Bounty Hunted

by Ian Cannon

The memory data continued forward. The RDT team took him prisoner. She told them that she needed to get back to her post. They offered her a maintenance pod. She took it and blasted away, disappearing from Benjar’s life forever … but not before plucking the key to freedom from his pocket and taking it for her own.

  Ben remembered watching her grow further and further into the distance, marveling the whole time at how quickly she’d come into his life, how she utterly and completely changed it, and how quickly she vacated it. She was a storm, a tragedy, a comedy, a force of nature—a mystery wrapped inside a riddle rolled into an enigma. She was the stuff of mythology, bigger than life, a true world-rocker. He also remembered smiling as she faded into the distance and thinking … What a woman.

  The RDT team brought Benjar to a Cabal detention center and dropped him off. He was processed in as a prisoner of war and dumped into a holding cell. Afterwards, a blue-skin from Maltauri—a rather proper and patient fellow named Vice Major Volist, as memory revealed—interrogated him, got no information from him worth any value, and placed him back in his cell.

  The whole ordeal took hours, all of which culminated into Benjar’s final testimony, which took place inside an evaporation chamber. There, he revealed to his uninterested observers the situation that transpired between himself and their missing Raylon. The memory stream betrayed a Benjar who, though somber, seemed courageously accepting of his fate, his final words being: “No matter what happens to me, we did it. We made it out of your war alive. And we did it together. We made it to higher ground. I pray to whatever god you choose that you do the same.” With a stiff upper lip, he sighed, “I’m ready to die now.”

  And then—BANG! The place began to deteriorate by some unknown, unseeable force.

  The embed flinched. Ben did not. He stood watching the noumen display with glistening eyes and a cool grin.

  Once Benjar fell from the evaporation chamber and landed in the lunar dirt below, it became obvious, even in the duplicative state—Tawny had rushed desperately across Malum to commandeer the RX-111 vessel, infiltrated the Imperium command center, punched a few faces, kicked a few others, stole the ship, blasted off in a hail of gunfire, hauled serious narse back across the Malum flatlands to the detention center and found him. And now, she was a hundred feet above the surface spinning four hundred feet of electromagnetically charged aeron-spires like a demon, lifting the complex off the ground and spinning it into a vortex of flying wreckage, crying over the loud speaker, “Benjar Dash, where are you? Benjar Dash, where are you?”

  Standing below in the eye of the storm, Benjar looked up at his ship, his future wife, and the life he had suddenly before him … falling madly, unabashedly and unapologetically in love.

  Memories continued moving quickly as though a collection machine were formulating them into usable data streams for duplication … and manipulation … and storing them away in some cerebro-digital upload/download readiness mainframe. And then suddenly, everything caught up to their most current events and froze. A long moment of silence flittered through the duplicative state before the embed shook his head, mystified.

  He said, “You two have an impossible story, Benjar. And yet, against every odd in the system, somehow, by some means that escapes all calculus, here you are.” He sat down studying Ben closely. He finally asked, “How does it feel to relive these moments, to see them again—that’s quiet a gift, isn’t it—only to know they will be taken from you and given to another … and they will be stripped from her, replaced with fabrications?”

  Ben returned the embed’s deep stare and whispered, “How does it make me feel? I want you to listen real close, embed. I’m going to destroy every living soul, every strip of tech, every crumb of ore on this boat. You mark my words. Mark ‘em! That’s how it makes me feel.”

  The embed absorbed his statement matter-of-factly and with great balance, and said, “That is an overwhelmingly clear point for which I understand perfectly. If it were under any other circumstance, Benjar, and because it came from only you, I would take you at your word. But I’m afraid there is simply nothing that can be done.” He stood. “I want you to know, I take no pleasure in it.”

  “And your model?” he sneered.

  “I am a projection of Jinn-Junn. That is all,” the embed said. He lifted a pointy finger and pressed it to Ben’s forehead, saying, “Duplication complete.”

  Eighteen

  Ben snapped awake blinking his eyes and shaking his head. He was still strapped to the cerebro table and stuffed inside the machine. He jerked on the restraints.

  The table slid out on its track revealing the laboratory with Specter standing at the foot of the table, his arms crossed, that cape draped over one shoulder and his helmeted head staring down at him, eye sensor pulsing. Ben flexed against the cuffs rattling them violently before settling back. He was a caged animal. “There, there,” Specter’s half-computer voice murmured, “no worse for wear, I see.”

  Jinn-Junn approached and stood at Specter’s side. He looked remarkably like his noumena self, only dawning a worrisome look that the embed did not possess. Jinn-Junn said, “Phase one completed successfully, Sire. The data has compiled. It is ready for phase two.”

  Specter nodded coldly, and said, “And the other subject?”

  “She is staged in the primary lab. All preliminary preparations have been made. She is currently under and will enter the cognitive rehabilitation sleep-state on your command.”

  Ben thrashed under his restraints angrily.

  Specter nodded at the news and took a slow step forward to address his prisoner. “You struggle now, Benjar Dash, because you believe there is still hope. It burns inside you. I understand this. I’m sure it will come to you as a consolation to know in a few moments the struggle will be over and the flames will be extinguished.” He looked at Jinn-Junn and said, “Take your leave to begin the process.”

  Jinn-Junn nodded and moved toward the exit on his way to the primary lab as Ben yelled, “Jinn-Junn!” The doctor stopped and turned. “I know you don’t want this. I know it gives you no pleasure. Don’t do it.”

  Jinn-Junn gave him a bewildered look. “How do you know my …” His mouth dropped open in sudden realization. “The embed.”

  “Your projection. He was a good man. You are, too. Don’t do this.”

  Specter turned slowly to Jinn-Junn making him bow his head, fearfully compliant. “Benjar Dash,” Jinn-Junn said, “the embed is merely a reflection. Nothing more.” He turned and left quickly.

  “Jinn-Junn!” Ben screamed. “Jinn-Junn!”

  The Incarcerum forward operations center initiated their hourly, routine systems check of the entire station with each lead operator submitting their reports. The drive systems, which had remained dormant for several months as Incarcerum hunkered down in its position among the inner arm of uninhabited space, were reading nominal—all systems functioning. Internal atmospherics and environmental controls nominal—all systems functioning. Gravometric asteroid control tower controls nominal—all systems functioning. Defensive battery control, not including the units that had earlier been knocked offline, nominal—all systems funcitoing. The other battery units were currently under repair. Foundry operations were stable. Security reports were negative. All structural maintenance functions nominal. Comm, nav, executive control and personnel systems and functions, nominal. The place was a smooth-running machine, a shipshape example of order and operation.

  “Wait a minute …” the junior sensory control operator mumbled, just noticing something ominous and leaning toward his equipment.

  His lead operator paced up to his control deck and glared over his shoulder. “What is it?”

  “I’m reading something, sir.”

  “Bring up the holo,” he said. The holo-projector jumped off the dash showing Incarcerum in its position in space surrounded by a sea of asteroids. “Pull out, a thousand klicks,” he said, and the junior officer did so, expanding their view. Something dropped into
3-D view off Incarcerum’s port, well beyond the asteroid barrier.

  “It’s a vessel, sir,” the junior said. “Just dropped out of inner-warp.”

  “Get a reading on its uniques.”

  “Aye,” he said and brought up the vessel’s signature codes. He said over his shoulder, “Sir, it’s the Krutt. Looks like he’s returning. But, uh …”

  The lead controller furled his brow with concern. He noticed it, too.

  The Krutt cruiser wasn’t slowing down. It was spearing toward the asteroids at a dangerous speed, even accelerating, its primary boosters obvisouly pounding at full-throttle.

  “Sir?”

  And then their blood ran cold inside their veins. Another signature dropped out of inner-warp. And another. And another. Then a fourth, fifth, sixth … more. They kept dropping out, blinking into view. Dozens of them, all in rapid succession and speeding toward Incarcerum’s asteroid field.

  The junior shook his head. “This doesn’t look good, sir.”

  The lead operator turned to the comms specialist and boomed, “Get an ID on those vessels!”

  The comms guy sent a standard code 3 hail, preset for this very situation—Unidentified vessels, you have entered Incarcerum space and have failed to identify. State your affiliation, status and purpose, immediately.

  No answer.

  He looked over, shook his head in the negative.

  The control bridge began to assess multiple points of data flooding in, all concerning an incoming swarm of space ships. Words began barking to lead ops, commands began filtering to the senior staff. The place was slowly submerging in a state of sudden peril.

  GuardKing turned his head slowly toward the commotion with great interest.

  “Signature codes are coming in, sir!” the junior sensory control operator shouted.

  “Display.”

  The signature codes popped up on an overhead data window:

  Privateer. Affiliation: Guild.

  Privateer. Affiliation: Guild.

  Privateer. Affiliation: Guild.

  Privateer. Affiliation: Guild.

  Privateer. Affiliation: Guild.

  And so on. And so on.

  The lead operator spun to the bridge commander and yelled, “Sir, we need battle readiness—now!”

  And then something enormous dropped in from inner-warp far outsizing the others.

  Privateer. Affiliation: Knave’s Blade.

  BOOM—Axum’s NorStar Sun Hammer command cruiser, fifteen hundred feet long and beset with lateral-mounted cannonades, four huge warp engine nacelles and a bristling forward command center came slamming in from inner-warp to join the party. And behind him, more pirate scum from Raider’s Bay.

  “Woo-hoo!” Axum cried powerfully from his commander’s chair overlooking the entire arena. “It’s a proper raid, boys and bots, gals and gears!” He pounded his ship-to-group comm and cried, “Knave’s Blade, to arms! Take up whatever gods-damned formation you like and pound her broadly with all ya got! Sun Hammer will provide fire power from the rear. All ship units, respond!”

  “You got it, Axum!”

  “Copy, boss!”

  “Beep bop-a-doo breeeer!”

  He looked to his driver, a man who self-proclaimed to be a bottom-star bastard, and said “Skulls, get us down there!”

  Skulls did so, blasting the entire rig toward the asteroids.

  Axum switched over, said, “Cannon control, start laying some waste, will ya!”

  All guns went forward and began filling the fjord with plasma bolts, zipping in zagging columns into the asteroid field showing distantly through the viewport. Big rock began to pulverize.

  “There she is, Guilders!” Vekter boomed over his comm glaring through his viewport at the approaching asteroid sea. He could see that spear-shaped Karbatt cruiser far ahead, leading the charge. Raining down from above came Axum’s volley slicing blindingly through space and into those floating rocks way in the distance. “Follow me … and try not to get in Axum’s way.”

  His big, powerful YT-10 Hells Charger attack ship with its layered, tri-deck design and long forward nose, committed a half roll and boomed ahead plunging into the storm. A dozen other privateer vessels coalesced in rough formation behind and followed suit—Rennick and Tiffa Nora in their BLB-701 mid-freight carrier named Nora’s Home. Shogun Star in his small, refurbished one-man Omicron battle fighter. Sindra Klaire in Hexahedras, her narrow, rhomboid-shaped, mid-pilot design fast cargo-carrier. And many others, all hailing from across the solar twins in their re-patched, refurbished and re-built cargo runners and bounty seekers, with their sub-warp boosters glowing big and hot, followed Vekter’s ship barreling toward Incarcerum’s asteroid field with a single, deadly intention. Destroy.

  But no one was going to reach the asteroid sea before Rogan. He howled in his weird, newfound mania as he punched the Karbatt cruiser straight down into the asteroid maelstrom. These narse-poos had taken his Gadget. Then they took him away from his dancing girl. Then they took a few pieces of his mind. And now they had taken Tawny and Ben? Oh, no—they weren’t going to get away with that. He was determined to make them pay … and pay big time.

  So here he was, by the gods, slamming through their asteroids laughing in wild, delighted glee, avoiding death by inches and seconds, and enjoying this brand-new sense of outrageous courage, never realizing these Incarcerum narse-poos had suppressed his amygdala, the very brain center that senses threat. Instead, he felt an overwhelming rush of joy, a deep and unbridled sense of manic fun as he peeled, sliced and danced his way through the asteroids at top speed, never also realizing they’d temporarily juiced his hypothalamus, the very brain center that controls endorphine output. He’d become the happiest suicidal maniac in the solar twins.

  “Oh look!” he yelled out loud to no one, “another one!”

  He pounded the reverse output thrusters on the starboard side while opening up the portside rockets and swung the cruiser around into an asteroid, feeling it slam the side of the Karbatt cruiser. The mountainous rock took on a different rotation angle and crashed into another one, bursting it into rubble. Sparks flew from the cruiser’s control panel showering Rogan in big, joyous blots of heat making him giggle and laugh. Like a conductor leading a mad symphony, he spun the other way and banged another rock off its current trajectory, opening the road for a group of Guilders. They came screaming past.

  “Thank you, Rogan!” he heard someone cry over the comms as they seared on by.

  “Right-o, my good man!”

  “Atta boy, ya damn nutball!”

  “Well done, friend.”

  Maybe it was Sindra. Perhaps Nefrix. Possibly Rennick. Definitely Shogun. He wasn’t sure. Didn’t matter. He cried, “Welcome one, welcome all—Harharhar!”

  Toggin’s freighter lifted above one of the asteroids followed closely by Sindra’s Hexahedras, in turn followed by Rennick’s BLB-701. They all three swooped down in single file, dodging another mountain as it shuffled by. As they did, space opened in the distance revealing the moonlet with Incarcerum sprawled across its northern hemisphere.

  “There, dead ahead!” Toggin yelled peeling around another boulder. His eyes went big as its shadow swallowed him, making him scream—Wah! A collision was eminent. Great orange streamers that had hailed from dozens of klicks through space fell at speed through the congested area stitching explosions across the rock and shattering it along deep fracture lines. The thing split apart at the seams, spitting huge fountains of rubble across his fuselage and forcing him to tilt his ship to one-eighty degrees desperately. He slid through the splitting asteroid.

  Sindra dodged right, sweeping around the thing’s eastern hemisphere and re-steadied. Rennick did the same to the left, tilting his big thruster nacelles in split-second timing.

  When starlight struck Toggin again as he passed through the dividing stone, he exhaled in utter relief, spending a fast moment in silent thanks to his new Knave’s Blade buddy, Axum. They were the Sun Hammer
’s blasts that railed into the asteroid storm and slammed away at anything they struck.

  Sindra had separated from her trio having to bob and weave her own way toward the station. But things only got worse. Returning plasma fire from Incarcerum’s rail guns came in waves, filling the asteroid field in the oposite direction, bolts striking rock in plumes or zipping like lightning strikes between big stone bodies.

  Someone yelled over her comm, “Those blasts are coming from the station! Watch out, watch out!” It sounded like Vekter. She couldn’t see his ship, only a vast swath of rail gun fire slamming into everything and creating a deadly cross-thatch of plasma. As a volley stitched across her rear and bucked her violently, she squeeled, sidling her ship up next to one of the boulders in a reckless maneuver searching for cover.

  Toggin had to do the same. The initial burst exploded his cargo bay. Now his ship klaxons wailed through the control deck. Breaches were everywhere. He looked out across a sea of shifting shadow and stitching cannon blasts to see Rennick doing the same on a neighboring asteroid, then, below and to the left, someone else’s ship hiding behind mass.

  “We’re being suppressed!” someone yelled.

  Suddenly, another ship, a small on, came screaming through the asteroids passing everyone by in a streak, directly into the shifting plasma beams, splitting between the blast strikes in a series of breakneck maneuvers and plowing forward—disappearing into the thicket as rapidly as it had shown up. Someone was taking a suicidal lead, charging toward the station.

  Toggin yelled, “Zeb—that crazy biod!” And then to himself, “I knew I’d end up liking that guy.”

  ZebX’s ship—the BioX-101—was a one-of-a-kind, assembled at the Sarzi production platforms that birthed ZebX himself and gave him life. It was rumored that the ship was given some semblance of artificial life as well, though never proven. Yet with its vastly more intuitive flight response capabilities than the average vessel, it was universally accepted that the ship had a sense of impulse, knowing beyond the standard computerized calculations how to perform creative flight functions. And with its unique understanding of mission objectives, it wasn’t without a sense of sacrifice.