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"Thank you. Well. I guess that's it.”
The ship initiates transport protocols with the phrase I programmed into her.
“Let’s fucking go.”
Manik
There's someone up there. I can't see them through the ice storms that ravage the planet’s surface nearly constantly, but I can feel them. I have been hunted from one side of the nebula to the other. I have killed too many times to remember. I have become the thing I swore I would never become, and I have had no choice in any of it.
Now another predator comes.
The energy signature of a transport is easy to spot when you know what you're looking for. Forcing atoms to rearrange themselves at short notice creates chaos in the local molecular community. Little subatomic entities who were busy being air are suddenly turned into a spleen or a gun. That leaves an unexpected vacuum in which the unexpected can and does occur.
This is not an effect that is often taken into account by the casual user. Most teleportation sites are atomically buffered to prevent chaotic results. But this is a wild planet, and here nature rules with a cruel and icy hand. I chose it for several reasons, and one of them was that the particular ionic makeup of the lower atmosphere does not tolerate transportation of that kind.
I hear a high-pitched scream as the incendiary material loses containment and flares. I am not close enough to see precisely what catches first, but I see the red flashes through the driving sleet.
It sounds like a woman's scream, I laugh to myself. This is not the first bounty hunter to burn up on transport, and it probably won't be the last. There's no documentation on the environmental phenomenon that causes one to be exploded and stabbed by the planet upon transport, because all those who transport are, well, exploded and stabbed.
Oh, wait. It’s a woman.
“What are they doing?” I growl the question to myself.
They’ve sent a woman to bring me in? A human female, judging by the number of limbs and the diminutive anatomy flailing about in the distance. For a moment, I wonder if I am witnessing some kind of an accident. Perhaps a lost researcher. No. There’s nothing to research on this planet, and certainly not alone.
Oh, well. That was that. Nobody survives transport…
There's a movement at the verge of my vision.
She’s alive?
She’s limping. Wounded. Impressive. Most people would have died in the first flash of flame, but her equipment must be of the older type that doesn’t go up like a stick of dynamite thrown into a swimming pool. She’s far from being out of danger, however. That sheared suit is letting in air so frigid it can snap freeze a soft-bodied creature like her in an instant. All I have to do is close the door for two minutes and she will be another forgotten creature eventually joining the fossil record of the planet.
Somehow, instinct has guided her toward my door, so close by that it’s not terribly inconvenient to save her. Against my better judgement and general temperament, I find myself braving the infernal chill and dragging her into my cave.
She’s unconscious. Wounded. So close to death that I can hardly claim to have saved her. Yet.
“I’m wasting my resources on you," I tell her insensate body. Being unconscious is no excuse for being rude. She’s put herself at risk in the pointless attempt to capture me. Look at her.
I strip the suit from her body. It will do her no good, and I may be able to salvage some of it for other uses. Nothing goes to waste out here. Her naked body is soft and curved and not at all geared to survive the kind of adventure she has foolishly embarked upon.
She’s wounded in all manner of ways. Burns from the fire. Frostbite from the cold. Scars from something she managed to do to herself before this moment.
I have a tool that can fix almost any injury that hasn’t yet become critical. She’s borderline, but I try it anyway. I don’t have a lot of experience looking after others. I’m usually the one inflicting damage.
Going through her pockets, I find the inevitable bounty chit. Holding it up between my fingers, I cannot help but laugh. They’re getting truly desperate now, throwing absolutely everybody with a ship and a death wish after me. Her arrival means my location continues to be leaked. I am going to have to move. But I knew that already.
“You’re lucky,” I tell her. She’s still not conscious. I move her closer to the reactor that is putting out enough heat energy to keep this cave well above freezing. She’s going to make it. She might wish she hadn’t.
She shifts uncomfortably. She’s not aware of the pain, but that doesn’t stop the pain from being there. I’m not usually concerned by the pain of others. I quite often enjoy witnessing suffering. Or I did, at one time. But there’s something especially pathetic about witnessing the suffering of an unfortunate, weakened creature like her.
Her pink lips part. She is trying to speak. What words does her broken subconscious hope to wring from her? Will she beg for help? For forgiveness? Will she call the name of a lover?
“Fido,” she whimpers. “Come here, boy. Such a good boy.”
I feel a strange flash of jealousy. Who is this Fido, and why does she want him to come? What makes him such a very good boy that she should remember him now in her darkest moments? My curiosity continues to grow in spite of the very limited information my captive has provided.
Lyssa
