Sean-Michael Argo - Hard Cargo

Captain Dar’s eyes went wide, and Sura knew he was about to do something stupid, his sudden rage at the insult having gotten the best of him. The captain sucked in his breath and turned his palms over. Jayce tensed and Sura prepared herself to attempt pushing him away to foil the merc’s point-blank shot.

However, before any of those seated at the table could make a move, the dim half-light of the platform was bathed in an orange glow.

“Samuel Hyst, you are bound by law to stand down!” boomed an amplified voice.

Out of the shadows emerged an armored figure, his body shining with inlaid orange lights that reflected off the growling force shotgun that was leveled at Orion.

“Submit!”

Recovery Agent Trask was well aware that the young man in front of him was not Samuel Hyst but in fact the former Reaper’s only known offspring. The resemblance was sufficiently strong enough that as long as Orion was apprehended the transient population of Dagda Station would accept the ruse as reality. The tactical situation in the half-light of the lower deck was far from ideal, though the agent had to admit that it made for an impressive display of Grotto’s reach and power.

Recovery actions on bustling stations and starports were what brought in the bonuses and kept people in line. Better to take the skippers in public and make a spectacle of it than to bag them clean where nobody could see. In this case, Trask was going to have to conduct the recovery in chapters, and while that annoyed him deeply, the agent was positive that there was no team better suited for the mission.

The acquisition order had come through on all Grotto channels, and though this Samuel Hyst wasn’t a bond skipper, Trask would be damned if some bounty hunter cost Grotto the sum of the reward.

As Trask leveled his force shotgun at the young man, he actually wanted to blast the smarmy merc instead, the sneering trigger man having swiftly become a symbol of everything Trask hated about this entire scenario. The idea of mercenaries and bounty hunters with no loyalty to Grotto Corporation seizing the reward was beyond offensive to him. Grotto took care of its own problems, and his team was part of that process.

While the former Reaper, Samuel Hyst, had no outstanding debts to Grotto, the Anointed had marked him as a fugitive and backed it up with a small fortune in offered reward. Upon receiving the order Trask had researched this salvage marine and discovered a man who had been no friend of Grotto from graduation onwards, even if he had done his job and paid his debts.

Hyst’s service record was impressive, and to Trask, he’d have been a hero of the corporation had he not also been instrumental in the Reaper Strike and subsequent union movement that was even, to this day, causing all sorts of complications and civil unrest inside the company. People’s lives were being destroyed all across Grotto space, as events like the union uprising on Trigag were replayed over and over. Things were better when people knew their place, and Trask was passionate about his duty in seeing that the people of Dagda Station were reminded of theirs.

“Samuel Hyst, you are bound by law to stand down!” bellowed Trask once more as he marched towards the table, taking note that Lovat was coming up on their flank, while Aeomi kept to the shadows as backup. “Submit!”

“No easy money,” stated Jayce, the smile never leaving his face, his voice steady, and then everyone at the table exploded into action.

Jayce leaped from his chair, diving to the right as he sprayed hastily aimed pistol fire at the oncoming armored agent. Sura twisted her body away from where the pistol had been a moment before, expecting the point-blank shot, only to be pushed back into her chair as the merc slammed his blade into her chest while he turned to fire on the agent. Dar flipped the table to the side to clear a path between him and Sura.

An instant later the table exploded into splinters as the energy discharge from Trask’s weapon disintegrated it. The force of the blast was radically dissipated, though Dar was still thrown from his lunge into Orion, who had been rising from his seat, and both of them went sprawling across the deck.

Trask dove to the left, hurling himself away from the withering pistol fire. His armor could handle the bullets, though the sheer multitude of impacts made him stumble and careen into another table of fleeing patrons. The agent was used to getting shot at, even being hit, though he was getting older, nearing retirement in fact, and the punishing salvo got the better of him. More bullets chewed up the deck around him as yet more thumped into his chest and legs. The agent was surprised that the merc had been able to smuggle a full-auto machine pistol onto the station, and he regretted that the man had seemed not to care about the bystanders he was gunning down in the process.

That was always a risk in such deadly recovery actions. The job of the agent was to make the apprehension as much of a spectacle as possible, but without causing so much collateral damage that the population’s fear turned to anger. Countless times he’d made the approach, used his voice caster to shout out the name of his prey and insist they stand down, and countless times the skipper took a knee and that was it. When the skippers fought back, things usually got nasty, and though Trask had yet to fail to bring in his collar, it had been years since the shootout with the Chiodo brothers, and he’d forgotten how rough such actions could be.

For as blindingly fast as the merc was, faster than the agent had ever seen, the trigger man hadn’t noticed Lovat, having suffered from the kind of bloodthirsty tunnel vision such bravos often did. As the merc’s pistol went empty and he began to slap in a fresh magazine his body was picked up and hurled onto the deck by a blast from Lovat’s force pistol. The former warden-turned-agent’s armor was ignited as he plowed through fleeing bystanders and fired once more, the second shot barely missing Orion as the captain shoved the boy aside.

Trask rose to a knee as he took note of Orion’s comrades at the other table. One of the prospectors, the older one, lay in a growing pool of blood upon the deck, having been shot several times at point-blank range. There were three men backing away from the upturned table, chairs, and corpse, each firing in a different direction. Two of them were mercs who had initially approached the prospectors, and as one fired his pistol at Lovat, the other used his pistol to drive the surviving prospector into cover as they exchanged haphazard salvos.

Trask racked the slide of his shotgun and charged from his crouching position as he fired at the closest merc, the one shooting at the prospector. The blast caught the merc full in the chest and sent him sailing into the crowd. The discharge would not kill him, though he’d have enough broken ribs and internal bruising that he wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon. Trask saw Orion rushing to his mother, who still sat in her chair, slumped over and unmoving. Before he could pump his shotgun and drop the lad several rounds bit into his side, this time one of them penetrated the armor, as the prospector rose from cover with a large caliber pistol and a determined look on his face.

“Aeomi, now! ” shouted Trask, his voice tight with pain as he turned to take a knee while firing his shotgun. The blast shattered a food stall, barely missing the prospector as he scrambled out of the way. Trask was beginning to suspect he might be a merc who rode with the prospectors as security.

Aeomi leaped from her perch on one of the platforms above, using a rappelling line attached to the bottom of Raptor Two, which now hovered above them, to control her descent. The recovery agents had laid this trap when Aeomi caught the scents of Orion and Sura.