The bounty hunter removes his respirator as he steps through the open doors, followed by a ray of dust-spangled sunlight.

“Apus! Back again, are you?” An old bartender passes her tray onto another waitress before hurrying to the desk, hands wiping on her apron. “Oh do close the doors, before any sand gets in.”

Apus gives a gentle salute and a “Nice seeing you too, Miss Reswin,” before glancing over at the bulletin board. “Got any good bounties today?”

Reswin frowns. “Bounties again? Aren’t you leaving for Sol-Dei soon?”

“Sol-Dei’s orbit doesn’t pass ours till October,” Apus replies, taking a closer look at one of the posters before deciding no that’s not it and moving onto the next. “I’ll need busywork till then.”

“Tsk, only you would have the gall to call bounty-hunting busywork. We’ve got some new commissions on digital files though, fancy a look through the holopad?”

“Oh yes, thank you,” he nods politely before scrolling through the list. Nothing catches his eye. Not a single tugging reaction. Apus keeps browsing. Hoping to continue the conversation, Miss Reswin speaks.

“Y’know the locals have been calling you the Dust Tail lately? With how you come and go between towns?”

“Are they?” Apus replies absentmindedly as he sifts through documents.

“Yep. ‘Kicks up dust and it settles wherever he goes,’ I’ve heard. They tried calling you Dust Devil a bit but apparently it’s already taken by some aerokinetic bloke back west.”

He shrugs. “Dunno, I kinda like Dust Tail.”

“Yes, I do suppose it’s got a nice ring. Do you plan on making a name with it?”

“Hm, not sure, maybe,” Apus waves away as he scrolls. Then he feels it– a tugging sensation in his gut– and flips the holopad around to face Reswin. "I'll take this one." Glasses perched on her nose, she squints at the hologram.

“A bandit clearing request? Why?”

Apus gives a wry smile. “Just a gut feeling.”

“Right,” Miss Reswin drawls, unimpressed, then transfers the quest details to his comms. “Well then, Mr. Apus Bowline, off you go. You’ve got bounties to hunt.”

—

The Hebdomas Survival Tourist Guide, by O.I. Lee

The Hebdomas is a particularly large gas giant that orbits the star Aestas Y6647, making it the only planet in the Aestas solar system. Though uninhabitable itself, the Hebdomas is host to a grand total of seven planet-sized moons, all suitable (albeit barely) for human life.

My managing team has warned me that publishing such a guide will undoubtedly receive low sales (because nobody in their right mind would ever visit this hellhole) but as someone who has traveled to all seven of the moon-planets, perhaps my experience may serve useful to whatever poor soul that’s gotten stranded on one of these Void-forsaken moon-planets.

Anyways, here’s a list of said Hebdomas moons:

* Luen-Dei

* Martis

* Mercurii

* Jovis

* Veneris

* Septimas

* Sol-Dei

If you ever somehow end up on one of these lawless barren desert moons, do yourself a favor: find a spaceship and get off as soon as possible. If you can’t, then well, that’s what this survival guide is for. Good luck!

—

The store’s beep sounds as the dull metal doors grind open. Why the beep was even necessary when the doors made more than enough noise was beyond Apus, but he wasn’t gonna complain. No, he was just gonna browse the shelves and stock up for his mission. The bandits had set up in a town a few day’s ride away, so what he needed was a few packets of food, three canisters of water, and of course…

“Hello sir, do you happen to have any ammo on hand?”

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 Apus scans him for a name tag but there’s none, so he mentally dubs him the old man. Said old man peers over his newspaper from behind the counter. “You a bounty hunter, kid?”

“Yessir,” Apus nods. “Got a mission over at Portum.”

“Ah that old town? Never been to it. Word’s been that a gang of bandits are giving ‘em trouble.” The old man shuffles over to the back cabinets, keys jangling as he unlocks them. “What kind do you need?”

“A few plasmogun charges and some admortine battery casings for my phazer.”

“What size?”

“0.22, sir.”

“Right, I got those.” He shuffles back and drops them on the counter, next to the rations. “That’ll be 157 credits.”

The water canisters were unsurprisingly the priciest, with them being on a desert planet and all. Apus transfers the credits over, and the doors screech open as he heads out– pulling the respirator back on his face and goggles over his eyes.

His boots make a hollow clang with each step down the stairs, the thin layer of sand that managed to get blown up to the rafters crunching beneath his feet. Most towns around here were made of metal– there’s not much wood in the desert. It’s nothing like the sleek modern white and glowing blue skyscrapers that Apus grew up with. These buildings were dull with hard grays in a brutalist industrial style, the stenciled orange numbers on the walls worn away by sand-ridden winds. 

Apus makes a left through an alley, then a right into the inn, then another right through the hallway into his room. His bags were rhythmically packed and his guns fully loaded before he strides right back out to the garage at the edge of town to load up his sandcruiser. The engine sputters to life and he speeds out into the vast expanse of sand, a cloud of dust tailing him.

Three days pass of driving through sand dune over sand dune. His instincts urge him to swerve right so he does, just as a sandworm sprouts from the earth to snap at him viciously. A blast from his plasmogun leaves it limp on the ground; he turns back on course and keeps driving.

Apus spots the town on the edge of his vision at midday, and skirts his sandcruiser to a stop a mile or so away. He’s greeted with a gust of sandy wind that leaves him squinting, cloak billowing behind him as he stretches. A respirator is pulled up to keep dust from his lungs, and goggles down to protect his eyes. The locals around here seemed to have no problem with this kind of environment, but Apus still wasn’t used to the sand after nearly a year later.

He opens the trunk, slings a bag over his shoulder, and loads himself up. A plasmogun on his left, a phazer on his right. Then two more plasmoguns: one holstered on his back and another much smaller one strapped to his bicep. Apus sheaths a thermal knife on his belt, slips another one in his sleeve, and hides a final knife in his boots. Call it overkill, but Apus wasn’t taking any chances. His instincts were screaming at him to be prepared– so prepared he was.

Apus pushes a hand through his curly brown hair, and treads steadily through the sand, to town.

The town, as he expected, isn’t all that much different from the others: a mismatched complex of buildings held together by steel pipes and scaffolding. Its main street is an open industrial catwalk lodged between metal walls and makeshift street stalls. With the way the townspeople hurried about with lips pursed in thin, silent lines, it seems the criminals have already done their damage.

Apus’s instincts tell him to enter a diner, so he does; just in time to see a spindly man get shoved against his seat, surrounded by a gang of bandits.

“Wait h-hey… we’re all friends right…?” Glasses slip down his nose before he pushes them back up, then raises his hands higher in surrender as the gang closes in. “C’mon guys, I did what you wanted, I helped you! We’re all good!! Bestest of pals, I’d say!”

“You sabotaged us, you slimy fuckwad!”

“W-wha—? I did not!” The man gives a little eek! as a bandit grabs him by the collar, but still impressively continues lying through his teeth. “No sabotaging done here! Nope, I certainly did not rat you out to any bounty hunter, none at all!” The man turned over with a sly smile. “Right, Mr. Bounty Hunter?”

It takes Apus an embarrassing moment to realize that the man was talking to him, but the stunned silence lets the man slip away and scramble behind the bounty hunter.

A bandit reached for his gun, but Apus was faster– and a shot from his plasmogun leaves a body dead on the floor. 

Apus doesn’t hesitate to shoot down another bandit before his instincts tell him to move.

Left right left left down, he dodged in that exact order as the plasmos whizzed past him. Grabbing the spindly man, the two of them dive behind the counter.

“Mr. Bounty Hunter, glad to see you’ve finally made it!” The man grins over the screams and gunshots.

Apus springs out to land a hit on two more men and ducks back behind the counter.

“Y’know when I posted that bounty a few weeks ago, I got kinda antsy when no one showed up.”

Plasmos rains on the counter, a few melting holes straight through.

“Like sure I didn’t offer much as a reward, but I was more-so hoping someone would accept it out of pity– woah—!”

Apus shoves the man down as a blast flies right above his head. He fires back a shot that drops the last bandit dead.

“But then you’re here now, so it’s all fine!”

There’s a holler of enemy backup, and the two of them make a run for the door. They weave through alleys with Apus’s gun blazing at bandits hot on their tail.

“Anyways, I don’t really know how to fight, so you’re on your own. Have fun!”

The man dashes off into a different alley and before Apus could even register that he’s just been ditched, there’s already a volley of plasmos flying his way.

Apus narrowly dodges every blast, because now he really wants to get out alive.

He’s got a spindly man to strangle, after all.