The entire cockpit rumbled and rattled quietly as the rush of space through the trade lane hurled the tiny ship along at a tremendous velocity. Each of the titanic rings that passed did so with another subtle shudder and fleeting flash of blue that washed over the cockpit’s intricate controls and readouts. Otherwise, the red lights of the HUD illuminated the interior controls and instrumentation panels. It was a kind of red that was easy on the eyes. It outlined keypads, switches, numerous small monitors, and the flight controls, painting the whole interior of the ship that dull color. The inside of an AP-18100 Hammerhead was a blend of contemporary ship technology, and older, more stubborn, tried and true bits of analogue. Kishiro Tech near-3D displays made up the majority of the HUD around the canopy’s transparent metal, along with the scanner display in the center of her cockpit. The shimmering, non-factory standard red is what lit up most of her view, and was probably the most sophisticated gizmo she had installed that she could lay her eyes upon. It was like well defined embers from a fire, or thousands of tiny little red lasers that were easy on the eyes, not the kind that stabbed you when you saw them. Below and off to the side sat screens nestled into little alcoves, each one practically surrounded by buttons and switches and indicator lights. The myriad of controls covered everything from targeting to fuel consumption adjustment to scanner recalibrations to IFF interrogators and so on and so on. Every so often in the red light, one could spy an aftermarket panel or monitor that looked newer than the others. It was a rough mish mash of a cockpit, one that smelled of cigarette smoke. What passed for an ashtray, effectively a divot hooked up to a little vacuum, saw frequent use by the pilot. A smoldering cigarette burned in it, crumpled up and waiting for her to press the button to suck the ash away.

Her heavy hand gently tapped along the edge of the flightstick that sat off to her right, her scarred fingers strumming along the well worn bits of leather grip. Her seat creaked under her as she adjusted herself, grunting in discomfort as she tried to get the straps not to chafe her chest. The straps holding her down caused her shirt to bunch up as she moved, but her seatbelts refused to give her much room until they were released. A necessary discomfort. Aside from the occasional beeps from her instruments and the rumble of her ship, her ears were treated to quiet and twangy guitars that slowly floated on down from her ship’s intercom as she let the computer run through her collection of old music. It wasn’t enough to be a distraction though, other thoughts dominated her mind. Her tired eyes moved from the navigation display that counted down the distance to Planet Erie, back to her tactical scanners and the two white dots that hovered at the flanks of her ship's sensors.

A glance out the portside window revealed the small, dart shaped silver craft that rocketed through space with her. One of two identical ships, both sporting pointed, fin-like pairs of tails and bore the star of Liberty upon their sides. And police markings. Or, technically, private contractors that had the mask of a policeman. Her ‘escorts’ kept quiet all through the trade lane, and through to the tail end of it at the rapidly approaching planet beyond. They arced through the stars, chasing ring after ring as they slid through the dilated space. Their ships collectively rolled over and with a flash were tossed into a high orbit as the last trade lane ring flew by, all three ships returning to the uncompressed and relatively stationary space/time the rest of the universe occupied. Quietly, one of the screens on her left flickered to life:

A quiet grumble came from the tired pilot as she watched her credit account quickly tick down before a ‘Thank You’ appeared on the same screen. Two thousand one hundred and sixty seven left in her account. And landing the ship would be at least three hundred when all the fees came together. A receipt printer came to life with a series of electronic clicks below. It spat out a more detailed list with several specific identification codes for herself, her ship, the trade lane, and the manifest from her ship. It hung in the printer, sticking out at her like a child’s mocking tongue. The blade on the thing had gone dull a long time ago, and it would hang there until she tore it free herself. With a huff, she reached up and toggled her manual controls back on, clicking through a few control and safety switches before the last one jostled her ship ever so slightly as if rocking a boat. The auto-ACS thrusters toggled off, and the ship was now in full manual. Her hands soon found the familiar feeling of the old grips on the throttle and flightstick, and with a subtle motion her ship came to life and accelerated away from the toll gate at the end of the trade lane. The whole world rumbled quietly around her as her engines flared on and she burned away from the lane.

The dull red radar and scanner combined display that sat in the middle of her instrumentation panels quietly beeped as new contacts came into and left short range scanner range. The various nav buoys she passed by soon gave way to a corridor of space filled with dozens of holo-adverts that lined the path towards the docking ring. New Synth Paste, new optronics, new vacation spots, new CTE high performance racer, new drugs. Those signs were probably the newest thing in this system. Numerous small shuttles and the occasional larger transport passed the three ships as they vectored towards the docking ring at the top of the orbital elevators. Radio chatter from the nearby traffic control stations filtered through the background of the comms, various messages streaming along in their garbled little bundles of static.

The lively orbital space was still nothing compared to the major inner systems of Liberty. The orbit of Manhattan would have five, or even six times as many moving through the lanes, and leaving all the comm lines open for general monitoring would turn the cockpit’s speakers into worthless chatterboxes. Planet Erie had grown dramatically in size as she flew down the trade lanes, and now, in high orbit, the blue and green world sat below her like the ocean with the stars above. It was a rocky world, recently annexed by Liberty, and was still largely wild despite the house’s attempts to civilize it. As the docking ring loomed on the horizon she finally had gotten close enough to transmit her docking codes and destination. She sat there, in line quietly waiting as the planet slowly turned, other ships falling into line behind her, all generously distancing themselves from one another. The traffic control officers took a moment to process her request, before finally a garbled transmission came back to her.

“Roger that, Coyote II, your request to dock is granted. Please proceed to landing pad twenty four at Seneca.”

She unclasped the microphone from the console and dragged it and the curly cord it was attached to up to her mouth.

“Thank you kindly. Starting my approach.” The pilot’s drawl was thick and syrupy like molasses. And as she clicked her radio off she turned towards her ‘escorts’ and let out a meandering stream of grumbles that left her mouth with a breath.

As she followed the flight path the traffic controllers laid out for her, one of the blinking red indicators on her instrumentation panel finally went out. The ‘Target Lock Detected’ indicator shut off with a hollow click and an accompanying low beep as the two LPI ships that had followed her in de-activated their targeting computers and finally pulled away. She watched them gain distance on the scanner a moment before she turned her attention to pulling into the docking queue with the other shuttles and small freighters. No risk of the cops having a hair trigger anymore. Not now at least, they’d let her do her work in peace. Allegedly.

With the orbital elevator, effectively a tunnel of force fields and weather manipulation technology, reentry into Erie was a smooth and easy affair, one that lacked the fiery flare of a manual reentry. Most ship shields couldn’t survive such a thing anyways, and if those went, the hull went next. As space bled away and got bleached out by a pale blue sky, jagged mountains and planes of tundra came into view far down below. Between the splotches of pale green and brown beneath her, the ground quickly opened up to glittering, dark blue seas as she crossed down, past the mountain ranges, and over towards the walled Seneca City colony. One of the oldest settlements on the planet, Seneca was built by the wayward Zoners decades ago, and has steadily grown in size as facilities were constructed to process mined material from the nearby Ralson ice fields. Even from a couple thousand feet up she could clearly make out the large refineries with their towers and massive fields of storage tanks. It was like a huge farm of metal cylinders and pylons. People and drones no doubt work around and between them like little bees.

Ironic that the Zoners, who fled from the influence of the Houses, would find themselves trapped in Liberty once the system was annexed. Liberty was not as just as its namesake suggested. No, they were scooping up everything not nailed down. Civilization at any price. And that included running over the Zoner colonies for their shot at resources and tax revenues, and to route out any pirates that sought safety in the backwater sector. All at the expense of the Zoners. Now they struggled to even get by, suddenly oppressed by the powers they fled. They hadn’t fled far enough, and now they were floundering in the shallows as the tides of progress threatened to rip them out to sea. Sucks, but they needed to grow a backbone, she figured. Though, she thought, any that did had likely already been stomped out.

Out past the refinery sat the sprawling city. Old, ill maintained, but still large. As she descended she could more easily make out the near ramshackle buildings, originally laid out with no real plan, she figured. The city grew organically over time, but time had not been kind to it. As she swung around towards pad twenty-four she took in the rusting space port, she passed by a duct-taped together looking set of communication towers that stood out like grand old metal trees amidst the rusting forest. It almost felt like the Junker scrap peddlers were the ones to put this place together, and for cheap. Not cheap in a cheap way, but cheap in a way where no one wanted to spend the money on getting brand new equipment. Not when you could rig up what you needed from half a dozen old busted machines to make a new functional one. Heck, Coyote II felt a bit like that half the time. But if it worked, it worked.

There was another fee to use the landing pad.

Going anywhere had a way of draining one’s wallet fast. Her receipt printer mocked her with that same electronic sound as she pushed her seat way back and climbed out of the back of the cockpit and into her cramped little living space. The sounds of her ship’s engines and reactor died down, leaving only the quiet rattle of the life support system and the music on the ship’s intercom. The small door leading into her ship was barely big enough for her, and it creaked loudly as she pulled it open and shut as she passed through. Dull and pale LED lights lit up the little space. There really wasn’t much more than a bunk, a narrow door leading to the refresher and toilet, a small food prep station, a handful of storage and weapon lockers, and a pair of doors leading deeper into her ship. She didn’t need much, this was a fighter after all. All it came down to was a place to sleep and eat and get clean. Ports would offer her the rest of the facilities she needed, if she was lucky and had the money.

Though a few sinful pleasures did squirrel their way in here as evident by some of her decorations. Pornographic posters of men and women hung above her disheveled small bunk on the wall, flaunting their raunchy nature. Cigarettes and stray packs of booze were tucked into gravity secured alcoves near her bed. Lockers lined some of the walls, ranging in size, and holding weapons, tracking gear, and other bounty hunter paraphernalia. Though notably in the room sat a small console near the cargo bay, one that had the control panel for a half-dozen seeker drones. They were little semi-autonomous Kishiro Tech Magpie-32 drones, quick little things that could rapidly traverse an area and gather information on the topography, landmarks, traffic patterns, people, etc. Normally they’d be used in game hunting, but there were a lot of common aftermarket modification kits available. Ones that could be programmed with facial recognition and set to scout the nearby area for their target…

Well, her target.

With a few keystrokes, the cargo hatch atop Coyote II opened up, yawning into the dull blue sky, and a small cadre of reconnaissance drones took off and scattered into the air above the city.

The cardamine epidemic had taken a turn lately with the slave revolts on Planet Malta. The highly addictive drug peddled by the Outcasts had long ago sunk its fangs into the heart of Liberty, enticing and twisting the young, the vulnerable, the stressed, and the rich. It had crept its way across all walks of life. The narcotic was dangerously addictive, both psychologically and chemically. But now, supplies were starting to dwindle. The fields on Malta that grew the plants were desperate for new workers, and what little is being produced now is simply not enough for the demand.

The effects were felt down low on planets the most, in the gutters and the streets that ran thick with grime and oily runoff. Where desperate workers like those on planet Erie looked desperately for reprieve. Ryan Petrov was one such man who offered relief at a price. The tall and thin man often disappeared into the dark corners of alleys and dive bars, finding little shadows to crawl into and hide until those who knew about what he had to offer came calling. He blended right in with the disheveled and poorly shaved droves of workers and crew that wandered in from their shifts. This dark and cloudy night, he found a little booth near the back of a dive bar by the name of O’Driscoll’s down in the slums of Seneca colony, not far from the ramshackle city blocks the workers from the refinery called home. Tired men and women cycled in and out at a predictable pace as shifts ended, transports arrived with crews looking for shoreleave, and the local hooligans sought out entertainment. It was a dusty little place, dark and patched up and smelling of greasy food and cheap beer. The kind of place where old music hits played on repeat through an even older sound system that left everything with a vague, tinny quality to it. The ideal past it and its patrons clung to was a past viewed through a rose tinted telescope, distant and longed for, long since gone.

Slowly and quietly he made deals, people knew they could come to him and rely on him for the drug. But for how long, he admittedly wasn’t sure. His buddy, Marco, was due back from securing a shipment of cardamine tomorrow morning. If that panned out, he’d be in business for another few months. But, it was getting dry everywhere. He had been rationing and cutting his product more and more, and people were starting to notice. Dealers were starting to vanish. Sooner or later he might have to, too.

The musty little place was big enough, had a bar that can and did sit thirty or so workers looking for some liquid relief, and enough booths to let folks sit down and enjoy some cheap fried yellow-beaked rockhopper wings and fries and whatever else happened to be on the menu at the time. Ryan smiled to himself as he nursed a beer, a couple guys making their way over to his table, regulars he knew by name.
They came, they traded their money and he traded them a dead drop location with the drugs.
Then they were gone.

Such was his routine.

It was the slow approach of heavy footfalls that made him turn. Such a thing wasn’t unusual around here, but something made him realize this was different. Steady, moving with a purpose, they were the footfalls of someone with a steady intent roiling in the back of their mind. A buyer? A bounty hunter? A cop? A cop he bribed? A cop that wanted a bribe? He turned, and as he did, he heard a deep twangy voice he hadn’t heard in over fifteen years.

“Hell, you’re still alive, you dumb bastard?”

A woman stood tall before him, her thumbs hooked into her belt as she rested her considerable weight on one hip. It was that kind of sassy energy that bled up into her face as well. With her cocksure grin and wild dark auburn hair, and those piercing blue eyes, his own lit up in recognition. Ryan knew this dumb fat bitch, he could recognize her anywhere.

“Son of a bitch, if it ain’t Bessie Bishop!” He leapt up, nearly knocking the table over before slapping her on the ass with a smarmy smile. “I thought you were supposed to be in jail, you dumb whore!”

“Hell I ain’t in that line of work no more.” She leaned in for a big hug, a crushing one that knocked the wind out of the much smaller man. He gagged for mercy.

Bessie was a big gal, easily six foot two even with those hefty boots of hers on, maybe a hair over. And she was stronger than half the men Ryan knew, and she obviously kept on top of her weight lifting or whatever she had been doing while she was in prison, because she was still built like a truck. Hell her arm was nearly as thick as his own head, she could probably pick him up and toss through the table. With a hefty and gruff frame lined with muscles and pudge, it was easy to see why she’d earned the nickname ‘Bison’ in her old crew. She had earned herself a couple more scars that he recognized from her winning knife fights since she had been in jail, and had gained a chain tattoo around her left wrist. It was something that sat opposite of her larger Liberty Rogues’ skull and crossbones tattoo on her right arm.

But why was she here, now? Why wasn’t she still aboard LPI Sugarland doing work in the prison factory? It is a question that gnawed quietly in his mind as she handed him a beer and they both sat down, the side arm on her belt that he briefly saw lingered in his mind as a warning sign. He recognized it as an oversized Detroit 358 hand cannon, a big ass laser pistol styled up like a revolver. Greedy thing needed six micro-fusion cells. It was a serious gun. But that smile of hers layered her personality with enough charisma to push that to the back of his mind. She always liked things that went boom anyways after all.

“Petrov, you two-bit horse fucker, what are you doing all the way out here? Hell, what are you even doing alive?”

“Hey I gotta make a living.”

“What, are you whoring yourself out now?” She mocked him with an exaggerated kissing face.

“Oh, lord no, haha. Just, well, the usual I guess.”

The two of them summoned one of the wait staff with a couple snaps. The human servers were busy, so they sent an old, DSE build robot over to take their order. Bessie looked the thing up and down, seemingly amazed at how old it was judging from the mismatched parts and flaking paint on it. It was a fleeting note that passed, and the two ordered more beer and some food. Ryan grabbing some of the local fried fish, and Bessie ordering one of the burgers the place had on offer.

“What, did you piss off everyone on Rochester Base? Had to do business in this dump?”

“Hey, I did not piss off everyone on Rochester.”

“Bullshit. What about Andre?”

“He’s not a fan of how I cheated on him with his sister. Besides, he’s in jail.”

“Sure he is.” She stifled a laugh and took a long swig of beer. “You really are a horny bastard. Okay, how about Lucas?”

“He’s not on Rochester anymore as far as I could tell, dunno where he is, probably gambling his savings away.”

“Oh yeah? What about Sam?”

“He doesn’t want to see me after I crashed his Bulldog.”

“Wow, you really are a dumb bastard. Dumb horny bastard, here I thought I had a monopoly on that. What about Stevenson? Where’s that hotshot kid?”

He opened his mouth to speak, but the words didn’t leave his throat save for a sigh and half formed a gasp of a word. His mind dwelled quietly on the question as his mouth hung open.

“... shot dead by the LPI eight years ago…” He finally answered.

A pause, then a long sigh from them both.

“Damn.”

The food arrived unceremoniously not long after as the two looked through each other.
The salty smell of the fish and fries and the savory notes of that cloned beef mingled in the air with the stale beer smell and distant mix of miscellaneous odors coming from the kitchen that resembled the smell of cooking. They all suddenly felt so far away as the weight of the years started to rest upon the two of them properly. Memories stirred in Ryan’s mind, refreshed by Bessie’s presence. The two former pirates no doubt recalled similar key moments in their past lives. Though between all the raids and smuggling runs, one event stood out to Ryan the most. It was like a hot coal. He dwelled on it as they ate and drank to the grimey music in the grimey bar. It was an event he was sure to sting at Bessie like a needle in her side. It stuck in his brain like a splinter while he looked at her here and now. The sights and sounds and smells of that day returned to him like a dream.
About sixteen years ago, most of the gang was together, flying under the flag of the Liberty Rogues. They were a motley assortment of petty criminals, stealing, raiding transports and cargo depots, and overall being a nuisance for the law enforcement and corporate pilots throughout Liberty space. You could get away with a lot in Liberty space back then, still can now. The reach of the LPI and Navy only goes so far, and while the Bounty Hunters Guild crawled out of the woodwork at every turn, it was never enough to truly make an area safe from outlaws. There were entire swaths of the Texas and California systems that the Rogues had total control over. They were just one small gang amongst dozens.
They knew a hacker, a gross, pervy kid by the name of Cameron Cooper, who fed them information on transports coming through the lanes from time to time. Apparently he had caught wind of a couple of big Universal Shipping transports that were absolutely packed with shipments of brand new Kishiro brand optronic computers. State of the art, not on the market yet. They’d fence really nicely, and the boys at the Lane Hackers would always pay well for new computers and sensor equipment. So it was a juicy target with a promise of cash floating on the wind. They just needed guns, and their crew had more than enough heavy fighters to bully them into submission. It was the kind of job they’d done half a dozen times.

Of course it didn’t go well.

The first sign of trouble came when Cooper bailed on the squad of Rogues. Little bastard didn’t say a word, but he must have gotten wind of something bad heading their way. So while Sam and Lucas were bitching on the comms about Cooper making a run for it, Bessie and Andre were busy shutting down the lane. Though a juicy train wasn’t what came tumbling out of it when it finally was disabled. Four LPI armored freighters, two gunboats, and six fighters fell right into their laps, way too much firepower for their small pirate squadron.

Bessie and Andre were caught up in the initial fire fight, and the two of them together were able to cripple one of the armored transports and down a fighter. Andre’s ship got shot through the flank and busted up his powerplant, leaving his weapons dead. Bessie, Sam, Ryan, and Lucas tried to cover for him, but during that mess Bessie’s ship, the Coyote, got one of its engine pods sniped off it. The rest of the crew made a break for it, leaving her and Andre disabled near the North Dallas Debris Fields as the LPI swooped in. That was the last he saw of those two. As much as he hated bailing on them, it was a losing battle. One not worth dying over. He heard later that they both survived and were arrested. The notion of their death being on his hands seemingly scrubbed from his mind.

But here she was again. As if nothing had happened, which was far from the truth.

She let out a hot sigh after taking another swig of beer.

“Heh. I miss those dumb bastards.”

“Yeah.”

Their words hung quietly in the air for a moment, before she spoke again, her expression softening.

“I dun wanna impose, but, do you have a place I could stay tonight?”

“Heh, well, I got an apartment you can crash at. Just one bed though.”

“I think we’ll manage.”

They traded smiles. Ryan felt little butterflies in his stomach.

The sky had been threatening rain throughout the evening, but it never came. He’d been drinking more and more heavily through the night at her behest, but Bessie herself stopped. It was her who drove the two of them home. And the two of them rode through the dirty little town in his truck, the dim yellow lights of the street reflecting off the old buildings and ill maintained stores as they went. Neon lights blinked color into the darkness, beckoning forth those who had pocket change to spend on cigarettes and snack cakes. Things like the newest flavor of Synth Paste, or tempting them with calls of the distant shores of a vacation to a resort world owned by Orbital Spa and Cruise. The late night siren calls of such things passed them over without effect. They had their beer, their food, and their cigarettes. Their quiet drive back to his apartment was just that, quiet. Soon, their truck pulled into the parking garage, equally as old and run down feeling as the rest of the town. A large billboard for the recently rebranded Imperial Shipping sat across the street atop another building. It was the newest thing in the whole area, and it was an advertisement for a shipping company on the other side of the sector.
Red lights lined the tunnel in, bathing the car in stripes of bright red light until the tunnel opened up into a grimy open garage. Dozens of different cars and aerocars sat quietly in their parking spots as their truck pulled into a reserved space near the automated reception counter. There was no sign of an attendant, merely a trio of terminals and a shuttered window where an employee could be stationed. The place was dirty, trash dotted corners of the huge chamber between all the oil stains and discolored concrete, and it stank like old oil and burning plastic from defective engines that the residents were running down to the last few kilometers of usefulness. A pair of elevators and some stairs led into the inner apartment complex.

The doors dinged and slid open. Bessie took a huff of her cigarette as she stepped out into the dimly lit hall, the orange floors and beige walls no doubt at some point in the distant past evoked warm inviting feelings. Now they felt well used and borderline neglected. The well traveled carpet muted the footfalls of the two of them, and quickly they made their way to apartment 12-109, where Ryan had made his home for the last few years.

The notion of sharing a bed with Bessie made his mind rush from one idea to the next.

Ryan wasn’t sure what to expect, he admitted. Bessie had always been somewhat of a tease, knowing just how to push the buttons of everyone she knew for more than ten minutes. Part of him wondered, if somehow, maybe he had a shot at her? She had always been at Andre’s hip, but that was years ago. But would making a pass at her be pushing his luck, he wondered? His tired and drunk eyes drifted up and down her ample figure as she stepped into his place, tracing those generous curves of her’s down from her chest and towards her hips and rear where the tightness of her clothes accentuated her even more. His better judgment escaped from him like steam from a kettle as his carnal urges guided his thoughts to images of her naked in his bed.

Bessie leaned in, putting her weight on her shoulder on the doorframe. That same smug smile. It had an odd warmth to it that made Ryan smile too.

“W-what is it?”

“Well,” She sassily swayed her hips as she spoke. “What do you do for fun around here? Anything, hands on?”

“Oh, er, well I suppose, I could, uhh… we… ” His words drifted off as she produced a pair of hefty handcuffs, his mind suddenly simultaneously racing and emptying.

“Interested in some roleplay?”

“Oh, well, I uh-” His face burnt red as his drunken blood giddily stirred.

“Take your clothes off, and put these on.” She smiled and tossed the handcuffs onto his bed.

An awkward smile crossed his drunk lips.

He wasn’t sure what he was doing, but he wanted it. Bessie was finally not being an asshole. Why wasn’t she being an asshole? The thought was fleeting, pushed aside, and snuffed out by drunken desires as his eyes once again settled on her chest. The well of warmth in his core spurred him on, and soon he found himself undressed on the bed as he played with the cuffs. Finally he got them on and clasped, something that made her mouth curl up into a wide and wild smile.

“You’ve been a bad criminal, you know?”

Slowly she sauntered up as his drunken grin grew and grew, and with that confident swagger, she leaned in to kiss him. Breath left his body, expectantly, as he waited. Then she grabbed his hair and pulled hard, dragging his head and scalp back with a painful yank that made him gag. Bessie was always into rough stuff, and Ryan did love a woman who could kick his ass. But his yelp of eagerness was snuffed out by something cold and metal being pressed into the soft spot under his jaw, and even before glancing down he knew it was her hand cannon. Bessie’s grin grew into a near manic smile, a wild catharsis shown in her eyes like daggers. Like she won some game. Suddenly this felt a lot less fun.

“That’s… a bit much…”

“Well now, ain’t this easy?” She dragged him up by his hair with a yelp before tossing him to the floor with a loud thud that left his temple stinging from where his head bounced off the faux wood with a loud thwack.

“Oh you bitch!” He snapped. “What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” She yelled back. “You stupid horny bastard, how did you even live this long?” A solid kick from her heavy boot sent him reeling and knocked the wind right out of him, and Ryan couldn’t help but gasp for air as she hauled him to his feet.

“To think I relied on you to have my back at all…”

Her voice trailed off as a quiet rage simmered within her, the kind she swallowed down. Words died in his throat, and Bessie didn’t give a shit. Her feelings of nostalgia for her old friend had been tempered down into a dull nothingness by his betrayal of her and Andre all those years back. As Ryan gasped for breath, she hauled the naked skinny bastard up and threw him over his shoulder. She stomped her way out of his bedroom, briefly stopping in his kitchen to steal some of his chips before hauling the barely conscious target out into the hallway like an unconscious dog. She wiped her hand clean of grease and salt on his hair, just adding insult to injury for the fun of it. She was sure to steal the keys to his truck before leaving, not like he’d be using it. And not like she had a ride out of here.

“Wh-what are you doing?”

“You know how much you’re worth, Ryan?” She drew her hand cannon and cautiously raised it to the elevator as she approached. She kept talking, pivoting and checking down the hall as she moved, warily watching for uninvited guests. “Eighty thousand alive.”

She couldn’t see his face, but she felt how his body tensed like a coiling spring.

“You’re a bounty hunter?!”

“Uh oh, sounds like you’re in trouble.” She let the sardonic words drip from her mouth with that classic venom. “I can’t believe you fell for such a stupid trick. You never could stop thinking with your dick, could you?”

“Fuck yourself, you fucking fat bitch. You’re not much better, I’ve seen how you look at Andre.”

“I’d shut your mouth if you knew what was good for you. You shit and fell back in it.”

The elevator arrived with a ding, and Bessie hauled Ryan inside, constant curses and complaints left his bruised body. Bessie’s heartbeat was starting to inch higher as she made her way back into the garage. Every sound that crept out of the darkness now could be a potential danger to her completing this job. There was a reason she was sure not to drink as much as Ryan had during their night at the bar after all. Plus she could handle her liquor, unlike this moron. She kept her gun in hand as she made her way to the truck in the dull red light of the garage, eyeing the dark corners where shadows pooled like ink.

The quiet was broken by Ryan’s commlink ringing out like an errant alarm as he was hurled into the truck. Her hand hesitated a moment as if the commlink was hot and dangerous to touch, before she snatched it up and looked at the screen. ‘Marco.’

“Who’s Marco?”

“Go fuck yourself.”

Bessie rolled her eyes.

Unceremoniously, she dropped the comm into the cup holder and fished out a roll of duct-tape from the side door, taking a smug bit of satisfaction in covering Ryan’s stupid mouth. He lay in the back and groaned like a pig as he trashed in his restraints. A punch to the face shut him up quickly, bloodying his nose at the same time. As she threw herself into the driver's seat and the vehicle rocked beneath her, she quickly yanked the battery out of his beeping commlink and dropped it to the floor. If someone came looking for Ryan now she’d be shit out of luck she figured. Now she just had to get this loser to the LPI and get that bounty payout.

The truck rumbled to life, and Bessie made her way out of the garage amidst the darkness of the night. Her turn onto the main road was punctuated by a lonely car passing her by. The bounty hunter’s mind started to churn and chew on the best way to get to the local LPI base in the city. Ryan’s truck did have a GPS map of the town… though thoughts of her plans slowed to a halt as she saw the car that she’d passed suddenly stop and make a K-turn before it would have entered the garage. That struck her as peculiar enough to warrant some action. Her heavy boot leaned just a tad harder on the accelerator, leisurely she picked up speed without trying to attract too much attention. Those headlights in her rearview mirror kept pace. Thoughts of that car being Marco’s entered her mind, and the thought of one of Ryan’s friends showing up and causing trouble made her hand drift to the grip of her hand cannon on her belt and draw it from its holster with a quiet rustle. She was sure not to act out or do anything especially alarming to let her know her tail was onto them. If this was a tail. Either way, Marco was a sudden variable she had to account for.

At the first red light she ran into, she switched lanes and turned right down a street heading towards the commercial district. The lights followed her around the corner. A block up she threw on her left signal light, then swung a right at the intersection near the fast food place that bathed the area in a blue light and cloying advertisements. The lights followed her. This guy was following her for sure. With a sigh she reached down and tapped the GPS screen on the truck, showing a map of the city in dim green light. She needed a plan, she was at a disadvantage here, she didn’t know the area very well at all. This guy may have known shortcuts or oddities in the roads that’d give him an advantage over her in a pinch. The trick would be disappearing somehow. Losing a vehicle isn’t about speed. She had to play this stupid until the guy made a mistake. It’s less about winning a chase, but being unpredictable until you can make the other guy lose.

The engine of the truck rumbled as she down shifted, and as the headlights of the car behind her filled her rear view mirror she brake checked him. The lurch that came with it caused Ryan to let out a muffled yelp like a pathetic animal, but she shut him up when she shifted back into a higher gear and put her foot on the gas, palming her wheel into an illegal U-turn and gunned it onto one of the long roads towards the warehouse district. The whole truck shook as she took the curb and sent the bounty hunter bouncing in her seat. A construction site up ahead lit up half the road. Distant movement briefly caught her eye as massive automated Samura Heavy Industries loaders and backhoes moved like lumbering giants beyond the orange lit perimeter. If push came to shove, she could cut in through those automated construction machines and try to lose the guy, but that didn’t strike her as an especially smart move. But if you’re stupid you gotta be brave. She would cut in there she figured, but her thoughts were immediately side tracked. Speaking of stupid, in her rearview she caught a glimpse of Ryan sitting up in the midst of being tossed around in these maneuvers.

“Get the fuck back down on the seat!” She grunted over her shoulder.

Ryan didn’t listen, and in her mirror she saw him throw his back against the door, and an instant later it went swinging wildly open and he soundlessly tumbled from the car. The cool night air flowed wordlessly into the car in the awkward aftermath. A fleeting look of disbelief crossed her face before her anger got the better of it and snapped her out of it.

“Son of a bitch!” The wheels squealed as she stomped the brake into the floor with a mighty force that would have broken something on an older truck. Rolling down the window, she had just enough time to look out and see the other car stop. A figure stepped out, hidden behind the blinding high beams. With a loud clunk, she threw the truck into reverse and gunned it, but the vague shapes that were Ryan and probably Marco already were stumbling back to their car as she closed the distance. It was a rushed act that came with a trio of loud bangs that echoed through the streets as someone started blasting. Immediately her driver’s side mirror exploded into sparks and bits of shrapnel, the flash burned hot on her face as she punched the accelerator and rammed into the car tail first. The impact nearly threw her from her seat as the metallic crunch jerked her violently into the steering wheel’s airbag that smacked into her with a thunderous force that left her dazed.

A roar from the other car came as the smashed vehicle lurched away and bolted down the street like a startled deer. Her world was still spinning. With a loud ka-clunk, she threw the truck back into drive, but the engine sputtered and stalled. She slammed her foot down on the gas and nothing happened. She swore and punched the deflated airbag as the engine died properly and grew dead silent. Time was quickly ticking down and she had to act immediately or risk losing both of these idiots. She threw the door open and took aim at the car speeding away and fired twice, the hot red blasts from her hand cannon ripped through the cool night air. The stench of ozone came with the electric crack of the laser. One shot went wide and blew a smoldering hole into a distant street sign, but the other blasted one of the car’s tail lights clean off in a sputter of sparks. They were going to get away, she realized. She reached up and tapped the NN implant behind her ear to try to snatch a scan of the truck. But it was too far, she couldn’t make out the barcode on the plate at this distance, but it was some kind of red, off-road vehicle. If she could get a bit closer she could link a scan back to her ship’s computer and try to find a matching registration in the LPI database. She had run a short distance after them, but quickly gave up as they sped off into the night. With a huff she stopped in the middle of the road, the light above her turning yellow, then red quietly as it beckoned the imaginary traffic to stop.

“...fuck…”

“Excuse me ma’am.” With a start she turned to see one of the man-sized construction robots standing next to her. Its yellow reflectors and flashing beacon light made it stand out in the darkness amidst the wreckage of the truck. The branding for Samura Heavy Industries was stenciled across its yellow chassis with black paint. “You have been in an automobile accident. Would you like me to contact medical services?”

“What, no.” With a huff she stuffed her gun back into her holster. “Thanks though, I guess.”

The machine gave her an affirmative nod, before turning its torso, then legs, and walking back towards the much larger automated vehicles it and a couple other man sized machines seemed to be supervising. She turned back down the street and faced the direction the car had fled.

They can’t get away that easily. An idea formed. As they vanished beyond the buildings, Bessie pulled out her own commpad and brought up the controls for her Magpie scouts. These things found Ryan, so she just had to set them to find that car. Simple. She’d never done this, but she knew the drones could do it. Gotta learn the features sometime after all. So she punched in the details for the vehicle and her location. Soon, one of them found the little car and managed to snatch a scan of its plate before someone shot the little thing out of the sky.

Hopefully that would be eight hundred credits well spent on that drone. His bounty would more than make up for it. A slight grin pushed her plump cheeks back as she copied the license plate data into the guild accessible part of the LPI database. Turns out the truck did belong to a man named Marco Bailey. Scruffy red-head, boney looking man with a face like a ghost and an awful looking mustache. Apparently he had ties to the Zoners, specifically their militant elements who were more violently opposed to Liberty taking over the planet. Suspected smuggler, a small bounty on his head too it seemed. Marco got up to some trouble, and she wondered if that’s how he tied back to Ryan. The guy even had a ship registered to him at the nearby spaceport. That could be Ryan’s ticket off world, he didn’t have a ship registered to him nearby… though that wouldn’t stop him from using an unmarked or stolen one she figured. Bessie called up a taxi, the odd feeling that these guys were going to try to get off-world burned in her mind. And it was a feeling that came with the confident excitement of laying a trap for your prey. She told the cabbie to gun it to the space port, paying him a generous tip to run the lights. Something he accepted with glee, maybe it was a reprieve from his ill paying work, or a brief moment of excitement in his life. Whatever it was, that old man seemed happy to help.

Somehow, Bessie had beaten them to the spaceport. If they were heading to the spaceport that was. Maybe that cabbie was that good? No. Her instincts were telling her this was the place to be, Ryan would want to book it ASAP, and Marco was also a wanted man. How long could they be sought out by a bounty hunter before the cops or other bounty hunters caught on after all? So, Bessie took her time, and found a dark corner to hide within the hangar. It was warm and quiet amidst the dull bits of orange light that slowly leaked in from the poorly lit yard outside and open air above. She wondered if they were grabbing something, what was it? There was probably something stashed away he couldn’t afford to leave behind. Money? Cardamine? Weapons? Ryan’s clothes?

Maybe it was a ship in better condition. She looked up at the Rhino, the bulky old block of a freighter was like a big silver brick. Or it had been silver at one point in the distant past. Years of use and lack of maintenance had ruined its glamorous Liberty stylings, leaving it crusty and dented up. It looked like at some point someone had wanted to do some maintenance and cleaning on the ship. A rolling tool cart and some cleaning supplies sat near the cargo loader. Though with just one guy a job like this would take a year. This Marco guy didn’t take very good care of his ship. It looked like the rest of this town, struggling to get by as time marched on.
At the very least this Marco guy would make for a nice bonus. Not a big fish by a longshot. But it would be a nice bonus. Something she mused about spending as she nursed her cigarette, though the notion of her debts sucking up most of the money came to mind.

It sullied her mood for a time, until the distinct echo of an old metal door creaking open called through the dull and stagnant air. It was something that drew energy into her body from some unseen source, and with the approaching footfalls she drew her gun.

Lights flickered on as Marco and Ryan rushed in, hauling hard cases towards the ship on hand trucks. Marco was in the lead and he pressed something on his commpad, causing the Rhino to clack and unlock its cargo ramp as they ran towards it. But Bessie was not about to let them get away. A quick tap on behind her ear and her NN implant ran a facial recognition just to confirm, and it blinked back positive in her vision, flashing small ID photos of Marco and Ryan after it briefly outlined their faces. Bingo. She stepped out from her hiding spot near the maintenance equipment with her hand cannon raised, confident in her position.

“Ryan!”

The roared name echoed loudly through the landing pad.

“Aw shit…” He spun and froze as he spoke, his companion stumbling to a stop.

“The bounty hunter.” Marco’s gruff voice trailed off in a dreary bit of expected disappointment.

“Ain’t it just? You wanna come quietly, boys?”

“We haven’t done anything.”

“Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining…”

She smiled, and stepped up towards them, her gun not leaving the two of them as she did. In the dull air of the storage yard, the Rhino’s ramp finally reached the ground with a loud clunk that echoed off the dusty walls. Bessie’s fingers moved on her gun’s grip as she flexed, and a look of curiosity entered Marco’s eyes.

“Why don’t you shoot?”

“I blow the bounty if I blow you away.” She snatched the cigarette from her mouth and snapped it in half with her fingers, flicking it towards Marco and nearly hitting him. Dead to rights. She reached to her belt and grabbed a set of cuffs, and Marco eyed her all the while, a silent rage in those eyes of his.

“Well then…” A snap movement drew her eyes to Marco as he brushed his coat back.

Her eyes left Ryan long enough for him to raise a gun he’d been hiding behind the crate he had been lugging around, he had always been good with slight-of-hand. She had caught the movement, and forced her momentum and focus to shift, and from her perspective she dragged the ironsights of her gun from one target to the other in slow motion. Her heart pounding in her ears, her muscle memory guided her hand more than her focused mind. She reflexively found Ryan’s body and her trigger finger squeezed as his gun was drawn level to her.

A bright red flash of her cannon’s laser briefly smeared her vision as a wet pop echoed through the chamber. Ryan stumbled backwards and away as a puff of sparks and smoke erupted from his right shoulder as it flashed black from the laser’s blast of light and heat. Her ears filled with his yelp, his arm contorted and the pistol tumbled to the ground, but Marco suddenly rushed forward. A distinctive gleam of metal in his hand. The weight of her arm moved in slow motion through the air as if it were molasses as she trained her gun on her next target.

She fired, scorching Marco’s hair and ear but missing a fatal shot. As he moved into arm’s distance from her, a distant flash of sparks blew from the Rhino’s cowling as another blast overshot him. Bessie’s feet twisted under her as she shifted her posture, forcing herself backwards as he swatted her gun hand up despite her attempts to steady her arm. The gleam of the knife kept moving towards her chest, and she instinctively backpedaled and rotated out of the way. He lunged past her like some mad dog, stumbling into some of the nearby maintenance supplies, a fumble she punished him with a crack over the head with her gun. But he was up and slashing towards her face alarmingly quickly, and he caught her right hand with the blade.

When Bessie was a kid, her whore of a mother (rest her soul) had taught her the intricacies of the art of the knife fight. Mainly, that there were few. When your opponent had an edged weapon, engaging and grappling with him were suicide. She had shown Bessie this by giving her a big fat marker, and had her try to fight one of the other street punks with it. Every smudge and bit of ink represented a gaping wound, a slash through skin and muscle and tendons. It wasn’t something you could try to ignore like the pain from getting punched, this was your body being torn apart. The best thing to do in a knife fight is to not be in one. Second best thing to do in a knife fight, find a way to ensure you can stay away from your opponent.

As the slice on her hand burned her and grew warm and wet, she caught a glimpse of her gun tumbling away from her with the drops of blood that were flung from her hand. Marco’s manic face twisted wildly as he lunged again, and Bessie stomped backwards gracelessly. Her boots smashed into and through the pile of haphazardly stacked tools and storage bins, throwing them wildly to the side as she dodged his slash. She was strong and had reach, but she was big, bulky, and slower than he was. Bessie bumped ass first into something light enough to grab, something leaning up against that cart. Blindly reaching behind her, she found the handle to the push broom and swung it into his face. He gagged as a cloud of dust filled his eyes and nostrils, an opportunity that Bessie pushed as she thrust it up into his jaw and smacked him backwards with a loud thwack. She pushed her advantage. Marco still had that knife, but Bessie suddenly had a range advantage of four or so extra feet and she was intent on force feeding him that broom right through his teeth.

The glittering blade of the knife came in wildly, and she spun the broom vertically and caught it in the shaft where it dug in. Marco realized too late that it was embedded deep in the wood as it was wrenched out of his hand with a violent spin of the broom. There was an attempt to steady himself, and Marco never managed to do that as the tail end of the broom was thrust towards his face, something he barely ducked under. He used the momentum from his sidestep to rotate into a punch to Bessie’s gut. With a gasping grunt she planted her elbow into his skull with a loud thwack that she quickly followed up with a wild swing into his ear, sending him spinning to the side. With a clattering crash he stumbled over his hard cases that were discarded near the hand truck, flipping them over and spilling orange ampoules all over the deck. They’d rushed out to grab their stash of that narcotic Cardamine before getting off world it seemed.

Her eyes went from the drugs to the ship, where she caught a glimpse of Ryan, who had struggled to his feet and up the gangway of the ship. He was badly hurt, the smell of his burnt skin and clothes stank up the landing pad even more than it already was. Soon the smells of grease and smoke and stagnant water mixed with ozone and blood. And Ryan was determined not to remain here. Slippery little bastard. If he got in there it would be hard as hell to get him out, and that was the last thing she wanted. Hell he may even be able to fly with that fucked up arm of his still. Her train of thought was interrupted as Marco wrapped his arm around the end of the broom and yanked it hard, but Bessie’s bloody grip didn’t relent. The shaft slid backwards, not leaving her hand, smearing blood all along the wood. But it was enough of a yank to get the knife back into Marco’s hand. The bounty hunter had no intention of letting the tables get turned again. With a quick crouch she snatched a wrench from the scattered tools and hurled it into his face, cracking it off his nose with a nasty sound that had to have been something breaking. And as he reached up to grab his bloody face Bessie retracted the broom and quickly whacked it across his reeling body, sending the knife spinning wildly into the air.

The Bison lunged, seizing the opening.

The broom was dropped and with one motion she stepped up and planted a fist up and under his ribs with a hearty crack that nearly folded him over. He didn’t have time to reel before the massive woman smashed him across the jaw with her left, blood chasing after a tooth as it was flung from his mouth. Marco tried to counter attack, but his attempts were sloppy as she countered blow for blow, Bessie adopting a boxer’s stance as they matched off. Grunts and shouts filled the garage as they bobbed and weaved around each other. Marco was fast, but each one of Bessie’s hits knocked him around, leaving him dazed and bruised with her sheer force. His strikes against her were all either countered away by her impressive strength or straight up didn’t seem effective. And he knew he was on the backfoot now that he lost his weapon. Bessie saw him trying to disengage and his attempt to backpedal landed him a high kick that properly broke his nose and knocked him on his ass.
“Ack!”

“You annoying bastard!”

She shook the pain from her hands before snatching up her gun, knowing she’d have to clean the grip now that she got blood all over it. It was enough of a moment of her breaking eye contact with Marco that when she looked back, he had Ryan’s gun in his hand. Her chest tightened and her heart lunged inside her. Instinct took over, and Bessie twisted her gun hand up and over to Marco’s center of mass, pulling the trigger twice.

His body slumped over with a barely audible sigh as the force of the blast knocked him flat on the floor, crackling smoke creeping up from his chest. The pistol fell from his grip and clacked against the floor, echoing quietly through the pad. Suddenly she was alone. Bessie stood there, nearly dumbfounded a moment as she realized what her body did on pure reaction alone. What she’d been trained to do, what she had grown up doing, what she was good at. She blinked, taking it in a moment. One of her bounties lay there before her, dead. There goes a chunk of that paycheck.

“... fuck.”

There was a loud clunk as the Rhino’s boarding ramp finished retracting.

“Fuck!”

She raised her hand cannon and fired twice at the side of the Rhino, blasting scorch marks into the hull as it rumbled to life. The gun failed to penetrate the ship’s armor, something that didn’t surprise her at all. One more shot into the cockpit, but it simply scorched the reinforced transparent metal window without blasting through it. Bessie wasn’t about to stick around and watch him launch, and instead she bolted into a sprint, stampeding her way through the spaceport, shoulder checking through doors and blasting the locks off of anything that refused to open to her brute force. She nearly bowled over a DSE repair robot as she cut through maintenance, stumbling over cables half hidden in the dim light. Behind her, she heard the echo of the Rhino’s engines as the ship roared, and soon the sound peaked into a crescendo of noise before fading away.

The Bison blitzed her way through the halls to landing pad twenty four, catching the corner with her bloody hand to force herself around the corner without losing momentum. She’d already entered the code on her commpad as she was running to start her ship’s boot sequence. And as she charged up the gantry rack to the boarding hatch on the Coyote II the ship rumbled to life amidst her thundering footfalls that rocked the ramp.

She threw herself into her seat with a mighty force and rammed it up forward into the piloting position, instinctually slamming the emergency umbilical jettison as she did. A loud series of bangs sounded as fuel lines and cables hooked up to her power cells blew themselves clear and went crashing to the floor below. Ryan was gaining ground fast, and she took off after him even as systems on the Coyote II were still coming online. The landing pad fell away from her, the feeling of motion in the ship muddled by its inertial dampeners as it ascended up above the space port. Formerly bright streets became glittering vestiges down below as she hit the throttle and climbed after him, the air traffic controller sending her repeated hails all the while. She had to spy him visually, her targeting scanners only fully booting a few moments later. Red outlines appeared around his ship and she gunned it after him, its wireframe appearing a moment later in her targeting computer. A glance at her indicators showed that her shields hadn’t even finished spinning up.

Night was peeling away into the red and orange dawn. Mountains framed with flame like colors blazed beneath her as the Coyote II closed in on the Rhino. The clouds he was climbing towards had that same glittering orange intensity that the sea below had adopted as the sun crept up on the horizon. The Rhino stood out as the single dark spot amidst all the color. Thankfully that hunk of junk had outdated engines… a more modern Rhino could have gotten away. Bessie bounced in her seat as the turbulence picked up as they crossed pressure zones, but her steady aim and targeting assist software quickly vectored her ship’s guns onto Ryan. A kill was worth far less in this case… but maybe she could force him down.

Red flared around her in the cockpit as she fired, a burst of her ship’s lasers screeching through the clouds and cutting them away as they drew a line straight into the back of the rhino where the shields flashed brightly. Her scanners showed his power cells flare as the backup batteries for his shields quickly began toggling on sequentially to desperately preserve the integrity of the ship’s defenses. He felt that one, and soon the ship pulled away and up towards a patch of sky where clouds lay thick like fog. It wasn’t enough to lose the hunter, and she chased after the glowing trail of his engines as it vanished into the gray and orange fog. As water splattered across her canopy, her comms garbled with indistinct chatter that she realized was on one of the encoded police frequencies. Police ships were nearby. Someone must have caught wind of this. She was on a timer now.

“Shit.”

She had to act fast. The clouds may have blocked her vision of Ryan, but her scanners and targeting computers tracked him clear as day, unimpeded by water and the airborne pollution. A toggle of a switch and another pull of the trigger sent a rapid series of EMP blasts into his aft shield, lighting up the sky like lightning as his shields blew away and he dove down to escape. His flying was sloppy, that bad arm of his wasn’t helping, and even if he was up to his usual game, that fat ship couldn’t come near the maneuverability of Coyote II. He had to know that. He had to know this was a losing game. Bessie had him outmaneuvered and outgunned. He had to land.

She eased the stick and rolled over and after him, the glitter of the sea and a narrow rocky beach appeared down below as she sped after him. There was a shuddering bang as she descended, one that coincided with a shockwave from the Rhino as well as they broke the sound barrier as he refused to slow down. Bessie kept on his tail, closing the distance as her Hammerhead cut through the air like the blade it was. Now the Rhino sat in her canopy before her, looking as big as her fist at arm’s length. With her targeting computer sounding a solid laser lock in her ears, she reached up and clicked the radio on, and left it on.

“Land the ship, Ryan.” She spoke plainly, strictly, driving her point home as hard as she could.

“Not a chance, Bishop.” The garbled comms spoke back.

“Don’t be such a God-damned idiot!” Her finger toyed with the trigger, the smooth plastic slippery with blood.

“Heh. Big words coming from you, b’unter. Way I see it, you’re the one who’s the fool. You’ve burnt your old life away, all your friends. They’re gonna want you dead for turning on them like this. You what, hunting us? For a paycheck? And you’re pissy with me about leaving you and saving my own skin?! You fucking traitor. We were friends, damnit, Bessie!”

There it was. The forbidden thought of hers. The notion that sat in the corners of her mind. Her greed, her pride, her ambition and lust for revenge was stifled by a simple, quiet thing. Nostalgia? Guilt? Shame?
She wasn’t even sure anymore.

“Shut. Up.”

He didn’t answer. And she didn’t pull the trigger. She just stared at him, keeping pace turn for turn as she listened to the target lock sounding in her ears. She started to squeeze the trigger.

“... would you have forgiven me?” The comms broke that silence with a sorrowful garble of words that blindsided her.

And Bessie didn’t have an answer. Sometimes, things seem so clear in your own head. Sometimes your best path is obvious, what you will do is obvious, how you will feel is obvious. But how we imagine things playing out can vary so wildly from how they actually do, no matter how sure of the results one is. Seeing it play out before you, it’s different. Bessie didn’t answer, because despite all her dulled fury and near hatred of Ryan, she genuinely did not know the answer to his question.

Ryan’s Rhino exploded amidst a flash of blue lasers that came from somewhere behind her. Yanking the stick back, she forced Coyote II up and over the blast as the ship cracked in half and went tumbling down to earth amidst fluttering plates of metal and clouds of fiery debris that filled the air like confetti. A pair of LPI fighters raced past her, slowing down and looping back around as they too watched the flaming ship crash into the sea below them. Bessie watched the smoldering wreckage glitter in the swell of the sea in the morning light, feeling hollow.

In the end, the LPI did not pay for a capture or kill for Ryan Petrov, but instead a ‘generous finder’s fee’ that barely amounted to a fifth of the bounty payout.

The ship currently known as Coyote II was commissioned in 798 AS and manufactured in the AP facilities on planet Houston in House Liberty in batch 214-11-10-798 of the AP-18100’s production lifetime. The ship would briefly serve BHG tracker Abigail Rodregiez as the Commando before her untimely demise three months later in a traffic accident on Planet New Tokyo. The ship would then be passed down to career hunter Roger Dalton at the end of 799 AS and be renamed Thunderbolt.

Roger Dalton would have a multi-decade’s long successful career until he retired to a strictly advisory and training role in 824 AS. His work would see him largely staying in the Texas system, combing the prison system and poaching disgruntled corporate pilots for recruits.

Dalton had taken several pilots under his wing over his years working in Houston, and in 830 AS, he found a woman named Bessie Bishop who was serving her time aboard LPI Sugarland. The Rogue pilot had caught his attention when he had gone through her records. The number of LPI ships that had been required to disable her Z-5500 was what Dalton had described as “notably above average.” He began working with the LPI to get her back in the field, this time on their side.

Dalton pulled some strings to get her paroled early, in exchange for working for the Guild, and to his surprise she seemed genuinely interested. He took her under his wing as his protege, and passed his ship along to her in 834 AS when he retired properly. Bessie Bishop renamed the ship to Coyote II, and has been using it in her Guild work ever since.

Coyote II’s primary armament is a set of four LB-42 Reavers. These AP designed weapons are long range rapid fire electric pulse lasers. Each “laser blast” is actually a pulse of thirty two rapid laser beam activations, each weapon capable of discharging an extremely rapid fire rate of five hundred pulses per minute (500 weapon activations per minute, approximately 16,000 laser activations per minute). This causes heavy mechanical shock to the target from brief periods of extremely high heating, rather than overtly vaporizing the point of impact. Each Reaver laser is rated at 65 megawatts at a 2.5 micron range and unlike some chemical lasers employed by the Liberty Navy, the laser is entirely limited by power supply and thermal load rather than lasing medium. An upscaled version of this weapon is mounted on the tail of the ship and used to fire at pursuing craft.

Secondary armament consists of a pair of rapid fire CB-m “Improved” Debilitator pulse cannons. These electromagnetic pulse weapons utilize a pair of rapid charge micro fusion powered capacitors to package a massive amount of ionizing particles into a single small magnetic capsule which is then discharged at a target. While most modern ships possess hardened electronics, EMP weapons such as the CB-m quickly overwhelm shield systems and can often cause malfunctions in a target’s capacitors, leading to power loss and module malfunctions as opposed to overtly disabling the target.

Utility weapons on the Coyote II include a CD88a Wasp class cruise disruptor. This small and fast tracking missile packs a load of highly energetic particles which explode near a target and contaminates the space around them. While the missile does little damage, most ships have fuel ramscoops that collect free floating hydrogen to supplement their fuel efficiency. The Wasp drowns this system and forces the engines briefly into emergency mode as the ship’s safety systems try to prevent a perceived critical failure. Attempting to power up the cruise engine while the engines are saturated often leads to malfunctions and engine misfires until the system can be purged, often taking upwards of five seconds.

Additional utility weapons include a minelayer, capable of loading a variety of explosive payloads depending on mission profile, though anti-ship mines are the most common type loaded into the device. The M56-D Shredder is Bishop’s mine of choice, a homing explosive weapon loaded with shaped tungsten spikes that can cause crippling damage to any ships caught in the blast radius.

The final armament is a pair of retrofitted aftermarket Detroit Munitions Guardian 117 Auto-Sentries turrets. These automated anti-personnel weapons are mounted in hidden compartments covered by retractable armor plates down on the lower fin of the Coyote II. These turrets can be set to automatically target and attack anything the computer designates as a valid target within their range, and it is often paired with facial recognition software to prevent friendly fire or to isolate a specific target. The guns can also be set to manual control from inside the cockpit. While they are too weak to penetrate space craft armor, they will shred through people and lightly armored vehicles.

The Coyote II’s primary propulsion comes from a pair of HN-C11 long range engines. The HN series itself is an advanced fusion rocket that uses plasma from the ship’s Ageira P-185 Tokamak B1 Fusion Core and funnels it into a pair of magnetically contained thruster assemblies. The highly charged stream of material is accelerated to near lightspeed, providing excellent thrust to mass ratio, especially when paired with the ship’s inertial dampening paragravity generator that somewhat reduces its relative mass. The HN series is designed to function for extended lengths of time with minimum maintenance, and features almost no moving parts or components that suffer extensive thermal load. The downside of this is that the entire engine typically reaches the end of its operational lifetime before similar, higher maintenance engines. This core also powers the ship’s large array of RCS thrusters.

A downside of this type of drive system is that once the reactor core becomes inoperable, so do the main engines. In case of emergencies, a small number of plasma fuel cells are kept on board to power the RCS system or briefly power the main engines, but this would be unable to sustain the Coyote II in combat and is often barely enough to limp back to a base in the same star system.

Should the main reactor fail, the Coyote II is equipped with a large array of batteries in her aft, just below the cargo bay. These power cells contain enough energy to restart the reactor should it be disabled, and can otherwise provide power to all of the ship’s systems save for weapons for approximately three weeks before running dry. Additionally, the emergency battery power can be dumped into the shield system at a moment’s notice, providing emergency reinforcement.

The primary defense system of the Coyote II is an Ageira manufactured SG-e2 graviton shield. The shield is formed by a bi-woven pair of force fields that creates a localized zone of highly focused spatial distortion that contains an energetic graviton field. This type of defensive shielding is excellent at scattering intense clusters of photons such as those from lasers, but repeated physical impacts often destabilize the field rendering it less effective against charged particle weapons.

Armor wise, the Coyote II’s armor is concentrated on its forward quarter, with the rear being substantially less well armored, notably around the engines. The armor itself consists of layers of an ablative ceramic fabric that’s been bonded to the vessel’s titanium alloy frame and radiation shielding. The armor is designed to absorb high energy discharges and vaporize in a controlled manner while minimizing energy bleedthrough to critical ship systems beneath it.

Throughout Dalton and Bishop’s careers, the ship currently known as Coyote II has been modded dozens of times with aftermarket features with the intent of making its bounty hunters all the more successful.

The main sensors array for the Coyote II is the Kishiro Tech R-67 Jintsuriki scanner. This device is a phased array RADAR with nano-filament sensors, paired with a complex LADAR array to detect ships at extreme ranges. The scanner’s powerful optronic processing unit is backed up by a bio-neural processor that is able to use ‘fuzzy logic’ to make educated ‘best guesses’ at a ship’s overall hull geometry and identification based on known variants. This allows the scanner to operate at ranges far oustripping more standard issue equipment, with the downside of the bio-neural processor requiring replacement about every 18 months as it wears out from use and radiation.

The cargo bay has been modified to hold a magnetically sealed prison cell, containing its own life support system. This is for any targets needed alive. The cargo hold can be vented into vacuum, discouraging escape attempts. However should someone manage to somehow leave the cell, the cargo bay floor is equipped with a high power paragravity plate that can generate forces upwards of 5.2gs, usually more than enough to incapacitate a prisoner long enough for the hunter to regain control of the situation.

The cargo bay also plays host to the ship’s coterie of Kishiro Tech Magpie-32 drones. These small hovering drones are designed to scout out an area, providing detailed information on traffic, topography, movement, and can be programmed to search for specific vehicle or facial recognition features.

For long range travel on a planet’s surface, a gantry rack for a small hoverbike is attached to the top of the cargo hold’s ceiling. This can comfortably secure most models of said vehicle, and would allow the pilot a quick alternative for travel should taking the ship to a new location on the planet be impractical.

The main cabin of the Coyote II is small and practical, containing little more than a bunk, cook prep station, and access to a lavatory/shower. Numerous gravity secure shelves and compartments allow for the safe storage of personal items and firearms. Hidden compartments with weapons also dot the cabin and cockpit, in case of emergency. In addition to the normal food prep counter and rations, the Coyote II is equipped with a SynthFoods Inc Happy Cook Food Printer. This machine can combine a variety of flavored synthpastes and texture formulas to effectively ‘print’ a variety of nutritious food items at various temperatures. This unit requires synthpaste cartridges that need to be regularly swapped out for full and fresh ones. Synthfoods anti-tampering technology prevents refilling or third party cartridge usage.

Regardless, rations and supplies are often stocked to allow a month of continuous work away from stations.

The desert of Planet Pittsburgh sucked. Any desert did, Bessie figured, but this one sucked more than any other she’d been on. The coarse sand covering the world was mixed with a fine dust that clung to the inside of your nose and smelled sour. A byproduct of all the strip mining on the planet. The air practically sucked all the moisture out of you long before the sun even settled on you. Not like you’d see it much here, though. Layers of smog and dark clouds often littered the skies, and the heat of the world was kept in through copious amounts of greenhouse gasses. When the rainstorms came, they came with howling dark winds and torrents of acid rain. It was a bleak place. Pittsburgh was the armpit of Liberty, without a doubt.

In a nation normally known for their tech development industries, prison factories, and the thriving megacorps like Synth Foods Inc and Cryer, Pittsburgh stood out as the one tried and true mining colony left in Liberty. Planets like Erie had their refinery areas, but it was Pittsburgh that was entirely dedicated to it. Thankfully there was not much of an ecosystem on the planet for the massive strip mining operations to effect, otherwise some bleeding hearts may get in a fuss about it. Bessie was willing to bet money on that. The planet itself was a single, vast desert, littered with rocky outcroppings and now, small cities and Deep Space Engineering company towns. Foreign companies dominated the Liberty market for raw materials outside of the boron that was dug up on Pittsburgh. Not everyone liked that.

It was that foreign domination that partially fueled the Xenos movement. The Xenos were, for lack of a better term, domestic terrorists. They claimed to fight for the ‘working man’ of Liberty, and vehemently sought out and attacked foreign ships and native pirates. Back when Bessie was in the Rogues, the Xenos were as much of a problem as the cops, if not more so with how they constantly chased away cargo ships and made the LPI tighten security throughout the lanes. The Xenos were unrelenting enemies of the Rogues and their allies, shooting down Junkers and Lane Hackers everywhere they encountered them. Frankly, with how many enemies the Xenos had built up over the years, Bessie was amazed that their ranks hadn’t been ground down to nothing. Part of the blame there though was on the LPI and their brutal crackdowns. In an effort to desperately control the problem, their knee-jerk reactions helped fuel it as more and more petty bastards wanted to stick it to the man and the foreigners backing him. And worst of it all, the LPI was looking to look the other way half the time with the Xenos doing their dirty work. It was a messy contradiction, but it was the truth.

For whatever reason, Pittsburgh seemed to be one of their preferred hideouts. Maybe they liked the sand and rocks. Maybe it was some kinda nostalgia that churned in their minds, those almost romantic notions of the mines on the world and the hard work that built up Liberty hundreds of years ago. Bessie quietly mused to herself as she lay there in the dirt, adjusting her dust mask under the warm morning sky. Distant wayward bits of light from the sun barely made it to the surface some days. You could travel through the rocky deserts for miles without seeing a single sign of civilization. And as Bessie lay prone on the ground near a rocky outcropping, she found herself really wishing this Xeno she was tracking had picked a more hospitable place to visit. She grunted through her dust mask, pulling her goggles up as she rolled onto her side. Lying down and waiting this all out while in her combat rig was especially uncomfortable, but if it turned into a shootout at least she’d have some protection. Clumsily she pulled the tablet out of her satchel and brought up the feed for the little spy cameras she had placed around the area in the middle of the night a couple days back. Grainy little feeds from her repurposed trail cameras gave her some insight into the surrounding environment. They’d tell her if any people got close, or any dangerous animals. She’d set them up all over the rocky basin where the Xeno Alice Rutherford had regularly set up her camp.

There were few animals of note on Pittsburgh, but a common one that was often hunted for game and meat was the local rock boar. Bessie had done some digging around, paying off some of her old contacts for information on Alice. She was a well respected member of Cobra’s inner circle, the de facto leader of the Xenos Alliance. That was enough trouble on its own, but she may have finally overstepped her bounds. The gal had gotten a heck of a bounty placed on her head, eighty thousand credits after she shot down an LPI prison transport that was bound for Sugarland. Of the twenty two crew and fifty prisoners, eight people survived. Bessie wasn’t about to shed a tear for the LPI boys, it sucked for them for sure, but her mind dwelled on those guys and gals who were tried and convinced, sent off to serve their time but never getting there. It was a lot of money on her head… but it wasn’t enough money to make up for the lives of the folks that died there. Probably enough to just cover the transport and cops. That bit, that bit there soured her mood a little. She wondered if this one had overstepped the line with this attack, or if these particular cops did something to cross the line themselves. So when she learned from an old dock worker that Alice often came out to the western bluffs to go boar hunting, Bessie figured a hunting trip of her own may be a good little excursion.

Bessie had taken the Coyote II out and parked it between a pair of large rocks, hiding it with a camouflage tarp that mimicked the surrounding environments and partially cloaked it under an obscuring EM field. That coupled with a cold stop of everything onboard would make the ship appear to be nothing more than a metallic bit of rock on long range scanners. That was parked miles and miles away from where she was now in the basin, and where she’d been lingering around for days camped out hidden in the dirt. There was a clearing in the middle of said basin, big enough for a ship to land, and judging from the way the dirt was compacted, it was a regular landing site as well. From what her scanner told her, the soil here was lightly contaminated with fuel isotopes from what could very well be a jerry rigged power plant, and they seemed to be deposited regularly into the rocks every two weeks or so. Bessie figured someone liked to park here, ship nice and low in the ground and out of sight, and make regular hunting trips out into the nearby mountains for those previously mentioned rock boar.

Worst thing a criminal could do is get into a habit really. So Bessie hoped that Alice was a woman of habit. And Bessie camped out in her little hiding spot and waited for three days. It was a venture she was willing to spend a week on, that was all she had in terms of supplies that she’d squirreled away on the back of her hoverbike at least. Though, she’d lost her patience after the first day. At this rate, she may have to pack up sooner than later. A dark storm had been looming on the horizon all morning, the clouds stained with pollutant and rancid dust and threatening acid rain. It’d be here before the day was out. She didn’t want that kind of rain, even with how dry it was. Even under her little camouflaged thermal tarp, the heat and dry air sucked. She’d been caked with sweat, and then dust, and she didn’t dare waste her water reserves on cleaning herself up when she could need every drop in case of an emergency. But after days of dry discomfort, shitting in holes, and subsisting off the most bland ass rations this side of Liberty, her waiting had paid off.

An old F-337 descended from the sky that dusty afternoon. An old Liberty fightercraft, something phased out of Navy use years and years ago. The cockpit and harsh lines on the wings were unmistakable Liberty design elements, along with the engine array with its over-under set up for the main thrusters. These old mothballed ships were once valuable collectors items and museum pieces when in fine shape, but were more often delegated to rotting in old junk yards these days as they were continuously phased out of service. The Xenos apparently had a program in place to refurbish them with new CTE parts, because Bessie had seen these century old fighters out in the black competing with more contemporary birds, using modern shields and guns. They were old, but they were tried and true designs with dangerous upgrades. Nothing to underestimate.

She watched from under the cover of her little EM shielded tarp from a kilometer away, careful not to make any sudden movements. Anyone who’s even half experienced with working in the wild like this would be sure to conduct a scan of the area prior to getting out of their ship. They’d look for motion, thermal signatures, weird radiation, power sources, life signs, and signs of optics looking at them. Well, Bessie wasn’t about to move, leave her shielded tarp, use any weird kit, or take out her scope before that ship had obviously powered down. She lay there in the dirt like one of the native pigs, quietly squinting at the Xeno ship in the distance until its running lights finally shut off a few minutes later. This would be it, she figured. Reaching into the shadow behind her, she dragged a hard case up alongside her and popped it open.

While watching the ship in the distance, she pulled out her Detroit Munitions S-112 Mk 3 DMR. The polymer furniture long gun could take a variety of ammunition, and Detroit manufactured a modest selection of less than lethal rounds. An adhesive neural shock sabot round should do the trick. Fishing through the rifle’s box, she finally found the magazine with its powder blue markings along the side and clicked it into place with a hearty clack.

The digital scope lit up and painted a clear picture of the distant fighter that sat there quietly on its landing skids. With the press of a button she turned on the rifle’s laser microphone and raked it over the hull with her crosshair. No noise from the engines, and the reactor was spinning down. Perfect. She was getting ready to step out. With the sound of the wind and rustling of the sand around her, Bessie quietly lay there, waiting.
As the ship’s gangway ramp lowered she inhaled sharply and adjusted her fingers along the fore grip. A woman stepped out, guiding a hoverbike down the ramp by hand. Bessie fiddled with the magnification level, quietly ticking in on higher and higher levels of detail until she could clearly make out the woman. Long blonde hair, pointy features, high cheekbones, slight build. A tap on the NN implant behind her ear snagged the image of the woman and checked her uplink to the LPI database. Positive facial recognition.

Perfect.

Bessie watched as Alice stepped back up the gangway ramp, and returned a moment later with a long rifle and a large backpack. Bessie quietly tracked her movements with the scope, and she moved towards the bike, unaware. Bessie exhaled. As Alice straddled the bike, a shot rang out through the desert basin, and her body seized up before falling to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.

Bessie smiled, peeking up over her scope with a grim bit of satisfaction. A glance at her hand scanner confirmed that there were no other lifesigns nearby. Perfect.

Quick as she could, she packed up her rifle and supplies, rolling up the tarp and throwing her pack on, attaching what few hard cases she had to the side of her bike before hopping on herself. The bike rumbled to life with a high pitched whine before she took it zipping down into the distant basin. The dry air actually felt good this time around, blowing her dirty hair back and blowing dry the bits of her that had been caked with sweat. As she dipped into the shadow cast by the ship she motored to a halt near the twitching body of Alice who stared back up at her vehemently like a pig in a trap. Bessie jumped off her bike and squatted down next to her. She gave her a gentle poke in the temple with the barrel of her gun as she spoke.

“Yo. Bishop, BHG. Nothing personal, Alice. Just business. Shut up and don’t do anything stupid and this will go just peachy.”

“Wh-ff-... oh you fat bitch… ” She strained to talk, unable to move or bring herself to do much more than cuss through her nearly locked jaw. “Y-you’ll regret this…”

“Uh hunh. Tell me something I don’t know.”

Bessie stepped up and cuffed her bounty, binding her hands and feet so when the less than lethal round wore off she wouldn’t be able to escape. With a huff, she lifted her up and threw her across the back of the bike where she lay, unmoving. A fairly effortless feat for a woman of Bessie Bishop’s strength. An overtly hard slap across her ass punctuated the affair. Finally, a small bit of catharsis, Bessie thought to herself.
The bounty hunter was quick to start going through Alice’s belt and pockets, snatching away her side arm, knife, comms, datapad, and a few items she couldn’t identify. All were tossed to the desert sand and dust where they’d lay abandoned forever, save for her credit chips. Though something much more valuable sat nearby. Bessie turned her attention to the ship as she stuffed Alice’s money into her pack. It loomed there, dark and quiet amidst the desert basin, its yawning ramp beckoning her. Worth a look, she figured. Cautiously, she stepped up the ramp with her hand cannon raised.

Inside it was stark and tidy, though well worn and practically held together with duct tape. A peek into the engineering crawlspace revealed a mish mash of parts and improvised repairs that would scare even a Junker. Bessie was no mechanic, but even she recognized the jerry rigged cooling unit was likely on its last legs. This ship ran hot, and ran dirty. With a frown she stepped back and turned towards the daylight filtering in from down the small corridor. The tight passageway had little more than some cargo crates of supplies, a gun rack, and a door leading to the cockpit with a bunk in an alcove beside it. Her hand slowly moved across rows of compartments with tiny doors filled with who knows what kinds of trinkets. The Rogue part of Bessie came to the surface as she started snatching valuables up. She grabbed up some of the ration packs, broke her lock box open and stole the few remaining credit chips her target had, and snatched a few of her long guns and stowed them on her bike. She had half a mind to maybe sell the location of this thing to a Junker, but, may not be worth it with how the other Xenos were bound to come looking before long. Actually, she had to do something about that.

Bessie snatched a thermite bomb from her bike.

The big brick was heavy and awkward, and effectively it boiled down to a shit load of thermite charges attached to a magnet. She yanked a key from her belt and stuck it in the bomb, slowly pacing her way backwards as she hefted the thing in her hand idly. Finally, she turned the key, and with a mighty grunt she heaved it skyward. It arched up towards the ship before dramatically changing direction and slamming into the hull with a mighty force and stuck firmly onto the reactor cowling below the engine.

“Alright, lady.” Bessie straddled her bike, causing it to dip under the added weight. “Now to g- oh shit!” She cussed and ducked, a frown tugging the corners of her mouth down in wide eyed surprise as a bright flash painted the area white momentarily. The thermite flared to life prematurely, causing a crackling hiss and a flurry of sparks to scare Bishop as they rained down and scorched the sand around her. She kicked against the ground, forcing her hoverbike back and away from the scorching hot slag. She hit the gas and got out of there, leaving the bomb to burn through the reactor’s casing.

Halfway through the long ride back to Coyote II a sudden flash in the distance made Bessie stop and turn. It came from behind. She saw a small mushroom cloud of black rising up from the basin behind her as flaming shards of metal came down like hail. The boom came a moment later and echoed off the nearby rocks. She watched the ship slowly collapse, snapping in half at the middle now that her back had broken. She gave herself an affirmative nod of satisfaction before resuming her journey.

Bessie came into where she parked her own ship and pulled up and under the tarp that hid it. Eagerly she looked down at the gray armored hull below. The blade shaped Hammerhead fighter sat there quietly and eagerly awaiting her return, a thin layer of dust smearing her battered and well worn hull. A smug sigh of relief left her as she keyed her access codes into her commpad on her wrist. Home sweet home.
The cargo bay opened up at her command, groaning aside with a mechanical whir as she descended down into the dark of her ship. Her bike fit neatly in between the scant few storage pods and crates in her cargo bay. Up above her, the light of the desert that bled past the tarp vanished with a clunk of the doors. That darkness faded away with a flash of artificial light as the doors closed behind her, locking both her and her prey inside the ship. Bessie leaned back in her seat, sighing in the hot air that had baked to an uncomfortable temperature over the last couple days. She was just glad to just be out of that desert.
The terrorist was unceremoniously dropped to the floor with a thud before Bessie secured her bike to the gantry rack in the cargo bay. Dust and bits of grime flaked off as the hunter turned to her priority here. Amidst the artificial light and supply crates, Bessie dragged the Xeno across the small cargo bay to the cell she had installed, her limp body unmoving under the effects of Bessie’s stun weapon. Mechanical and electronic locks unlatched, and Bessie hurled her prisoner inside with a thud where she lay flopped over unceremoniously. There wasn’t much to see in there. A chair, a bed, a toilet. Just a basic box to keep someone locked in until jail did a better job. Alice lay there, groaning, drooling. The bounty hunter stomped over and strapped her down to a secure chair so she wouldn’t go rolling around mid flight, she’d at least leave her there until they got into space. With a swing of her generous hips she slammed the cell door shut.
With that, Alice was sealed in her own self contained holding cell to gripe and complain in until the LPI got her. She was safe enough; individual backup batteries and life support would keep her alive even if there was a problem elsewhere on the ship. Forcefields, mechanical locks, and magnetic locks would also stop any unwanted access. Plus if she did anything goofy, Bessie could vent the cargo hold into space and leave a nice vacuum gap between her prisoner’s cell and any ideas of escape. Crossing a few feet of vacuum became a lot less appetizing when you had to do it in your hiking clothes after all. And if push came to shove, there was a paragravity trap in the floor plates in the cargo hold that’d pin anyone to the floor with half a dozen Gs.

Bessie didn’t bother waiting around to see her quarry properly come to, instead just locked her up and headed to the cockpit. She ducked under the bulkhead and closed the compartment door behind her, making her way down the short ladder. She ruffled her own hair as she went, knocking dust and dirt loose and realizing just how bad she smelt from sweating in the desert for so many days straight. She was gonna need a long shower, and probably spend the better part of a day cleaning her gear. The sterile lights in the cabin flickered on as she moved inside, illuminating her small sleeping space and equally small mess. Slack jawed, she stared at the mess a moment. Her tired eyes raked over her limited selection of rations before her hand finally grabbed a “Plant-based Cheesy Beefburger” tube of Synthfoods Synthpaste that was plastered with obnoxious yellow packaging. Truly, the joy of a pre-chewed hamburger in a tube, she sarcastically mused to herself. She started sucking the thick paste down as she stepped on up to the cockpit with its myriad of dark instrumentation.

“Cheesy.” She muttered.

With a mighty sigh she lowered her hefty frame into the seat. One switch after another was clicked on by Bessie as she started the boot cycle for Coyote II. New lights slowly appeared around her in the cockpit, flickering red screens and small indicators began to glow all around her, adding color to the pale light filtering in from behind her. Auxiliary power, power plant, main computers, power distributors, shields, engines, sensors, comms, click click click went every switch. She rolled the tube tighter and sucked down more paste as she watched. Slowly screens flickered to life and displayed their start up logos before loading bars appeared and her computers began chugging away as they began to think again. A quiet rumble began to fill the ship around her as various machines shuddered awake all around her. The high pitch whine of capacitors charging filtered in along the walls, and a deeper groan and whir of the engines soon joined it. That stale air in her ship began to freshen up and cool down as life support came online properly, sucking down the hot air that had built up and replacing it with refreshing coolness.

As she leaned in against the back of her seat, sucking down her cheeseburger flavored paste, letting out a sigh of relief as she could finally enjoy the air conditioning after all that time in the desert. An okay-ish meal, no sun, cool air, and a comfy seat. Bishop practically melted. And as the tension drained from her body she let out a long sigh, and she let herself just lean back in her seat for a moment. But it was a reprieve cut short. An alarm started quietly beeping. The sensors had pinged something on constant bearing, decreasing range, five kilometers out and closing fast.

Immediately Bessie snapped out of her stupor, quickly she leaned in and tossed the empty tube over her shoulder down the hall. The little scanner display indicated some kind of hovering vehicle, small, likely an aerocar flying low. Coming in from the northwest, she could see that from the cockpit she realized. Back in her cabin she grabbed her binoculars out of one of the lockers and clumsily clambered over her seat. There was a plume of dust in the distance, heading towards her like an arrow across the rocks and sand. Her binoculars whirred quietly as she zoomed in, the auto focus finally settling on a large aerotruck brandishing the white winged half-star of the Xenos. As she lowered her binoculars she realized they’d get here before her ship had finished its boot cycle. A frustrating fact that had her biting the inside of her lip.

She wouldn’t be ready to take off for at least another two or three minutes.

Pausing, her brain quickly began chewing on plans and contingencies.

Bessie turned to the security console and quickly entered her codes to lock down the ship, mag locking every door and access hatch with a loud series of THUMPs. As much as she wanted to believe there was some off chance it was coincidence and they hadn’t seen her, she knew better. They must have seen her work at Alice’s ship, or she failed to check in, or it was just dumb luck they stumbled across Bessie and Alice, but whatever, it didn’t matter now. Bessie started working fast, bringing up the exterior cameras and arming the anti personnel guns down below on the ventral fin. The sentry guns booted up in a snap, and quickly their details appeared on the security terminal as they readied themselves. She wasn’t about to let them get to her ship without a fight.

As her ship continued to rumble to life around her the aerotruck finally crested the hill near the rocky outcroppings he had set up shop under. The camouflage tarp only covered the top, that meant the front of the ship was still in clear view, and the Xenos spotted it immediately. Shouting went on unheard outside, and Bessie switched off the safeties for the auto guns. The click quietly echoed through the cockpit, and she expressionlessly turned to face her security terminal’s view of the outside. Outside, the auto guns popped out of their armored hatches and spun around to aim at the gap between the rocks, twitching like snakes ready to strike for a moment before unleashing a torrent of laser fire. The edges of the cockpit flashed red, and Bessie watched the grainy camera feeds as a man crumpled. He fell, his leg blown clean off by her auto guns amidst the flashes that overloaded the cameras and filled them with bursts of static. The Detroit Munitions manufactured autoguns performed just like the company advertised, definitely worth the investment she thought to herself. She was glad Dalton had pushed her to make the purchase, turns out these things were paying for themselves.

The other Xenos scattered as fist sized chunks of metal on the side of the truck were vaporized in showers of sparks and slag that went skittering across the rocky ground like ice on a frying pan. A kind of morbid smile crossed her face for a moment. Hate was an expensive human luxury, and Bessie was keen on keeping her work strictly professional and wanted to make a point not to get too pissy with anyone she hunted. But the Xenos were an old enemy of hers, and she wasn’t exactly about to shed a tear at the sight before her. The Xenos were quick to dive into the nearby rocks as the auto guns raked across the area, turning chunks of sand into glowing glass under the barrage of fire. The scene around her ship quickly began filling with smoke, clouding the scene ever so slightly as lasers and sparks danced through her view.

From the rocks they began taking pot shots at her, bullets and lasers plinking ineffectively against the Coyote II’s armor. She smirked, standing up to gaze out past the edge of the transparent metal canopy. She could barely make out their heads and arms peeking out from cover now and again. Someone must have seen her though, and taken aim right at her. Instinctively she ducked as a laser sparked off the barrier a few feet away, not penetrating or posing any danger. As the initial shock passed, she couldn’t help but let out a dry chuckle. She scooped up the microphone from where it was latched to the side of the console and brought it to her mouth. She gleefully turned on the loudspeakers mounted on her ship’s hull and they crackled and squealed to life before her voice boomed out over the din.

“You’re gonna need something a lot bigger than that to get in here, boys.”

Another pair of shots plinked harmlessly off the side of one of her wings, leaving the smallest of scorch marks upon the armor. Bishop smiled, and as she turned away, she caught something on the cameras out of the corner of her eye that made her whip back around. A Xenos in cover, aiming an RPG. A glance to the side showed that her shield system hadn’t fully powered up.

“...son of a bitch.”

There was a puff of smoke on the camera. Her ship rocked on its paragravity cushion amidst a thundering, distant boom that reverberated through the hull as alarms started sounding. Bessie had to steady herself by holding onto her chair as if a wave had just rocked a boat she’d been in. Nervously she sat there, gripping the seat, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Her eyes snapped to the red screen on the security terminal a moment later. One of the auto guns was registering a massive malfunction and had likely been blown off. On the cameras, she saw the Xenos immediately take advantage of the lack of turret coverage and quickly made a run for her ship’s starboard side. The sounds of her ship continued to grow in life and power as she stood unable to escape yet. She watched those five men loop around to where the access panel was to lower the boarding ladder.

“Oh no you don’t.”
With the flip of a covered switch, the turn of a dial, and press of a button Bessie energized the intrusion countermeasures and a new whir of their capacitors sang through the air as the charge bar filled up on the terminal. It filled and sounded a positive tone. Instantly the man who touched the panel seized and fell back as the electrified hull zapped him senseless and left him laying unmoving on the ground with smoke rising from his arm. The other Xenos dragged him away, and soon one ran back towards the truck. Bessie turned back to her displays. Engine and shield restart procedures would finish in thirty-two seconds.

“Come on, come on come on…”

The man came back dragging a hard case half his size through the dirt. He threw it to the ground and two of the men cracked it open and dragged out large metal clamps with big cables coming off the back of them. She couldn’t help but stare as she tried to figure out what the hell they had with them. It didn’t look like a fusion cutter, it looked more like a pair of big metal disks. A glance back at her security terminal, almost charged again. The whine of the capacitors reached a screeching pitch then stopped, ready to electrocute again. She just watched as the two men seemingly counted down then slammed the clamps onto her lower fin where they stuck like magnets. The bounty hunter leaned in towards her screen to get a better look at the device, but had barely moved when suddenly there was a bang that made her jump. In an instant a loud electrical pop echoed through her ship as the intrusion countermeasure system overloaded back into itself. It blasted out capacitors and filled the air with the smell of burning plastic and metal amidst new warning messages. Quickly their charge readouts on the security panel dropped like a rock before a big error message appeared.

“Oh you little bastards…!”

She slammed her fist down on the side of the console with a loud grunt that punctuated her sentence. Now that was going to be expensive… but she didn’t have time to worry about that now. They were already breaking open the locks on the access terminal down on the ventral fin. She glanced back, nervously, at the sealed door leading to the cockpit, her hand instinctively going to the gun on her hip. But as repeated invalid entry codes alarmed on her terminal the engine and shields finished their reboot cycles, and the systems were ready.

“Okay, finally.”

With a huff she let herself fall back into her chair, buckled up, and scooched it into position at the controls at the front of the cockpit. With the flick of a switch, a barrier of energy shimmered to life around her ship. Instantly it knocked the two men back and severed the cables attached to their gadgets, loosing a shower of sparks in the process. The drone of her shield generators was quickly overwhelmed by the rumble of the engines. In a storm of dust and wind that knocked all the terrorists on their asses, Coyote II ascended, tearing her fancy camouflage tarp out of the ground and sending it fluttering down below where it buried the men beneath it.

She had no reason to stay.

The ship gently rumbled beneath her, and the floaty feeling of G-forces leaking through the inertial dampeners made her smile. She did it. A bit of a close one though, she thought to herself as she keyed in a gentle route up and out of the atmosphere. In a moment a series of waypoints appeared on her holodisplay, flickering to life with a distinct purple amidst all of the red and gold instrumentation and holograms. She already had some plans on how to spend that eighty thousand. Some of it was going to go to ship repair, unfortunately. She could tuck away a few thousand for herself, but she really had to set aside at least fifty thousand to pay off some guys in Kusari she’d gotten into some gambling debt with. Actually if she wanted to ever go to Kusari again, she better get that taken care of sooner than later. The Hogosha Syndicates weren’t exactly the most forgiving group in the business. Bessie would prefer to return to the Golden Dragon Casino in a dress and not a body bag.

As Coyote II arced up away from the badlands, the sour sky continued to turn. The smog and dark clouds slowly boiled in the distance as she gained altitude. Her timing seemed to be impeccable. A rancid storm had been brewing in the north, spurred on by the ceaseless discharge of industry and shifting hot air flows, it came together in a wall of rancid cancerous air. Her vector out of atmo had been muddled by this, and she shifted her route to take herself parallel and eventually over the wall of wretched air that stretched out towards the horizon. The thought of being down there disgusted her, and made her worry about the health of anyone who was in the area below that thing.

The turbulence of the air grew around her, rocking her ship as wayward crashes of lightning lit up the clouds intermittently with wild flares of blue and purple. The sheer amount of pollution and energy in the air had started to distort her sensors, something she realized when a flash of lightning briefly illuminated the shape of something off her port. It was small, distant, it may as well have been a bug on her canopy, but she was sure she saw something in that cloud. It drew her eye and gave her pause, and in a moment it vanished before she could get a good look at it. Suddenly, a creeping feeling crawled into the pit of her stomach. That was a ship, wasn’t it? Had she been cut off? She began cycling through different scanner settings, trying to cut through the ionization of the air and heavy pollutants it had dragged up into the storm. Run off and metallic particulates from nearby mining operations had turned her sensor screens into static.

Another flare of light off to her side as her ship rattled amidst the turbulent air, and this time, she saw it. Two shapes. A pair of ships, old Liberty ships, Xenos fighters like the one she had torched. Bessie sat there, staring at them as a knot seemed to form in her stomach. She couldn’t say she was too surprised to see some, but the timing of running into them had her worried in a way that began to dry her mouth. This wasn’t a coincidence in the slightest. They’re here for her, and her specifically.
Immediately her target lock indicator screamed at her. And surprisingly an unencrypted communication pinged her comms. They wanted to talk, that was unexpected. Bessie toggled the safeties off on her lasers and skirted the edge of the storm as her curiosity got the better of it. They hadn’t fired yet, which in itself was unusual enough to warrant some investigation. But part of her gut was telling her to book it, just bail, don’t bother. Despite her curiosity, the hunter wasn’t about to do anything overtly stupid however. She vectored up and away, accelerating and trying to gain some altitude and some distance as they slid in several hundred meters away behind her. Won’t be easy to shake them now. With a sigh and shake of her head she snatched her mic and clicked it on.

She listened to the static piping through a moment before speaking.

“Howdy, boys.” She locked onto the lead ship as she spoke. She zoomed in and had the computer run the markings and ID signature, hoping she could at least ID who she was talking to. As it chewed on her request, she spotted what looked like a hooded snake adorning the hull, fierce looking and with a fiery, piercing gaze. She adjusted her camera’s magnification again. A feeling of familiarity gnawed at her.

“Hello.” The garbled comms squawked back at her, drawing her eyes to the old speaker bolted to the side of her console. The voice that filtered through was smooth spoken, silky, but dripping with determination and arrogance. “Would you be interested in negotiation?”

“And what’d we be negotiating about?”

While she waited for a response, she cleared her last set of waypoints and locked in on the nearby spaceport’s nav beacon, hoping for a faster way into space. Originally she wanted to break atmo in the middle of nowhere to avoid someone spotting her and following her or warning someone, but that ship had sailed.

“I believe you have one of my Knights aboard your ship. I am sure we can make an arrangement, we may even let you walk away too. If you’re willing to discuss this like the civilized individual that I am sure you are.”

“Civilized individual eh? Well heck I ain’t had a complement like that in a heck of a long time. What’s your game, Xeno?”

“I am not here to make enemies. But I am not about to simply let you walk away with one of my crew. Come, let us land and we can make this work.”

“I ain’t so keen on just rolling over.” Her computer pinged back a result; Cobra. The leader of the Xenos Alliance.

Well, fuck.

Of course her luck would burn down to nothing and she’d be stuck with that ruthless bastard out there behind her. What the fuck was he doing here, now? She swore under her breath, realizing how much trouble she was actually in now. She could fight him, try to take him and his wingmate out… but she didn’t like those odds at all, not when they were already in her kill slot. She had to cut her losses and get out.

It’d take too long to burn straight into space. She wouldn’t survive for that long with them so close on her ass. However Allegheny Starport was nearby. Running through the storm to the space port was sounding like a better idea with each passing moment, one she was reluctantly tempted by. It was right below the docking ring, which meant that the weather control devices, force field tunnels and all that jazz would make a straight shot into space significantly easier and far far faster. Less time in atmo with these guys. Then it’d be a straight shot to the trade lane out of orbit. If she made that, she’d be home free. If she could get there.

“That so, hunter? I urge you to reconsider. We can land and… discuss this. I am not unreasonable after all.”

“Uuuh, sorry, can’t hear you.” She said sarcastically, arming her mine launcher as she spoke. “Can you speak up?”

“Now don-”

“Listen, uh, I gotta go.”

Bessie slammed her flight stick hard over, jamming the left rudder pedal hard and gunning the throttle in one swift move that had the Coyote II roll up, across, over and then under the Xenos fighters’ flight path. Her launcher clattered and clanged somewhere behind her as the deployment arms inside the chute released their volatile payload before preparing another from the magazine. All the while the horizon spun inside the cockpit as the wayward sun half hidden behind the clouds made light dance about her. She saw the flash of red in the camera as the fighters split away from one another, the blazing flares of their engines growing distant as one of them pulled off with their shields sparking wildly.

“Fine. Harlequin, her engines if you please.” The transmission squawked and ended.

“Guess they don’t mind if you get banged up, eh, Alice?” Nervously she smiled, knowing it was on now.

Bessie wasn’t going to wait for the invitation to arrive, and took the brief opening she had to roll on into the storm wall, the entire cockpit going dark save for the red instrumentation. Out before her she could only see the brilliant floodlights on the prongs of her ship that shone into the darkness. They caught rain and pollutants for but a few feet before the rancid fog consumed the light. Biting the inside of her mouth, she pushed her whining engines to full as her ship rattled around her, the momentum of her turn dragging her to the side of her seat and then far back into it as the dampeners struggled to suck down all the Gs. Her heart started to beat faster as she checked her rear view camera feeds for signs of the fighters.

As Bessie dipped into the storm wall, the turbulence increased dramatically all the way in with the wind howling wildly all around. Even with the dampeners running, she could feel her ship being tossed around in the wind, and the down drafts were forcing her lower with a distinct lack of nuance. She knew the Xenos would follow her in, but they’d be half blind and struggling to fly straight. Just like her. With any luck that’d actually help. Though her luck hadn’t been kind to her so far.
She was sure they could beat her in a straight line speed test given how overclocked Alice’s engines were. Chances are these two had a similar set up. She had to come up with something else. Flying into the storm would only delay them, not guarantee her escape. Her canopy lit up red with a new holo-display as her ship’s terrain scanners drew a scratchy wireframe of the ground below upon the transparent metal windows. Flying by instrumentation only wasn’t exactly her first option, but with any luck the sheer amount of shit in the air here would give her a chance. Though if they hit her ground scanner she’d be nearly blind in here, having nothing more than an altimeter, horizon line, compass, and the spaceport’s beacon.
And just like that, the dust and toxic rain flashed red around her as a blast came from behind, a volley of red particle bolts came screaming past her ship and lit up her canopy in a brilliant flash. Her red targeting scanner screens showed the glittering gold outline of the two modified F-337s in grainy detail, the pair of them having slid inside her turn and following close on her tail. The screens with their mix of night vision and thermographic imaging produce a blurry, but still menacing image of the ships on her six.

“So much for negotiating.” She nervously groaned, bouncing in her seat as a particularly nasty downdraft knocked a few hundred feet off her altitude with an unnatural shuddering. “Guess they don’t care if you eat shit, Alice. Shit this was a terrible idea…”

Allegheny wasn’t far out at this point. If she got there she could make a break for the docking ring. She had to get them off her ass first though.

Another flurry of red shot past her, and one of the blasts clipped her ship, nearly throwing her onto her control panel with the force of impact. Recovering from the feeling of someone rear ending her, she cranked the poorly working inertial dampeners up higher to compensate for the stupid planet’s gravity, but the system was already strained with flying this close to a planet’s surface. The ship systems display showed worrying data; it drew red highlights around the aft portion of her shield bubble on the display, signifying their compromised state as they threatened to collapse entirely.

Another stupid idea crossed her mind with a nervous sigh she committed to it.

Easing her stick over she pulled up and went into a narrow corkscrew. Her sensors showed the two Xenos fighters pitch up and arc right after her. She found herself staring at the little icons on her radar and scanner display, watching them dance behind the icon representing her ship. Each obvious movement and gambit for position they made, even as tiny pixels, was something she had to put physical effort into avoiding as her seatbelts kept her pinned amidst the torrent of G-forces the dampeners couldn’t eat up. Coyote II climbed wildly at her command, going into a vertical climb that was punctuated with the roar of her engines at maximum power. She felt the controls shudder in her hands as she constantly shifted her yaw and roll, red blasts rocketing by as the sky suddenly opened up. The yawning tan expanse of distant spinning clouds beckoned her skyward. Down below the two fighters breached through the cloud tops, dragging black smog with them towards the distant sun.

“Okay…”

With a frustrated grunt she cut her engines, and cartwheeled up and over. The high pitched growl was snuffed out as power to her thrusters cut out, leaving the cockpit eerily devoid of that omnipresent white noise. The massive flat side of Coyote II slammed into the open sky like a massive air brake and ground her velocity down violently. Half her canopy filled with a flash of white vapor for an instant from the shockwave of the turn. It forced her into the side of her seat as her bulky armored body heaved against the restraints. The discarded tube of Synthpaste clattered off her canopy windshield mid turn. As her ship floated on and up, it finally hung in the air for the briefest of moments as gravity seemed to fade from her world. Slowly her nose pointed towards the distant Xenos as she gently finished the stall turn. Then she went full power, the sudden shock pressing her firmly back as she burned towards the Xenos and the ground.

The Coyote II’s gimbaled guns centered in on her crosshair as it tracked across her canopy towards the lead fighter. As she wheeled around it finally lined up with a resounding rapid beeping as the targeting computer finalized the firing solution. A squeeze of the trigger and the three of them exchanged fire simultaneously; near misses blasting holes in the lead fighter’s shields as they both slammed her with charged particle rounds simultaneously. A loud THOOMP and the scream of capacitors somewhere deep in her ship, coupled with a violent rocking mean she’d been hit. Her master systems display screamed back at her about the shields on her forward quarter and she groaned back at her ship. She reached up above her and pulled power from her reserve batteries and dumped them right back into her shields to keep them intact as they tried to collapse and leave her exposed. She rocketed past them, the Coyote II diving wildly towards the ground and away from her aggressors.

The enemy ships fired off another volley, hitting nothing but air, before curving wildly away and into the sky behind her, dragging contrails of errant vapor with them into the distance. They hadn’t been ready to brake that hard, that was gonna cost them time and distance. Slowly they wheeled around, but Bessie had already dived back below the cloud tops, loosing another mine as she did with hopes they’d not see it in time.

Coyote II dipped low, descending out of thirty thousand feet as she made a run for the ground below, forcing as much speed and distance out of her maneuver as she felt she could. Another wayward volley red energy shot by, lighting up the storm around her. A moment later a series of small explosions illuminated the ground below in the distance where the shots vaporized some rocks in a volent torrent of molten slag that rained down through the air in flaming orange sparks and droplets. The HUD’s terrain wireframe flickered wildly amidst the storm as she descended down to one thousand feet. Mountains and mesas suddenly looked ominously close, and she found herself struggling with her ship’s speed as she dipped down into a valley and then up over a mountain, both hidden just beyond her terrain scanner in the torrent of black. Her eyes went wide, her ship’s wings narrowly missing a mesa by mere meters.

“Aaaaaaaah come on, you second hand piece of shit!”

She rolled up and over one of the cliffs and into the adjacent valley, her scanners showing the two fighters right on her ass still, descending from on high. The mine she dropped had flown wildly past them and exploded in the distance with a dull flash. She brought up her anti-pursuit laser and had it fire several volleys, but the damn thing didn’t have an automated gimbal. She had to get one, eyeballing shots with this thing like this was a disaster waiting to happen. Only one volley managed to clip a Xeno fighter, the other two barrages went wide and vaporized distant bits of rock. The Xenos responded in kind. A volley of shots from behind lit up the space red around her and with a loud electric crack the computer announced to her what she already knew:

“Shields failed.” It said amidst the screaming alarms and rapidly beeping indicators as a piece of her armor had been blown away too, leaving something rattling in a horrid way she couldn’t identify.

“Aaah, I’m sorry, baby, hold it together…”

Another bang shook her ship and nearly threw her off course, Bessie felt as if it had been yanked out from under her as her stomach turned and she yelped. Amidst the alarms and flashing red indicators she saw that her anti-pursuit laser had been blasted off, no doubt leaving a stump of power conduits and cooling assembly hanging from a smoldering spot on the hull. A glance at her cooling unit confirmed her fears as she saw the temperature readouts begin to creep higher as coolant pressure dropped. The ship couldn’t help but groan as if in pain as it strained under the pressures of atmospheric flight.

“Alright, Coyote,” She took her hand off the throttle and gave the control console a quick pat. “Get me through this and I’m gonna buy you a brand new power distributor as a treat…”

She had hoped that a big chunk of this cash could have gone to paying off the money she owed the Hogosha Syndicates, but at this rate she’d be lucky enough to cover the repairs to her ship. If she could even collect on the bounty that is. It was a worrying notion.

In an instant the sky opened up before her as she crossed into the weather control grid. Coyote II tossed up a stream of dust as she went zipping across the desert floor, screaming wildly towards her easy ticket off-world. Amidst the calm air the distant city came into view, and above it, the faded darkness of space and distant stars from where the docking ring and associated ground based kit opened up the sky. Shapes moved between the antennas and spires in the distance, little pinpricks of light that were in fact the engines and lights from massive freighters and transports. Slowly they funneled up or down from the lane leading to the docking ring in orbit, forming a steady string of lights like cars on the road. Her way out. She only could acknowledge it for a moment before her comms chirped to life.

“Attention, Bounty Hunters Guild ship, you, this is Allegheny air traffic control, you have entered a speed restricted zone. Decrease speed immediately, or you will be subject to fines and or arrest.” The comms garbled to life on the open frequency line. She clicked her comms on and started yelping, frustration easily rising to the surface. This was the last thing she needed.

“I’m being chased by Xenos fighters, you idiots! Worry about them!”

“If you- wait, man she’s right - attention Xenos Alliance ships, you have no clearance to be here, advise you turn around immediately or you will be fired upon!”

“Hell if they’re just as sharp as a bowling ball…” The hunter grit her teeth.

“Unlikely. Last chance Hunter. Land your ship.” Cobra’s garbled comms crackled to life again.

“Go fuck yourself!” She reached up and tried to dump more power into her shields, but found her backup batteries had completely drained. The blast that hit her rear turret must have damaged them, and she could not help but cuss under her breath. “Oh son of a bitch…”

“It’s Bishop right? I heard Andre’s whore was a feisty one.” Cobra’s communication channel crackled to life again, his smooth voice coming in mockingly with details he shouldn’t have.

It gave her pause, catching her completely off guard.

“... how?”

“I know you ran my identification, did you not think I’d run yours? I don’t suppose you were the one to help him escape? Then again, given what you’re doing now, you seem more like a traitor than an accomplice. Is tha-”

“You don’t know jack shit about what you’re talking about!” Her flightstick creaked as her mighty grip threatened to crush it.

“Maybe I’d be doing Andre a favor if I killed you then.”

Bessie was seeing red. And she caught it in time.

Stop. He’s trying to get to you. Don’t take the bait. Turn it around.

“Whatever happened to your rescue mission?!” She yelped back at the speaker on her console. “Are you willing to kill one of your own so easily?”

“An acceptable risk. Harlequin, paralyzers. Ground that ship.”

A flicker of pixels on her scanner and immediately her missile alarm screamed and the warning light began rapidly flashing on her console as Coyote II shared her rising panic. These guys really were psychotic.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?! You’re gonna get us all killed!”

Bessie tried to gain altitude, accelerating away and dumping countermeasure flares as the pair of missiles careened her way. The violent hum of her engines increased in pitch as she pulled above the city, blocks and industrial parks shrinking away under her. The structures of the spaceport loomed closer as Bishop dragged the missiles along. The missiles finally veered off course behind her and exploded on her countermeasure flares. The blast of the EMP force caused a surge of static to scatter across her screens, but with the distances involved she escaped any truly detrimental effects. Down far below, lights on one of the city blocks flickered off.

“They’re still closing! Activate the defense grid!”

The Coyote II veered past the control tower, the antennas passing just a few dozen meters away from the cockpit as Bessie accelerated, swinging down towards the larger of the loading docks after circling the tower. A massive Imperial Shipping train her computer tagged as the ISS Mosel had just taken off, loaded up with thousands of tons of refined metal. The ship, a massive set of engines and servicing module strapped to a dozen massive cargo pods lumbered to life sluggishly, oblivious of what was unfolding around her.

Bessie dove for the gap.

Her world bobbed and seemingly dropped out from under her as she swung the Coyote II down and rolled under the looming Imperial Shipping transport with barely enough clearance to spare. Her proximity alarms loudly and rapidly let out a series of ear piercingly shrill beeps to ensure she knew about the potential collision, something that wasn’t helping her stay calm. A mighty blast of air was dragged through with her, toppling nearby loading trucks and rolling them across the pad below. It was a narrow gap that Coyote II barely fit through on her side, and Bessie dumped the last of her blindingly bright countermeasure flares into that gap as she zipped on through. The closest Xeno veered wildly off course at the last moment to avoid getting flashbanged in such a small space and risk turning into fire and metal confetti. Bessie lost track of the fighter in the chaos and she made a break for it.

The vertical climb was easier than before, once she crossed up out of ten thousand feet she crossed into the orbital elevator. The force fields, weather control systems, and other complex machinery she didn’t understand kept this lane of traffic from the space port and up to the docking ring in a tunnel of very low air pressure. It let ships easily move to and from the planet’s surface without burning too much fuel or burning up physically from atmospheric friction. Wonder of engineering, she was sure.

But now she was flying headlong into the traffic moving to and from the ring above. The scanner filled with strings of pixels as her computers identified dozens of ships constantly triggering collision warnings on her HUD. The ass end of dozens of freighters and small shuttles glittered before her as tiny pinpricks of light and tiny flames in the distance. Though some monstrously large ships were far closer, and avoiding the engine wash of large, chunky ships like the pair of Gateway transports was something that required a more involved maneuver. Their fusion torches threatened to incinerate anything within a hundred meters of their rear end with their superheated engine wash. She really wanted that shield right about now, but something must have malfunctioned, some capacitor or power conduit, because the damn thing hadn’t recharged.

A glance back and she could see one of the Xenos pulling into the lane behind her, weaving between the larger ships. They both shot upwards and into the tunnel heading to the docking ring and the black patch of space beyond. From somewhere behind and below her a volley of blue blasts shot skyward past her. Her rear view cameras showed several turrets near the space port had sprung to life, one of the Xenos still hot on her tail as the second strafed the tower below. Their blue lasers desperately tracked the Xenos fighter, missing crucial shots.

“Holy shit, we’re under fire!”

The transmission cut to a burst of static as distant puffs of smoke and fire appeared around the space port. It was the briefest of distractions that led to a red blast slamming into her ship on her starboard forward wing. The flash of the blast and force of impact caught her entirely off guard as the force of the crash mixed in with the screaming of new alarms. A big chunk of her starboard wing was singed black, glowing red and orange at the point of impact as sparks and smoke streamed out. The floodlight and laser mounted to the wing were blown to bits, leaving little more than gnarled wreckage. The laser’s assembly snapped off and crashed into Coyote II’s chassis with a crunch before bouncing away and vanishing into the sky behind her. New warnings flashed to life as the damage to the cooling system became too much for her old ship to handle. Out beyond the cockpit, the radiators at the rear of her wings were glowing red hot as they desperately tried to pump heat away from the ship’s core with what little coolant they had left. Her nano-repair system had patched several of the holes in the lines, but not all of them, and not quickly enough.

“Come on and hold together you piece of junk!”

A flurry of encrypted comms on the Liberty Police Incorporated channels was as detail she almost missed, but as space crept closer her scanner continuously lit up with new contacts as she ducked and weaved between the transports in the lane to the docking ring. Each one she zipped by she tried to duck in front of to get some cover. It partially worked, particle blasts from the Xeno fighter behind her exploded off of the shields of random ships she cut in front of in a shameful display of collateral damage. As the chaos unfolded, the forces of order descended down from space.

Out past all of them, a small group of four LPI fighters charged down the lane straight towards the dogfight. Bessie could only see the glint of them in the distance, but her scanner display showed them clearly as a flight of Patriots; little silver, dart shaped ships with distinct flared double tails. Her computer showed them broadcasting a string of communications directly to the Xenos ships, and they must not have liked what the cops had to say.

Somewhere from behind her a missile rocketed past her cockpit and into the formation of fighters in the distance as they just opened hailing frequencies. What came over the comms was the dying electronic squeal of a transceiver array as the lead LPI ship’s IFF transponder vanished from her sensors. With the blue flash of the EMP missile, one of the fighters went silent, her running lights flickered off, the glow of her cockpit vanished, and the ion trail from her engines ceased. Bessie watched on, morbidly curious, as it eerily passed her by. The ship committed to a deathly quiet somersault as it fell to the ground like a discarded toy. The other three fighters broke formation and loosed their own missiles towards the Xenos ships, the second from farther back having nearly caught up to her leader now. The Xenos broke away to deal with the cops.

Bessie had no reason to stick around any longer, and made a break for the docking ring up above her as the LPI swung around and fell in behind the terrorist ships. The last vestiges of sky bled away as the horizon fell far behind her. The Coyote II finally rocketed through the rings at the top of the orbital elevator, and left them far behind as she vectored for the nearby trade lane. She couldn’t help but stifle a nervous laugh. The bounty hunter had finally cleared her way past the massive structure in low orbit, emerging into space amidst a parking lot of freighters and transports and random advertisements between Pittsburgh and the nearby trade lane. Not far beyond that, a massive trash field of scrap and debris surrounded the planet and glittered like bits of broken glass. Once she was able to make it to the trade lane, she’d be home free. On the other side of the lane sat Fort Bush and Baltimore Shipyards, massive installations which would have more than adequate protection to cover her as she made her way to the Colorado jumpgate.

Unfortunately as she looked back, the Xenos were still following her, even while under fire from the LPI and several random cargo ships in the area that had begun taking pot shots at them. The evasive action they were taking was more than enough to slow them down and let her get some distance from them. The trade lane ring was practically within arm’s reach. The massive ring would accelerate her ship out of this damn place.

“These fucking guys don’t know when to quit.”

With numerous private comms coming in from all the transport she cut in front of, Bessie forced her own activation codes through to the trade lane’s terminal as she came rocketing in. She had to throttle down and burn her retro thrusters to get into position, something the Xenos tried to capitalize on as they made one final pass at the bounty hunter’s ship. But Coyote II’s engine two powered down completely as she tried to throttle back, one half of her main drives sputtering to a stop abruptly. Error messages appeared across her fuel computer screen as the interlock chamber on her lower engine finally fused and burnt out amidst the heat and the stress of constantly forcing a full power burn. She started repeatedly hitting the restart switch. A desperate act that yielded no results.

“Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck.”

Whatever, she didn’t need it now, she was almost at the trade lane ring.

In her cockpit, her computer beeped optimistically as the tollbooth on the lane accepted her codes and took her credits. Before her, the massive trade lane ring shimmered to life for just a moment. In a flash of blue the Coyote II accelerated out at superluminal speed through the trade lane’s compressed field of space/time, leaving Pittsburgh a shrinking brown marble in her rear view cameras. A volley of red blasts flew through the space that Coyote II occupied an instant ago, hitting nothing but the vacuum and space dust.

Her heart was pounding, and instinctively she cycled through her sensors for any sign of them being on her six. Nothing. With a mighty sigh she ran her hand down her face. She undid her harness and half fell out of her seat with an absolutely tectonic groan. Her weary eyes drifted to her poor ship’s status screen, noting her cooling system was pushing one hundred and fifteen percent thermal load.

“Oh, Christ this better be worth it.”

Cautiously she started to shut off some non-essential systems and take the thermal burden off her core systems. Maybe, just maybe, her backup cooling unit could stop any further damage. Powering down her broken ass shield generator, her weapons, some of her sensors, it all seemed to help. With the auxiliary cooling unit going she saw the thermal load of Coyote II finally start to creep downwards.

As the tension finally began to bleed away from her body, she sat up, snatching a cigarette and a lighter from a nearby storage compartment. With another long and exhausted exhale, she stuck the cigarette in her mouth and cupped the lighter in close. She sat there, breathing, exhausted, and finally feeling a tinge of relief. With her nerves calmed some she turned to her security console, bringing up the image of the woman in her cell strapped to her seat.

“Eighty thousand credits, eh?” Her eyes lazily drifted back to her master systems display and the myriad of red indicators on it. It immediately drained her energy, and she slumped down into her chair. “Better be worth it.”

With a loud electric snap her instrument panels and lights all went dark.

“... uh oh.”