“Epsilon 23-AQ, huh? Never been to this place and I’ll make sure I never come back here, or to this stupid hotel.” Rimin spits out the window.

“Hey! Watch where the fuck you’re spitting!” someone yells from below. He glances down and spots a young man.

“Consider that a gift, you little shit!” he yells back.

Compose yourself. Then again, it’s not like we haven’t been wandering around the last ten years with no sort of leads. Yeah, there’s definitely no good reason for this. God, I just want to leave or have something good happen. And no killing as the main stipulation? What a bore. Though, if it’s not my fault then I still get paid so who cares? He thinks.

Agitation and impatience have eaten at him fairly quickly. The job he’s working involves an extortion racket, which to him just means a terribly long assignment. The individual who posted the job is being strong-armed into payments for Imilts they borrowed, and the interest rate is at a whopping one hundred percent. The family in charge of this shady business practice calls themselves the Lossos, and are beings called Tibits, the frog-like race that are denizens of Tibibbipo Z2. He’s been learning their routine for two or three weeks so he can take down the appropriate targets.

Humanity had been long observed by the citizens of the Expanse, but due to the constant wars and strife, they were excluded, and thus were embargoed from the Expanse. Various records have stated information that seems to be solely dependent on what part of the Expanse you visit. The truth however is that at the rate they were going, they would simply have gone extinct without any external assistance. So, in 1990, with new technologies and valuable allies at their disposal, humanity built themselves a fleet of space-faring vessels at a far faster rate than any of their space projects before them. The first contact event was said to have occurred as early as 1950, but was disputed once more.

In more than seventy years humanity became woven into this massive universal family and it didn’t take long until they themselves began to propagate in these markets. Advancements like Universal Law and standardized measurements helped greatly and were followed shortly thereafter.

Rimin raps his lap, doing a little dance to keep himself awake. His attention is quickly waning.

For this particular job, in the eyes of Universal Law Rimin’s compiled enough evidence that a competent grand jury should be able to reach an easy guilty verdict in court. However, in his experience this is hardly the case, as things tend to move along a less than favorable route for him, and if it heads that way, he’ll just be back to shoot them in their faces before they return to their old ways, scamming idiots with mundane existing problems, like gambling and vicious STDs that cost their families a small fortune.

He knows it won’t be that easy to get them to stand trial. They’ll just try to shoot him; everyone tries to shoot him.

Rimin spots the Lossos in their tacky business wear and watches them head into a restaurant bearing their names. He scoffs at their stupidity. Using his helmet’s zoom feature, he can see their place quite clearly from his hotel room that sits about three or four blocks away from the place, and also seems to be their regular meeting spot at this time.

He hunkers down and looks around the room to make sure he has enough food, then syncs up a small desk timer to measure how long they spend in there, while he settles in the office chair at the oak desk near the window. He makes gun sounds, pretending to be a sniper picking them off. This goes on for approximately three minutes before the next shot… blows up the building? The blast breaks the window and sends him flying backwards, but thanks to his quick reflexes, he’s able to stop the timer right as he’s being blown away, with his face. The windows in the surrounding area all follow suit and explode.

“Fuck, there goes my payment!” he yells.

Each of his targets were in the restaurant at the same time and right now, there’s no sign of survivors.

….

As Rimin exits his hotel room, he sees staff evacuating guests. His gear is all packed up, so he checks out in the lobby and makes his way to the busy streets of Epsilon 23-AQ. He doesn’t know who names these planets, but finds himself wondering why they’re named so stupidly.

He calls the contract holder to tell them the news.

“Hello?” they answer.

“Yeah, this is the Hunter in charge of your contract. All targets are dead, through no fault of my own, so you should be okay.” He says, flatly.

“What are you talking about?” the holder asks.

“Check the news, I want my payment after you see the footage.” Rimin hangs up and makes his way to a park near the destroyed building.

Even worse in person. He thinks.

News crews and the Universal Police Force, diligently work the scene.

Glad I won’t need to come back to this planet once the Imilts are in my hands.

He receives a call from the same man as before. “Yeah?” Rimin asks, toying with his pocket.

“Holy fuck, I just saw the news!” he exclaims.

“Good, I’m at the park down the street from the site.” He looks around and notes glass and roof debris littering the grass.

“I’m on my way to pay you now.”

Rimin hangs up and stretches. This is about to be the easiest fifty-thousand Imilts I’ve ever made. He thinks. About fifteen or twenty minutes later, the contract holder arrives. Rimin stands up to greet them.

“Here’s the five-thousand Imilts we agreed to.” The man says as he hands over the money.

“Five-thousand? I thought this job was fifty!” he yells.

“No, it was five-thousand. Check the log.”

Rimin looks at the job and is disappointed with himself for mistaking zeroes again. The man leaves satisfied as Rimin curses under his breath.

I’m gonna go get fucked up now. Ah, this name looks interesting enough and look at that, they got dancers!

….

In his travels, the experiences he’s garnered are mere microcosms compared to that of his former mentor and teacher, Verol. A man, who is rumored to have single-handedly started the Hunter’s Group. As such, when faced with decision making, Rimin typically goes against the grain, unless it’s something easily solved by a weapon.

Situated in a rundown slice of the city, and upon entry, a scent ensnares Rimin inside Lexinor’s Lot; a seedy strip club and restaurant with the curviest species in the Expanse. All manner of men and women, from the insect-like people Antunites of Antun-171-B which happen to be a hardy race that are incredibly strong and agile, to the reptilian warrior-race Lizens that call Melinat 3 home and can breathe underwater, are drawn to it from their travels.

One must wonder, is it a force, an energy drawing them? Or is it an impulse that laid its foul curse on them?

Maybe, but for our hapless and hopeless hero, he just wanted to eat and drink and relax…

Rimin enters and is ushered to a booth but opts for a bar seat instead. Once he’s situated, he lets out a sigh of relief.

“I will be your garcon this evening.” A middle-aged man with dark, slicked hair bows and hands him a holo-panel to order from.

“Can’t use paper? What is this shit?” he asks.

“We’re trying to cut down on waste, I do apologize.” He smiles.

“This place looks like a money pit for idiots and you guys are worried about paper… fantastic. Guess I’ll have this?” he skims a dish called Zellzil and notes it features meat with sauce from Amoror-Q7, which means nothing to him, and a form of rice. He also places an order of water, and whiskey, hoping he can stomach it tonight.

“Thank you, I’ll be right back with your drinks.” He shuffles away and Rimin glances about to get a feel of the area.

Seems safe enough but I’m not too sure yet if I should collapse the helm… Maybe some drinks will help with this uneasy feeling I’ve got? He sighs, cursing his over-active mind. Those dancers are really pretty though.

The waiter returns with a shot and Rimin tosses behind him a handful of Imilts on the counter.

“What’s this?” he asks, a look of confusion fills his eyes.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“I forgot to ask for the bottle.” He says, dismissively. His attention is fixed to the stage.

“Ah, very good. Would you still like a glass?” he slips the money in his shirt pocket.

“No, I think I’ll just save myself some time.”

The man bows once more and is off. After a short while, he hears a clink besides him and raises the bottle in the air as a toast before adjusting his visor to allow himself a well-needed drink.

“Ooh yeah… you like that honey?” he hears. Rimin immediately fixes his gaze to a dancer.

Atoraxius Belenta; commonly referred to as ‘Man-eaters’ his helm displays data and he quickly shuts it down.

Annoy me now why don’t you? He thinks sharply.

“Wait… honey? I don’t think that’s in this dish, is it? Hey, waiter!” he calls. Raising his hand, trying to flag down the self-appointed “garcon” of the establishment, which has its humor given the setting.

“No, not your food. You. You like what you see?”

His vision is severely limited, a thick haze fills the room as patrons smoke and gamble.

“What am I supposed to be seeing?” he asks loudly over the next song that was queued up.

“This!” she claps her paws, and as if on cue, the overhead lights brighten and a few women engage in a choreographed dance.

With the lights kicking back on, he can now make out the faint visage, and a mortally fatal curiosity grabs hold of him. The woman appears humanoid, well mostly, but what he notes first are the rippling undulations of her bosom, and a two-piece suit of undergarments that are barely able to contain what she’s moving to in rhythm with the other dancers. He’s transfixed.

Just looking, you wouldn’t notice how different she was from a human. He thinks.

That is until you saw her unnatural curvature and more importantly her tail. It’s possible that those parts of her were in fact augmented, he’s not judging, but what he does know for a fact are the perfectly white fangs she flashes in her maw look razor sharp.

Man-eater. Maw. He contemplates this while eating through his helmet, which is open just enough only his mouth shows through the space.

Knowing that he’s transfixed, the Man-eater waggles a slim finger at him. He swallows hard.

“You gotta go up there now.” A Lizen jeers next to him, jostling his shoulder with excitement.

“Nah, I’ve got no moves, I’ll look dumb.” He replies, throwing up his hands in a warding gesture.

“You see that guy?” the Lizen points at a man in the audience, an Antunite, “He can’t move worth shit, but he’s dancing while he scurries and picks at leftovers tossed in the trash!” Rimin focuses his gaze, and is about to call him racist or something of the like, but the Antunite is literally dancing while picking through refuse. He pauses, then collects himself.

“I was actually gonna call you racist at some point but you know? Point taken. I want some liquor then if this ass is doing anything!” he yells.

“Get him something on me. I wanna see what he’s got!” the Man-eater calls to the man tending the bar.

“You got it, Mist!” he lines up shots of various colors and brands then hand delivers the alcohol to his stoop. Rimin nods and knocks back each at once, tipping the glasses upside down as he finishes them in rapid succession. The crowd hollers and in a moment, he finds himself dancing erotically with the Man-eater known as Mist.

Rimin’s memory becomes fragmented after the copious amounts of liquor and sweat, and wakes in an apartment, unaware of how and when he got there.

No more drinking for me. I’ve done woke up in some stranger’s—

Mist lay there in sleep, clinging to his arm.

—house. Oh shit…

He now finds himself in a very dangerous situation.

If she wakes up and is in a bad mood, the Remoursit will need to fix more than my damn leg.

Keen to their name, Maneaters are notorious for their feline-like change in mood, and have been known to mutilate…

We do this carefully and leave. We got this.

….

Quietly, he slips out the apartment and once far enough he breaks into a sprint to the city center.

Never again. Never, ever, again! He thinks, panting.

When he enters the area, he glances over the bounty board.

-New Delivery Job Available! – the holo-panel reads.

A delivery job, huh? He scrolls the listing, nothing about the contents yet but I just wanna know where might you be heading… he swipes to the very bottom and his eyes light up.

 Dref-02? Seems kinda familiar to me. Oh, well. I’m bored and forgot to get leads anyway.

He steps inside the Hunter Group post, and makes sure to inquire about the job he just took, lest it be something perishable like food or animals for that matter.

“Name?” the hulking canid-like being asks. His helmet’s analysis function picks it up and scans what it believes to be a male Canator.

“Cana-c-ca—” his visor displays garbled text and the audio feed seems to glitch. 

What the hell? He thinks, pressing a button on the side of his helmet.

“Canator Ula; a canine-like species from Canathos Ul, are humanoid and canid hybrids that—”

 Hey, I’ve seen these guys before! Why is my helmet showing me data? He slaps his helm.

It’s well known that they’re an aggressive people with incredibly short tempers, but are fiercely loyal companions.

“I’m here about the job to Dref-02. Says something about a delivery?”

“I asked for your name, not the job details.” He says flatly.

“Okay, well it’ll be under D. Dude 0-4-2-0-0-6-9. There needed to be special characters for whatever reason.” Rimin snorts.

“Listen here, you—” his voice activated terminal picks up on Rimin’s awful name and does some sort of chime.

“Well, it looks like you’re telling the truth, but come on man, I need your real handle.”

“Change it to Rimin, that should be fine.” The Canator shifts his eyes at him while he processes the name change. They then grow wide. Clearly, his reputation precedes him.

“So, your last job was just completed?” he asks, tapping away.

“Yep, my marks blew up, as I was shooting at them while I was on a two or three week-long stake out. Wait, pretending to shoot. I didn’t really shoot them.”

“That should be fine, not really my business anyway… you received the payment already? I don’t see it marked.”

“I did indeed. One of us forgot I guess.”

“Okay, good. Let me go grab that delivery then. Get cozy, there’s a lot of shit back here.”

Rimin has a seat while he waits.

What a day so far. He thinks.

While the Canator is trying to find the order, a group of three disgruntled men fling the door open with such force it breaks the glass. The Canator sprints back, teeth bared.

“Can I help you or are you gonna keep breaking my shit?” he asks them.

“We’re looking for a fucking dead man who took a job from one of our… clients. Know the poor son of a bitch?” he flashes a bolt pistol, Bolter for short, and the others pull out their hardware.

“I heard he rides around in a shitty OSC-type frigate.” The slack-jawed looking guy says. Rimin looks at the Canator, then the men, and puts his cloak over his face to hide it, even though he’s wearing a helmet. With a tinted visor.

It was a gift…

“Did you guys get a chance to rig it?” he asks.

“Just finished before we got here. Shit’ll blow to shreds once he flies out.”

After that initial insult, Rimin ignores the entirety of their conversation and formulates a plan, while he waits to hear what the Canator will say to them.

“If it’s who I’m thinking about, the guy left. He used a ridiculous, phony name, so I don’t know what more I can tell you.”

The men are incredibly agitated by this. “Are you fucking lying? Because the Lossos are not to be fucked with, you understand?”

Rimin gets up casually and starts out of the building.

“Didn’t we get a description of the guy?” he hears. They look at him, then each other.

“Looks kinda like that guy, what with the fuckin lightbulb he’s wearing.” He points, and the man who entered first slaps his partner for being obvious.

“Who, me?” Rimin asks, in a terrible, country accent. “I’m just here for that, there, delivery job, yup.”

“Anything new that comes in stays packed until I can get to it. Your items are on an electric lift so when you’re ready you can take them out. Just set the lift in the drop off area of the landing bay when you’re done, yeah?” Rimin can see worry in the Canator’s eyes, who’s clearly dropping hints to him, telling him to run. He never got his name.

“Will do good feller.” He nods, sliding his visor up and down, as if tipping a cowboy hat, and still speaking in that terrible accent.

The Lossos goons allow him to leave the building and Rimin hurries to the lift.

Let’s move as fast as we can. He thinks. The landing bay is about three blocks from his location and thankfully it’s a levitating model, nullifying the weight of the cargo. As he pushes it out of the warehouse, the men come from around the building seconds after Rimin hears a bolt fired inside.

They killed the guy, didn’t they?

“We killed the guy. For lying to us. You’re comin with us, lightbulb.”

“Who, me?” he says in the accent as he points at himself.

“And knock off the dumbass voice, we ain’t that stupid.” Another one of them says. He studies the three of them.

Those idiots look like the three guys from TV that would get into wacky situations and hit each other. They even have a leader it seems, that reminds me of that guy… he acts just like the guy with the bowl cut on that show! It makes Rimin smile wide as he waits for them to hit each other again.

They don’t, however. Instead, they draw on him.

“Like I said, you’re comin with us!”

Rimin sighs deeply. “You guys should’ve just hit each other!”

Before they have time to register or respond to what he said, Rimin unholsters his weapon, and gets low in a fluid motion.

“Pray, to whatever it is you believe in…” he takes a deep breath.

Rimin pivots his body around and shifts his leading leg while stepping forward, in the direction of his ship.

“What the hell is he doing?” he hears.

“He… isn’t gonna dart, is he?” someone asks.

That specific motion is a creation all his own, one of his most crucial, fundamental building blocks of combat. A move so deadly that every time he uses it his targets perish in mere moments.

His finger curls over the trigger.

I’ll bet it all on this order! I’m serious about my work!

Rimin fires off three precise shots over his shoulder that streak towards their heads with blinding speed.

It’s over. He smiles wryly, he doesn’t have to look at them to know his shots landed. Rimin quickly grabs the lift and sprints down the street with it.

“The motherfucker just missed all three of us!” he hears.

“Don’t just stand there, get after him or shoot him!”

His shots land… most of the time.

….

Rimin tears down the street, with the lift in tow.

“Coming through!” he screams.

“Hey watch o-out!!!!!”  a thud.

“I-I’m sorry!” another thud.

“What the fuck!” another thud.

“Can’t you people just move it?! I don’t want to—” yet another thud. He’s lost track of how many people and objects he may have mowed down in his haste.

“I warned all of you!” he screams on the busy sidewalk, running frantically. “It’s your fault if you got knocked over and trampled!”

Good, I made it back. Come on you shitty piece of shit, open!

He makes it to the frigate and opens the cargo bay back door as fast as the “shitty” thing can manage. Rimin locks down the lift, saying “fuck it, it’s coming with” and races to the controls. The men chasing him scream and shoot at his ship.

Here we goooooo! Rimin thinks.

The overhead shutters open as he begins to ascend. The men below scramble for cover for whatever reason and he lifts into orbit, then punches in his destination; Dref-02.

“It didn’t explode! Why didn’t it explode?” the leader asks one of his men. Before he can reply, he slaps him.

“Oh, a wise guy, huh?” A fight breaks out, and becomes downright slapstick; palms and fists fly and are subsequently blocked, fingers are jammed into eyes, and the bomb they attached to Rimin’s ship falls in front of them. They flee to cover but thankfully, it doesn’t go off.

After entering the Expanse, he stops, and pulls up the job request once more.

A junking planet, huh? It’s gotta have some cool starship parts or maybe even computer parts. What else...  nice, the money offered looks pretty good and I don’t see much of a strict time limit, just says ‘when you can’ so this one is really weird.

He takes his eyes off the job description then swings his head back when something in it grabs his attention.

The Outer Expanse? His heart sinks.

“No, no, no! There’s no telling how long it’ll take to get there, and it all depends on if there’s interruptions! Knowing me that’ll just happen…”

Dref-02 awaits! If Rimin can arrive intact that is…