The Reforged Trilogy: Book 1 — Crucible of Stars
Chapter 17
Bare Necessities
“The real beauty in chaos is the opportunity to create order.”
– General Cierra, CWAAF 12th fleet (62 PA)
Vyron’s wrists were bound in steel handcuffs. Coldhand kept his Talon free and powered up, but no longer against Vyron’s temple. Such obvious force would only attract attention from the gangs and other criminal elements of the lower levels. The Dailon was terrified and didn’t need reminding that he was one untimely twitch away from death. As they exited the lift to Level Three, Coldhand finally put the gun away.
The CWAAF testing and collection station was a simple, tidy white building on Level Three and was made of a sturdy, functional plastic. Wood was a hard-to-grow luxury, available only to the very wealthy of the city-world, and fibersteel was generally reserved for spacecraft. Microwoven steel or aluminum was durable but flexible, making it uniquely suited to the constantly changing pressures and stresses of interstellar travel. For most cheap buildings, plastic and ceramic sufficed.
Uniformly shaped green marsona bushes skirted the station and to judge by the sparse sprinkling of lavender flowers, Axis’ long summer was finally coming to an end. Reinforced white plastic doors hissed open at their approach and Coldhand marched his bounty through. There was a metal sign inside with black letters etched into it.
Identity Testing and Bounty Collection Center
CAID #45K93–288D-5VS
Please have your license and identification ready
The reception and waiting area was small and currently empty, with a gray plastic floor scuffed by numerous escape attempts. In the center, the flooring was stamped with the auroch emblem of the CWA. Another set of sliding double doors stood closed at the other end of the room. There were no handles on this side of the entry — they could only be opened from inside.
A fat, bored-looking human sat behind the square window next to the vault-like doors. He wore the dark green uniform of the CWA Armed Forces, which he filled almost to overflowing. The bars on his collar identified him as a first lieutenant and a name tag on his lapel read P. Darson. He looked up from his computer as Vyron and Coldhand entered.
“License please,” Darson said. His voice was rendered hollow by the speaker set into the window.
Vyron stared around the room with wide, frightened black eyes. He twitched, but didn’t make a run for the door.
“I don’t have it,” Coldhand said. His bounty hunter’s license was stowed on the Raptor with the rest of his gear.
The lieutenant rolled his eyes at the obvious incompetence of any bounty hunter who couldn’t keep track of their license.
“Print scan, then,” he said.
Darson flipped open a panel at the bottom of his window and out slid a flat scanner with the outline of a hand on it, the thumb pointing off to the right. Coldhand held up his cybernetic left hand to Darson. Despite the thick window between them, the CWAAF officer went pale and recoiled.
“Oh.” Darson seemed unable to tear his eyes from the illonium hand, morbidly fascinated. “Right, we’ll have to… to take a retinal scan, Coldhand, sir. For the records.”
Coldhand heard a few soft beeps as Darson entered an access code into a keypad somewhere out of sight. With a low clank, the secondary doors unlocked and slid open. Vyron whimpered as the Prian hunter grabbed him and shoved him roughly through and down a short hallway that opened up into a much larger room. It was lined down one side with scanning stalls and a bank of computer terminals along the other.
A pair of Ixthians in green scrubs sat at a table, a tall female and smaller male gossiping over plastic coffee cups. The man’s antennae twitched in his white hair and he turned to see Coldhand pushing Vyron into the room. The Ixthian stood quickly, dropping his drink. His cup bounced off the tabletop and fell onto the floor, spilling lukewarm coffee in a brown puddle at his feet. The woman gave her counterpart an annoyed look, but then followed his whirling red eyes to Coldhand. She raised her multitude of fingers to her mouth. Darson jogged around the corner after the hunter, his pudgy face quite pink. He skidded to a stop.
“It’s Coldhand,” Darson announced unnecessarily. Anyone who worked in an identity center knew his name.
Darson approached the pale-haired hunter gingerly, as though expecting a blow. His fingers twitched nervously against the automatic laser pistol holstered under his arm.
“I’ll scan you in,” he said, pointing to one of the booths along the side of the room.
Coldhand nodded. He shoved the cringing Vyron into the arms of the waiting Ixthian technicians.
“Get his ID confirmed,” he instructed. “I’ve got verbal only.”
They pulled the Dailon toward a stall. Coldhand turned and followed the CWAAF lieutenant to another one. A collection of scanning equipment, each attached to a central core by folding metal arms, hung from the ceiling like an immense steel spider.
Darson hesitantly asked the hunter to sit on a narrow bench jutting from the wall. He pulled down a mechanical arm that terminated in a fist-sized box and lined up a circular lens with Coldhand’s icy eyes. Darson pressed a button and a network image of the nerves and blood vessels flashed up onto the screen behind Darson. The computer high-lighted key points and accessed the CWA database, blanked and then brought up a name. Darson turned to look.
- Centra, Logan A.
“Uh… what the hells? Sorry, I’ll get another one,” Darson said, frowning nervously.
“Don’t bother. It’s correct,” Coldhand told him. He tapped a key on the computer console. The screen flashed and changed again.
- Centra, Logan A.
- Known aliases: Coldhand, Logan
- Bounty hunter: License class E3 (full exemption)
- Species: Human
- POB: Prianus, New Empyrean, district C
- Age: 26.23 CSYs
“You didn’t think my family name was actually Coldhand, did you?” he asked without the faintest trace of a smile. The hunter tapped another key and the screen blanked again.
“Class E3?” Darson said. “Full exemption… You don’t see many of those outside the Alliance forces.”
“And you won’t tell anyone you did, certainly not one named Logan Centra,” Coldhand suggested in a frosty voice.
The flush drained from the other man’s face and he nodded vigorously. “Yes, of course. I absolutely understand. Discretion. Let me get you the datawork.”
Coldhand doubted that Darson actually understood, but he didn’t press the lieutenant. Logan Centra was a dead man, a stupid young police officer back on Prianus that vanished six years ago. His marks knew Coldhand only as a ruthless killer, remorseless and inhuman. The story of a one-time cop turned to bounty hunting would undermine his reputation. Prian police respected the laws. They protected people. Coldhand didn’t.
It wasn’t a part of his life he had any desire to advertise. Or to think about.
Lieutenant Darson led Coldhand out of the scanning booth and then to the table where the two Ixthians had been seated a few minutes before. He motioned for Coldhand to sit and vanished back to his office to retrieve a few forms. There was an indignant yelp from another stall. The privacy curtain was drawn, but behind it, Vyron was being subjected — and loudly objecting — to a full-body scan. Advanced though Alliance medical equipment was, it couldn’t take an accurate enough image through clothing and no one wanted to risk that some bounty hunter might have caught the wrong man.
Darson returned a moment later with a slender silver datadex and held it out to Coldhand.
“Just the standard forms. Mark identity confirmation and autonomous authority. Uh, these ones here. I need your signature on the last line of each,” Darson said, and offered a stylus. “In the event that you apprehend or execute a person found to be innocent, you will be held responsible for criminal acts including, but not limited to harassment, assault and unlawful death in the second degree under CWA law.”
“This is a privately posted bounty.”
“Oh, right,” Darson said. He pressed a key at the bottom of the datadex. “Then please sign the PBP-19 on page forty-seven. Both you and the party responsible for posting the bounty will be subject to investigation if the CWAAF receives any complaints pertaining to this arrest.”
Coldhand quickly signed his assumed name to the forms and then passed them back. Darson keyed through the screens to check over the datawork, nodded to Coldhand and went to one of the computers on the opposite wall to file it.
A few minutes later, Vyron was led out of the scanning stall. His sleek black hair was disheveled and his angular blue face was contorted by embarrassment and fear. His handcuffs had been replaced around his wrists and the tall female Ixthian was holding Vyron by the shoulders.
“Are we keeping him?” the male asked from the booth.
“Nope, it’s a private bounty,” Darson said. “Xed, send over your confirmation.”
“Sure.” There were a few soft tones from the Ixthian’s computer. “Got it?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
Xed waved to the lieutenant, but hesitated in the doorframe of the scanning stall. He stared at Coldhand for an uncomfortable moment, then stepped back into the booth and let the curtain drop. Darson returned to where Coldhand was waiting.
“The bounty has been transferred to the account we have on file,” he told the hunter.
“Good.”
Coldhand held out his cybernetic hand for the receipt. Darson shuddered visibly and pressed the plastic strip into his metal palm. Coldhand scanned it for a moment, reading, frowned thoughtfully and dropped it into his pocket. He took Vyron by the shoulder and led him from the building.
The Dailon hadn’t said a word since Coldhand captured him. Vyron stared sullenly at the ground, not meeting any of the curious stares in the streets of Axis, as Coldhand hauled him to a lift and pushed him inside. Once the curved doors sealed shut and the lift’s machinery hummed to life, Vyron hesitantly lifted his eyes to the bounty hunter’s.
“A private bounty? Did I hear that right?” he asked. “But who would pay for me?”
Coldhand could understand why Vyron was the frontman for his gang. Even nervous and dispirited, he spoke in a musical tenor and his words were crisp, far more educated than a typical lower-level thug. By his accent, Coldhand guessed that he was from Tynerion, one of the oldest colonies of the CWA. Tynerion had a reputation for being a world of great culture, a cradle of literature and education.
“You’re wanted in connection with drug trafficking, kidnapping and murder,” Coldhand said.
“What?” Vyron shook his head and sagged hopelessly against the wall of the large lift. “I should have guessed. They think I’ll break and incriminate the other Steelskins, don’t they? Great.”
Coldhand didn’t answer.
The lift chimed to let the occupants know that they had reached their destination. The doors hissed open, and Coldhand and Vyron stepped out onto Level One. It was midmorning and bright light poured over the city from Axis’ brilliant white sun. The pale blue sky blazed with millions of twinkling stars.
The lifts were all clustered together into a clover shape and let out into an expansive plaza. Space commanded a premium price on Level One, but this was the capital world of the Alliance and even the public works had the money to build whatever they wanted. The courtyard was paved in a mosaic of blue, green and white; the colors of the CWA. A fountain rained endlessly glittering water over a brightly enameled Alliance crest.
A great crown of starscrapers circled the plaza, majestic spires of ceramic girders and tempered glass. Their points soared up so many hundreds of stories that the summits were lost in the silver-blue brightness of the sky; monuments to the power of Axis, the center of the galactic Alliance, thrusting toward the sun and stars with possessive, crystalline grandeur. Whoever had the color to afford buildings like this, though, remained concealed behind the polarized glass.
Roads paved in hardened white sancrete led out into the rest of the city and were packed with all manner of vehicles, from archaic bearing cars — ironically collected as a status symbol by the wealthy of Axis — to wide bulk transports, humming on their null-fields, all pushing bumper to bumper through their daily business. The sidewalks were no less crowded, alive with pedestrians of all species. On this megalithic altar to commerce and progress, personal space was sacrificed for the chance to work and walk on the surface of the most popular and populous world of the Alliance.
Many years accustomed to the dark lower levels of Axis, Vyron’s eyes watered in the bright light of Level One and even Coldhand had to squint a little until his vision adjusted. He prodded his prisoner into motion and they began walking down the shining, busy streets.
And kept walking. Corporate starscrapers and manicured business parks gave way to high-rise residential spires and expensive department stores that sold only the galaxy’s best clothes, food, and electronics. At least, that was the boast in every elegantly designed holographic display.
Vyron stared. In stark contrast to the lower levels, everything here was fastidiously clean. Despite the heavy traffic on the streets, the air remained cool and clear. Coldhand knew it was recycled, cleaned and pumped back into use by vast overclocked industrial machinery somewhere in the bowels of the massive city-world. Booming population and development at the dawn of the CWA had choked out the plant life that would naturally have done the job. There wasn’t so much as a stray blade of grass or sprout of moss in sight. Nothing that wasn’t part of a garden or sculpted topiary.
Vyron fidgeted, trying in vain to find a comfortable way to walk with his hands bound in front of him. The passing denizens of the Axis’ upper crust stared in frank curiosity and Vyron studied his feet. They stared at Coldhand, too, but the hunter ignored every glare or shocked start.
Finally, the apartment spires faded into the distance and Coldhand led Vyron into a network of small private airfields and communications towers.
“Where are we going?” Vyron asked at last. “Did someone on Level One put the bounty on me?”
“No. I’m here to pick up my Raptor. My bird.”
Vyron gave him only a blank stare.
“My ship,” Coldhand said.
“You actually keep a ship up here?” the Dailon said. “That’s got to be expensive. Does bounty hunting pay that well?”
“Sometimes. The bounty out on the woman I’m hunting now is twenty thousand cenmarks dead. Thirty-five if I can take her alive,” he replied.
Vyron’s black eyes bulged. “But you could live for years on that! What did she do to be worth that much color?”
Coldhand shrugged and didn’t answer. He wasn’t particularly inclined to discuss Maeve’s crimes with a petty gangster. A private party wanted the fairy for sixteen counts of premeditated murder, all verified with the CWA Armed Forces records office. Most of them had been committed before Coldhand was even born, but those weren’t why he chased after the fairy princess. Every one of Maeve’s victims had been themselves wanted beings, all guilty of murders and rapes so terrible that the details were never released to the news networks. If Maeve hadn’t killed them, Coldhand would have taken each bounty himself. They must have been worth thousands of colour, though the Arcadian princess hadn’t collected their bounties.
Far more interesting was the final charge on Maeve’s bounty posting, listed all on its own and with no explanation: genocide.
Since Coldhand found her bounty a year ago, he had hunted no one and nothing else. With the exception of Vyron… but that was only means of returning to the real hunt.
How could one woman commit such a crime? Maeve Cavainna was an experienced and deadly fighter, but she couldn’t have wiped out an entire species with her spear. So what happened?
Vyron cleared his throat. He didn’t seem to like the silence. There was a reason the man made his living talking.
“So… what am I worth?”
“Eight hundred cen.”
The Dailon looked a little crestfallen. “That’s it? Damn. You can’t be taking me very far for that much money.”
“I’m delivering you to Stray,” Coldhand said.
Vyron jerked to a halt. The hunter stopped, too, and eyed the blue-skinned man with chilly curiosity. A human woman in an exquisitely tailored burgundy suit brushed past, glaring at the men in rushed irritation.
“Stray?” Vyron asked. “You can’t take me there!”
“You live on Level Nine, Fethru, and run with a gang known for brutality.”
“Yeah, and I got roped into dealing chems for them. I was abducted by a rival gang, you know.”
Coldhand didn’t answer. Vyron raised his cuffed hands in an imploring gesture.
“I only made it here because the Steelskins protected me,” he said. “They can’t help me on Stray!”
The bounty hunter shrugged. “Keep moving.”
“But–”
“Move,” Coldhand said.
Vyron turned away and resumed walking slowly through the city. But not silently.
“Why do you keep your ship up here?” the Dailon asked. “It’s got to cost a fistful of color. It’d be cheaper a level or two down.”
“Level One aerofields have priority for takeoffs and landings. Any ship leaving from a lower-level port may have to wait several hours, but I can be off the ground in under five minutes. That’s worth the extra colour.”
Vyron stumbled down the busy sidewalk, glancing frequently back over his shoulder at Coldhand. His mouth worked and he tried to find another question to fill the silence, but found none. Coldhand didn’t offer one.
The bounty hunter finally directed Vyron to turn left down a quiet side street that eventually led to an arched wrought iron gate. It was set into a colorful wall high enough to cramp the neck of the tallest Hadrian trying to see the top. An elegantly austere etched silver plate affixed to one of the gateposts read Haven Field. The wall’s shiny tiled surface was an almost impenetrable layer of ceramic armor that covered the entirety of the tall barrier, all painted with a graceful and colorful geometric pattern. The decoration might come close to convincing a casual observer that they were looking at something more welcoming than an airfield so secure that it bordered on being a fortress.
At Coldhand’s approach, a hologram appeared from a hidden projector and displayed a young Lyran woman with glossy white fur and golden eyes. She smiled warmly, if toothily.
“Good afternoon, sirs, and welcome to the Haven Field airbase. My name is Arianna. How can I help you?” she asked. Her voice was pleasant and transmitted with almost no mechanical buzz over expensive fiber optics from wherever she was.
“I’m here to get my Raptor,” Coldhand said.
Arianna tapped a few keys not picked up by the holo-feed. “Ah, Mister Coldhand?”
He nodded.
“You have a balance due of two hundred eighty-four point three cenmarks before we can release your vessel,” Arianna said.
“I have it.”
“Will you be paying in cash?” the Lyran asked.
“No, the money is in one of my accounts.”
“Please enter your account information, Mister Coldhand, and we can release your craft.”
A keyboard slid out from under the screen. Coldhand typed in the account number and the keyboard withdrew. The Lyran receptionist glanced at her computer again.
“Thank you very much, Mister Coldhand. Your funds have been verified and your Raptor has been released for takeoff. Will you require any additional assistance?”
“I’ll need some grade five illonium shielding and the use of one of your mechanics for about fifteen minutes.”
“We can have a technician report to your hangar immediately and bill your account. Will that be all, sir?”
“Yes.”
“We thank you for your continued business, Mister Coldhand,” Arianna said. “Haven Field looks forward to serving your needs in the future. Safe flying and have a nice day.”
The hologram of the Lyran vanished and with a buzz like the release of a prison cell door, the heavy gates unlocked. They swung smoothly open on mechanized hinges and Coldhand pushed Vyron through ahead of him. The gate clanged shut behind them.
Vyron stared around this latest prison. Hangars and repair bays were all arranged in straight rows of the same stark military design. A more corporate building sat in the southeast corner, sided with the polarized glass popular all across Level One. A pair of blastphalt runstrips — both vacant for the moment — dominated the rest of Haven Field.
Coldhand took Vyron toward one of the hangars. The doors were equipped with a massive computerized lock, but true to her word, the Lyran receptionist had released it. The entry was wide open by the time the two men reached the hangar.
Inside, taking up less than a quarter of the available space, was the Raptor. Afterward, Vyron certainly would not have said that Coldhand relaxed when he saw his ship, but some of the steely tension seemed to bleed away and the hunter’s glacial eyes softened just a little.
Raptors were far from the most beautiful, fast or deadly fighters in the galaxy, but they were tough and could take one hell of a beating. Much like the Prians who made them, some said. The fighter had a standard conical body with long, backswept wings and short tail fins, all plated in a thick layer of illonium armor.
And Coldhand’s Raptor could clearly give as good at it got. The small ship bristled with weapons: missile launchers slung under the wings, an NI chain gun mounted on the right side of the cockpit and a double-barreled laser in the nose of the armored fighter.
Vyron swallowed hard. How often did his captor need that kind of weaponry?
A pair of elongated pods were fitted over each of the Raptor’s wings, connected over the ship’s body by an arch of fibersteel. The pods looked like extra engines and the name Long Wings was stenciled on the side above a serial number.
PPFC LWAP 2144–23VA
Coldhand unlatched the Raptor’s canopy and flipped a switch, turning on the computer inside to begin a prelaunch diagnostic. The computer beeped at him and began scrolling rapidly through text and numbers. Vyron noted unhappily that between all of the sensor panels and controls, there was barely room in the Raptor for a pilot, much less a passenger.
“We’re not flying all the way out to Stray in this, are we?” Vyron asked.
Coldhand ignored him as another Lyran trotted into the hangar wearing a mechanic’s jumpsuit and produced a plastic case filled with sheets of silver-white illonium.
“Is this what you need?” he asked.
Coldhand glanced at the rectangles of metal. “Yes. Now I need you to install it.”
The Lyran looked at the Raptor. “Grade five isn’t used on hulls, sir. Do you have some system repairs to make?”
“It’s not for my ship.” Coldhand extended his cybernetic hand.
The Lyran inspected the damaged illonium skin and probed the welded joints with a thoughtful frown. “I can fit and fix replacements in about fifteen minutes.”
“Do it,” Coldhand said. He looked at Vyron. “Don’t run. Haven Field is completely enclosed. There’s nowhere to go.”
“I wasn’t going to,” Vyron answered.
He hadn’t been, but now it was all he could think about and Vyron wished Coldhand had said nothing at all. Fifteen minutes later, the Lyran mechanic pronounced his task complete. Coldhand flexed his cybernetic fingers and curled them into a fist. A faint mechanical whirring came from the servos.
Vyron flinched. Why didn’t he buy a real hand?
Apparently satisfied, Coldhand dismissed the mechanic and opened a small cargo area in the side of the Raptor. He pulled out a dark blue flight suit, rolled up around the helmet. It looked heavy in his hands. Vyron guessed that like his cybernetics and his ship, the hunter’s suit was armored, meant to keep him alive when someone else wanted to make him otherwise.
Unabashedly, Coldhand stripped to put on the suit and his pale skin prickled in Axis’ artificially brisk air. Vyron could make out scars across his chest, most old and white, but overlaid with a few fresh, livid ones. One of the new stripes was nearly the length of his arm, stretching from shoulder to navel. Whatever had made it was a long weapon, to judge by the straight length of the scars.
Vyron turned quickly away and stared at the notice posted on the hangar wall until Coldhand tossed his discarded clothes back into the small cargo hatch.
“Get in,” he said, pointing to the Raptor.
“But… it’s only a fighter,” Vyron objected, even as he obeyed and pulled himself into the tiny seat behind the pilot’s chair. “Tell me you have a larger ship in orbit…”
“No. The Long Wings pods each contain superluminal engines,” Coldhand said, gesturing to the augmentations fitted over his fighter’s wings. “They’re just as fast as the bigger birds. We should be there in four or five days.”
“Five days? In this?” Vyron asked.
Coldhand leaned in as he situated himself and handed Vyron a pair of small hoses that attached to the side of the cockpit. Vyron took them awkwardly in his cuffed hands.
“Um… what are these?” he asked.
“Waste collection. Put them in.”
“You can’t be serious,” Vyron said. He regarded the tubes as though they were live snakes.
“I won’t have you pissing yourself inside my bird. Put them in yourself or I will.”
Vyron’s face went hot and he did as Coldhand instructed. The human climbed into the pilot’s seat, affixed another pair of hoses to his blue flight suit and set his helmet on the instrument panel. The Raptor thrummed as he powered up the engines and steered the fighter out onto the runstrip. He radioed Axis control to request permission to take off, and was immediately granted clearance.
Coldhand pulled back on the throttle and the fighter accelerated down the runway. Speed shoved Vyron into his tiny seat hard enough that he struggled for breath. The Raptor angled and then shot upward, arrowing through the pale blue sky of Axis and into the star-studded black of space. Through his blurred vision, Vyron almost thought he saw the bounty hunter smile.
