One cycle earlier

The icon for the freighter Tegado crossed into the threshold of Atan’s channel region—the vast torus-shaped zone in the interplanetary medium between three lifeless inner planets and an outer stretch of thin asteroid belt and a single planetoid.

Seated on the bridge of the Relentless Pursuit, the three recovery agents watched the icon disappear from the main display as the freighter displaced from the system.

“Great bounty hunters we are, watching our stupidly lucrative bounty slip away,” Parr said, using the colloquialism for their profession to purposely irk the pilot. The stocky man—officially a “recovery agent” per the legalese of their licenses—sat at the systems station behind the pilot and navigator chairs. His goading allowed a hint of a smirk to interrupt his ever-present scowl and a smudge of warmth to enter his cold, beady eyes. Thick and strong, with unkempt jet-black hair, he walked with the presence of a larger man.

“The kid isn’t on it, like I’ve already said,” Cutter said, seated at the pilot’s station of his ship.

He ignored Parr’s instigation attempt. The reality of the recovery agent profession was far less sexy and exciting than portrayed on the entertainment vids. The job required persistence, patience, and covertness. Cutter embodied these traits. Of average height and build, with short hair and a trim beard, he appeared unassuming from the outside. A closer look beneath the calm exterior would reveal a military-spec skinsuit atop a lean yet muscular body, the efficient composition of a deadly predator. Hunting was in his blood, forged from a youth spent in the wilderness. An upbringing the majority of modern civilization had neither the ability or desire to partake.

Parr was undoubtedly persistent, a biological wrecking ball to be sent after a dangerous target. A trait he appeared to have possessed since birth, and honed in a military stint. But he lacked the needed amount of the other two traits, in Cutter’s opinion. Parr’s recruitment hadn’t been up to him. The anonymous client handpicked the team. There had been no negotiating on that.

“I think Cutter’s right,” Bloek said. He was tall and dark, with blond dreadlocks extending to his mid-back. A brainy university graduate who somehow ended up in a dirty profession. With a chiseled face and defined cheekbones, he was the opposite of Parr; pristine and sharp, like the wicked extendable blade he’d begun to carry on his hip as if it were an extension of his being.

“And I think you’re both wrong,” Parr said. He placed his feet atop his station in another move designed to irk Cutter. “But Cutter’s the lead on the contract, so it’s not my ass on the line.”

Cutter inhaled deeply and let out a long, soothing breath. The multi-cycle contract had been the most protracted and frustrating of his career. It was also most unusual: a multi-agent, non-disclosure-enforced private contract—meaning the bounty didn’t appear on any public boards. No one else would be after the target, only Cutter and crew. Even the manner in which he’d been contacted was out of the norm. He’d returned to Tavel after a job retrieving a rare feline from some unscrupulous trader. While he was waiting for his freshly roasted stim beverage from a vendor, a pair of SecForce officers accosted him about the caged animal in his possession. They brought him into an interrogation room and grilled him about transporting restricted organisms, despite his retrieval contract. The whole thing was a farce, something Cutter had dealt with many times before. It ended as suddenly as it started. The officers left, and a plain-looking man entered the room.

He sat across from Cutter, a vacant glaze behind his eyes. Cutter watched—a tinge of alarm tickling his spine— as the man placed a PD on the table and offered a secureComm. Cutter accepted, then watched the man’s face shift and warp in his overlay. He was a bio-mod courier; a person with embedded comm tech to minimize chances of hacking. A shadow-draped man appeared over the courier’s face, the details sparse; a tip of the nose, a sliver of lips, a glint from dark eyes. The user—close enough on the habitat for real-time communication—spoke to him through the secureComm.

“You have a stellar reputation, Agent Cutter,” the man said. His official usage of the term let Cutter know the speaker was serious.

The feline, who had taken a slim liking to Cutter and his generous allotment of treats, growled inside the cage at the newcomer.

“And you are?”

“You may call me the Envoy,” he said, and went on to explain that he represented a client who wished to hire Cutter to lead a small team. The target: a young medtech—Wesley Martjan Dennenberg—in hiding aboard a freighter. The client wanted the kid alive. It was only a matter of finding him and keeping it quiet. Cutter understood the underlying message: a public bounty would bring unwanted attention to the client in some way.

The other two agents had already been selected for their skill sets. Cutter had heard of both. Bloek was tech savvy and talented, but had a cutthroat reputation. Everything was an equation for him, a calculation. Killing four corporate bodyguards to capture an executive wanted for war crimes was justified. Then there was Parr, who always produced results, sometimes to the detriment of the target. He was known to make full use of the “dead or alive” clause in bounty contracts.

It would be a tedious contract—given the little data they had to go on—but the reward was invaluable to Cutter. The payment was the largest haul of creds he’d ever seen in a contract. The amount itself didn’t matter to him; he made quite a good living with his skills and reputation. Rather it was what he could do with the reward. His long-running personal mission—one which motivated him above all else— had come across what he suspected was a bombshell revelation. But it was locked away in a bankrupted survey company’s assets. He needed an absurd amount of creds to purchase the rights from the lien holder, and access the data. Then he could elevate his mission to the next phase. One of action, and of violence.

One of vengeance.

He read the full terms of the contract, as he always did. It was rock solid, and even demanded cooperation among the agents. The payments were equal no matter what, and any death of an agent could invalidate the payment to the others if foul play was suspected.

An hour later, he accepted it and was out of the interrogation room. Less than a cycle after, he’d met up with the other agents and the hunt had begun.

Since then, the agents had been scouring the Cova Straits commerce route—of which the Atan system was the primary hub—with unconfirmed reports that their target was aboard a freighter working the line. With no solid leads, they hadn’t made a bit of progress—much to the chagrin of the Envoy. Then, a cycle prior, they caught a break. The Envoy forwarded a tip from one of his intelligence sources: the kid was on the Tegado, a long-haul freighter scheduled to arrive at the corporate mining station Terminus on the outskirts of Atan. The data was considered solid enough that the Envoy themselves would be coming to collect the bounty in person.

The agents had arrived in the Atan system a day ago, and watched from afar as the Tegado swung around the station but never docked. Then it took off for the channel region, heading out of the system.

Cutter said to Parr, “I don’t see how you think the ship did anything other than dump the target on a transfer shuttle and run.”

“How would they have found out bounty hunters were hot on their tail? They’re just dumb haulers, and the target is some dumb kid,” Parr said.

“I don’t know about the haulers, but the kid isn’t dumb. Someone obviously tipped him off.”

“Whatever. Let’s get this wild chase over with so we can get back to tracking the Tegado. Hopefully they won’t get too far ahead of us.”

Terminus Station loomed ahead of them, a cluster of gray stalks protruding from the speckled-brown planetoid body. A wide-mouthed docking channel slithered from the curvature, resembling a gaping maw of some space monstrosity from a horror vid. Created from decommissioned materials haulers and barges welded together and driven into excavated craters in the planetoid’s surface, the operation had run strong for years since the Commonwealth spearheaded the confirmation of the Reconciliation two decades ago. The monumental diplomatic agreement between all major governments ended open hostilities and disputes, regulated commerce and expansion, and brought order to the annexation of sentients to the galactic community.

Then, six cycles ago, the independent colony world of Auturia mysteriously cracked in half and took fifty million sentients with it. Aside from being the worst disaster in the known galaxy, no one had a clue what caused it. The Reconciliation had threatened to fall apart in short order. Commerce was devastated, sanctions were enacted. The chaos undermined Terminus’s viability as a station, joining countless others among the stars in the economic fallout.

Cutter guided the Relentless Pursuit, a reconnaissance and interdiction vessel, toward the Terminus dockyard. Built for the Human Coalition military decades prior, the outdated ships now filled the fleets of SecForce agencies, private military contractors, scientific institutions, and a handful of ultra-wealthy ship collectors. There was nothing in particular that stood out about them, and that was exactly why Cutter had chosen one. The ship was as unassuming as his person, and held just as much hidden capability. The hull was coated in a stealth glazing, while the sensors had been finely tuned by the best system engineers he could find. The ship AI’s data processing rivaled the capabilities of its military brethren. But the icing on the cake was the not entirely legal addition of a HydraX missile launcher hidden in the interior weapons bay, along with grappling cables and a Nemesis point defense system. The armament left the Pursuit more than capable of disabling a ship on the run, and even blowing one to bits if need be. He was glad for it, especially considering the recent rumors around pirating incidents occurring in civilized systems. Only a complete fool would attempt to board a vessel of that nature. But he’d found through experience that the galaxy had an excess of those.

The Pursuit’s interior had been stripped spartan, an extra berth removed to add in a reinforced polysteel containment cage. The engines ran with seventeen percent greater thrust than they had when the ship was built. And the reactor’s insulation allowed the ship to power down and lurk in the depths of space like a spaceborne arachnid waiting to spring on unsuspecting prey.

Now, if only they could get ahead of said prey.

Bloek opened the station’s docking hub on his chair display. “There’s open berths in the dockyard. Executive berths are closed.”

“That’s strange,” Cutter said.

“Maybe some big shots rented it out on the cheap for a sweet party in the empty mines,” Parr said. “They need the creds.”

“Terminus docking hub is showing nine occupied berths in the dockyard,” Bloek said.

“That leaves nine ships for the kid to seek passage on,” Cutter said. A scary proposition, if the kid was able to board one unbeknownst by the agents. With sanctions in place, most if not all of the ships wouldn’t be returning to Terminus.

“Oh, good. We’ve narrowed it down,” Parr said with a snort.

“Request permission for a dockyard berth. Tell them we’re consultants scouting stations for a confidential client.”

Bloek relayed the information, then said, “Request confirmed from Terminus Control.”

“Good,” Cutter said, and plotted a docking course. He stood from his chair and approached the weapons locker mounted against the bulkhead at the rear of the bridge. The ship AI received his authorization and popped the locker open. He removed two snub repeaters—folded down in concealed carry mode—and tossed them to the other agents.

Bloek examined the weapon and let out a low whistle. Parr said, “I told you these were worth demanding the Envoy buy for us.”

“Good thing Cutter asked for them and not you,” Bloek said.

“I’m charming when I want to be, so crank off,” Parr said. He shifted his gaze to Cutter. “What’s the plan then, boss?”

Cutter removed a third weapon for himself. He held it in one hand while the onboard controller interfaced with his PD. He hoped to not have to use it. He wasn’t against violence, but he knew how destructive and long-lasting it was. His back to the others, he placed a palm to his upper chest, reminding himself of what was at stake. Everything he was about to do was for his mission. “It’s a small station that’s not even near capacity. With the limited ship traffic, someone will have seen the kid. We go to the place where people like to talk,” he said. Now connected to the weapon, he sent the activation command. It deployed smoothly, barrel and short stock popping into place. “The pub.”