Hard Luck Hermit

The mining outpost they’d found themselves on apparently had very stringent security measures, so much so that they couldn’t even land the Hard Luck Hermit directly on the planet’s surface. They had landed on an exterior space station and then split up, with Tooley and Doprel staying on the ship (Tooley, for obvious reasons of laziness, and Doprel just in case another assassin snuck aboard), while Corey, Kamak, and Farsus pursued their bounty. A small shuttlecraft ferried the trio out of orbit and into the atmosphere, though it was far from a comfortable journey.

Ever since they’d entered the planet’s exosphere, the ship had been rumbling slightly, occasionally pitching to the side at random intervals. Kamak and Farsus had the veteran spacefarer instincts to lean into every shake, but Corey was starting to get rattled.

“You’d think they could get a better pilot,” Corey mumbled. The cockpit was separated from the passenger area, but Corey still didn’t want to risk being overheard.

“Atmospheric entry is harder than it looks,” Kamak said, with an unexpectedly grim look in his eyes.

“And you have been unnecessarily spoiled by our own pilot,” Farsus said. “You have only ever flown with Tooley, and so her skills are your only frame of reference.”

“Is she that good?”

“You think I’d put up with that bitch if she was mediocre?” Kamak asked. “She’s fucking fantastic. Don’t ever tell her that, though. Only thing bigger than her drinking problem is her ego.”

The rattling flight of their apparently-average pilot came to an end as they landed at the mining facility. Kamak provided his bounty hunting credentials to the gate guard, to get their guns past the checkpoint, and then convened his fellow hunters in a short meeting.

“Split up and see if you can find this guy,” Kamak said. He tapped a button and sent an image of their bounty target to everyone’s tablets. “Corey, don’t get lost.”

“I won’t,” Corey said. He feigned indignation, but had made sure to download a map of the station when no one was looking.

“Good, because Farsus can’t talk me into waiting for you that long.”

“Believe what you will,” Farsus said.

“Yeah yeah, you’re very persuasive, shut up and get searching,” Kamak said. “Anybody sees our guy, contact me, and don’t do anything unless he tries to leave.”

While any member of the crew could technically make an arrest, Kamak was the only officially registered bounty hunter, so the technicalities got ironed out whenever he was present. The end result would usually be the same, but there would be less paperwork for everyone involved along the way.

Corey picked a hallway at random and started heading down it, finding himself strolling along a seemingly endless parade of hallways. Corey picked a door at random and poked his head in. A quick scan of the room showed no immediate sign of their target, a humanoid with orange skin and thick rows of deep black hair. Corey briefly felt glad for the variety of skin tones in space, because he could tell at a glance everyone in this room was green, and that made the search very easy. He skipped this room and headed for the next.

Having wandered his way into some kind of lunchroom, Corey tried to brush off the awkward stares of the occupants and take a seat in an unoccupied corner. The enforced silence and awkward sidelong glances made it very clear that Corey shouldn’t be here, but he also couldn’t leave. He’d spotted their target.

The young alien was sitting amid a small cluster of his species, on the far side of the room. Though they stole occasional glances at Corey, that probably had more to do with him being out of place than any real suspicions of him. With a coat covering his body armor and disguising the pistol strapped to his side, there wasn’t much identifying Corey as a bounty hunter. He tried to keep it that way as he sent Kamak a message and transmitted his location.

After enduring ten nightmarishly awkward minutes (or about ten point five awkward drops, Corey reminded himself) Kamak strutted into the room, took one look around, and locked on to their target. He nodded at Corey to follow him as he approached the target. Following Kamak’s lead, Corey undid his coat, revealing the fact that he was armored, and more importantly, armed.

“Hey, kiddo,” Kamak said, as he strolled up to their target and forced his way into the circle of their conversation. “You know there’s a bounty on you?”

Since he could see nobody here was armed, or all that fighting fit, Kamak took the matter much more casually than usual. This was a third-rate bounty, not the kind likely to get violent.

“Ugh, this shit,” the target. “Devann isn’t even illegal in most systems.”

“It was illegal in the system you sold it in,” Kamak said. “And even in the places it’s legal, selling three point eight tons of it will raise some eyebrows.”

“Come on, this can’t be worth your time.”

“I’ve been paid less to do more, so unless you’ve got thirteen swaps worth of whining in you, you’re worth the paycheck in my book,” Kamak said. “But in case you’re getting any ideas about how to burn that much time, trust me, trying to drag it out will cost you more than it costs me.”

Kamak emphasized his point by tactically placing his hands on his hips, at just the right angle to show off his holstered gun. Corey tried to not-too-obviously mimic Kamak’s pose and managed to reveal a small portion of the butt of his pistol. He figured that was good enough.

Much to both Corey and Kamak’s relief, the gaggle of aliens surrounding their target backed away from him. Apparently he wasn’t worth fighting for. With nobody at his back and two guns in front of him, the bounty target gave up on any ideas of resistance or escape. He stood up and compliantly allowed Kamak to latch his wrists behind his back with some solid metal handcuffs.

“Smart guy,” Kamak said. “Play nice and stay quiet. Always goes over better with the people at your trial.”

Kamak had heard that from other bounty hunters, but he had no way of knowing if it was true. He rarely followed up on the people he arrested unless he though their crimes were funny. He made regular checkups on an old guy who’d got caught trying to smuggle a Thiddian Ringworm through customs in his anus, and never ended the search without having a good chuckle. This guy would offer no such amusement.

“So, this is all about the Devann smuggling, then?”

“You saying there’s something else I should be hauling you in for?”

“No,” said the bounty, a little too swiftly. Kamak couldn’t care less. He barely cared about the crimes someone was paying him to care about.