Which was why Lorric Bren, organizer of the grand hunt for Ivan, decided to give him a place on the crew.
“Uh, okay,” Platt mumbled, scratching his uninjured face with a hand that would not be present in ten month’s time. “Sure.”
Lorric smiled. “Good to have you, Platt. You’ll be with me on team four. You have your own gear, a ship?”
Platt shook his head. “I got my stuff in a crate outside, but I don’t do no flyin’.”
“All right, no problem. Make sure your gear gets loaded onto,” he checked a datapad, making a disgusted face, “’Eternal Loss,’ jeez…” Lorric rolled his eyes. “Grib Denko’s the pilot. He’s a bit odd, but then…”
A motley assortment was gathered, ship and person names reflecting the strange quirks of personality of those individuals in the field of bounty hunting. Regardless of these oddities, the selection was all on purpose.
And it was Lorric’s purpose.
Lorric Bren was said to be a more successful strategist than anything else. He had no great notoriety for piloting, shooting, driving, detonating, or any other task the job often required. Though he didn’t bring in his target every single time- who among them ever did -he always emerged alive and unscathed from each encounter. This was accomplished through careful planning and allowing others to shoulder some of the burden when necessary
Even cooperation, though, was not entirely useful on every occasion. The desire for high caliber financing with a general lack of compassion formed the basic disposition for bounty hunters.
Three out of five of the most honorable and loyal people in the noble profession would sell their own mother for half of an increased share. A cohort meant little in the face of more money, and the usual extended courtesy was to limit the amount of suffering, or if killing wasn’t on the menu, to leave limbs and teeth relatively intact.
But Lorric was different. For certain, over the years he had to put down a number of colleagues whose eyes outmatched their appetite and wit, but he never did so unprovoked. Intelligent, careful, shrewd, and completely honorable, Lorric always kept his agreements and came up with the plan most likely to succeed.
He was perfect for the job, his magnum opus, of putting together a team to take on Ivan. The biggest challenge, save for the task itself, was to make as sure as possible that no individual would jeopardize the mission by becoming too hungry.
This even extended out to they who would collect the prize and pay out. No more highest bidding was allowed: only cooperation. Due to three years of failed hunting, he managed to convince all contributing corporate parties to agree to an equal share of whatever they wanted out of Ivan.
The thought of what he might hold, including the threat of getting nothing, outweighed the advantage of having a leg up on the competition. Through careful negotiation, Lorric managed to get them, as a group, to endorse his efforts and even provide advances to the members he chose.
In short, he managed to convince everyone that he and only he had the greatest chance of bringing Ivan in alive, intact, and ready to spill the secrets behind the destruction at Atropos Garden. The deal was beyond excellent, and Lorric was perfect for the job.
Hoping to get a piece of the action, hundreds flocked to the interviews. Individuals from across the galaxy came to display their impressive skills. Fighting for favorable position outside of the evaluation site ran rampant, and many were killed in the chaos. Fortunately, due to corporate sponsorship and security, nothing within light years of the interview complex itself went amiss.
Lorric did not choose the best of the best, as evidenced by the presence of Richner Platt. Employing a stringent battery of physical and mental testing, he crafted his group by two main criteria: the ability to co-exist in the crew as a whole and the ability to fit a niche.
Well-rounded skills with certain strong points filled the ranks. Pilots, marksmen, demolitions, scouts, electronics experts, ground vehicle drivers, hand-to-hand combatants: the group as a whole, and each of the five individual teams of five, could handle about any task. Psych evaluations ensured no large amount of personality clash between individual members.
Every possibility was thought of, laid out, and carefully considered. Every conceivable scenario was mapped, every individual loss was survivable, and every detail was accounted for. Even so, Lorric’s brilliance in strategic planning could always be counted upon in the heat of a losing battle, including the cooler head necessary to figure out how to turn the tide.
Which became the primary reason why, when Lorric was among the first of his finely crafted team of expert bounty hunters to die, everything went to hell quite rapidly.
The planning and hiring phase took months, delicate persuasion and a healthy living stipend keeping the impatient members satisfied. During this time, aside from planning each possible encounter and scenario, Lorric developed the sources, leads, snippits, and conjecture required to actually find the man they sought.
Locating Ivan was a formidable challenge by itself, considering the man had all but disappeared from the galaxy. Even so, details were gathered in an effort not simply to locate Ivan but to understand him, to learn how he fought, how he ran, and how he managed to defeat and destroy anything he came across.
Lorric understood this. The way his mind worked, even without any impressive alterations or upgrades, he would have made a most impressive Archivist.
Of course, much of the useful data was gathered by an actual Archivist by the name of Quinn. Repeated and somewhat desperate attempts were made by Lorric to convince Quinn to join up, to be a part of the crew, but the Archivist in unsurprising fashion refused. Regardless, Quinn’s work became instrumental, and Lorric’s hunt would have extended into years without his assistance.
Finally, after many long months of planning and recruiting his twenty-four doomed souls, they were ready to depart, full-well knowing the risks and time the task might take. Having put together the most formidable hunting party ever seen in galactic history, Lorric deemed a speech quite necessary.
“I hope you all understand,” Lorric spoke as the motley assortment looked on, “that this is not all tea parties and social clubs. This isn’t a weekend getaway, and there’s no fast grab for easy cash. Two hundred and fifty billion credits are promised to us upon successful delivery. Ten billion each, in addition to the healthy stipends you’ve all enjoyed thus far. Two hundred and fifty billion for Ivan,” he repeated, “alive.”
“The prize is excellent, and hundreds have died from incompetence or ridiculous in-fighting. No one has even come close to bringing Ivan in, and very few have survived the attempt. We put this group together,
Lorric grinned, seeing his words sink into the many faces hungry and ready to begin. “Oh yes,” he continued with a laugh, “and we’ll also become exceedingly rich.”
Properly motivated, they set off. Ivan, knowing full well of the efforts against him, led them upon a merry chase for the better part of a year.
Close calls numbering in double digits filled the lives of the pursuers and pursued. Stations, moons, planets, cold vacuum: Ivan was hounded with every step he took, not even able during this time to thin the numbers. Lorric was too careful to allow such a thing.
“Divide and conquer,” he told them, “is the biggest strategy and planning cliche that has ever
A few individuals sounded off, others already weary of the repetitive mantra. “No solo missions.”
It wasn’t the only rule Lorric had either, not that he was pretentious enough to emblazon them anywhere. He knew how he liked to have things run, and those who wanted to stay didn’t question.
Everyone wanted to stay.
But the long months of fruitless chase took their toll upon group morale. Cohesion began to slip. With too many narrow escapes by their prey, frustrations rose, tensions mounted, and a few voiced concern about the leadership.
