A friend, maybe?
They’d never met in person. But he’d guessed from her voice what she looked like. And sometimes, he thought he knew what a young girl working for a clandestine organization’s business offices might do with her time. If she had someone in her life. Friends that thought she did some normal boring job relating to above-board galactic commerce. People who thought they knew her. But really didn’t.
He’d told himself once, during some long hyperspace crossing from this place to that place to kill, capture, or deal with someone, that he was just adding all that in to complete some picture he needed. Making it up to fill in the story where the unknown and unspoken parts were just as real as the known and the business words they exchanged. He reminded himself that others had often told him he wasn’t very creative. His mental picture of her was of a normal twenty-something that could be trusted. Pretty. Efficient. Reliable.
That would have been the only way the Guild would have hired her. She would have to have those qualities. And that lack of damage to be so young. They’d provide the things that would make her old and jaded before her time. But they needed a fresh canvas. Those with baggage need not apply.
And discretion…
Discretion was key.
Discretion was what kept bounty hunters working. Seeing as the hunters were usually wanted dead or alive by someone somewhere in the galaxy almost as much as the people they were sent out to bring back… dead or alive.
“Seriously,” she said with that uncomfortable laugh of disbelief the polite and civilized have when occasionally confronted with the dark sides of the galaxy. “Where are you, Tyrus?”
“I think,” he began slowly. “I’m on a slaver sled, somewhere over the Antibian Sea… on Suracaõ.”
“And you can’t see?” More subdued, but maybe still a little concerned. Or it could have been simple disbelief. Tyrus Rechs wasn’t always good at reading people. There had been misunderstandings in the past. Even he had to admit that.
He could feel the wind buffeting his armor. Pushing him as the bad gravity-decking and repulsor fields tried to keep the craft he was in aloft. But they’d shut down the armor’s systems in the hopes of preventing him from seeing, smelling, and hearing. With the restraining clips and ener-chains, he was virtually a prisoner in his own armor.
But he did have a secret hypercomm link, being fed to him by Lyra from the Obsidian Crow. And the guards in the slave sled seemed to be ignoring him. No prodding, hitting, or attempts to communicate. Unbeknownst to them, and despite their best efforts, the bounty hunter could hear them chatting idly, but not about him.
“Tyrus, Suracaõ is a no-go world for bounty hunters unless you’re working for—”
“I know.”
“Can you talk? Or are we being listened to?” Her voice was becoming frantic. “Signal me if you need help. No, wait—they probably just heard me say that, right?”
He tried to move his wrists. Nothing. The shackles were dialed to their highest setting. The bad guys weren’t taking any chances.
“No. Everything’s fine. I’ve got this under control.”
The sled began to slow, and the wind cutting across the armor’s surface faded. Through his armor, connected to the deck of the sled by his boots, he could feel the throb of the badly synched repulsors shifting into hover while the engines throttled down to a low hum.
Other sleds whooshed past, and he could hear catcalls and alien ululations coming from the passengers. In the distance he heard the big ship coming in. The one he’d been waiting for.
And then, coming to the surface of his hearing… the sound of waves distantly crashing against rocks, like a low rolling thunder.
“I have to go now, Gabriella.”
“Tyrus…” she protested, not sure where she was going or what she could offer.
But he was already gone… replaced by the ghostly howl in the ether of the hypercomm between them.
* * *
Tyrus Rechs felt someone come close to him on the hovering sled. His armor should have shown him who was coming. Told him how close and what threat level. Identified weapons. Should have. But a slicer had done a trick on his armor.
Rechs wondered if the hacker was nearby.
Other sleds, most likely filled with brutal thugs, vicious killers, and steely-eyed mercenaries acting as palace guards, swooped close in and zoomed off within the soundscape he was trying to put together. Like this was some kind of festival, fair, or special event instead of an execution.
A circus even. Or a carnival, with an incredible sideshow made up of diverse aliens who’d gathered at the dark end of this section of uncontrolled galaxy some called the Maelstrom. Spacers and smugglers thought of these distant reaches as the real edge. Last stop before you reached the great void where nothing inhabitable existed. And not for a lack of exploration.
As with every big-top circus act, this one had a main event. The execution everyone had shown up for. And its time had come.
A hush fell, so that all Rechs could hear were the waves.
“Victims of the terrible and mighty tyrannasquid…” began the court jester who ran the show for the prince lord of the Hegemmy Cartel.
Another prisoner near Rechs crashed to the deck of the sled. Fainting at the fate that had just been revealed.
“Now would be an excellent time,” continued the jester, “to make your peace with your various belief systems. You are shortly to be torn to pieces by the mighty leviathan in the depths below… and then horribly devoured. Your last seconds are sure to be the most atrocious you have ever experienced. I can assure you your suffering will be great.”
The hacker turned on Rechs’s bucket. Allowing him to see.
“Wouldn’t want you to miss the view,” said a Samurian standing right next to him. Her voice a hiss.
Samurians were arachnotaurs. Half humanoid, half spider. And this particular green-skinned beauty with
