Bounty Hunted

by Ian Cannon

  Outside, the team blasted away with great abandon, but their disadvantage was clear. They had nowhere to go. There was no egress, no escape and no way to advance.

  “I do believe we’re pinned down!” Nefrix yelled across the hall over blaster pounding, streaks of light stippling by.

  Something big came banging up from behind, huge feet stomping forward. Oonta Goomba had joined the fight brandishing a heavy piece of iron shielding and holding it forward, rushing ahead. Blasts pelted off it, glancing away, striking the ceiling or dashing against the metal floor.

  “Go go go!” Vekter yelled ushering everyone to follow. The team did so, cramming behind the big fellow and following him down the corridor.

  They made it to the foundry control center where their attackers had hunkered down. It was an Incarcerum battle team who all suddenly looked mortally surprised at the Prax-Noossian’s clever maneuver. Dressed in two-tone black uniforms, these were the raiders of Guilder’s Mix. This was the party that had destroyed their home. This was the Kruual.

  “Kill ‘em!” Toggin screamed fanning blaster bolts in a wide pattern through the room. The others followed suit laying down streams of plasma repeater rounds, laser blasts and pump-action gas munitions, sending their attackers scattering for cover, shredding the control room in big plumes of smoke and hails of spark, shattering the big window overlooking the foundry into raining droplets of glass, laying waste to the entire area. Oonta Goomba wrenched one Kruual soldier off his feet, slammed him like a rag doll to the floor, bowled a number of others into oblivion, and smashed his way to a vengeful payback.

  Once the room was clear, they looked across the control space and into the big steel cavern. More soldiers stationed across the way gawked back at them. For the first time, they had defeat written on their faces.

  “Fire!” Vekter shouted, and both sides began exchanging blasts in waves across the open ore-pits.

  GuardKing stormed into the primary laboratory. Specter turned to him. Even through that cybernetic mask, his grim countenance was clear.

  GuardKing said, “The infiltrators have stormed the docking platforms. Our manotaurs have failed. They’re in the foundry engaging the Kruual.”

  The mind machine hummed in its low, thrumming alpha tone. Specter looked back at his patient laying inside the machine. It was Tawny, unconscious and swimming through layers of psychic rebuilding. She was to be his reward.

  Specter shot a look over to the machine’s operation cubicle. Jinn-Junn looked frightfully back at him.

  “Progress?” Specter demanded.

  Jinn-Junn swallowed hard and said, “The nueral inlays are progressing as expected, my lord. It … will take time.”

  He said in a threatening tone, “You will continue the downloads. Nothing will interrupt the process. Nothing will stop us.” He turned to GuardKing and said, “Remain here. Guard this laboratory with your life. Destroy all who enter.”

  “Yes, Sire,” he said with a grin.

  “I will see to these invaders myself.” With that, he stormed from the laboratory, a creature with a mission.

  The battle had moved down the corridor at such swift and violent pace it left a vacuum of silence around Rennick and Tiffa Nora. They swam in it momentarily, still laying flat on the floor inside the antechamber with her on top, both looking into the other face-to-face, eye-to-eye—two people of such a rare common feather that they were the only two people in the whole universe that could love the other.

  Finally, Tiffa crawled off him and dusted herself off. He groaned, picking his massive girth up off the floor and looking around. The place buzzed with computerized tech. Lights twittered and beeped communicating a million actions a minute back and forth through server units and big, piped-in computer relays. It was some sort of brain room, a central hub controlling and monitoring the backend networking of the entire station.

  “What is this damn place?” Rennick grunted.

  Without warning, the thunder call of a big pounder weapon went off from behind. Rennick and Tiffa both hit the floor with him covering her up protectively as the place exploded all around them. Machines erupted into bits and pieces. Chunks of new tech became twisted, steaming piles of wreckage on the floor. Sparks and flame licked out as the entire room crumbled in one massive show of obliteration.

  Silence fell. Their ears rang.

  They both shook their heads and popped their ears, looking back, stunned. Lyra Noot stood in the entryway laughing through a tiny voice. All three feet of him held that big repeater rifle of his perched on a hip with a steaming barrel.

  Tiffa Nora rolled her eyes ridiculously and muttered, “It ain’t nothing now, big lovin’.”

  At the sudden destruction of the brain center, every security system on Incarcerum tripped. It was a station wide safety measure. The hatchway securing the prisoner dungeon unlocked and flipped open. Holding bars depressed into their floor cylinders. Energy cuffs controlled by the station’s universal security network powered down.

  And in the laboratory, Ben found himself sitting up on the cerebro table looking into his hands, then down at his ankles. His cuffs had suddenly and without warning disengaged. He was perfectly free … and seething mad.

  Nineteen

  Ben knew where his wife was. She was in the other laboratory. The primary lab. And she was having her mind wiped right now—her memories erased, refabricated and replaced.

  Tawny …

  Ben threw himself from the table and stormed from the lab, on fire. He moved across the extended walkway several stories over the foundry floor and toward the perimeter catwalk where a pair of Incarcerum warriors faced him—the Kruual—both clearly prepared for combat.

  One of them called, “Stop!”

  Ben. Did not. Stop.

  “Our orders are to detain you,” the guard said as he readied himself for a physical encounter. They both pulled long stun spears, telescoping them to their full length with a flick. “We will use every measure to prevent your escape!”

  “That’s your last mistake!” Ben sneered as he reached them, hit the floor, rolled as one of the spears swung at him, and sprang up with a shot that stunned the first guy. He commanded the spear in his grip blocking the other’s strike, jerked the spear away and pounded the first guy across the orbital bone. His head jerked back and Ben helicoptered the spear into the second. The shot sent the guy over the rail and into freefall to the foundry floor below. He turned and invited the first guy to follow his compatriot with a kick to the chest. Now, armed with a spear, he hit the catwalk that would lead him across the chasm and to that other cantilevered structure at the far side of the foundry—the primary lab.

  Another member of the Kruual thundered at him from the front, a second moving in for a strike from the rear. Ben continued his march, blocked a shot from overhead, swung fully around surprising his rear pursuer with a handle thrust to the throat, turned around and leg swept the first. The guy hit the deck with a—guh! Ben smashed him across the skull, swept back around and pressed the other guy against the railing with enough force to flip him overboard and drop him into deep, negative space. He screamed as he fell.

  Ben continued forward. Here came another Incarcerum soldier. Another quick read. Another shot. Another enemy plummeting below.

  He remembered his words to the embed …

  Another Kruual warrior approached. Block. Strike. Thrust. Another immediate dispatch.

  Every living soul …

  And another Kruual warrior.

  Every strip of tech …

  And another.

  Every crumb of ore …

  Ben was a man of his word. He was perfectly prepared to make good on all his promises.

  He rounded the corner with his storm of rage following him and came to a stop. GuardKing stood at the entrance to the lab, security blaster at his hip, that long dirk jutting over his shoulder, spear in hand. The look on his face was of a man eagerly awaiting a great trial. He brought up his spear and thumbed the em
itter switch. It hummed, started glowing.

  Ben did the same, raising his own weapon and poising himself to make a charge. He and Tawny would be together forever. Nothing would stand in their way. Nothing would tear them apart. That was the deal.

  No words. No threats. No posturing. He put his head down and blasted forward with a battle roar.

  At the foundry control room, the back and forth blaster war had suppressed both sides, plasma blasts stipling across the chasm. The Guild members, now fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with a number of the Knave’s Blade, posted up behind the large control station for cover, seething volleys at the enemy. And their numbers had grown as more civvies, black marketers and pirates infiltrated the station through the forward airlocks and came charging down the long main thoroughfare to join the fight.

  Vekter and Sindra Klaire had teamed up, both aiming and firing. Vek dropped down to his butt slapping a charge round into his blaster. Sindra joined him below. “You thinking what I’m thinking?” he asked her under the blaster pings and bangs of exploding strike points.

  “What?” she said.

  He gave her that debonnaire grin and said, “You like me.”

  She laughed, “Oh please.”

  “You do a little.”

  “I know you too well, Vek.”

  He gave her an affirmative grin and said, “Yeah, that’s why you like me.”

  She rolled her eyes grinning with resignation. The truth was the truth.

  He popped back up and continued blasting away at the enemy.

  Shogun Star could not refute his own philosophical encoding. As a member of the Iotian Nid and faithful to the Junga god, he’d always studied the world around him with fierce eyes and a hungry mind—absorb everything, see all, accept the truth.

  This fight had become too easy. The enemy was trapped across the chasm. Their numbers were shrinking while the Guilders’ numbers grew. They had poor cover. They had no advantage to speak of. Their situation was dire. Yet there was no surrender, no pleading to end the struggle. That could mean only one thing. Something wasn’t right.

  Ducking low, he snuck from the control arena and out into the steel honeycomb of catwalks, extensions and bridgeways of the cavern. Looking directly down through the extensive space, he spied something farely alarming. There was a group of Kruual elites spreading out across the bottom level—eight of them—working their way to the system of stairways up to the control arena. Their standoff was about to become an ambush.

  He grinned offering a quick prayer to his Junga god—Allow me now, Junga, to find my final testament, and die in the honorable ways of my people.

  He drew his blade, leapt over the rail and sailed down with the ever-growing speed of gravity, slamming down squarely on his feet. The group of Kruual each stopped and turned to him. He was enfolded among their numbers, blade bore, eyes sharking coolly across them. He knew the Kruual philosophy. It was one of the blade as well.

  The first one attacked. He turned with a block and countered across the chest, lightning quick. The second moved in with a feint inviting the third. Shogun read it, parried high, parried low, commited a breakneck riposte dispatching both, all within a blink. Another came forward, then another. But Shogun’s years of deep meditation, search for unyielding perfection, and fluid balance was too great a thing. With an economy that moved in nearly sub-visual performance, he moved like a phantom pirouetting his blades into the enemy like a dance, the art of motion and the science of killing becoming one single thing.

  When he found his moment of stillness, he exhaled long, slow and even. The Kruual lay around him in heaps. There would be no Kruual ambush today. Nor would there be any final testament.

  Something landed behind him on the metal floor just as he had moments before. He turned slowly. Specter stood before him, his sensor node pulsing in rhythm with his focus. He drew his own Kruual blade slowly, hissing the steel from its scabbard. He pointed the blade at him and hissed, “I will finish with your friends. But I will start with you.”

  Shogun tilted him a look and readied his sword. Perhaps his final testament would come, after all.

  Ben and his enemy met halfway across the extension bridge, both bringing their lances against each other in a fulmination of fire, lightning clashing out in all directions. The lances slammed to the side exploding the railing in half and spinning both combatants around in a dance of death. GuardKing finished the maneuver with a lateral move that arced around slicing a horizontal rip in Ben’s shirt. Ben stumbled back, caught his footing.

  The two studied the other, eyes locked and reading. GuardKing’s were pitch dark and reflected the sizzling weapon he held before him, Ben’s a tempest of determination.

  GuardKing sneered, “You’re too late, Benjar Dash. My master’s plan is unfolding as we stand here now.”

  Ben’s face turned to an angry, defiant glower. “I’m not here to talk.” He thrust forward with the lance. His enemy blocked the strike, deflecting it to the ground erupting sparks across their feet. GuardKing’s motion was like an apparition, light and steady, yet his strikes came like a freighter tug. He struck high in a powerful remise, trailing light and flame through the air and forcing Ben to constantly bob and weave, backing out onto the catwalk searching for separation. He slammed into the rail where GuardKing pressed into him, their spears locked together in the struggle.

  Ben bore his clenched teeth, pressing against his foe with all his might but being wrent over the railing painfully. GuardKing moved closer, their faces nearing to within inches, each an unveiled mask of hate.

  GuardKing growled with overscored, hateful words, “Her mind is no longer hers, Benjar Dash. Her heart is no longer yours.”

  Ben roared out and slammed GuardKing off him in a surge of sudden, new strength. He swung at his enemy threatening his own balance, but the man whirled around with perfect, defensive precision, his waist cape fluttering behind like a banner, and Ben missed, driving himself fully around.

  GuardKing paused a moment to snicker. Pacing before him he said, “You are no more than a test, Benjar, a final hurdle for my master to overcome. And when he’s through with you, he will become a ruler to the likes the solar twins have yet seen.”

  Ben heaved, “You’re as mad as he is.”

  “And when he ascends to his position among the New Frontier, he will do so with your wife at his side.” He lowered his voice dawning a sinister sneer, and said, “And I will make it so.”

  Ben’s eyes went into slits. New Frontier? What the hells is this New Frontier?

  He shook his head. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was Tawny.

  He collected his focus winding the spear in his hands and poising for another shot. “Not today—Yaaaa!”

  He exploded forward striking from overhead, committing thrust strikes aimed to penetrate, swings and slices designed to amputate limbs. But GuardKing parried, blocked, switched, adjusted—his form was perfect, quick, almost effortless. It left Ben no avenue to explore, save one. He had to overpower him. His blows became heavy, full of rage. Above the lance-on-lance pounding and the plasma-electric howling of their weapons, GuardKing called out Ben’s maneuvers with balanced ease, “Tachual strike! Jo’udan counter! Gasu’ami thrust! Yes, Benjar Dash—very impressive!”

  They locked weapons as Ben left his feet and came down from above, the blazing light from their glowing lances leaving deep, attached shadows across GuardKing’s face. “Do you see? You do not know your enemy, Benjar.” He lunged hard, shoving Ben backward several paces and loosing his spear from his hands. It fluttered hopelessly over the rail and began its plummet to the foundry floor, far below. GuardKing collected himself, lazily swinging his spear in a figure eight, pacing slowly forward. “But I do.”

  GuardKing disengaged his lance, shutting it off. He threw it over the railing as he strutted forward. He traded it for his short sword sheathed across his back, drawing it in a slow, menacing hiss.

  Ben spied his enemy stalk closer, feeling h
is hope flush away. GuardKing was too powerful, too good. Ben had done nothing to strike a positive blow against him, even now with his strength depleted, his energy drained. He felt the scourge of desperation rise up in him. His gaze went beyond GuardKing and to the lab entrance. His wife was in there. She was being altered. No telling what damage had already been done. Time was of the essence. Seconds counted. He didn’t have time to struggle against this GuardKing. And he sure as hells didn’t have time to lose.

  He needed a weapon. Something fast. Not a lance or a stun spear. Not some ritualistic sword. Nothing clever or novel. No—he needed a blaster. A simple, basic blaster. Like that one … holstered at GuardKing’s hip.

  He knew what he had to do. No pain was too great. Not even death was too high a price.

  Oh, this was going to hurt.

  The gunfight had dwindled. Several Kruual warriors lay sprawled across the walkway. Several others had been struck with plasma fire and fallen over into the ore pits. It had slowly become apparent to the remaining few, help was not coming. Their fight had become a question of when, not if. When would the very last one be shot down? When would there be none left to return fire? So, they surrendered. They had seemed a proud bunch at the fight’s outset. Now they were happy to have survived.

  The thunder of war ceased rapidly. Smoke lingered in the air. The Guilders and Knave’s Blade collected themselves slowly, some recoiling their weapons, others standing to full height pointing their guns across the cavern keeping their untrusted enemy combatants honest.

  A voice boomed from behind, “Awe, smuggler’s luck! I missed it?”

  Vekter turned around to see Axum framed by his entourage stroll into the big control bay with his thumbs hooked at his beltline under that bulging belly.

  One of his Knave’s Blade bellowed, “Bout time!”

  “Hey!” he said, “you try piloting fifteen hundred feet of command galley through an asteroid storm.” And with a finger in the air, he punctuated, “Key word—command!”