Hugh Howey - Bounty

Yeah, toward the front of the ship, I nearly say sarcastically. From the bump he gave the locking collar, I’m pretty sure I’ve got more flight time than this bounty hunter does. But I keep it to myself and follow him toward the cockpit. We pass through what looks like a holding pen—gray bars run from floor to ceiling. There’s an animal in one of the pens, drinking out of a toilet.

“Cricket, stop that. No. Bad girl.”

The animal pulls its head out and turns to look at its master, water dribbling from its jowls. Looks like a cross between a dog and a leopard. Probably not even a little bit of either. Definitely alien. The animal goes back to slurping.

“Hardened criminal?” I ask, jabbing my thumb at the cell.

O’Shea laughs. “Cricket? Naw, I just put her away so she don’t maul you.”

I look back at the animal. She’s the size of the cougars we’d see now and then in the backwoods of Tennessee. Might be deadly, but I doubt it. Seems like a pushover, drinking out of that toilet and looking at us with that blank expression.

I follow O’Shea through a narrow hall. There’s an open door to a bunkroom with an unmade bed; just beyond that are some grated lockers with guns inside and big padlocks on the latches. We squeeze past these into the tight cockpit, and O’Shea pulls up his system scanner. I peer out the porthole to see another dark-hulled ship approaching the beacon.

“Goddamn,” O’Shea says.

“You got an ID on that?” I ask. The ship looks vaguely military. I don’t like things that look vaguely military. I hate the things that look really military. With me, it’s like a sliding scale of hate versus appearance with some direct correlation.

“Don’t need an ID,” he says, disgust dripping from his voice. He reaches across me for the HF mic. Squeezing the transmit button, he glares plasma rounds up through the canopy. “You know putting hull trackers on a bounty ship is a federal violation, right, asshole?”

The radio hisses a response: “You think I need a hull tracker to sniff you down, you filthy runt of a raped pig?”

I’m beginning to suspect these two know each other. I watch this new ship expel little volcano blasts of air as it orients itself to face us.

“He’s not going to shoot us, is he?” I ask.

“Nah, Vlad here is a chickenshit .”

I notice O’Shea squeezes the mic and raises his voice as he says this last bit.

“What did he mean by a ‘raped pig’?” I ask.

O’Shea shrugs. “He’s not so bright. Stay away from him.”

I look Mitch O’Shea up and down and consider what it might mean for this guy to label someone else “not bright.” Thoughts of black holes come to mind.

The HF squawks again. I adjust the squelch, since Mitch doesn’t seem to care to. Or maybe doesn’t know how. “Beacon 23, this is Vladimir Bostokov on federal marshal duty. Requesting docking procedures. I have a warrant. Over.”

“Fuck him,” Mitch says, with all the disgust of a man with a shitload of debt who feels very close to a large pile of credits and sees another man eyeing that same pile.

“I’ve got to let him,” I say, waving Mitch for the mic.

“You could claim a section 12b, extenuating circumstances related to injury in the line of duty.” He nods at my sling, all the bandages over my little cuts and scrapes, and the array of purple splotches.

“ Now you tell me,” I say. I key the mic to radio this Vlad character. “This is the operator of Beacon 23. Locking collar Bravo. I’m under quarantine, so please stay aboard. Over.”

“ Copy, ” Vlad says.

And beside me, Mitch O’Shea rattles in annoyance.

“Look, I don’t really want either of you on my beacon,” I tell O’Shea as we wait by airlock Bravo. “You’ve both got warrants for scans, so you’ll both get them. Then you’ll get the hell off my station.”

“I’m telling you, this guy’s an asshole,” O’Shea warns.

The light above the airlock goes green, signaling the second bounty hunter’s ship has a good magnetic seal and that the atmo on the other side is clean. I didn’t even hear the hull make contact, the landing was so soft. I glance at O’Shea, but he’s fuming and oblivious. Vlad might be an asshole, I want to say, but he’s a damn good pilot.

I key open the airlock. A bewildering sight awaits. There’s a man in a tuxedo on the other side of the door.

“Vladimir Morrow Rostokov,” the man says, extending his hand to me.

I accept his hand with my inverted left. Before I can introduce myself, Vlad shoots his colleague a nasty look. “Mitchell,” he says, in his thick accent.

O’Shea says nothing in return.

Vlad reaches inside his jacket pocket and pulls out a printed sheet of paper. He unfolds it, and I can see it’s the same bounty O’Shea showed me.

“What do to your arm?” Vlad says, leaving out a non-vital word in there somewhere.

“Grav panel issues,” I say. He looks me up and down in my boxers and bandages, seems to be waiting for more than this. “Fluctuations,” I tell him. “Polarity issues. Went for a bounce or two.”

Vlad shrugs. I gesture toward the printed flyer. “And no, I’ve never seen her.”

“Here,” Vlad says, handing me the flyer anyway. “Keep for you.”

Perhaps too eagerly, I accept the flyer and fold it back up, sticking it in the waistband of my boxers.

“Ding-Dong, ” I hear myself say.

“What now?” I ask.

The two bounty hunters stare at one another.

“You mind?” I point into Vlad’s ship. He shrugs, and I step past him and enter what looks more like a swanky hotel than a star cruiser. Everything is large clean slabs in that pre-post-second-modern style. Some black and white photos hang on the walls, mostly alien portraits either staring right at the camera or off to the side. They almost look like mug shots, but artfully done. A wet bar in one corner gleams with shiny bottles of all shapes, most of them half-full of a myriad shades of amber.

Vlad waves me forward, leading us past transparent doors that look in on small posh rooms. In one of these rooms, a young man looks up from a bunk, his hands shackled in iron fists. I realize these rooms are cells. I’d kill to live in one. They look amazing.

Behind us, I hear O’Shea jangling and following along. He grumbles enviously about something or other. Vlad tells him to not touch that.

I duck my head and enter a meticulously kept cockpit. You can smell the leather. The place is so nice that even my nose is perking up. O’Shea and Vlad crowd in beside me, and all three of us peer out the canopy.

“I don’t like this,” O’Shea says.

“Me either,” says Vlad.

In the distance, my voice whispers, “ Ding-Dong .”

“Look, it’s not my favorite day this week,” I tell the two bounty hunters. “And yesterday, I cleaned the shitter.”

It takes me a moment to find the new arrival, to see what the bounty hunters are seeing. This third ship is matte black. It can be picked out only by the background stars it gobbles and shits out as it moves across the constellations. A dim red and green light glows at each wingtip, but probably below legal illumination levels. A white light flashes from the nose of the ship, directed toward my beacon. Pulses of long and short.

I locate the HF on Vlad’s dash and pick up the mic without asking. Legally, with the ships docked to my beacon, they’re under my command. Warrant or no.

“Won’t need that,” O’Shea says, squinting up at the ship.

I ignore him and squeeze the mic. “Vessel inbound at beacon 23, state your intentions.”