No Live Cargo
an excerpt

Chapter 1

Kyle slumped over the console, exhausted. He had been up for three days straight hunting for the current bounty. According to his source, the man was supposed to frequent this area of space, yet he had been monitoring the area for at least two months, while his partner had been out doing some business on his own. Kyle sighed. This was what he got for being dead set on capturing the man at the head of the Most Wanted List. Every time. With complete confidence in his skills. Bobby, of course always sighed when Kyle was in one of these moods, and left the ship in the small flier. He had to keep eating, even if Kyle seemed to be able to subsist on a bowl of instant ramen a day.
Kyle wistfully remembered the first time he ever caught a bounty while Bobby was away. He had proudly shown the captive to Bobby, prodding the poor man with a stick. Bobby had, of course congratulated him on capturing the current most wanted man n space, not mentioning that over the course of that year, Bobby himself had captured enough bounties to double the prize for bringing in Kyle's captive in.
A sudden alarm went off, drawing Kyle out of his daze. He looked at the monitor blearily, expecting another asteroid to be blowing by on some careening course, possibly target practice if it was large enough, just to relieve the tedium. He stared at the blank screen for several seconds before remembering to turn it on, then screamed happily. It was a small black ship with gold trim. Exactly the description of the fleeing criminal. Kyle threw several switches and lurched after the swift craft. He turned on the com and yelled over it. “This is the Gleaming Dragon, of the Galactic Surveying Service. Please stop your vessel and provide a full manifest of your cargo.” An old gimmick that rarely worked, but it never hurt to try.
The other ship stopped suddenly, turning in its track, and flew close to the Dragon. A voice came over the com shakily. “This is unnamed crew transport 126. No cargo to speak of. Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?”
Kyle grinned. The man had been fooled. “Your thrusters appear to be damaged on the aft side, would you like to dock for repairs?” The voice came over the com again, wavering slightly less.
“No, Dragon, I wouldn't want to take up your time. I will just be on my way.” The black ship started to move away. Kyle flipped a switch and a spike shot from a concealed port underneath the main body of his ship. The spike pierced the engine casing on the black ship neatly, sparking as it went through. Kyle winced. It was always a shame when a fine ship like that had to be marred in any way. He knew he would have to turn it over to the impound yard, but he still felt like he was destroying his own property. He spoke over the com slowly, measuring his words carefully, not wanting the man to come out, guns blazing. “I'm sorry, but we have evidence that you have some.....unsavory cargo aboard. We are going to have to force you to dock. I will have some of my men meet you in the main cargo bay. If you run, that spike will transmit a jamming signal, which will knock you out along with your systems. We can do this the easy way, or the hard way.” There was no response, but the ship sat, dead in space. Kyle docked slowly with it, being careful not to scrape the paint on either ship. He had just had his ship redone, so it finally lived up to its name. He did not want to scratch it this early into the job. The ships slid together, and a steel seal closed the gap. Kyle ran down, grabbing a rifle before he got to the hatch. It opened with a neat hiss, as if a pot lid had just released steam through a small gap.
The pilot of the other ship stood on the other side, in a bright white jumpsuit, tall white boots, and whit gloves. The second thing Kyle noticed, after the glare from the white, was a long mane of brown hair, stretching halfway down the pilots back. The third thing he noticed was that the other pilot was a woman. “Oh, damn. You aren't a short, fat man with black hair and a cybernetic arm. Are you?”
“No. No, I'm not. Is that a problem, officer? You can have a look around my ship, but I do expect you to reimburse me fully for the damage you caused to my ship.”
Kyle struggled for his next words, finding little to say. “I.....Uhm.....I'm not....really.... with the government survey corps....”
The woman looked him up and down, staring first at his grubby clothes, his lean appearance from lack of food and sleep, finally resting on the rifle. “Ah, So I will simply file a lawsuit. And if you continue to point that gun at me, I will have to also have you sud for attempted assault.”
Kyle sputtered. “I'm a licensed Bounty Hunter, woman. Your ship had every marking that George Ignatow is supposed to fly. And you disguised your voice on the com. What are you doing out here, anyway? And what are you hiding, disguising your voice and giving me that crap about an unnamed vessel. I could see the name from the hatchway, it's printed neatly on the hull of your ship. The Black Romance. Not very original, and your look doesn't really fit, if you don't mind me saying.”
It was her turn to sputter. “I do mind, in fact. And I can still sue a bounty hunter! And of course I would disguise my voice to a ship of questionable origins out near the outer boundaries of the Confed. And like I told you, idiot, I'm not carrying anything, take a look if you want, I will add trespassing to my list.”
“Just get back on your ship and go away. You can't have my name, and my ship isn't that uncommon a model. I'll even let you keep my jamming spear to resale as reimbursement. I'm sorry for any damage called. If you find Ignatow, call me, I will be sure to come running, and save you from being shot any more, he is supposed to be ruthless.” He started to walk away, hitting a button to close the hatch between the ships, sighing at his stupidity. He was mildly angry at loosing a costly jamming spear, but he could not exactly ask for the damned thing back. He threw the rifle in a wall rack, before hearing the call from behind him.
“My ships dead, you have to give me a ride.” The woman came running in front of him. “It's the least you can do.”
“No, the least I can do is take back that jamming spear, give you a paddle and an evo suit and throw you out to get back on your own. What makes you think I will give you a ride?”
She looked at him, and, seeing the sincerity in her eyes, muttered, “I caught Ignatow.... He;s locked in the sleeping cabin.... You can have a cut......” She looked at a pot just over Kyle's left ear.
“Fine. 60 percent, plus, you pay for the fuel when we get to a base. And I take it, since you don't have your own ship, you are not licensed. That will be a 30 percent finders fee..... And don't let me get started on food.....” Seeing the look of disgust on her face, he smiled. “Or I could just put you back on the Black Romance with Ignatow. I'm sure he will love the company of a woman like you, seeing as he is a great mechanic, and also reportedly a great sexual offender. Thirty cases of assault and rape. He'll be happy to help.”
She wrinkled her nose in disgust, and grunted. “Fine, take the bounty. I'm not sure how I was planning on getting the reward anyway. But I get your cabin.”
He smiled widely, and put on a tone that he was being th nicest man in the world. “But of course! Mi casa es su casa! And your ship is my ship!” He showed her the way to a dark room, pushed her in, and locked the door. She immediately began pounding on the door.
“Oi! You lying weasel! Let me out of this rubbish closet! I asked for a cabin! Not a trash heap!”
He called though the door. “That's my room you are insulting, but it’s all right, I forgive you, this once, since you did all of my work for me! I usually sleep on the couch anyway; I'll bring dinner in six hours!” He banged on the door, and walked away to see if she had been telling the truth about Ignatow. She screamed at him as he was retreating, but he did not even bother to turn around. He grabbed his gun form the shelf before entering the black ship, and stepped cautiously through the hatch. He was immediately struck with one of the most awful stench he had ever encountered in his life. It was a rancid smell, like that of a trash bin full of old beef that had been left unattended for several weeks. He walked through the halls, gagging, fighting back the impulse to vomit and leave. At each door on the small ship, he hit a switch, yet the doors refused to open. Finally giving up, he came to the largest door in the ship, at the far end of the hall, and shot the panel angrily, wrenching the doors open with the crowbar attached to the but of his rifle. As the door slid open, the smell became so strong that he could no longer hold back his base impulse. He fell to the ground and retched. Several times. Finally recovering, he walked into the room and was met with a horrifying sight. The door he had opened led to a cargo bay. Inside the cargo bay, was an enormous pile of bodies, stacked neatly one on top of another, in tiers running from one wall to the other. Ignatow’s body was among them, thrown haphazardly atop of the neat stacks. The bodies were in varying states of decay, some obviously having been there for several years, the ones closest to the top seemed to be as recent as two or three weeks old. Kyle ran from the sight, dropping his rifle and his flashlight, and ducked through the hatch at the end, sealing the lock behind him and opening a hatch to vacuum out the air in the corridor. He slumped against the door. On the profile, he had seen that Ignatow liked to collect the bodies of his victims, but he had no thought that it would be as horrible as it really had been. Walking slowly to the cabin, he remembered Ignatow himself, strewn atop the bodies of his victims, obviously dead. He was a major witness to military atrocities, being the leading interrogator in the last Universal Espionage Crisis. What Ignatow had actually done with his “subjects” had been highly classified, but after several months of questioning, Kyle had gotten an idea. The torture had been gruesome and always fatal. A man would be strapped in a chair and injected with a venom that burned as soon as it entered the system. Slowly, the poor mans arms would start to rot, starting at the fingertips, yet they would maintain the elasticity to stay on the bones. Then the rot would travel up the arms, and begin at the toes as well. Ignatow prided himself as the leading torture scientist. At least, he had. Now he was dead. And since he could no longer testify in the courts as to who his accomplices were, the bounty would be cut in half. And since there was no evidence of his atrocities that Kyle had seen yet, the bounty could not be collected until he searched the whole ship for the venom that Ignatow had made. Kyle shuddered at why the government might want the cursed compound, but he was too far in to not collect. He walked slowly to the hatch that led into his room. He heard a scratching from behind, and opened it quickly. The girl tumbled out, covered in black filth and one arm of her jumpsuit singed. A control panel hung open, and there were clothes and makeshift tools strewn about the floor. Kyle ignored this infraction for now, and picked her up roughly by the shoulders. “He’s dead.”
The girl looked at him with an impassive demeanor. “I know, I shot him. What, did you really buy that crap about me keeping him alive? There was barely enough air in the forward cabin to get to the nearest planet, and I wasn’t going to let the corpse rot get into my lungs. So I shot him and threw him in with the other corpses. Fair justice, if I say so myself.”
Kyle stared at her incredulously. He had had to kill men before, but always when they tried to kill him first. This girl had shot a man in cold blood because she had no wanted to share the clean air with him. He shook her. “Do you know what that means? You aren’t even licensed. You could be tried for murder! And the bounty is cut! You have made this whole trip completely useless. He will just barely pay for my fuel now! What am I supposed to do about that, huh? And you have let the rot penetrate the ship, which has made it a biohazard more likely than not. Finding the venom will be next to impossible, and with the fumes, it might have spoiled. Then we get nothing. Do you hear me? Nothing! It’s the venom they wanted, and his testimony, he himself is worth nothing if not alive and with his implements!”
She shrugged. “So? He was a bad guy. I killed him. Then I decided to make some cash. There is no problem with me not getting anything, I mean, I have a decent job. What do I care if some political criminal lives or dies? They would have killed him for his war crimes anyway. I just sped him on his way.”
Kyle threw her unceremoniously into a chair and tied her down. “You, my dear are going to sit in that chair, and I am going to put you in the ship. Near the cargo bay. When we get to the next planet, I am going to throw you out, and you are going to go to wherever it is you need to go and you are going to charter a ship. Way from me. And we will never see each other again, understood?” The girl just sat sullenly in the chair, and refused to speak. He muttered. “Good,” and walked off to find a gas mask.