The Bounty Hunters from Arachnxx Three

by Milo James Fowler

  As Captain Quasar had presumed, their shuttle had no difficulty blending in and setting down alongside the slew of escape pods, which had apparently been emergency-programmed to take a direct course to a large landing bay carved into the side of a mountain. It had the look of a rock quarry about it, and there were scores of all-terrain vehicles moving to and fro outside, carrying mounds of shale.

  Was this the mineral Princess Sya had mentioned—the source of her Ancient Ones' magic?

  "What now, captain?" Hank half-turned as, on the viewscreen, the escape pods opened all around them in the landing bay. Frazzled Ciliac soldiers and attendants emerged from their cramped quarters and stretched their limbs, congratulating one another on making it off the space station alive.

  "We get their attention." Quasar pointed at the console, but at nothing in particular. "Charge up the engines—full burn."

  "In here?" Gruber squeaked. "We'll blow—!"

  "Do it." Quasar kept a steely eye on the viewscreen. "And put me on external comms."

  Glancing at Gruber, Hank moved his furry fingers over the console and nodded to the captain as the shuttle's engines roared to life. Cries of alarm erupted outside as Ciliac soldiers scrambled for their weapons. They could tell something was definitely amiss with the shuttle.

  "Greetings, Ciliac friends," Quasar said, watching the three-eyed aliens on the viewscreen. "Some of you may remember me. I am Captain Bartholomew Quasar of the—"

  "Captain?" General Frayek strode forward from the pack of armed soldiers, his appearance changed by the final blasts he'd survived on the station. He was now covered in a light coat of soot from head to toe. "I thought you had returned to your ship?"

  "There's the rub, I'm afraid. I need to speak with your princess about that very matter." Quasar added with urgency, "Please patch her through as soon as possible. I don't know how long these engines can burn at full blast in a confined space like this without wreaking havoc."

  Frayek blinked once and signaled a nearby attendant to do what Quasar had requested. Seconds later—they were of the nail-biting variety, with Chief Gruber actually biting his own set like a rabid beaver eating corn on the cob—Princess Sya's image appeared in the bottom right corner of the shuttle's viewscreen.

  "So, Captain Quasar, we meet again." She chuckled, winking broadly with her third eye. "Perhaps I should take this as a sign that our two houses are meant to be united. What would you say to a royal wedding, Earth Man?"

  Choking back bile at the thought, Quasar managed, "I might consider it—as long as I can return to my ship first. We have the two reactor coils you so graciously supplied, but we have no way of boarding the Effervescent Magnitude without your matter-energy-transference. A few giant spiders stand in our way, you see."

  Princess Sya raised her third eyebrow at the mention of the reactor coils. "The coils are yours, of course," she said, saving face before her subjects. "But I do not see how I can help you. For one thing, you were hired by House Bromidia to kill me, were you not? A lady is not apt to forget such a thing."

  The subjects didn't take kindly to that revelation. Obviously, they hadn't been in attendance at the arena earlier. Regardless, the crowd in front of the shuttle parted as half a dozen soldiers suddenly appeared carrying heavy weaponry, training every muzzle on the cockpit.

  "Are those—?" Gruber gasped.

  "Rocket launchers," Hank growled.

  Episode 18: Face to Face

  Captain Quasar was far from intimidated. He made a habit of staring down death in its various forms, but he doubted these Ciliac soldiers could say the same. So he ordered Hank on external comms, loud enough for all to hear, "Cut the port thruster!"

  "But sir, that'll send us spinning!" Gruber said in dismay, knowing full-well the back-burn would set the Ciliac soldiers ablaze before they could scramble to safety.

  "That's the idea." Quasar signaled Hank with a thumb jerked across his own throat.

  "You want me to silence external comms?" Hanks ascertained, eyeing the captain's gesture warily. At Quasar's nod, he hit the mute button.

  "No one's going to die today, gentlemen," Captain Quasar said with a wink. "You'll see. Princess Sya herself will make an appearance, and when she does—" He grinned after a glance at the viewscreen. "Why, speak of the devil."

  Just as the captain had expected, the princess appeared in the middle of the landing bay, no doubt matter-energy-transferring herself straight there once it became clear she was dealing with a very unpredictable Earth Man. What Quasar did not expect, however, was the grenade-sized object in her hand, which she nonchalantly tossed under the shuttle.

  After a burst of blue light from the localized EMP, the shuttle's engines ground to a halt, along with every other system on board. The Ciliac soldiers cheered while Captain Quasar and company were left in the dark.

  "Come out, come out, my dear captain," the princess called. "Let us settle our differences face to face, shall we?"

  "Uh-how do we get out of here?" Gruber shuffled awkwardly, bumping into the captain. "Where's the rear hatch?"

  "Without power, there's no way to open it. They'll have to matter-energy-transfer us out," said the captain. He wondered how long it would take the princess to realize this. "Quick—grab hold of those reactor coils. We're not going anywhere without them!"

  A split-second later, they stood outside the shuttle surrounded by the scowling, well-armed Ciliac soldiers. Quasar looked the princess in the eye—the left one, not the forehead one—and pointed beyond the high-arched ceiling of the cavernous landing bay.

  "You have no idea what's going on up there," he declared in a commanding tone imbued with all the authority of United World Space Command. "Danger lies at your very doorstep!"

  "I don't believe you, Captain. If that were the case, why would you be here? You would have returned to your ship. There are no spider-things, and there never were. It was all a ruse to escape my arena." The princess clucked her tongue strangely as if doubting her own words a smidgeon. "But even if those creatures do exist, they do not concern me or my people."

  "No? Well, they should. They're not the sort of enemy you're used to dealing with!"

  She frowned at him. "You are saying they are worse than the Bromidians?" She guffawed, slapping one of her thighs. Her subjects echoed her incredulity. "Surely you jest!"

  "Did she just call you Shirley?" Gruber whispered into the captain's ear.

  Quasar took a step away from the sweat-drenched security chief.

  "Besides, if they are as horrible as you seem to believe, why have we not encountered them before now?" Princess Sya raised all three of her eyebrows. "Why have they not graced us with their awful presence?"

  "Because your planet is invisible," Hank muttered.

  "The carpet has something to add?" She snorted at her own little funny. "Speak up, furry creature!"

  "See for yourself," Quasar said, pointing at the massive viewscreen mounted on the cavern wall. It had tracked the escape pods and shuttle as they entered the planet's atmosphere and now displayed an image of the Ciliac space station's remains, broken pieces venting atmospheric gases into the black and slowly revolving like an infant's derelict mobile. "Enter my ship's coordinates, and you will see the battle with your own eyes. There are 1,482 members of my crew on board, and the longer I remain here, the less chance they have of surviving against overwhelming odds!"

  Keeping her forehead eye fixed on the captain, Princess Sya gestured impatiently to General Frayek, and he took command of the viewscreen console. Captain Quasar recited the coordinates where the Effervescent Magnitude's cold fusion near-lightspeed reactor had gone kaput, downshifting from near-lightspeed to no-speed-at-all without tearing the ship apart. Perhaps it truly had something to do with the Ciliac Homeworld's invisibility cloak surrounding their planet. How far did it extend into space? Could that have been what kept the Magnitude in one piece?

  On the viewscreen, the firefight between the Magnitude and the two Arachnoid vesse
ls continued with great gusto. Incinerator rays bent on destruction streaked forth from the Arachnoids, and concussive blasts from the Magnitude's torpedoes retaliated with all their might. Quasar winced at the damage his ship had already taken; some of the scars look irreparable. The star cruiser was already venting plenty of its atmosphere in chugging streams of gas escaping from multiple decks.

  But Commander Wan continued to hold her own. Already, the Arachnoid ship a few hundred meters off the Magnitude's bow looked as though half its systems had shut down—judging from the lack of external lights and the black burn residue that covered the vessel's blunt nose. It was a standard attack pattern: destroy the enemy from stem to stern. But usually this was done only after the enemy's engines had been knocked out. Such was not the case here, as both Arachnoid vessels remained fully in control of their propulsion systems, taking evasive actions to dodge one out of every three torpedoes headed their way.

  Wan would have known to go after their reactors first. The only explanation: the Arachnoids had massive defensive measures in place on their engine decks.

  "Which one is yours?" The princess frowned at the viewscreen.

  "The one that isn't moving." Quasar thought it should have been fairly obvious.

  It was also the only sleek, gorgeous cruiser out of the three that had gleamed like silver in the moonlight before suffering this horrendous abuse from the Arachnoids. Their vessels, on the other hand, looked like something ghoulish from a nightmare: headless, muscle-bound ogres cut off at the waist, hunched over with incinerator rays firing from both arms. Everything about the bounty hunters' ships was angular, jagged, and ruthless—evil incarnate.

  Princess Sya let out a short gasp. "How can your crew hope to survive?"

  Exactly, Quasar almost said aloud.

  "They are easily outmatched." She shook her head in awe. "And yet they continue to inflict damage upon their enemy." Her eyes widened as both of the Arachnoid vessels concentrated their incinerator rays on the Magnitude's engines, cutting through the hull in jagged strokes. "What is this weapon they employ? It cannot be a laser beam—my fighters' cannons had little effect on your ship."

  "The Arachnoids use incinerator rays, Your Highness," Quasar said in his most diplomatic tone. "And from what I've heard—" He glanced at Hank. "They carry weapons of the same type in their face-to-face encounters."

  The Carpethrian nodded grimly.

  "Face-to-face…" the princess mused. "Yes. Get them on screen. I must know if they be friend or foe to my people." Nothing like the direct approach.

  With a nod, General Frayek hailed the Arachnoids, and a moment later, one of the creatures appeared on the viewscreen in all its gruesome, acid-drooling glory. It had a fuzzy black head with eight glistening eyes; four equally fuzzy limbs arched upward, and it wore the torn khaki coveralls of a humanoid mechanic, altered to accommodate its multiple appendages. It chattered and hissed, clapping its obscene mandibles as the Ciliac translation software struggled to interpret the alien sounds.

  Audible gasps echoed throughout the cavern while the princess herself cried out in disgust, "And I thought Prince Barclay was ugly!"

  Episode 19: A Convincing Argument

  Apparently, it took more than a hideous monster twitching with menace and hurling garbled threats to frighten Princess Sya of House Ciliac. Of course she didn't like the looks of the bigger-than-life Arachnoid on the viewscreen, but she steeled herself and raised her chin with glorious regality, glaring fiercely at the creature.

  "Identify yourself," she demanded.

  More unintelligible noises issued forth from the alien on the screen—but via Captain Quasar's collar translator, he could understand the malicious creature to a much greater degree than the Ciliac. The software engineered by United World Space Command was able to adapt and grow as it encountered new languages, and the more contact it had with them, the more precise the translation to Common speech became. Since this was the second time Quasar had been confronted with this particular race of aliens, his communication device was now doing a remarkably better job at deciphering the spider-language.

  The only interference came from the captain himself as bad memories flooded his mind and carried him back to the bridge of the Effervescent Magnitude during their first encounter with these vicious creatures. The Arachnoids had fired without warning and answered Quasar's hail only after two of the Magnitude's bridge crew had been lost—both the helmsman and the weapons officer.

  Captain Quasar clenched his jaw at the thought of them: Helmsman Elliott, the irritating imbecile he'd wanted to kick out of the nearest airlock on more than one occasion but of course never would have; and Lieutenant Davis, the athletic young blonde with striking good looks and a ponytail that never quit bouncing. He'd often fantasized about her, truth be told, but nothing between them had ever materialized—nor ever would have, given time. United World Space Command had regulations against fraternization between a captain and his crew, after all, and Bartholomew Quasar had always lived his career by the book.

  Still, it had been enjoyable to glance back from his deluxe-model captain's chair and see the nubile weapons officer at her post, always willing and eager to launch a plasma torpedo when the need arose, her bright eyes sparkling at him like blue sapphires as she sought to please her captain—appropriately in the line of duty. But alas, such was a sight he would never be graced with again. The Arachnoids had stolen her life. So now he was left with stoic Commander Wan at the weapons console instead—a first officer with high aspirations who didn't always read her captain's hand signals correctly.

  "I cannot understand a word out of them." The princess turned to Quasar. "Care to lend an ear—assuming you can comprehend the speech patterns of this monstrosity?"

  The captain raised an eyebrow. "I can translate for you, but you may not like what he has to say."

  "Let me be the judge of that." She crossed her toned arms in the crimson bodysuit and stared him down. Quasar would have laughed in the face of anyone else attempting to intimidate him, but she was a woman of unmatched pulchritude and a hideous third eye that glared at him without blinking.

  "Very well." Quasar cleared his throat, glancing up at the screen where the Arachnoid's drooling mandibles continued to chitter away like something from a Kafka-esque nightmare—which the captain had unfortunately been prone to as a lad. He'd always had an overactive dream life. "Beginning translation: 'I am the captain of this ship here to collect a Goobalob bounty on the Earth Man's head.'"

  Princess Sya shrugged. "How does any of this concern me?"

  "Directly, it would appear. He believes you're harboring a fugitive and giving my ship safe harbor. So, after he disables the Magnitude and slaughters my entire crew, he plans to come down here and take whatever you have of value as due recompense."

  She glared at him. "How convenient. Is it no coincidence that your translation of this creature's words supports everything you told us before?"

  "Of course not. In my experience, few things are ever coincidences."

  "And if I were to say I do not believe you?"

  "I would say you have no choice. Your translation software is obviously ill-equipped to deal with Arachnoid speech patterns, so you can either take my word for it or get a trained linguist over here to translate for you. But I truly doubt my ship's crew or even you will live that long." Quasar clenched his jaw, and the muscle twitched on command. "Once they kill you, all of your magic will be in the sticky hands of these bounty hunters. Imagine them being able to pop in and out wherever they choose—matter-energy-transferring themselves all over your planet, wreaking loads of havoc along the way?"

  The princess growled deep in her throat—not a very ladylike reaction—as she glared at Captain Quasar. "You make a convincing argument, Earth Man." She shook her head in frustration, then faced the viewscreen with an imposing three-eyed stare. "Translate this to the creature: Stay out of our affairs, and you will not be harmed."

  "Uh...it doesn't quite wo
rk that way, Your Highness," Chief Gruber spoke up.

  She shot him a withering glance, then half-turned to Quasar. "Is this true?"

  He nodded. "The translation software in my collar is only compatible with viewscreens manufactured by United World Space Command. I can translate incoming transmissions, but I am unable to transmit an outgoing message via an unsupported viewscreen." Not exactly the case, but Quasar would be damned before he promised the Arachnoids they wouldn't be harmed.

  "That makes little sense," she retorted.

  "Humph," Hank agreed.

  "Very well. I am certain the creature will understand this." She raised her voice to Frayek, "End transmission!"

  The screen went dark.

  "Unsavory creatures," she muttered, strumming her chin in much the same way Quasar did when he was deep in thought. A very dignified gesture. "I truly loathe them. Disgusting, uncouth, and unpleasant." She locked her gaze on the captain. "Very well, Earth Man. I will help you."

  Captain Quasar was glad to hear that. He flashed a dashing grin at no one in particular.

  "Please do not do that again." Princess Sya grimaced. "Your teeth are so white, they give me a headache."

  Quasar gestured for Hank and Gruber to grab hold of the reactor coils for their matter-energy-transfer, expecting General Frayek to throw a switch and activate the Ciliac magic. But at that moment, the princess suddenly appeared at the captain's side, wrapping her arms around him and pulling him into a tight embrace.

  "Hello?" He didn't know what else to say at the moment, stirred as he was by the pressure of her curves.

  She winked at him with her forehead eyeball—a sight he was sure he'd never be able to expunge from his mind—and a split-second later, the two of them stood on the bridge of the Effervescent Magnitude.