Young Writers Society

Had it really only been three days ago that he had turned over in that cavernous bed and traced my cheek? He’d murmured “I have another job for you, darling; the perfect prey for a perfect bounty hunter,” and with those words sent me halfway across the galaxy.

I hadn't had a harder job in years. No time for sleep and little for food as I fled, transport to transport, calling in every contact and favor I knew to track his prey. And here he was at the end, standing in this abandoned warehouse, feet above where I knew my target to be.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked.

Kirn smiled broadly. His bronze hair shone like a halo in the dim light. He was sculpted perfectly, my lover, and when he held his arms out it was all I could do no to fall into them. But that could come later. Answers first, and then I had a job to finish.

Something flashed across his face when he realized I would not come to him yet. “Jan, Jan,” he said in his honey-smooth voice. “This was a competition! Forgive me for deceiving you. I wanted to test my fading skills against your ever-growing ones. Who could first track him down? Had I told you beforehand, it would have spoiled the game.”

“Well, it looks like you won,” I said, and went to him with a smile. He smelled of cinnamon and cloves and somehow not a hair on his head was out of place. I probably smelled awful, and my travel clothes hung limply on my frame.

He only allowed me a quick kiss, then pushed me gently away. “I may have beaten you here, but this is still your job,” he reminded me. “I’ll just tag along, a voice in your ear. No different from the earpiece.”

Yes. Business. I shook his scent from my head and drew my blaster. I had been sent to retrieve a Mr. Drav Edvin and his family. The man ran a gambling place on Bontaf IV, owned and subsidized by Kirn and his gang. Unfortunately for him, the place had gone bankrupt. He had taken his family and fled, but Kirn was not a forgiving man, and he had left debts to pay.

My scanner was reading life-forms in a cellar hidden under this warehouse. That would be them.

I scanned the warehouse, looking for the hidden trapdoor and trying to ignore Kirn’s gaze. He’s not here, I told myself. Just a normal job.

I’d narrowed it down to a corner where the signs were strongest. I crept between the stacks of crates – better not to let them know I was here. I stowed away my scanner, and finally the rim caught my eye. I knelt and felt along the edge. It wouldn’t be locked – locks were inconvenient when you were in a hurry. One side, then two, forming the edges of a square a meter long. Then I hit the catch.

The floorboards swung down into darkness. The hole was square and lined with metal, and sported a ladder on one side.

“Coming down?” I asked Kirn quietly. I didn’t wait for his response, but lowered a foot cautiously to the first rung.

I didn’t need to tell him to be quiet as we descended into darkness. I wished for a light, but that could easily alert Edvin. Slowly, my eyes adjusted, and I was able to see the bottom when I reached it. I was about to drop the last few feet when Kirn hissed “Wait.”

“What?” I looked up at him, framed boldly against the receding light of the outside world.

“There. A sensor,” he told me, pointing to the wall, just above the ground. He was right, and I never would have seen it. My Kirn had beaten me again. I smiled to myself as I carefully opened my pack while holding to the ladder. I took out a jammer, and deactivated the sensor. I allowed myself to fall. My feet landed on well-packed earth. This was a well-used bolt-hole.

A hand landed on my shoulder and I flinched, but of course it was Kirn. He was barely a shadow to my poor night vision, but his grip was solid and warm.

“This is always the most exciting part, isn’t it?” he breathed into my ear. “The moment before the trap is sprung.” He stood so near I could feel the warmth of his skin, maddeningly close. It strung every nerve in my body taunt. I gave a tiny nod.

“Everything is about to fall into place or fall apart,” he continued, “and who can say which it will be?” His finger traced my jawline, and suddenly I was kissing him again. In the dark, on a mission, with only our wit and skill and each other. Never before had he come with me, but suddenly I knew I must convince him to, because what could be more perfect than this?

He broke away first and gestured down the tunnel. “Shall we?”

I took a long breath, wiping his taste from my lips. I drew my blaster and made sure my spider wraps were easily to hand, to immobilize Drav. Kirn hung back as I began to walk, and I knew from here on out he would not interfere.

The tunnel was short and the door at the end sturdy. I picked the lock and paused. This was the moment, the time I would lose the element of surprise.

I kicked the door open and made my move. In a split second I’d taken stock of the room – supply-laden walls, several sleeping rolls on the floor, and Drav and his two daughters. Drav sprang to his feet, a blaster in his hand even as I trained mine on him. Damn that blaster. I made my decision and snatched his daughter, a girl about five years old, even as she scrambled away from me. She shook and squirmed in my grasp, terrified into silence.

Behind me, I could feel Kirn’s gaze on me. I put the blaster to the girl’s head. “Stand down. Or she dies.”

It was a bluff. There was no way in hell I could kill this girl, but I needed to throw him off guard. Just one moment…

“You kill her, I shoot,” Drav said steadily. “First you and then your master behind you.”

They locked gazes. “You should have known you couldn’t run from me, Drav,” Kirn said mildly.

Drav’s other girl, a little older, had been cowering on the floor a few feet away. Now she lunged at me in a wild, ragged fury, heedless of my blaster. She slammed into me and I staggered, releasing her sister and in the same moment palming a spider wrap. Disguised in the confusion, I threw it underhand and prayed.

Pain lanced up my hand – one of the children had sunk her teeth into it. I kept my eyes on the wrap’s trajectory and was rewarded by Drav’s look of shock as the wrap hit is chest.

I just managed to shake the girl off as the ping of blaster fire resounded through the tiny space. I dropped, pulling the children down with me. When those few instinctive shots passed, I knew it was over. “That’s enough,” I said sternly to his kids. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if I have to. Now sit down and be quiet.”

The older girl was crying silently now, while the younger’s face was utterly blank. They did as they were told, clutching each other in fear.

Drav lay bundled on the floor and was struggling furiously against the spider wrap, which had unfurled to cocoon him from the shoulders down. He growled, but if he formed words I couldn't make them out through the netting that swathed his mouth. The stuff was stronger than steel; I knew he wouldn’t get far.

And I turned and there was Kirn, lounging against the doorway frame, mouth twitching. I grinned. “One debtor delivered,” I told him.

He treated me to his smile, full of delight and pride. His love radiated like warm sunlight. Then he straightened up, and his expression became eager and deadly serious.

“Now, my beloved, finish the job.”

He became larger than life, a shadow cast over the small room. “What do you mean?” I said. Something was wrong. “He’s right there, and the children are subdued.”

Now he was laughing. “Darling, he can’t pay me a single credit. What did you think I would do with him? Imprison him? No. He will pay for this crime with his life.”

“You want me to kill him?” My voice was childish and weak. “Right here, right now?”

Kirn gathered me in his arms from behind and whispered into my hair. “It’s okay to be afraid. I know this is your first time. But you have the gun. You have the power. Press the trigger, and it’s all over.”

“But he’s done nothing to merit it. You can’t kill a man for failing to keep a business going.” I heard my words but barely attached meaning to them. It was like struggling to see through a haze. What had happened to my Kirn?

He squeezed my shoulders gently. “Jan, of course there’s more to it than that. Drav’s a scoundrel if I’ve ever seen one. It was his fault the casino went out of business – he’s been stealing from me since it was opened. And he thought I would never know!”

His righteous fury was building now. “A lowly criminal tried to scam me, Jan. As he’s done at least a dozen others. How many millions of credits gone? He’d have a life sentence on twelve systems if they knew the whole of it. You’ll be doing the universe a favor. And me.”

I still held my blaster, hanging limply at my side. His hand crept down my arm and curled around my fingers. Together, we lifted the blaster, his warm hand steadying mine. But he didn’t pull the trigger. It was my choice. I began to pull. It was what he wanted.

A muffled sob reached my ears and scythed through the haze clouding my thoughts. The children. I saw them, then, clutching their father as they cried. The older curled protectively around the younger and tried in vain to hush her, even as her own shoulders shook and her wide eyes accused me. Shame crept through me, then horror. I gasped in a breath and saw clearly for the first time. Bile rose in my throat.

I wrenched myself out of Kirn’s grip. “You think yourself judge and jury,” I spat, “but I won’t be your executioner. Damn you, what about his children?”

His face hardened into fury. “You think this is the first time? Are you so naïve, darling? What did you think I did with the others? Nirak, Hidiah, Miak – you bought them back neatly wrapped, like a cat with her prey. You think I scolded them and sent them on their way?”

He gave a derisive laugh. “They’re dead, all of them, and you killed them. You didn’t ask questions. You took my money and set off, discreet as ever, and gave them easily to their fates. Did you truly never stop to think what would happen to any of your bounties, over the years and across employers? You’ve always been an executioner, Jan. This time, I’m just letting you pull the trigger.”

I looked at him again, and it was as if a façade broke and ugliness seeped through the cracks. My dashing Kirn, the head of a network that spanned the galaxy, twining each thread together in an expert weave, and I at his side. And now I saw that web, saw how I had lain with him and let him wrap me in it. How many had died to build his mansion on Ilana? How many quiet accidents, how many loaded negotiations had he arranged as he wove his power? He’d always assured me his business was on the side of the law, with a laugh and a wink to say “mostly.” I hadn’t cared.

“No,” I said. “Never again.”

He shook his head, mocking me. “If you won’t do it, then I will.”

I’d brought my blaster up and shot him before his was halfway out of its holster. He took the bolt with a strangled cry and crumpled limply to the floor, black hair fanning around his head.

I knelt next to him. His eyes searched mine as he died, and the outrage they held shattered every last illusion I had of him.

“It looks like you’ve won… darling,” he breathed. Then his chest fell, and he was gone.

“Don’t call me darling.”

I holstered my blaster and splashed the dissolving agent over Drav. “Get out of here,” I growled at him. “Nobody will follow you now.”

As soon as he was free, he gathered his children in his arms and fled. I bent over Kirn’s body and wept for my lover and his betrayal.

I don’t know how long I knelt there, but when I stood, I had formed for myself a new creed. Once, I had prided myself on discretion. I did my job and no questions asked. No more. I would not serve petty revenge or coercion. I would aid justice, not atrocity. And maybe one day, I would walk with a clear conscience.