Bounty Hunted

by Ian Cannon

  Very familiar screaming.

  He shot a look forward.

  His wife tumbled like a streak coming right at him.

  “Oh shhh—release right!” he screamed. The glove released. He reached his hand out, grabbed her arm as she flew by. She whipped around in his grasp, slammed against the ship’s side. Ben cried out in agony. The left glove’s mag grip held tight to the ship, his right-hand grabbing Tawny. There was nothing between her and an endless fall to death. But he was being pulled apart. The windspeed and pressure was going to yank his arms out of their sockets. But he wouldn’t let go.

  Never let go!

  “Ben-jee-hee-hee!” she screamed over the roar of wind.

  “Hey—errr—babe!”

  “What are you doing out here!”

  “I was going. To ask you. The same thing!”

  “No seriously! What are you doing out here!”

  Through clenched teeth, he gave her a painful look and snarled, “You know. Just going. For a ride. Baby.”

  “Well, that’s the dumbest thing I ever heard!”

  “Tell me. About it.”

  The spheroid that was attached to her shoulder …

  It had a green light.

  And a red light.

  Two lights.

  One was a return feature. It had to be. It was a matter transport ball. Matter transport balls had to have a return feature.

  Ben yelled, “Release left!”

  The left glove cut its mag grip and they slid away from the ship and out into perfectly empty, perfectly open sky. The Krutt’s ship continued its vertical climb toward space, its big, blue boosters growing further and further away.

  They tumbled through the sky, wind beating them relentlessly in their plummet. He wrenched her into him and wrapped her up. They began spinning, spiraling, whirling further and further toward the planet’s surface.

  “Benji, we’re falling!” she screamed.

  “I know!”

  “No, I mean we’re falling—down!”

  “I know!”

  He snatched the spheroid, holding it tight and looked up at that fading Karbatt cruiser. It was almost a dot in the sky, lost among the stars. Too far for a matter transfer jump. No choice! He slammed his eyes shut and jabbed the red light with his thumb and—VWAP! They disappeared from the sky.

  VWAP! —they transported back to the cargo bay suspended in midair. Both fell to the floor with a thud, Tawny laughing. Ben grabbed her, put his hands on her face, concerned.

  “Baby, you alright?”

  She took a big breath and said, “We gotta do that again.”

  He grunted, “A crazy woman. I’m in love with a crazy woman,” and got to his feet. There was no Krutt. He’d escaped into the forward living quarters. The hatch was sealed tight. “Damn that Krutt!”

  Tawny got to her feet standing next to him. She groaned, “Looks like we’re passengers now.”

  They felt the vessel lurch to a stop as they heard the tortured scream of tension cables jerk the thing to a standstill. Ben cracked a grin that turned to a chuckle. “No we’re not.” He looked at her showing hope. “We got Axum.”

  She finished his thought, “And Knave’s Blade.”

  “That’s right. They’re surrounding this vessel right now.” He murmured with anger in his words, “Now we get to have a little chat with this Krutt buckethead.”

  “Friends in low places, huh?” Tawny said.

  “Best kind, darlin’.”

  “Puts me in a mood,” she said, her bottom lip pinned under her teeth.

  He looked at her, suddenly frightened.

  She leapt into him, grabbed him by the head and kissed him hard, mouth-on-mouth, hungry, relentlessly, knocking him flat down on the floor.

  Fourteen

  Massive couplers fired across the sky thudding against the Krutt vessel from four, powerful Teridrone tugboats, each a garish suborbital vessel with booster rockets that far outsized the Karbatt cruiser’s thrusters. Even if the Krutt had wanted to go into immediate inner-warp, his vessel would have splintered into shards. The sky would have rained cruiser parts.

  Each tugboat, though only a fraction the length of the Karbatt vessel but possessing the sheer force of a battle cruiser, pounded the high skies over Raider’s Bay coming to a majestic stop and pulling their new captive with them. Initiating their mag-drives and locking themselves against the planet’s natural gravity field, they began lowering back to the surface in careful coordination, dropping back to terra firma.

  Inside the cargo bay, Tawny and Ben felt the bump and sway as inertia changed. But they hardly noticed. Ben found himself drowning in the strength of an adrenalized, passion-triggered wife for which he was happy to oblige, until a final bang sounded across the entire spine of the ship and everything settled. They had landed.

  A hiss indicated big pistons releasing pressure, and the bay door lowered open. Lights from outside flooded in silhouetting a storm of rushing pirates as they clamored their way into the rear section, each brandishing weapons of their chosen make. Thundering boots parted around Tawny and Ben as they lay on the floor looking up, and amidst the team of cajoling marauders, Axum entered, parading mightily up the ramp until he came to them. They looked up at him, Tawny grinning like a devil, Ben catching his breath. He stood over them with his hands on his waste looking down, his face on the edge of laughter.

  “Now that’s what I call a boarding party—hahaha!” he declared wildly and reached down. He lifted Tawny powerfully to her feet, and then Ben, bringing them both to an upright position.

  Tawny adjusted her belt, brushed her sleeves and said, “Thank you, Axum.”

  “Obliged,” he said offering a sweeping bow, hat in hand, before plopping it back on his head. “Now, let’s go get the gang plank!” Together, they headed for the forward hatch to the Karbatt cruiser’s operation quarters.

  With his ship tethered and surrounded, and with his suit’s matter transport tech disabled, the Krutt was out of options. There was nowhere for him to go, yet he was safely cornered inside his vessel’s operations sector. The place had been hermetically sealed off from the cargo bay and was designed to hold the atmospheric extremes of his homeworld. Nevertheless, the pirates of Knave’s Blade were a patient lot. They waited him out until he could repair the breach in his bio-containment suit and lower the interior temperature to Teridrone’s static atmosphere. The process took nearly an hour.

  As they heard the airlock door unbind, Tawny and Ben got to their feet from a sitting position with Axum grinning behind. The hatch opened connecting the cargo bay and operation center atmospheres in a steamy wind, and the Krutt stood amidst the backlighting of the threshold. He seemed humbly ready to accept capture.

  Ben sighed with tremendous relief and groaned, “We got him.”

  As it turned out, Raider’s Bay didn’t have a penal code. The colony left that to its different bergs to establish, also leaving each berg to its own devices in choosing their respective measures and punishments. Pirates were very good at policing their own. Or not. They were typically lax on crime and punishment. An eye for an eye suited most cases, unless there were political motives involved in the crime. Pirates had no love for top-level corruption. Or, if the criminal was an off-worlder stirring up trouble. Pirates didn’t like that, either. Like, per say, the Krutt bounty hunter.

  Axum and his entourage, including Korok the Malybrian, escorted Tawny and Ben from the security dock where they stored the Karbatt cruiser, into one of the primary hubs for Knave’s Blade. The Krutt strode behind them ushered by colonial guards. His streamlined atmo-suit hid any signs of dismay, but behind that cold, impassive visor, they figured he was a bundle of pent up frustration. Krutt bounty hunters were not known for being captured. It was a rare thing, impressive to say the least.

  The station’s interior was rudimentary but clean. It was all steel paneling and harsh lights as the superstructure’s sprawling passage umbilici vexed over the edge of Teridrone’s e
quatorial crevasse and down into the fjord, clinging onto the rock sides. They came to the captive detaining area, into a gray room with rock walls, and sat their captive down, gruffly. From there, Axum muttered, “He’s yours, kids. Don’t be too rough with him, but … whatever. Just remember, he belongs to the Knave’s Blade next.”

  “Sure thing,” Ben said.

  Tawny hadn’t taken her eyes off the Krutt. And she had that look. It was a viper’s look, silently fuming. Ben recognized it. Something was about to hit the fan.

  Axum exited to go view the interrogation through a viewport in the next room. The door slid shut and Tawny smashed the table with both fists. The Krutt didn’t so much as flinch. Didn’t even look at her. It made her anger spike. She snarled, “We’ve been shot at, blown up, cornered and chased. Our friend was laser blasted and left for dead.”

  “Tawny,” Ben murmured trying to coax her.

  She continued, not even slowing down, “What home we had was evapp’ed, and now you got us chasing you across Teridrone. Oh, you’re ours now, bub. We got questions for you,” she smacked him across the helmet, “and you’re going to have answers for us, buckethead.”

  “Tawny.”

  “Because if you don’t start talking, there’s a hells-born leach pit got your name all over it, pal!”

  “Dear,” Ben said coolly.

  She snapped at him with fire in her eyes, “Oh, I’m just getting started, Benji.”

  From the next room, Axum watched the exchange through the window with his arms crossed over a barrel chest flanked by his staff, each member starting to grin with fiery interest. Axum said, “I like that one, boys. She gives me a hankering.” There was a round of mumbling agreement.

  Back in the interrogation room, Tawny continued, angling her questions toward the Krutt. He remained as stoic as a statue behind that helmet and bio-suit. “Who do you work for?” she demanded.

  The Krutt remained still. Not a word, not a twitch.

  “What do they want?” she said, her words growing.

  Still nothing. No response.

  Tawny grabbed him by the external feed tubes running over each shoulder and looping into couplers under the mask, forcing him to look up at her. “Why are they targeting the Guild?”

  Despite her grip on him, he forced his head to swivel away from her glare. It was a show of defiance. She released him gruffly and unsheathed her knife, threatening, “That’s it, I’m going to stick you with—”

  “Tawny,” Ben said through a remarkably calm voice. It soothed her and she looked over huffing. He said, “Let me take it from here.” After a pause, she slammed the knife down onto the table and took a step back.

  Ben took his time sliding the knife off the table and down into his lap. He rearranged his chair to face the Krutt directly and crossed one leg evenly over the other. The Krutt’s helmet adjusted ever-so-slightly to look at him. Remaining irritatingly composed, Ben began, “Let me put it to you this way. We have your technology. We have your ship. And now, we have you. My wife is right.” He looked her way, then back, and said, “You’re ours.” He allowed the words to linger momentarily before continuing, “So you can do this easy like. Or hard like. But you don’t have a lot of friends here. And options? Well, you don’t have a lot of those, either. So, I’m going to ask you some questions, and you’re going to give me some answers real easy like, or … well … it’ll have to turn real hard like. Got it?”

  The Krutt turned his head straight. No answer.

  Ben shrugged. It didn’t matter. He was going to ask anyway. He leaned forward and said, “Who do you work for?”

  As before, no answer.

  “What do they want?”

  Nothing, just silence.

  “Why are they targeting the Guild?”

  The Krutt was like an oak.

  Ben nodded with a frown. “No? Okay, then. I can’t help what’s about to happen, though.”

  The Krutt’s monotone words pierced calmly across the room. “My employer does not game play.”

  Caught, Ben gave him a questioning look and said, “Meaning what?”

  “He is destroyer. He is like dark dream. You have hope,” he looked up to punctuate the word, “none.” He leaned back comfortably. “Stop at nothing he will, and what is left for you is only to run. Because you … game play.”

  Ben calmly felt insult and said, “We game play, huh? How’s this for a game?” He lowered his left hand and dug through a pants pocket overplaying the motion, then pulling up the Oficium memory cell. Displaying it between thumb and forefinger he showed it to the Krutt. “You see this?” he said. The Krutt leaned forward. His head swiveled over, nodded once. “Do you know what this is?”

  The Krutt offered a subtle head shake—no.

  Ben put it slowly onto the table and scooted it toward him with a finger, drawing it painstakingly along the surface. The Krutt followed it through his visor. Ben stopped and pulled his hand back with patient deliberation. The Krutt stared at it, bemused.

  “Go ahead,” Ben said. “Take it.”

  The Krutt looked up, then back down.

  “Take it,” Ben demanded sharply.

  The Krutt reached a hand up and placed it onto the small device.

  THWACK—Ben wheeled Tawny’s knife up from his lap and slammed it home straight through the Krutt’s hand pinning it to the table’s surface. A burst of blistering heat shot up from the ruptured bio-suit and the Krutt put his head back with a digitized howl of agony. Ben got to his feet ripping the knife back and sneered, “How about now? We game playing, now?”

  The Krutt slammed his other hand over the breach in his suit closing it off.

  “Who do you work for?” Ben screamed.

  The Krutt cradled his injury close to his chest, holding it tight and gasping, “Hurts. Hurts!”

  Ben donkey kicked him in the chest knocking him against the wall and pinning him under his boot. He snared the external feed tube looping over the Krutt’s right shoulder and put the blade up against it. “Don’t like losing internal pressure, eh?” With a sneer through clenched teeth, he sliced the blade through releasing another blast of boiling air. It slathered Ben’s arm making him bark in pain and rear it back, blistered.

  The Krutt slumped off his chair grasping for the tube. He gripped it with both hands and pinched the flow off. He minimized it down to a puny, flatulating whistle, but it was only a matter of time. His suit’s internal systems were dying. He was losing heat and pressure. His insides were about to pop.

  He groaned, “Must return to vessel. Must repair.”

  Ben thrashed the empty chair with a boot sending it across the room as the Krutt wilted to his knees. “Oh, you must repair, huh?” he chided.

  “Benji!” Tawny screamed.

  He looked over. They met eyes. It calmed him, brought him back. He stood there heaving like a marathoner. He needed her. He’d lost himself almost completely. But she was there for him, even now, as always, giving him balance.

  She said in her own remarkably soothing way, “He has records on his ship. He can give us names.”

  Ben looked down at the prisoner suffering at his feet. His eyes fluttered in self-loathing. What had he done? He let his emotion get the better of him, tip him into cruelty. He’d never done that before. He felt … low. But it was too late now. Damage done. This was his mission.

  He shook it off and returned to anger lifting the Krutt to his feet. “You want back on your ship? Alright, then we’re going to make a trade. You give us what we want … or you give us what we really want. Deal?”

  The Krutt hesitated, obviously growing weak. Ben slammed him against the wall and asked, “Are you game playing?”

  The Krutt nodded, beaten. “Yes. Deal.”

  From the observation room, Axum looked over at his entourage standing all around him and said with cool glee, “I’m starting to like both these two.”

  They had to escort the Krutt on a hover chair back out into the Teridrone night and across
the metal walkways to the security tarmac. Ben was on the move pacing quickly, with powerful, angry strides. Tawny followed behind, eyeing him. This wasn’t her husband. She’d never seen him like this. Ben was the stable one. He was her counter-balance, always thoughtful and cool. At his very core was pure tact. But now … she couldn’t believe it. He was a storm. What had made him this way?

  She looked down at her striding feet. It was Sarcon. Four months stored unjustly in a prison had pulled threads of anger out of him, given him over to a master like some marionette doll—dance the jig of madness, boy!

  Her husband had gone into that place. This new man had come out. She felt responsible.

  They approached the ship standing under the lander awning. It was a magnificent looking vessel—narrow and tall, long and solid. Three quarters of it was all loading bay. It was a pure freighter, yet it had a port and starboard rail gun currently folded into their neutral positions. The vessel wasn’t without its lethal defensive measures.

  The bay ramp was down sitting between its two, big landing gears. They stormed up the ramp and into the cargo bay. Signs of Tawny and the Krutt’s earlier struggle were still visible. A few dozen fist-sized transport spheres still lay across the floor. Ben saw them. He put the knife against the Krutt’s side and said, “Don’t even think about it.”

  They came to the entry hatch. It was still open and the internal atmosphere had long since equalized. They entered the ship to a wholly strange, new environment. The Krutt’s command deck had an organic sense to it with a rounded pathway leading to the cockpit, bulkheads that curved into ovoid shapes along the walls. They entered the bridge, a wide space with a long control board at the fore and a single pilots chair on a track designed to slide back and forth. The large viewport curved over the ship’s nose. Ben took in the sight. So this was a Karbatt cruiser, huh?

  Everything was dead. The power was down.

  The Krutt, now slumping over in his medical chair, murmured through his mask, “Must … return … to stasis.”

  “I want full access, Krutt,” Ben said.

  The Krutt struggled to the control panel and brought up a central command screen. Nodules organized by column and color flashed into life. These were the master controls to the whole ship. He manipulated them by sequence as other panels across the control board lit up. The Krutt pointed them out as he fought to speak, “Ship has … standard systems … like most. Drive systems, there.” He pointed weakly. Even his voice emitter was failing him, turning his vocal range into a sickly series of cracks and whispers. “Inner-warp and … comm.”