Amnesiac Assassin - Chapter 1

“Now that is a big fucking ship.”

The Merrick Lavigne sat in the vacuum of space between two toes of the Cat’s Paw Nebula. An unusual place to park a luxury cruiser, so close to the heat birth of new stars, but it won points for creative insanity.

“What kind of cunt names their ship after themselves?” Elias asked, sitting in the pilot seat of a much smaller vessel as he examined the cruiser through a telescope. The Barbara Anne wasn’t much, more akin to a car than a ship, but she was fast and big enough for one man to live in for a few weeks at a time—everything an assassin needs. He had her stopped fifty feet outside of the Merrick Lavigne’s radar range to be safe.

“Zzz-ckt-euhhtk-kttickt-zzidt-i-cktzz?”

The question came from his shoulder, where a small beetle was perched, or large depending on the scale someone went by. This bug was a bit like the rhinoceros beetles that Elias remembered from back home, except not at all. It had three horns, pincers, and four golden wings underneath a holographic shell. Add to that the drinking and gambling addictions, and there wasn’t another beetle like him in the galaxy. Elias called him Mark.

“I don’t actually know a Barbara,” he answered, “ship had the name when I bought her.”

“Tkickt-ckt-zzzzdt-zztckt?”

“Nah, why bother?”

“Zct-cktickt-ckzzickt!” Mark jumped up and down on Elias’s shoulder, wing cases clicking along with his words.

“Look, if you want to pay for the new paint job she’ll need, you’re welcome to name her whatever you like.”

The bug went silent, busying himself with cleaning a nonexistent piece of dust from his antenna.

Elias glared down at him before shaking his head and returning to watching the Merrick Lavigne. “As I thought. You’re a cheap bastard, you know that?”

Mark’s response was to jump onto the telescope and wiggle his carapace in a rude gesture.

“Bug off,” Elias waved his hand, the gust from Mark’s wings blowing his hair back as the beetle returned to his shoulder. He stowed the telescope back in its overhead compartment. “Seems they’re here for the long haul. You ready?”

“Zzickt!” Mark’s entire body bobbed with his nod.

“Alright, tuck in.” Elias held a pocket on the front of his jacket open, and Mark hopped in. “Could be a rough entrance.”

Pulling the steering console toward himself, he flipped the engine on and shot the ship forward. His knuckles were white over the handles of the yoke, ready to take evasive maneuvers as soon as the first shot would be fired from the larger vessel. Only, it never happened. It took ten minutes to reach the cruiser, ten minutes of uneventful silence.

Mark started humming a tune from his pocket, something he did when things got too boring.

They approached the Cruiser’s shuttle bay, the Barbara Anne’s landing gear hissing as it settled on the pad. The bay was empty outside of their own ship and a number of crates stacked around the room.

“Maybe somebody beat us to it,” Elias mumbled as he looked over the empty bay through the windshield. Unclipping his harness, he pressed a button to open the door. The noise of the seal breaking, followed by the groan of old hinges, filled the space as he shrugged his holster over his shoulders. He ducked under the door, too impatient to wait for it to finish opening, and was greeted with twelve rifles aimed at his chest. “Maybe not.”

One man, whose weapon remained holstered at his hip, stepped forward. “This is a private vessel,” he said in a deep voice, “Get back in your ship and leave.”

“Sorry, mate,” Elias said, stepping onto the pad from Barbara’s wing. His pocket continued to sing with Mark’s humming. “Didn’t mean to intrude. Fusion drive needs a charge, you know how these old boats get.”

The man glared. “You’ll have to charge it somewhere else.”

“I would love to, truly, but yours is the only ship I could find within a lightyear. If you’ll let me charge up, I’ll be out of your hair within the hour.”

“Men.” The man held up a hand, and the clicks of twelve safeties being switched off followed. “Last warning, mate.”

“Oh, come on,” Elias said, holding up his hands with a smile as he stepped to the left. “You really can’t help a fellow traveler out with a charge?” He stepped back.

The man ignored him, his hand still held in the air. “Take aim.”

“Have it your way.” He ducked one raised arm behind his head and drew his gun from between his shoulders as he backed up the last few steps. Firing off a single shot, he dove behind the ship.

For several seconds, the air was filled with the bangs of rifles firing, and the thunks of bullets slamming into Barbara’s hull.

“There goes half my pay,” Elias grumbled, reaching into his pocket to scoop Mark out.

“Tckt-zzick!”

“Sorry,” he said as the shots on the other side of the ship stopped, followed by the metal scrapes of magazines being removed. He’d have to be quick about it. “Stay here.”

Elias raised his gun as he stepped out from behind the ship, firing off three quick shots at the men closest to him, each dropping like sacks of dirt. One man was already on the ground from his earlier shot. He continued forward, firing off two more rounds at a couple of men that were raising their reloaded rifles as he approached the group.

The next man was panicking, struggling to get a new magazine into his gun before Elias reached him. Lucky for him, Elias’s six-shooter was out. Not so lucky for him, it didn’t prevent the barrel of the gun from slamming into his face. The man dropped his weapon, holding his hands over his gushing nose with a pained groan. Elias kicked the man into three others as his time ran out, the others were finished reloading. He ran for the nearest crates, shots embedding into them and ricocheting off of the walls as he dove behind the cubes.

“Fuck! Jesus!” He covered his head with his arms. Bits of foam and metal exploded around him where any bullets made it through.

“Fall back!” the commander of the men shouted. “Not you!”

From behind his cover, Elias could see the commander and two soldiers run through a door at the back of the room. A bright color-shifting shell crawled over the window on the door as it slammed shut.

The silence in the room was deafening after the commander’s departure. By his count, there were four guards left in the landing bay.

“Are you trying to wait me out?” he yelled. “I’ve gotta tell ya, it’s not a great strategy!”

“Then come out of there!”

“I’d rather not, if it’s alright with you!” Swinging the cylinder out from his gun, he let the spent charge fall out, replacing it with a new one and slamming the cylinder back in place with a twist of his wrist. “How about we make a deal? My contract says I can’t leave any witnesses, but I’m sure the last thing you want to do is die for some useless fat cat! You leave now, and I’ll forget your faces!” The men discussed in whispers too quiet for him to hear before another shouted out.

“No deal! I need the money!”

Elias scoffed. “And you’re speaking for everyone, are you?”

More whispered discussion between the guards before, “Yes!”

He sighed. “Alright, what’s he paying you?”

“Two million!”

He thought about it. A bit much, but he could swing it. “Fine!”

“Each!”

“He’s paying you two million each? That’s triple what I’m being paid to kill him!” He was in the wrong business.

“Sounds like no deal, then. Throw out your gun and come out from behind the crates!”

“Yeah, sure! Just let me get my affairs in order real quick!” Picking up the spent cartridge, he lobbed it over the crates and stood.

The four men, one with a bloody broken nose, had their rifles moving skyward as they followed the flying object. Their eyes went wide when they realized their mistake, his gun already pointing at them. They started firing before they lowered their rifles back down, the bullets useless as they hit high on the wall behind him. He fired four shots, hitting two men in the chest, one in the shoulder, and one in the stomach. They fell, dropping their weapons.

“Honestly,” Elias said as he stepped up to the four men on the ground. They were young, some still with acne on their cheeks. Two were dead, one was groaning with his eyes shut and his hands over his stomach, the other was pale as a sheet and sweating as he watched him approach. He fired off two rounds as he passed the kid with the stomach wound, cutting off his cries. Nasty way to die. A spark of gold lit up in the corner of his eye as Mark landed on his shoulder. “I’ve seen better security at the brothels.”

“Please, please,” the kid whispered, his eyes wide.

He knelt down on one knee. “What’s your name?”

“J-Jason… Mendez.”

“How old are you, Jason?” Flipping his wrist, the cartridge fell out of the cylinder. He replaced it with a new one and cocked the hammer.

“Twenty… Twenty three.” Tears were running down the kid’s cheeks.

“Well kid, I’m sorry about this.”

Two more shots echoed off the walls, and the kid went limp.

He sighed. “Such a waste.”

“Zckickt-zzidt-i?”

“Hm?”

Mark was gesturing to the door.

“Oh, right.” He ran through the bay to the door, behind which was a hallway that ended in a fork. “Did you see which way they went?” he asked as he ran down the hallway.

“Zzckti!”

He went left, and the wall next to his head exploded, sending his heart into his throat. Spinning as he dropped, he fired off two rounds at a man behind him, kicking at the ground to put more distance between them.

The guard slumped against the wall, arms at his sides, trying in vain to lift his rifle again. He coughed, splattering the wall with blood and saliva, before collapsing face first onto the carpet.

Elias glared at the bug on his shoulder.

Mark’s legs bent and he bowed in his version of a cringe. “Zzcktit-ck-tickit?”

“No shit, ‘maybe it was right,’ the fucker nearly blew my head off!” He was breathing as if he had just run ten miles.

Pincers snapped together as Mark raised his abdomen and clicked his wing casings.

Elias raised his hand. “Save it. Let’s just finish this.”

Following the right fork in the hallway, he made his way through the ship until he reached a set of ornate double doors. Crouching behind a corner in the hall, he held a hand to his shoulder for Mark to crawl on, setting him on the carpet. The beetle crawled over the thick fibers until he reached the doors, ducking below the gap at the bottom. His abdomen stuck out, wiggling this way and that as he got a look inside the room before crawling back to Elias.

“What do you make of it?”

“Zcktzz-tchkti-tcktizzit.” Mark’s front legs waved in the air as he described the scene. “Cktcktzzcht-itckt-zzctk-tkicktiz.”

“Two on the left, one behind, one right. You’re sure this time?”

Mark bobbed a nod.

Elias sighed. “You better be right. Come on.” Mark hopped into his hand, and he dropped him back in the front pocket of his jacket before loading his gun with a fresh cartridge. “Two left, one behind, one right.” He whispered the words as he faced the double doors, bouncing on the balls of his feet and swinging his arms back and forth. “Two left, one behind, one right.” He exhaled a long breath. “Here we go.”

Running full sprint, the doors slammed inward as he hit them. He kept running, shooting the man on the right before bowling into the two on the left. He hugged one of them to him as they all fell. The man in the back of the room shot, and the one he was hugging let out a grunt as he went limp. Throwing his elbow back, the other man on the ground let out a yell as it connected with his face. He hugged the dead man again, feeling the jolt of bullets hitting.

Aiming low from behind the corpse, he shot the man still standing in the ankle. Jumping back up as the man fell over, he swung his gun behind himself and shot. The man he had elbowed collapsed, a hole in the hand that had been covering his face. The man in the back, the commander from the shuttle bay, was scrambling to grab his gun from the floor. He raised it halfway before slumping to the floor with a smoking hole in his chest.

Elias rested his hands on his knees to catch his breath.

“Cktizzi-tckt-i?” Mark said from his pocket.

“I’m breathing, aren’t I?” He straightened.

Two sofas with a coffee table between them were in the center of the room, one empty, and one occupied by a man that was cowering with his arms over his head. Elias laughed as their eyes found each other, and he made his way to the empty sofa. Falling onto the plush leather cushions, he scooped Mark out of his pocket and set him on the neighboring seat.

“You,” he said, resting his gun on his knee as he grabbed a tumbler from the table and downing the amber liquid that was inside, “are a hard man to track down. Though, I’ve got to say,” he grabbed a random crystal decanter from the table and sniffed the contents before refilling his glass, “I was expecting you to have better security.”

Merrick Lavigne stared at him with wide eyes, his chest heaving with his heavy breathing. “My lawyer said he hired the best mercenaries in the galaxy.”

There was nothing commanding about the man in front of him, nothing that screamed power. He was small, balding, and shaking with fear.

“Well,” Elias said, leaning back and putting his feet up on the table. The crystal glasses and decanters chimed as they were jostled. “Either your lawyer got swindled, or he pulled one over on you. A third of those boys were barely past puberty. Felt a bit unfair for them, if I’m being honest.”

“How did you even find me?”

Downing his drink, he tossed the tumbler back onto the table as he sat back up. He would pretend he didn’t notice the other man jump at the sound. There was already so little dignity left in the man. “Now, you see, that was tricky. Never would I have guessed that you’d be crazy enough to hide out in a bloody stellar nursery. Though there was one person who knew.”

Merrick’s face dropped. “My wife told you where to find me?”

“Huh... Well, I guess it’s two then. I found out from your lawyer.”

“My...” Merrick’s head fell into his hands. “My fucking lawyer!” He jumped up, pacing around the room. “I should have known that bitch was fucking him.”

Elias looked at Mark, who was already looking at him. “Wow,” he mouthed, and Mark nodded. They returned to watching the man pace.

“She wanted kids, you know?” He waved a hand in the air. “But I couldn’t have them! You’d think being married to the richest man in the sector would be enough for a woman, but no. They always want something more, and how is that my fault?” He stopped his pacing, leaning against the back of the sofa as he ranted at them. “Why am I the one who’s going to die when she’s the one sleeping around?”

“How do you know she put the hit on you?” Elias poured another drink, sliding it away from Mark when the bug jumped onto the table. “Not until we’re done, eh? You’re a miserable drunk.”

Mark lunged forward, his pincers latching onto skin. A searing pain erupted in Elias’s hand and he yanked his arm away, the glass bouncing across the floor as it flew out of his grasp.

“Fuck! A little warning next time!” Clutching his hand to his chest, he fell back against the cushions as the burning moved through his wrist and up his arm. His breath was coming in gasps.

“If not my wife, then who?”

Squinting through the pain that was now making its way into his neck and across his chest, he was faced with the barrel of a gun. “Oh, come on.”

“Who sent you?” Merrick was holding the gun of his security commander in a steady grip, all signs of his earlier fear now gone.

Elias scoffed a laugh, groaning as it made the pain worse. “I don’t know. Company doesn’t tell me. It’s not relevant to my job.”

“You’re lying.” He cocked the hammer. “How could you even make it all the way out here? You’re the Amnesiac, right? The top assassin. Can’t even remember your own fucking name, and I’m supposed to believe that you could find me?”

“You’ve got it all wrong, mate,” Elias said, breathing hard as sweat ran down his temple. “I’m not the Amnesiac.” His eyelids were heavy. “I’m just the chauffeur.”

“What?” Merrick whispered, his eyes going from Elias to the beetle that was currently swimming in one of the decanters.

“Mark,” Elias slurred, pointing at Merrick. “Your target.”

“No!”

The decanter exploded as a shot rang out, sending crystal shards and what smelled like brandy in every direction. Elias slumped over on the couch, his eyes closing. The last thing he heard was the thud of Merrick Lavigne’s body falling to the floor.

Next Chapter

On no! Bowie has stolen all of my coffee!

Press to refill the coffee.

Thanks for reading this silly new story I’ve started. If you’d like this story to continue, let me know in the poll and comments! This one only continues if the readers want it to.

As a reminder, this is an edited first draft. It won’t be perfect, but it will almost certainly be entertaining.