---Rematch---
---Kara’s perspective---
I drop the Vulture into realspace in a system that the charts show as uninhabited.
In front of me is a gas giant with a murky brown colour.
“There!” cries Rylan, ‘helpfully’, from the copilot’s chair, pointing at the flashes of blue that are visible near its equator “They’re degaussing! We should just blow them up!”
“No…” growls a voice from behind me, making me jump out of my skin!
His clawed, metal feet clank and thud on the treadplate floor, no longer in stealth mode, as Stetter walks forward to look out of the viewport with his creepyass skullface.
Unnaturally swivelling his head to me, he continues “Ms Stellan here wouldn’t be able to confirm my bounty if you did that… Right, Kara?”
Swallowing a little, I clear my throat and answer “No… I only have your word for it that Emiko Miyazaki is actually aboard… and the idea of getting both her and Lhamo Yeshe in one go… seems a little fanciful to me… I’m not going to authorise blasting a ship out of the sky based on hearsay and I wouldn’t be able to sign off on your receipt of the bounty.”
“So…” he shrugs “…we’ll have to go aboard… Hail them.”
“Whuh… what do you want me to say? ‘Hello, we’re assassins and we’d very much like to come and kill some of you, if you don’t mind’(?)”
“Make. something. up!” he instructs.
I look into his soulless, glowing eyes for a few seconds.
Then, I send a hail.
It takes a few moments to be answered.
“This is Twila MacLeod of the private craft the Bright Plume, Vulture. What can we do for you?” answers a woman’s voice, speaking sweetly.
“Hi, yeah, this is Jane… Thompson of the private craft Vulture. We were wondering if we could impose on you to sell us any supply excess you might have? We’ve been caught a bit short.”
“Oh! I’m very sorry to hear that, Jane!… What exactly do you need?”
“Uhm… well, water, food containing carbohydrates, protein, fat and a bit of fibre, for a start… but really we need enough of all the essentials to get us to the next pitstop in a few weeks. Really sorry to have to ask but, one of our crew was meant to arrange restock at the last space station and neglected to do so! We can pay you for it, that’s not an issue.”
“It’s lucky you found us then! We were just finishing our degauss here and were about to leave the system! Why don’t you dock to us and we can talk about details like quantity and price once you’re aboard?”
I breathe a silent sigh of relief that she fell for it and answer “That sounds amazing, Twila! Thank you! You’re really saving our bacon here! Send us an approach and we’ll be with you in about 45 minutes.”
I cut the call.
Without asking, Stetter leans forward and activates the cockpit microphone to make a shipwide announcement “All combatant crew, arm and armor yourselves and be in the docking bay in half an hour. We are about to make a boarding!”
I hear distant cheers echoing through the ship behind me as he deactivates the mic.
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“You’re not gonna get your hands dirty, I assume?” he asks me.
“I’m not a fighter… I’ll stay here and keep the ship ready… in case you need to make a quick getaway(!)”
He scoffs at that before turning to Rylan and saying “You’re staying here… I learned these guys were no fucking joke when I got my arm ripped off last time! I need you safe in case I get damaged again and need another repair.”
The cyberneticist throws up his (one partially, one fully) bionic arms and says “No complaints here!”
“Good.” answers Stetter before turning on the balls of his clawed feet and stamping away, fast enough that his black cloak billows behind him.
---Jackson’s perspective---
I see the much larger ship out the window as we approach its broadside, near the front.
Shaped like a fucking wingless bird and its hull painted in a bright, gaudy, glossy rainbow.
How disgustingly pretentious to make a ship look that way!
I’ve got a dozen folk from Bastion behind me, all wearing partial durasteel.
My hand rests about 6ft up the 7ft shaft of a plasmaswordstaff with a further 2ft of blade on the top.
I miss my daggers… My thigh cavities feel naked without them!
I wish I’d had time to retrieve them from the ODR but… it was them or the traitor’s head… I had to prioritize!
I can have some more fabbed when I get back to Bastion… just gotta collect these bounties to make the trip worthwhile, first!
Even still, those ones have been with me since the War… since before the Betrayal… they had a certain… sentimental value… Reproductions, even perfect ones, won’t be the same…
Anyway, no use dwelling on that… not when there’s business to take care of!
“You all know who you’re looking for, the traitor, Lhamo ‘Crane’ Yeshe, and the archtraitor’s sister, Emiko ‘Smiles’ Miyazaki… They’ve both got substantial bounties on their heads so whoever brings them to me gets a double share.”
Excited muttering comes from behind me at that news as the Vulture drifts to the illuminated docking port.
The ship attaches and locks in place.
The doors open and I step through.
My underlings file through behind me.
The moment the last of them has made it inside, the internal door wooshes shut.
Three heads I recognize and one black, durasteel helmet appear from behind the safety barrier, on a walkway, six floors up, about 100ft in the air.
Seven guns are leveled down at us.
The four of them open fire without a word.
The blond and the woman with the light brown skin and curly black hair are using suppressed pistols.
The four armed subHuman with the dark blue skin is shooting an unsuppressed pistol in each hand.
The soldier (who I’d guess to be the Tshwane) fires a light assault rifle.
In the space of only a few seconds, they rain down over a hundred rounds on us, between them.
Several of the idiots behind me are hit on unarmored portions of their bodies.
I look up at them, unimpressed, as bullets bounce harmlessly off my durasteel exoskeleton.
“You give our planet a bad name, dude!” shouts the blond, in New Colorado accented English, as he aims a shot right for my eye.
It misses… but only by an inch or two! He’s a good shot!
“Right back at you, traitor!” I shout back.
The morons I brought onto the ship finally manage to rally themselves to return fire.
Slugs reduce the railing on either side of their firing position to a fine cloud of debris but they’ve clearly reinforced their panels to be adequate cover for them!
“You guys, pin them down, I’ll climb up there and-shit!” all four of them took advantage of the break in fire to bolt from their hiding place.
“OK, new plan… you guys get to cover over there, stay together and…”
“Oi! Fucker!” comes a voice I recognize over the tanoy “I know you can hear me, Jackson! Me and some friends are waitin’ in the cargo bay at the back of the ship… we’d like a rematch! Come alone, ’less you’re too chickenshit!”
Anticipation rises in the stomach I don’t have at the implications of what he said.
“You guys… sweep the rest of the ship… stay out of the cargo bay…” I say over the moans of my wounded men and women.
“Is that a good idea, Sir? I mean-YAAAAAAH” Charliza’s words are cut off by my foot connecting with the side of her knee, dislocating her lower leg.
As she sobs on the ground beside the other wounded and dead, I turn on the rest of them and ask “Any more input?”
They all hastily shake their helmeted heads, cowering away from me.
“Good! Go!” I command and they quickly make for the direction I point.
I turn toward the back of the ship and begin walking, leaving the casualties where they lie, behind me.
“Stetter! What the fuck is going on?!” comes a comm from Kara, directly into my brain.
“They were expecting us… talk later.”
“Whuh… How the…?!” is all I hear of her response before I hang up.
My swordstaff clunks against the floor as I make my way sternward, beneath all the wasted floorspace above me, and wonder why anyone would design a spaceship with so much empty volume!
I reach the door between this section of the ship and the cargo bay.
I step through and am immediately disappointed.
The one I wanted to fight again is not among the three stood facing me in the middle of the room.