Ghost Of The Black: A 'Verse Full Of Scum by Alan Baxter

Author:Alan Baxter
Format: epub
Tags: action, alien, fantasy, gritty, mystery, noir, novella, science fiction, supernatural, thriller

Episode 19

I sat in my room, grinding my teeth and gripping my Reader like it was trying to run away. What the hell was I supposed to do now? Every Bounty Hunter has a sensitivity to their line of work, call it a professional sixth sense. The more sensitive you are, the better you are. Those people that aren’t don’t stay Bounty Hunters for long. A lot of them don’t stay living for long.

My professional sixth sense had picked up something as soon as I laid eyes on the guy on the bridge and it was right, as usual. This guy, this pilot, had a price on him. Now I felt professionally compromised.

His name is Gavin Bartellian and he’s wanted for a string of quite violent crimes. Various hold-ups, kidnappings and tappings on contract. He’s actually a very scummy guy. My sense of duty to my profession and my sense of moral correctness told me to wrap this guy up and hand in him. My bank balance would appreciate it too. But we were heading out to a Globe, so where was I going to hand in him?

Then it occurred to me that I actually had more serious things to worry about. Was this scumbag’s presence here a coincidence? There’s always room for coincidence, it’s important to remember that. It’s also important to remember that just because a soul is paranoid, that doesn’t mean that they’re not out to get you. Was this Bartellian character hired to take me out? Or was it coincidence that he happened to be flying this boat now? What would he be doing as a salaried pilot unless it was part of a contract? I was pretty sure that he hadn’t decided to go straight after racking up the kind of record that he had. No, he must be working something, but was he working me?

I was surprised that he had managed to slip through the Sanctuary security profiling. I have greater resources on hand than most people when it comes to sourcing background intel on a bastard, but I’d found this guy’s most intimate details in a matter of hours. Surely the Sanctuary would have had access to enough information to find this stuff out, even if it had taken a few days.

Then a strange sensation slipped through me, percolating outwards from my soul. It was a white heat rage coupled with an ice cold dread and I suddenly felt like a nuclear fission engine in meltdown. Those bastards. Those scum-sucking, whore-fucking, worthless holy god bastards!

I felt like a complete blent, a total newb. I might just as well have walked straight out of school and pretended to be a Bounty Hunter. Why had I believed these arseholes when they said they wanted to help me rather than hinder me? They’d just sweetened me up and let me set my own trap by asking them for a ride. Now they obviously planned to hinder me quite considerably with the help of Gavin Bartellian. Fancy such a holy group hiring one of the scummiest dregs of humanity to do their dirty work.

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