TABLE OF CONTENTS:
CHAPTER I – PIZZA PALACE
CHAPTER II – SPACECRUISER RHINOCEROS
CHAPTER III – HALFBAG SILVERTOOTH
CHAPTER IV – ORFAN STORAGE
CHAPTER II – SPACECRUISER RHINOCEROS
Xalluna was a cold planet. The geography was nearly all tundras and mountains. There was a frozen ocean, amounting for a small fraction of the entire surface area of the world. The weather was harsh everywhere, except within the city. There was nothing out there in the wasteland except for some tough animals, able to exist with sparse vegetation. Species that adapted to the crushing hostility of the environment; thick-coated birds and beasts.
Ockgate was the lone capital epicenter of the entire planet, simultaneously ancient and technologically advanced. The old quarter had temples that were built centuries before to worship the original gods. A mysterious apocalypse must have happened along the way. The epoch ended, catapulting the evolution of the species on a path of long-winding reset into the future. Ruins of an advanced civilization with archaic technology were preserved. There were new gods now.
The planet had a relatively small temperate zone. Scientists couldn’t explain why. The reality of its existence was more important than the reason. A foundation had been set up there long ago and grown into a metropolis over centuries. In present time, skyscrapers and fortresses were rife and spreading, making up the majority of the city.
Xalluna was located at a crossroads between larger planets with more desireable ecosystems, attractive to travelers and good for commerce. Ockgate served as a convenient spaceport for outsiders, enabling it to slowly grow into a wealthy, state-of-the-art urban triumph.
In their long seclusion on the home planet, before space travel could reach Xalluna, or anyone could leave, the Ochot had diligently advanced in the realm of transportation, primarily a network of hyperlink tubes that ran a vein-like structure through every section of the city. A passport supplied by the government was needed in order to use it, which many civilians subscribed to. Once inside, the passenger would be swept away, riding a platform along the route at a comfortable speed, able to step out into a new sector at any exit point.
The Ochot had been under threat of attack for a long time, thus becoming resilient and vicious against overwhelming opposition. The barrier ring of defense ships above Ockgate was doing an examplary job since its implementation. A strict filtration of visitors by the guard ships rejected or captured any with illegal or ill-intentions, keeping the city in order and generally unthreatened by serious outside mischief.
Despite being native to a winter planet, the Ochot rarely wore much clothing. Within the city or the ships, the temperature was carefully moderated. It was a show of pride and strength against nature to bear skin against the elements. Traditionally, they wore only enough clothing to cover the sex organs. That was socially acceptable.
The Spacecruiser Rhinoceros hovered in orbit outside the planet. Inside the ship, Delt Kangis was in his seat, gazing at the expanse of space outside the window of his chambers. He was a lanky creature, wearing a black speedo, leather gauntlets and boots. His face was plain, nose and mouth hidden beneath a layer of wrinkled skin, with gaping red eyes.
The ship was sleek built and relatively compact, with a skeleton crew of ten. Its main purpose was facilitating an interstellar superweapon, the Axial Ordinance. The nuclear laser could wreak incredible carnage, but the microchip with the codes needed to launch it had been stolen. The bandit was thought to be the rogue known as Voltaz.
Attempts had been made by bounty hunters to kill him and recover the chip, but Voltaz had thwarted them all.
The Rhinoceros was the only Ochot vessel to be equipped with a weapon as potentially devastating as the Axial Ordinance. The government had spent considerable sums on its development and subsequent implementation into a spacecruiser. It had been tested in the past on derelict planets, wreaking nuclear havoc. There was a sole key, the microchip which contained the codes to engage the weapon. Without the chip the Axial Ordinance was useless. It couldn’t be remade, on purpose. The original creator stressed the importance of extremely restricted access, so it couldn’t be misused. No one else knew the secrets to how it worked. Now, no one did at all. The famed scientist, Dr. Klebold Kundruum, who had spent a period of his life’s work building it, passed away suddenly under dubious circumstances. Some surmised he was murdered with poison, but the official cause of death was unknown and never investigated.
Delt Kangis had risen far in the ranks of favored government agents and space captains. It had come with a good amount of hate and jealousy from his peers, who became rivals. Now he was assigned to the position of being the guardian of the most powerful weapon which couldn’t be used. That made Voltaz one of the most sought after fugitives in the universe. Informers had reported he managed to escape to earth.
Delt Kangis wasn’t a bounty hunter. He didn’t have arcane knowlege. He was a spacecruiser captain. His place was on the ship. There were other responsibilities. So he delegated.
“Halfbag” Silvertooth was on the vidscreen. Delt Kangis paced up to meet him.
“Captain Kangis, I heard you were interested in my services,” Halfbag said. He was pale. Thin, long hair like a recently deceased corpse. His eyes shone like a demon was behind them.
“Mr. Silvertooth, greetings. Your reputation preceeds you. I’m told you’re skilled in the arts of reconaissance, and a warrior of great courage and ability,” Kangis said.
Silvertooth said, “I take it there’s a job you’re interested in my services for?”
“A man by the name of Voltaz has stolen an item very precious to the Ochot government. Multiple attempts have been made to recover it. All have failed. We are prepared to pay you handsomely for the safe return of the Axial Microchip to the Rhinocerous.”
“A tempting undertaking. Who is Voltaz?” Silvertooth said.
“I won’t lie to you, Halfbag. He’s somewhat of a little weasel. Conniving, slippery, and most of all dangerous. To a frustrating degree. Not to be underestimated. He’s shown significant prowess in the arcane and he knows martial arts,” Kangis said.
“That doesn’t intimidate me,” Silvertooth said.
“You are saying what I like to hear. Superb. The target has fled to Earth. We can provide you with the necessary information to get started, that is, all we know about the situation. Upon safe return of the microchip, you will be paid. Eliminating Voltaz is not required, but recommended. The universe would be a better place without him.”
“Sounds like a worthy challenge. Send me the info and I’ll start as soon as I finish up what I’m doing, which will be soon. One last thing. I’ll need to receive half the payment now.”
“What if you fail? Then we will have wasted the money.”
“I never have before. Half now, half when I bring back the microchip. I’m not stupid enough to abandon the mission and try to disappear with the cash. I know what would happen.”
“There’s a first time for everything, Halfbag. You drive a hard bargain. I’ll have to discuss it with my superiors in Ockgate, but that can most likely be arranged.”
“Good. Then you’ve got yourself a deal. When I receive the first payment, I’ll start.”
CHAPTER III – HALFBAG SILVERTOOTH
✸
The desert was cracked and uneven, sun blaring down with ballistic heat. A tall wooden post was embedded in the ground. Someone’s bone-thin, sun-peeling body was tied to it with their arms wrapped behind, wrists bound with rope.
Halfbag Silvertooth was standing there, weilding a curved dagger.
His spaceship was parked beside them. It was an LWS (Light Weight Spaceship) named “Falling Star”, octagonal shaped with wings spread out the sides. Simple and compact, no passenger seat, with some cargo space in the back.
The prisoner was slowly regaining consciousness as Halfbag smoked a cigarette, patiently waiting. When the young man looked up at him with confused, bleary eyes, Halfbag threw the finished butt on the ground and squashed it into the dust with the toe of his boot.
“Good morning,” Halfbag said.
The prisoner glanced horror-stricken at the dagger and turned his eyes back to Halfbag, struggling pathetically in his bondage before he gave up. He started gagging and retched a little bit of bile.
“W-what are you going to do?” He said.
“Well, that depends,” Halfbag said, tossing the dagger in spirals, catching it by the hilt repetatively.
“Oh god, please don’t kill me. Please, I don’t know anything,” the prisoner said.
“I’m not so sure of that,”
“Who are you?”
“That’s cute. I thought I was the one asking the questions here.”
Halfbag took the man by the pinky finger and casually sawed it off. The young man screamed in agony. Halfbag held up the finger in front of his turned-away face, keeping it there until he looked at his dismembered body part.
“Nine more to go,” Halfbag said. The young man was in shock, squealing and wimpering, fighting the pain.
“How could you do that?” he said, “I didn’t mean any harm.”
“What you mean and what you do aren’t always the same.”
“But, but, I’m innocent. You can’t hold me responsible for other people’s actions.”
“I can do whatever I want,” Halfbag said and cut off the next finger. After the screams, which lasted awhile, the man regained a semblance of composure and could face Halfbag again. There was nowhere else to go. The only possible way out was through the conversation. Halfbag waited patiently until the man was finished with the brunt of his agony, absorbing the suffering.
“Please, my Father is very rich. You know what my Father does? Let me live and he can pay you. I won’t hold it against you. Just let me go. Whatever you’re being paid now, my Father can do better than that!”
Halfbag twisted the dagger, staring at himself in the reflection of the steel, mock-contemplatively.
“That’s a very enticing offer. But money isn’t really the full issue here. I’ve got some degree of ethics and honor, I like to think. To accept an offer like that from you, after I already agreed to a contract with someone else about this. That just doesn’t bode well for my self-esteem.”
“Contract? I didn’t do anything to you! This isn’t fair…”
“That’s the really troublesome thing about life, isn’t it?”
“What is?
“It’s not very fair sometimes.”
“Ahhhh… What do you want to know?”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Halfbag smiled with a twinkle, “cooperate and you may come out of this alive. Maimed, of course, there’s no going back on that. But alive.”
The man held his head. “You want to know where… Where the… Sceptre… Is…”
“That would be a good start.” Halfbag held the tip of the dagger up beneath the man’s chin, “let’s skip right to it, then.”
The wounds had created an incessant dribbling of blood, pooling behind the stake the man was tied to and surrounding his bare feet.
“My Father, he’s… Oh god… He’s keeping it…”
“Yes? Go on. You’re so close. You can do it. I believe in you.”
The sarcastic derision stung differently than the blade.
“He’s keeping it in the… the…”
Halfbag sliced off the index finger. A vulture was scavanging above, circling in anticipation. Halfbag threw the severed digit to the bird, who caught it in midair and began eating it on the ground in front of the young man.
“The… The… The… The what?” Halfbag smacked the man in the face with his open palm, forcing him to stay in reality a little bit longer.
“Tell me now.”
The man was waving his low head back and forth, sobbing.
“It’s in the Sunken Temple,” he said.
“What Sunken Temple?” Halfbag lifted the man’s head with his free hand, but the man couldn’t look him in the eyes. He squinted away, mouth twitching with chapped lips.
Halfbag smiled. His silver front tooth gleamed in the sunlight.
“The Sunken Temple… In the Stormspike Valley… on Asheron.”
The vulture had finished pecking the flesh off the morsel it had been offered. Now it was hungry for more, with a potential feast in front of its avian eyes. Halfbag stood with the vulture as his newfound accomplice, the victim hopeless and depleted.
“The planet Asheron?
“Y-Yes…”
“You wouldn’t lie to me?” Halfbag said.
“N… No. It’s in the… the… Sunken Temple.”
Halfbag believed him. He thought the young man was so weak and cowardly in character he wouldn’t have the guts to boldly lie in the face of death. No, this one would use any last fleeting chance to save his sun-fried skin.
“You’ve won your life but not your freedom. For now. Let’s see how you serve me and we’ll reassess the situation later.” Halfbag cut the ropes binding the man’s hands and released him. He was so exhausted and near-death he fell face first to the ground and passed out.
The vulture attempted to begin nipping at his back-flesh, but Halfbag kicked the bird away. It squawked and settled for the other two severed fingers laying there, then watched disappointedly as Halfbag hauled the abused man back to the Fallen Star. He placed him in the back cargo area and nurtured him with water from a bottle out of the mini-fridge, pouring it into his mouth. By some reflex of dehydration he swallowed it, even though he wasn’t conscious. Then Halfbag bandaged his mutilated hand.
✸
Halfbag took a syringe out of a bag on a counter top in the cargo room. He filled it with liquid from a vial and walked over to the man’s body, inserted the needle into his arm, pushing the fluid into the blood stream. That should keep him incapacitated for a while. In the cockpit, he got in the pilot’s chair and engaged the turbo thrusters. The Fallen Star took off from the desert, leaving a cloud of blown-up dust in its wake. The ship ascended, soon passing the ozone layer into space.
Now Halfbag had a dilemma. He had agreed to undertake the job for the Ochot government, but he still had this prisoner, who had just divulged the information about the Owl Eye. He spared the man’s life, now he was his responsibility, and he might need him later. Right now, he was going to get in the way. A place to drop him would be ideal. Then he could come back later to finish the mission. Halfbag had never been to Asheron. A guide would be optimal, but he would have to break the man’s spirit first, if there still was one. If he died in the desert, and lied about the location of the sceptre, there would be no reconciliation. This way Halfbag could still squeeze the truth out of him.
The Owl Eye Sceptre originally had belonged to the kingdom of Barbador, located on planet Thora. The King of Barbador, Ernest Tedbaldust, commanded real respect from his people, as the sceptre was imbued with charisma-enchancing witchcraft that made whoever held it beloved by anyone who encountered them. Halfbag’s prisoner was from the kingdom of Gann, also on Thora. His father was King Isemburd Guilhelm, who commanded a savage army amassed of knights and barbarians.
Gann and Barbador were the two main kingdoms on Thora. Naturally, they fought for supremacy. The conquest campaign wrought by the Gann army was able to eventually overpower and invade the Barbador empire. Legend has it, King Tedbaldust was killed by King Guilhelm himself in The Battle of Barbador. When Gann usurped the castle, they found the sceptre prominently displayed in an alter in the court.
Many Barbador knights had retreated before the battle, citing impossible odds, but King Tedbaldust was too proud and stubborn to forfeit his kingdom. Over the coming months, the knights, led by a brave up-start, Ralf “the Shepherd”, began amassing a new army, adding components of revenge-thirsty savages that had been violated by Gann in the past and lived in the woods.
Gann occupied Barbador, and was busily making reparations to the damage they had done, building the ruins back into a city, this time in King Guilhelm’s vision. The Barbador survivors, peasants and noblemen, were enslaved or executed in mass public burnings. This brash brutality infuriated the outsiders on Thora. The balance of power had fallen completely into the hands of Gann, who dominated the planet except for the hidden patches of rebels amassing a retaliating force in the forests to the west. When word of these enemies reached King Guilhelm, he had the treasures of Barbador extradited in a space freighter and hidden on Asheron, which was a small, desolate planet beside Thora.
Asheron had fledgling Gann colonies, and the addition of valuable items such as the Owl Eye was an attempt at quickening the expansion of the off-world empire. The Shepherd’s guerillas soon began winning some battles of their own, ambushing Gann outposts, solidifying themselves as a real threat to be taken seriously. They started to gain traction in the west, enough to get King Guilhelm’s attention and weaken his confidence. Gann was spending heavy resources on rebuilding Barbador, struggling to manage the territory that was full of new slaves and civil unrest from the conquered. Barbador became “Gannador”.
This prisoner of Halfbag’s was the son of King Guilhelm, though he didn’t share the fortitude of his father, making an easy hostage for him. He stumbled on the chance to kidnap him out of the streets of Gann, and he took it, intercepting the prince on an unfortunately drunken, wandering night for the young man.
Halfbag wasn’t sure how powerful of a hand he held with the prince. He didn’t know what his relationship was with the court and the people, or his father. They could very well not care at all if the prince were to be fed to the vultures. The court could wish him dead. He didn’t have any redeeming qualities, not that Halfbag had witnessed so far, but he was too valuable of a hostage to waste.
These details would have to be worked out at a later time. For now, that mission was going on hiatus. Halfbag had to find the Axial Microchip now. They weren’t the sort of people to be taken lighty, or betrayed. This was a crucial gig for his finances. After this one, he was sitting pretty for awhile. Maybe he could buy that ranch he had been dreaming of, and take a vacation from the merc life, reflect, relax and enjoy himself.
He had given his word to Delt Kangis. He said he was going to do something, now he had to do it. As long as the Ochot came through with that half payment upfront.
He lit up a cigarette as he steered the Fallen Star through space, strategically thinking of his next move. Hours passed. The radio was on, playing sporadic songs interspersed with talk show chatter. An asteroid belt was near, he could see it in the distance, and on the radar, which was more useful for navigation than looking out the windshield. It displayed all space debris, substantial obstacles and places, including his current destination.
The Fallen Star approached a huge rectangular station suspended in space. It docked in the landing bay, where there was one other ship. Halfbag brought the prisoner to the main office. The place was a space-chain storage facility called “Orfan Storage”. It was fitting because Halfbag intended to use it for a person.
“This ain’t really a jail,” the employee said. He was a short fellow with a ballcap, chewing gum, bushy auburn eyebrows.
“I need to store my property, that’s what this place is for isn’t it?” Halfbag said.
“Yeah, but it’s for items and stuff, you know, furniture and that kind of thing.”
Halfbag held up a hundred dollar bill.
“There’s more where that came from, if you just go along with it for a little while, feed him, keep him alive until I get back.”
“Who is he? I don’t want no excess trouble here. What if people come looking for him?”
“Nevermind that. No one knows he’s here.”
“How do I know that for sure?”
“Trust me.”
“Well, I don’t know, I ain’t no prison warden or slave keeper or whatever.”
The man had a spine. He wasn’t afraid of Halfbag’s presence. Maybe after enough time of working alone in this storage facility, death didn’t scare him.
“What’s your name?” Halfbag said.
“Jethro.”
“I’ll make it worth it, Jethro. I won’t be too long, I’ve just got a pressing engagement I need to take care of. Then I’ll come right back for him. Shouldn’t take me more than a week. You’ll be amply compensated, just keep your lips closed about it and there’ll be no trouble.”
A bribe and a threat had something in common.
“Well, OK, I guess. Sounds like you’re leaving me no choice.” He reached out and took the money.
“I’m imploring you to take the path of least resistance. Then we both win.”
“Alright, let’s see here,” Jethro looked at the grid on his console, “lot 32 is open.”
Halfbag paid the fee and hauled the prince’s body over his shoulder to Lot 32, led by the employee, who glanced warily at the bandaged hand. They took a freight elevator to the third floor, walked down the hall and opened the garage. It was a dark empty room. There was a mouse inside that scurried into a hole when the outside light flooded in. Halfbag slumped the body in and shut the door, locking it.
He got back in the Fallen Star and exited the landing bay, blasting off into space. Now that that was taken care of, his next destination was Earth. A beep sounded on his command console. He checked it. It was a file on Voltaz from Delt Kangis, and a payment.
He put the steering on autopilot and read the file. There was a picture of Voltaz, and the microchip. Somehow the Ochot knew it had been placed inside a sapphire ring. Voltaz had no official criminal record, but there was a list of deeds deemed guilty of. In the photo, his eyes had cunning to them. It looked like his drivers license picture. No smile.
Halfbag flipped open a compartment with a lone button inside that read WARP underneath. He pressed it. A beam fired out of the bottom of the Fallen Star and a swirling purple warp portal opened in front of the LWS.
He flew in and the ship was swallowed by the vortex and transported through a tunnel of revolving plasma and light, traveling speedily towards the Milky Way Galaxy. It emerged out the other end of the portal several minutes later.
Halfbag could see the moon and behind it, dwarfing it, planet Earth.
He was becoming a professional treasure hunter fast.
