Young Writers Society

Had it really only been three days ago that I’d lain beside him in that canopied bed? He’d turned over and murmured “I have another job for you – the perfect prey for a perfect bounty hunter,” and with those words sent me halfway across the galaxy.

But now, the chase was over. Triumph was already building in my chest as I eased open the door to the abandoned warehouse. I knew my bounty hid in a bolt-hole underneath it, and I knew he had nowhere to run. I slipped in cautiously, wary of guards or traps.

And then I saw him. Kirn, the one who had sent me on this far-flung mission. My lover. He stood in the middle of the room, with open hands and a welcoming smile. The tracker I held in my hand registered three life signs roughly meters feet below him. Those would belong to my prey – a man called Drav, and his two children. Kirn was standing just feet above my victory.

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

He recoiled in mock offense. “And here I thought you would be pleased to see me,” he teased.

I took him in. He was immaculate, dressed in a well-cut white suit that had not a speck of dust on it. His bronze curls glinted in the dim light, as if a spotlight shone on them. He didn’t belong here in this dusty warehouse, and yet he was here and beckoning me. He grinned at me and I melted.

“Of course I’m pleased,” I said, easing the door shut and joining him in the center of the room. He took me into his arms and I drowned in his scent – cinnamon and cloves. “But what are you doing here?” I murmured.

He pulled out of the hug and held me by the shoulders, beaming down at me. “It was a competition!” he declared.

I stared up at him. “You’re not making any sense.”

“Jan, hadn’t you ever wondered whether I might miss bounty hunting? It’s been almost ten years. I had to know if my skills were still sharp.”

“So you sent me on a hunt and tried to beat me to the kill?” I had to laugh. It was exactly the sort of thing he would do and not tell me.

“I just wanted to see if I was still better than one of the best young bounty hunters in the galaxy,” he told me with that charming smile, bending down to give me a kiss. I closed my eyes and let him sweep me away.

All too soon, Kirn pulled away from me. “I may have beaten you here, but this is still your job,” he told me. “I’ll just tag along, a voice in your ear. No different from when you have the earpiece.”

I nodded and put my hand on my blaster. I had been sent to retrieve a Mr. Drav Edvin and his family. The man had ran a gambling place on Bontaf IV, owned and subsidized by Kirn. Unfortunately for him, the place had gone bankrupt. He had taken his family and fled, but my lover did not easily forgive debtors. I had tracked them to this warehouse, and now my scanner was reading humanoid life-forms underneath it.

I sank to the floor and began searching for a trapdoor, running a finger along every crack in the floorboards. It was slow, it was tedious, but Kirn allowed me to do it alone. I could feel him watching me, evaluating me. The best young bounty hunter in the galaxy? I’d prove to him I deserved the honor.

My nail caught on a too-straight crack. I followed it carefully, noting the absence of dust. This had been used, and recently. I had found my trapdoor, and a moment later I found the hidden catch. It swung open to reveal a dark square, a ladder bolted to one side.

“Coming down?” I asked, already halfway in the hole. He followed behind me, leaving the trapdoor open so that a square of light receded slowly into the distance.

I didn’t need to tell him to be quiet as we descended into darkness. The metal ladder creaked under our weight, coated with dust except in the middle, where recent passage had wiped it clean. My heartbeat started to quicken – we were getting closer.

But I had become incautious in my haste. I reached the bottom of the ladder, and was about to drop to the ground when Kirn seized my arm and hissed, “Wait.”

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

He slid down another rung, and his fingers were so nimble I had hardly realized he’d taken my blaster out of its holster until he’d tossed it to the ground below.

Three pings of fire assaulted my ears. Light flared, white and blinding, as they hit my blaster and sent it spinning into the wall. It hit the metal with a dull clank that echoed all the way up the shaft.

I blinked the spots from my vision and shouted at Kirn, “What the hell did you do that for? That was my blaster.” I tried to ignore the creeping sense of shame that I had forgotten to check for traps.

He was rummaging through my pack now, pulling out my hacker. “Here, deactivate it,” he said, holding it out to me. “It’s right across from us, just above ground level.”

Fuming, I saw the tiny bump in the wall and began to set up the hacker. I was glad it was dark – Kirn wouldn’t be able to see my red face. “He knows we’re here now. He’ll bolt.”

“Nope,” Kirn said smoothly. “Your jammer would have blocked the transmission.”

He was right again. I finished with the sensor and dropped to the floor, gingerly picking up my blaster. The clean white barrel was scorched around a noticeable dent in its side. By now, my anger had faded to hurt.

“You dented it,” I said.

“I needed something that wouldn’t get destroyed.”

“But why mine?”

He took my hand and drew me to him. “I’m sorry, darling. I’ll buy you a new one if you want.”

My heart swelled with warmth. I knew how hard it was for him to apologize. Most likely, he just hadn’t been thinking. “Let’s go,” I said, and we set off down the tunnel, moving as quietly as we could.

Soon we neared the end, where a door lay fitted into the metal. I could feel myself becoming more alert, moving into battle mode with every step. So close to the prize.

A hand landed on my shoulder. 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. How had he known?

“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 towards the door. “Shall we?”

I took a deep breath and wiped his taste from my lips. I moved to the door and began to work the lock. Kirn hung back, and I knew he would not interfere from here. The lock clicked. I readied my spider wraps, pushed the door open and stepped inside Drav’s bolt-hole.

It was a bare room about twenty feet across. His children played on bedrolls sprawled over the floor. Drav sat behind them, bent over a datapad, but had already seen me. I threw a spider wrap, but he scrambled out of the way and drew his blaster in one fluid motion.

The children paled and tried to scramble away, but I grabbed the younger of the two and pulled her up roughly. Behind me, I could feel Kirn’s gaze pierce 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. The girl stood stiff and silent. Her heart beat frantically against her chest in time with mine.

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

He shifted his gaze behind me, glaring, defiant, at Kirn. “You should have known you couldn’t run from me, Drav,” Kirn said mildly.

I tried to force my hands to stop trembling. It was a stalemate, at least until Drav realized it was an empty bluff. If I could just distract --

A weight slammed into my legs and I staggered. It was Drav’s other girl – she lunged at me in a wild, ragged fury, heedless of my blaster. I had only seconds. He would shoot if he got a clear sighting. I pulled my hostage closer and palmed a spider wrap. Disguised in the confusion, I threw it underhand and prayed.

As I shoved the older girl away, I kept my eye on the man and was rewarded by a look of shock as the wrap hit him in the leg and began to grow around him. His finger reflexively pulled the trigger on the blaster.

“Down!” I shouted, seizing whatever part of the children I could reach and dropping fully to the floor. Several shocks ricocheted around the room, and when a child cried out in pain I felt as if I myself had been shot.

Then it was over, and the only sound was Drav’s struggling. A moment later, that fell silent too, as the sedative in the wrap put him to sleep.

When I stood up, the younger girl was clasping her leg and whimpering in pain. I breathed again when I saw it was only a leg wound. But when I approached her to see how bad it was, she shied away, and her sister stepped firmly between us.

Fine. I turned away from them and towards Kirn, who was leaning casually against the doorway. His approval filled the room with a warm glow and melted away my guilt. “One debtor delivered,” I told him with a smile.

“You were amazing,” he told me, and the tension flowed out of me. It was over. I had proven myself.

Then he straightened up and his dark eyes became 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, my chest tightening. “He’s right there, take him. We’ll go back together.”

Now Kirn was laughing, an awful, cruel laugh. “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?” I turned to look at the man, wrapped neatly on the floor.

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. “Darling, 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.

My choice. My finger shook, but I began to pull. It was what he wanted, and I had to trust his judgment.

A muffled sob reached my ears and scythed through the haze clouding my thoughts. The children. Where had they gone? I looked and found them. The older one had pulled her injured sister to the corner of the room. She had curled protectively around her and was trying in vain to soothe the wound, even as her own shoulders shook and her wide eyes accused me. She was young, but she knew what I was about to do.

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, he’s got children! You want me to leave them here to die? After killing their father?”

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 off?”

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 bristled as if I had pricked a gakwa. “Think about what you just said.”

It was impossible to miss the threat in his voice, but for the first time that evening I was utterly calm. “I’ll say it again. No. Never.”

“If you’re too weak to do it, then I will,” he snarled. His hand moved to his holster and I reacted instinctively. I’d brought my blaster up and shot him before his hand had closed on his.

He took the bolt with a strangled cry and crumpled limply to the floor. His hair fanned around his head, black in the shadow I cast.

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

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

“I was never your darling,” I whispered. His dark eyes were empty of any charm they had held.

Numbly, I holstered my blaster and went over to the children. The older one tried to stop me, but I pushed her aside. “You’re safe now. I’m trying to help.” My voice was too flat to be reassuring.

The younger girl had fallen unconscious, probably from the stress and shock. I inspected the wound, forcing myself to confront what I, through negligence, had done. It was bad, but at least it had missed the major arteries. I began applying a healing pack, and some of my pain left me. I would cause no lasting damage to this little girl.

Would it have bothered Kirn? And now that I thought of it, I knew my other employers were as ruthless as he. He had been right, and I was complicit in God knew what horrors. My fingers fumbled as I worked Rashly, perhaps, I 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. Maybe one day I would walk with a clear conscience.

After tending her, I dissolved the spider wrap and revived Drav. “Get out of here,” I growled at him once he had wakened. “Kirn’s dead. Nobody will follow you now.”

I knew he was confused, but I still held the weapons, and so he asked no questions, but gathered his younger daughter in his arms and ushered the other away.

Now I was alone with what was left of my lover and my life. I bent over Kirn’s body and wept for the death of the man I’d thought him to be.

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Questions for Reviewers:

1. I'm awful at writing action. Please help.

2. Does Kirn seem nicer at first in this? Should I keep it like that, or go back to him being more creepy?

3. Thoughts on the extended ending and the extra conflict?