26: Turn

If it’s your first time here, check out the Table of Contents. You’ll probably want to start with the Prologue.

The doctor is fading fast. They’re all watching helplessly as life is draining out of him.

Elena steps closer, puts a hand on his shoulder. “Doc. Who did this?”

He’s pale, weak. Looks up at her. “They’re looking for you,” he whispers.

Not again.

The doctor wheezes, coughs. Jaxon keeps applying pressure to the wound, but it doesn’t seem to do much. Blood is spewing out and he’s having trouble breathing. Kaela embeds, sends desperate messages, comes back. There’s nobody able to help. Or willing to. They watch as he takes his last short breath, falls on his side.

“Fuck,” Jaxon says, throwing the soaked gauze to the side.

Elena watches Kaela tear up, watches all of them step back a couple of paces. She is not sad, she is angry. She almost died and now they’re hurting the people who helped her, kept her alive. She turns to Kaela. “What did he mean they’re looking for me?”

Kaela embeds. {Check this out.} She sends Elena a clip, combed out of thousands of video feeds from the docked ships. It’s two of them, bullying the doctor into a corner. They don’t look like operators. Not in great physical shape, not dressed for an op. One of them is large. Very large. He wears a shoulder holster over a huge white shirt that barely covers his girth. The other one is short, wearing a red jacket that makes him easily stand out of a crowd.

They seem to be asking the doctor questions. He shrugs, nods his head from side to side. The larger one shoves the doctor’s left shoulder. He stumbles back, half-turns. The short one produces a knife from his jacket, stabs the doctor in the back. They walk away.

{Left him there to bleed out,} from Kaela.

So they did. She’s seen enough. She grabs her newly acquired gun, double-checks to make sure it is loaded this time, and steps onto the docks without another word.

She starts walking, takes a stim. It works its magic right away, her pain dissolves into a background tingle. She feels her senses heighten again. What am I doing? But she knows what she’s doing. She’s going to find those two fuckers. They’re looking for her. She has to take the initiative.

She gets online.

{Kaela, can you get a visual on them?}

{Looking.}

{I … I’m sorry,} she sends to them while Kaela is searching. It’s her fault. She caused this, she got them into all this trouble. Terek paid for it. Fuck!

{Not your fault,} replies Kaela. It’s the right thing to say, but it is her fault—deep down she knows it is.

Jaxon catches up with her. “Where are you going?” he asks, short of breath after sprinting after her.

“Get back to the ship. I’ll join you in no time.” Or not. Doesn’t matter much to her either way.

“Come back, we can leave now.”

She ignores him.

{Found them,} sends Kaela. {Take a left turn.} She sends her a live feed. They’re still going around, talking to people, getting closer to the Radiant. Elena recognizes the ship since she just returned from there with her new Noctics. The size of the large man and the red jacket of the short one are unmistakable.

{They’re bounty hunters,} sends Kaela. {Sure enough, there’s a bounty on you.} She sends her details. Elena skims through them while walking. Anonymous bid. It’s not dead or alive. Just dead. Fine, have it their way.

{Shit. There’s a bounty on Jaxon too.}

Jaxon is still walking next to her. “Really, don’t do this.”

“Get back to the Charon, Jaxon.”

“Come with.”

She keeps walking.

{They got data on both of you. It’s all attached to the bid.} Kaela is digging into the digital, sharing her findings. {I bet you they found Doc, asked him your whereabouts, but he convinced them they had the wrong guy.}

Sounds plausible, matches the vid she saw. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have left him.

{Stabbed him anyway,} Elena sends back. The sheer meanness of it turns her blood icy.

{Fuckers,} Kaela agrees.

Getting close now. She’s making her way through the crowd, pushing people aside if they’re not making way. She takes her pistol out. The gun feels somehow different in her prosthetic hand, but the grip is familiar nevertheless. Jaxon falls back behind her.

The dock is busy as usual, groups of people conducting all sorts of shady businesses. They step back when they see the gun, clearing a path for them. But that is their only reaction. It’s probably a common sight on Horizon. No screams, no alarms, no cops. Elena sees a couple of private security uniforms standing on the side. They watch dispassionately as Elena and Jaxon push ahead, her leading the way with a weapon in hand. They don’t care. Nobody cares.

“What are we doing, Elena?” he asks. He gave up on trying to convince her to return to the ship, willing to lend a hand now. She doesn’t answer. It’s self-explanatory. And he doesn’t need to be here. There’s a lot of people around, but she’s seen enough shit go down during their short stay here that she’s not worried at all about causing a scene.

A few more steps, one more turn. There they are. The prow of the Radiant behind them, the two bounty hunters are talking to someone, backs to her. She can see the big guy’s face on the feed Kaela sent her. The short one is hidden from the camera by their interlocutor. Between her own eye and Kaela’s feed, she has a surround view of them.

She watches herself on the feed, approaching from behind, lifting the gun up to the larger one’s head, pulling the trigger.

His head explodes, spraying pieces on the docks, the short bounty hunter, and on their interlocutor. He falls with a thud. People yelp, start moving away from the scene. The woman they were talking to—she now notices it was a woman, short-cropped hair, sunken eyes—turns around and runs. She is smeared with bits of the big guy’s head. The short bounty hunter turns towards her, mouth agape. His red jacket is now stained with his partner’s brain matter. She doesn’t give him a chance to react. She lowers the gun, shoots him in the lower abdomen. The high-caliber kinetic round tears through him. He goes down on his ass, screaming, his pants quickly soaking in red.

He is crying now. Definitely not professionals. She looks down at him. The wound is fatal; he’s missing a large part of his lower body and he’ll bleed out soon. She is positive there’s no way to patch a wound that size. But she doesn’t take any chances, shoots him again, this time in the face. I’m so sorry, Doc. Bystanders are watching from a safe distance. Just another day on the Horizon docks. Nobody steps in to intervene. Business as usual.

She scans the crowd defiantly, gun in hand. Any other bounty hunters out here? she doesn’t ask. Some people avert their eyes, avoid her gaze. Others look on without any reaction.

She turns around, starts walking back towards the Charon. Jaxon is watching her aghast. She continues past him, puts the gun away, keeps walking. As before, people who witnessed the scene clear a wide path, then the path narrows, then she is just another person in the crowd. Jaxon is behind her again, following. He doesn’t say anything.

{Good job!} Kaela sends her.

{Fuck those fuckers!} adds Rynn.

Looks like they were all watching the feed. Except poor Doctor Terek. She doesn’t feel good about what she just did. She feels she had to do it. She keeps walking.

Back on the Charon, she notices blood on her shirt. Splatter from one of the close-range shots. Some on her face, some on her eye patch. She takes a long shower. The Charon leaves Horizon Station as she is drying off.

New transponder installed, they begin their journey towards Nova Prime. Rynn navigates the docks relying on peer-to-peer path negotiation with the surrounding ships. Their vessel peels away from the station, accelerates. From this distance, Elena is positive she can see the subtly erratic spin of the segments, the hiccups leading to fluctuations in the artificial gravity. She thinks of the station denizens imprisoned there by the smuggler militia. She wonders how often black market business concludes with a shootout. She thinks of Hope, the promise of an ark, the recyclers. The barely functioning infrastructure of what was the newest Sector 36 outpost. How did they get here? Why did Ingram allow this to happen?

The Charon puts more distance between them and the accursed place.

She thinks of Terek Nassar, telling her about the kid he couldn’t save on Forge. Telling her about Abyssal withholding his license. Her offering to help, offering to try pulling some strings for him. He was a good man. Stabbed in the back, because he didn’t give her up. Her act of vengeance didn’t do him any good.

The ship speeds up, her view from aboard freezing into a still image as they go superluminal.