Demons, Mercenaries, and Other Complications Chapter 4
Hello everybody! Here is chapter 4 of my Fantasy/Sci Fi Novel. Hang on to your hats because things get a little weird in this chapter. Let me know what you think with a comment or a like. If you missed Chapter 3 click here and if you want to go to Chapter 5 click here. If you want to start at the beginning click here to check out Chapter 1. Thank you for stopping by and enjoy the read!
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Chapter 4
Snake Eyes on the Hunt
The cantina bar smelled of cheap cigars and sweaty miners. The gravity on the asteroid colony was questionable, but it did the job. Platinum was the name of the game on this jagged rock, and business was booming. It was just worth going into zero gravity every couple of days when the ancient machinery jammed up.
The city council could have bought a replacement for the old gravity emulator years ago, but then the sleazy miners would have to actually pay taxes. Not that there would be any tax money left after all the corrupt officials took their cut.
At least that was how Snake Eyes saw it, and he was never wrong when it came to underworld shenanigans. “You gonna fold or what lizard boy?” Snake Eyes curled his scaled tail, and leaned into his chair like a sunbathing crocodile.
The motion of the spiked appendage dragged the uneasy miners’ attention to the floor letting Snake sneak a peak at his cards through his round aviators. The trick wasn’t necessary. Snake Eyes had killed his tells ages ago, but he wasn’t here to win the scum suckers’ chump change. The lizard eyed fourteen year old was more interested in the conversation going on around the long bar between a couple of half drunk border agents.
“That last load had some crazy cargo eh? Can’t believe the slide they paid for it too,” Snake Eyes played his cards smiling at the three scruffy miners sitting around the small round table. They moaned when they saw his hand. Snake was too busy to enjoy his win.
“Slide” was this tiny rocks term for bribe. The reptilian boy adjusted his hat covering his horns as his mind worked. This could be what he was looking for.
“Yeah did you see that AI controlled rifle? Those have been illegal for years after that hacker turned off the safeties last year. Ha still can’t believe that useless governor got his ass smelted by his body guard. I mean what was that idiot pointing his weapon at the guy for anyway?”
Snake held himself back from smashing the useless inspectors against the bar for wasting his time. He looked at his cards again to distract himself. Nothing worth having, and nothing he felt like bluffing for. He folded and looked around the cantina again.
Snake’s eyes followed the motion of some rock shaped humanoid dancing in the background. It could have been the thick smoke permeating the air or the low red lighting in the run down bar, but the alien was pretty hot in a rock woman kind of way. At least Snake thought it was female. It was hard to know with some of the more exotic aliens.
“Come on that’s what you saw out of all that? Didn’t that box catch your eye? I got a peek inside that magnetic monster and you know what I saw?” Snake Eyes took a long drink of the rancid liquid this rock called beer to cover his excitement. His ears lit on fire at magnetic box. That was promising.
“What? A magic scorpio there to bless you fertility you cad?”
“Nope a wolf sword.”
Snake’s tail stiffened tighter than a boa-constrictor around a wild boar. It couldn’t be that easy. Could it? Snake had only been looking around this asteroid for a week. He’d had a few leads, but he expected to at least be there another month before he got anything solid.
“What ya mean a wolf sword?”
“I mean a saber with a metal wolf around the blade and a giant ass gemstone in the hilt. That rock had to be worth at least three times more than my pay is ever gonna be. But get this it was sparking and these lightning bolts carved into it glowed! The thing had to be some kind of metal walker. Where the hell they got one of those and trapped it in a box is beyond me, but it definitely put up a fight.”
“Why yous say that?”
“It had these nasty scratches running up its face like a zenith bear left a present. I bet I could have gotten more out of those smugglen rats, but just seeing how my watch acted around the damn thing… I thought it better to get it away from our shit emulator before it lashed out know what I’m sayin?”
“Gotcha ya,” thought Snake Eyes with his first content smile of the night. Snake knew exactly what the corrupt inspection officer was saying. If that guy had known what he had in his hanger he would have turned the smugglers ship into scrap and killed the crew, but life didn’t give take backs.
“Gents I’ve got a date. I’ll just take my money and go you keep what’s in the pot. Oh wait I don’t have anything in the pot do I? Thanks for the game and the money old-timers,” it was always worth seeing some sleazebags get all worked up over losing their money to a teenager.
Of course, not everyone understood the need to lose every now and then. What was poker if you never lost? Not that Snake could remember the last time he lost, but that was beside the point.
“Where do you think you’re going snake boy? You ain’t leaven without finishing the hand,” the closest miner said. His cybernetic arm transformed into a laser drill to prove his point.
Wow, because that was a practical weapon you moron. Snake had to avoid bursting out laughing at the threat. It’s not like he’d won that much money in this crap game, and they were the ones trying to take advantage of a kid they found hanging in the pub. Thing was Snake Eyes didn’t need the attention a bar fight would cause.
Snake sighed. He sat down and lowered his dark glasses blinking his horizontal eye lids at the smirking miners. A second later his reptilian eyes glowed a bright green for an instant before Snake stood up and grabbed all of the money on the table. The miners just stayed there smirking.
Snake tightened his long coat and finished his mead. With flip of a coin to a passing barmaid with gills and a long colorful sail running down her back he stalked out of the cantina.
He might have smirked a bit when he heard the barmaid scream once she realized the miners were frozen. They’d wake up soon enough, but with no memory of the last three hours and much lighter pockets.
Snake Eyes stepped out into the semi open air of the underground miner town carved into the space rock. At least it wasn’t as stale as the air in the bar. Still it didn’t have dancing rock babes on the corners so that was a bit of a drag.
He’d even seen the girl’s eyes follow him as he left. She must be into lizards or very young men either way it could be fun. Maybe he’d explore that option before he left. But first he had a ship manifest to steal.
Snakes Eyes glided through the dark allies, tunnels, and caverns. The colony was small, but the population was large and that meant the mining business was good.
Small businesses were haphazardly carved into the walls or the floor with neon lights telling the predominantly male miners where to lose coins for less than holy company. There were a few legit businesses like the grocery store and the scrap yard that doubled as the ship repair bay, but they were surrounded and out gunned.
There were dozens of these little shitholes dotting the asteroid field, and they’d grow till the minerals around them dried up. Two things would happen then either the city would be abandoned, or be turned into a space station in the middle of a rock field. A city with no purpose or point, but sticking to their rock nonetheless.
Snake Eyes slinked through the crowd till he came to one of the few buildings not carved out of the asteroid. It leaned so far to the left that Snake wondered how the customs house was still standing. He couldn’t help but feel like he was climbing a house of cards. The crappy metal groaned under his reptilian claws, and swayed like a hurricane was hitting it.
In a few seconds he’d climbed in the third story window, and passed into the customs agent’s office finding the manifest strewn out on the desk. “Too easy,” thought Snake Eyes. He began scanning the file with a low hum on his lips.
Of the five cargo ships not bound for the platinum mines that had flown through the checkpoint last week only two had already passed their inspections and flown off. The first was an oil tanker that was going further into the asteroid field and away from civilization. So that only left The Prancing Lancer. By the looks of its description the old clunker hadn’t done any prancing for at least a decade.
A tough ship with complicated holes perfect for smuggling made The Lancer Snake’s target. Of course, the customs agent’s notes also talked about the wolf sword in its cargo bay. So much for detective work. Couldn’t they’ve given him a little bit of a challenge? A few minutes later Snake had his information, and was skipping his way past the rancid puddles scattered around the asteroid’s main hanger bay the customs agents none-the-wiser.
It took a second for him to find his drop ship amongst the spider like miner craft. She was a beauty smooth and slick like a stark black shark in the deep. The ship was heavily modified too. The mods were varied, but most of them were military grade weapons they weren’t suppose to have. They also had a portal drive, and all manner of gizmos that went way over Snake Eyes’ head.
Sheila was messing with a panel over the left wing. Her pink hair was smudged with even more grit than her overalls, and she was cussing so loud even the miners were feeling uncomfortable.
“Snake!” bellowed Sheila without looking up from her work, “What took you so long?”
“Aw Sheila I’m working as fast as I can. If you think you can do better have at it.”
Snake Eyes received a Death glare that bored through his head, melted through the asteroid, and destroyed some hapless planet stealing all of the residents’ happiness in blast of inhuman disdain. You’re probably thinking that Snake was exaggerating; let me assure you he wasn’t.
“Easy killer I got a lead alright.”
“That’s what you said when we came to this shithole.”
“Look I know this whole intel gathering job isn’t your speed, but usually this sort of thing takes months. I mean come on I didn’t even work any assets this time. You should be thanking me.”
Sheila rubbed her face smudging the grease on her cheek as she rolled her eyes. With a flip of her wrist the pilot slammed the panel shut, and jumped off the wing with huff. Snake followed his belligerent partner in crime toward the belly of the ship.
He allowed himself a smirk when he saw the mural sprayed on its side. A muscle bound, gun totting, Rambo man was drawn riding a shark smoking a cigar in its mouth. Two half naked cat girls hung off of the muscle head’s arms to complete the image.
For some reason Snake never got tired of that boyish humor. Sheila for her part ignored the mural. She punched the shark’s eye opening the hatch for Snake. They climbed into the large open doors in the back of the hefty ship ignoring the curious miners and pilots in the hangar.
“So is this lead good?”
“Yeah it’s what we’re looking for Sheila, but first I got to find a cargo ship. Go buy some supplies. We should be out of here by tomorrow. That work for you pigtails?”
Without a word Sheila closed the hatch behind Snake. That girl needed to chill out. Maybe she didn’t like being ordered around by a fourteen year old. Whatever she was the best pilot Snake had ever seen so he wasn’t going to complain, or at least not to her face.
Snake Eyes walked past a few gun-wracks and explosive murals climbing into the cockpit. With a few buttons the ship’s computer and the solar array purred to life lighting up the stuffed animal sharks smiling over the cockpit. Good thing he’d already hacked the local customs boys’ systems. He’d be able to track his lancer with a few key strokes. A few seconds later he was reading the ship tracking manifest.
“No way!” The lizard boy snarled so harshly his tail twitched.
The damn ship had been hit by pirates. No, worse the crew said it was some kind of morphing aliens they’d never seen before. Great that was a lot to go on. What sector?
Snake looked. It was a solar system right in the middle of the Ancients’ none-military zone. Of all the places it had to be there? Snake Eyes slouched and stared down the plushy shark glaring at him from the top of the console. Sheila was going to kill him.
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The Story will continue in Chapter 5: Nightmares. New chapters will be released every Friday.
Click here to read the previous chapter: Chapter 3: Snakes and Centipedes