Bounty Hunter Academy 4, page 28
The bounty hunter lazily snatched the flying hand terminal from the air.
“‘BECAUSE MONKEYS CANNOT TELL LIE,’” she read.
Morgath considered the message, then she nodded at Lerren.
“Alright,” she said. “You’ve got yourself a deal, monkey.” Morgath held out her open palm. “The sleepkillers. And be quick about it.” The bounty hunter let out a yawn. “I can feel the urge for a nap coming on.”
Lerren gave a couple of monkey shrieks.
“He wants you to honour your end of the bargain first,” Madge translated with palpable bitterness. Her grim expression turned towards me, and for a second, I could have sworn a shutter snapped down over her left eye. “It’s too bad, Tega. I was just starting to like you. But I guess this is the way it has to be.”
The droid took a step back, and I suddenly found myself feeling extremely alone. What had I done to deserve this sudden act of betrayal from my crewmates? Hadn’t I given everything to save their captain—
No, our captain.
We were supposed to be one team, one unit - bound by honour to support and protect each other. Alright, we hadn’t exactly sworn any oaths to that effect (or at least I hadn’t), but wasn’t that what you were supposed to do when you were part of a starship crew? If all the holomovies I had seen over the years were anything to go by, loyalty to your crewmates was amongst the most important attribute for a successful crew member.
“Alright, into the escape pod with you,” said Morgath, gesturing in the direction of the circular doorway with a flick of her head. “Personally, I don’t care whether you remain on the ship or not, but I do care about getting those sleepkillers before that monkey drops them in a bio-eradication tank. And with that in mind, I think it’s high time you took a little journey into the black.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but in my peripheral vision, I caught sight of a pink shape drifting towards my rear. I looked around, and there was Wallace, his sharpened steel jaws gleaming maniacally in the half-darkness.
“Girl go now,” said Wallace in his deep, throaty voice. “Or Wallace get second breakfast.”
“You’re an android, Wallace,” Morgath chided. “You can’t have a first breakfast.”
The robotic alligator’s orange eyes gave off a mysterious twinkle. “Wallace can dream.”
I looked back and forth between Madge, Morgath and the AMIGO at my back. This wasn’t at all how I’d hoped things would play out. Instead of bundling the bounty hunter into the escape pod, I was being forced to climb inside of my own accord. A feeling of bitter rage flooded my veins, and I directed it with considerable force towards the former casino droid who had turned backstabber.
“Damn droids,” I spat at Madge as I was herded towards the escape pod by the bounty hunter’s pet nightmare. “I knew I never should have trusted you.”
“Now don’t be like that, Tega,” said Madge. “This way, you get to leave the ship in one piece. If you’d remained behind, there’d be no telling what the bounty hunter would have done to you.”
Morgath turned a sour frown at the android. “Hey, I’m a bounty hunter. I’m not a psychopathic killer.”
“But what about all those threats about feeding us to your alligator droid?”
“Oh, those I meant. But only if you put up any resistance.”
Madge spun back in my direction. “Well, there you go. You were going to put up considerable resistance, weren’t you, Tega? So at least this way you won’t have to have any of your fingers or toes bitten off. That can’t be a bad thing now, can it?”
“What’s bad is being betrayed by your friends,” I snapped as I slipped through the circular doorway of the escape pod. “At least, I thought we were friends. But I guess I was wrong.”
“I guess you were.”
I gave Madge the frostiest stare I could muster as the droid sidled up to the control panel outside the door. Over her shoulder, Morgath and her AMIGO gathered round, eager to witness my departure.
“Oh, and Tega,” said Madge.
“What?”
“There are some sick bags in the storage compartment beneath the pod controls.”
I frowned. “Sick bags?”
“You know how you’re always getting sick in escape pods. I wouldn’t want you to spew up all over the interior and have to wait like that until the rescue ship comes along.”
My mouth hung open as I tried to figure out what the hell the treacherous droid was talking about. As far as I could remember, I had only ever been in an escape pod once before, and that was with the bounty hunter supreme (in happier times, when I didn’t actually hate the perfidious woman). But Madge hadn’t been there, and I had no memory of mentioning the event to the droid. Nor had I been in any way sick after the escape pod was launched. So then what in the name of Destron was Madge going on about sick bags for?
“Goodbye, Tega,” said the droid, before I could raise any further questions. “Have a safe trip.”
“Madge, you treacherous metal bit—”
My words were cut off by the hiss of the escape pod doors closing. Through the duraglass window, I watched as Madge, Morgath and Wallace crowded round. A moment later, there was a loud clunk, and then I was suddenly moving away at alarming speed. The ship quickly came into view, first dominating my vision, but soon receding into the background, growing smaller and smaller until I could hardly see the Reclaimer at all.
Now I was well and truly alone. Stranded in an escape pod until the authorities at Starcore Station sent out a rescue party. And who knew how long that would be? I was certainly no expert on the process of recovering jettisoned escape pods inside interspace tunnels, but I doubted my rescue would be a high priority. After all, I wasn’t exactly the president of the Tri-Galactic Territories. I was just some girl - a onetime cadet at the Bounty Hunter Academy, now reduced to a mere plaything for bounty hunters and deceitful droids alike.
It wasn’t what I had signed up for, but I was slowly starting to realise that, in life, you didn’t always get what you wanted. In fact, you hardly ever did, unless what you wanted was to be pushed and shoved around by the universe until you got old and died.
Well, maybe it was about time I had a long, hard think about what I wanted. Because if I didn’t, I was liable to spend the rest of my life filled with disappointment as unrealistic expectation after unrealistic expectation crashed and burned like a starship with engine failure.
Less…
That was what I had to set my expectations on.
Much, much less.
So much less that it made nothing look like everything.
Then…
Oh, sweet, happy then…
I would never be disappointed again.
27
Chapter 27
As far as escape pods went, the Reclaimer’s escape pod was far from uncomfortable. As well as having a plush, cushiony lining that ran around the horseshoe-shaped bench, it also had a rather spacious design with wide viewing windows that afforded an excellent view of the surrounding stars; a holomovie viewer stocked full of holomovies to tie you over until your rescue ship arrived; a fully working rehydrator, along with a cupboard packed full of rehydration packs, drinking water and pre-packaged asteroid cookies; and a pleasing, lemony smell that made me feel all tingly and fresh. It certainly could have been worse, and had I not been floating freely through an interspace tunnel, fresh from experiencing the kind of betrayal that was all too common in those holomovies I now had at my fingertips, I might have actually enjoyed my little sojourn in outer space.
But as it was, I had been betrayed, and I was now at just about the lowest ebb in my life (and considering the depths of the ebbs I had been in before, that was really saying something). Back on the Reclaimer, the bounty hunter Iptra Morgath was no doubt now tucking into sleepkillers, laughing mercilessly at the thought of my predicament. Probably Madge was laughing along with her, and maybe even that damnable monkey - the one whose idea it had been to put me in the escape pod in the first place. From what I could gather, they were all more or less in it together, and now the poor captain was being left to fend for himself on a ship filled with traitors, bounty hunters and the snap-happy pink alligator droids.
“I’m sorry, Eckel,” I said to the speck of grey that might have been the Reclaimer (or might have been just an errant asteroid). “I’m so, so sorry.”
A knot twisted in my stomach at the thought of the captain suffering at the hands of those villans, and I felt a sudden urge to bring up the rehydrated pasta and asteroid cookies I had already scoffed in a desperate hunger. The urge to vomit was hardly strong enough to bring any chunks of half-digested food to my tonsils, but it did make me think of Madge’s final words before she had pressed the button to close the escape pod.
Words that had involved the mention of sick bags…
I tried to shake the confusion out of my head as I sat down on the butt-pleasing bench. On the pod controls, the red emergency beacon light was blinking steadily. The rescue controller at Starcore Station had estimated the pickup ship would arrive within the next seven to ten hours, which left lots of time to puzzle out my thoughts, and, in particular, that strange mention of sick bags.
Why had Madge said that?
I mean, of all the things she could have said before I was fired off into the black, that was what she chose to say? Why hadn’t she mentioned the rehydrator or the holomovie viewer or the compact waste-E-vac? All of those would have been of far more pressing use to someone stranded inside an escape pod than a few sick bags. It made the mind boggle.
“Droids,” I remarked aloud with a bemused shake of the head. I didn’t have much experience with mechanical beings, but from the few encounters I had recently had with their kind, I was expert enough to form my own opinion. “What a bunch of total whack jo—”
I cut off my words with a gasp.
Sick bags…
Why had Madge mentioned sick bags? Was it just because she was a damn crazy, treacherous droid? Or was there some other reason - something my idiotic mind was failing to discern?
There was only one thing for it.
Scrambling to my feet, I hurried to the other side of the escape pod, knelt down beside the storage compartment under the pod controls and tapped the door release button. There was a soft whoosh, and the doors slid apart, disappearing into the mechanism.
I searched for sick bags.
I searched long and hard for the sick bags.
But inside the storage compartment, there were no sick bags. Instead, there was something that had probably encouraged a gurgle of vomit to rise up in the throats of a considerable number of people.
“Madge, oh, Madge,” I said, holding the newfound item aloft for inspection under the bright pod lights. “Where in the universe did you get this?”
Dark blue metal glinted dangerously under the escape pod lights. An elongated barrel with a groove cut into the top threatened to smash through one of the duraglass windows, if I wasn’t careful where I pointed the thing. Towards the rear of the deadly implement, a nest of razor-sharp, star-shaped blades were clustered together in an ammo holder. Below the barrel, twin grips covered with white leather invited my hands to grasp the weapon properly. A black strap dangled limply, its ends attached to loopholes on the front and back underside of the device.
It wasn’t the first time I had seen a starblade launcher.
During the training arena shenanigans that had taken place on my first day at the Bounty Hunter Academy (the very shenanigans that had almost ended with an outsider assassin claiming my life), I had seen Tartrian Moonstorm wielding one of the limb-severing devices. Of course, being that he was the model of proper and ethical conduct, Tartrian hadn’t used it to severe anyone’s limbs but instead merely terrorised Diakon Pygott - the biggest, ugliest tub of lard in the entire colony (perhaps even the entire Tri-Galactic Territories).
And that was about as far as my expertise with starblade launchers went. Fortunately, however, a quick look-over of the device revealed that the number of available buttons was only two, and one of them was clearly for ejecting the ammo cartridge (it being placed adjacent to the holder filled with star-shaped blades). Unless I was very much mistaken, the other button - located adjacent to the rear hand grip right about where someone might rest their right index finger - was the trigger. There was no scope, which meant I would have to aim carefully. And while I hadn’t had any actual weapons training at the academy, I had used several different weapons during my most recent escapades, and that should at least have counted for something.
At least, it might have, if I actually had anything to aim at.
But being that I was trapped in an escape pod hundreds - or maybe even thousands - of megatectars away from any bounty hunters or robotic pink alligators I might want to shoot at, I was left with the choice of either obliterating the rehydrator or devastating the holomovie viewer, neither of which I had any particular beef with (although the rehydrator had taken an unusually long time to rehydrate a pack of sliced pears). If only there was some way I could get back to the Reclaimer. If only I had a jetpack or a starsurfer or an extremely long ladder or—
“Oh, hell.”
I set the starblade launcher down to inspect the second item in the storage compartment. While I might have had some minor experience firing weapons, I had absolutely zero experience when it came to jetboots. The only time I had ever even seen a pair was on the feet of Startide, the hunter commandant, and they had always looked so heavy that no amount of microthrusters would suffice to lift the user more than a tectar off the floor. Of course, in outer space, there would be no gravity to contend with, but there would still be my complete and total obliviousness to standard jetboot operating procedures.
But what the hell. I had to die of something.
After I had pulled on the jetboots - an uncomfortable operation that left my feet feeling like I had some kind of eternal grudge against them - I was once again caught off-guard by what turned out to be a third item that could be of use in a scrape with a maniacal bounty hunter and her simpleminded AMIGO. The plasma claw was yet another implement I had never used before, but like the starblade launcher, it promised to come in handy in any potential upcoming battle, providing I could figure out how to use the damn thing.
Putting it on seemed easy enough. Slipping my hand into the glove-shaped implement, I was surprised by what turned out to be a comfortably lined interior - very much the opposite of how it had felt to pull on the jetboots.
Turning my hand over, I inspected the plasma claw.
The sensation was…
Strange.
When I had first removed the weapon from the storage compartment, it had felt heavy. But now that I tried it on…
It was as if I was wearing nothing at all.
The steel (or was it galvanium?) segments that wrapped around the fingers moved seamlessly as I stretched out my hand, their jagged tops threatening to spill blood (if the blades of concentrated energy that extended from the tips of the fingers when the weapon was activated didn’t do the job first). The same metal was present on the plate that covered the back of the hand and the palm, while a long sleeve of metal ran up my arm almost all the way to the elbow. There was no obvious way to power on the device, but I felt confident I could figure it out between now and the moment when I kicked in the Reclaimer’s airlock to start a ruckus on board that would have made a boarding by space pirate seem like a tea party by comparison.
As I surveyed the goodies I had found in the storage compartment, I realised with a pang of guilt that I had completely misjudged Madge and Lerren. What I thought was a display of outright treachery was, in fact, a cleverly coordinated attempt to move me to a position of safety and equip me with the tools I needed to storm the ship. They had put their trust in me, and now I had to repay it in full.
Slinging the starblade launcher over my shoulders, I hit the button on the side of my neck to activate my helmet. There was a whoosh of duraglass, then the gentle beeping sound of the emergency beacon and the hum of the pod’s life support systems went all muffled, leaving me with only the amplified sound of my own breathing for company.
The emergency escape hatch was on the roof of the pod. A red handle hung invitingly from the ceiling, ready to be turned in the direction of the red arrow imprinted on the hatch. But when I tried to pull the hatch, there was an irritated (albeit quite muffled) sound from the pod controls. Turning back to the controls, I saw the message ‘EMERGENCY ESCAPE HATCH LOCKED’.
“Alright,” I said, bending over the controls, “but how do I unlock it?”
A quick bit of tapping on the pod controls brought up the emergency operations menu. Along with options for venting radioactive gas and activating a protective sunshield, there was an option to unlock the emergency access hatch. I quickly selected the option, feeling suddenly extremely aware that the Reclaimer was getting further away by the second. A pop-up promptly appeared, asking me for a password. Not having received any hints from Madge as to what the password might be (as far as I was aware), I ran through the usual host of common passwords Instructor Brekum had taught us to always try first, but none of them seemed to work (and neither did ‘LETMEOUTOFTHISDAMNESCAPEPOD!1234’). I was almost on the verge of attempting to smash in the escape hatch with the pod controls when I noticed a strange glimmer of purple light coming from my right side. At first, I assumed I must have set off one of the emergency flares, but when I looked I saw five elongated blades of pure plasma emanating from the tips of the fingers of my right hand.
The plasma claw…
Somehow, I had activated the device. And with a fully operational plasma claw, I could rip that escape hatch to shreds. Checking one final time that the atmosphere seal indicator on the HUD inside my spacesuit was green, I did my best to calm the erratic thumping of my heart, then I gingerly stretched out with the hand wearing the plasma claw until I heard the hissing, sizzling noise of melting metal. The sharpened points of plasma slid easily through the hardened shell of the escape pod like a laserknife through rehydrated butter. There was a hiss of escaping air, and all kinds of warning lights started to flash on the pod controls. The warnings were punctuated by the blare of sirens, but they were barely audible through the thick duraglass of my helmet. In almost no time at all, they had died out altogether, silenced by the sound-restricting vacuum of space. A quick glance at the ‘OXYGEN TIME REMAINING’ readout on the HUD revealed that I had one hour and fifty-two minutes of breathable air left, which would not be long enough to survive if I had to wait for help to come from Starcore Station. I would have to find my way back on board the Reclaimer immediately, or it would be a slow, painful death for Tega Cloudborn.
“‘BECAUSE MONKEYS CANNOT TELL LIE,’” she read.
Morgath considered the message, then she nodded at Lerren.
“Alright,” she said. “You’ve got yourself a deal, monkey.” Morgath held out her open palm. “The sleepkillers. And be quick about it.” The bounty hunter let out a yawn. “I can feel the urge for a nap coming on.”
Lerren gave a couple of monkey shrieks.
“He wants you to honour your end of the bargain first,” Madge translated with palpable bitterness. Her grim expression turned towards me, and for a second, I could have sworn a shutter snapped down over her left eye. “It’s too bad, Tega. I was just starting to like you. But I guess this is the way it has to be.”
The droid took a step back, and I suddenly found myself feeling extremely alone. What had I done to deserve this sudden act of betrayal from my crewmates? Hadn’t I given everything to save their captain—
No, our captain.
We were supposed to be one team, one unit - bound by honour to support and protect each other. Alright, we hadn’t exactly sworn any oaths to that effect (or at least I hadn’t), but wasn’t that what you were supposed to do when you were part of a starship crew? If all the holomovies I had seen over the years were anything to go by, loyalty to your crewmates was amongst the most important attribute for a successful crew member.
“Alright, into the escape pod with you,” said Morgath, gesturing in the direction of the circular doorway with a flick of her head. “Personally, I don’t care whether you remain on the ship or not, but I do care about getting those sleepkillers before that monkey drops them in a bio-eradication tank. And with that in mind, I think it’s high time you took a little journey into the black.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but in my peripheral vision, I caught sight of a pink shape drifting towards my rear. I looked around, and there was Wallace, his sharpened steel jaws gleaming maniacally in the half-darkness.
“Girl go now,” said Wallace in his deep, throaty voice. “Or Wallace get second breakfast.”
“You’re an android, Wallace,” Morgath chided. “You can’t have a first breakfast.”
The robotic alligator’s orange eyes gave off a mysterious twinkle. “Wallace can dream.”
I looked back and forth between Madge, Morgath and the AMIGO at my back. This wasn’t at all how I’d hoped things would play out. Instead of bundling the bounty hunter into the escape pod, I was being forced to climb inside of my own accord. A feeling of bitter rage flooded my veins, and I directed it with considerable force towards the former casino droid who had turned backstabber.
“Damn droids,” I spat at Madge as I was herded towards the escape pod by the bounty hunter’s pet nightmare. “I knew I never should have trusted you.”
“Now don’t be like that, Tega,” said Madge. “This way, you get to leave the ship in one piece. If you’d remained behind, there’d be no telling what the bounty hunter would have done to you.”
Morgath turned a sour frown at the android. “Hey, I’m a bounty hunter. I’m not a psychopathic killer.”
“But what about all those threats about feeding us to your alligator droid?”
“Oh, those I meant. But only if you put up any resistance.”
Madge spun back in my direction. “Well, there you go. You were going to put up considerable resistance, weren’t you, Tega? So at least this way you won’t have to have any of your fingers or toes bitten off. That can’t be a bad thing now, can it?”
“What’s bad is being betrayed by your friends,” I snapped as I slipped through the circular doorway of the escape pod. “At least, I thought we were friends. But I guess I was wrong.”
“I guess you were.”
I gave Madge the frostiest stare I could muster as the droid sidled up to the control panel outside the door. Over her shoulder, Morgath and her AMIGO gathered round, eager to witness my departure.
“Oh, and Tega,” said Madge.
“What?”
“There are some sick bags in the storage compartment beneath the pod controls.”
I frowned. “Sick bags?”
“You know how you’re always getting sick in escape pods. I wouldn’t want you to spew up all over the interior and have to wait like that until the rescue ship comes along.”
My mouth hung open as I tried to figure out what the hell the treacherous droid was talking about. As far as I could remember, I had only ever been in an escape pod once before, and that was with the bounty hunter supreme (in happier times, when I didn’t actually hate the perfidious woman). But Madge hadn’t been there, and I had no memory of mentioning the event to the droid. Nor had I been in any way sick after the escape pod was launched. So then what in the name of Destron was Madge going on about sick bags for?
“Goodbye, Tega,” said the droid, before I could raise any further questions. “Have a safe trip.”
“Madge, you treacherous metal bit—”
My words were cut off by the hiss of the escape pod doors closing. Through the duraglass window, I watched as Madge, Morgath and Wallace crowded round. A moment later, there was a loud clunk, and then I was suddenly moving away at alarming speed. The ship quickly came into view, first dominating my vision, but soon receding into the background, growing smaller and smaller until I could hardly see the Reclaimer at all.
Now I was well and truly alone. Stranded in an escape pod until the authorities at Starcore Station sent out a rescue party. And who knew how long that would be? I was certainly no expert on the process of recovering jettisoned escape pods inside interspace tunnels, but I doubted my rescue would be a high priority. After all, I wasn’t exactly the president of the Tri-Galactic Territories. I was just some girl - a onetime cadet at the Bounty Hunter Academy, now reduced to a mere plaything for bounty hunters and deceitful droids alike.
It wasn’t what I had signed up for, but I was slowly starting to realise that, in life, you didn’t always get what you wanted. In fact, you hardly ever did, unless what you wanted was to be pushed and shoved around by the universe until you got old and died.
Well, maybe it was about time I had a long, hard think about what I wanted. Because if I didn’t, I was liable to spend the rest of my life filled with disappointment as unrealistic expectation after unrealistic expectation crashed and burned like a starship with engine failure.
Less…
That was what I had to set my expectations on.
Much, much less.
So much less that it made nothing look like everything.
Then…
Oh, sweet, happy then…
I would never be disappointed again.
27
Chapter 27
As far as escape pods went, the Reclaimer’s escape pod was far from uncomfortable. As well as having a plush, cushiony lining that ran around the horseshoe-shaped bench, it also had a rather spacious design with wide viewing windows that afforded an excellent view of the surrounding stars; a holomovie viewer stocked full of holomovies to tie you over until your rescue ship arrived; a fully working rehydrator, along with a cupboard packed full of rehydration packs, drinking water and pre-packaged asteroid cookies; and a pleasing, lemony smell that made me feel all tingly and fresh. It certainly could have been worse, and had I not been floating freely through an interspace tunnel, fresh from experiencing the kind of betrayal that was all too common in those holomovies I now had at my fingertips, I might have actually enjoyed my little sojourn in outer space.
But as it was, I had been betrayed, and I was now at just about the lowest ebb in my life (and considering the depths of the ebbs I had been in before, that was really saying something). Back on the Reclaimer, the bounty hunter Iptra Morgath was no doubt now tucking into sleepkillers, laughing mercilessly at the thought of my predicament. Probably Madge was laughing along with her, and maybe even that damnable monkey - the one whose idea it had been to put me in the escape pod in the first place. From what I could gather, they were all more or less in it together, and now the poor captain was being left to fend for himself on a ship filled with traitors, bounty hunters and the snap-happy pink alligator droids.
“I’m sorry, Eckel,” I said to the speck of grey that might have been the Reclaimer (or might have been just an errant asteroid). “I’m so, so sorry.”
A knot twisted in my stomach at the thought of the captain suffering at the hands of those villans, and I felt a sudden urge to bring up the rehydrated pasta and asteroid cookies I had already scoffed in a desperate hunger. The urge to vomit was hardly strong enough to bring any chunks of half-digested food to my tonsils, but it did make me think of Madge’s final words before she had pressed the button to close the escape pod.
Words that had involved the mention of sick bags…
I tried to shake the confusion out of my head as I sat down on the butt-pleasing bench. On the pod controls, the red emergency beacon light was blinking steadily. The rescue controller at Starcore Station had estimated the pickup ship would arrive within the next seven to ten hours, which left lots of time to puzzle out my thoughts, and, in particular, that strange mention of sick bags.
Why had Madge said that?
I mean, of all the things she could have said before I was fired off into the black, that was what she chose to say? Why hadn’t she mentioned the rehydrator or the holomovie viewer or the compact waste-E-vac? All of those would have been of far more pressing use to someone stranded inside an escape pod than a few sick bags. It made the mind boggle.
“Droids,” I remarked aloud with a bemused shake of the head. I didn’t have much experience with mechanical beings, but from the few encounters I had recently had with their kind, I was expert enough to form my own opinion. “What a bunch of total whack jo—”
I cut off my words with a gasp.
Sick bags…
Why had Madge mentioned sick bags? Was it just because she was a damn crazy, treacherous droid? Or was there some other reason - something my idiotic mind was failing to discern?
There was only one thing for it.
Scrambling to my feet, I hurried to the other side of the escape pod, knelt down beside the storage compartment under the pod controls and tapped the door release button. There was a soft whoosh, and the doors slid apart, disappearing into the mechanism.
I searched for sick bags.
I searched long and hard for the sick bags.
But inside the storage compartment, there were no sick bags. Instead, there was something that had probably encouraged a gurgle of vomit to rise up in the throats of a considerable number of people.
“Madge, oh, Madge,” I said, holding the newfound item aloft for inspection under the bright pod lights. “Where in the universe did you get this?”
Dark blue metal glinted dangerously under the escape pod lights. An elongated barrel with a groove cut into the top threatened to smash through one of the duraglass windows, if I wasn’t careful where I pointed the thing. Towards the rear of the deadly implement, a nest of razor-sharp, star-shaped blades were clustered together in an ammo holder. Below the barrel, twin grips covered with white leather invited my hands to grasp the weapon properly. A black strap dangled limply, its ends attached to loopholes on the front and back underside of the device.
It wasn’t the first time I had seen a starblade launcher.
During the training arena shenanigans that had taken place on my first day at the Bounty Hunter Academy (the very shenanigans that had almost ended with an outsider assassin claiming my life), I had seen Tartrian Moonstorm wielding one of the limb-severing devices. Of course, being that he was the model of proper and ethical conduct, Tartrian hadn’t used it to severe anyone’s limbs but instead merely terrorised Diakon Pygott - the biggest, ugliest tub of lard in the entire colony (perhaps even the entire Tri-Galactic Territories).
And that was about as far as my expertise with starblade launchers went. Fortunately, however, a quick look-over of the device revealed that the number of available buttons was only two, and one of them was clearly for ejecting the ammo cartridge (it being placed adjacent to the holder filled with star-shaped blades). Unless I was very much mistaken, the other button - located adjacent to the rear hand grip right about where someone might rest their right index finger - was the trigger. There was no scope, which meant I would have to aim carefully. And while I hadn’t had any actual weapons training at the academy, I had used several different weapons during my most recent escapades, and that should at least have counted for something.
At least, it might have, if I actually had anything to aim at.
But being that I was trapped in an escape pod hundreds - or maybe even thousands - of megatectars away from any bounty hunters or robotic pink alligators I might want to shoot at, I was left with the choice of either obliterating the rehydrator or devastating the holomovie viewer, neither of which I had any particular beef with (although the rehydrator had taken an unusually long time to rehydrate a pack of sliced pears). If only there was some way I could get back to the Reclaimer. If only I had a jetpack or a starsurfer or an extremely long ladder or—
“Oh, hell.”
I set the starblade launcher down to inspect the second item in the storage compartment. While I might have had some minor experience firing weapons, I had absolutely zero experience when it came to jetboots. The only time I had ever even seen a pair was on the feet of Startide, the hunter commandant, and they had always looked so heavy that no amount of microthrusters would suffice to lift the user more than a tectar off the floor. Of course, in outer space, there would be no gravity to contend with, but there would still be my complete and total obliviousness to standard jetboot operating procedures.
But what the hell. I had to die of something.
After I had pulled on the jetboots - an uncomfortable operation that left my feet feeling like I had some kind of eternal grudge against them - I was once again caught off-guard by what turned out to be a third item that could be of use in a scrape with a maniacal bounty hunter and her simpleminded AMIGO. The plasma claw was yet another implement I had never used before, but like the starblade launcher, it promised to come in handy in any potential upcoming battle, providing I could figure out how to use the damn thing.
Putting it on seemed easy enough. Slipping my hand into the glove-shaped implement, I was surprised by what turned out to be a comfortably lined interior - very much the opposite of how it had felt to pull on the jetboots.
Turning my hand over, I inspected the plasma claw.
The sensation was…
Strange.
When I had first removed the weapon from the storage compartment, it had felt heavy. But now that I tried it on…
It was as if I was wearing nothing at all.
The steel (or was it galvanium?) segments that wrapped around the fingers moved seamlessly as I stretched out my hand, their jagged tops threatening to spill blood (if the blades of concentrated energy that extended from the tips of the fingers when the weapon was activated didn’t do the job first). The same metal was present on the plate that covered the back of the hand and the palm, while a long sleeve of metal ran up my arm almost all the way to the elbow. There was no obvious way to power on the device, but I felt confident I could figure it out between now and the moment when I kicked in the Reclaimer’s airlock to start a ruckus on board that would have made a boarding by space pirate seem like a tea party by comparison.
As I surveyed the goodies I had found in the storage compartment, I realised with a pang of guilt that I had completely misjudged Madge and Lerren. What I thought was a display of outright treachery was, in fact, a cleverly coordinated attempt to move me to a position of safety and equip me with the tools I needed to storm the ship. They had put their trust in me, and now I had to repay it in full.
Slinging the starblade launcher over my shoulders, I hit the button on the side of my neck to activate my helmet. There was a whoosh of duraglass, then the gentle beeping sound of the emergency beacon and the hum of the pod’s life support systems went all muffled, leaving me with only the amplified sound of my own breathing for company.
The emergency escape hatch was on the roof of the pod. A red handle hung invitingly from the ceiling, ready to be turned in the direction of the red arrow imprinted on the hatch. But when I tried to pull the hatch, there was an irritated (albeit quite muffled) sound from the pod controls. Turning back to the controls, I saw the message ‘EMERGENCY ESCAPE HATCH LOCKED’.
“Alright,” I said, bending over the controls, “but how do I unlock it?”
A quick bit of tapping on the pod controls brought up the emergency operations menu. Along with options for venting radioactive gas and activating a protective sunshield, there was an option to unlock the emergency access hatch. I quickly selected the option, feeling suddenly extremely aware that the Reclaimer was getting further away by the second. A pop-up promptly appeared, asking me for a password. Not having received any hints from Madge as to what the password might be (as far as I was aware), I ran through the usual host of common passwords Instructor Brekum had taught us to always try first, but none of them seemed to work (and neither did ‘LETMEOUTOFTHISDAMNESCAPEPOD!1234’). I was almost on the verge of attempting to smash in the escape hatch with the pod controls when I noticed a strange glimmer of purple light coming from my right side. At first, I assumed I must have set off one of the emergency flares, but when I looked I saw five elongated blades of pure plasma emanating from the tips of the fingers of my right hand.
The plasma claw…
Somehow, I had activated the device. And with a fully operational plasma claw, I could rip that escape hatch to shreds. Checking one final time that the atmosphere seal indicator on the HUD inside my spacesuit was green, I did my best to calm the erratic thumping of my heart, then I gingerly stretched out with the hand wearing the plasma claw until I heard the hissing, sizzling noise of melting metal. The sharpened points of plasma slid easily through the hardened shell of the escape pod like a laserknife through rehydrated butter. There was a hiss of escaping air, and all kinds of warning lights started to flash on the pod controls. The warnings were punctuated by the blare of sirens, but they were barely audible through the thick duraglass of my helmet. In almost no time at all, they had died out altogether, silenced by the sound-restricting vacuum of space. A quick glance at the ‘OXYGEN TIME REMAINING’ readout on the HUD revealed that I had one hour and fifty-two minutes of breathable air left, which would not be long enough to survive if I had to wait for help to come from Starcore Station. I would have to find my way back on board the Reclaimer immediately, or it would be a slow, painful death for Tega Cloudborn.
