“This is so fucking cool!”
For the fifth time in as many minutes, Jace brushed back his black leather duster and drew his sidearm in one fluid motion, quick as an eye blink. He twirled the pistol a few times before expertly holstering it as part of the final spin. He grinned up at his brother and spread his hands, as though to say “ta-da!”
Mark couldn’t help but smile at his older brother’s childlike enthusiasm. Mark had been the same way at the beginning of the last Cycle, and Jace had gamely let him have his fun. He decided to return the favor. “That’s awesome, man!”
Jace was the Captain of the ship, and had chosen “gunslinger” as his skill set. As such, he’d spent the last hour exploring the Lonestar and practicing gun tricks. Mark, on the other hand, had volunteered to be the pilot. While the core skills for the occupations they had chosen were something that A.I.D.A. uploaded, for lack of a better description, at the beginning of a Cycle, there was still a lot for Mark to learn about the ship and how things worked before he’d really be very effective at his job. The folks that programed the Cycle, and by extension A.I.D.A., weren’t much for hand holding. Jace guessed they figured that the Colony Members had all the time in the world. Why make things too easy on them?
The Lonestar was an old converted freighter that looked like a brick with wings slapped on it’s side. It wasn’t very pretty, but it was functional. From what Mark could gather, it was pretty middle of the road as far as speed went, but it’d been modified with a decent set of armaments and defenses, so they could probably hold their own in a fight if it came to it. Knowing Jace, it most assuredly would, and he’d want to have the ship customized and upgraded as soon as they could afford it. His brother may at times seem wealth-oriented, but Mark knew it wasn’t out of a sense of greed or the need to have the best of everything. Jace had spent their entire childhood fending for them to survive. As a result, his brother couldn’t help but focus on amassing resources as quickly as possible at the start of each new Cycle. Jace was like a squirrel always perpetually preparing for winter, and couldn’t even begin to relax until he was sure he and his brother had more than enough, both financially and in firepower. Jace was the guy with the plan. The big picture guy. Mark had always been his right hand and the one that kept his brother grounded. It’d worked for them. They survived when so many others that they’d known hadn’t.
Like their parents.
Mark returned his attention to memorizing the ship’s schematics. The Lonestar had enough private quarters to house five crew members, though at the moment there was only the two of them. He and Jace would need to talk about whether they wanted to try to hire any sims as crew, or if they’d do their usual thing and just keep it the two of them. There was also a cargo hold that had been converted into a prisoner transport area. Ten individual force cages lined the walls. At the center was an airtight security station. In an emergency, one or all of the cells could be vented into the cold vacuum of space, while the crew member at the security station would be protected. Mark shivered at the thought. Brutal, but effective. He hoped he’d never need to use it.
The panel next to him started to beep.
Jace’s head popped up from over Mark’s shoulder and he pointed at the flashing indicator light. “What’s that flashing?”
Mark scratched at his head. “Communications.”
Jace dramatically leveled a finger at the console and bellowed, “On screen!”
Mark snorted. “Jesus, you’re going to be insufferable, aren’t you?”
He grinned. “Reap the whirlwind, wizard nerd.”
Mark rolled his eyes and hit the indicated button. The screen on the co-pilot’s side of the cockpit sprang to life, replacing the field of stars with an image of a middle aged human male, with pasty white skin, a bright orange handlebar moustache, and thin grey-red hair haloing a massive bald spot. He was enthusiastically puffing at what looked like a fat brown cigar, the front cherrying orange-red with each inhale. Identifying information scrolled across the bottom of the screen in mustard yellow:
Name: Manny Mans
Occupation: Fixer/Bail Bondsman
Relationship Status: Working Allies- Five Years
Mark glanced up at his brother and then gestured at the screen. Jace took the hint and repositioned so that Manny could see him better. “Manny! Long time. What can we do for you?”
Manny blew out a huge billow of smoke and then flashed a Cheshire smile that was all yellowed teeth. “Boys! I’m glad I got ahold of you before you jumped system! Got a job. Big one. She’s a difficult case, and I need the best. So, I asked myself, I says, ‘Manny? When you need the best, you know who you need to call?’ And I replied, ‘Yer goddam right I do! I need to call the Reynolds Brothers!’ I says to myself, ‘When you need a tough job done right, that’s who you call!'”
Jace blinked. “Wow, you said a lot. To yourself. Thanks, I guess? Who’s the quarry?”
Manny pushed a button and his image was replaced with another. This one was a grainy shot clearly taken from some kind of security footage. It was a zoomed in head shot of a young human woman, maybe late twenties to early thirties. What was left of her hair was bright purple and styled in a pointy mohawk. She also had a few silver rings in her nose, ears, lips, and probably a few other places that Jace couldn’t see. There were also what looked like black and red tattoo’s snaking up her throat in a weave pattern, but the image was zoomed too tight for Jace to really tell what it might be. Jace wasn’t normally into the whole punk chick aesthetic, but the woman in the image was definitely making it work for her.
“She calls herself Kayla Blaze. She’s wanted for theft in three systems. Got a bounty on her head of twenty kay. There’s a ten thou bonus if you bring her in alive.” He chuckled, and it sounded like a walrus grunt-fucking. Jace tried not to laugh at the mental image. “She musta really pissed the wrong people off to have a bounty that high just for theft. Bad for her, good for us, eh boys?! Ha! Anywhos, one of my feelers just sent word that she was spotted out just a short skip from where you are, at Port Orion. Thought maybe you could take a look before she blows in the wind. If you bag her, I get my standard twenty percent finder’s. Sending you the deets now. Just watch yer asses, ‘kay? Word is she’s a bad bitch. Already took out a few hunters on her trail. Did ’em messy. Don’t let the looks fool ya, eh? Think with the right head.” He looked knowingly at Jace and gestured with his cigar when he said that last, and Jace felt personally attacked. “Happy hunting, boys.”
The screen winked out and Mark scoffed, “Charming guy. Definitely seems to know you pretty well.”
“Har, har.”
Mark’s console beeped again and a file popped up on his monitor. “Uh, yeah, I got the location. Port Orion. Marked as a ‘Free Trade Space Station,’ whatever that means. According to this, known as a stop off for rowdy types- pirates, smugglers, scoundrel’s. Provides fuel, gambling, and ‘entertainment’.”
Jace smacked his hands together and started to rub vigorously. “Hell, yes! My kind of place!”
Mark punched a few more buttons. “Oh, thank God this navigation system is nothing complicated! Looks like I can just click the link he sent and the autonav will automatically set the coordinates and take us there when I engage the drive.”
“Make it so, Number One! Engage!”
“Dude, you have got to stop.”
Mark keyed the skip drive and space ahead of them seemed to warp and bend. There was a bright flash and then a massive asteroid was right in front of them. Mark blinked. No, it wasn’t an asteroid. Well, it was. Or had been, anyway. Structures had clearly been built into the surface, and now ships came and went, swarming all around it like knats.
Jace gasped behind him. “Well, that was trippy. What the hell happened?”
“I used the skip drive. According to the brief you should have read, in this Cycle faster-than-light travel is achieved by using ‘skip drives’ that somehow warp and bend space around the ship, instantly moving it from one place to another, as long as that place is near a ‘skip beacon’. Don’t ask me how the hell that even works, because I understand fuck-all right now.”
“Fair enough. I guess take us in close and see if we can find a parking spot? Do we need to hail a tower and request landing or something?”
Mark glared up at his brother. “Do I look like A.I.D.A.? How the hell should I know?”
“You’ve been doing your nerd thing and reading the whole time we’ve been here!”
“Dude, it’s been a fucking hour! Unfortunately, I can’t just directly download everything straight into my brain.”
Jace held up both hands in supplication. “Okay, okay! Sorry. I’m just excited is all. Take your time to figure out what you need to figure out.”
“Thank you.”
Jace was silent for a few breaths, and then he muttered, “Just saying, sooner would be better. We don’t want to lose h-“
As nut taps go, it wasn’t the hardest that Mark had ever given his brother. Still, it got the message across and Jace shut the fuck up. Mark was skimming the parts of their brief he hadn’t gotten to yet, hoping some of this basic stuff might be outlined, when he was spared the further need by someone from Port Orion hailing them.
“Lonestar, you planning on landing or just enjoying the view?”
The voice was gruff, but sounded like it was probably a female. Mark keyed the comm. It was voice only, thank God. He didn’t know if he could handle a face full of weird alien right then. “Uh, yeah Orion. There a place you want us to go, or…”
“Bloody hell, Mark! You act like you’ve never been here before! Land in Bay Four and fuck off down to see me. I may have a job for you and that jackass of a brother you fly with. Don’t keep me waiting. Bertrude, out.”
Mark blinked. “I guess Bertrude wants us to land in Bay Four and ‘fuck off’ to see her.”
“I guess so,” Jace wheezed.
Mark grabbed the control yoke and eased the ship towards where Dock Four was indicated on his nav screen. Once again, he was amazed at how easily skills came to him that he had no practical experience using. He’d never piloted anything in his life, much less a starship; yet he almost instinctually knew what to do, as though he’d been flying his ship for decades. Easy as breathing. Not for the first time, Mark silently wished he could learn other things that way. Maybe that was the point of doing the Colony this way? At this rate, by the time the Colony is released from hypersleep, the Members would have lived so many lives that they’d be natural experts on all kinds of things. Probably intentional, he decided. He knew the reasoning was that a human brain in hypersleep long term without stimulation tends to drive the host insane. Why just kill a single bird when you could hit a couple with one stone?
Jace’s head appeared over his shoulder once again, only this time he was decidedly less rambunctious. “So, was there anything in the brief that you saw that mentioned this Bertrude?”
“She’s the administrator of Port Orion. She’s also something of a minor crime boss. Port Orion is known for being the Mos Eisley of this area of space.”
Jace did his best Kenobi impression. “You’ll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.”
Mark leveled a finger at him and winked. “Ex-actly. That said, according to the brief, we’ve worked for her in the past…both officially and under the books. It didn’t give any more details than that.”
Jace grunted. “So odds are, she really does have a job for us. Whether it’ll be above board or not is up in the air.”
“Odds are.”
Jace brightened. “Great! We’ll go see what Bertrude wants and maybe score another gig. She may even be able to point us to where we might run into that Kayla chick, too. If Bertrude is the head honcho, there’s no way she isn’t aware that someone with a bounty on her head is running around.”
Mark arched an eyebrow up at him. “Why are you so gung-ho all of a sudden? We just popped into this Cycle and you’ve already got us diving in the deep end before we’ve learned to swim.”
Jace rolled his eyes. “Well, little brother, while you’ve been reading the brief, I’ve been looking into other important factors. Stuff like what our bank account looks like. How much food and fuel we have. You know, stuff that’ll directly keep us alive for the immediate future; and it ain’t looking great. A.I.D.A. has us coasting in on fumes; and unless there’s some secret credit account that was listed in the brief where we’ve got shit stored away, the Reynolds Brothers weren’t exactly killing it recently. I don’t think we’ll have enough to refuel.”
Mark sighed. “God dammit. Why do they always start us off in the shit every Cycle?”
Jace shrugged. “Maybe because we tethered our accounts? I know the eggheads really didn’t like us doing that.”
“Maybe…” He shook his head. “Or, maybe it’s just because if you have to scramble to survive right out of the gate, you don’t have time to think about things. It kinda forces you to live in the life right away.”
“You can say that again.” There was a slight jolt as Mark set the Lonestar down in the hanger. Jace gripped his brother’s shoulder. “For the first time ever landing, that was a great job, man. I know Bertrude said to not keep her waiting, but take a few more minutes to finish skimming the brief while I get our shit together. I’d rather not walk into any surprises we could have known ahead of time about.”
“Right.”
Ten minutes later, the two brothers met at the exit hatch. Jace handed Mark a black vest. “Put this on under your jacket.”
Mark shrugged out of his brown leather jacket, pulled the vest over his head, and used the Velcro straps to secure it into place. “Bulletproof vest?”
Jace nodded. “We have a gun cabinet in the cargo hold that apparently serves as our armory. There were a bunch of different types of guns and these vests. Figured better to have them and not need them…”
“Right.”
Next, Jace handed over what looked like a sci-fi version of a sawed off shotgun. “Here. You’re a shitty shot-“
“Fuck you.”
“-but with this you don’t need to be Annie Oakley. Just point, click, and you’re good. Range is probably going to be shit, so best to only use it when you’re too close to miss. Oh, and make sure to brace yourself when you fire. I’d assume it’ll kick like a mule until it proves otherwise.”
Mark worked the pump and loaded a round with a satisfying cha-chick. “Got it. Hopefully we won’t need to worry about it.”
Jace snorted. “Yeah, because that’s how our lives usually work.”
As the hatch opened a ramp extended, allowing the brothers to exit the ship to the deck below. There were a few other ships parked in the bay, mostly personal short distance craft the size of bi-planes. The two brothers couldn’t help but take a moment to gawk at the scene beyond the magconfield that held in the atmosphere, their mouths agape. According to the information that was available in the ships databanks, Port Orion was originally a mining station, and was built within a giant asteroid belt that had been located near the Orion nebula. Those asteroids were, apparently, rich in elements that were highly sought after; so much so that the entire field was mined to practically nothing within a century. It still had an amazing view of the nebula though, so Bertrude bought it and converted it into the waypoint for ne’er-do-wells it was today.
Mark’s voice was barely audible. “That is the most amazingly beautiful thing that I’ve ever seen.”
Jace could just dumbly nod in agreement.
They stood like that for a few minutes, until Jace snapped out of his daze and nudged his brother. “Come on, we should get moving. After the jobs are done we’ll take the ship and just sight see for a bit.”
As they started to walk Jace gripped his brother by the shoulders and side hugged him. “Can you believe we’re in fucking space!? God, I’ve waited my whole life for this!”
Mark couldn’t help but once again grin at his brother’s enthusiasm. He hadn’t seen him this way since they were little kids, before the war. “I know man. You finally get to live out your Han Solo fantasy.”
Jace playfully ruffled his hair. “And I couldn’t do it without you, Chewie! Now, let’s go see what Jabba wants.”
As it turned out, the Star Wars metaphor was pretty apt. The station was bustling with humans and various alien species that looked like something taken straight from George Lucas’ dome. There seemed to be beings of every shape, size, and configuration that could be imagined. A lot looked like humanoid versions of animals found on Earth. Mark saw a few lizard people; some obviously humanized beavers, which was disturbing; cat people; wolf people; bird people, and so on. There were also the more alien designs, with skin tones in weird colors and body part arrangements that were just weird or off.
From next to him Jace whistled, “Wow, they really went buck-wild on the creativity for some of these.”
“No kidding. I wonder where… oh! There’s a sign. Administrator’s office is that way.”
Mark pointed and Jace grunted. “I’ll never get over having shit downloaded into my head. Like that sign is obviously not in English. It’s some weird script that they call ‘galactic standard’, and the fact that I inherently know that and can read it is both really cool and really unsettling.”
Mark was about to reply when he was suddenly shouldered aside by a massive alien that looked like he was a cross between a mountain and a walrus. The thing spun and barble-grunted in an an obviously angry tone. Whatever language the thing was speaking hadn’t been one that A.I.D.A. uploaded, but Jace knew a bully when he saw one. He also knew that overt aggression was pretty universal in getting a point across. His gun was out of it’s holster and tucked under the thing’s… chin, before it could finish it’s threat.
“You should be more careful, friend. Someone could get hurt. Now, I suggest you apologize to my brother and move the fuck on.”
He emphasized that last with the click of his gun’s hammer cocking. The alien’s eyes bulged and it nodded very slowly. Message received. It mumbled something and then hurried off down the corridor. Jace waited for it to disappear into the crowd before holstering his weapon and offering his brother a hand up.
Mark grunted. “Look at you, being all diplomatic.”
“Yeah, I’m a galactic Kissinger.”
“Who?”
Jace rolled his eyes. “Nevermind. Let’s get moving.”
The boys managed to weave their way to Bertrude’s office without further diplomatic incidents, and was stopped by two beefy guards in matching leather outfits, cheerless dispositions, and automatic weapons. Mark nervously looked to his older brother, who shrugged and took a step forward with a smile.
“Heya, boys! Bertrude told us to fuck off up to see her, so we’ve fucked off directly here. Mind if we go in?”
The two guards shared a glance, with expressions that read to Mark as they’d prefer to rip the brother’s heads off and then use them as toilets. Instead, the one on the left grunted and hit a button next to the door. The door wooshed open and Bertrude’s voice bellowed from beyond, “Well, fuck off in here already!”
Mark nervously sidled between the two guards, who clearly had no intention of moving at all. Jace rolled his eyes and pushed his way past in a show of bravado that made Mark proud. While it appeared that Jace had no fucks to give, in reality he was about to piss himself. He figured they wouldn’t want to piss off their boss by fucking with the guy that she clearly and urgently wanted to see. His gamble was rewarded when the guards hurled curses and growls at his back, but not bullets.
Bertrude’s office was large and painted piss yellow. It was not a stylistic choice that Jace would have gone with, but there’s no arguing taste. That said, the impressive collection of weapons from all over the galaxy that completely covered the walls and were displayed in cases surrounding the room distracted from the poor color choice. The only other furniture in the room was a black desk that took up the entire north wall and two metal chairs in front of it. From behind the massive desk stood Bertrude, who was easily as intimidating as the office that she owned. She stood at least seven feet tall, with a wide, muscular frame to match. She also had four, three fingered arms, like Goro from Mortal Kombat, and massive tusks the grew from her lower jaw like a warthog.
She spread her four arms wide and bellowed, “Finally! Boys! Get in here! You took your sweet ass time getting here, and we didn’t have much to begin with!”
If Jace was put off by Bertrude’s appearance, he didn’t show it. He did his best Han Solo impression and spread his hands with a smile. “Bertrude! We got here as soon as we could! What’s the big rush?”
“I got a gig that needs doing, and since you two owe me, you’re gonna be the ones that do it.”
Jace blinked, but took it in stride. “Okay, what’s the gig?”
Bertrude reached under her desk and pressed a button, and a door designed to blend into the wall slide aside and a woman stepped into the office.
A very familiar woman.
“Boys, this is Kayla Blaze, and you’re going to smuggle her off of Orion.”
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