FSE

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The Confederacy Of Deep Space is a region of space that spans over 4,000 light years in every direction from its Capital of Ania. It's government is a tiny, well oiled and organized machine that is prepared to do what it must to uphold all it's citizens have built.

The people were packed shoulder to shoulder in the back water flea market, searching the credit bins and tables for a hidden gem of surplus military equipment or some old electronics that were still in working order. Individual voices were drowned out in the chatter of customers and vendors trying to haggle over items with price tags that were astoundingly overpriced for the quality of the items to begin with. Everyone slinking around the place was packing, though there were only a few weapons I could openly see. Even through the loose rags most of these people wore, the fact that they had some high dollar iron strapped to their waists or hamstrings was all but a given, it was the only fact in this part of the Galaxy. I wasn't any exception to that rule either. The Sig Sauer P226 that was hidden under my heavy coat was loaded with plus powder hollow points, good for shredding through anyone stupid enough to attack me. The stand I was shopping at was staffed only by an older guy with a shaggy white beard dressed in some old jeans, falling apart boots and a dirty shirt covered by a leather jacket. He was wearing a Bonnie hat, smelled like weed and was missing an eye. The product he was selling was copper cased 5.56x45, 7.65x50 Wylde, 12.70x40mm shot and 9mm full metal jacket ammunition in cases by the thousands and all of the supplies needed to load your own ammo, while maintaining the quality his factory rounds provided. The prices on the ammo was excellent, though I just wished he was selling them in slightly smaller cases.

"It's good ammo friend", the old man said stroking his beard, "all hand loaded."

"I know", I said, "I've been in your shop before, ammunition's great, I just wish you would sell the 5.56 in cases of 1500 like you do the 9mm."

"Not economically viable to offer it off the shelf", the old man said, "I may not look it, but I own a rather large company, and to offer a product for only one customer who would buy it just doesn't work, though I will give you a discount on the 2000 round crate since you've bought a bunch of ammo and reloading supplies from me in the past."

"What kind of price are you offering?", I asked crossing my arms at my chest to brace against the cold wind that was shrieking through the market.

"250 credits for the box of two grand", the man said, "and I'll throw in a box of 200 9mm's on the house."

I clicked my tongue against my teeth, mulling over the old man's offer in my head, "umm...gimme two cases of 2000 5.56 and one case of 500 for 9mm. Also, I need two, thousand count cases of 7.65x50 Wylde for my friend."

The man reached underneath his metal table and brought out the cases of 5.56 and 7.65 along with a smaller case of 9mm's, "850 kid."

I fished out my wallet, pulled out the bills and handed them to the man, "will you be taking them now or holding till later?"

"Hold 'em", I shrugged, "I'll be back for them in the next few minutes."

The man smiled and winked at me. He printed out a receipt and stuck them to my requested number of cases, sticking them on the floor by his chair. I checked my watch, it was still rather early in the day, here at least, back home it was nearing 7PM, which meant my sleep schedule would be thrown, more so than it already was.

"Damn time zones", I yawned moving through the market place, making sure to stay out of the way of others, screwing with someone was the quickest route to death, especially on a backwater planet such as this. A ways down the road from the ammo vendor was a stand that was selling freeze dried food and MRE's along with various different kinds of out door cooking equipment and fuel canisters. I wasn't in need of more mess kit, though I did need to stock up on the MRE's, the job I had just gotten done working had taken quite a while and exhausted most of the supply I kept on my ship. The vendor had a variety of meals and packages for sale in his stand, ranging from pizza's, different chicken recipes, pastas and even vegan stuff. I wasn't too big into the veggies, my teeth were hardly designed for it, though I was a sucker for pizza and pastas, despite my teeth not being really designed for that either. Magellan would eat whatever was put in front of him, he wasn't picky, so really, I suppose there was nothing to complain about. I picked up a case of 15 pizza MRE's two cases of Alfredo and Mac and Cheese a few cases of spicy and plain chicken, soups, fresh vegetables, meats, etcetera. The couple who ran the vending station seemed surprised at the bulk of it all.

"I'm not normally one to ask questions", the man said typing some calculations into his tablet, "but, what the hell are you gonna do with all of this?"

"I hunt bounties for a living", I shrugged, "I buy for three or four months down the road. In my line of work, you never know when you'll get to spend an extended period of time at home, where the bulk of your fresh food is. MRE's aren't as good as a fresh kill, but they keep me alive on the job. Now, how much is it all gonna set me back?"

"1,119 credits and 44 units", the man said.

"Rackin' up the bill the'day', I said opening my wallet and forking over the cash, "such is life I suppose."

"Take or hold?", the man asked as he printed some receipts.

"Hold them", I said, "I'll be back in about 5 minutes."

The man nodded and stuck the receipt's to the boxes I'd bought. I navigated through the thick crowd and back to my ship, which I'd parked a good distance from the marketplace. It was a standard A-Class, though with the amount of work and cash I'd put into it, it was probably nearing more an X-Class in terms of power. I kept it's exterior appearance up, but the interior...that was a different story. The hallways were always dark, but I liked it that way. My time as a slave had left me with a rather strong light sensitivity due to a weakened visor and even the normal daylight was like a flash bang unless I was wearing eye protection. The floors were made of grated metal panels that allowed me easy access to the wires, pipes and systems underneath them, due to the amount of power the engines were putting out, shit was always braking, so I needed the quick access. It kept the weight down too, which helped to offset the already laughable fuel consumption. The walls were no different, they were bare metal and wires with the struts showing. I needed to get a Kydex interior into this thing, sooner rather than later. I walked down to a four way hall and took a right turn and walked down another small hallway before passing through a hatch which opened with a whooshing sound and walking down another short hallway to the AFT Storage compartment, where I found a robot dressed in Multicam digging through the boxes and various crates.

"Looking for something Magellan?", I asked.

"Those extra clips for my M1", he said closing a metal box and setting it back in it's place, "I can't remember if I stored them here or if I left them at home."

"How does a robot forget things?", I asked.

"Same way most lifeforms do", Magellan said, "we run out of memory space. How did the supply run go?"

"Well enough", I said, "I can't say I found anything interesting though. Going on four hours of sleep over the past four days isn't working well for my brain."

Magellan, a navigation robot with True AI, was given to me as payment for my first job. At the time, he was a pile of scrap metal, barely functional. I did everyone of the repairs on him myself with brand new parts bought straight from the company that manufactured him. He and I had become best friends in recent years and without him, navigating the abyss of Confederate space would be nigh impossible. He was also rather handy with a M1 Garand that was super modified, with not a single part of the weapon having been left alone. He didn't carry a secondary weapon, always said he didn't need one. I'd been up his ass these past few months trying to get him to build an AR-15, though Robots are kinda hard to convince of anything once they've made up their minds.

"Want me to fly the ship home?", Magellan asked.

"Uhh...yeah", I said matter-of-factly, "I'm too tired to fly this thing, also, I need you to carry all of the ammo I got up here, I can't foot it and all of the MRE's as well."

"How much ammo did you buy?", Magellan asked taking his heavy coat off the wall near the door as we left.

"Over 6000 rounds between 5.56, 7.65 and nine millimeters", I shrugged.

"We didn't use that much on our last job", Magellan noted retrieving his Sig Sauer P226 from a leather holster that hung near the exit of the ship, stuffing it in his coat.

"Not about how much we used", I said as we returned to to the market, "it's about stockpiling for the future and shit."

Magellan shook his head. We went by the ammo stand and retrieved the boxes then trekked to the food vendor, picking that up. Back in AFT storage, the boxes packed away very nicely and compactly. Magellan left his pistol in the holster and went to the cockpit, starting up the ship's engines and getting us airborne. I strapped myself into the passenger seat as we cleared the planet's orbit and began to orient ourselves towards home.

"Let's go for fast travel", I said tightening my harness, "I just wanna get home."

"Uses a lot of fuel", Magellan said, "you sure?"

"Yeah, sure as I've ever been in my life brother."

"Alright", Magellan flipped a few switches, "Warp sequence initiated."

He a key into an ignition and turning it. A red light came on near the key. I took the other key hanging from the sun visor and stuck it into a second slot. A hissing sound in the back of the ship signaled the warp core was charging. When it was charged and ready, the red light turned green and a screen displaying transmission information changed, clicking off since the Warp Core didn't rely on the Torque Converters or mechanical gear boxes to get a ship moving.

"Drop keyed", I said, "away in 3, 2, 1."

I turned the key. The stars outside the cabin started to shift from white to magnificent blue color, then they turned violet, disappearing as the digital needle that monitored the RPM of the Warp Core neared 10.5 million. The pitch dark of normal space transitioned into a light blue haze, that eventually became a cone in front of ship, illuminating the entire cockpit with it's glow. The Warp System picked a higher output/spin ratio at 12 million RPM's knocking them down to around 8.5, where it held steady. Warp systems, in case you were wondering, use powerful magnets and Temporal Compensators to distort the space around a ship, effectively like taking a piece of string that's a foot long, and bringing the ends together to make a little over an inch of distance from tip to tip. Since Warp Core's, like anything else, need to produce extra power to shorten the distances, they spin like a transmission and when the material that composes a core spins, it grows unstable, producing more energy, but it sucks down a ton of fuel and is taxing on the ship's generators. Specialized electronics harnessed into a ship's normal computer allow it to pick from an endless amount of output/spin ratios and do trillions of calculations a second, which keeps trips short and the RPM's of the core low. Extra cores make things safer and more efficient, but aren't worth it in the long run, not to me at least. A multi core warp system wouldn't fit on an A-Class and I don't go on long enough trips to justify an extra core any way.

Minutes after engaging the Warp Core, we had arrived home. A familiar yellow and green marble with fantastic blue and green X shaped rings floating in a single planet star system welcomed Magellan and I home with open arms as we descended into it's atmosphere. Exiting the think cloud cover, we laid eyes on the familiar mountain range that stretched far past the horizon. Thick, pure white, fluffy fog billowed up from the canyons in between the mountains and the river that ran from an unknown source raced off the edge of a large cliff face into a valley below it that was always shrouded in fog and contained the titanic skeleton of a long dead creature. Yellow Elephant grass surrounded a stucco house with a solar panel roof and concrete driveway that had a truck covered in water droplets sitting on it. Magellan set the ship down on the landing pad about 50 yards from the house, disengaging the Warp Core and engines.

I unlatched my harness and walked through the barren hallways once again, entering my room. It was better done than the rest of the ship. A thick blue carpet covered the floor and a large bed on a wooden frame in the corner as bolted to the steel underneath it so it wouldn't slide all over the place when the flying got rough. A flat screen hung on the wall with a DVD player, monster PC and four generations of Xbox secured to a grate steel table bolted to the wall and floor underneath it. I had the same set up in my house, in an entire room devoted just to gaming, which annoyed the living hell of Magellan, who always maintained I could be shooting with him or hiking in the mountains. Sometimes even I have to relax. The walls were covered in tan painted sheet rock as opposed to the bare, grey metal of the rest of the place. In the corner closest to my bed, I had a wooden table that held a neon lamp and small mini fridge. In another corner of the room, I had a dresser that had my everyday clothes in them, though I normally walked around the ship without them, since I really didn't need them to begin with. Beside the dresser were two lockers that held various articles of military equipment from different species and worlds that I had acquired at gunshows and bazaars over the years for rock bottom prices. I kept most of my use gear in a MOLLE Gen II pack that rested at the foot of my bed with my Mark 65 Mod 0 bolted to a small space at the foot of it.

Sierra Outdoor Company's Mark 65 Mod 0 was my first real rifle. I'd bought it bone stock from the HQ store on EDN III when I was 17, and over the years it had become my second best friend. Over time, I'd built it up and tuned it like I had everything else I owned. Built carbon fiber 16 inch barrel, straight pipe gas system that placed the block and the gas key on equal levels, all Magpul furniture as recommended by SOC, a Trijjicon ACOG scope with their tiny little red dot mounted on top, kept a hold of the original M-LOK rail and the rifle also had a very special surpressor that all but eliminated firing noise even with the compressed powder charges met for machine guns. I wished I knew what made it tick, I'd love to have one for my Model 14, but sadly, SOC only manufactures them in 5.56, so I was shit outta luck on that front. I picked up my rifle and pack, meeting Magellan at the ship's entrance. He had all of the supplies I'd just bought in an old shopping cart with wheel barrel tires on it. We used the old thing to move heavy stuff from the ship to the house, it had taken me about 20 minutes to throw together, and it had been worth the time.

"I've got the supplies", Magellan said, "you need to go scrub your filthy body and get some sleep."

"Do you have your house key?", I asked.

"Always", Magellan laughed, "I can handle shit Skyline, you go get some rest."

I yawned, nodded and stepped off the ship out into the cold, damp evening. The sun was putting on a hell of a show as it sank beneath the misty mountain range. One good thing about living so far out of the way was that Magellan and I, aside from a single town containing mandated Confederate facilities, post office, clinic, general store, hotel and a landing pad with a fueling station and repair shop, we were literally the only ones who lived on this planet. I had found it by accident during my travels, and Confederate law states that if you find an uninhabited planet, you get to keep it. So I filed the paper work, and MG-667 belonged to me and only me. I was the only one who could approve of new settlers, but no one except a fringe minority wanted to live out here anyway, due to a lack of valuable minerals, super rugged terrain and constant cold and rainfall, though for me, it was paradise. I unlocked the front door and stepped inside. There was a small cubby, six feet across and 9 feet high immediately behind the door. I took off my boots and set them on a rack next to my other pairs and shut the door behind me.

The house was cold, all of the power was off as I'd been away the past few weeks on the hardest job of my life. The main entry room had a steel and oak wood stair case that went up to the second floor along with a small hallway that lead off to four other rooms, my office, gaming room and armory. I walked through the small, hallway, past the door way into the kitchen and into the Armory. A single, huge gun safe manufactured by Onyx Safe company stood at a slant in the corner. The massive, black safe cast a shadow when I hit the breaker to restore power, which also turned on the main light. I hung my ruck sack and tactical vest on rebar hooks next to each other and set my rifle on a table in the middle of the room that had all of my tools in chests built into it. I unlocked the safe, gave the giant, vault like handle a turn and pulled open the heavy, solid steel door. The safe was stocked full. I had a full arsenal, containing various self loaders, bolt actions, shotguns and handguns as well as a Gauss Rifle, the only weapon in the safe aside from the handguns that wasn't manufactured by Sierra Outdoor. I stashed my Mark 65, locked the safe and then went upstairs to the bathroom. It was a good size, ample enough room to fit two people at once. The sink was placed at the back of the room on a long counter that ran to both ends of the room, slotting in nicely against the shower and bathtub, which were separate. The toilet was located against the back wall with a wooden divider between it and the door, while to my left was a cabinet that held towels, shower curtains, cleaning supplies and various other things it made sense to stash in the bathroom. The floor was done in those sheets of little square tiles and so too were the walls. Because of the way the bathroom was set up, water going everywhere whenever I showered was un avoidable, the tile made sure I could just leave it to dry without a worry in the world. I stripped off all of my clothes and threw them into a basket I kept near the towel cabinet. I turned the hot water on as high as it would go, waited for it to warm up and then stepped in. One thing I liked about the way the shower was set up was the fact that there wasn't anything to step over or into, rather, the floor around the area of the thing was sloped just enough that the water would run into a drain in the floor. I scrubbed off the weeks worth of muck and grime that I'd accumulated over the duration of my last job. By the time I finished, I felt new. It was never lost upon me what staying clean could do for someone's morale, even if they didn't realize it. Growing up, I didn't have too many opportunities to leave my cage unless I was going to school. Gym was last period for me all through High School, where I was getting the worst of what my captors could give out, and it irked my friends at the time to no end that Coach Times always let me off the hook when it came time to getting out of the locker rooms before final bell, but coming to school smelling like blood and hot metal every day with usually a fresh set of stitches I received from the nurse actually bothered them. Had my back then, still do today. I shut off the shower, dried off and slunk across the hallway on all fours back to my bedroom.

It was the biggest room in the house, aside from the living room, and also the most empty. My bed built out of steel I-Beams with a high dollar air mattress sitting on top of it. Just to the right of the entrance was the closet where I kept most of my gear and clothes, and the water heater was back there too, tough it was hard to get too. I slunk up to the foot of my bed and crawled under the covers, laying my head on the pillow and passing out from exhaustion shortly afterwords.

When I woke up, it was the next morning. Starring out the window above my bed, the sky was clear and the flying leaves indicated that the wind was gusting hard. The heater I could feel from the vent above my head was on full blast. Downstairs, I could smell Magellan cooking eggs and sausage. I laid in bed for a few minutes, trying to fall back to sleep, but I didn't have any luck. I pushed side the covers and crawled across the room on all fours to my closet. I pulled on my Cotton lined thermal underwear, foliage green M99MN Survival Cargo pants with a sleeve in them for my tail, a white M76D Survival Shirt and a M45 Softshell jacket in Woodland camo. I slid my feet into some wool socks and pulled my normal boots, a tan pair of M25JHG's, on over them. Everything in my closet was manufactured by Sierra Outdoor Company, for two reasons, one, they always had it in any color you wanted and two, the stuff would never fail you, no matter how hard you worked it. I've been wearing the same boots for 7 years and they haven't failed me yet. I walked downstairs, where I found Magellan hunched over the stove, no shirt on, exposing the metal and rubber bits of his body. A thick line of wrapped cables disappeared into the base of his head after traveling a aways up his neck. It was impossible to tell of the mechanics that were going on underneath his armor plating, but they were rather impressive. Broke down calories into a substance that produced electricity at 100% efficiency, so there was no need for a waste removal system, the one thing he had over me, besides not having a tail I supposed.

"What are you cooking brother?", I asked getting into the fridge for a coke.

"Sausage and eggs", Magellan said, "wanna top off the batteries, by the way, there's pizza left over from last night. I went into town and picked some up, put gas in the truck as well and got the ship refueled."

"Thanks man, did you get the ammunition and food sorted out?", I asked getting the soda and shutting the fridge,

"Yeah", Magellan said, "everything that needed to be done got done."

"I owe you one", I said cracking open the can and pouring roughly half of it's contents down my throat, "ah, I needed that."

"Did you sleep well?", Magellan asked.

"Like a rock", I said looking at the clock on the microwave, "holy shit, 11:50?"

Magellan chuckled, "yep. I blew an air horn in your ear and you didn't wake up. You could have been certified dead by any non robot out there."

"You know I keep a .300 blackout under the bed right?", I asked chugging more soda.

"I ain't scared of no .300", Magellan said, "oh, and speaking of .300, Thomas said there was a job offer waiting for you in town when I was there."

I set the empty coke can on the table, grabbed the dish of leftover pizza, it was pepperonis and stuffed it in the microwave, "well then I guess I've got a trip into town, wanna come with?"

"Sure", Magellan said, "I like car rides."

I finished off the can of coke and threw it in the bin. Magellan and I got our rifles from the safe, I got the keys to the Corvette and met him outside. Usually, when people hear that I live on an undeveloped back water planet and drive a Corvette, their first reaction is a Chevy Corvette, but not so. The Corvette was a diesel sport truck custom built by a company known as Meteor Performance EDN III. Ours had been upgrade, of course. The standard Inline four had been ditched for a big, 5.0 liter V10 that put down a thousand horsepower to two thousand foot pounds of torque through all four wheels via a five speed manual transmission with a variable rear end that could switch ratios on the fly for on or off road driving. The standard turbo had been ditched for a twin set that hung off the back of the truck and compressed anywhere from 50-150 PSI, depending on how crazy I was feeling. Thanks to big, fat military tires with tread that could be compared to the teeth on the scoop of a dedicated excavator, off road we could reach our top speed of 195 miles an hour quite easily.

"You're not seriously thinking of running out on another job are you?", Magellan asked, "not sure you'd last very long in the state you're in."

I yawned, "I can't disagree, but hell, it can't help to go see what's up. If I don't wanna do it, I suppose there's plenty of other bounty hunters who could take the job."

"It's not like anyone else posses your skill set", Magellan said, "plus, if they're coming to you, it means they want a mother fucker dead."

"Yeah yeah", I said kicking the truck into first. The engine groaned and shoved the hunk of steel forward. The drive to town was only about 20 miles, but because the terrain was so rough, it wasn't exactly an easy trip. Creeping over that damn trail with a manual transmission required a shift at just the right time or the truck was gonna stall, and it wasn't like I hadn't killed it before. The trail began about two miles away from our home base and ran for about six miles, shifting elevations at points with inclines and slopes ranging from light to damn near vertical. It was child's play for some of my friends in town, but for Magellan and I it was just annoying, seeing as we flew most everywhere, though we always managed. Once we cleared the trail, it was smooth sailing on a well pounded out Jeep trail all the way into town.

It was a sleepy little place that would remind anyone who'd looked at old pictures of 1930's New York, but built with modern technique. Seven or eight total building's made up the town and a paved, two lane road with some room on the side to park cars separated the columns that they'd been built in. You had the General Store, Clinic and Hotel all on one side, while the other side had the Post Office, Fueling station and repair shop. The landing pad was about 300 yards outside of town for extra clearance in case a large ship needed to make an emergency landing, though the odds of that were low, seeing as we were so far out of the way. There were only two road signs in town, one that said "Outpost 11-RT, Population 7" and another one that said, "Speed Limit, 15". I knew all of the five people who lived in town, friends from back in High-School who'd made my time as a slave borderline bearable. There should have been six people in town, though that was neither here, nor there. I pulled the Corvette up behind Peter's red Jeep sitting in front of the post office and killed the engine. Magellan and I gathered our weapons and exited the truck out into the cold, damp air. The vehicles sitting quietly in the street were gathering rain drops and soggy pollen blown in on the wind. Treacherous looking, pitch dark storm clouds with streaks of lightning going through them in the distance told me the worst of the storm was mere hours away, so it was probably a good idea to get what we needed to do done and then get home.

"Hey Peter", I called as Magellan and I ducked inside the post office, "You around brother?"

"I'm in the back", a man's voice called, "I'll be up front in a minute."

Magellan and I walked to the front desk. The post office was a small, three room building that looked more like a house than a government facility. The walls were made of china berry wood paneling with cheap varnish that, though well applied, made it feel like a trailer. The front desk itself had been carved from the trunk of a Super Tree and was probably more expensive than the entire building. There were only ten PO-Boxes in the facility that were all up near the front desk, three of them were empty as there weren't enough people on the planet to fill them, and it would stay that way until the day that I died. There were papers piled up on the desk and on shelves that allowed people to pass things through to the back from the front, and through the opening I could see even more clutter accumulating. Peter had always been a super unorganized, boxes everywhere but he knew where everything was kind of guy. He joined us in the lobby shortly after we entered.

"You look like hammered shit Sky", he grinned.

"Eh my last job was hell bro", I yawned, "shiftiest little bastard I've ever had to hunt and a crack shot with a 1911, almost didn't walk away from that fight."

"Almost only counts when you're chucking an RGD-33 in the direction of the enemy", Peter said handing me a bundle of envelops and a small media player, "jobs on the media player, everything else just looks like payment for past jobs and some new residency permits."

I took the media player off the pile and handed the rest of the mail to Magellan, who went out and put it in the car while I booted up the small player and took note of the job offer. I'd had jobs like it before, but the amount of money the man was willing to fork over was nuts for the kind of work he was asking for. I took a deep breath. Four and a half million was a lot of money. Like...a lot of money, "4.5 million? Dude must have the worst roach infestation of all time."

"What about roach infestations?", Magellan asked coming back inside.

I read the letter aloud, "Hello, Skyline Imese. My name is James Holden with the Biosphere Corporation. Being the Owner and CEO of the company, I am inclined to inform you my lab is currently facing an infestation that my security can't deal with on their own and given your reputation for jobs well done, I have decided to contact you. Should you choose to accept, I do a 25% payment up front and the rest on completion for all outside help I hire. I am willing to pay you 4.5 million credits should you chose to assist my security forces in battling the infestation, plus costs to you. If you accept my terms, simply arrive at the provided coordinates. If you don't then don't reply."

"I've heard about Biosphere", Magellan said, "one of the leading DNA, Robotics and Military research facilities in the universe. Super high profile and they have a security force that's it's own private military to boot."

"Wonder why they're contacting me then?", I asked.

"Probably just sheer numbers of creatures", Magellan said, "for four and a half million, two sets of extra hands could hand out a lot of help."

"So I guess we load up the ship and head out when we get home then", I said putting the device in the pocket on my leg, "say hi to the other's Peter, when we get done with this we can all go on another camping trip."

"I'll hold you to it then", Peter smiled, "good luck Sky, and don't eat the yellow snow."

"Never", I said bumping fists.

Magellan collected a few things addressed to him, read through them and then we returned to the truck, driving home in awkward silence for some reason. About a quarter shy of the getting home, I turned to him.

"Okay brother? Been awfully quiet, which is strange for you."

"Thinkin' 'bout the job, something about it is rubbing me the wrong way."

"What's wrong with it?", I asked, "we've had jobs like them before. Easy money at the end of the day."

"That's what I'm worried about", Magellan answered, "it seems like it's almost....too easy. One of the universes leading military, robotics and biological research labs and they're calling two bounty hunters to deal with a simple infestation? I don't trust it."

"You don't trust anything", I said.

"Well you got me there", Magellan concerned, "it is a lot of money, but still though."

"It'll be okay brother", I assured, "you'll see. It'll be just line any job we've done in the past. Show up, kill off the infestation and get the wad of cash. Once were done, we camp out at the house for a month or two."

"I won't argue with that. Could use a vacation."

Magellan and I didn't waste any time getting our kit together when we got home. He loaded up the ship while I gathered my gear and hit up Jesus and Saint Mike to watch over me and let me have the insight to know when or if this would become a bad job. I'd taken out the wrong people before, and the guilt for that never quite leaves you. If you have any sort of integrity, hunting bounties isn't so much about the money as it is knocking off the trash of society and helping out folks who need it, and the last job was a great example. Magellan and I were hired by the government of a planet to bump off someone they considered an international terrorist. We suspected something was fishy, but we accepted anyway, quietly agreeing that we'd support whoever was in the right once we found the truth. Turns out the international terrorist was a 15 year old 1911 crack shot who had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time and seen something he shouldn't have. After getting close enough to explain who we were, we took him to the Confederate capital of Ania. No one else could touch him there without bringing down the full force of the Confederate Government, the one government in all of recorded history that did what they were supposed to do, and did it well. The reason I bring this up is to try to shed some light on why I do what I do. Bounty Hunters are often thought of as mindless drones in it for the money that will kill anyone for any reason at any time as long as the price is right, but that couldn't be further from the truth.

I finished up my prayers, grabbed my equipment and headed for the ship, finding Magellan had finished packing up the ship and was sitting on the ramp cleaning his M1.

"Get everything packed up?", I asked stashing my gear on the hooks near the exit.

"Yep", Magellan said quickly throwing his rifle back together, "want me to fly the ship while to catch up on your sleep?"

"Sure", I said. I walked towards my room, put up my rifle and crashed into my bed as Magellan picked up the ship and took us into orbit. If I had known what I was in for, I would have never left home.