on board, want the rest o' this?” He asked, holding out the half full bottle as he fell into one of the approaching crew.
Two of them caught him and a third took the bottle. “Judging from what it's done to you, I think I'll pass,” she said, handling it by the neck with two fingers.
“Back on your feet, guy,” the larger of the crew said as he walked the intoxicated fellow back to his friends, who were slowly starting to walk away from the door. A pair of them each took an arm and started guiding him down the street.
They watched the ragtag crew make their way down the abandoned walkway for a moment then started through the doors. “Wait, where's Gillian?” Asked one of the women in the group.
The other three looked around and didn't see the woman who was walking at the rear last they looked. “Gillian!” One of the men called out.
“They must have taken her,” said another fellow, drawing his long pistol. He ran down the street to the nearest corner where he could see one of the patrons just walking out of sight.
“Wait!” Said another man as he ran after his friend. He was several meters behind but close enough to see the flashes of light from the alleyway as his friend was shot several times. He stopped, unsure of himself. The two other crew members stopped behind him. “What do we do?”
“We wait, then we pick up Curtis's corpse and bring it back to the ship,” the other fellow said, checking the crew status readout on his wrist. One light was out.
“We didn't see them take her, whoever did it must be around here somewhere,” retorted the last remaining woman in the group.
“If those folks were the distraction, I don't want to see the main event.”
“What do you mean? We can't just-”
“I mean whoever's got their hands on her's more dangerous and I don't want to cross them,” he replied to her insistently. That was the end of it.
Across the street, behind a small building Gillian struggled with her wrist restraints. Her captor had come up from behind without making a sound while she stood watching the stumbling revellers. He pressed one hand down on her sidearm, jamming it into its holster. He held a weapon right up against her neck. It was some kind of injector mounted on his arm.
“Don't say a word, don't move and you'll make it out of this alive,” he whispered, dragging her backwards across the street at a run. He was strong, fast, and he knew exactly what he was doing. As soon as they got around the corner he took her handgun out of its holster and put it inside his long coat. She grabbed his arm and tried to flip him, but he dropped to his knees and punched her in the stomach so hard it knocked all the wind out of her.
He tripped her and she fell flat on her back. Before she knew it she was in wrist restraints. “My license number is Valance-433-11482-21-3, I represent the Carthis Port Authority.”
“Bounty Hunter?” She asked, just catching her breath.
“Yes, they have you down for one count of attempted starship hijacking and five counts of murder.”
“Let me explain, that ship belonged to my brother, his crew wouldn't give it to me when he died.”
The bounty hunter pulled something out of his black long coat and rolled it out on the ground beside her. “You'll get a trial.”
Gillian watched him open a slit in the long bag and redoubled her efforts, trying to get on her feet. “What are you doing?”
“It's a vacbag, it'll protect you until I can get you in stasis,” he said as he firmly planted a hand on her chest and unsealed her head piece.
“Please, don't do this! They'll kill me! Just let me go, I'll give you everything I have, anything you want!” She pleaded as she looked up at his blackened transparesteel faceplate. He was in a sealed black vacsuit and black long coat, everything about him was unyielding and inhuman. He brought the device on his left forearm up to her throat again, only this time the metal injector touched bare skin and she winced in anticipation of whatever substance he was about to dose her with. There was a moment of hesitation. “I'm sorry, I'm under contract,” he said before she felt the injector's pinch. She slipped into unconsciousness as he put her headpiece back on and rolled her into the vacbag.
Routine Maintenance
The Samson hovered over the alleyway and opened the lower rear hatch. Captain Valance awaited below with a body in a vacbag over his shoulder. In all black he blended in perfectly with the darkness around him except for the glint of the thrusters reflected by his darkened face plate. Frost dropped a harness from the hatch and his Captain wrapped his free arm in it. “Haul me up,” he commanded.
He activated the winch and pulled him up ten stories through the hatchway and into the lower airlock. “Captain's in and we're clear to move on to the second pick up, Ashley,” Frost reported.
“Roger, moving on,” replied a female voice with a slight lisp so her s's and z's had a softer sound.
“She cause much trouble?” Frost asked the Captain as he made sure the lower hatch was secure.
“No more than I expected,” he replied as he stepped onto the small lift plate that would elevate him out of the airlock and into the interior of the ship. “I'm going to get her into stasis. Get the rest of the crew on board and set course for the Thadd System.”
“Aye sir.”
“Did you manage to replace anyone while I was landside?”
“Aye sir. Three able crewmen signed on, all experienced and an engineer with three years schoolin'.”
“Lucky, does he have any experience?”
“Just a few months on an old ore hauler. He's only nineteen.”
“Young. Well, take care of him. Make sure he has an opportunity to learn before we need him for anything important.”
“Aye sir.”
“Oh, and Frost; after this capture is in stasis I'll be in my quarters. No disturbances,” Captain Valance's voice had a dark seriousness that ended arguments and cleared rooms.
“Aye, bad one sir?” Frost asked as he watched his Captain reach the top of the airlock and step out.
He didn't reply.
“We're at the pickup point Frost, they should be right below us,” Ashley reported through the communicator stud in his pierced ear.
“Aye, I see 'em,” he replied, looking at the beat up monitor in the airlock wall. “Opening up. Get ready ta get outta here, we're headed straight on to Thadd.”
“Really? We getting leave?” She asked.
“Don't think so, pretty sure it's a job. Ask the Captain later, he's in a mood.”
“He always gets that way when we pull off a bounty he has to track for a while.”
“Yup.”
“Know why?”
“Nope,” Frost said as he opened the hatch and kicked both of the harnesses down to the crew members below. “We've got to get a better system for this,” he muttered to himself, shaking his head.
Elsewhere on the ship Finn shook his head at a tiny compartment where several operating components were wedged in. It was like opening a bank vault. Every key component of the inertial dampener systems were locked up in some box, or sealed in some piping, or built right between two parallel bulkheads, like this one. It took Finnn half an hour of looking at how it was placed just to figure out his best route to access. He had seen well integrated systems before, but whoever had rebuilt that section of the dampeners had one thing in mind: it must not fail.
Word was that they had just finished chasing down a bounty and it meant a payday for everyone. When and how much he hadn't asked yet, but since he had nothing to do with the capture, he wasn't expecting anything. His experience over the last couple days had been eventful, interesting, so he had no reason to complain as far as he was concerned.
