Best of Beyond the Stars

by Patrice Fitzgerald

  Which left me in quite a predicament. Because I was barely seven sols old.

  Being the only kid on that godsforsaken rock actually had its advantages, including the fact that nobody ever thought to childproof anything. I don’t mean putting guard rails up and plugging empty sockets. I mean there were lots of ways someone my size could get in and around pretty much everyplace in that small settlement because nobody thought to make it otherwise.

  I swiftly learned that I could go practically anywhere without being seen, and that meant I could take whatever I needed from whoever had it. And if what I needed to take was a person’s life, then I took that. Within a few months I was so good at sneaking up and slitting someone’s throat that they never even knew I was there.

  Sneak.

  Slit.

  Steal.

  Repeat.

  That was my life for years‌—‌I lost track of how many‌—‌until there was no longer anything to steal, or anybody to steal from. Eventually, I was on my way to starving, and there was nothing that was going to prevent it. Truth to tell, I had become somewhat feral.

  Then a ship showed up. From what I gathered, they needed to do some repairs that required them to land, and this was the closest place. While they were taking a look around, I stowed away aboard the ship.

  I sometimes wonder if they might have treated me okay if I had just explained my situation, either before or after I snuck on board the ship. But after they discovered a couple of crewmembers with slit throats, there was no way they were going to welcome me.

  Unlike the mining settlement, this ship was too small for me to stay hidden forever. The smell alone was enough to give me away.

  I’ll give them credit. They didn’t just shoot me once they caught me. That’s what I would have done in their shoes.

  But that might have been a favor compared to what happened next. They dropped me off at an Imperial hub and had me arrested. They showed holo-pics of the carnage at the mining town, and said I had murdered some of their men the same way.

  Turned out I had actually killed more people than anyone they’d ever heard of. I didn’t even get why it was a big deal, considering it had been my life for so long.

  Imperial trials being what they are, it didn’t take long for me to be processed, convicted, then tossed onto a prison station orbiting a gas giant. Nobody had ever escaped from this place in all the decades it had been spinning around the planet. Until me, that is.

  But it took years for me to do it. By that time, I had grown a lot. I wasn’t the biggest, but I was big. And I wasn’t the toughest, but I was tough. Nobody could fight like me.

  And nobody could beat me.

  Of course, someone with my history doesn’t have a whole lot of options when it comes to a profession, so after I escaped I went with the one that came naturally. The polite way to describe me would be bounty hunter. A closer term would probably be assassin, at least in most cases. But the reality is that I usually get paid to be a cold-blooded killer.

  * * *

  So. Back to my story.

  As I was saying, Xiomara and I were blasting around the galaxy, slobbering all over each other and having a grand old time.

  Then the Cinque showed up.

  They caught up to us on Synius Prime, out on the edge of nowhere. We had landed the Raptor on a plateau with an astonishing view of Broneah Falls‌—‌you’d have to see it to believe it‌—‌and had been holed up there for about a week, enjoying the scenery and each other, when these boys showed up in their ships.

  The first thing we did was try taking the easy way out. I powered up the Raptor’s reactor in emergency mode‌—‌not the safest move in the world, but then, neither is being shot at by a quintet of the galaxy’s best bounty hunters. We were out of the atmosphere in seconds, and past Synius Prime’s orbit soon after. They were fast, but I own a modified Imperial recon vessel (I’ll explain that some other time‌—‌I don’t want to slow down the momentum), so we were going to be outrunning them right quick.

  But one of their better shots‌—‌probably Four, from what I’ve seen‌—‌hit us with a blast from his ion cannon. We felt the ship jolt violently as the beam tore into our starboard engine. We weren’t going to be going anywhere for long.

  I performed my fanciest flying maneuvers through that system, but I couldn’t shake them without the extra juice. And I’m a fairly decent pilot. May have even won some pretty big piloting competitions (oops, there I go tooting again). I whipped around asteroids, flew through the rings of a gas giant, and reversed course a few times to try to lose them.

  But, again: Five to one. And so it goes.

  I pulled up the nav charts, desperate to figure something out.

  Then I realized where I was. Coincidence? Probably. Or maybe I’m just so good that my subconscious figures these things out without me noticing. Toot, toot.

  As the Cinque closed in on us, I kicked in the afterburners and blasted out toward the furthest planets in the system, including Finnegan’s Centaur.

  We almost didn’t make it to the barren rock that had been my first home and my first prison. Almost.

  When we were getting close to the former settlement, I slowed down just enough to make them think they’d be able to hit me. Then I flipped around and flew between Four and Six. Four got off a shot, since that was his area of expertise, but I dropped down right when I knew he’d shoot, and the beam sliced through Six’s ship. I didn’t watch for long, but I did see it fall toward the planetoid in two pieces.

  I finally began firing back instead of just running, now that the odds were slightly more even. I almost hit a couple of them, even with my damaged ship. That was enough to scatter the four scumbags who were left long enough for me to get down to the settlement.

  I managed to nestle the Raptor into the main landing port and get off the ship with Xiomara before the other ships had a chance to land. There were no lights, and it would have been exceedingly difficult for someone to put a ship down if they weren’t already familiar with the place, especially in the smaller auxiliary ports.

  We headed for the main warehouse, since that would offer us a lot of chances to stay hidden. It was also where I’d set up shop as a kid after nobody else was left, since it was so big that I would occasionally come across a crate of supplies that hadn’t been found by anyone else and extend my miserable life another week or two. Ah, good times.

  The past couple of decades hadn’t been kind to the abandoned settlement. It was a ghost town, with most of its ghosts having been created by yours truly. It was in such bad shape that it looked like nobody had been there for hundreds of years. Structures were crumbling, wood was rotting, and a heavy layer of dust covered everything.

  The warehouse was just a smaller version of the settlement itself, full of stacks and shelves of crates that were either empty or filled with things that were no longer needed after the mining company had abandoned it.

  It didn’t take long for Two through Five to find me, since they had tracking equipment just like I did. But I knew the radiation from some of the rocks they used to mine there would foul up their scanners enough that they wouldn’t be able to pinpoint us exactly.

  Their first mistake was splitting up. They probably figured they’d find us faster that way, and that it would’ve been easier for me to kill them quickly if they were in a group.

  But individually, they’d lost their only advantage over me. Now that it was one on one, they didn’t stand a chance.

  Once Xiomara was relatively safe and had her blaster at the ready, I climbed up to one of my favorite spots, on top of the highest rack of shelves in the warehouse. From there I got a bead on the locations of Three and Four, with Three being just below me. Three was from the planet Morivar, which meant he was taller than a human, and much thinner. Morivarians were good at a lot of things, especially tracking, but hand-to-hand combat was not one of them.

  Since I didn’t want to give away my position, I jumped down on him fro
m above, knocking him to the permacrete floor in the process. After that, I shut him up with a few punches before he was able to yell for the others. Then it was just a matter of hitting his head hard enough against the floor to make sure he wouldn’t wake up again.

  I went back to check on Xiomara and told her where Four was, and she informed me that she had spotted Five. I tried to convince her to stay where she was, but she insisted on going after Five herself. The truth was, she could take care of herself better than almost anyone I’d ever met. I had no right to tell her to stay put, any more than she had a right to tell me.

  We went in opposite directions, and I found Four right away. His species had four arms, and he was a two-gun man. At the moment, both were drawn and at the ready. I climbed on top of a crate to get the advantage, but the top had started rotting away, and it splintered as I stood on it. As I lost my balance, Four spotted me and took aim.

  Then, the sound of blaster fire echoed through the warehouse. He turned for just a split second when he heard it, and that was a split second too long. I fired and put a smoking hole through his forehead before he had finished turning his head back in my direction.

  I ran toward the sound of blaster fire, but I couldn’t find Xiomara right away. I started to worry, but then Xiomara came back around and told me she had taken out Five. I was relieved to find out that the sound I’d heard was her blaster killing him, and not the other way around.

  One left: Number Two. I told her to wait there while I circled around. That way she could get him if he came to her, and I could get him if he was still out there. I knew which direction he’d probably be approaching from, and I also knew how to get back behind where he’d be coming from.

  While Four had been the best shot of the bunch in a ship, Two approached my own skill in hand-drawn blasters. He was from a colony with heavy gravity, so he was quick, and his reflexes were faster than any non-enhanced human I’d ever seen. I had to be extra careful, since it would probably be a matter of who drew on whom first. I spotted him creeping up on Xiomara’s location, so I started creeping up on him. I couldn’t fit in the same small spaces as I used to back in the day, but I hadn’t lost my touch, either. I probably should have just pulled out my gun and finished it fast, but something came over me.

  I pulled my blade instead.

  I don’t know what was going on in my head‌—‌whether I wanted to see if I could still do it, or if I thought it might give me some kind of thrill I hadn’t felt in decades‌—‌but I made the spectacularly stupid move of trying to slice his throat. Within seconds, I was behind him, and I saw him tense for a split second as he realized I was there.

  But it was too late. I grabbed him by the hair, pulled his head back, and sliced.

  As I let him fall to the ground, I saw that Xiomara was at the end of the aisle I was standing in. I smiled at her and thought about how great things were going to be now that those scumbags were taken care of. Nobody else would even be able to come close to taking us out.

  I found it curious that she didn’t smile back, but I immediately found out why.

  I heard the quick whine of a blaster, and the next thing I knew, I had an extra orifice of my own. Before I felt the pain, I noticed my legs were no longer working, and I dropped to the floor like a sack of plantains. I held my hand over the hole through my middle to stem the extensive bleeding, and twisted around as best I could to see who’d shot me. The handsome face that smiled at me was not one I was expecting to see again.

  Number Five was still alive. Xiomara was a good shot‌—‌almost as good as me from what I’d seen the past few weeks‌—‌so I don’t know how she could have thought she’d gotten him when he obviously looked perfectly fine.

  That meant there was a problem. But before I could fully figure it out, I blacked out.

  Luckily, I wasn’t out for long, and Five hadn’t bothered to shoot me in the head in the interim. I guess the crimson pond beneath my body was enough for him to assume I’d died when I passed out.

  It didn’t take a whole lot of calculating to figure out what was going on here.

  Sure enough, when I popped my head up to check out the situation, Five and Xiomara were making googly eyes at each other. And not the love at first sight kind, either. More of the “Soon we’ll be together forever, my love” kind.

  I might not be the brightest star in the sector, but I know when I’ve been had. That’s right: I had an honest-to-goodness femme fatale on my hands. Apparently, she’d made a deal with Five‌—‌or maybe they were genuinely together from the start, I don’t know‌—‌and now they were getting rid of all the competition, including me.

  But they’d made the colossal error of thinking I was dead. Not that I was far off. The shot had gone through my lower abdomen, and not only did it hurt like hell, I wasn’t able to walk. Depending on which organs were hit, I may or may not have survived long enough to get patched up. But I was determined to take them both down either way.

  I snuck another peek and saw Five grab Xiomara in his arms and plant a kiss on her lips. Those luscious lips. It made my stomach turn and my chest clench up. Of course she’d want to be with that jackhammer with his holo-flick good looks. Why would I ever think she’d really wanted to be with me?

  While he was macking on her, I slowly crawled back around to find my weapon, which had flown out of my hand when I was shot. As far as I knew, they didn’t notice me moving, but I stopped cold when I saw what happened next.

  Still locked in Five’s arms, Xiomara pointed her weapon at the back of his head and blew it clean off. Interesting twist there. That would have left her home free.

  If I’d actually been dead, that is.

  Gravely wounded as I was, I still managed to grab my weapon from the floor next to me and point it at her. She sensed it, just as I was ready to shoot. Her surprised expression momentarily morphed into that seductive gaze that had conned me for weeks. I almost couldn’t do it.

  But I squeezed the trigger. The blast went clean through her middle breast. Dammit, that was my favorite one, too. She dropped to the floor immediately. As the blood pooled under her body, I managed to drag myself along the floor to be near her. Our blood was mingling together, my red and her blue, as our lives had briefly done up until that point.

  “Was it worth it?” I asked.

  “It... would have... been...” she replied, with a great deal of effort.

  “I take it none of it was real?” I had a hard time getting it out, but I’m sure that was just due to my injuries.

  “The pasta was good.” The slightest smile. Then the lights went out in her stunning violet eyes, and she was done.

  For some reason the hole in my gut was also causing my eyes to leak. Not sure what the connection was there.

  * * *

  I returned to Earth as soon as I was recovered enough to fly there, and with the help of a Tranrian vorpal blade, six electrocell crystals, and some duct tape, I soon had Hank telling me everything. Actually, he was ready to talk as soon as I walked into his office, but I needed to release some of my frustration on someone.

  I want to say I let Hank live after he spilled the truth along with the contents of his stomach. But we don’t always get what we want.

  Not only had Xiomara not stolen his money, she had paid him to play the part and to hire me to put everything in motion. That was her plan. Get me on her side, then hire the rest of the best to come after us so we’d all take each other down. Which would have left her as the new Numero Uno. Instead, she just put a bigger distance between me and whoever was the new Number Two.

  She was never a trophy wife at all. She was just another bounty hunter.

  A Word from Christopher J. Valin

  Christopher J. Valin is an award-winning writer, artist, teacher and historian living in the Los Angeles area with his wife and two children. He has written stories of all kinds since childhood, including novels, short stories, comic books, and screenplays, despite banging his head too much pla
ying bass in heavy metal bands for years. His biography of his 5x great-grandfather (based on his master’s thesis in military history), Fortune’s Favorite: Sir Charles Douglas and the Breaking of the Line, was published by Fireship Press.

  In addition to writing and inking for independent comic book companies and writing screenplays for production companies, Christopher has had numerous short stories published in anthologies such as Alt. Chronicles: Legacy Fleet and Chronicle Worlds: B-Movie. He also has a life-long obsession for comics and superheroes, and tends to put a comic book spin on nearly everything he writes, especially with his Red Raptor Files series.

  Sign up to get Tres Puercos and Other Dark Tales for free:

  SUBSCRIBE

  Connect with Christopher J. Valin:

  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorchristopherjvalin/

  Twitter: https://twitter.com/ValinChris

  Website: http://www.christophervalin.com

  A Pool of Uncountable Eddies

  by Jeff Seymour

  EFIE STARES OUT the skimmer’s tiny windows as it comes in for a landing. The craft shakes a little, and the whine of its engines comes and goes as it struggles to maintain power and altitude. Around it, crags rise like broken teeth, dripping with greenery in the Belladox equatorial belt’s eternal spring. The temple where she and Rosa will do their research‌—‌little more than a collection of tents despite the century for which it has stood‌—‌lies in the embrace of the mountains, next to a pool the color of emeralds, surrounded by the branching, inky limbs and flowers of alien trees and dwarfed by the churning colors of Belladox’s ever-changing sky.

  A bundle of nerves crawls from Efie’s guts and settles around her stomach. She can already see the swirling eddies in the pool. They’re her future, and she knows it, and it terrifies her.