Hard Luck Hermit

Professor Drrok thanked the crew for their services, paid them for their services (the far more important part), and then fled. The incident with the purple ship had clearly left him rattled. It had left them all rattled, though they were coping in different ways. Tooley had sealed herself in her room with a large bottle of something with a high alcohol content, and wished the rest of the crew, barring Kamak, good luck.

The crew had spent hours speculating possible identities for their purple stalker, but produced no productive results. Their initial suspicion had been that it was some kind of pursuer from the planet they’d just robbed, but that had proven wrong. There was only one spaceport on the planet, and a quick look revealed they were the only ship to take off or land that day. That left a galaxy of possibilities to contend with.

“Come on, we’re going to the Guild,” Kamak ordered. The Bounty Hunter’s Guild maintained active records of almost every suspicious vessel they came across, and most of the senior staff had done a few tours of the universe, and seen most everything there was to see. If you wanted info on a mysterious vessel, the Guild was the place to start.

Unless, of course, you had as many enemies as Kamak D-V-Y-B. He’d made it about two steps in the building before someone shouted his name. He glanced in the direction of the shout and saw a diminutive, fuzzy humanoid stomping his way.

“Do I know you?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, you son of a bitch.”

“I’m not playing dumb, I genuinely have no idea who the fuck you are,” Kamak said. “You’re what, a Demuin? I’ve probably been bounty hunting longer than you’ve been alive, I got a lot of shit to remember.”

Gentanians were an unusually long-lived species, by the standards of the greater universe. Kamak was in his nineties and still considered young, and had been bounty hunting for most of his long life. The unusually long life gave him a unique perspective, but unfortunately for most of the people around him, it was a bad perspective.

“I’ll let you know in advance, whatever you’re going to bitch about, I don’t care.”

The fuzzy little alien stepped up to Kamak and stared up at him all the same. Kamak looked down at him like a child looking at gum stuck to his shoe.

“You left my brother behind to die,” the fuzzball spat.

“Bounty hunting is deadly work, I’m sorry your brother got in over his head,” Kamak said flatly. “It happens.”

A varied group of aliens sitting behind the fuzzball stood to follow their friend and face off with Kamak. The receptionist at the Guild’s front desk slowly and quietly ducked below his desk. They had a little shelter constructed beneath it for situations just like this.

“You really want to do this?” Kamak said. He pointed over his shoulder at Doprel. “You seen this guy?”

The fuzzball and friends did flinch slightly when they looked at Doprel’s hulking frame, but they did not back down. They had numbers, at least, with seven bodies against Kamak’s four.

“Alright, alright, just a second,” Kamak said. “I got a new hire, not sure he wants to get roped in to my shit, just yet.”

Kamak turned to look at Corey for a moment.

“Hey, newbie, might want to back-”

The slight turn of Kamak’s head provided the fuzzball with the perfect opportunity for a sucker punch, and he seized it. The captain’s neck popped loudly as the blow turned his head much too sharply to one side. Kamak recoiled from the blow and then rebounded, spinning back towards the fuzzball with a punch of his own.

Corey might’ve appreciated the chance to drop out of a fistfight, but apparently he wasn’t going to get it. Within seconds he was being shoulder checked by a stack of cinderblocks in human form, or at least something that felt like it. He let out a breathless gasp as he hit the ground and then started punching at anything that resembled a face or stomach. His knuckles met walls of solid, unyielding flesh, and Corey began to suspect this would be a very one sided fight.

He was right, but in the wrong way. The thick body of the alien was bodily lifted from on top of him by Doprel’s massive hands. Doprel squeezed once, for emphasis, and then tossed the attacker across the room, careful to aim away from any breakable furniture -as well as the other two aliens he’d already chucked away. Farsus, ever the warrior monk, was holding his own against two more of the brawlers, while Kamak had his hands full with the fuzzball and a single friend.

Since Corey was now free (and because the other aliens look a lot softer than the one that had tackled him), Corey decided to make a point, and help out Kamak in the process. While Doprel snatched one of the fighters harassing Farsus, Corey stumbled across the lobby, grabbed the shoulder of fuzzball’s friend, and punched him square in the jaw.

In retrospect, Corey might’ve put more thought into the relative differences of alien anatomy before making a punch. This alien was apparently on the opposite end of the spectrum from the living cinderblock that had tackled him earlier. A few of their teeth flew out, and Corey could feel it’s jawbone pop out of its socket as he punched. He wasn’t even that strong.

Freed from the interference of a second fighter, Kamak grabbed on to the fuzzball with both hands, lifted him off the ground, and then slammed him down hard. Farsus knocked out the last of the standing attackers, and Kamak spat blood on the ground before kneeling on the chest of the fuzzball that started it all.

“And I still don’t even remember your fucking brother,” he spat. “Now, you are a Demuin, right? I got that right?”

Kamak grabbed on to the fuzzball’s left arm and squeezed hard. The fuzzball let out a quick grunt of affirmation, prompting a smile from Kamak.

“Oh, good. Then this-”

Kamak twisted the arm at a sharp angle, causing a loud pop.

“-should really hurt,” Kamak said. “Now, let’s see if we can’t make this not a total waste of my time. You’ve got it out for me. You or any of your friends send a fancy purple ship after me?”

“No! No, no, nobody,” the fuzzball shrieked. Kamak was squeezing tight on his dislocated arm. “My ship’s a rust-red piece of shit, it’s in the registry, you can see!”

Kamak didn’t bother verifying. Nobody who squealed like that had the stones to lie under pressure. He let go of the fuzzball’s arm and stood up, wobbling slightly as he did so.

“Now, moment I walk out of that door I’m going to stop giving a fuck about you,” Kamak said. “I suggest you do the same. Grudges are a waste of time.”

Kamak glanced at the alien Corey had punched, who was still rolling on the ground next to a row of their own scattered teeth.

“And teeth. Come on. We’re getting out of here.”

The Guild hall was no stranger to fights, but the cleanup process was a bitch. Better to let things blow over for a few swaps instead of trying to conduct business in a pile of blood and teeth. Kamak led the men back towards the ship, and back towards some medicine, limping slightly as he did so.

“You couldn’t have started by grabbing the guys punching me?”

“You deserved it,” Doprel said.

“Eh, fuck you big guy,” Kamak said, with a bloodied smile. “Come on, let’s go-”

Kamak’s rounded ears twitched as he heard the subtle yet familiar whine of a plasma cell charging to fire. He ducked instantly, and let the bolt fire over his head, careening into the Guild ceiling. The wounded Demuin, realizing his last chance gambit had failed spectacularly, started to back away, gun still raised in his uninjured hand.

“Seriously? In the fucking Guild hall? We got rules, asshole.”

“Fuck you and your rules, you can- oh no, no no no no no!”

Kamak was pissed, but he didn’t know if he was pissed enough for the Demuin to be quite so scared. As it turned out, he wasn’t. The Demuin didn’t have his eyes on Kamak, but on something behind him, and above him. The fuzzball’s trembling hand dropped the gun to the floor just a moment before the hand itself hit the floor -while the arm was still raised.

Some kind of alien polearm had flown down from the ceiling, severed the Demuin’s gun hand, and embedded itself a few inches in the Guild Hall’s floor. Corey traced the spear’s angle upwards, towards the ceiling, and regretted looking for the source as soon as he saw it.

There was an alien clinging to the ceiling unlike anything Corey had ever seen, or anything he had ever wanted to see. It had gray skin, thick and tough like an alligator’s hide, covering a towering body that almost equaled Doprel in size. It clung to the ceiling with two long, spindly limbs, like bat wings without the connective membrane, while two stocky legs provided stability and two triple-jointed arms provided a means to hurl spears at lethal velocity.

The horrific creature detached itself from the ceiling and landed near Corey, giving him an unpleasantly close look at it’s face. It had a long mouth split into four jagged, fanged mandibles that moved independently of each other, and six eyes running along either side of it’s head. The square pupils in each of the six eyes was locked firmly on Kamak. It moved forward slowly, folding it’s wing-like appendages behind it’s back, coiled around the spears it wore. Now that it was on the same plane as him, Corey could see how it towered above him even while hunched low, like a predator ready to bounce. Kamak looked calm, but too calm, as the monstrous being approached him. He was actively suppressing whatever emotions he felt as the strange beast clambered forward.

“Thanks for the assist,” Kamak said. “Khem.”

“I do not assist,” the predatory alien said. “I obey. The laws of this Guild protect it’s members from harm within this place. Breaking those laws has punishment.”

Khem bent down to match his six eyes with Kamak’s two, pushing his face so close that his deep breaths washed over Kamak’s entire head.

“Oathbreaker.”

Kamak didn’t blink. Neither did Khem. Corey wasn’t entirely sure Khem could blink, come to think of it. Distracting himself with thoughts like that helped keep his mind off the many, many gigantic spears Khem was carrying on his back.

“You done?”

Khem curled his fanged mandibles inwards and snorted at Kamak.

“For now,” Khem said. “The laws of the Hunter’s Guild stay my hand. But one day you will break the laws of this place, just as you broke our compact, and those laws will no longer-”

“Yeah, yeah, you gave me this shpiel before, ‘shield me from the avenging fury that is due to me from...what was your code called again? Kalkoi?”

“Kalakai,” Khem snarled back.

“Right, that,” Kamak said, snapping his fingers as his memory was jogged. “Anyway, the code of ‘Koobokai’ also says you can’t leave the Bounty Hunter’s guild, or disobey it’s laws, and the Guild laws say you can’t kill me so long as I’m a member in good standing. Sucks to be such a stickler for the rules, right?”

Khem let out a low, rumbling growl that sounded audibly acidic. The hairs on the back of Corey’s neck stood on end.

“Oh hey, speaking of killing me,” Kamak said. “You by any chance send a purple ship to do me in?”

“No, Oathbreaker,” Khem said. “When I end you, it will be my fangs in your neck.”

“Alright then, asked and answered,” Kamak said. He gave Khem a firm pat on the shoulder, careful not to stick himself on any of the bristling spines that ran down Khem’s back and wrapped around his shoulders. “Good catching up with you, bud. Will I see you at the next Guild potluck?”

Khem snarled once more and pulled himself away from Kamak. He retrieved his spear—and the severed arm of the Demuin- and left with both, leaving the wounded Demuin behind to be tended to by his friends. Kamak waited a few moments to give the alien hunter some breathing room, and then also walked away, leading the crew back towards the ship.

“Come on. Don’t much feel like hanging out here anymore.”

“I can see why,” Corey mumbled. “Who the fuck was that?”

“Khem. Widely regarded as one of the deadliest individuals outside the Hatka Syndicate,” Farsus explained.

“What’d you do to piss him off?”

“Broke a promise,” Kamak said. “I ran with him for a few hunts, picked up some tricks, then went back to doing my own thing.”

“Hunters of the Kalakai Pact swear their souls and the souls of all their victims to the servitude of the god Akai,” Farsus said. “Akai being a god of both blood and honor. Breaking laws or promises one swears to follow is the most heinous heresy a Kalakai can commit.”

“You swore your soul to a blood god?”

“Oh don’t talk like that, Corvash, even if souls existed we both know I wouldn’t have one,” Kamak said. “I made some money, learned some fancy tricks, only got myself one never-ending blood vendetta, it was good times.”

There was a blood trail from the Demuin’s arm leading all the way out the Guild door and into the streets beyond. Corey found himself wondering just how many blood trails led right back to Kamak. The thought kept him preoccupied for the entire walk back to the ship. Kamak was thinking of nothing but his own bed and a bottle of booze as he stepped up into the common room and knocked on the threshold.

“Tools, sorry we’re back late. We met an old friend,” he said. “Got in a fight.”

“Oh hey-”

Corey stepped into the common area, to see that it had been torn to shreds. Then he turned to a far corner, where Tooley was lying with red blood dripping down her blue chin, a jagged knife in her shoulder, and a corpse in her lap.

“-Me too.”