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  Earth Bounty

  An Intergalactic Bounty Association Story

  This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, by any means, without explicit permission from Eli Constant.

  This is a work of fiction. Any locations, characters and entities are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously; they should not be construed as real in any capacity. Similarities to actual persons, living or deceased, organizations or locales are purely coincidental.

  Xandros System

  I was crouched down, in the dirt, in my brand-spanking-new uniform. The redesign was snazzy – a little too fancy for a Bounty hunter for my tastes. Whatever idiot designed it must not have realized that cobalt blue wasn’t exactly discreet.

  Shifting slightly, I peered around the beat-up hull of a decade old cruiser.

  It was ridiculously hot on the junkyard planet, with the sun beating down on trillions of kilos of wrecked star cruisers, transport ships, and unidentifiable, mangled bits of dull metal – all reflecting the rays of the three Xandros suns.

  I’d been tailing the Xandarian, home planet unknown, for a week. The longest damn week of my bounty career.

  He was tall, too tall – intimidatingly tall.

  Eight feet at least and a complete neon-5 yellow alien beefcake with bulging muscles and a curved spine covered in sharp ridges.

  I’d been trying to catch the creep by surprise, but that was proving impossible since he quite literally had eyes in the back of his head. His hair was localized – only coming out of the peak of his scalp in one round, thick expanse of white.

  He had the strands twirled now, tied-up bun style on his ugly, alien head to keep his rear eyes free to see.

  Every time I’d come close to slapping my light cuffs on his wrists, he’d bolted and he was fast, much faster than me.

  Now though, he was lounging on the ground- his back and head leaning against a sawed-in-half shipping container- which meant his third and fourth eyes were useless. Point one advantage to me.

  I squinted, trying to read the writing on the container, but the letters were too faded. Not that the history of the container mattered. I was just trying to delay the inevitable fight.

  I looked at the Xandarian again. His name was Devo. Devo the Rapist according to his bounty file.

  He was wanted in four different star systems for fifteen counts of sexual assault. And he didn’t discriminate – no two victims were alike.

  Apparently the guy wanted an all-you-can-rape alien buffet. If I wasn’t careful, the gigantic, muscle-bound Devo would make me number sixteen on his sexual bucket list.

  That wasn’t going to happen. No. Freaking. Way.

  Because I was going to take the sleazy perp down. Here and now.

  Dropping to all fours, I scooted around the junkyard, quietly making my way to Devo. One wrong move, one loud noise, and I’d be playing cat and mouse across the galaxy again. And I needed to get paid… really… badly. I was over a hundred merchandise points in the hole and I owed three hundred merch. points in rent for my tiny living pod.

  If I didn’t bring Devo in today, I’d be beyond the galaxy with a dead fuel cell.

  I was crouched next to – what appeared to be– a starflight simulator, early generation, like my great-great-grandfather’s era. The beat-up, ancient simulator was directly behind my mark’s position. I could barely see the top of his pale hair.

  Finally, a break. His head was still leaning against the shipping container so his extra eyes were useless. I yanked my antiqued Earth gun from its holster, stood erect, and began walking.

  Felt like a death march, but I wasn’t going to let the Xandarian see me sweat.

  I kept my eyes trained on the perp and that’s why I didn’t see the xenon bulbs littering the ground.

  Crunch. Crunch. The sound of busting glass wasn’t loud, but it was enough – enough to tell the Xandarian that he had company. Smart bugger.

  “Aren’t ya bored of chas’n me, Bounty?” His Interspace English was good. So he wouldn’t misunderstand me. Also good.

  “I never get bored of chasing dirt-bags, Devo. You going to come quietly?” He smiled. And it was a wicked smile – the double row of teeth decidedly sinister.

  I sighed. “I didn’t think so.”

  Close combat. Always fun. I re-holstered my sidearm and reached over my shoulder and towards my machete.

  Many times, I’d been approached about my refusal to give up my human toys. My hardware guy once even insisted that I try out the new issue light gun. The weapon could use any available light source, concentrate it, and slice through practically anything.

  Yeah. It was cool, no doubt about that, but it couldn’t replace the heavy weight of the machete or the recoil of the 500 Magnum I’d stolen from my dad’s gun cabinet before off-worlding to the Academy. Sometimes I regretted not given my family a proper farewell. Eh. No use whining over the unchangeable.

  I expected my fingers to meet the cool handle of my trusty machete, instead, they found nothing, but air. Crap. Knew I’d forgotten something… I hesitated- just long enough for Devo to pounce, his eyes slitting in anticipation of sexual mealtime.

  Not this time, slime ball. I sidestepped, but I couldn’t fully avoid his advance. Devo’s long arm stretched out sideways, following my movement. He had me around the waist and lifted off the ground before I could say shit-sandwich.

  I kicked hard, violently flailing my legs in the air – my normal girl instincts momentarily overriding my kick-ass Bounty training. I forced myself to relax, going limp as an overdone noodle in his grip.

  I tried not to grimace as he pulled me to him, my feet still off the ground. My body was against his now and I couldn’t control the shudder of loathing that vibrated my body.

  “I’m really gonna make you shiver in a minute…” his voice trailed off and my stomach lurched as his long, black tongue licked the side of my face. So. Freaking. Gross.

  With my arms pushed down against my body, my hands rested against my thighs – impossible to hit the tiny button embedded in my right cuff.

  Devo shifted me, half-throwing me over his shoulder and smacking my ass for emphasis. He had me… or… at least he thought he had me.

  Resting awkwardly on his shoulder, my hands were free. I pressed the button.

  And Devo screamed as my uniform produced a high voltage charge. He dropped me and, because he was so tall, the landing hurt like hell.

  I’d hoped the shock would give me a moment’s breather, but it didn’t. Devo just looked angrier – and the uniform could only act like a gigantic Taser once. Well, crap on toast.

  What the hell was I going to do now?

  He came at me – his four eyes full of rage.

  The next few minutes were a blur. Hand to hand combat was never my strong suit. His height and speed were advantages, but I was smaller, lighter on my feet and used to fighting dirty to compensate.

  A fistful of dirt in the face impaired two of his eyes and that gave me a blind spot. Quick as (humanly) possible, I whipped out my regulation issued light cuffs and linked his wrists together.

  Devo began to struggle realizing he was coming closer than expected to capture. He kicked out, catching me in the stomach and knocking the breath out of me. I doubled over, trying to minimize the pain. When I looked up, Devo had turned around, allowing his rear eyes to see me while his forward eyes recovered from the face full of dirt.

  So… he could see me and I could no longer see the light cuffs. Shit. And, sure enough, he’d gotten them off – sneaky alien. Behind him and between his legs, the broken cuffs lay on the ground.

  Battle – back on.

  I reached into a pouch on my pants’ leg and pulled out a second pair of cuffs. I held them up, smiling
slightly.

  “Think I’d only have one pair?” He scowled.

  The light cuffs wouldn’t hold Devo, that much was apparent, but I was going to have a damn good time trying to get them back on him.

  “Stop fighting, damnit!”

  “Screw you, Bounty!”

  “Fine. You want to keep playing tough guy? I can play along.” I gave up trying to get the light-cuffs on the wanted-for-murder Xandarian and slammed my body against his. He fell forward; of course, I fell with him, but at least the jerk stopped struggling.

  Once we were down on the ground. I straddled his leathery-brown body, grabbed a fistful of his greasy hair and crammed his face against the debris-covered ground.

  “Still want to screw me? Cause I got to tell you…” I grunted as he, pushed against the ground and bucked my body upwards. “I like it rough.”

  I tightened my grip on his hair, causing him to cry out in pain. He was on all fours now, me riding him like a mechanical bull. I’d only ridden one once- back on Earth over a century ago. I’d lasted eight seconds. I was determined to beat that record now.

  As the Xandarian continued to buck, I concentrated on unsnapping my sleep wand.

  One tap of that sucker, and he’d be down for hours.

  My fingers were pretty nimble, so the snap was unfastened quickly, but every time I got my hand around the wand shaft, the felon beneath me gave a perfectly timed lurch.

  “Son of a Sewage Feral.” I sucked in a gasp as one of his sharp spine ridges cut through my uniform, leaving a deep gash on my inner thigh.

  I was bleeding now. And I hated blood.

  “That’s it. I’m done playing.”

  The sleep wand was out and rushing quickly towards the Xandarian’s head. He bucked again and I smiled as his head arched towards the wand and made contact.

  Out. Cold.

  I stood, the motion making the stiff material of my uniform brush against the thigh laceration.

  Limping slightly, I made my way over to a discarded seat. The five-point harness hung uselessly- severed in several places. Must have been a crash-victim.

  It was as good a place as any to sit and fix myself up. I unzipped a thin pocket on my right arm and retrieved the medi-paste. The stuff smelled nasty, but it worked. That’s all that mattered.

  Several minutes and four applications of the paste later, my thigh was good as new. My uniform wasn’t.

  I tapped my comm-bracelet and messaged for pickup.

  Mission status- Complete Pickup Ready No need to tell them where I was. The comm-bracelet was a stylish accessory- rigged with a handy-dandy homing beacon and a slew of other tools that made my dirty job easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy.

  Bounty G.M.

  Friendship is a hard concept for me.

  Let me clarify. It is not so much a hard concept to understand, but a hard concept to put into practice. I find that friends only wish a certain level of openness and honesty. Cross that line between polite reassurance and tentative rebuff into the world of total candidness and rage-filled rebuke and you’ve entered the ‘what the hell is your problem’ zone.

  Needless to say, I’ve maintained zero healthy adult relationships- platonic or otherwise.

  My attempts at polite conversation usually end somewhere between a foot in my mouth and a foot in the other guy’s ass.

  Nobody likes a girl carrying razor sharp blades and an even deadlier, bad attitude. Not that I have any right to walk around with a Texas-sized chip on my shoulder.

  I grew up in the late 2020’s in a proverbial American town, with the quintessential mid-economy and relatively happy parents. We had a white picket fence and even a happy, tail-wagging dog waiting for me at the bus stop every day after school.

  Yeah, it was picture-freaking-perfect. The neighbors thought we were the ideal family. I was content with my self-consumed days of friends and track meets. Then one day my first boyfriend, Guy (I’ve always thought Guy was such an original name for a… guy) and I were doing the nasty in the basement on a pile of unclean laundry.

  I was in the middle of the big “o” when a big “oh, no!” happened. I reached up to stroke Guy’s face and then he was gone. No poof, no bada-freaking-bing. He was just… just gone.

  I was beyond spooked. I was hysterical; by the time my parents got home from their monthly date (which always culminated in me burying my head in my pillow as the gross, old people made carnal sounds- easily heard through the thin walls), I was inconsolable. Later my mother told me I ranted about Guy disappearing into thin-air and then collapsed.

  I was dead to the world for three days. When I regained consciousness and a bit of sanity, my mother explained to me that I was traumatized over a break up with Guy and that he was at home and sorry that he’d left so abruptly.

  He was apparently scared off by the crazy girlfriend’s bipolar ravings. I was confused, but the deepest part of me knew I wasn’t off my rocker. I was positive Guy had vaporized and apparently reappeared. Guy was okay, except for a bit of memory alteration. Count your blessings I guess.

  Guy tried to be my boyfriend again several months after the ‘sexually triggered disappearance’ or STD for short. Yeah, I’m clever like that. Internally, I told Guy ‘no freaking way.’ Externally, I very nicely told Guy to take a hike. Besides, he’d apparently “broken up with me and sent me into a state of hysterical ranting and a three day comatose depression.” That’s what my therapist said anyways. I told Dad the witch doctor was a waste of money, but I guess I scared my parents pretty good during my quasi-coma.

  For years I fantasized about my super ability to rid myself of bad boyfriends. As far as powers go, it wasn’t too shabby an ability to have. I’d find out the truth many years following the STD.

  It had been a simple and cliché case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Planet GRUP (Galaxy Recognized Ultra-Power) scientists had randomly solicited human test subjects. Guy just happened to be on top of me and the laundry or I’d have been the one zapped into space and studied like a hairy lab monkey.

  Pretty

  In the here and now (approximate Earth year 3085), I stood in an intergalactic soup kitchen looking for a green-haired creep named Pretty. Yeah, really his name. Trust me when I say the name did not fit the bill.

  I pulled out a picture of Pretty and flashed it to the gelatinous mass of Meckdar female standing behind the first vat of reeking yellow soup. God it smelled like puke and bile mixed in some heinous idea of alien stew.

  I don’t speak much Meckdarian, but I knew enough to understand “leck tol mi savet et rebet” as “my left second row” and something about red or maybe blood. Meckdar’s sometimes interchanged the color of something and the actual something. It’s a very confusing language, made even more confusing by the unintelligible grunting that means nothing at all.

  Meckdars are squat, horizontally large, and the color of dirty khaki pants. They have a disposition for very dry and very flaky skin and no great love of moisturizing. I guess if your major food source is dead skin cells, lotion can be a boon rather than a pleasant skin-teaser.

  I turned around and searched the crowded left corner of the mess hall. Down and out members of the universal community from all nations and star regions could be found in a local soup kitchen. The Alliance of Peaceful Partners for Alien Understanding was a popular free grub destination. Apparently the puke and bile soup was pretty damn good. I sure as hell wasn’t going to test the gossip for truth.

  I glimpsed a red shirt and headed in the direction suggested. Pretty didn’t need to look up to know I was there.

  “Small world, G. What I wanted for now?”

  Pretty spoke decent Interspace English, but his home language was Tularian.

  Members of the Tulaté race were rare now and those speaking Tularian just as scarce. I switched to Tularian for discretion’s sake.

  Pretty looked me up and down with his limpid, blue eyes (the only semi-pretty thing about him). His gaze hesitated over the curve of
my hips and then moved further up to the swell of my not too shabby breasts. It took him a while to run his eyes over the length of me. I’m not amazon tall, but I’m relatively tall at 5 feet 9 inches and some odd centimeters.

  I’m well-muscled, but I’m careful to keep my lifting regime to low weight and high reps. I may be a member of a male dominated profession, but that doesn’t mean I have to forget I have a vagina. I used to be an honest-to-god blonde, but have adapted my look to better fit my alien surroundings.

  My current hair color is a very artificial looking blood red, but I could change that by a quick touch of my communicator’s disguise function. I’d been debating cutting my hair shorter, but didn’t want to lose the convenience of a quick ponytail thru my favorite blue ball cap.

  I go by G.M., but my mother would have a cow if I didn’t explain that she named me a very attractive Gabriella Marie. I’ve hated my full name ever since some jerk boys in grade school taunted me with “Gabby my Penis Marie.” Like I’d ever ‘gabby’ their zit covered dicks and do anything with them.

  “U-at lah-lah nuck-nuck se chi ba, Pretty. Ne-ne nub eww-aga pug Chi-Chi.” Simply put- I told Pretty that it wasn’t him I was after (for once); I was searching for an associate of his nicknamed Chi-Chi.

  Continuing in Tularian, I described a Digha-Waa native named Chi-Yeta who had last been seen in the eastern region of the Meckdar solar system. My sources sent me to Pretty- who apparently conducted a shady business deal with Chi-Yeta involving boosted and modified fuel cells.

  Unfortunately the modifications on the fuel cells were leading to system melt downs and stranded starships. This was more an issue for the Intergalactic Trade Association and normally wouldn’t warrant the attention of the IGBA (Inter-Galactic Bounty Association. Technically, we were supposed to say I.G.B.A. with full stops between each letter – at least that’s what it said in the manual. Most Bounties prefer to say IG-BA though– It sounds a bit strange (like the first letter of ick met guh and they adopted a sheep), but it’s quicker… and it annoys our superiors).