Welcome to Gaia! ::

Rarely do I post my stuff online because I'm terrified that someone will take it and use it. But at this point, I feel like I have most of it down to a T, so if anyone takes this first chapter and uses it, it sure as heck won't be anything like my story. XD

It's a long chapter, 17 pages, and I hope it doesn't scare anyone off. I think I've managed to create an interesting, non-dry first chapter, but I'll leave that decision up to you, the readers.

What I need from readers are crits on characters, dialogue, action, and believability. I'm not looking for any spelling or grammar mistakes. If you MUST point them out, it's fine, but I won't really be fixing those until I get to that part in editing. smile

Thanks everyone.


Chapter 1:

“You move, you die.”

Ayixe abruptly stopped running, her feet planted, frozen, unable to move even an inch. She believed the man who stood before her, aiming a lightpoint directly at her forehead, holding the existence of her future in his sweaty hands. She absolutely believed that he would kill her if she moved.

She was, after all, kidnapping his boss.

Her grip tightened around her prize, a small, rather malodorous man knocked unconscious to the word and slung haphazardly over her right shoulder. She licked her lips as her mind raced.

How could she get out of this alive?

To leave the premises with her prize intact and unwounded herself would be nice as well.

Things were not looking her way, though. The impossibly small-sized barrel of the lightpoint, aimed straight at her brow, seemed to grow in size as she watched the hand holding the trigger press down. Her eyes widened, waiting for the thin, silver light to shoot out and fry her brains from inside her head.

It’ll be quick, she chanted fearfully to herself. Painless. I’ll never feel a thing.

The chanting was supposed to calm her nerves, make her feel numb, welcome death just as the next step in her adventurous life.

Instead it scared her more. She didn’t care if it would be quick and painless, and she didn’t care that she’d feel nothing. Nova, she just didn’t want to die.

“Put him down!” The man, some sort of guard obviously, jerked his head in her direction, his dull, beady eyes darting from her face to the backside of his boss.

She tried to think of something to say, anything to stall him, to keep him from deciding if she’d live or die, but the ClearClever radar-screen attached to the inside rim of her ear bleeped and flashed warnings like crazy, distracting her. Yeah, she cried to herself, I know I’m about to die, thanks.

“I said,” the guard repeated, his other hand coming up to steady his aim, “put him down.”

Her arm gripped tighter around the back of her captive’s knees, and her tongue darted out to wet her lips before speaking. “No,” she said, her eyes narrowing in defiance. There was no way she was going to make it easier for this guy to get his boss back. It had taken a lot to get the Contract, and she’d be Nova’s idiot if she gave it up just because her life was in danger.

Also, Havik would kill her if she came back empty-handed, especially because they’d gotten separated for the first time since Ayixe had started hunting, and double especially since she’d tripped some stupid hidden alarm in her haste to get out. So she’d life either way.

Really she had two choices. She could bring the Contract back to Havik and live, or give him up and die, either at this very spot by lightpoint or on the Love Traitor via space ejection. Neither sounded very appealing to her. She was only seventeen. She wanted to live.

She couldn’t help but suffer a deep pang of regret as she stared at the weapon about to do her in. She hadn’t even been able to collect the reward money for her first solo pick up. She felt sudden anger at the Contract weighing down her shoulder. He wouldn’t see her existence fade quickly into nothing. He wouldn’t even get blood splattered over his expensive Easclust silk shirt. Designer made, most likely. No, the lightpoint would do it’s job on her without making a mess around her.

She had a lightpoint of her own strapped to the back of her belt, snug in it’s holster, but with the heavy Contract taking a toll on her entire right side, she didn’t have the speed to whip it out. Not without the guard catching on way in advance and shooting her dead. To top it off, she’d forgotten to snag up an anti-gravity bag, which would have made carrying the dustcluster much easier. It would have made pulling her lightpoint on the guard in front of her easier too.

She realized that drawing her lightpoint before she picked up the Contract would have been the smart thing to do.

She just couldn’t win, no matter what.

Way to go, she thought, angry with herself for nothing thinking of such things before hand. I’ve been training for the past two years to actually hunt and I muck it all up the first chance I get.

The fear of eminent death loomed over her. She never imagined it would end this way, she had always thought she would die bravely, in the midst of some exciting, extravagant battle, where she would match her fighting skills with some evil-type enemy who was bent on taking over Wesclust and enslaving the people. Like in the movies.

Of course, she understood that nothing like that would actually happen. Not to a contract hunter. Certainly not to a contract hunter who worked for a large bounty corporation, one she was pretty sure was bent on Clustorial domination anyway.

“Kid, don’t make me shoot you!”

It was easy to push back the instant flair of anger towards anyone who called her ‘kid,’ she was too afraid to care at the moment. He had, however, snapped her from her morbid thoughts.

The guard was sweating, although she couldn’t tell if it was from the decision to kill her or if he was just a sweaty kind of guy. He didn’t look nervous or indecisive to her, although he hadn’t shot her right on the spot, which could mean he actually just wanted her captured alive.

She wasn’t sure if being taken alive by a Chattel Shift outpost would place her better or worse off than death. Being taken would most likely mean being sold into slavery, possibly taken to Easclust. Maybe she would rather be melted from the inside instead.

The knowledge that this could be her final moment of freedom sent her into hyper-awareness of her surroundings. The skin-tone tanned colors of the walls, the flashing, reddish hue of the emergency lights pulsating all around her, the sirens broadcasting to the entire compound of her intrusion, and the exit that had to be only fiver feet behind her and to her right. She had almost made it to freedom. She had almost gotten away.

But now she was stuck, facing off with a man she could only hope wasn’t trigger-happy. Hope for some sort of distraction, some form of escape.

Her desperate mind searched for a miracle, a diversion. If something, anything would catch his attention for a few precious seconds, she could drop the Contract and grab her own lightpoint. Then at least things would be even. At least then she’d have a slim chance of getting the Nova out and cashing in on her contract.

As the seconds ticked by, her hope for an interruption evaporated. She was never getting out alive. She was stuck inside a measly Chattel Shift outpost on Iboraia, which was nothing but a wasteland planet in a dusty corner of Wesclust.

Stardust. She was done for.

It felt like she’d been in a stand-off with the guard forever. What the nova was he waiting for? Did he have to put her through the torment of letting her fantasize about her death? Couldn’t he just decide whether or not he was going to pull the damn trigger or tie her up and send her across the Aeoclusts?

She was just about to open her mouth and tell him to get it over with already when an explosion ripped through the air. Hot, tethering licks of fire leapt around the bend behind the guard, followed by large, billowing clouds of think, dark smoke. The ClearClever attached to the inside of Ayixe’s ear shrieked an ear-splitting pitch and the radar-screen in her left eye popped a blinding light and went black, disconnecting her from her vital readings and successfully blinding her in one eye. Her hand shot up to her ear but before she could rip it out the shrieking in her ear died to nothing. The guard standing before her let out a whimper of pain and fell instantaneously to the ground.

Ayixe froze, shocked into silence. In place of the fallen guard stood a dark-skinned twelve-year-old girl. She grinned, her hand wrapped around a tiny needle. Ayixe gapped down at Fen, who looked back up at her as if she’d just done the most stardusting thing in the world.

“Did good?”

Ayixe stood straight and peered out of the gaping doorway, her heart leaping for joy when Havik broke free from the trees and ran with speed she hadn’t known her Captain possessed. She was easy to see so far away, her red hair blazing in the double sunlight as if it were on fire.

“Havik!” She cried, raising her arms up and waving like a lunatic. Half of her was relieved she was alive. The other half was relieved she didn’t have to go back and get her. She should have known Havik could take care of herself. As if she needed some trembling teenager to look after her.

However, Ayixe’s elated feeling plummeted as four or five Skow broke out of the trees only two hundred feet behind her.

“Oh, burst!” She grabbed at the lever again, readying herself for the few seconds she’d have to close it. “Fen!” She cried, and the little girl’s head snapped up, her eyes wide with fear. They reflected the way Ayixe’s stomach was currently flopping.

“Fen,” she said again, controlling her voice to come out steady so as not to scare the little girl more, “I need your help.” Her voice was calm enough, apparently, because Fen grabbed onto the lever beside her again.

“When I say…” Ayixe began, her heart thudding painfully in her chest as she watched Havik scramble frantically towards the dock. “Wait for it…” she breathed. “Wait…”

“Now!” She cried as Havik threw herself into the ship. Ayixe and Fen pulled with strength born of absolute fear.

It didn’t budge.

“Nova!” Ayixe cried out, yanking down as hard as she could. “Close!” The Skow were coming closer, she could hear their clawed feet scrambling against the ground.

They were going to die. The Skow would come aboard and rip them to shreds. Ayixe could see it all happening inside her head. Lightpoint wouldn’t be enough to save them. Their lives as Contract hunters would end right here.

And then Havik was behind her, her bouncy, red hair ringlets tumbling over her face as she pushed Fen aside none too lightly. With a glance and an encouraging nod exchanged between them, they pulled with all their strength.

A loud, echoing ‘clunk’ vibrated through the inside of the ship’s belly and the dock slowly rose up. It was a step in the right direction, but they weren’t in the clear yet. They didn’t stick around to make sure it closed up all the way. Instead, Havik grabbed the struggling shoulder bag up with one hand and motioned for Ayixe and Fen to follow with the other, heading brusquely for the control deck.

Rynk sat in the designated pilot’s seat, hastily moving controls and pressing his fingertips against the imprinted control pad when they stumbled in. Several different holographic screens were popping up and disappearing at a rapid pace Ayixe could never hope to understand.

“Get us the nova out of here, Rynk!” Havik shouted as she flew into the room, throwing the bag into the corner before slamming herself into the copilot seat and buckling up as fast she could. Ayixe followed her lead, buckling herself into the seat behind Havik while Fen did the same to her right.

“What were you guys doing in there?” Rynk shouted over the noise of the ship finally booting to its full power. “It was supposed to be a simple in-and-out contract! How did they detect you?” The strain in his voice was obvious, like he didn’t want Havik finding out Fen had escaped from under his nose.

The ship rocked as the Skow slammed into them, the screeching of claws against metal as they tore at the side of the ship.

“Someone tripped an alarm in there!” Havik accused, her eyes wide and wild.

Ayixe winced and debated whether she should give herself up.

Havik craned her neck around to look straight at Ayixe, her gaze like imploding stars – angry and hot. “Ayixe, what happened? Where did you find the b*****d?”

For a moment, she thought her Captain meant Fen, and she frowned in confusion. Then Havik’s gaze shifted down to the struggling Contract, ignored and struggling on the cold, steel floor, and she remembered that she’d actually caught him herself this time.

Ayixe tried to look as in control of her emotions as possible as she replied. “I found him in a room in the northeast corner, unguarded.” Her voice shook.

Havik frowned. “No cover?”

“None. In fact, I didn’t run into any cover until I was on my way out.” After I tripped that alarm, she added silently at the end.

Now their Captain just looked grim, her thick lips pulled into a very thin line. “How bad?” She asked.

“Only one.”

“One?”

“One.” Ayixe confirmed before glancing over at Fen, who was listening intently. “It wouldn’t have been any trouble, but the Contract was heavy and I couldn’t grab at my lightpoint without-”

“How many times do I have to tell you to grab that thing before you take on an armful?” She interrupted, her tone biting. “What in stardust’s name were you thinking?”

Ayixe flushed with embarrassment at being lectured to – like a child, and in front of Rynk no less, although he didn’t seem to be listening, his eyes fixed solely on the sky in front of him. She knew he was hearing was what going on, however, and didn’t doubt that he’d be teasing her about it later.

“I-I don’t know,” she stuttered out, nervous at the mistakes she’d made and trying to explain them best she could. “I panicked. I wasn’t expecting to run into the Contract first, I-”

“That was the point of splitting up, wasn’t it?” Havik interrupted again. “So there was a fifty-fifty chance you’d run into him first.” She shook her head. “You told me you were ready for this, you said- ”

“I was ready!” Ayixe balked, her eyes wide and desperate. She could feel Havik’s respect floating away like space debris.

“You made way too many mistakes. How many times have I told you to expect what you don’t expect?”

This time she didn’t speak, just nodded in agreement, too furious to continue defending herself. She was angry at Havik for treating her like a child and angry at herself for having deserved to be treated like one. She thought for a fleeting moment to rat Fen out so that the heat was taken off her, but she forced the impulse back. Fen had saved her life. Her left eye was still blinded by the destroyed ClearClever to remind her. Telling on Fen would not only prove that she was still a child, but it would be unthankful as well.

“Did you trip the alarm, too?” Havik’s voice had turned hard and dangerous, and Ayixe bit her lower lip – hard – to stop the floodgates.

“I don’t know.” She muttered. “Maybe.”

Havik let out a growl, deep from within her throat. “You said you ran into some trouble on the way out. So how did you get away? Why didn’t anyone shoot you?”

Ayixe shrugged, frowning, her face bright red. “There was one guy – one of the guards – he was stalling, he seemed really nervous. And then I used a firebomb…” She tried her best not to look over at Fen. She was a terrible liar.

“That was the explosion I heard?”

She nodded.

“Hmph,” Havik said, her bottom lip jutting out, “saved by the nick of your neck. You should be proud.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm.

Ayixe opened her mouth to answer, still on the verge of angry, angry tears, ready for the scrutiny to be over, but a small voice to her right spoke up.

“No, Fen did.” Fen interjected, her lip jutting out just as Havik’s did. No doubt Fen had picked it up from her over the past year-and-a-half.

She saw Rynk’s back stiffen, just as hers did, and she silently cursed the little Easclust girl in her head. Just great, she seethed, now I’m in more trouble.

“What?” Havik inhaled sharply.

“Fen threw firebomb, Fen pricked him, Fen got Ayixe free.” She was on a tattling roll.

“You went into the compound?”

She nodded.

“Under my direct orders to stay put.” It wasn’t a question.

Fen nodded again, then threw up that same easy sign, grinning.

Easy for you, sure, Ayixe fumed. She was expecting a full-blown eruption from Havik, but instead she merely turned her gaze again and raised her eyebrow.

“So, you were actually saved by a ten year old.” She corrected herself, an evil grin spreading across her face. Ayixe gulped, feeling very much like her Captain’s prey. “You must be really proud.”

“Twelve.” Fen interjected.

“Twelve year old.” Havik repeated with an unfair smile towards Fen. “At least someone’s proven themselves!” She turned back to focus on Rynk’s escape route, effectively cutting off the next excuse Ayixe had ready.

Great, now she not only felt ashamed and embarrassed, but guilty as well, and her guilt led to feeling simply pissed. Thankfully, Rynk and Havik were both preoccupied trying to get the LoveTraitor to move faster to pay attention to the very angry tears she struggled to hold in.

Fen, however, noticed immediately.

“Ayixe easy?” She asked, leaning over to whisper, her eyes wide at her older friend’s reaction.

Ayixe forced a faint smile to spread over her lips. “Yeah Fen, I’m easy.”

“Fen save Ayixe’s life, but Ayixe get bounty.”

She nodded, recognizing Fen’s eager attempt to stop her tears, and reached over to ruffle the girls’ short, spiky black hair. “Thanks Fen, I feel better now.”

It must have been enough for Fen, who sat back up in her seat, seemingly pleased with herself.

I’d be pleased with myself too, if I was hero of the day. Ayixe immediately felt like crap, firstly because she shouldn’t have thought something so mean about the girl who saved her life, but mostly because what Havik had chewed her out about was right on target. She’d made stupid mistakes and only got away by some insane sort of luck that really didn’t make a lot of sense. She deserved what the Captain had said, and probably more.

Finally up enough in the air to get some distance in between Iboraia and themselves, Ayixe watched as Rynk grabbed at the bar handle and pushed it up on the ship’s panel, starting the second set of engines that would boost them out of Iboraia’s atmosphere completely, and away from the Skow entirely. Thankfully, their breathing patters were the same as humans. Limited.

The bad thing about Skow was that they were also able to use their feather-light, impossibly skinny bodies to fly, extremely fast at that. Although they were a bit clumsy on the ground, flight to them was as natural as seeing was to humans. Luckily, Rynk was probably one of the best pilots to come out of the academy, and was great at outrunning Skow. He had been young to graduate from the academy, only nineteen, but he could fly.

Ayixe sat in her designated seat and studied Rynk’s profile as he did what he did best. His eyes focused intently on the sky in front of him as the engines finally kicked in enough to send them shooting out of the atmosphere. The LoveTraitor shook with the pull of gravity it defied until they broke into space.

It was at that moment that everyone let out the collective breath they’d been holding. It would be impossible for the Skow to catch up to them now.

However, they weren’t in the clear yet – even though nothing would be chasing them – and the look on Havik’s face proved it. Rynk either didn’t notice or didn’t care, but Havik was sending angry vibes his way, an infuriating growl passing through her lips. It was coming; Ayixe wasn’t going to be the only one getting chewed out over this trip.

Finally their Captain couldn’t contain her anger any longer. She ripped off her seat restraints and stood so she could tower over him – something that she never got to do while he was standing. “Rynk, what the Nova was with you today? The directions you gave us were worth crap!”

“It wasn’t my fault.” He said calmly and jutted his head back towards Fen, who was still busy holding onto her seat for dear life. “Someone thought it would be amusing to sneak the directions off the ship along with her.”

Ayixe was mildly shocked that he’d told on Fen. Rynk was the overprotective sort around Ayixe, but to say he was overprotective of Fen was an understatement. If rescuing Fen from a Chattel Shift made Havik her adoptive mother, then Rynk surely was her adopted father, and he sure as Nova acted like it, whereas Havik sure didn’t.

But she guessed that Rynk figured the cat was out of the bag – Havik already knew about Fen sneaking off – what was one more catastrophic detail to add to the list?

Havik’s gaze locked onto Fen. “What?”

“She snuck out, I was looking all over for the directions before I realized she’d taken them. I had to boot up and hack into the StarWeb to try and get blueprints that way.”

“The StarWeb is worth nothing! The prints were way off!”

Rynk rolled his eyes, which Ayixe found mildly amusing. Usually so poised, it was always a treat watching him argue with Havik – it was the only time she really saw him get riled up.

“Really?” He was speaking sarcastically. “Thanks, I’ll remember that from now on.”

“Don’t talk back to me like that!” Havik said.

“If you can’t tell, I’m trying get us the Nova away from Iboraia, where, might I add, the three of you almost died,” Rynk replied, his demeanor calm again, “so if you could lay off on the lecture until we’re fully in the clear…” He let his sentence hang.

She jutted her chin out, disapproving of his write-off, but turned her anger towards Fen anyway. “And what was with you?” She asked, pointing an accusing finger at the little girl. She waved that finger back and forth as Fen’s slanted eyes grew as wide as the planet they’d just left. “Yeah, don’t think that you’re off the hook because the other two mussed everything up as well! Sneaking off the ship and endangering your own life is one thing, stealing my layout prints and endangering mine and the rest of my crew is something else!” She inhaled sharply and dropped her hand. “And don’t think for a second I won’t remember this, you little punk! No more explosives for you, and no more leaving the ship during refills! From now on, you’re staying with Rynk!”

“What? Why?” Rynk’s outburst made Havik jerk in surprise.

“What do you mean, why?”

“Refills are the only time Fen gets to go out and explore with Ayixe for a bit. Don’t take that away because Ayixe and I mussed up.” He paused. “Besides, didn’t Fen rescue her? Doesn’t that count for anything?”

Ayixe’s jaw dropped. She couldn’t believe he was pushing Havik’s anger off on her. “Wait, wait, wait,” she said, “Fen sneaking off the ship had nothing to do with me! I didn’t even know until the hallway exploded!” She narrowed an accusing glance towards Rynk. “I could have gotten away on my own.”

Havik threw a questioning look her way.

Great.

Ayixe shrugged reluctantly, feeling like a child again, and sighed. She realized she was going to have to admit to it sooner or later. “Yeah, she saved me. Distracted the guard.”

Rynk grinned. Ayixe seethed.

“Rynk, you-” she started, fully intending on telling him where he could shove his traitorous ways, but a loud, thundering roar drowned her words. The LoveTraitor shook violently under their feet, and Ayixe glanced at Rynk, noting that his knuckles had gone white as he gripped the controls, trying to keep the ship steady.

Orin’s voice broke through the shuddering noise. “The engines can’t take much more, get us out of here.”

“What is it?” Havik was right back at Rynk’s side, hovering over his shoulder.

“Nova,” He said under his breath, “Skow.”

“What?!” Ayixe cried, moving to his other side as holograph screens popped in and out existence in front of them. She tried again to make sense of the moving, bleeping charts and warning signs, but gave up and watched their frantic path through the stars instead. “How?”

Rynk shrugged, his body tense. “They can fly ships.”

“Yeah I know,” she replied, “that was just so fast. I thought once we’d left the atmosphere we’d be free of them. How do Skow acquire piloting skills way out here?”

“It doesn’t matter!” Havik shouted over the noise to her right. “Can’t this thing go any faster?”

Another violent shake. The Skow were closing in behind them.

Rynk shook his head, his eyes fixed straight ahead, his mouth set in a grim line.

“No, it can’t,” came Orin’s sharp reply, “because I wasn’t allowed to buy the part to fix the rudder.”

“The company doesn’t pay for broken parts,” Havik retorted angrily, “it comes out of our own pockets. The parts you wanted were overpriced and you know it. We can get cheaper ones!”

“Not before we break down and end up drifting aimlessly into space, or get caught up in a contract like this one and die by surprise ambush-”

Rynk grit his teeth and dodged another attack.

“-Like – We – Are – Now!” Orin pronounced every word deliberately.

Rynks’ eyes focused on the path of stars ahead of him and the LoveTraitor, ignoring the pop screens just as Ayixe was.

She managed to push Orin’s words to the back of her mind, her attention caught by one of the screens, the one that used the tiny indicators to show just how many ships full of Skow were chasing after them.

Nova, she was going to get an earful when they planet-docked over at The Bounty Swag. If they didn’t get rid of the Skow, J’fer was going to slit her throat for attracting the grotesque-looking creatures. The smell was bad enough, but the sight of them, having them roaming around Etheos…

Ayixe shivered and sat back in her seat, the mental pictures of dozens of Skow destroying her home flitting across her mind. She knew that it couldn’t happen, Etheos’s outer checkpoints had the military power to stop them before they could get close enough to do any damage.

Her sudden retreat caused Rynk to glance over, and his hard-as-stone face softened and looked somewhat concerned. Finally.

“Ayixe, you easy?”

She swallowed her fear and tired her best to smile. “He’s going to cut our pay if we let the Skow follow us home.” The gloomy murmur of her words had the ends of Rynk’s lips twitch up into a grim smile.

Havik interposed. “He should dock your pay anyway.” She mumbled.

She was right, J’fer would probably consider docking Ayixe, whether they brought the Skow home with them or not. Going on contract without receiving the actual pay was so uneasy, the thought made her slightly nauseous, although it could have just been her horror over possibly being eaten alive.

She liked to think it was the lack of being paid. Yeah, that was better to concentrate on, although not by much. No contract hunter liked being on the short end of a contract.

Ugh, there was the nausea again.

“-leaving.”

Ayixe shook her head clear and turned back to Rynk. “Sorry, what?” She asked, having been too lost in thought to pay any sort of attention.

“The Skow are leaving.” He let out a relieved whoosh of air and patted the empty panel board above the pad of controls. “That’s our love, outrunning the evil mutations,” and he sat back more comfortably in his seat and began to whistle a cheerful tune.