The hunt, the hunt, and the hunt.
By Lt. Cuddles
The Steindrage snapped awake, called to consciousness by a sudden sound, similar to a muted explosion. Then a pause, then another sound, the same. And again. Its brain couldn’t name the noise, or what made it, but it knew exactly what it was: good sport before breakfast.
With deceptive fluidity, it uncurled, let go of the FZX billboard on the ceiling, and dropped to the floor with a screeching snap, its claws digging into the metal grille. It yawned lazily, letting a faint cloud of chemical fire escape from its jaws, and rubbed a bit of gunk off from its rightmost eye with a wing’s end. The sound of muted explosions was still far, but it was getting closer. The Dragon shook the sleep off and let the rolling motion of his neck slowly turn into a huge stretch, ending with a satisfying crack of the tail, which destroyed a Stardeers cafè embedded in the cave’s side, robotized barista and all.
It moved a few steps out of the tunnel, tossing aside crates and trashcans with every movement, until it reached Dewey’s Spaceport Hub number three, its favorite place. It actually preferred the open air, but it had soon found out that the planetoid had a severe lack of sky and overabundance of ordinance on the surface, so it settled for the tallest cave it could find and made it into its den, a place where it could spread the old flappers after a long day of mayhem in the mineshafts.
Of course it took a little bit of redecorating, but a generalized removal of most of the protruding bridge-docks and a systematic incineration of the triple-As (Anti-Air-Autoturrets) was enough. Within a day of work, the Steindrage had a nest and plenty of shuttles to play with.
Speaking of, the muted sounds of explosions rang again, closer this time. The Dragon scanned the dimly lit dome, looking for the incoming ships, finding nothing. Every day the prey tried new and better methods to evade its attention and the Drage loved the challenge, in its primal, wordless way. He took off, trailing debris and wiring from the platform, and circled the cave in a leisurely glide. Almost immediately a set of loudspeakers turned on, filling the cave with human noises:
<< Attention all passengers. Steindrage airborne from dock 24 and circling main airspace. Takeoff and Landing is forbidden until the nearest hunting team is deployed. Seek shelter until further notice. Repeat, Attention all passengers….>>
The drake flapped its wings, gained height, and then curled upon itself in an overly dramatic U-turn, dropping towards the main landing area, near the cave’s floor and the entrances to the mineshafts. In its total ignorance of the meaning of words, it still challenged the very concept of “understanding” by having learned that the sounds “hunting team” meant “breakfast on delivery”.
Mere meters away from the cave’s bottom it snapped its wing open, sending dust and small items flying in all directions, and slammed its rocky frame on top of a luxury shuttle. The single-seater, an ancient refurbished spaceship of angular frame and X-shaped wings, bent and crumpled under the beast’s momentum, transforming into the priciest pile of bolts and scrap of the whole planetoid. By megabeast standards, a perfect landing.
The Steindrage looked around, craning its neck over and under the nearby shuttles, toppling one with an arrogant shove and gutting a second one with a snap of its whipping tail, in search of “hunters”. It reached the center of the main landing pad, climbed on top of a B.O.E.I.N.G. freight shuttle and finally saw its prey: two distinct groups of humanoids were approaching its position from opposite sides of the Hub.
The dragon couldn’t put its excitement to words, so he did the second best thing and started putting it to flames.
Hallken ducked behind cover avoiding a spout of flame by the smallest of margins, the heat of the chemical inferno radiating oppressively around him, singing his brand new Brawler Lieutenant overalls.
The datastream from his Lt-Commlink updated him in real time about the forces under his command, dispassionately showing with a red line of text what he could clearly hear on the opposite side of the heatshield: the last Igao serving under Fiberwyre got unceremoniously pop-corned by the megabeast.
He quickly sent commands to Kii’wa’s triad to sneak closer and lay some mirrorballs to help the beasthunters get closer, but he got pinged back with a negatory.
“Kii’wa, what gives?” he shouted in his commbead “You are our best bet!”
The Kriigel’s voice rang back in the typical Tohaa high-definition monotone “I’m pinned, taking fire from the other hunters’ team”
Hallken sighed to himself. Competition between hunters’ teams was fierce and hospitalization by innocent stray bullet had been at an all-time high, but this kind of firepower seemed a bit over the top. Usually the bigger guns were pointed at the beast, but those were much bigger guns than normal, and they were all pointed towards the Fiberwyre team. Judging by the sounds, all of the guns were of PanO make; the people wielding them had no insignias, and all wore black/blue anonymous colors.
The former O12 agent pinged his assigned aide, the Kiuutan known as D.Bob “How are things on your end? can you take some of those guns down for us?”
He expected the kiuutan’s voice to purr back in her barely-ok-to-HR tones, but she sounded perfectly monotone instead, in her very first show of genuine Tohaa emotion since she met Hallken “Nevermind the big guns, our mark is here. They have a hostage, a civvie, head bagged, FZX ID card on breast pocket, woman, a fresh catch.”
“What of her?” asked Hallken “We have a contract for the Steindrage”
“Not the hostage.” droned back D.Bob “The hunter. Black leather, high heels, two golden crucifixes on her neck, pneumatic assets rivaling my own, and a whole team without any kind of insignia whatsoever. That’s Lisette Beckmann.”
Hallken heard the commbead screech a bit, while D.Bob hastily switched to all-comms “Kii’wa” she said flatly “You were right, Beckmann is trying to evacuate with an FZX hostage from this very spaceport. It’s now or never.”
Kii’wa’s monotone echoed D.Bob’s: “I’m taking command back. All units, our target is here, move to intercept and capture. Do not harm the civilian if possible.”
Hallken didn’t even have time to protest: the HUD projected on his helmet flickered and changed before his very eyes, all tohaa forces forcibly removed from his command, leaving him in charge of a couple of helots, a beast Hunter, and a lone Digger, who had been debating loudly to himself whether to charge the Steindrage or shoot it before charging.
“You’re on the Megabeast, Hallken” concluded Kii’wa, shifting forces to the side of the landing platform “You got this”
The former O-12 investigator peeked out of cover, holding curses at bay behind his teeth, and saw the Steindrage snapping its jaw around the Digger, who’d be now better defined as Digger part 1 and Digger part 2.
“Well then fuck me I guess” he commented, sprinting from cover to cover, reaching the Beasthunter, a barely intelligible angular man, bent under the weight of an excessive amount of high explosives and homemade variations on the chainsaw concept, sporting the pinkest Hawaiian t-shirt of the sphere, on top of bomb-proof gear. He may or may not be called Don, or Dok, or possibly Dan.
“Ho m’boss hey!” he welcomed the Brawler, his speech encoded by some weird unknown accent, slurred by some nasty facial scars and muffled by an explosion-proof helmet “Wha’gud whindsh brig you here in this here hiding spaht o’mine, here?”
Hallken took a second to make sure he understood the question, then another couple seconds to analyze what just transpired with Kii’Wa. He lifted his head, meeting Probably-Don’s surprisingly pretty eyes “The enemy is trying to evac” he started “Which means they’re going for a shuttle, and I bet my lunch money it’s that one over there, the black one that stands out from all the rest by looking too inconspicuous”
“Bet” agreed Likely-Dok, mildly
“We need to get the Steindrage to that shuttle, give them a reason to shoot at it rather than us”
“Nah, Steindrage’s stuck defensive, see? Themwings all curled here in and such. It won’t be gon’do move f’ra while. Nonnis own volition.”
Hallken pondered the hunter’s words for a bit, peeked a couple times around the corner, dodging the occasional enemy pot shot, and took stock of the landing pad, littered with trashed shuttles and random bits of chemical fire.
He inhaled deeply, deeper than he felt he normally could, a side effect of his new lungs, then started sending command prompts to the helots through his Lt-Commlink. He heard the sound of a heavy machinegun, punctuated by the typical noise of a rocket launcher, and saw a red dot on his helmet’s HUD. He corrected the orders to include a single helot. “You go to the black shuttle” he then added, towards the Beasthunter “sneak under it, set a mine at the very base of the landing gear, then wait for the signal to manually detonate”
“Aye, I reckon I’mmm gonna do know it when it do show itself to me to see ansuch, right, nay?”
Hallken nodded, then broke into a sprint out of cover, dodging a stray rocket by sheer luck. He tried to hide from the not-PanOceanians by using the mirrorball zones Kii’Wa and her team were currently throwing around, in their effort to catch this Beckmann character.
He took position behind a flaming control panel, peeked out and shot at a blue-bereted, sunglasses-sporting, black-clad operative who was just about to reach the -anonymous- shuttle. He missed, but it was enough to get the whole fusilier team’s attention. They quickly turned on the Brawler and saturated his position with various flavors of gunfire, allowing the Beasthunter to sneak past them, next to the shuttle, and place a… mine?… a homemade explosive device on the spaceship.
The Fusiliers, ears full of gunfire and head full of trigger-happiness so high it bordered trigger-elation, didn’t hear him whistle happily while he armed the charge. They did, on the other hand, hear a prolonged screeching sound: it was a maintenance forklift, hurled at them at maximum speed, the mechanical brakes sparking and screaming, a shrieking helot militiaman at the wheel. They mostly managed to dodge out of the way.
The vehicle barely slowed down after hitting the shuttle, the impact sending sparks and shards of electronics all about, and it careened loudly towards the Steindrage, slamming right into it. The mine then detonated with a dull POPping snap, sending bits of plasteel and shreds of high end leather seats flying in all directions, followed shortly after by a river of fire, puked out by a now wounded and vengeful Steindrage.
The beast jumped and rolled, a bloodied shard of what looked like a very pricey real-ceramic toilet sticking out from its wing joint, and limped towards the lower mineshafts at a deceptively fast pace, biting, clawing and charring whatever was in that general direction, including some inconspicuous not-PanO operatives, and some racially homogeneous groups of Tohaa.
“He’s going to mineshaft 12” screamed Kii’wa, surprisingly loud for such a monotonic voice, “If it gets to the Cave Ducks it’s all been for nothing. After it.”
Hallken peeked out from behind his cover, seeing the Tohaa disappearing down an escalator, following the dragon’s trail of destruction, trading shots with the not-PanOceanian forces, hot on their tail.
He sighed and looked around, evaluating whether he could stand up yet. He saw Probably-Don walking casually towards him, waving, and took it as a sign that they were no longer in a gunfight.
They met in the middle of the landing area, next to a couple of wounded fusiliers. A third one almost shot the mercenaries on instinct, but she stopped short, mostly in confusion at the beasthunter’s pink Hawaiian shirt. That split second gave Hallken the chance to produce a first aid kit from his belt and toss it at her feet. “You do the big guy with the head wound” he said matter of factly “I do the blonde guy with the thing in his arm. My colleague here is going to see if he can find enough Helot to rescue.”
He didn’t wait for an answer and turned to tend to the blonde fusilier. The muscular man was awake and ready to fight, but allowed Hallken to get close after he was showed a medikit and a flask of hard liquor. The fusilier had gotten hit by some kind of super high end novelty limited edition Tungsten-Titanium bottle of Vodka, possibly ejected from the black shuttle by the explosion. Hallken dislodged the bottle from the man’s elbow area, applied an emostatic painkiller patch, then did his best to immobilize the arm in a shape resembling the correct one. “I’m calling for MedEvac right now” he said to the fusilier “While we wait maybe we should drink a bit of this, huh? As revenge for shattering your elbow?” he suggested, shaking the dull grey bottle, still dripping blood.
The blonde man squeezed a smile out of a wince of pain and went to answer, but froze immediately, all expression draining from his face, his eyes going wide in typical soldier’s stone-faced fear of an higher-up.
“I’d advise against opening that bottle” said a female voice with a thick germanic accent from behind Hallken. “I went through great pains to collect it. It’s AbsolutelyAbsolut brand.”
Hallken saw her walk around him and enter his field of view, her black leather boots making no sound despite the high heels, her black clothing hugging her toned body, two golden crucifixes hanging in areas not very holy, her pale face artfully dirtied with soot and blood spatter.
-Beckmann- he thought, remembering D.Bob’s description. He looked at her an instant more, seeing nothing but cold steel behind her eyes, and noticing she was currently holding someone’s severed head. He decided there and then that he had never heard her name before.
“That’s a Tohaa head” he said instead “I’ll trade you the bottle for it”
“Oh? you’re saying this cube is worth a priceless bottle of AbsolutelyAbsolut?” answered the now nameless woman “Does this mean it’s someone important to you? Am I to understand that you were close with a Kiiutan? A terrorist?”
“Not close, no” lied Hallken, bringing out his policeman’s poker face “I am employed in the same company though.”
“Tell me more” she asked, her voice dripping subtext
“Company’s named Fiberwyre” stated Hallken drily, sensing his life was once again on the line “we get work from the Ducktail Pub’s Billboard and just do contracts. We are deniable and we get results” he gestured at the wreck of the black shuttle, still on fire. “You could hire us yourself next time”
“Us?” she laughed “My squad is on your so-called colleagues’ heels. There won’t be an ‘us’ much longer, I’m afraid, unless we get our …civilian guest… back. You must have a commlink to your team. Give it to me.”
“Buy it from me”
She raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow “You think you can negotiate?”
“I’m clearly still alive, which means that you either don’t have the means to crack my commlink’s encryption fast enough, or I know something you need. Whichever it is, I’ll trade it to you for my ability to walk away from here alive, and never having met you in the first place”
Hallken put on his best shit-eating grin, another skill he picked up from being an O-12 investigator for so long.
For an endless instant, silence expanded between the two, covering the sounds of the gentle crackling of flames, the occasional snap of a fuse exploding, and the distant rumble of the MedEvac approaching.
“You’re not haggling for BitCreds?” she queried, tilting her head slightly
“What good are they if I have to spend them all into rezzing?” He put the vodka bottle in his helmet and presented both to her “Take it and give me a personal comms code. Once I’m on my MedEvac I’ll text the password to you.”
She narrowed her eyes to slits, her gaze trying to pierce Hallken’s poker face. “Code is @#6193232Lizett” she paused for a second “You have a good eye. I might have work for you in the future. I’ll be in touch.”
She sprinted towards the escalator, followed closely by the uninjured Fusilier. Hallken never took his eyes off of her, as if scared that she could change her mind. The MedEvac’s engines roared closer and closer, until a gust of air pushing on his back told him his transport was finally here.
He turned around and saw an egg-shaped shuttle, the bright red chassis painted haphazardly in the style of graffiti art, dark blue insect-like legs extending from the bottom, an omni-directional landing gear, clamping magnetically to the landing pad. The front of the egg shape opened up, two oblong panels lined with strobe light-dots shot upwards, a thick fog pouring out from the opening, light and shadows dancing around what now looked like the shape of a cartoon bunny vomiting a rainbow of vapors. Then from the mist emerged a figure.
MedEvac teams on Dewey had never been able to afford standard vehicles or dedicated crews, but seeing such a novel one was a first for Hallken. He was even more surprised when he saw a single woman disembark, rather than a full team of paramedics. She smiled cheerily and moved fast, almost twitching, giving the impression of a hyper kid who found their dad’s stash of Whole Protein’s 25hrEnergyGummies(TM). She was scantily clad with faux-jeans overalls, which turned into a faux-jeans micro-miniskirt halfway down, on top of a vertiginously undersized red T-Shirt and faux-jeans thigh-high socks, both held firm above the knee by miniature tool-belts, filled with miniature wrenches. She wore an oversized red beret, decorated with a white “M”, on top of aqua blue hair, tied into twin knee-high ponytails. A Camera-bot painted up as some sort of walking mushroom followed her closely.
“Oh Wow-ee y’all already phyring up the place, huh? I liek it. very raw, very real, postapocalypse grindset, mad maxxing a bit, but with less sand, which is always a plus, it’s so coarse and it gets everywhere”
She looked with wide blue eyes at the wounded fusiliers, the pink-clad beasthunter, the adrenaline-high helot (now forklift certified), and finally Hallken. She reached him in a couple gay hops and grabbed his hand in an over enthusiastic handshake “HI!” she chirped “Everyone calls me Gogo, they would think the “M” on the hat stands for “Marlene”, but this is a cosplay, it stands for “Hatsune Mario”, I love cosplay you know, I made this one myself with stuff I sourced entirely on Bakunin’s DeepShop5, I really recommend it if you are into comics and nerd stuff, Mid Bertha is kind of a bitch but she gets what you need for a good price, and she really loves her deep lore so I guess it’s ok, anyway you must be the leader of this little crew, great job decorating here, as I said before, I’m really really vibin’ with your style, so raw and realistic! Where are you gonna put the merch stands for when people start coming in?”
Hallken wrenched his hand out of the gracious little vice that was Gogo’s and managed a “Huh? Sorry I…”
“Ah you haven’t figured it out yet, I see, I see, those kinda things are always tricky. I’ll let you do your job then, yeah. Would you maybe tell me where your boss is? I gotta talk with the organizers, there’s SO-MUCH to do still, and while I see you’re pros, I also see there are some details to straighten out, I mean…” She tapped her multicolored fingernails on Hallken’s chest, pointing at the Fiberwyre tag “I get it that it sounds similar, but the correct spelling is P-H-Y-R-E festival. And whoever got “wire” from “festival” must’ve been so high on som’n, they make me wish I had a hit of it too! HAHA! Anyway, forget I asked about your bosses for a sec, where’s the best place a gal can get a sip of amasec down here? Last-minute supplier audits for the festival are my fourth favorite way to get hammered. If you treat me to dinner and a fun time, I’ll tell you the other three, HAHA jk, jk, so, where to?”
Hallken answered on instinct, overwhelmed by the deluge of words
“The only place with any real liquor around here would be the Ducktail Pub”
“Great! sounds fun, that’s a fun name, very PG-13, but a bit riskèè at the same time, let’s Go-Go-Marlene, it’s my treat!”
She took the Brawler by the elbow and hopped alongside him, half following his lead, half pulling him through the wreckage and flames on the landing bay, on the hunt for the best alcohol on Dewey.
