by Lizzy Bequin
CHAPTER 23: ROGAR
As soon as I hear Lorka’s voice, I realize something is terribly wrong.
Acquisitor Lorka doesn’t do field work. As his title implies, his role within the Guild is to acquire jobs which he delegates to the real bounty hunters. It pays handsomely, as Lorka is fond of displaying, but it’s not a job I could ever do. I need the thrill of the chase. I need the vast sea of stars beckoning me with new and strange adventures.
By contrast, the diminutive Gavronian Acquisitor’s tastes tend a bit more toward the epicurean. If he had things his way, he would never leave his bed, with a retinue of Q’morran sex droids to wait on him hand and foot with pitchers of ice cold ale, trays of exotic delicacies, and full body massages every hour on the hour.
He’s mused about his retirement plans so often, I’ve got them memorized now.
So the fact that he would just show up here, on an uncharted world unannounced, means there is trouble.
Big trouble.
From the shadowy depths of the wrecked ship, I cock my head up toward the open cargo door above me—a rectangle of bright blue sky swirled with a few wisps of clouds.
No sign of Clare.
My first impulse is to call her name to see if she is okay, but I immediately stifle it. The fact that she hasn’t called for me already tells me she is in trouble and can’t talk. I picture a gun pointed at her, and my heart hammers against my ribs like an enraged animal trying to escape its cage.
A millisecond later, my second impulse is to grab my spear, but I don’t have it. Like a fool, I left it above so that I could work unencumbered inside the ship.
Something drops through the opening of the cargo door. Something round and small—no bigger than a snooker ball. It bounces off the metal walls with a series of pings as it falls toward me.
It’s inches from my face before my eyes focus and realize what it is.
A stun grenade.
The dark interior of the ship suddenly turns a blinding white, like a bolt of lightning in the night as the device explodes.
***
My vision gradually clears, and the ringing in my ears subsides. The world starts to reconstitute itself around me.
It feels like mere seconds have passed, but I know that it has been much longer.
I’m no longer inside the ship. Now I’m outside, amid the squawking wildlife and the swaying jungle leaves speckled with dots of sunlight poking through the canopy above. My back is pressed against something hard. Through the fabric of my cape, I feel the rough scrape of bark.
When I try to move, I discover that my arms are lashed tightly at my sides. My legs are wrapped as well with a tough synthetic cord.
I’m tied to a fucking tree.
At least my helmet is still on.
“Well, well, well. We meet again, Rogar,” a familiar voice purrs smugly. “I have to admit, I’m a bit disappointed at how easily we caught you. The droid had no problem disabling your paltry security perimeter.”
Van Cleef and the droid Null-99 step into my field of vision. The feline bounty hunter’s one good eye gleams with delight. He’s leading Clare, and the sight of his filthy paw on the back of her neck makes my scales prickle with rage.
With an angry snarl, I struggle against my bonds, but they refuse to give.
“Careful, Rogar,” Van Cleef says. “I’d hate to see you hurt yourself. Those ropes aren’t going anywhere.”
“Damn right those ropes aren’t going anywhere.” Another voice, feminine and sibilant, comes from the other direction. “I tied the knots myself.”
Szelina, dressed in a sleeveless black body glove that shows off the purple scales of her arms, steps in from the other side. She stands directly in front of me and draws a knife from her belt, tracing its tip over my chest.
“Rogar taught me everything I know about tying knots,” she hisses. “Isn’t that right, darling?”
“In your dreams,” I growl. “And don’t call me darling.”
She steps back and laughs coldly, but there is a hint of a hurt expression on her face. Good.
Through the visor of my helm, my eyes scan the rogue bounty hunter scum lined up before me in the dappled light of the jungle. Then my eyes fall on Clare. She’s doing her best to be brave, but her eyes are wide with fear, and her chest is rising in falling with shallow, rapid breaths.
I want to tell her to stay calm. That everything will be okay. That I’ll figure something out.
But to do that would signal to Van Cleef and his partners just how much the girl means to me, and I can’t let them know. That would just give them even more leverage than they already have.
Clare seems to understand that too, and she keeps her mouth shut, even though she is clearly terrified. Besides, she can’t understand what anyone is saying right now since we are speaking Lingua Galactica, and I have deactivated my helmet’s translator.
“Where’s that son of a bitch Lorka?” I growl.
“Down here,” comes a weak voice beside my knee.
I glance down beside me and realize that Lorka is tied up to the tree as well.
“I’m sorry, Rogar,” he nearly sobs. “I didn’t have any choice. There was nothing I could do.”
If my legs weren’t bound, I’d punt that little fucker across the jungle right now. It’s not that he’s gotten me into a bind that pisses me off. It’s the girl. The thought of her in the hands of scum like Van Cleef makes my brain seethe with rage.
Szelina stands beside Clare, eyeing her up and down.
“So this is what all the fuss is about?” She scoffs. “It looks so weak and helpless.”
“You’d be surprised,” I tell her, and I instantly regret not keeping my mouth shut as a wicked smile spreads over Szelina’s face.
“Oh really?” she hisses through her grin. “Let’s see how easily it bleeds.”
She feints with her knife blade, swinging it toward Clare’s throat, but stopping short mere micrometers from the human’s delicate skin. Clare flinches and lets out a fearful squeal.
My body flinches too, almost imperceptibly, but enough for Van Cleef to notice with his one good eye.
He gestures for Szelina to lower her knife. Then he saunters forward, hands on the collar of his flight jacket, boots crunching in the underbrush.
“Rogar, Rogar, Rogar,” he laughs. “You’ve lost your touch, old friend. You were always the dispassionate one. Strictly business, right down the line. The only thing that ever mattered to you was that ridiculous Creed of yours.”
He stops in front of me, standing with a wide stance, hands on his hips and grinning victoriously.
“But look at you now. You’ve actually gone and fallen for your own bounty, haven’t you?” He clucks his tongue. “So out of character,” he chides. “So unprofessional.”
“The girl is nothing but a bounty to me,” I hiss.
Van Cleef, still wearing that shit-eating feline grin, just shakes his head.
“I’ve said it before. You’re a hell of a fighter, Rogar, but you’ve always been a terrible bluffer. Besides, I’ve already seen your little sleeping arrangement. And don’t forget, I have an excellent sense of smell.
He taps his snout.
“Let me just ask you one thing.” He pauses dramatically. “Did you keep your helmet on when you fucked her?”
He throws his head back and laughs at his own joke. He’s the only one laughing. Szelina doesn’t find it amusing due to her jealousy. And Null-99, well, droids don’t have much sense of humor.
As for me, I almost wish I wasn’t wearing my helmet right now, just so I could spit in Van Cleef’s ugly face.
“Here’s the way I see it.” The scruffy bounty hunter goes on. “We could take you both back to Lord Putrude and tell that fat bastard what you did to his little concubine. I’m sure he would throw us some fee for bringing you in so he could torture you.”
He scratches distractedly behind one pointed ear.
“But the girl’s worth a hell
of a lot more if Putrude thinks she’s still untouched. So your little secret is safe with us. Unfortunately means that we’ll need to dispatch you and the little purple midget.”
Van Cleef backs away, and gestures toward Null-99.
“The droid here suggested we put a blaster round through your head.”
“It is the most logical method of disposal,” Null-99 drones.
“That’s a droid for you.” Van Cleef knocks his knuckle gently against Null-99’s metallic dome. “No imagination. No…”
Van Cleef snaps his fingers, trying to think of the word.
“No pizzazz?” Szelina offers.
“No pizzazz!” Van Cleef goes on. “So Szelina here had another idea. She suggested that we tie you up to this tree and just…leave you! At first I thought it was just that soft spot she has for you,” he snickers, “but now I realize it’s quite the opposite.”
Van Cleef takes Clare away from Szelina, and the female bounty huntress strides toward me again. With a flick of her knife, she opens a thin slash across my chest.
“Rogar!” Clare shrieks.
“That will get your blood scent in the air,” she hisses. “I never got to taste you, but now the beasts of this planet will. I hope you think of me while they’re feasting on your entrails.”
Below me, Acquisitor Lorka lets out a shuddering sigh of fear mixed with nausea. Szelina storms away to rejoin her companions.
“This is highly illogical,” Null-99 protests. “What if Rogar escapes?”
Van Cleef chuckles again.
“He won’t. But just for the sake of argument…”
He draws a small device out of the pocket of his flight jacket—a small handheld cylinder with a red button.
A detonator.
“If he does manage to escape, he’ll still never make it off this planet.”
He depresses the button, and a moment later, a shock wave shakes the ground and the trees, sending the flying creatures in the upper canopy scattering in a flutter of wings. Behind, through the dense branches, an orange fireball rises against the pale blue sky.
My ship. The fucker just destroyed it.
“Well, I’d say that takes care of just about everything,” Van Cleef says with a self-satisfied chuckle. “We’d love to stick around and watch you get eaten alive, but we’ve got a rather sizable purse awaiting us on Rothilian Primaris. Null, beam us up to the ship.”
Van Cleef has relaxed his grip on Clare’s arm, and In a sudden, unexpected burst, she breaks away from him and rushes toward me, throwing her arms around me and sobbing.
“Aw, how sweet,” Van Cleef snarls. “Szelina, get her.”
Before the female bounty huntress can pull her away, Clare stands on her tiptoes and places a kiss against the visor of my mask.
“I love you,” she whispers.
As Szelina pulls her back, Clare’s tear-filled eyes stay locked on me. Her chest is stained dark green from my wound.
Null-99 taps a few buttons on his forearm. Their bodies coruscate with flickering white lights, and a moment later, in a burst of sparks and ozone, they disappear in a faint upward streak as they beam up to the ship waiting high above in outer space.
Now it’s just me and Lorka, left for dead in the jungle, while my mate is being taken across the galaxy to be given to a crime lord as his concubine.
All that’s left of her is the smudge that her lips made on my visor—the ghost of a kiss.
CHAPTER 24: CLARE
I collapse onto the cold metal deck of the spacecraft and immediately empty my stomach of its contents—my breakfast of cranberry-plumbs and water-stalks.
Rogar said the first time teleporting was the worst, but now I beg to differ. The trip up to these alien bounty hunters’ ship was way worse.
Maybe they have a cheaper model of teleporter?
Or maybe it’s just my broken heart.
The purple woman clutches my hair and yanks me up, hissing with disdain at the mess I just made on the floor. She has smooth scales and strange, segmented “hair” like Rogar’s but longer. I’m pretty sure she is the same species as him.
Meanwhile the catman and the android head to the cockpit of the ship.
As the woman drags me forward, I take a minute to look around.
From its interior, the ship is similar to Rogar’s. It’s more spacious but also grimier. The craft seems to be in a state of disrepair. The walls are splotched with rust and scorch marks. Panels have been stripped away to reveal tangles of cables wrapped in rotting insulation. Overhead, looping chains jangle like grim wind chimes.
“Liiqquua,” the purple woman snarls shoving me forward into the cockpit.
The catman has already strapped himself into the pilot’s seat, and he’s flipping controls on the dashboard, bringing the ship to life in a series of escalating hums. The android is beside in the copilot’s seat.
The purple woman forces me to sit on a bench along the rear wall of the cockpit. She snaps a command at me, and when I don’t understand, she begins buckling me into the safety harness with great annoyance before taking a seat and preparing her own straps.
A moment later, the catman drives a lever forward, and there is a sudden rushing feeling as the stars streak past and finally dissolve into a fluid, multicolored stream like a molten rainbow.
We’re in hyperspace, heading straight for my doom.
It’s deja vu all over again.
But this time, the scene is missing the only piece I care about anymore.
Rogar.
Once again, the tears start spilling out of me, rolling down my cheeks in scalding stripes. I don’t even try to hold them back.
The purple woman sucks an inhale between her teeth and says something that doesn’t sound very nice.
I just glare at her, trying to burn a hole through the back of her head with my eyes. I hate her for the way she cut Rogar's chest.
In the copilot’s seat, the droid’s chrome skull turns a complete one-eighty to face me, without moving its body.
“Szelina says she can’t believe a soft little bag of guts like you is the cause of all this excitement,” the droid says in a cold monotone. “Those are her words, not mine.”
“You speak English?” I ask.
“Affirmative. I am Null-99. In addition to my primary function as a hunter-killer droid, I am fluent in over one thousand languages.”
“Well in that case, tell her to go fuck herself,” I say angrily, turning my eyes back to the woman, who is apparently called Szelina.
“Your insult denotes a physical impossibility based on the nature and arrangement of Szelina’s reproductive organs. Nevertheless, I will inform her of your request.”
The metal head pivots toward Szelina and translates my rather uninspired insult into a language she can understand.
It seems to do the trick.
Her scaled eyelids flare open, and her serpentine pupils narrow to hateful slits. With a sharp cry, she draws her arm up to backhand me, and I brace for the blow.
But it doesn’t come. At the last second, the catman shouts something at her. He hisses and spits like a pissed off feline, staring the purple woman down.
She obeys him. Obviously he’s the boss of this ship. He says something gruffly to Null-99 who rises from his copilot’s seat and moves toward me.
“Release your safety harness, human,” it says coolly. “The captain has requested that I place you into the stasis chamber.”
Last time, on Rogar’s ship, I did everything I could to avoid the stasis chamber, but this time I submit.
I want my mind to go blank for a while.
I want to forget about the situation I’m in now.
And most of all I want to forget about what has happened to Rogar, my mate.
As I’m rising to go follow the droid, Szelina snatches my arm and unloads an angry message at me.
She nods to Null-99, who translates.
“Szelina says that Rogar does not really care about you. He only
had sex with you because you were the only female on the planet, and he was bored.”
Even though I tell myself that’s not true, it still stings me. But I try not to let Szelina see that.
“Tell her that’s better than she can say for herself,” I retort. “Rogar wouldn’t fuck her if she was literally the last woman in the universe.”
I’m not sure if that’s true, but it feels good to say it.
As Null-99 translates my message to Szelina, her purple face flushes nearly black, and her muscles start to twitch and tremble with barely restrained rage.
“Come, Earthling, let us take you to the stasis chamber before there is trouble.”
As I follow the droid out of the cockpit and down the dingy corridor, I say a silent prayer for Rogar back on that planet.
I don’t care what happens to me anymore. My fate is pretty much sealed.
The only thing I want is for Rogar to survive.
CHAPTER 25: ROGAR
Dark green blood trickles from the gash in my chest where Szelina cut me. The wound stings, but not nearly as much as the wrenching pain in my heart.
I have to find Clare.
I have to get her back.
I have to protect her.
A sudden booming sneeze startles me. Acquisitor Lorka sniffs.
“As if things couldn’t get any worse,” he mutters. “this jungle is making my allergies act up.”
He squints his dark beady eyes and peers at the shade of the jungle as if he’s just noticing it for the first time. Our surroundings are quiet now except for the wind stirring the highest limbs. The air is thick with the smell of burning fuel from my detonated ship. The only sign of our visitors is a small, curling plume of vapor where they beamed up to their craft, and soon even that fades away.
“You sure picked a hell of a planet to crash land on, Rogar.”
I snarl, and Lorka’s face turns a shade paler behind his black beard.
“You’re seriously going to blame this situation on me, you little traitor?” I snap.
Lorka raises his eyebrows and shakes his head, which is the only part of his body he can move. His normally rotund belly is tied so tightly to the tree that he looks a good twenty pounds lighter.
