The captain was the first to die. It likely wasn’t by conscious choice, but rather just a matter of the information available and convenience. After a final, failed voyage of the PMF Black Maria as a legal Collective bounty transport, the shrewd captain quickly turned his attention towards the illegal, if procedurally identical, practice of slave trafficking. He even managed to claim a Collective bounty mandate on some worlds to collect merchandise with the help of the local militias until the word finally spread to all corners that the government had indefinitely suspended the practice. After that, while authority could no longer require assistance, credits could certainly buy it, credits the captain certainly had after selling the contents of his full cargo hold to slave operations operating outside the authority, or within the blind eye of the Collective councils.

While extremely profitable, the new venture also proved to be short-lived as just a year and a half later, the captain found himself in a reversed role, now captive to the Collective special guard. One of his crew, a true believer in the Collective manifesto apparently, had grown squeamish with their new business and had ratted him out, sending a secret communication to a Collective prosecutor who had served aboard the Black Maria during their days of bounty quotas and triumvirates. Prosecutor Alber, now a rising star among the ranks, brought swift justice down upon the captain, arriving personally with three warships to take him into custody before the captain could even offer a bribe. Alber tried and convicted on the spot of course, but as for the sentence, the mandatory execution was commuted to ten years of hard labor out of consideration for the captain’s past service to the Collective. The small collection of the crew with him at that moment was allowed to go free after the captain testified that they were all acting under his orders alone. All escaped punishment, except of course for the spineless worm that had caused the whole mess. Before the door of the captain’s cell slammed shut for the first time, that crewman found himself ejected out the hatch of the ship that had offered him passage home. The once-bounty captains may have been competitors in business, but a cowardly snitch deserved the same fate from them all, so a former rival named Mikhail had seen to the deep personally.

Seven years into the captain’s sentence, he was released early, but the shortened incarceration had still cost him more than just his time. The hard labor and conditions at the prison have taken from the man most of his sight, one leg below the knee, and naturally a great deal of his once impressive girth. Most importantly though, his imprisonment had cost him something that would have been more valuable than all these plus another limb or two; his anonymity. The damnable Collective datalogs would forever tie the registration number of a ship called the Black Maria, confiscated and sold after the captain’s arrest, to the man himself and from personnel records to a criminal record. A criminal, within Collective space at least, was forever branded as such, tracked and monitored via the band still uncomfortably strapped around his wrist, never to be removed. From the moment the former captain stepped foot off the prison transport and on to Mos and from there to the seediest drinking brothel in the city’s lower slums, he was being tracked by the authorities, or for that matter, anyone with the access and inclination to do so.

It was early the next morning before the former captain began to make his stumbling way home, still drunk on the cheapest liquor and debauched company his limited means could afford, plus a mildly generous line of credit from the proprietor who had been a buyer of the former captain’s wares. It was those same limited means, plus his few friends, that had allowed the man to maintain a squalid residence in the slums during his incarceration, saving the former captain the indignity of sharing bunks in a Collective halfway house with their mandatory reeducation sessions and work requirements. In hindsight, the former captain may have been willing to put up with such restrictions in exchange for the increased security provided by halfway house guards and administration present. As it was though, the man was now staring up unsteadily at the hundred or so stories of his tenement block, trying his damndest to remember the apartment number of his meager rooms, the windows of which were one of thousands dotting the side of the building. The former captain once had such a good mind for numbers, but age and liquor had robbed this ability from him, not to mention the fact that he could barely see the numbers on the doors once he was inside. Finally, after half a dozen failed attempts, the man found a thumbpad that finally blinked green instead of red, the soft click of a single easily-bypassed autolock providing access to the apartment. Even in his inebriated state, the former captain wasn’t oblivious given his history as a bounty hunter, criminal, and finally prisoner, so when the lights didn’t automatically flicker to life when he entered the room, he knew something was off. The hairs on the back of his neck stood as he gazed warily past the entryway-kitchen area and to the living quarters within. It was still dark outside, however enough light pollution from the city filtered in through the drawn curtains to make out the shapes of the basic furnishings that belonged to the room and the figure of a tall man near the far wall who most certainly didn’t.

As the former captain squinted in an attempt to sharpen his failing vision, he could make out the intruder’s pale blue eyes staring back at him, as cold as the depths of space and full of malice. Without a word, the man pushed a button on a device he had placed on a shelf near the window, the pattern of flashing red diodes allowing the former captain to recognize it as a repeater, an expensive little piece of tech that simultaneously blocked signals from exiting the area and broadcasted an exact copy of the signals which were present when it was activated, such as the former captain’s tracking band which was, despite his currently rising heart rate, still showing stable vitals and location to anyone watching on the other side. If there had been any doubts regarding the intruder’s intentions before, the repeater quickly removed them and the former captain’s mind snapped to as much clarity as it could muster and began to size up the opponent in front of him.

With the flashing red of the repeater intermittently lighting the room, the former captain could make out a few more details of the man in front of him. At the very least the intruder had the build of a man, tall, lean, and strong, but an unblemished, clean-shaven face gave him away as barely out of boyhood, perhaps in his early twenties if not even still his teens. This didn’t give the former captain much relief, however, as the young intruder drew a stunbaton from his hip and settled into a relaxed fighting stance, showing he likely knew how to use it. The battle lines were now drawn, with the intruder possessing clear advantages in youth, strength, sight, and all four limbs, not to mention a weapon, still even as a shell of his past self, the former captain remained a dangerous man and one keenly aware that he was likely fighting for his survival. Still standing in the kitchen, the former captain reached behind a partition, his fingers the knife long hidden there for just a situation. His lips curled almost imperceptibly upwards, knowing that while the blue-eyed intruder was strong, he was young and naive not to have searched for the weapon when he arrived. With a flick of the former captain’s wrist, the blade flew expertly from his grasp towards the young man, his eyes widening with surprise. The intruder dodged without a moment to spare, his young reflexes sparing him a damaging, if not deadly, injury, and the knife embedded itself deeply in the wall behind him. Still, the former captain wasn’t going to let this momentary advantage go to waste and with a guttural roar, he willed his body at the intruder with a speed and ferocity that belied his age and varied handicaps. As the intruder’s eyes turned from the knife on the wall, he found the former captain already upon him, spearing a broad shoulder into the young man’s ribcage with an audible crack and bull-rushing him into the wall behind him, taking the breath from the intruder’s lungs with the blow. Still somewhat dazed, the young man tried to bash the former captain’s skull with his stunbaton, but the opponent grabbed his wrist and painfully twisted it, sending the weapon clattering to the ground and under a sofa. While holding his wrist, the former captain connected a still-meaty fist to the young man’s temple. The old man managed two more staggering blows before the intruder raised his free arm to parry the shot, his face now bloodied, and the once cold eyes now hot with blinding rage.

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Quickly, the young intruder expertly reversed the former captain’s wrist lock and executed a throw to send the old man’s bulk crashing to the floor. Dazed and finding his advantage gone as quickly as it had appeared, the former captain lashed out wildly with his false leg, by pure chance connecting with the intruder’s injured ribs causing him to cry out in pain and grab the attacking appendage for balance, only to be surprised by the cheap prosthesis disconnecting from the former captain’s stump, sending both the man and the artificial limb stumbling backwards. Still, even while momentarily saved, the former captain knew that his already ragged, gasping breath and inability to stand properly meant this brawl couldn’t be won on offense. He knew that his only chance was to get to the repeater and deactivate it, hopefully alerting the authorities or at least making the intruder consider a retreat. In pained locomotion crossed between a crawl and a hop, the former captain struggled to reach the small device sitting on the shelf, still blinking in dangerous red. The effort was in vain, however, as the intruder leaped towards him like a beast, putting all his weight behind a sharp elbow aimed at the old man’s one good leg. The blow landed cleaning, snapping bone as well as ligaments, jagged shards of the former now protruding from the former captain’s skin, gleaming in the room’s dim light. The pain was so great that the old man could barely stay conscious and only a feeble whimper escaped his lips. Still, the rage burned in the young man’s eyes as he pulled himself over the former captain, pinning the man’s shoulders with his knees and placing his gloved hands around the old man’s throat, squeezing the life from him while staring down with unblinking eyes, feral grunts and gasps escaping his lips. The old captain’s attempts to fight back were weak and soon ceased altogether. Meeting his failing eyes with the young man’s, the captain received a moment of strange clarity before his senses permanently faded. Now close enough to be perfectly in focus, the old man could make out the details of his murderer’s features. Not a day past twenty, the young man’s hair was light, cropped short above a furrowed brow, blood dripping from a gash over his eyes. The former captain realized two things in that moment, first that he had never seen his murderer before in his life, and second, given the rage and pure emotion behind those pale blue eyes, whatever the former captain had done to provoke this man, he deserved the fate now delivered. The moment of clarity ended with the last bits of life leaving the old man’s broken body, now just an empty shell, dead eyes staring back at his killer.

The young man pulled his shaking hands from the dead man’s neck, the rage and ferocity leaving his body, closing his eyes for a brief moment of meditation to calm his breath and force something deep down. When they opened once more, the pale blue cold had returned. He collected his stunbaton from under the couch and placed it inside a bag retrieved from the small bathroom. From this bag, he removed a small, round device, turning the top half clockwise and depressing a button on the bottom. He placed this on the shelf next to the repeater and tapped a code on the first device’s small screen, activating a timer. The young man then pulled a mask over his face and left the body behind without a second glance. He walked out of the apartment sure that the brawl had been heard by neighbors, but confident none were the type to call the authorities to this neighborhood, an assumption that was proven correct. He also trusted that five minutes after his exit, the small sphere he left behind would open and expel a gray cloud of metallic dust that quickly spread around the room. The dust was nanobots, ones programmed to consume dead organic matter. They made short work of the former captain’s body, leaving nothing but bone behind and even consuming the murderer’s blood left from the fight. It was doubtful in the first place that Collective investigators would have paid much attention to the murder of a criminal in the slums, but just in case, the nanobots made sure that by the time the repeater self-destructed, all the authorities would find of the crime were bones, a prosthetic leg, and a silent tracking band, still encircling the skeleton’s wrist.

After leaving the room behind, the young man had moved with intention, but not hurry, out of the building and down the street. The whole ordeal had only taken around 20 minutes and the sun had yet to rise, leaving the area deserted except for a few catatonic forms occasionally visible between the towering buildings. Ducking into an alley, the young man found it empty and slumped to the ground, staring at his hands. They had started shaking again and, for the first time in several years, silent sobs escaped from his lips, tears welling from pale blue eyes. He closed those eyes now, wrapping his arms tightly around himself. If anyone saw, they’d just assume he was another tweaker crashing, but no one did. For the young man, a single image was frozen in his vision, two hands wrapped around a neck and two dead eyes.