid a firm hand on her shoulder. “Don’t be sorry. You’ve already pulled our fat out of the fire twice. Plus, I think you’re just what Jesse needs right now.”

  Even Kym, who had tried to focus her attention on the repairs at hand, looked up at K’Tran in confusion at this statement. “What I mean,” the older man explained, “is that you’re helping to keep the boy on his toes. He’s been getting a little careless on this hunt. I think he has a death wish. If he can’t take down Lohren’s killers, he’d just as soon be dead himself. Now you’re here, shaking things up a bit, getting his fur ruffled, and that’s putting some of the fight back into him.”

  “I don’t think I’ll be doing that much longer,” Kayla admitted. “I think if I set foot back on board, he’ll atomize me.”

  K’Tran chuckled. “Then you’ll just have to kick his ass a little.” He smiled, a wide, toothy grin that Kayla found infectious. “You’re certainly the one to do it, too. If you could handle Ho’jisk without breaking a sweat, you can certainly handle him.”

  With that, K’Tran broke into loud, raucous laughter, and Kayla found it hard not to join in. “I guess I’ll just have to do that.”

  Two hours later the hull repairs were nearly complete. Kym stayed behind outside to do some final spot welding while Kayla followed K’Tran back inside the ship. As she tagged along through the ship’s narrow corridors, Kayla finally asked the question that had been nagging at the back of her mind for some time.

  “You mind telling me why Captain Kid is leading this team and not you? As senior hunter, I’d have guessed you to be in charge.”

  K’Tran glanced over his shoulder at her, giving her a warm smile, but did not break stride. “I only came on this team as a favor to Jesse, and a promise to his father.”

  He led her into the galley, taking a seat at one end of the long table. He punched an order into the tabletop keypad, and a few seconds later, twin glasses of a foamy fruit nectar appeared through the slot in the center of the table. K’Tran took one glass, handed the other to Karson, gesturing for her to take a seat as well. She settled into the offered chair and took a sip, surprised to find the drink had an exotic flavor that was both sweet and sour at the same time.

  “Jesse’s old man and I met during the war. We both enlisted at the same time, went through training together. We were placed with the 59th fighter group, flying recon missions in an old SX-17 like yours.”

  “You flew with the 59th? The Wolf Pack?” Her eyes went wide with his affirming nod. “I’ve heard so much about them. Their stories are near legendary.”

  K’Tran chuckled softly. “You’d think we single-handedly ended the war all on our own, if you put too much stock in some of those tales, but we did see more than our share of action. Cana Zartis, Sethulon, Sedra – we were involved in all the major engagements. We were there when Earth fell, and we took part in the victory celebrations on Harkonia Prime. Granted, Thom and I flew recon. Most of the glory went to the fighter jockeys, and they deserve it. We saw too many young pilots blown to dust to try to take the recognition from them. But we were there.”

  He leaned back in his seat, scuffing the table’s polished black surface as he rested his feet upon it. “After the war, things got pretty quiet and neither one of us could see going career military, but we missed the adventure. We needed to do something that would provide the same kind of thrills, and paid well, too. Money wasn’t that big a deal to me, but Thom had just taken a wife and needed to support her and the kid that was on the way. After the war, it seemed like the bounty hunting profession went on an upswing. Plenty of war criminals to track down.”

  “That’s when the guilds started up, isn’t it? When the business started getting more legitimate?” Kayla asked.

  “That’s right,” K’Tran answered. “Supposedly it got more respectable, though I’ve been doing this for twenty years and still don’t see much of that. Respect, I mean.” His reply brought a chuckle from the young woman.

&nbs
p; “So, anyway, Thom and I pooled our credits and bought the Starhawk. Started out slow, bringing in troops that went AWOL and such. Pretty soon we got tired of that and started after the bigger credit bounties. We got really good at it too. For a while there wasn’t a hunter team that could match our record.”

  The older man was no longer looking at her, but staring past her at the bulkhead, and, Kayla supposed, even beyond that. His gaze was somewhere distant, the events of his youthful years replaying in his mind.

  “Problem was, we got older,” he said with a half sigh. “The other teams were younger and their technology better. Then it came down to our last hunt.”

  He took another long sip of his drink, holding it on his tongue and savoring the taste for a long moment before swallowing.

  “There was this pirate, Shontaia Thring, who had been marauding the shipping lanes. We figured if we could make one last, big snatch, we’d be set for the rest of our lives. The only problem being that Thring knew we were close to nailing him. He set a trap and the two of us walked right into it, like a couple of bloody amateurs. The tunnel we were traversing was rigged with concussion detonators. Thom pushed me clear just before the damned things went off. He caught the brunt of the blast full on. Thankfully, he went quickly. Thring got away clean. Bastard’s still at large.”

  K’Tran paused again, and he seemed to grow older before her eyes, but he caught the look of compassion on Kayla’s face and recovered.

  “I took what earnings I had saved and bought myself a small spread on Bonaba Six. After all those years on the hunt, I guess I just wasn’t cut out for raising a herd of gravars. Disgusting little animals.” He chuckled softly at the memory. “Well, you can imagine my surprise when one day, out of the blue clear sky, Jesse just shows up.“

  *

  The heat of the midmorning sun was already unbearable as it beat down upon the plains of Bonaba Six. K’Tran removed his frayed straw hat and mopped the sweat that was pooling on his brow for the third time in the last few minutes. Squinting against the glare of the sun, he watched as the shepherd drones fanned out among the throngs of gravars, keeping them in line as they were led out to be watered. The gravars stood waist high and closely resembled sheep, but with the head and powerful hind legs of a jackrabbit thrown into the mix and a pair of sharp, bony tusks that curled back around their large ears.

  K’Tran silently thanked the gods that he was upwind this morning. It was getting close to mating season and the males gave off the most god-awful stench when trying to attract a mate.

  His mount twitched nervously at the metallic scraping sound his administrator drone’s knee-joints made as the automaton approached from the main house. K’Tran silently cursed the two-legged bogo for its skittishness, then cursed himself. The bloated, reptilian bogos were superior pack animals well suited to Bonaba Six’s harsh conditions, but their inherent jitteriness made them less than adequate as riding mounts. Should have spent the extra money and had some horses or camels brought in from one of the Earth colonies, he thought.

  The administrator drone, an old EX series came up beside K’Tran’s mount. “Pardon me, sir, but our sensors have picked up a groundcar on the road, heading in this direction.”

  K’Tran looked towards the road. seeing a cloud of dust kicked up by the vehicle’s passing. Without thought, his hand went to his hip where he normally wore a sidearm, finding only empty air.

  “They haven’t signaled?”

  “No, sir. Do you want me to activate the defense systems?”

  K’Tran could hear the whine of the groundcar’s repulsor engines now. A moment later, the vehicle came slowly around the house, past the stables. It was an open-air rental job, a classy four-seater, its high-sheen crimson paint job dulled by the coating of dust it had picked up on the road. K’Tran took one look at the driver and shook his head at the drone’s inquiry. “No need for the defenses,” he said through his broad grin, which just as quickly faded. “At least, I hope not.”

  He dismounted and handed the reins to the drone, slowly approaching the vehicle as it cruised to a stop. “Never in my life did I expect to see you here.”

  Jesse Forster grinned as he raised himself in his seat and took the hand that K’Tran offered while using the other to remove his goggles. A fine coating of road dust had darkened his face, except for the area around where his goggles had been. He pulled a handkerchief from one pocket and proceeded to wipe his face. His dark blond hair had been blown every which way. “It’s been a long time, old friend. Nice hat.”

  Suddenly conscious of his headgear, which worked well against blocking the sun, but looked rather silly on a man as big as he was, K’Tran whipped it off his head. “Yeah, it has been awhile,” he replied, gesturing toward the house. “How’s your mother?”

  “She’s good,” Jesse followed the older man into the house. “She had to have her whole pelvis replaced after that hoverball mishap, but you know her. She was up and back on that court two days after the surgery.”

  The interior of the house was blessedly cool after the heat of outdoors. The main sitting room into which they entered was sparsely furnished. A worn easy chair, a small end table covered with a reading lamp, datapad, and piles of data cards, and some holographic prints dotting the walls were the only furnishings in the room.

  “Caitlin never was one to just sit and take things easy.” K’Tran chuckled as he moved to the bar in the far corner, which appeared to be the best cared for area in the room. He poured them each a tall glass of Tyrosian brandy from an emerald decanter. Handing one to his young visitor he asked, “So how are things at the University? You ever get that xenoarchaeology class you were trying to get into?”

  Jesse did not answer immediately, stalling further by taking a long sip of the brandy. He swallowed, and turned to gaze out the window, watching for a moment as the admin drone struggled to restrain the still nervously dancing bogo.

  “I withdrew from the University almost two months ago.”

  K’Tran swallowed the sip of brandy he had taken, nearly choking on it as it went down. “Jesse, no,” he said. “Your father always had hopes that you’d finish and get your degree.”

  “My father also would have wanted his murder avenged.” Jesse’s reply was casual, matter-of-fact. He took another sip from his snifter.

  K’Tran looked at him with exasperation. “Jesse, we had this discussion back after Thom died. I thought we agreed that . . . “

  “Shontaia Thring was spotted on Braxiss,” Jesse cut him off. “We’re going after him.”

  K’Tran stood speechless for a long moment, pondering the possibilities that Thring might even still be alive. The fact that no other hunters had gotten to him after all this time seemed a bit farfetched. It was true that K’Tran had been out of contact with most of the galactic events, but he was sure that news like that would have found its way back to him. “We?”

  “I have a team put together,” Jesse replied, without going into details. “I had the ‘hawk taken out of mothballs and refitted. Took the remainder of my university tuition, but she’s in better condition now than when you and Dad flew her.”

  “And you came here to offer me a chance to join up with you?”

  “We could use you. You have the most experience with Thring. You and Dad got the closest to him and would have nailed him if he hadn’t killed Dad first.”

  K’Tran was shaking his head. “I’m retired,” he replied, and finished off his brandy with one quick swig. “Bounty hunting’s not a job for an old man like me, or for a young man like you, for that matter. Your father didn’t want you to follow in his footsteps. And your mother . . .”

  “My mother,” Jesse cut him off again, “has accepted my decision. She doesn’t like it, but she accepts it.”

  K’Tran shook his head again. “I’m sorry, kid, but I can’t. Look around you,” he waved his brandy snifter around for emphasis. “I’ve got a responsibility here. I poured a lot of credits into this place. I can’t j
ust up and leave it.”

  “I understand,” K’Tran knew from the tone of his friends’ voice that he was telling the truth. The younger man was looking out the large bay window onto the main pasture. The herd of gravars was far in the distance now, but the soft honking sound they made still carried across the plains. A few stragglers were visible, their round, wooly bodies seemingly glowing in the sun. Two shepherd drones were trying to coax them into joining the rest of the group.

  “It is a very impressive spread here,” Jesse said, turning back to his old friend. “I know you must be busy. Almost time to take your stock to market. I’ll let you get back to your work.”

  He held out his hand, which K’Tran shook firmly. “I’m glad you see things my way. I just wish I could talk you out of this.”

  “Not a chance.”

  K’Tran slapped his young friend’s shoulder. “I’ll walk you to your transport.”

  The two of them stepped back out into the harsh sunlight, the screen door squealing as it shut behind them. The admin drone was still standing by the fence, holding the reins of the bogo, which hopped nervously from foot to foot and gave a shrill cry of discontent.

  They shook hands once more and Jesse climbed into his vehicle. Pulling on his goggles, he looked around again as he brought the engines out of standby mode. “Yep. A very impressive spread. You’ve done well for yourself.”

  He leaned back in the control couch and took a deep breath, his face suddenly scrunching up into a grimace. “Don’t know how you can stand the smell though. Gravars certainly aren’t the cleanest critters around. Still, I guess after a while you don’t even notice it.”

  “Umm, yeah,” K’Tran answered, without enthusiasm. He looked around again. The wind had shifted, and the scent of the gravar’s mating pheromones hit him especially hard, made worse by the intense heat. Intense, considering this was Bonaba Six’s cool season. When summer came around, the place was hellish indeed. Don’t notice, my ass, he thought.

  His eyes fell on the bogo, more jumpy than ever from the whine of Jesse’s engines. The admin drone was having a harder time keeping the beast under control. The bogo kept jerking back on his haunches, lifting the rather heavy drone off its feet.