The Reaper Diaries: Fetch Job, Part 1
02 Dec 2015Michael Wolfe
It was bad enough that I was paralyzed. It was worse that I was paralyzed and helpless. But paralyzed, helpless, and naked? That’s just low. Everything had gone to hell. The job, my ship, and my dignity.
This is all her fault.
I tried moving my head. Still no luck. But my mouth and my tongue were responding a little. That should help manage the steady flow of drool that had been soaking my ship’s bunk for about an hour.
No. This is all your fault.
There was the door, right in front of me. The one she walked out of, laughing at my gullibility.
How the hell did I end up here?
I was alone in my ship, on an uninhabited ice planet. Engines shot out, mission failed, and the side of my head in a puddle of my own drool. And did I mention that I was naked?
Rax. This all started with Rax and that stupid job posting.
I thought back to where this whole mess had begun. It had been nearly a week ago, on Ackerman Market, in the Eravate System. Reliving how I had arrived at this humiliating spot wasn’t exactly pleasant, but what the hell else was I supposed to do?
Funny how everything can change in a few days. It seems like another age. Before this. Before the artifact. Before…
...her.
“This ain’t exactly your kind of work, Lehman.” Rax was giving me a skeptical look, as my Pilot’s Federation info reflected across his face. He had been reading my record from his personal holo-projector, and hadn’t spoken a word other than the occasional grunt.
“I mean, you’re a decent bounty hunter, and you occasionally bring in some trinkets worth buying. But this?”- he gestured towards the mission screen- “This is out of your league, kid. No offense.”
I threw up my arms in frustration. “So, I can’t even try to find it? And what happens if I bring it in anyway?”
Rax shrugged, flipping off the holo-projector. “Then I apologize, pay you, and we have a drink.”
I stood up and threw on my black leather duster. “That's all I needed to hear. I’ll see you when this is all wrapped up.”
He tossed me a holo-disk containing the mission info. “Of course, there are consequences for failure.”
I caught it, and stuffed it in my pocket. Plenty of time to examine this later. ”Yeah? What kind of consequences?”
Rax smirked like the smartass he was. “You admit that I was right, get mocked by me and my mates, and we have a drink anyway. It’s no skin off my nose if you decide to waste your time on this. Besides, it ain’t like you’re the only one I’ve got looking for it, anyway.”
I smoothed the sides of my jacket. “Sixty-thousand?”
He nodded. “Sixty thousand.”
I smiled. “Consider it delivered.”
And just like that, you agreed to fetch an alien artifact.
Now I was considering the downside of the job.
About which you know nothing. Is it Thargoid? Indigenous? Would you even know the difference?
All you did was see the job posting. No- you didn’t even see that. You saw the credit reward, and hopped right on it.
Well, I had been itching for a break from reaping, right? One can only cash in so many bounty vouchers before it starts to feel like a chore.
You wanted different- and boy, did you get it. Way to go, asshole.
I climbed into The Professor, my Viper Mk III, and started warming up the systems. It had been named in honor of my father, the history teacher. As a bounty hunter’s ship, it was also used to educate criminal scum about the error of their ways. Get it? It’s clever.
Not that I was feeling too clever at that moment. I fished the holo-disk out of my jacket pocket, popped it into the slot, and let it load. It was a self-recorded video of Rax, staring straight into the camera. Amused, I hit “play”.
Ok, the damn thing’s working. If you’re watching this, it’s because you know about that alien artifact we need to get our hands on. Don’t bother asking why we need it or who it’s for- the point is that whoever brings it in gets a big pile of credits. Simple enough?
Let’s cut to the chase: as far as we know, the artifact is just a hunk of rock with weird alien letters carved into it. Here’s a picture of one like it:
I don’t know how big it is. My sources tell me that it’s somewhere in the LHS 3005 system. I know that’s a ways out, but we’re making it worth it. Bring it back, and get paid.
Rax out.
For a few moments, I just stared at the screen, watching the circle arrow asking me if I wanted to play the video again.
Well, that was about as useless as a hand-drawn sign with an arrow. Thanks a heap, Rax.
I ejected the disk, looked at it a moment, and flung through the door toward The Professor’s sleeper. I heard it impact against a bulkhead wall somewhere and skid across the floor.
The LHS 3005 system. Never heard of it. Great.
I swung to my left to bring up the galaxy map. Let’s hope it's at least a straightforward system.
The screen cycled a moment to retrieve the data, and-
Nope. A single station, dozens of planetoids… and this artifact could be on any of them.
I sat back in the pilot’s chair, already feeling defeated. This is already a needle in a goddamn haystack.
It was tempting to just contact Rax over the comms and tell him to shove off with this mission, but my ego and bravado had already obligated me to set out.
“Consider it delivered”… idiot.
Sighing, I set the course for LHS 3005. Just look at all those waypoints.
I went back to the sleeper and checked the fridge. This is going to be a long one.
The more I flew The Professor, the more I realized that I had named it well, in that neither my father nor my ship liked very long journeys. Not that the Viper couldn’t make it- it just had short legs, as far as jumping was concerned. An Asp Explorer it was not. Bounty hunters tend to set up in systems that have entrenched crime problems- why venture far from the pay dirt? The ships that they flew were more or less designed with this assumption in mind.
So, no: I wasn’t exactly used to road trips. And I wasn’t in a good ship for it, either. It was jump, scoop, jump, scoop, jump, scoop. For hours. For days.
I had by no means plotted the quickest route to LHS 3005, but every single one of my stops was at a scoop-able star. Besides, I had never been in this part of the bubble before, and hell if I was going to run out of gas and need rescuing by the Fuel Rats.
Finally, I jumped into the LHS 3005 system, its yellow star filling my canopy view. Ok. I’m here. Now where the hell do I start?
The only hub of civilization in the entire system was Cartmill City, a large station that housed most of the system’s 3 million inhabitants in those enormous rings of artificial planet surface. There were dozens of tiny outposts dotting the icy planets, but Cartmill seemed like the best bet. Besides, it would be good to dock and stretch my legs.
On any station as packed as Cartmill, there was plenty to space to get lost. Pilots tend to not explore their pitstops too much, since it isn’t a good idea to wander a strange space station any more than it is to take a stroll down a shady-looking alley in a planetside city. Also like any surface metropolis, a station is divided into de facto neighborhoods- thanks to the miracle of 34th century engineering, it’s actually possible for a person to be born, live, work, and die on the same station their entire lives. Unusual, granted- but it wasn’t unheard of, either.
Another practical result of the “neighborhooding” was that if you were a pilot, there were bars, shopping centers, hotels, and restaurants near the hangers where you were expected to stay. There wasn't usually anything prohibiting you from just taking a stroll down the residential blocks and having a drink in, say, the miner’s quarter- but it was something that, as a rule, you just didn’t do. Why? Because you didn’t, that’s why.
This arrangement suited me just fine. I prefer the company of other pilots, not because of the conversation, but because of the lack of it. Usually, if a local yokel gets the slightest whiff of “pilot”, your next hour is spent getting bombarded with questions from someone who might never have even travelled out of their home system.
What’s it like to be a pilot?
How come it’s called “witch space”?
How many people have you killed?
Have you ever met a space pirate?
How do you go to the bathroom if your gravity gets knocked out?
You get the idea.
So, I changed into some more comfortable clothes- slacks, sweater, and leather jacket (Cartmill seemed a few degrees colder than most stations) and headed to the nearest bar. I packed my tablet and fished the holo-disk of Rax’s from the floor where it had been sliding around for a few days. Might need that, too, as useless as it was.
I had figured that I could get some peace and quiet at the nearest hole-in-the-wall bar that I could find. I wanted to interface with the station’s network and dig up anything I could about alien artifacts. Maybe there were some ruins on one of these icy planets? I didn’t know jack about xeno-archaeology, but I knew that the more humanity pushed out into space, the more we had run into curious little surprises here and there regarding civilized life on other worlds. Then, of course, there was the whole Thargoid thing, which I understand was pretty terrifying, but it was before my time. Besides, Thargoids hadn’t been spotted in decades, ever since we damn near wiped them out with that virus.
I ordered a tall beer and a synth steak, since I hate researching on an empty stomach. I popped in the holo-disk and had it display the artifact above the tablet to help me focus.
Ok, local network access is good to go.
LHS 3005 alien artifacts… 502 results. Great.
LHS 3005 dig sites… 32 results… ok.
LHS 3005 alien artifact locations… 0 results.
My brow furrowed in frustration. So what the hell was all that stuff about dig sites and artifacts?
I accessed a few of the hits and skimmed the contents. Paranoid conspiracy theories. Thargoids around every corner. Mysterious doomsday station failures.
Awesome.
And dig sites? Yeah, there were a few, but most of the artifacts had been accidentally uncovered by mining operations- and there was no way that that the LHS 3005 Travel Network was going to shut down a profitable mine just so that some archaeologists could take some samples. What few artifacts that had been excavated were locked away in a lab somewhere off-system, and it wasn’t like I could just stroll into one of those.
I could have made twice the mission reward already if I’d have just put in a few hard days worth of reaping.
At least the beer was looking good when it finally showed up with the steak. That, and the young woman sitting across the bar from me. She was reclining, smoking what appeared to be a cigarette, and wearing some pretty wicked eye-shields. Age in the 34th century was tricky- a person could be 60 and still look like they’re 30- but she looked to be 26 or so, maybe a little younger. She had been staring in my direction almost the entire time I had been seated. I’m never one to waste an opportunity with an attractive female of the species, so I smiled and gave her my best chin lifty. Slowly, a smile crept across her face, as well.
Maybe it was worth coming here, after all.
She continued smiling for just a moment, and then planted her feet and walked up to me, her slim, leather-wrapped hips swaying at eye-level towards me. I looked up, and she was staring down, still smiling, head cocked at an angle, metallic-purple hair falling over her shoulders.
“Want a little company with that steak dinner, flyboy?”
I smiled and gestured to the vacant chair in front of me. The woman pulled it out and sat down, leather from her clothes creaking with the effort. She took a drag of whatever it was she was smoking- not tobacco, from the smell of it, but something a little more pungent and acidic- and took a healthy swig of her drink. She gestured towards the hologram of the artifact that was floating above my tablet.
“So what’s that? Your weekend homework?” Her voice was still sweet, but with traces of mocking sarcasm lingering on the edges.
The hologram of the artifact continued to flicker and rotate.“Something like that. But it’s a hands-on assignment. Show-and-tell, you could say.”
She smiled and raised her eyebrows. “Well, I was never one for school, but 'hands-on' was always my favorite way to learn about something that interested me.”
Is this beauty flirting with me?
I smiled back and took a drink. “So, what brings you all the way out to good ol’ LHS 3005? Something tells me you ain’t a local.”
She giggled. “Nope. Just a girl with a spaceship, looking for a good time. What about you?”
I shrugged and gestured towards the hologram. “Just a guy with a spaceship, looking for this.”
Behind her oversized glasses, I couldn’t tell if the mysterious stranger sitting across from me was looking at me or the hologram of the artifact. “Doesn’t look like much. What is it?”
I slid the tablet over to her. “Some kind of alien artifact. Don’t know much about it, except that if I find it, it’s a payday.”
The woman regarded the hologram for a moment, and looked back at me. “So you’re a freelance treasure hunter?”
I took the tablet back, shutting off the hologram. “Bounty hunter, actually. I’m just doing this to mix it up, keep things from getting dull.” I took another sip of my beer and smiled playfully. “You ain’t wanted in this system, are you? I’m always up for a little bonus on the side.”
Her smirk widened. “Not this one. But if you want to keep things from getting dull, maybe I can help you out. Maybe you hadn't noticed, but this system is crawling with Authority, and I’m what you could call an independent hauler”- her smile widened a tad more- “for goods that shouldn’t strictly be where I deliver them.”
Raising my eyes, I looked into my reflection on her eye shields. “So, you’re a smuggler?”
She leaned forward, voice hushed and index finger over her lips in an exaggerated gesture of secrecy. “You gonna tell on me, flyboy?”
I leaned forward too, my face inches from hers. “Not if you can help with the job. And not if you tell me your name.”
She sat back up, arms folded. One finger pointed at me like a gun. “You first.”
“Lehman. Matthew Victor Lehman. Call me Matt.”
The young woman in front of me nodded. “Kyndi.” She extended her hand, and we shook.
“Kyndi- what?”
She smiled. “Just Kyndi. ”
“Well, 'just Kyndi', I’ll have you know that I normally work alone.”
“Same here.”
“And my ship only has one seat.”
She shrugged. “So does mine.”
“Still think this little partnership of ours can work?”
Kyndi looked me up and down and paused a moment before answering.
“Yeah." She grinned again. "In fact, I think everything's going to work out just fine.”