Hard Luck Hermit

As he walked through yet another corroded hallway, Corey started to wonder if the universe didn’t need a higher standard for maintenance. These ironclad halls were the only thing standing between them and icy oblivion, but a leaky pipe was currently dripping water into a pool on the floor, filling a puddle that was obviously slowly corroding the metal. Corey kept his concerns to himself and kept walking at a brisk pace, following the rest of the crew.

“Bones, I hate shitholes like this,” Kamak said. “How hard is it to label a god damn map?”

Karzahd Station’s maps left much to be desire, making it harder for them to find a space where people might congregate. The port records had already proven completely useless, so now they had to do the manhunt the old fashioned way: by asking around.

Aimless meandering eventually led them to a canteen of sorts, where the stations various visitors and residents stopped to pay too much for a half-decent meal. Kamak took a seat, and the rest of his crew filed in around him as he carefully scanned the area. There were only a handful of workers on staff, and Kamak wanted to be sure he picked the one that was most in the know. It was easy enough to see who called the shots, once you knew what to look for. Every place like this, be it a bar, a canteen, a restaurant, all formed a similar social hierarchy. Something about food service just turned people into their own little clan, with a self-appointed “chief”. The other workers in the area gravitated around them, running close circles around the one with the most experience, the most charisma, or simply the most attractive one.

Luckily for Kamak, this one appeared to have been picked out for his experience. Kamak didn’t know the species by name, but it was a big one. He stood nearly a head taller than Kamak, and twice as wide, with stripes on his rugged skin and a broad, powerful jaw. He also had what appeared to be a scar from a knife wound visible in his forearm. Kamak especially liked that.

“Tooley, we’re up.”

“Ugh. I hate being an example.”

Sturit were relatively uncommon on a universal scale, but their skin and hair colors were all nearly identical, so one Sturit made a good example of what any other Sturit might look like. A fact that made things easy for Kamak and very unpleasant for Tooley. The two walked up to the canteen boss and Tooley tried her best to look generic.

“Hey, can I bother you for a moment?”

“You already are, so you might as well keep going,” the boss grunted.

“Excellent. You seen a man around here that looks like her recently?”

Kamak pointed at Tooley, and she waved at the boss.

“A Sturit, I know,” he grunted. “Yeah. Keevah Battir Nunn. Hangs around Hanger 5C. Has been for a while.”

“Oh. Well, thanks.”

That had been far easier than Kamak had expected. Too easy. He returned to his table with a relieved Tooley in tow and aired his suspicions.

“Nobody’d be that obvious about who and what they are while on a hunt,” Kamak said. “Either we got the wrong guy, or we’re walking into a trap. I don’t think I need to say which is more likely.”

“While the universe bends me towards cynicism, I must point out the hangars here are ill-suited to an ambush,” Farsus said. “They have several wide, open entrances into the main walkway. A proper ambush would necessitate an easily sealed chokepoint.”

“And being the ones with advance warning. I haven’t seen any signs of us being actively observed or reported on since we got here,” Doprel added. While there was always the possibility of hidden cameras or subtle forms of communication, Doprel had seen nothing suspicious so far.

“Well then, assuming we all want to check it out,” Kamak said, to a chorus of nods. “We got two options. We go now and hope we got the element of surprise still, or we head back to the ship and try to outprepare the guy. All in favor of going in now?”

No second vote was needed, as Doprel, Corey and Farsus all raised their hands, instantly winning out over Kamak and Tooley’s desire to prepare.

“Alright, well you fuckers are walking in first, then,” Kamak said. He slapped the table and led the way back into the exterior ring of the space station, where all the hangars were located. The upside to their mission was that the hangars, at least, were plainly labeled, making their target easy to find. The downside was that the Hard Luck Hermit was docked on the far side of the station from their target. They’d be in for a long retreat down a narrow, exposed hallway if things went wrong.

“This just keeps getting better and better,” Kamak mumbled to himself. There were no good places to walk into an ambush, but this was definitely one of the worst places possible.

“Just relax,” Doprel insisted. “We’ve handled worse.”

“Usually for much better reasons,” Kamak grunted. In spite of his protests, he kept a hand on his gun and an eye on every corner as he walked. They reached Hangar 5C without incident, but that didn’t give Kamak even a spark of optimism. He gestured to the Hangar’s open doorways. “You’re up, boys.”

Farsus, Doprel, and Corey all shared a nod, and mutually pretended that none of them were having second thoughts. They each picked a door, braced themselves, and readied their guns. As usual, Doprel went first. He took two steps in and immediately froze in place.

Then the crying started.

“Oh, he- sorry, sorry!”

Kamak groaned heavily and took his hand off his gun. He’d been expecting an ambush, but found the only thing in the universe worse than a mercenary out to kill him. A crying baby.

“Our apologies for the misunderstanding, folks, just a simple case of mistaken identity,” Kamak said. Not that mistaken. There was, in fact, a Sturit male here, presumably the Keevah guy who’d been mentioned earlier, but he was likely not their assassin given that he was unarmed, out of shape, and currently preoccupied trying to shelter a cowering wife and crying child. Given that they still looked absolutely terrified, Kamak did a quick check to make sure everyone had put their guns away. Every gun in the room was safely holstered, but the quick scan did make something else clear for Kamak. The terror the couple felt wasn’t aimed at any gun, or even at the hulking Doprel -it was all focused on Tooley.

“Tooley, do you know these nice people?”

“You think I know every blue-skinned son of a bitch in space?”

“Well if you don’t recognize them, and they don’t recognize you, why are they looking at you like you’re the Void itself?”

The terrified duo were looking slightly less scared as time passed, but Kamak’s point stood.

“Well they’re scared as shit and got to be looking at something,” Tooley said.

“You’re not here for us?”

“Yeah, we just said that,” Kamak said. “We were looking for another Sturit, you got caught up in the search.”

That statement seemed to rekindle some of the fear in Keevah’s heart, and he took a step back. The baby had stopped crying, at least.

“Wh-why are you looking?”

“We’re pretty sure he’s trying to kill us,” Kamak said. “Any chance you’ve been hanging out with another Sturit on this station?”

“No. I- we’ve been keeping to ourselves. I don’t know anything. I think you should leave.”

As Keevah started to protested, his wife put a quick hand on his arm and whispered something in his ear. He grunted something back under his breath, and she whispered back more insistently.

“Fine, fine,” he said. He turned his attention back to Tooley. “Are you trying to get away from Structuralists too?”

Tooley’s eyes narrowed, and she crossed her arms tight across her chest.

“In a general sense, I guess,” she grunted. Last she’d heard, the “Structuralists” were an extremist fringe group with a lot of loud voices but not much clout. “I’m not much of a ‘homeworlder’, I don’t really know or care what the hell’s going on in local politics.”

“You haven’t heard about the coup?”

“The fucking what?”

“The Structuralists took control of the military and executed everyone in the previous government,” Keevah said. “They’ve got Turitha and every other Sturit system under their control now. Everyone has to submit to Structuralism or they treat you like a violet. Re-education, imprisonment-”

“Or worse,” the wife said bitterly. There was a tension in her voice Kamak had seen plenty of times before. This was personal. She’d lost someone.

“Huh. Well, glad I got out while the getting was good,” Tooley said, without the slightest bit of tension in her voice. Corey was actually angrier about the takeover than she was. He had a more personal problem with fanatics.

“It’s not enough to just get off-world,” Keevah said. “They’re zealots, and they want the Sturit to be one people, with one ideology. They’ve been sending soldiers offworld to hunt down people like you. Like us.”

Now the edge of concern slipped onto Tooley’s face. Kamak and Farsus shared a quick, knowing look. A possible motivation for at least one of their pursuers.

“That’s horrible,” Doprel said. “Haven’t you been to Council space? You should be able to claim refugee status.”

“They turned us away,” Keevah said bitterly. His wife looked at the ground. “Ever since we’ve just been trying to get as far as possible as fast as possible.”

“Well, good luck with that,” Kamak said. “You might want to move fast, there’s probably one of those Structuralist hunters on this station.”

“We can’t go anywhere,” the wife moaned. “Our ship’s broken.”

This time it was Doprel’s turn to get a knowing look from Kamak. This one went unreturned, since Doprel was busy looking at the tiny blue baby held in the wife’s arms.

“I know that look,” Kamak sighed. “Remember to keep enough that you can feed yourself, Doprel, your food’s expensive.”

While Doprel made a handout, everyone else started to walk away. Corey glanced over his shoulder once, and had some second thoughts, but Tooley grabbed him by the elbow and kept him moving.

“If anyone in this universe needs a savings account, Corvash, it’s you,” she said. “Keep yourself safe before you worry about them.”

Even thinking as charitably as possible, Corey had to agree. In the grand scheme of things, he didn’t have much money, given that he was an orphan adrift in space with no idea how to get around or how to make a living beyond doing what Kamak told him to do. If worst came to worst—and things were rapidly getting worse all around him—Corey would need every bit of money he had.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Corey said. Then, to avoid any lingering guilt about not helping the refugees, he changed the subject. “So. You don’t seem bothered by what’s going on back home.”

“Closest thing I got to home is the Hard Luck Hermit, and ain’t shit going on there,” Tooley snorted. “Least I sure hope not. Could be another assassin waiting there, now that I think about it. Anyway. Fuck the Sturit and fuck Turitha. I left for a reason and I got no plans to go back.”

Tooley then made it very clear that she was done talking about by walking away from Corey and following Kamak out into the hallway.

“Alright, captain, what do you want to do next, take- Well fuck me running.”

Kamak said nothing, and kept his gun trained on the other Sturit in the hallway. Unlike the father in the hangar, this one was young, in shape, and most importantly, armed, though the rifle was currently strapped to his back and not held in his raised hands. Kamak had been quicker on the draw, but the Sturit had enough sense to surrender. He also had a military badge on his chest that Kamak didn’t recognize, but knew could only be bad.

“Any chance you recognize this one, Tooley?” Kamak asked, without taking his eyes, or his gun, away from the held-up Sturit.

“Fuck no.”

“Any chance you recognize that badge on his chest?”

Tooley took a good look at it for the first time.

“It’s exactly what you think it is,” Tooley sighed.

Kamak’s finger shifted a little closer to the trigger. They’d found their Structuralist.