Bounty Hunted

by Ian Cannon

  Within its neural-mech mind, it had sensed a serious impediment to the job, defined the Incarcerum rail guns as their most immediate threat, and deduced the most logical means of overcoming it. ZebX, in his mind-matching software, agreed, and now the ship wound through the field, dodging blasts, half-piking up and down and around asteroids, until the oncoming danger presented a terminal outcome. ZebX dropped immediately from his cockpit’s floor hatch and out into space as his BioX-101 erupted into a big ball of flame.

  ZebX gunned his robotic limb thrusters forward and shot toward the approaching Incarcerum, no more, now, than a man-sized assassin bot darting through the asteroids, through the plasma blasts, and across the vacuum of space, pre-calculating his landing spot on the way. ZebX came down hard, landing squarely on his composite steel feet next to one of the big rail guns that was blasting at three rounds a second into the rock field. The biod spent a great deal of time—being a mere eight hundred seventy-two thousand four hundred and one nanoseconds—analyzing the cannon for an exploitable weakness.

  There, found one!

  ZebX’s manufactured bio-rhythms experienced a flashing series of noumenal numerals that his hardwiring translated as a feeling of redemptive joy, and he wrenched the cannon’s side panel off, reached in and smashed its primary power cell. The thing’s barrel continued flexing and reflexing, but nothing came out. The cannon was now dead.

  ZebX turned to face the row of cannons spaced incrementally along the entire lower flank of the station. With his sensors intuitively aware of his surroundings, it took exactly Seventy-nine thousand seven hundred and seventy nanoseconds to confirm that the station itself was eight hundred and seventy meters long, the control deck at its fore had roughly nine thousand square feet of operation space across three levels, the central tower that housed the primary foundry sections was eleven stories high and directly overhead, and he stood at an objective seventeen degree angle along the station’s port side … and there were fourteen other cannons which would take, in total, exactly two minutes and twenty one seconds to disable, one at a time. ZebX also intuitively knew that living creatures under the extreme duress of combat would consider that a disheartening length of time and that he’d best get started. So, he did, rocketing from one installation to the next, ripping off panel housings and dismantling power cells.

  “Them plasma cannons,” Toggin said over Vekter Ramm’s comm. “They’ve stopped.” It was a general hail to all ships. Vekter had moved his YT-10 Hells Charger up and out of the asteroid field suffering minor damage to his top decking and port side bay housing. At four hundred feet long and over a hundred feet wide at its dorsal passage conduits, his vessel was among the larger ones and made for quite a juicy target, not only for the plasma cannons, but those asteroids. The pelting it had taken was only getting worse.

  He checked his sensors to confirm the report, then shot a glance through his viewport. There was too much asteroid activity. He couldn’t see the station. He called, “Guilders, what’s the situation?”

  “Toggin’s right.”

  “Yeah, they done runned out of power or something or other.”

  “Skies are clear, Vek, except for these smashers.”

  He licked his lips guiding the Hells Charger back into the field. “Okay, everybody, get to that station and lay it down! Watch your skies.”

  “I’m hooking up to the starboard side dock assembly now. Gonna have to blow the damn thing. Me and Tiffa will be in in two.” That was Rennick’s big, gut-deep voice. “Anybody want to join us?” he said.

  “In deed,” came Nefrix. “I’m directly behind you, old boy.”

  “I, too, am arriving,” came the ironically balanced voice of Shogun Star.

  The reports made Vekter grin. His team of Guilders were preparing to board the station.

  Inside the command center, the station arms commander had counted down his cannon units as they mysteriously stopped hammering at the congested skies. The entire bridge looked his way, breaths held. When the last cannon stopped firing, he turned to GuardKing and cried, “That’s all of them, sir.”

  GuardKing glanced over to the general ops commander and said with his wicked cool, “The airlocks?”

  “I’m definitely getting chatter signals.” He looked at him. “They’re docking at the starboard platform. A number of others are approaching port.”

  GuardKing nodded once and said, “Good. Deploy all defensive manotaur bots. I want them stopped.”

  “Yes sir,” he said and began adjudicating the order.

  “Operations commander,” GuardKing called resolutely. “The command deck is yours.” He turned and strode powerfully through the exit, his waist cape flowing behind.

  Down in the main training floor, a column of manotaurs jerked into action having received their system orders. Together, they began moving to their newly assigned locations, each one internally checking system functions, prepping defensive systems for action. The enemy was coming. It was their programmed duty to kill at all cost.

  Rennick’s BLB-701 freighter came down with its heavy butt end laying flat against the starboard docking platform. His vessel’s umbilicus stretched out and attached to the station’s airlock. The last thing the Incarcerum crew was going to do was simply let them in, so he and Tiffa set charges, took cover within their own vessel, and detonated while Lyra Noot danced the nervous jig of his gnomish people, brandishing that big repeater rifle in his tiny clutches. The explosions were small, contained and powerful, and when atmospheres connected through a veil of smoke, Noot started auto firing, sending blasts into the station. He was taking no chances.

  Rennick gave his co-pilot a wily grin, cigar clamped in his teeth and that dasher/shredder harnessed to his hip. “First ones in, babe.”

  Tiffa Norra drew dual blaster pistols grinning back, and said, “Let’s do it!”

  They charged from the cockpit, down the metal stairs and into the main hold where they joined Noot in seething blaster fire into the station.

  A big thud nearly knocked them off their feet. It was Nefrix companion docking with their upper airlock. The hatch popped open and down he dropped, joining them in blasting away at the station’s acceptance corridor.

  “Whoa whoa whoa!” Rennick bawled. The blasting stopped.

  Everything quieted. The four of them stood there stairing into an empty hall through a smoke screen. Rennick shrugged and said, “No one to greet us? That’s damn rude.”

  There was a noise a hundred feet down the corridor—a big, rhythmic thudding. They each squinted through the screen, looking hard. “What might that be, dare I wonder?” Nefrix groaned.

  The first one came around the corner, turned and began its approach. Then the next. Manotaurs, all big and garish, armed to the teeth with built in repeater blasters and a host of auxiliary weapons. Rennick’s mouth dropped open, the cigar falling from his lips. “I stand damn well corrected, I guess,” he muttered.

  Sindra Klaire banked over the top of Incarcerum making a fast approach for the portside landing platform and igniting her yaw thrusters, controlling the swing tightly. The station pivoted around through the viewport revealing her destination. She hissed surprise, finding another ship had already docked—a TarTan-7 gunboat. She knew the model. It was a fast attack ship produced on the Valirun moon system that orbited Malybur. But she didn’t recognize this particular ship with its dual horizontal striping and custom-built engines. Someone had modified it for reasons of piracy. She groaned, assuming this was one of Axum’s people. Probably some knife-loving henchy, or worse, a Malybrian.

  “TarTan-7 gunship, this is Guild vessel Hexahedras. I’m coming in for a companion dock, over!” she called. There was no response. She could only assume the pilot had left their top airlock accessible to others knowing they’d join the fight.

  Oh well.

  She guided her ship down over the other vessel locking her docking target onto its upper airlock and felt the thump. She was home. Time to go. She streaked down t
hrough her main hold and into the passenger level checking her equipment on the fly.

  First, her systems power override pack.

  Second her mol-lectronic bundling unit.

  Third, the digital coupler—all secured to the utility band strapped across her waist.

  She hardly ever left home without her systems hacking hardware tools. But she never went into battle without it.

  And finally, the heavy blaster strapped to her thigh. If their approach through the asteroid field was any indication, there was sure to be action waiting inside Incarcerum. Dropping through the TarTan-7’s airlock proved her right. The sound of heavy fire banged through the ship.

  Unleashing her blaster, she slowed to a stop at the crew’s lounge and peeked around the corner. It was out in the hall, aboard the station. She slunk back around the corner closing her eyes, readying herself for battle. Gunplay. She hated gunplay. Why couldn’t she just be hacking a system, descrambling a comm code, maybe hijacking a battle unit? So much easier.

  Oh well.

  She peeked back around the corner and froze to see a manotaur security bot gamboling on its heavy, piston-driven legs across the opening and laying down streams of fire at an unseen enemy. It must be the TarTan-7’s crew. They were returning gunfire from their positions. It was futile. They’d gotten aboard the station. Now the manotaur was pressing them down the corridor, cornering them. They were dead meat.

  The thing hadn’t sensed her, though. This was good. Maybe this situation would come down to hijacking a battle unit.

  She growled and sprang into action moving quickly up behind it, her eyes scoping across its machinery. She knew what to look for, and she could spot it in seconds. This was her wheelhouse. And she was good—very good.

  There! The slotted jack for power recharges. It was just above its lower frame servos. Of course!

  On the run, she reeled out her override chip on its draw cord, dove feet first sliding up behind it and slapping the chip home, all in one seasoned maneuver, and wound up between its feet. She punched the power override pack attached to her belt unleashing a stream of alien code into its internal charge nodes and closed her eyes.

  Gods, let it work!

  It did. The manotaur froze momentarily as its arm-mounted spinner guns wound down. The thing clicked and whirred returning to its default state, arms lowering to its sides, feet squaring up. She opened one eye, then the other. The thing stood over her like a statue with its big guns smoking. She had decommissioned it.

  The returning fire ceased, and three figures poked out from behind bulkheads twenty feet down the hall. Sindra had been right. One was Malybrian. The pale, verdant-colored creature inspected the scene quickly and raised its long rifle over its head in a show of thanks. The crew stomped toward her, one with a cybernetic eyeball, the other wearing silver breast armor over a red sash. She was right. Pirates.

  “Not bad for a Guilder,” Cybernetic Eyeball said, his voice brimmed with hard-bought gratitude.

  Sindra got to her feet. “You three weren’t doing so bad yourselves … for pirates,” she quipped, implying their dire situation. That earned a round of grumpy laughs, a sign of respect from a Knave’s Blade trio.

  There was action way down at the other end of the corridor. It was the starboard docking platform. More gunfire. More manotaurs. It sounded fierce. Someone was getting stomped by blaster fire way down there.

  She climbed up onto the manotaur’s shoulders searching for mechanical ports. Every battle bot had ports. They were the only way to operate a manotaur for maintenance when synovial joints or motion junctures became frozen and stuck. With the right overrides installed in its brain to activate its gunnery systems, she’d be able to drive the thing. All she needed was a lever. As she scoped the thing’s surfaces quickly, she said, “You Knave’s Blade?”

  “Yeah,” the first one said. “Glutt.”

  The next said, “Baston.”

  The Malybrian said, “Korok.”

  “Sindra Klare,” she said.

  Yes! Found the port for the right-side operations. Now for the—there! The left side. Now all she needed was—that! She pointed to the Malybrian’s long rifle. “Hand it over.”

  Korok reacted with insult. The others motioned for him to hand over the gun. He did so. She took the rifle surprised at its weight and jammed the long, narrow barrel into the right-side port. She had a lever. Then she pointed to a four-foot long tension bar that had been blown off the wall during their firefight and said, “That!”

  Glutt grabbed it and passed it up to her. She jammed it into the left-side port creating dual levers, hit the power override pack again and the thing powered back up, quivering into life. The pirates stepped back alarmed. She grinned at them as she mounted her feet on the manotaur’s back and began wrenching the thing around with her makeshift levers. It followed her commands in a cantankerous, herky-jerky fashion, and they began their march down the corridor.

  “Hey,” she called back to them. “Korok spelled backwards is still Korok, did you know that?”

  They eyeballed each other, mystified by this Guilder companion and her sudden appearance, and continued following her down the hall as she rode the manotaur’s back.

  Rennick ducked down low behind the airlock frame. Rapid-fire blasts pounded toward him from the manotaurs. Sparks glanced into his ship’s main hold. Tiffa was behind him. They took turns sending blasts back at the imposing combat droids.

  Across the airlock opening, Nefrix stood over Noot who was down between his knees, both of them firing down the hall. Laser barrels and plasma repeater rifles had begun to steam and smoke. In moments they’d begin to melt.

  Shogun Star had joined them, then Toggin, then Vekter Ramm, all three dropping down from the airlock right into heavy combat. The team was pinned down doing everything they could. The world shattered and quaked.

  Vekter pumped a volley through the airlock opening trying to get a split-second view of the manotaurs. He glimpsed at least four of them silhouetted against the flash and bang of close-quarters combat, probably more. His blaster strikes railed off the forward bot in a series of perfect hits. The thing continued lurching forward. He gritted his teeth and hit cover. Time was getting short. The manotaurs were twenty feet away through the airlock. This was a bad situation.

  Think. Think.

  “Rennick!” he yelled over the thunder.

  Rennick ducked away, looked up with wild, war-driven eyes.

  “Get to the cockpit. We gotta back off!”

  A strike bristled far too close for comfort searing across Rennick’s broad shoulder. He jerked back behind his bulkhead, teeth gritted in pain.

  Tiffa screamed, “Renny!”

  An explosion boomed over the sound of battle and a column of fire burst into the BLB-701’s main hold. Everyone dove like mad, hitting the floor and looking up. The sharp prattle-ping sound of a manotaur’s auto weapon seethed in one long note—Barratatatat!

  Another explosion erupted like a thunder clap just outside. Vekter rolled over, looked up. A big chunk of steel hit the metal floor with a bang and slid across the main hold right toward him. It stopped in front of him. He found himself staring at it in bewilderment. It was a manotaur head with its red eyeball sensors fading black as though it were dying. Someone—or something—was out there blowing up manotaurs and squirting their pieces all over the corridor.

  Another explosion boomed trembling the entire ship, then another, and the battle wound down. Everyone looked up shaking their heads, their senses overloaded and numb. A final manotaur stood in the airlock with sheets of smoke furling up around it. Then it teetered like a busted column and collapsed to the floor, expended. Someone—a person—rode it to the ground and stepped coolly inside the main hold swinging her hips perfectly composed.

  Vekter grinned up at her. It was Sindra Klaire. She’d done what she did best. She hijacked a combat unit and used it to destroy the others, turning one manotaur against its counterparts. The sight of he
r mesmerized him. Yep—that’s why he loved that woman.

  She grinned in the light of the bay and said, “C’mon boys. It’s this way.”

  Vekter chuckled. He couldn’t help it. Despite the situation, despite laying on the floor side-to-side with Toggin the Denubrian hard-noser, and despite the ringing in his head, he laughed.

  Toggin gave him a severe look and muttered, “What’re you lauging at?”

  “That’s my girl right there. Mine. My girl.”

  Toggin rolled his silver eyes pathetically and said, “Swoon later, Vek, let’s go.”

  The team, now joined with Korok and crew, along with a few other Knave’s Blade members, all clad in the respectively unique garb of space pirates with bits of armor plating adorning their bodies, the occasional mechanical limb, and black tattoos slathered across necks and faces, made it to the main thoroughfare that stretched the length of Incarcerum connecting the forward command levels to the foundry at the aft. It was a dauntingly long passage ribbed with bulkheads and iron support arches. Lots of places from which to get shot at. Not very many places to hide.

  Vekter took the lead. There was no time to second guess the layout, no time to hesitate. “Come on,” he grumbled, and they began hauling arse down the corridor, guns up, senses alert. Blaster strikes rang out from the far end, streaking down the corridor at them.

  “Of course!” Toggin barked as everyone hit the walls for cover, pressing behind bulkheads and ducking to the floor. They returned fire with enough weaponry to fill the hallway with blaster strikes, back and forth.

  Rennick jerked Tiffa with him as he tumbled into an antechamber set into the wall. They crashed down avoiding a volley of striker blasts. She landed on top of him, both staring into the other eye-to-eye while pandemonium played out just beyond their shelter.