Lupis awoke with a start and looked around. He was in a strange twilight wood that he did not recognize. Come to think of it, he did not remember going to sleep. He stood up and began to look around, trying to get his bearings. He felt slightly disoriented and sick to his stomach. Since he did not remember where he was, he picked a direction at random and started heading that way.

  Memories began to flood his mind as he could not remember how he had gotten here, but he began to remember his numerous enemies. First face that came into his mind was that guard that had taunted him constantly for the past two months. He had been taunted physically, as the Titan guard would pound on the container frequently, many times waking up from a dead sleep, just to hear the guard laughing in delight. He had taunted him with food, oftentimes spilling or withholding the lifegiving substance, or in worse cases spitting in or rubbing body parts in his food, just to laugh as he watched the bounty hunter eat it greedily after having been starved for days.

  This guard had been a constant thorn in Lupis’ side since his capture. He seemed to get off on the fact that he had some power over the once mighty Titan, once having even deprived him of water for three days, only to urinate in a cup and force him to drink it. The worst of all insults, however, was that this guard had somehow managed to gain access to Lupis’ prized Phantasm armor and wore it around proudly like he was something special now. He had probably been there among the troops that had initially captured him. All of his false bravado though had only come from the fact that he had Lupis locked in a cage. Lupis wondered how bravely the Titan would act if he had been free.

  Though his memories were foggy and distant, he began to focus on a single memory, one that he had repeated to himself over and over so that he might never forget. One night while the guards were taunting him, one of the other ones spoke the leader’s name, the guiltiest of them all. In fact, his name was spoken in admonition from some of the others that did not agree with his treatment of the prisoner. It seemed he outranked the others though, and there was little they could do to control his reckless ego. They had spoken it, and he had remembered. Halden was his name.

  Then there was Pando, which came in through an old memory suddenly. Pando was an Ursid from Russevia. During one mission several years ago, he had been tasked with bringing in a criminal that had evaded justice for nearly a decade. The name of this Titan eluded him now and was not important anyway. This Titan had hired a few bodyguards or partners, and they had been planning on hijacking a cargo train full of credits headed for the capitol of Russevia, Moshuv when Lupis had found them. He had killed the giant Ursid along with his boss and fulfilled his bounty as promised.

  Only Pando did not die. Lupis had left him bleeding out in the snow with a gunshot and stab wound, but the Ursid was too tough and stubborn to die. Instead, he dragged himself back to Moshuv and somehow got a full cybernetic conversion. Where the Ursid got the money for that, as it typically could cost as much as the Rhapsody did, even for a cheap chopshop underground butcher with stolen and questionable parts, Lupis would never know. But the Ursid spend the next two years hunting him down for revenge, and nearly got it too.

  Lupis had been resting on Io after a series of jobs had worn him down physically and mentally, and the now cyborg Ursid ambushed him unexpectantly. They had wounded each other in the exchange, but in the end, Lupis had barely escaped with his life. Pando was still out there somewhere, and Lupis imagined with hungry evil eyes, waiting for another opportunity to kill him.

  There was also the famous space pirate whom Lupis had run across the bad side of a year ago. Blackfur was a truly scary Titan, and one that Lupis hoped never to see again. He was maybe even more frightening in his wrath than Pando. That was another encounter that he had barely escaped from, but sometimes wondered if the pirate captain thought the same of him in the dead of night while he tried to sleep.

  Most of all, that damned little rat that had sold him out came to mind. Boss Rancor.

  “Enjoy your trip!” The little wannabe crime boss had laughed to him as the soldiers took him away. Lupis would never forget the mirth and amusement in the Rodentia’s voice. As Lupis found a barren hill in the darkness ahead and moved to begin traveling up it, he thought to himself how sweet it was going to be once he finally got his hands on the little rat.

* * * *

  “You stole an AI unit from the governor?”

  Lupis looked into the container, studying its contents. He recognized the square unit for what it was instantly, as he had wanted to install one like it on the Rhapsody. This was no minor Ai unit, this was an advanced AI, capable of full Titanian thought at several times the speed and was probably capable of thousands of processes at once. These were extremely expensive, and the box he was now holding probably represented more worth than even his beloved and expensive ship.

  “No crazy death machines or ancient artifacts capable of mass destruction? Just…an AI unit?”

  “Let me guess, you were told we stole a bunch of rare antiques. They probably made it look like we were a lunatic fringe cult that was trying to summon some elder horror from another dimension.” The female replied with just a hint of sarcasm.

  Lupis frowned under his mask. That was in truth exactly what he had been prepared for, and it wouldn’t have been the first time either. On a backwater planet with no official name but nicknamed Stardust-1, he had encountered just such a thing. He had slaughtered the entire cult and stopped them from summoning forth some demonspawn resident of a different dimension they had called Aether.

  Lupis pressed the release button for the largest of the boxes, which was lying at the foot of the table. When it opened, he was then more confused by the situation.

  “An industrial fabricator? This is all just normal stuff, not priceless antiques.” Lupis’ voice modulator spoke his thoughts. He then turned towards the female. “If you aren’t some doomsday cult, then what exactly were you planning to do with all of this stuff?”

  “We have an industrial fabricator, a few scanners, an advanced AI and some parts for a terraforming unit. I’ll save you the trouble of looking through them all. What would you do with all of these things?” The female was gentle and not combative in her tone and inflection. It was almost as though she really cared about the bounty hunter’s opinions.

  “You were going to start a colony?” Lupis replied distantly, his voice processor unit modulated the speech as slowly as his thoughts had been. “Is that all? Not try to destroy Titan or anything?”

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  The female chortled at this accusation. It briefly brought him back to a kinder gentler memory, and of one whom he had loved many years ago.

  “The occupation of Saxon is unbearable. I could tell you stories, but you either wouldn’t believe them, or wouldn’t care. I can see you’ve already made up your mind. We were simply a collective of fugitives looking to escape tyranny, is that so horrible?”

  “Then what was that creature, and the villagers?”

  “We came here to appeal to the local governor, Governor Taris. When we arrived, we found a group of the villagers taking the rest into the cave. We thought it strange and wanted to investigate. That’s when we first discovered the creature. It held some power over us mentally, and the next thing we knew, we had awoken from the dream we were in, with you attacking and killing us. We thought you were either with that creature or being controlled by it.”

  “I’m not controlled by anyone.” Lupis turned away, he was years past feelings such as guilt for his actions, but he still felt some discomfort.

  But now he was forced to make a choice, as his job had been to recover the goods and those who had stolen the goods. In his line of work, it did not pay to have a conscious, or guilt, but after hearing this female’s story it might be best to see if the job could be fulfilled by simply returning the goods and leaving them on their own.

  “Wait here.” Lupis spoke more harshly than he’d meant to. But then again through the robotic speakers, nearly everything he said came out harshly. He could change the sound of the voice to just about anything, even sounding like a female, but he had chosen this powerful robotic sound on purpose. It was all part of his image.

  Knowing he would regret his next actions, he walked back outside. He passed the others without saying a word and then brought up a link with his Net-Comm to Boss Rancor. It took longer than expected for the Rodentia to answer.

  “Well, that was fast. Did you find them already?” Boss Rancor’s voice sounded inside his head using his helmet’s EEG function.

  “I found the stolen goods. Several boxes, right?”

  “Are you sure you got the right boxes? What was inside of the boxes?”

  “I’m not paid to be nosy. I didn’t look inside the boxes.” Lupis was too intelligent to be sucked into that trap. “There was a spaceplane here on the outskirts of the village. It was empty. They either abandoned it or probably got themselves killed somehow. I can bring the cargo and be back in about twelve hours. Will that fulfill the contract?”

  “Negative. Governor Uldan specifically wants the thieves back also.”

  “I can be back with his things in twelve hours. Finding the thieves…if they’re even still alive, or their remains, could take considerably longer.”

  There was a long pause. Come on, accept the deal. He did not want to take these Titans back to that snake. They…didn’t deserve that. Finally, the Rodentia spoke again.

  “Negative. Governor was specific about this. If they are dead, he wants proof.”

  Damn.

  “Lupis out.”

  Lupis turned towards the gathering. They had obviously not heard both sides of the conversation, but they had clearly heard his side. Lupis pushed a button on his gauntlet to bring up a visual display menu. He navigated and entered a password, which was locked to a simultaneous EEG function. He then turned towards the other Titans as the Rhapsody began to travel to the beacon he just activated.

  “Gather your things. And the Governor’s things.”

* * * *

  Lupis walked through the twilight woods over hills and across valleys. He had been walking for what felt like days and yet the sky never changed, time did not pass. His memory was still blurred, it was hard to remember how he had got here, or where he had been originally going. But as he crested a hill that afforded a panoramic view of the valley below, those thoughts faded as he saw a peaceful little village sprawled out before him. He was at first cautious, as the memories of being on a hostile alien planet kept wrapping around to the foreground of his thoughts, but he beheld a pair of Titans down below that eased his fears. Had he simply dreamt the entire alien planet?

  Lupis came down the other side of the hill and marched on towards this village. As he approached, the pair of Titans, both females he now could see, stopped gathering firewood and spotted him. He outstretched his hands at his side to show that he was unarmed and no threat to them. One of the females, in turn hailed him.

  “Hail, stranger. What business do you have way out here?” The female’s carefree voice held no mistrust or malice, which Lupis immediately thought was foolish. He could easily be a bandit there to take advantage of this pair of females in more ways than one.

  Lupis made some hand gestures back, signaling that he could not speak. This took some time before the female seemed to understand, the line he kept drawing across his throat with his finger, but when the dawning of realization took over her face, a sadness flooded her eyes for him.

  “Oh, you poor thing, you can’t talk?”

  Lupis touched his nose and nodded in reply.

  “You can talk?”

  Lupis shook his head, thinking he should have replied thus to begin with. She approached him next with little fear. She was a beautiful young Felid, with black and white fur wearing what could only be described as a tattered beggar’s dress.

  “Are you injured?” She next asked.

  That was a good question to contemplate, he decided, for he wasn’t sure. There were faint memories somewhere in the back of his mind of injuries, and a phantom pain in his leg when he put weight on it. He decided to check himself once over and despite those memories, could not find any evidence of injuries to his person. He looked back at her and shook his head from side to side.

  “Well come along then. I don’t know from whence you came, but surely you must be tired and hungry. There are no nearby villages for many miles, and you must have walked for quite a distance.”

  He had walked quite a distance, hadn’t he? It all seemed like a dream now, time seemed distorted to his sensibilities. But he had indeed traveled for what seemed like days through the strange woods. Though it was in his nature to be suspicious, he had decided he posed much more of a threat to these females then they did to him, so he decided to acquiesce and go along with them for now.

  The female Felid smiled at him, a warm inviting gesture. Suddenly another thought drifted to him as through a wide gulf of space and time as he looked into her dark shining eyes. It hit him at once, more like an ingrained muscle memory than any conscious effort on his own part. His face was bare and exposed, he was not in his armor. It had been years since he had let anyone see his true face, and here he suddenly was, with no filter between the two of them.

  Lupis turned quickly away and tried to cover his naked face with his hands. The female saw this and reacted with curiosity. She did not understand the sudden shyness from the stranger and remarked on it.

  “Is something wrong? Why do you hide your face stranger?”

  He gestured behind him for the female to stay back, as his eyes scanned the landscape for something that he could use to hide his countenance. Perhaps he could use some leaves and branches that were scattered about, and fashion some type of mask or…?

  Suddenly warm hands touched his face, and the female’s gentle touch turned his head back towards her own. Their eyes connected and a wave of shame poured over him to the point he could not hold her gaze. Not wanting to appear rude or hostile and rip away from her, he closed his eyes, not able to bear the naked eye contact with his exposed face that had hidden away from civilization for so long.

  “Why do you hide yourself stranger? You have such a lovely face. There is nothing there to be ashamed of. Now come with me, I will lead you to our village where you will be welcomed. Most of our men had gone off to war years ago, never to return. Besides the females, only the very young and old remained behind, and we have much use for an abled body male such as you.”

  Lupis could not bear the hospitality. He fought back a tear. He could tell she noticed it but made no mention of it. Instead, she began leading him back along a trail through the woods by the arm.

  “My name is Angela by the way, and I am very pleased to make your acquaintance good sir. Can you draw words if I find something suitable for you to do so?”

  Draw words…was she asking if he was literate? Lupis nodded to her, still having a hard time bearing the full brunt of her gentle gaze. Inside of the suit he was an invincible warrior, but outside of it he was feeling very much like a pup.

  “Wonderful!” Angela gasped. “Then I shall look forward to finding out your name soon enough. Now come along.”