05/10/2026
AFTERMATH
Xxandan Voss regained his feet slowly, pulling himself upright with his three good arms and supporting his small frame's weight on the wreckage of a makeshift barstool repurposed from a starship’s interior. The ygg’tygian informant's remains lay smoldering nearby on the other side of an overturned table. Steam still poured from grape sized wounds in the purple-onyx body where the four-armed starship captain had emptied all four of his blaster pistols, causing the green glow in the arms dealer’s eyes to go out forever.
With mild annoyance, Voss realized that his lower left hand's fingers had become stiff and lifeless, paralyzed by what was doubtless severe nerve damage. One of the merchant’s gluth bodyguards had fired a laser pulse through the palm of his furry blue hand. The other beams were mostly absorbed by his gelsuit, but the heat was still enough to bring him to his knees, singing his vibrantly dyed body fur. The suit's HUD now indicated severe burn damage to its sensor systems that would require expensive repairs before it would be useful on another mission. This trip's profit margins were diminishing rapidly, and the rest of the crew would not be happy.
‘Tough sh*t,’ the captain thought as he spit on the tile floor and absently propped himself up on the stool. This mission was personal.
Working quickly, Voss reloaded his blasters, holding two in each of his right hands and deftly inserting the argon cartridges with his good left hand while the maimed one lay limp in his lap. Holstering the blaster he could no longer use due to the injury, he jumped down from the stool and began moving about quickly and carefully to avoid tripping over pieces of wreckage and broken furniture. Until moments ago, this place had been one of the grubbiest spice halls on Okasta resettlement colony. Now it looked like the scene of a massacre, but Voss knew better than to take chances. The priority was to scan the room for survivors. Throughout the Protectorate, the gluth were known for being tough, their slime-coated skin and dense muscle tissue capable of taking laser fire that would cut through battle armor.
Just then, the comm-tab in his suit came online, its report broken by a crackle of static evidently caused by damage to the sensory systems.
” Captain? Xxandan? What the hell just happened in there? Scanners indicate a discharge of fusion cells from military weaponry. You told us this was just a quick errand before we left for Mendira.”
The young voice belonged to Xendra Shar, the daughter of a Tsillarian general who had joined the crew by accident when Voss rescued her from slavery on a resort planet owned by his former employer. He had told her to wait outside and cover the door in case any of Blue Star's security forces showed up. The truth was that he couldn’t have her getting in the way and hadn’t wanted her to see what he was about to do.
Without a word, the crew’s cyborg technical officer F45H climbed out from behind the bar where he had taken cover during the firefight, his magnum slug thrower already cleaned and reloaded. Methodically and systematically, the amalgamation of panhuman and machine began moving refuse off of the gluth he had wounded during the battle, stripping them of their weapons and shooting each in the head at point blank range to ensure the slugs would pe*****te their thick skulls. Voss gave a thankful smirk to the cyborg before answering Shar’s hail over the comm, quietly grateful that the machine man had known what his orders would be without needing to be told.
“It will be quick, Xendra. Just a small delay. Nothing has changed, and we’ll be back on the ship in no time at all.” Voss clicked off his comm, turning to face F45H. “Are any of our friends here still alive? Any coherent enough to speak to us?”
“This one.” The cyborg seemed almost disappointed as he lowered the barrel of his slug-thrower away from the large gluth's face whose nose he had broken with the butt of his weapon near the beginning of the fight.
Voss walked calmly over to the creature, blasters loaded and ready in his hands but casually pointed at the ground rather than the massive, slime-covered form that lay on its back before him. A grey-green face with features reminiscent of a cross between a hairless pig and a bulldog looked up at him through bloodshot eyes, the bridge of his slimy snout caved in from the impact of the slug thrower’s butt and his teeth covered in blood. Voss said nothing and only continued to smirk; it was the gluth who spoke first.
“So… this is the legendary Xxandan Voss that my men and I have heard so much about…” the creature growled the words in a butchered, guttural jargon of Fed-Trade. “I was expecting someone larger, someone more professional. What I see here is a skinny little runt who got lucky and lied about it. You disappoint me.”
Voss’ smirk widened into a grin as he discharged several rounds from each blaster into the fallen gluth's left kneecap, sublimating bone and flesh into steam and leaving the limb all but completely severed. The creature screamed in rage and pain and pounded the tile floor with his fist, sending pieces of tile and grout into the air as a sound like thunder echoed throughout the remains of the ruined bar. Shar’s voice could be heard frantically yelling over the comm, but Voss ignored it.
“I am very sorry to disappoint,” the muldijian said with a chuckle, the large grin still on his face as he lifted the visor from his helmet, revealing the green and purple stripes that he had dyed into his sky-blue fur that morning, “but you are not a muldijian. So by my calculations, you’ve got only three limbs left for me to shoot. How many of those you leave this little meeting with will depend entirely on you.”
It was the gluth’s turn to laugh, and he did so between wheezes of pain as his auto repair bio-implant began sending nanites through his bloodstream to attempt repairs on an injury that was far too extensive to remedy without cloning.
“So this is the legend… a weakling and a coward who resorts to torture for information. You may as well kill me now, fool. Not that it will matter. You are already dead. You were dead as soon as you decided to cross House Khalil.”
Voss shook his head and continued to grin, raising one blaster to keep it trained on the gluth, while bringing the other one's barrel down on the edge of the bar. His attention seemed diverted as he began digging the tip of the weapon up and down on the surface, though the other weapon remained aimed at the creature’s face and would have ended its life had the muldijian pulled the trigger. The captain continued working intently as he absently responded to the gluth’s insult.
“You are not my prisoner, and this was never about getting information. I need you to stay alive long enough to deliver a message.” Silence filled the room for a long moment as Voss continued working, scraping the tip of his weapon into the bar with the apparent love and care of an artist completing some great design.
Apparently now finished with his work, Voss turned his full attention to the wounded creature, the grin remaining on his lips but his eyes taking on a glare as ice cold and serious as death.
“Tell that w***e you work for that her ambush went sideways, that her agent on Okasta is dead, and that Snoggy’s children are no longer on the auction block. Tell her also that the shipment of weapons she sent to Golgara has been intercepted and will not be reaching its destination. I am sure her customers will be very disappointed. And most importantly, tell her that Xxandan Voss is still alive, that he has not forgotten, and that he is still coming for her.”
The bounty hunter turned a knowing glance toward F45H, the grin still on his lips as he stopped to pour himself a drink at the bar before calmly walking away from the injured gluth toward the main entrance and flinging the door wide open. Though they were now too far away for the cyborg to hear them speak, F45H could tell by the female’s stiff posture and body language that she was angry beyond belief as she approached him at the door. In a gesture that would have resulted in a broken nose or worse had it come from anyone but her captain, Voss threw both his right arms around Xendra’s shoulders and hips as he downed his shot and let the empty glass fall and shatter on the pavement beside him, the wide grin never leaving his face. Shar’s discomfort and anger were obvious, but she made no attempt to push him away as they started walking.
As the captain and the Tsillarian woman headed off in the direction of the ship, F45H took one last look at the maimed gluth before turning his glance to the spot where Voss had been leaning; carved into the wood grain of the bar, in a spidery scrawl that looked like it could have been made with the barrel of an ion pistol, were the words ‘Zenebra Khalil is a w***e.”
