Bounty

Mas holstered his glowing blaster, and the girl fell to the mud like a puppet with cut strings “Stupid kid.” He let himself release a long sigh. He pressed his bloody knuckles to his lower back and cracked it, then, slowly, he knelt to her side and pried open her petrified eyelids. Her gaze had rolled back in unconsciousness, but he could still see the iris. Blood red. 

“You were a real pain to find. You know that?” His words trailed in the midst of the alien marsh. unanswered. He caught his breath and stared at his unconscious charge for a long moment. The scanner on his wrist buzzed at him, and he rolled his eyes. 

“No rest for the weary. . .” he grumbled. He threw the body over his shoulder; grunting under the weight. Either her small frame was deceptively heavy, or he really was getting old. Horns and sirens sounded in the distance, and he trudged through knee-high mud.

Without a thought, he took the last syringe from his coat. A long red tube with a button on one end, and a tiny hole at the other. His back ached, and his knees vigorously protested the burdened slog. The small pinprick of a headache had grown since yesterday. If only for a moment, He thought about using it. Maybe. . . if I- No. . . it’d take almost a week to make the delivery, and another day to reach a seller. 

He stuffed the tube back into the inner crevice of his coat and cursed himself for gambling. Then, he cursed Keller instead. If only you’d lost. I hope you choke on those credits. Time passed, and just when the sirens were growing loud enough to cause worry, the silhouette of the ship came into view. 

***

Mas dropped the princess in the mud and fiddled with his ring of keys. For a moment he thought he heard her groan, but he quickly disregarded it. Maybe I’m becoming senile. . . He found the right one and twisted it in the entrance hatch. Through the sheets of reinforced steel, he could hear the shifting of rickety mechanisms. Twisting and turning. Unsealing the airlock, and releasing the pistons that slowly lowered the entry ramp. 

He dragged her limp body up the ramp and pounded the close button. He left her in the hold and maneuvered his way through broken crates, and a sea of empty bottles. He found one that was half full and grabbed it on his way to the cockpit.

While pulling the series of levers and knobs to initiate startup, he found his comms unit blinking. It’d probably be Keller. The short little credit nabbing gremlin who probably wanted to gloat a little longer. Him or the Sharks. . . Either would b- A clatter sounded from the hold.

Had someone snuck aboard? It couldn't possibly be the girl. . . how long had it been? Ten minutes? It hadn't been nearly long enough. He unholstered his blaster, turning a knob to set it to kill. He took a swig of his drink, - Spice wine from system 8 - then reconsidering, he set it back to the highest level of stun. 

Wouldn't want to kill my payday. . . Down in the hold, remarkably, he found the girl standing and looking around confused. It perplexed Mas too. Had he left the blaster on medium stun? No. even if he were senile, he’d keep it on the most lethal settings. Had his shot grazed her? Was the blaster core running low? 

She turned, while in her stupor and faced Mas. “YOU!” she exclaimed. Mas squinted at her, still figuring the blaster mystery. “You shot me! Didn’t y- Wait! The others. Did you save the others?” a series of stunted facial expressions slid across her still half-paralyzed face. Mas scratched his scraggly beard and took a swig of the drink. 

If the blaster core was getting low, it could be a major problem. . . “Are you listening to me? There are others. Wrongfully imprisoned.” The way she moved, talking with her hands waving in front of her reminded Mas of someone. “Call the UDC kid. Unless you’ve got credits, it’s not my problem.”

“My name is Lila Cassa-”

“I know who you are kid.”

“Then you know I’m from the Inperion roya-”

“But do you have credits with ya?”

“Stop interru-!”

“Guess n-”

“I have them!”

“Huh?”

Lila pulled a handful of golden bars, - about two inches in length - from her pocket. “I grabbed them from the storage compartment outside my cell. Seven Imperio-”

Mas shot her. She fell like a bottle of scotch from a drunk man's hand. He chuckled to himself. It wasn’t quite enough to compel him to go back, especially now since the whole place was on high alert. He knelt to scoop up the spoils. If the blaster core were dying, this would be enough to replace it. He’d even have enough to buy a few bottles after the fact. Stupid kid. 

***

The blinking comm stopped as the ship pulled out of orbit. Without a long-range station to piggyback off, Mas could enjoy relative radio silence all the way to station six. He drank the rest of the spice wine and tossed the bottle to the copilot seat. Smooth intoxicated sailing for hours. This is the life. 

A thought nudged at the back of his mind, and aside the dulled, but persistent headache, it stopped him from sinking into an enjoyable nap. Oh yeah. The brat. Most folks who wanted a target didn’t care if the person was dead or alive. Mas could simply toss the corpse in the hold, and sleep all the way to a port. 

He fished inside his deep coat pockets and found the crumpled poster with the bounty. Lots of zeros for the royal kid to be brought home alive and well. Darn. When was the last time he’d done something like this? It seemed that as he got older and less capable, the jobs became progressively harder. He scanned the poster again, figuring the math to how many of the zeros it would take to get a dozen red tubes. 

A long groan came from the hold. Up again? Mas took his blaster and unlatched the power core from within. He squinted at it. The little yellow orb was still glowing bright. . . he reassembled the weapon, set it to kill, and aimed at the bottle of spice wine. He missed, vaporizing a large chunk of the seat. Looks like it still works. . .

“You shot me again!” Lila yelled in indignation. Her voice echoed from the hold.

“Yeah?” 

“My credits. . . You scoundrel!”

“Yeah. I’m not a saint. Took you long enough to figure it out.

Mas could hear her rummaging around below.

“I can’t believe my father would hire someone like you.”

“Don’t care. You’d better hope he pays me though.”

A moment of silence passed.

“Hey kid, ya have a dampener somewhere on ya?”

“. . . Dampener?”

“A little box that absorbs laser fire.”

“No.”

“You lying to me? Cuz I could just shoot you again and check.”

“A royal never lies.”

“Then how are you conscious?”

“Father says I have royal blood”

Mas thought about it. Red irises. He’d heard about the Imperion royal bloodline somewhere before, but he’d always thought about it as egotistical bullocks. Wouldn't it be diluted at some point? Mas could remember his great grandfather griping about the foolish Imperions. Didn’t that mean there were a bunch of laser resistant blokes somewhere out there?

Lila climbed up to the cockpit. Her head peeking above the floor level. She looked at the smoldering copilot seat, and then to Mas. 

“I’d like my credits back.”

Mas waved the laser blaster. “Not your credits anymore.”

“Then return to the planet.”

“I don’t thin-”

Mas trailed off. Tiny flashes of blue drew his attention, and he saw three specks appear in the distance of empty space. Steadily approaching. Warp drive? Who in their right mind would waste the resources to warp a ship here? Let alone three!

“It’s the UDC. . . You actually contacted them?”

Mas was sure he hadn't. He had at least six current arrest warrants. He squinted.

“Erm. Sure. . . you can see those?”

“The blue and silver lines are unmistakable.”

“Huh. . .”

Royal blood. . . how much would someone pay for a permanent infusion? Mas began pulling levers and knobs to shut down all non-essential ship functions. With any luck, the ships would pass right by and go do whatever it was they needed to do”

“Why’d the lights go out?”

“Er. . . system reboot.”

Lila climbed fully into the cockpit and sat on the half-vaporized chair. 

“You should send a message to my father. Let him know I’m safe.”

“Don’t think I will.”

“Why.”

“Long-range comms are broken.”

“Then connect to the UDC to relay it.”

“Yeah. no.”

“Do it.” She said it, pointing at Mas with every shred of her non-existent authority. It was almost humorous. He could tell she was trying to put on a stern expression, but whether she realized it or not, it looked awfully like helpless pouting. 

“Kid. I've got a headache, and you’re adding to it.”

“The-”

Mas resisted the urge to shoot her again.

“You’re not in some palace, or even in your homeworld. I’m the king here. Right now, inside this hunk of welded metal, it’s my territory. You can either put up with it for a week, or I can shoot you again and lock you in the hold.”

She stopped in the middle of another gesture, and paused, before pulling back and corking whatever else she had intended to say. Mas leaned back in his chair, enjoying the moment of silence. The UDC ships that had steadily been growing larger, were now passing overhead.

It occurred to Mas who Lila reminded him of. How long had it been? Twenty years? I wonder where she is now. . .

***

The next three days passed nearly uneventfully. The ship glided past empty space, and Mas found an unopened crate of full bottles to help him sleep. His headache grew hour by hour, and each night, he drank more to dull it. Lila stayed mostly quiet. An asteroid cluster appeared on the horizon.

“Drinking that much will eventually kill you.”

“A lot of things do that.” Mas struggled to find a comfortable position in his chair. He threw a thermo blanket over his head and pulled it tight.

“Don’t you feel sick?”

“Yeah. Got any Royal remedies for a headache? Or do ya just want to kill my sleep?”

“Stop drinking. It’ll do Wonders.”

“Anything useful?”

“Nope. I don’t have headaches.”

“Are you even human?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever been sick?”

Lila paused before responding. “There was one time. . .”

“What? You got the sniffles?”

“No. . . It was after the city generator implo- well, you weren't there. . . It was about three years ago. I caught something and was bedridden for days. It was hard to breathe, and I couldn't move. It was like gravity had quadrupled, and the ground had become an ocean. . . There’s a light blinking on the consul. . . are you listening to me?”

“What?”

“There’s a blinking light.”

“The comms?”

“It’s a blue rectangle.”

Mas took off the blanket and squinted at it. “Huh. thought I’d disabled it. . .”

“What is it?”

“The distress beacon transponder”

“Someone’s in trou- wait, you disabled it?”

“It’s an asteroid field, they’re probably pirates. . .”

“Pirates don’t put out distress signals.”

“Shows what you know.”

Lila pressed the blue blinking button, and a static fractured voice buzzed onto the radio. An image of a ship blinked onto a nearby screen. “Our vessel is in grave need of repairs. We hit an asteroid traversing the highway, and many syst-” More static cut through the recorded transmission. They were probably on the edge of the transmission range. 

Mas laughed. “They change it up now and again, but this is just sloppy.”

“There are people in trouble!”

“You’d have to have the brain of a sea slug to believe it.”

“How can you treat this so lightly?”

“I'm deeply intoxicated, But I’m not a moron. Take a look at the ship's model ID.”

“It’s from Imperion!”

“Exactly.”

“Steer the ship towards the beacon.”

Mas rolled his eyes. “Kid, ships from your people’s wheelhouse have incredible operating systems.”

“What’s that have to do with anything?”

“They seriously push the edge of legality. Heck. It's almost AI.”

“. . .”

“I said almost. Do you really think one of those sleek systems would run right into a ten-ton asteroid?”

“We should still investigate it. People could be dying out there.”

Mas squinted again at the model ID “They’re no friends of mine.”

“But they’re people!”

“There are trillions of people.”

“Every life has value.”

“Sure. Mine is especially valuable to me.”

“You drank two bottles of Fire whisky an hour ago.”

“I have extenuating circumstances.” 

“At least contact them.”

Mas pressed his palm to his forehead. His headache was getting worse. He navigated the ship closer to the asteroid cluster. A small gold-tinted ship came into view. He opened a channel, and a voice buzzed to life on the other end of the link. “Please. We’re in desperate need of repairs. If you dock wi-” he aimed the ship's weapons at the little vessel. “We’re detecting a weapons lock. . . what are you doing!”

Lila looked at him shocked. Mas ignored her and fired at a nearby asteroid. Yells sounded from the other end of the link, and the line was cut. “What are you doing!” she screamed. Mas let her complaint sit for a moment as he watched the little vessel. A second passed, and the engines flared to life. The ship buzzed further into the asteroid cluster. 

Mas looked to Lila with his smuggest of smiles. “I’m providing my assistance.”

***

A dream. Mas found himself in a maze. Where had he been a moment before? He’d been drinking. On normal trips, he’d have to be at least semi-conscious. Ship alerts would have to be loud enough to wake him in-case something went wrong. How had he fallen into such a deep sleep?

Right. . . Lila was there. She could wake him if anything went wrong. For now, he could sit back and enjoy the conjurations of his mind. He waited for something to appear. Nothing did. Huh. Thought I was more creative. . . The walls of the maze began to fade, leaving him in a mist of grey. A voice was calling him.

“Come on. Show me somethin' while I'm here.” Mas stared at his unconscious mind annoyed. He tried to willfully conjure a pile of credits, but the world blurred. His head felt fuzzy. The voice called again. It was familiar. . . Grace?

Reality stung. Mas was cold. It was a familiar and frightening sensation. His headache had disappeared. A very bad sign. Instinctively, he tried to reach for the red tube, but his muscles spasmed. He was basically paralyzed. He’d drunk enough to sleep into the last stage of withdrawal.

His eyes focused on a blurred figure in front of him. She was saying something, but words didn’t register. He tried again to reach for his pocket. He felt his arm sway, but no dice. Well darn. . . he could feel the person moving him around. Grace? How long had it been? Fifteen? Twenty years?

He felt a pinprick deep in his thigh, and sensation flooded back into him. He fell into a pool of pins and needles, and color splotched his blurred vision. “Stim!?” The high pitched voice berated him. “You said you value your life, and you’re doing Stim!”

Mas’s head was still rolling. “I’ll see a doctor Grace. . . I’ll take care of it. . .” Lila grabbed him by his coat and shook him back to soberness. “Oh. it’s you. . .” 

“How am I supposed to get home if you die halfway there!?”

Mas leaned forward, pinching his eyelids.

“Don’t worry about it kid. I’ll get you home.”

***

Lila slept in the hold. Since the incident, the headache had disappeared, and Mas had remained sober. The last leg of the trip was the most important. The closer he got to the rendezvous point at station six, the higher the chance of meeting bandits, or others that knew him. 

As soon as he pulled out of the asteroid cluster, his comms blinked to life. They’d piggyback off the station's transmitter, and connect him to anyone trying to hale him. A line of messages strung down a nearby screen. There were dozens of them, almost exclusively from Keller. 

Mas pressed the button, and immediately, Keller’s nasal voice buzzed through. “For Sakes! Repair your Rickety ship!”

“What is it Keller.”

“Everything! While you’ve been spudding around in your rust bucket, the system’s been going haywire!”

“What?”

“You’ve got the red-eyed kid, dontcha?”

“Yeah, I took the re-”

“Hot Nebula! We’re in it! We’re in the dough!”

“It’s not your bounty”

“But ima hook you with a buyer.”

“I’m bringing her to her father.”

“Her pops is dead.”

“What?”

“Listen up, a coup or somethin’ busted up Imperion one, and instead of fixin’ things, the Bloomin’ UDC Put a bounty on the whole red-eye family.”

“You’re not making any sense.”

“I thought so too! Then I talked to an old acquaintance on-world and Get this. . . Nanites.”

“Manufacturing?”

“They found a factory under the palace, and someone snitched.”

“What’s this got to do with the girl.”

“Think about it Mas. Royal blood? Money stuffed folks that live to their hundreds and never get sick?”

“Bullocks! They’d show up on all kinds of scanners.”

“It all fits Mas. Why else would the UDC stir up half the fleet to track them down?”

“Oh my. . .”

“You’re little princess has special blood alright. Pumped full of A-grade nanites. At least a brick’s worth.”

“. . .”

“The UDC bounty is small potatoes to what my guy’s willing to pay. 

“. . .”

“Imagine enough Stim to last you Years.”