It was like waking up, only a whole lot slower. The eyesight blurred but slowly beginning to regain it's sharpness and clarity. The signals from the eyes slowly accelerating on it's way up to the celebral cortex, but any data arriving there just sort of bounced into oblivion. There wasn't really anybody home, yet.
"Where am I?" wasn't the first thought that poured through the slowly awakening brain, no, there were plenty of them before that one. But they faded away before they ever could gain any form of meaning.
The shapes and forms. The brain finally began processing the input. The blinking lights from what could be some sort of control panel. A cage-like construction of metallic frames with windows between them. The frames bending down toward what could be forward. That wasn't really established by the brain, yet. The windows, dirty and scratchy, separating this space from the fuzzy pinkish clouds in the space outside of them. An evenly spaced humming sound accompanied with a similarly evenly spaced reccuring vibration. Hands still holding some sort of control stick. This was a vessel of some sort, and he was in it's cockpit.
He hadn't the slightest idea on how to manouver this thing. All the buttons blinking angrily at him weren't waking up any memories as to what function they had. If only they could speak.
He jolted from the sudden appearance of that voice. It's was obviously the vessel speaking to him, and for a moment it felt to him as if it had heard his thoughts.
"Where... where am I?" he uttered, hoping the vessel would somehow hear him and respond. But there was nothing - apart from the humming from the engines and the blips and blops from the instrumentation - answering. If his memory had served him he would have remembered this as his loneliest moment ever.
He awoke again, hazed and confused, not even having realized he had drifted off into sleep. He did not recognize his surroundings from before, which meant he somehow had been transfered off the ship. His heart jolted when a blurred shadowlike figure suddenly appeared on his left side. It began speaking to him with a silk smooth, female voice:
"Finally, you are awake mister"
The figure, out of focus due to his irritatingly blurred eyesight, had a strange foreign accent to its pronunciation. He opened his mouth to answer, but not a word got the chance to leave his mouth before he drifted right back into the dark mist of unconsciousness.
Elsewhere, a man with a cold, strong voice announced:
"This here is your target"
For a short while, silence. Then an image appeared projected on a great screen in front of the gathered group of greedy, money hungry and somewhat more than averagely professional bounty hunters, mercenaries and freelancing men and women. Those who were never invited to this hunt just didn't make the cut. Not just anybody got called up to perform dirty deeds for Cryer Pharmaceuticals. And when they got the invite, something had been let loose that just shouldn't be out there in the first place. Rudhud-Ran Hudibras knew this. And everyone around him knew this with him.
Hudibras stood by his ship. He let out a deep sigh and jumped inside. A loud noise came out of the twin engines as he started them up. With a bright flash one of the engines caught fire and emergency lights went on.
Several nearby engineers rushed to his ship to help put out the fire. In a matter of minutes the fire was put out, and not long after a tall man came rushing in.
"Are you in charge of these lads, good sir?" Hudibras asked.
"That's right." Said the man with a clear Libertonian accent.
Hudibras handed him the keys to the ship and placed them in his hand and asked:
The comfort of hospital beds and the tending from caring nurses had him almost completely forget about the ship. The ship now sat in the hangar, imprinted with dust and scratches from what could have been combat, but most likely were scrapings from micro meteroites and larger particles of space dust. He was on his feet, barely, a nurse held him steady by his side.
"So... this is my ship?"
The nurse nodded, and a man who had stayed in the periphery of the hangar sighed before entering the field of view.
The mans voice was sharp and irritated: "So you really can not remember anything ?"
If he could have remembered it would not have been this ship. It did not feel like it belonged to him in any way or form.
The sharp voiced man, who was a Kusari police officer, waltzed around the ship, inspecting it up close. Scraping dust off with busy hands, doing his job, and being bored with not getting any questions answered from this... stranger. He inhaled deeply, before continuing his questioning:
"Where are you from?"
"I... I can't remember. I keep telling you, I can't remember. Hell..."
The officer continued his tour around the ship. He stopped only to look up at the stranger. He did not like strangers, especially strangers without identification. And he did not trust foreigners.
"Bretonia? Liberty? WHERE ARE YOU FROM?" The sudden outburst from the Kusari police officer echoed in the hangar.
And then everything went black. He could feel something being strapped tight around his forehead. Suddenly he lost balance and he fell - the nurse was not holding him up anymore. He took note of the cold metal floor scraping his chin as he landed. Pain. Then he heard muffled electric discharge noises nearby tightly followed by the Kusari police officer screaming out in pain. He heard someone mumble and then the troubled voices of his nurse disappearing in a distance. And then it went really black, and silent, as he drifted out of conscioussness.
"Three days." Hudibras muttered..
The engineers were working as hard as they could on fixing his ship, he knew this, but he was anxious to get going. Hours passed when finally he heard a familiar noise coming out of the docking bay.
He started running towards the docking bay. The cheering got stronger and stronger as he got closer.
"It's working!" "We did it!"
The engineers cheered. And rightly so, the Raven's Talon was in bad shape. Hudibras felt joy, after all, the ship was all he had.
"So.. It's a matter of the payment.. Yes.." Hudibras spoke uneasily.
"You see.. I was just on my way to Kusari.. On a bit of business, you see.." He continued.
The man in charge of the engineers walked towards Hudibras and leaned close.
"Give me the credits.. Now."
"You see.. I don't really have.. any.. credits." He paused..
"I will get you the money.. On my honour, good sir, I will get them for you." Hudibras said confidently.
"You've got one week. One week." The man said before he walked off.
Nineteenth of May, Chugoku Gate Construction Site.
Time was of the essence. Hudibras stormed in taking sideway steps in order to check every room he passed. He had his target.. This time he had no choice. The job had to be done.
As he approached a rather secluded docking bay, he heard chatter from what seemed to be a Kusari police officer questioning someone. Moving closer, he was startled as the officer started shouting. Hudibras took a close look around the corner. The man standing next to the nurse, his target, the police officer, an obstacle.
He quickly sneaked up behind the target, and put a blindfold around his eyes, making him loose his balance and fall to the floor. With the officer looking away he grabbed his neck in a chokehold and stole his tazer gun, which he then fired into his back. It was all done in a matter of seconds. The only witness was the woman.
"Not women." He mumbled looking at the nurse, who then started moving away.
He awoke, aching all over, and his chest and back were a whirlpool of stinging pain. Again, darkness surrounded him. He could hear machines hissing and humming further from him, but could make out neither their direction or his own orientation towards them. He seemed to be in a weightless state, as he could not feel any form of solidity beneath him. He tried moving his arms, only to become aware that they were attached to something that seriously hampered their freedom. Suddenly something made a scratchy noise beneath him. He startled, and his heart started racing. He turned his head towards the noise. The noise just as suddenly stopped, but he was sure he could hear someone, or something, breathing beneath him.
"H... hello?" he stuttered. "Anyone there?"
He was greeted with a pair of devilishly glowing eyes in the darkness. Then something growled, and he could feel that very 'somethings' warm breath against his back. And then the sharp pain of its teeth grinding through his flesh. His last, terror-stricken, scream could be heard -- even in space.
Patient Journal. unknown, file D-1007
"... the patient suffered from delusions, paranoia and Schizophrenia. Patient was held under strong medication, mainly (CENSORED) from (CENSORED) Pharmaceutical.
Cause of death: hemorrhaging, mainly from self inflicted wounds to his lower back. Patient was found lifeless by personell from (CENSORED) Pharmaceutical, on (CENSORED) to which the patient was remitted by his doctor, dr. (CENSORED).
Obduction performed by dr (CENSORED), (CENSORED) Pharmaceutical. Date as original file.
A few days after dropping off the package, where it was later picked up and transported to an unknown location.
Hudibras stood leaned back towards the hangar bay wall, smoking a cigarette.
"A job well done.." He thought for himself, looking at the incoming neuralnet payment.
He reached into his pocket, and picked up the scrabbled note with a photo attached to it.
"Shellback.." Hudibras chuckled out lightly, while reading it. "Yes.. That was what they called him.."
Memories flew past as he put the story behind him.
"Well.. Time to find some new work.." He mumbled, and put out his cigarette.
He then tore the note apart and threw it on the hangar floor, and walked towards his ship.
With a loud roar from the Ravens Talons twin engines, he set off once again to find his fortune.