Hybrid Saga 01 - Hybrid (9 page)

“Strap yourselves in,” Jarred ordered, once the engines had finally warmed to the point that he could manage dust off. “This won’t be a smooth exit.”

Everyone did as he suggested, Ethan buckling himself into the seat closest to Jarred’s, grinning excitedly.

Working the controls, Jarred raised the ship off of the deck, maneuvering it around. Almost immediately, the freighter was rocked by a number of incoming laser blasts. System alarms began wailing in protest as Jarred struggled to regain control of the lurching ship. They were rocked again by more blasts and he cursed to himself, putting the craft into a slow turn. Much slower than it was capable of. The ship lurched around in a circle, which Jarred hoped would give his attackers the impression that they were dead in the air.

The attacking patrol ship seemed to take the bait, its attack ceasing as it lowered down into a position directly in front of the freighter.

“Look!” Elora cried, pointing at it through the viewport.

“I see it,” Jarred replied, calmly. He kept the ship steady, maintaining its look of helplessness. Keeping up the facade was a lot harder than it looked, the old bucket wanting desperately to fall back to the ground.

Through his viewport, Jarred could see the pilot in the cockpit of the patrol ship across from him. He smiled to himself as he flipped a switch on his control panel, opening up the freighter’s hidden missile tubes. He switched on the targeting computer, and to his amazement and relief, it immediately responded and locked onto the enemy patrol craft.

He saw the other pilot’s look of surprise as he pulled the trigger on his control stick, launching a missile directly into the patrol ship’s cockpit. The ship exploded instantly, Jarred simultaneously pulling up on his control yoke and punching the thrusters to maximum, trying to avoid as much of the flaming debris as possible.

He fought to maintain the ship’s slow ascent as it was spattered by chunks of burning metal. It choked for a moment, dropping back down a few meters before the thrusters kicked in again, receiving a collective gasp from everyone on the flight deck as the wind was knocked out of them.

“Is this heap of garbage going to stay together long enough to get us out of here?” Elora shouted.

“Don’t worry,” Jarred reassured her, sparing her a backward glance. “The old girl’s got a few clicks left on her still. She’ll make it.”

He hoped.

Punching the accelerators, Jarred sent the ship roaring away from the outpost, streams of laser fire stretching out past the viewports on both sides, finding no purchase.

The streaks of fury light soon faded as they ascended beyond their range, leaving only the empty night sky out the front viewport. The sudden peace and calm made Jarred’s stomach feel uneasy. It was always the same in places like this. Sooner or later, they swallowed up anything and anyone that dared linger too long upon their surface. He cringed as his mind flashed to all the ones left behind in the dying outpost far below them. No one would ever know, or care.

Just another forgotten outpost, buried beneath the sand of this unforgiving rock.

*     *     *

“Perhaps we should retreat to a safer vantage point aboard the vessel?” Traug’s personal mech, Praxis, suggested from where they stood atop their large cargo freighter’s boarding ramp.

Traug smirked. His mechanical assistant, which had been specially programmed to perfectly suit and mirror his own personal needs and characteristics, was of course looking out for, not only his owner’s physical well being, but his own as well. It had also been modified to match Traug’s height and stature. Though he did not see his physical dimensions as a weakness in any way, he also did not intend to have to look up to his own assistant.

“Thank you for your concern, Praxis,” he answered, “but I’m sure we are quite safe here with the High Commander and his troops.”

They had remained safely out of range of the insurgence taking place throughout the outpost, maintaining a position behind Durak and his soldiers, the High Commander angrily shouting orders to his subordinates. Standing there, watching the destruction, Traug couldn’t help but feel saddened by it all. It was such a waste.

Violence had never been Traug’s strong suit. Though many facets of his employers’ enterprises included the manufacturing of a wide variety of destructive weapons and war machinery, he personally preferred to wage a different sort of war against his own enemies. One which required cunning and the use of deceit and misdirection, as opposed to brute strength. It was far more profitable to
use
one’s enemies than to simply destroy them. A dead foe gained one nothing. But a living enemy, carefully mislead and manipulated . . . now that was something else entirely.

It was for these reasons that Traug felt disheartened, as he stood gazing out across the burning dock ring. What could be gained from this? He had expected a number of casualties of course, but as it was, far too many humans had been killed to make this deal worth his while. After all, these people were to be the compensation for a service rendered, and dead slaves were of no value to him or anyone else.

He supposed he would have to make due with what he received though. Durak would not appreciate any complaints on his part. Especially considering that a number of ships had managed to escape the compound, and the individual he sought had most likely been aboard one of them. In fact, he surmised that Durak would, in all likelihood, wish to slaughter the entire outpost in retribution for the loss, and nothing short of predicting Orna’s next destination would save him his new slave acquisition.

Traug smiled to himself. Luckily, that was a prediction he could easily make.

Chapter 5

Rolling sand dunes stretched out seemingly forever, in all directions across the soon to be blistering desert landscape, the sun just beginning to break the horizon between blue sky and white sand. It was a sight Jarred had intended to view from a much higher altitude, as he now found himself trudging over the crest of one of the dunes, lugging a heavy backpack. Coming to a stop, he glanced over his shoulder to find Elora close behind him carrying a similar pack, followed by Ethan and Orna. Looking further back, he caught sight of the plumes of black smoke rising from the crash landed remains of his ship and scowled inwardly.

He hated being wrong.

The old freighter had taken too much of a beating escaping the wasteland outpost. It would have been incapable of making it off world with all the breaches in the hull. He’d only just managed to keep them going at minimal power for about a half hour before the ship’s few functioning systems began to fail. With the main propulsion drive shutting down, it had been more luck than skill that he was able to set them down, though roughly, but in one piece.

All he could do now was decide the next best course of action. The spaceport he had hoped on making it to before going down was to the north and he estimated that it was only about a standard days walk or so from where they were. What would happen once they got there was something else entirely. Taliss wouldn’t exactly be thrilled with him when he showed up empty handed, especially after having communicated that he’d secured his bounty. Not that he really had much of a choice at this point.

Jarred took a final look back at what was left of his ship. He had salvaged everything he could use from the wreckage, which was really very little, but as he stared back at it, he suddenly felt an odd sense of loss. It almost felt as though he was losing a companion in a sense. He’d spent so much time alone in the rusted bucket, traveling from place to place, it had become the closest thing he’d had to a home in years.

He silently said his last farewell to the old freighter and turned away from the crash site, noticing that Elora was observing him from off to one side.

“Did you want to say something?” he asked.

“Well, I hate to say I told you so,” she replied, a bit sarcastically.

“Then don’t.” Jarred frowned, all the more annoyed as he could see Elora smirking out of the corner of his eye. “Nobody likes a gloater,” he added, before turning to walk away.

If there was anything he hated more than being wrong, it was having someone else inform him of the fact. He knew he was wrong. He didn’t need this woman, who had forced and guilted her way into his company, rubbing it in. Glancing back to find her still smiling to herself, he scowled, more at himself for letting her get to him than anything else. He had more self control than that. At least he thought he did.

He cast aside his wounded ego and refocused his mind on the moment. The most important thing now was to make their way to the spaceport and put as much distance between themselves and the crash site as possible. If any Sect patrols were searching the area, they would see that billowing tower of smoke from kilometers out. That not withstanding, these desert wastes weren’t the friendliest of places to wander. The sooner they made it to the spaceport and got off this rock, the better.

Jarred put a hand to his brow and squinted up at the blazing sun that continued to rise slowly overhead, the intense heat rising with it. Something told him it was going to be a very long day.

*     *     *

Elora stared out at what appeared to be endless waves of shimmering gold, stretching out into the horizon. It was the same unchanging landscape she had been staring out at for the last few hours, and the site was beginning to grow more than a little tiresome. Every dune they crossed over lead to another, nothing but hot sand expanding outwards forever in all directions. She was beginning to wonder if this bounty hunter even knew where he was going.

What had she been thinking? She didn’t know anything about the man, apart from the fact that he hunted people down for money. What kind of a person did that? He could be a vicious killer for all she knew. She observed him from a short distance back as he led the group on their blistering trek. He wasn’t an overly large man, being of average height, though even beneath his garments she could see he was well muscled. Even so, his physical appearance didn’t quite match what she would have envisioned of someone in his trade. She supposed it was naive of her to think all bounty hunters would look a certain way, large and imposing and intimidating. Appearing not much older than herself, he was actually fairly pleasant to look at, with piercing blue eyes and a handsome face, though it was covered in a few days worth of stubble, his brown hair cut short. If not for the weaponry he was clad in, all of which he seemed quite capable with, the man in front of her could have passed for any average bystander. That was probably the point. It would be easier to sneak up on someone if they never saw you coming.

Obviously, looks could be deceiving. Just because he didn’t
look
like a cold blooded killer, it didn’t mean he wasn’t. She had witnessed him kill a half dozen soldiers only hours earlier. Yet, he had also helped them escape the outpost when he could have easily just left them behind. It had taken some persistent arm twisting on her part to convince him not to leave them in his wake, but she wouldn’t have been able to win him over if there wasn’t some kindness to him. From that she felt fairly certain, whoever this man was, he wasn’t some knife wielding berserker.

That still left her wondering who he was. A kind hearted mercenary? It didn’t seem a likely fit. She had spent the last while trying to glean an answer to the question, but staring into the back of the man’s head had revealed very little, but for the fact that he wore a tattoo of sorts on his neck just below his hair line. A peculiar marking, it looked oddly familiar, though she could not say she had ever seen the design before. It was basically round in shape, two distinct crescents, one sitting with the other, giving it an almost planet-like appearance. She had become fixating on the marking after first seeing it, and with little else to occupy her, she had burned the image into her mind.

Concluding she would learn nothing more from her current vantage point, she left the rear of the group, where she had been walking with Ethan and Orna, quickening her pace a bit to catch up with their reluctant rescuer to walk along side him. She stared at him a moment, receiving only a quick glance in return, as she thought of what she should say to him exactly.

“I was thinking,” she began, waiting for him to look over at her before continuing. “Here we are, hiking across a burning desert, away from
your
crashed ship that
you
helped us narrowly escape almost certain death in . . . and we don’t even know your name.”

It was an odd way of asking the question, she knew, but that had always been her way, and for a while, it seemed as though he wasn’t going to answer. Maybe he hadn’t understood her. It was possible. Likely, actually. Beginning to feel like a bit of an idiot suddenly, she opened her mouth to rephrase the question.

“Jarred,” he said finally, and she felt a great sense of relief wash over her, so much so that she realized she hadn’t even absorbed his response.

“Jarred Archer,” he continued, as if having heard her unspoken thought.