Sara Jane stomped her feet on the way towards the launch bay, booming and snorting at Kelles, who trailed behind.

"Where's the freakin' dinghy?"

"I don't know, Boss. All I know is Maybell went in it to get her gear."

To relieve stress, Sara Jane threw about her mane. Kelles started trailing a little further back, just in case things got worse.

"And did you give her the launch code, for chrissake?"

"No Sir, Ma'am. I only gave her the access code. You know, to open the doors. You did say she was First Officer."

Kelles found that increasing the distance between herself and Sara Jane had been a good idea, as Sara Jane swung her arms for emphasis. "Well, how did she launch the dinghy, then?"

Kelles only shrugged. Once inside the launch bay, Sara Jane examined the consoles. "Bitch locked out the auto-return, too. Dammit, Kelles, what's the override sequence?

"Ah…" Kelles replied, looking around in confusion.

"Shit! Maybell could probably guess the damn sequence, and you can't even tell me where it's written down!"

"The journeyman should know how to reset it."

Sara Jane made a host of horse-like noises. "Well, get him up here!"

Maybell surveyed the major settlements on the planet below, searching for the one with the most recent activity. Finding a parking lot where many crafts sported heat signatures that signified recent usage, she touched down amongst them. As soon as Maybell opened the bay door of the dinghy, her good guesswork paid off. The air was rife with the smell of tobacco.

"Thank God for the weather magnets," she muttered while unloading her monocycle.

With the weather magnets doing the job of keeping scents close to the ground, she slowly rode by the various spacecrafts in the lot. None of them caught her eye the first time through, but rather than motoring to a different lot, she gave this one another go. Her thoroughness paid off when a certain X-wing Scrambler caught her eye. Still on her monocycle, she examined its port side fuselage.

It bore three sonic bulletholes—evidence of a gunfight. Maybell stuck her finger in one. Its edges were rough, signifying it was recent. Analyzing another one further, she groped it far as her finger would let her. Upon smelling it, her suspicions were confirmed.

The Scrambler had a cracked Thesium oscillator.

"No wonder why the guy hasn't spaced this mudball yet," Maybell said to herself.

She motored backwards to examine the Scrambler's bay door. Dismounting, she stuck her nose into the crack. The scent of tobacco was everywhere. She walked around the ship, finding few signs of activity in the dust and dirt. She then climbed the gangway and peered through the bubble shield, cupping her hands around her eyes to shield out the light. Seeing nothing, she spoke out loud to herself again, to see if her suspicions sounded convincing.

"The grits are still in there. This guy's a hack."

A hack merely took advantage of a situation he or she bumbled into. Although more unpredictable than a professional hijacker, Maybell felt confident in her ability as a bounty hunter to be able to handle someone who was stupid enough to get his craft shot up, and then leave it parked out in the open and useless.

"Okay," Maybell said with a stress-relieving sigh.

She surveyed the lot by standing on top of the Scrambler, and saw not a single soul. Then, finding a likely candidate, she quietly motored up to a craft whose Thesium oscillator was a match for the one inside the Scrambler. Maybell retrieved her toolkit from her swag and in about an hour, she'd swapped one oscillator for the other, leaving the good one installed in the Scrambler with a crucial connection undone.

She then surveyed her surroundings again. Still not being observed, she stood on the Scrambler a second time, to pick out a building in which to start her search for the hack who stole the cigarettes. Upon dismounting, she spied a butt crushed into the dirt by someone who wore boots. The butt bore animal-like teeth marks, giving her another clue as to who she was looking for.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"A genetic. That'll narrow it down a bit."

"A genetic that stinks of cigarettes," Maybell reminded herself as she gunned her monocycle towards town.

Maybell's search didn't take long. She figured that a genetic dumb enough to leave the butt of a stolen cigarette with his teeth marks on it by his shot-up spacecraft would likely leave other butts somewhere else. Few grits ever made it this far out in the frontiers, so very few butts were smashed into the ground. As she examined the area around doorways to various buildings, she found another butt like the one she'd found earlier, lying outside a watering hole. Adding that piece of evidence to the one she already had in her pocket, she worked the room to figure out which of the patrons possessed so much animal DNA in their genes that it affected the way their teeth looked.

She found her most likely suspect. Shirtless, hulking and mottled gray, he was full of so much animal junk that he likely had to shave fur off his whole body. He wore an open crease cowboy hat with a huge brim. Maybell examined him from behind as inconspicuously as possible, until he obliged her suspicions.

Cigarette smoke curled out from under the brim of his enormous hat.

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Heinemann [https://i.imgur.com/O520H1E.jpg]

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Maybell threw her hat on the table next to the man, giving him a start.

"Who the hell are you?" he growled as she came into view.

Maybell turned a chair around and sat in it backwards, leaning into it and smiling bright. "I'm your newest best friend, Gunner," she said with sass.

The man mewled before turning away. "Take a grit if you want one. You don't have to whore me for it."

Maybell fondled the pack of cigarettes he had on the table, then pushed them at him. "I don't want your stash. I just want company."

The man growled with his eyes cast away.

"I like that you've got junk in you," she said. "And you're proud to show it, what with going shirtless and all."

"Shirts hurt," he said. "They make me itch."

"Mmm," Maybell purred, running a delicate finger over his shoulder. "That's because you're so furry."

The man shrugged in response to being petted, but not so as to get Maybell to stop. She cocked her head while examining his skin.

"Spots?" she asked sweetly. "Or stripes?"

"What?"

Maybell acted intrigued. "I see discolorations in your markings, and I figure them to be spots. Or are they stripes?"

The man growled again, only this time in a friendly way. "A little of both, I suppose. What's it to ya?"

"Oh, I don't know." Maybell made pleasant small talk as she took to petting him more. "I know a bobcat, only he's got just a little junk in him. Not nearly as much as you." She ran a firm hand down the small of his back, titilating him near his pants line. "He has a lovely patch of fur running down him a ways. Almost to his rear end!"

Maybell patted the man hard, geting him to look at her. "Oh! And I got a girlfriend? She's got so much horse in her that she's covered in hair, white from her head to her toe."

Maybell leaned in, to whisper in his turned-back ear. "But I secretly know that she bleaches it. She is as gray as a mule!"

The man murfed before speaking. "Go away, Bitch."

Maybell smiled ear to ear. "Not until you have a shot of this with me, Asshole."

She clunked a glass hip flask two-thirds full of Sara Jane's bourbon onto the table.

"Now look here," Maybell said, speaking in a low and serious tone. "I stole this from that horse-ass I was telling you about, and it's only a matter of time before she figures out that I did it."

The man acted intrigued.

"I don't have any creds. You know?" Maybell lied. "But I figger you do. Why don't you order us up a coupla Cokes, and maybe some grub, and we'll share this hooch together. Okay?"

"What is that?" the man asked, sniffing at the flask. "Whiskey?"

"Whiskey?" Maybell scolded, pretending that she spoke too loud. "This is pure Kentucky bourbon, Mister Spots."

The man scoffed.

"One hundred percent Woodford Special Reserve, Buddy!"

"Bullshit. And I ain't your buddy."

"You shoud be," Maybell said. She uncapped the flask and took a slug. The man she was with had enough animal DNA in him that she didn't need to waft the bourbon under his nose in order for him to smell it. He turned his whole body and finally faced Maybell, who smiled sweet as pie.

"I ain't sittin' here to fix drinkin' hooch with no girl."

Maybell got serious fast. "No, Gunner, you are not. But what you are doing is sitting in this shithole with your back to the door."

The man huffed on the fact.

"Now, if I were the wife or the daughter, or a sister or maybe best friend of that mule you gunned down, I'd have sunk a sonic-slug right into your big, fat cowboy hat without you even knowing I'd done it."

"Hmph," the man growled nonplussed. "If you were. Which you're not."

"And how do you know I'm not, Genetic?"

To the slur Maybell had called him, the man grabbed a fistful of her vest. He pulled her in to gain her full attention.

"Cuz I know the son-of-a-bitch who I gunned down, you stupid slut. Do you know who he was?"

Maybell kept her voice steady, as the man was as strong as a lion. "No. I just know you did it."

"Well, it's about time someone came in here knowing what I'd done. I've been sitting for two days with my back to that damn door."

"Why so, Gunner?"

With a forlorn look on his face, the man released his grip on Maybell's vest and spoke to her flask. "How the hell should I know?" To her, he asked, "You ever kill anyone?"

Maybell shook her head. "Came awful close. But no."

The man took a huge slug from the flask. "Me either. Not until that moment."

Maybell stared at the man. He looked far too sad to be a mule or a hijacker.

"Order up that suds and grub, Bitch," he said, looking softly into Maybell's eyes. "And get us a room upstairs to eat it. You don't want to be sittin' here chatting me up like this, should somebody come in who does know that ass that I gunned down, and blow my big hat full of brains all over your pretty body."