"More of the same, hon?"

     I looked up from where I had been staring off into the distance. The bartender was short, a little plump, and muscular enough to make me certain she could suplex a bear.

     "Sure," I said. I had some money left.

     As she filled up another glass with what the locals refer to as 'gutpunch', I scanned the room and took note of tonight's clientele. The place was almost entirely empty; there was a huge guy in the corner drinking from a keg-sized mug, a reptiloid sitting at the other end of the bar, and a guy in a military-issue spacesuit. The bar girls who normally milled around had mostly all retired for the night, as it was getting pretty late. I guess they figured those of us left weren't interested in what they had to offer. The few who were still up wiped tables and swept the floor.

     "Thanks, Fran," I said, as the bartender placed the glass of cheap alcohol next to me. She winked, then moved away and started to clean glasses with a rag at her belt.

     I was a regular here; had been since I landed on this rock. It was quiet most of the time, and any fights hardly ever grew to include the whole bar. Those that did tended to be ended pretty quick. Busting heads happened to be one of Fran's specialties.

     I was an odd-job man, myself. I took work where I could find it, and a little more of it was of questionable legality than I'd care to admit. Money was money.

      Suddenly, hands slid across my shoulders and over my chest, and before I had time to react I felt hot breath on the side of my face.

     "Hey there, sugar," a silky voice breathed into my ear. It sounded like pure, unadulterated sex.

     I turned my head to look at the girl now sitting on the stool next to me. She was very attractive, wearing a bright red skirt, black and white striped stockings, and a low cut blouse that didn't leave much to the imagination. She had a pale complexion, big dark eyes, and broad, black tiger stripes that ran down her arms and the back of her neck and in between her shoulders. I might have wondered how far they went, if I hadn't seen the rest of it myself. They went all the way down.

     "Clarissa," I said.

     She flashed me a big, pearly grin. I couldn't help but notice, as I had before, the size of her canines. Love bites from Clarissa hurt.

     "You know," she said, her fingers dancing across the top of my thigh, "I was over there sweeping the floor and I saw you sitting all alone at the bar, and I thought to my little old self, why don't I just come over and say hi."

     I knew what she wanted, but I had other plans for the night. They wouldn't be as enjoyable, but they were unavoidable.

     "I don't have any time tonight, Clarissa," I told her bluntly. I didn't have the money, either, but she didn't need to know that.

     She pouted with mock disappointment. "But Jack, honey," her fingers moved towards my inner thigh and her voice poured out from between her lips like liquid gold. "You know I can give you a time like you've never had before."

     "Look, I'm sorry," I said. "I've got more important things to do right now."

     Her flirtatious demeanor dropped, and she gave me a look of frustrated seriousness.

     "You know, I bust my ass in this joint day in and day out, servicing rocket jockeys," she said in an exasperated tone, "but whenever I'm in the mood, nobody wants any. Care to explain that to me?"

     "I'm sorry," I said again, taking a swig of the gutpunch. It tasted like battery acid and broken dreams, but if there was a faster way to get drunk, I wasn't aware of it. "I can't help you out."

     "What is so damn important that you'd turn down this?" she gestured to herself with a sweeping motion. Admittedly, if I didn't have other things on pulling on my thoughts (and if I had the appropriate remuneration), we'd already be in flagrante delicto. Clarissa liked me, and I didn't mind a bit.

     "I'm gonna die tonight," I said, "And I wanna be drunk when it happens."

     She gave me a shocked look, then narrowed her eyes. I could tell she was trying to figure out if I was serious.

     "I'm not funnin' you," I said quietly.

     "What exactly makes you think you're gonna die?"

     I opened my mouth to tell her, when I heard a sound from the decrepit metal door behind me, on the other side of the room. It swung open with a creak as the hinges protested having to work in their old age. I downed my drink and had just put the glass on the bar when a hand landed heavily on my shoulder.

     "Jack O'Bannon," the voice sounded like its owner brushed his teeth with steel wool.

     I swallowed, sighed, and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. This was happening earlier than I had hoped for.

     "S'me," I said. "And to whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?"

     "S'not me you're gonna talk to," said the voice, and the hand tightened its grip on my shoulder. "'S Mister Gribbs 'oo wants to speak wif yoo."

     From the way he said it, I could hear the capital M in Mister.

     "And do I want to speak with Mister Gribbs?" I was stalling for time. I wanted to squeeze out these last few moments so I could make the most of them. I was also more than a little drunk and feeling glib in the knowledge that I was dead no matter what I did.

     I could practically hear the man behind me smiling, before he responded with a simple "No."

     His other hand joined its brother on my shoulder and I felt myself spun completely around on the barstool. I had time to notice that Clarissa had disappeared. I didn't blame her.

     Mister Gribbs was smaller than I expected. A lot smaller. In fact, he couldn't have been taller than an even five feet. The next thing that I noticed, as probably did most who looked at him, was that he had an ugly scar over the ruined remains of his left eye. It had healed badly and wasn't a clean cut; probably from a broken bottle or a blunt knife. From his scruffy appearance and thinning hair, I would have said that life hadn't been kind to Mister Gribbs. From the copious amounts of gaudy jewelry he was wearing, the small mountain of a man standing next to me holding my shoulder, and the nasty smiles on both of their faces, I would have said life had been very kind to Mister Gribbs.

     "Jack," he said, looking for all the world like a cat who had caught the canary. "How good of you to join us."

     It didn't take a whole lot of guesswork to know who was the canary here.

     I heard Fran's voice from behind me. "Can I help you fellas?" She didn't sound amused. I knew she would have her hand on the shotgun she kept underneath the bar.

     "I like your establishment, madam. It's very clean," said Mister Gribbs, an evil glint in his eye. "But me and my associate have business with our friend Jack here, and I would hate for your place to take any collateral damage...by accident, of course."

     "Are you threatenin' me?" Fran asked. I had heard that tone from people before. I had known men to die from hearing that tone.

     "It's alright, Fran," I said, holding my free arm up. "I don't want you to get in any trouble on my account."

     "...If you're sure," Fran said.

     Mister Gribbs turned back to me.

     "Now, Jackie," he said. "Let's get right down to brass tacks, shall we? I believe there's a bit of money that you owe me."

     That much was true. It turns out that I'm a high-stakes bidder when I'm drunk and playing cards, and also that alcohol impairs my ability to recall faces. Sartorius Gribbs was a famous crime lord across two or three star systems, this one included. His empire mainly made its fortune selling extremely dangerous and highly illegal weaponry, but it also dabbled in drug dealing, extortion, and blackmail. Not someone I would have normally played cards with, especially in a back alley joint like the one we were in at the time, but I had just finished a big job and had a lot of money in my pocket. Not enough to pay my drunk self's debts, evidently, but enough to give me the confidence to acquire them. And Gribbs played for keeps.

     "Let's talk about this for a moment," Gribbs continued. "I do seem to recall that we played cards about a fortnight ago, and that my boys at the table lost to you, and you lost to me. Is that correct?"

     "I guess that depends," I said with inebriated sass. "I've never seen five aces in a deck of cards before."

     The bones in my shoulder crunched together as the hands tightened, and I felt my arm go numb.

     "I also," Gribbs continued, ignoring me, "seem to recall that you bet a substantial amount of money on your losing hand, which you apparently did not have on your person at the time. And had the authorities not showed up at that most inconvenient time as they did," he thrust his face close to mine. He smelled like cigar smoke and chronic halitosis. "I would have collected on your debt some other way. That being the case, I have had to spend an inconvenient amount of time and an inconvenient amount of money tracking you down. Let me tell you two things about myself, Jackie boy: I don't like to be stiffed, and I always get my way in the end. So I'll have my money, or this is the last night you're gonna spend here or anywhere else! Get me?"

     Little veins stood out on his forehead at this last exclamation. "Now I'm gonna give you one last chance. do you have my money? Or do I have to take it out of your hide?"

     This was the end of the road. I wasn't going to die quickly, that's for sure, but this would probably be the last moment I had as a free man before I was beaten to death. I decided there was no point in denying the truth.

     "I'm gonna be honest," I said, matter-of-factly. "I don't have your money, 'cuz I spent it all. Even if I did have your money, I wouldn't give it to you. Because I'm drunk, and I can't feel my arm 'cuz of your meathead lackey, and I don't like to be cheated; especially by a jumped up, two bit thug like you."

     He took a moment to process this, then his face turned red and the veins in his forehead, previously only standing out, now threatened to explode. I could have sworn steam was about to come out of his ears.

     "Do you know," he fumed, "I don't think anyone has ever talked to me like that and lived?" He spoke slowly, like the anger was stuck in his throat.

     "Well, I guess it's a moot point now." I wasn't even scared; acceptance seemed to have dulled my ability to feel anything aside from a vague sense of amusement. The big guy standing next to me didn't seem to know what to make of my attitude. "Look, are we done here? At this rate I'll die of boredom long before you ever get your brass knuckles out."

     "It's gonna be slow," Gribbs said, shaking with anger. His voice came out in a hiss. "And it's gonna be the most painful thing that has ever happened to you. By the end of it, you're gonna be crying for your mama. You're gonna be begging me to let you die. And I'm gonna say no."

     I was just about to fire off some flippant remark about the way his one eye was twitching when the metal door opened again, faster this time. It slammed against the wall next to it and sounded just like a gunshot, startling Gribbs and the giant shoulder-squeezer, so that they both reflexively whipped their heads around to look at it.

     Opportunity knocks, I thought, pulling a knife out a sheath on my belt and slamming it to the hilt into the big guy's leg. He howled with surprised pain and went down like a collapsed house. Gribbs, hearing his man's exclamation, turned around again, a gun in his hand. He was too late, though, I was already on my feet. I grabbed his wrist and twisted it, forcing him to drop the weapon. My other hand connected with his face, knocking him to the floor. I picked up his gun from where he had dropped it at my feet.

     "Alright, Gribbs," I slurred, standing over him. "You lose. I'm gonna give you to the count of three to get your runt ass out that door, and I don't want to see your face around here again. Because if I do," I kicked him, and he whimpered. "I'm gonna shoot it off. Get me?" I heard a sound from the other guy, off to the side. It sounded like he was standing up. "And you can tell Tiny over there that if he reaches for any weapons, I'm gonna put more holes in him and you than a prairie with a rodent problem. One," Gribbs and his lackey scrambled to get to their feet. "Two," They were running for the door.

     "This isn't over!" Gribbs shouted.

     "Three!" I responded, and grazed a round off of Gribbs's ass right as he made it out the door. He screamed like a wuss, but I gotta hand it to him, he kept running.

     The new arrival, Door Slammer, Interrupter of Business, and official Saver of My Ass, stalked into the room; and I'll be damned if the whole bar didn't hold its breath for the second time that night.

     First off, she was tall. I mean, really tall. The top of her head almost scraped the doorframe as she walked into the dimly lit cantina. Her floor-length coat was a bright, vibrant red, with a fur collar that looked like it came from some exotic animal at the top of the endangered species list. She wore leather gloves the same color as her coat, so the only skin showing was her face, framed by jet black hair coiled up on top of her head so it looked less like a bun and more like a snake. Strands of hair hung down in front of her face like creepers, shiny and not at all dulled by the grungy bar lighting. Her lips matched her coat and gloves, her eyes were dark and seductive and entrancing, and her skin was...look, I'm not the kind of guy to use the word 'alabaster' lightly, but if there was ever a reason to apply it, this was it. I mean, her skin was so white it was almost see through.

     You hear frequently in songs and books about someone walking into a club, bar, restaurant, or what-have-you and then everyone inside stops and just looks at them. Bullshit. That never actually happens; it's simply that person's ego poking its aggressively hyperbolic little head out like some ugly monster underneath the bed.

     Except this time it did. Scant patronage as there may have been, every single one of us stopped what we were doing or thinking about and stared like a bunch of idiots.

     The woman stood for a minute and stared back at us, haughtily, like she was disgusted that we weren't grovelling yet.

     "I'm looking for someone," she announced loudly. Her voice had a rich, melodic quality to it, deep and harmonious at the same time.

     Normally, a woman making a statement like that in a place like this was a one-way ticket to sexual harassment-ville, but I don't imagine any of us were up to replying lewdly even if we wanted to. We were all too busy picking our jaws up off of the floor.

     "A very particular someone," she continued. "Someone who doesn't mind being paid an enormous amount of money for something that is...legally ambiguous. Someone who knows how to keep their mouth shut."

     Fran recovered first, and immediately went back to her task of wiping down the counter. If there was someone looking for a hired gun for questionable purposes in her bar, she didn't want to know about it.

     The tall woman folded her arms over her chest and scanned the room, her eyes looking almost black underneath their eyeliner-encrusted lids.

     "Anyone who is interested," she continued huskily, "will meet me at the rocketyard loading docks along Heavyweight Avenue at four. A. M. Sharp." she punctuated each period with a harsh accent on the preceding word. "Tonight."

     With one final sneer, she turned on her heel and exited the bar. I caught a glimpse of long, black leather boots with very sharp looking heels underneath her coat as she strode out. The door slammed shut behind her, and it was a few minutes before I swiveled back around to put my elbows on the bar. I groaned as the adrenaline left my nervous system, making me feel like I had just gone ten rounds with a Volexian jetsquid.

     "Fuck me," I said, rubbing my temples. This was too much weirdness for one night.

     Like a genie, Clarissa was there next to me, all stripes and boobs and big toothy grin.

     I looked over at her, blinked a couple of times, and then slowly fell backwards off of my barstool.

     There was a chill in the air, a common occurrence given that it was just now entering the warm season. The double moons were lowering themselves in the sky, inching towards the night time horizon. I pulled my jacket up farther on my neck, hunched my shoulders, and thrust my hands into my pockets. I tapped my foot impatiently and after a few minutes passed, I looked at my watch. 3:53. seven minutes to go.

     Yeah, so I decided to check out the job. Sue me. I've done shadier things.

     I had decided to get to the shipyard early and secure my place in case any of the other guys wanted the job, but it looks like no one else did. They were either too afraid, or smarter than me.

     I hoped it didn't turn out to be the latter.

     As the minutes ticked by, the odd rocket or two passed overhead, but the shipyard was pretty much deserted. I guess four in the morning wasn't a popular time to go planetside. There was a wide assortment of rockets, but they were mostly dingy old models held together by rust. Out of all the shipyards in this town, this one wasn't exactly the most upscale. Probably a pretty good place to make dubious contracts.

     "You came," said a voice from behind me. It occurred to me that this was the third time tonight someone had snuck up on me. This is the reason that I wasn't a mercenary.

     Well, that and the whole killing-people-for-money thing. I'm no paragon of human kindness, but I'm not a thug, either.

     I turned around to face the phantom voice. It was the same woman from the bar, clad in deep, blood red and towering over me like a giant. She wore the same scowl as she had in the bar as well. The light from the two moons gave her skin a weird, eerie look, almost like she gave off a faint glow.

     "You got a job needs doing; I'm your guy." I said.

     "Good," She replied, "I had hoped someone would have the balls to accept my generous offer." She reached under her coat and pulled out a several photographs, and held the first one up. "This is the Glorious Sunset, a ship belonging to a council member of the Ubergovernment of Kalaxo-Partheii 7, who is a collector of unique and valuable objects. The ship is a travelling museum of sorts; available for hire to customers of discerning taste and sufficient wealth to peruse and to impress their friends."

     I squinted in the darkness. It was hard to see, but I could make out the outline and contours of a huge-looking ship in the photograph. It looked like she was red and gold, and of the traditional bottle shape, like the kinds used decades ago.

     The tall woman held up another picture. "She carries something of tremendous worth and cultural value within the exhibits of her hold. This is the item in question."

     She handed the picture to me. I stuck it in my pocket to examine later.

     "She will be docked for forty-five minutes at 6 a.m. to be refueled while waiting for her next patron," she continued. "Once that time frame has passed, she will exit the atmosphere and the item will be unattainable. Should you fail to retrieve it, I will be...unhappy. And I am very good at finding people. Should you manage to appropriate it, return to this spot and I will have your payment."

     Before I could say anything, she had turned sharply and disappeared into the shadows. I shivered involuntarily, wondering what I had just gotten myself into. Couldn't be too hard, right? Simple in'n'out job. Job like this should mean enough money for a ticket off of this rat infested rock.

     Or enough for a really fancy coffin. Best not to think about it.

     In my pocket, my hand brushed against the gun I had appropriated from Gribbs. It was an old service gun, old enough to be more of a showpiece now than an actual combat item. Eight shooter with a revolving drum and a handle made of some kind of ivory. I couldn't be sure exactly what metal was used to make it, but it looked like ceramic infused steel. It had definitely been taken care of properly, but Gribbs probably carried it to wow people rather than to ice them. I'm sure he left that job to his human avalanche. Next to the gun rested the photograph I had been given. I had two hours to plan the job, so I set about familiarizing myself with the bounty.

     I pulled out my pocket flashlight and looked at the photo. The thing was ugly as hell, and gaudy to boot. It was an idol of some sort, modeled after some kind of tentacled monstrosity and crusted with enough gems to be able to buy a planet. There was no accounting for taste, but it was gonna help me buy a ship so I wasn't about to complain.

     I had landed on this planet for a job, and not an honest one. Heard through the grapevine that someone was looking for a thief, a good one, to steal the prized possession of a governor's daughter, and they were willing to pay through the nose for it. So I packed my bags and jumped on the next transport that came through town, and seventy-two hours later found myself standing in the spaceport of the lovely town of Rustbouquet. I found my employer, a foppish young dork in fancy clothes, who told me that he had no greater desire than the solid gold necklace with an emerald brooch belonging to the governor's daughter, who was lovely as the day is long, radiant as the twin suns of Alpha Coreon, yadda yadda. Hot chicks are a dime a dozen.

     So I waited until night fell, then slipped through the governor's security into his mansion. It was easy enough to find his daughter's room and even easier to pick the lock on the big chest in the room's corner. I got it open, and no sooner had I pulled out the necklace with an egg-sized emerald then who should burst through the door but the very same little dweeb who had given me the job. It was a set up to get him in the governor's good graces, which I'm sure included his daughter's bed. Needless to say, I didn't get paid. I also escaped by the skin of my teeth and spent the rest of the night pulling a bullet out of my leg. With no money left and in an unfamiliar town on an unfamiliar planet, I tried my hand at my other skill: hustling cards. It worked out great for about a week, until I got too confident and too drunk and wound up opposite Mr. Gribbs and his entourage and got myself hustled instead. That's not to say I wasn't cheating as well, but come on. Blatant extra cards? If you're going to cheat, you should at least do it well. It would have been the second time in as many days that I faced certain death if the local law enforcement hadn't chosen the exact same moment to show up right as I loudly and drunkenly accused Gribbs of being a "goddamn no good cheating tunnel skunk", if I recall correctly.

     Two weeks found me sitting at Fran's bar, being propositioned yet again by Clarissa, who was a Velorian, a race of people renowned for their prowess at dancing the horizontal samba. Two weeks and two hours found me being handed a photograph by an unfriendly amazonian woman. Two weeks, three hours, and thirty-five minutes found me standing in the shadows at the spaceport, watching the massive red and gold monstrosity of kitchiness called the Glorious Sunset touch down. It was a little ahead of schedule.

     I had spent the last hour and a half scheming and procuring myself a dock worker's uniform, which the guy I left in his underwear in the control room's bathroom would miss as soon as he came to. After that, I grabbed myself an unsupervised fuel tank cart and boom, I'm invisible. I gave it a few minutes for the ship's crew to leave and strolled up to the entrance ramp, a tool bag thrown over my shoulder. The ship had two guards, big guys in serious looking suits, wearing sunglasses despite the early morning darkness. One of them moved to stop me as I walked toward the door.

     "Where do you think you're going?" he asked, having obviously attended the doorman school of cliches.

     "Just here to secure the interior fueling valve," I said.

     He looked at the other guard, who looked suspicious. "There's no such thing as an interior fueling valve," he said.

     I put on my best incredulous expression. "No such thing?" I said. "No such thing? I'm sorry, I had no idea you were a rocketship engineer. I guess I'll just leave the fueling process and the routine maintenance in your capable hands then, shall I?"

     The guards began to look uncomfortable, so I pressed harder. "I mean, I'm sure you're licensed to switch out the beryllium fusion reactor core then, eh? And you'll have no trouble flushing the quantum hyperdrive and re-galvanizing the retro thrusters so they don't melt during re-entry."

     "Well, maybe you could-" guard one began, before I cut him off.

     "And the heat shielding around the photon zip capacitor, that'll be easy for you to reapply, right? You're an expert, I'm sure, in radiation induced subdermal melanoma caused by improper shielding?"

     The guard, thoroughly over his head at this point, stepped aside. "Go right ahead. Sorry for the trouble."

     "No such thing as an interior fueling valve," I muttered, stepping into the ship's airlock.

     As the door shut behind me, I grinned and thanked the evenings I had spent in various spaceport bars, listening to the engineers get drunk and throw jargon at each other. Now was no time to let down my guard, though. Getting into the ship was the easy part. I opened the inner door and peered through the corridor that it opened into. It was a T-shaped airlock, meaning I had a fifty/fifty shot at picking the right direction. I picked left, and stepped through the door.

     The walls of the corridor were lined with hooks and cubbies, probably a place for the rich creeps to hang their fur jackets and stow their stoles. I'd never stolen a stole before. The walls themselves were a deep crimson, and the floor had a royal blue carpet that I sank ankle deep into. Soft sepia light floated down from the overhead lighting.

     I continued down the corridor until I reached another door. This one was gold with an inlay that was either platinum or silver, with a crystal doorknob. I pulled on a pair of gloves and opened it, and gasped at what I saw. I had been in my fair share of mansions, treasure houses, and safes before, but the sheer volume of items in the next room nearly floored me. The door opened up onto a balcony with a staircase on either side. The room was enormous, with crystal chandeliers spaced every couple of feet. On the lower level were display cases of various sizes, some as small as an aquarium and others large enough to fit a dozen people inside. Inside each and every one of them was an artifact, and each artifact looked like it could make me rich beyond my wildest dreams. And I've had some pretty wild dreams.

     Once I had gotten over the shock, I thought back to my plan. Before I could even begin to locate the object my employer was after, I would have to cut the ship's power. I would have bet good money that each and every one of those display cases was protected with a laser shield, which at best would set off the ship's alarms and at worst would fry me like a bug. I didn't care to find out either way. The ship's power grid would most likely be toward the back of the ship, so that was where I would head first.

     I descended the big staircase into the lower level where the treasure cases stood. If I ran into any more guards I could just feed them the same line about the fueling valve. I made my way across the room, being careful not to touch any of the cases. The door at the far side of the room was the same kind of overly fabulous design as the door leading in, but it was marked with a sign that said "authorized personnel only". That was a good sign. I tried the doorknob, and to my good fortune it was unlocked.

     The other room must have been a place for the sizeable guard corps to store their hardware. The walls were covered in laser guns, photon rifles, plasma bursters, concussion staves, and a variety of other powerful weapons. I briefly considered taking one, but an engineer walking around with a rifle slung over his shoulder might raise some suspicions. Also, I'm not generally a fan of guns. They tend to get you into a lot more trouble than they can get you out of. The only reason I still had Gribbs's revolver was because I was planning on hawking it the first chance that I got.

     I made my way across the guard room, through the various guns, grenades, flak jackets, electrobatons, and the like. I came to a door that was just plain steel, not needing the fancy look that the rest of the ship had. I opened it and stepped through, and was greeted with the welcome sight of a room filled with wiring and cables. This had to be the engine room.

     The room was huge, easily the size of the display chamber that I had come through. Miles and miles of wires covered the wall, and the engine, a swanky newer model powered by nuclear fission, made up one of the walls just by itself. I crossed over to it, figuring the best place to start was there.

     It was at this point that I realized I was in over my head.

     My entire experience with rocket engines was with combustion models, which were easily messed around with and even more easily broken. What I faced now was a monstrosity made of circuitry, levers, switches, dials, and readout displays. Nuclear engineering was a little bit out of my depth. As I pondered the best course of action, which included moving to the other side of the planet and changing my identity before the terrifying woman in red could find me, I heard approaching footsteps from the guard room and a familiar voice saying "Hold on now, I just need to make myself some coffee and I'll be right back to finish the hand."

     Before I could find a place to hide, the door opened and in stepped Mr. Gribbs.

     I froze. My mind began racing with things I might be able to say to maintain my cover, but Gribbs walked past me without a look. Apparently workers weren't worth his time, which was fine by me. I turned and pretended to be reading the displays on the engine while Gribbs made himself a cup of coffee at a small counter on the other side of the room. I probably wouldn't have designed a ship with a percolator right next to a fission reactor drive, but that didn't really matter.

     "Bloody ridiculous weather out there, isn't it?" Gribbs said, pouring sugar into his cup. I grunted in agreement.

     "I mean, it's supposed to be the warm season. So what's the excuse, eh?"

     I grunted again, and pulled my cap down farther onto my head.

     "Anyway, me and a couple'a mates are having a friendly game of cards in the next room. "How'd you like to join in?" He turned around, a glint in his eye, and looked me straight in the face. The coffee cup dropped from his hand as his face twisted into an expression of disbelief. My hand immediately went into my pocket to retrieve the revolver, but not before Gribbs started shouting his head off.

     "Get in here, you bloody lunkheads! There's an assassin on board!"

     I pulled out the revolver and pointed it at Gribbs, which shut him up right away. "I'm not here for you, Gribbs, but if you shout anymore I might decide to change my mind. I'm only here to collect a certain item, and the I'll be on my way and we can forget we ever saw each other."

     "Oh, I don't think so, Jackie." Gribbs smiled, despite his peril. "My boys are on the way over, and we're gonna take what you owe us. With interest."

     As if on cue, the door opened and in charged four men, including Gribbs's personal mountain.

     The next few seconds happened in painfully slow motion. The men pulled out their guns and trained them on me. Gribbs pulled open his coat and began to reach for a very large gun that was slung at his side. He cocked his head to the side and an evil grin spread across his face. "So where shall we start, Jackie?"

     I paused for an eternity, then pointed my gun at the engine and pulled the trigger.

     Immediately, the overhead lighting turned red and sirens began to blare throughout the ship.

     "What the hell did you just do to my ship?!" Gribbs screamed. I pointed the gun at the men who had come through the door and fired a couple of shots, making them dive for cover. I ran through them and the open door and into the next room. As I ran, dodging bullets and assault gear, I reached out and grabbed something from off of a shelf, cramming it into my pockets. I kicked open the door into the museum room and ran through the display cases, Bullets pinged off of the cases around me, shattering the glass and leaving holes in the tiles underneath my feet. I covered my head with my arms as I ran, scanning the displays. That stupid thing had to be here somewhere. I had come this far; there was no way I was leaving without it.

     I ducked and rolled as I searched, zigzagging from case to case. One case had a statue of a man holding up an a severed head. A glass cover behind me broke as bullets whizzed through it. Another case had a golden monkey in a suggestive pose. A painting on the wall to my left got riddled with holes. A third case had a tentacled figure that looked similar to my target, but it was doing something very Japanese to an overweight woman. A bullet ricocheted off of the floor by my foot. I raised my head, almost got a lead lobotomy, and saw the thing across the room.

     I leapt up and sprinted across the room, breaking the display case glass with a bullet from the revolver. The glass tinkled musically to the floor. I grabbed the idol from its perch as I ran by; the weight of it almost threw me off balance and made me trip. I bolted for the stairs, pushing the revolver back into my pocket and pulling out what I had grabbed from the guard room. I ducked behind a pedestal at the foot of the staircase.

     "Give it up, Jackie boy," Gribbs shouted from the back of the room. "We've got you surrounded. There's nowhere you can go."

     "Why don't you give up calling me Jackie boy?" I shot back. "I may not have a place to go, but you know what I do have?" I thrust my hand straight up, holding the guard room object. "You know what this is, right?"

     "He's got a singularity grenade, boss!" I heard one of the men shout.

     "You're damn right I've got a singularity grenade!" I said. "And I'm gonna take out this ship and everyone on it unless you let me walk out of here!"

     "You don't have the stones!" Gribbs shouted.

     "Don't I?" I said. "You wanna find out?"

     There was silence for a while. My palms began to sweat.

     "Get out of here," Gribbs said. "And remember this: I'm gonna find you. And when I find you, I'm gonna tear your goolies off, and I'm gonna make you eat 'em!"

     I darted out from the pedestal, backing up the stairs and holding the grenade out between me and the others like a shield. When I reached the door, I opened it behind me, slipped through, and slammed it closed. There was a heavy shelf next to the door, so I pulled it down in front to prevent Gribbs from coming after me anytime soon. I put the grenade back into my pocket, walked through the corridor and into the airlock, opened the exterior door and stepped onto the entrance ramp, where the suits were still standing guard.

     "Ok, I checked all of the systems and they're good to go. Only thing is, the reactor core was a little shaky so I had to open the shielding so it can stabilize. It's gonna be letting off a lot of radiation for a while, so it's absolutely essential that you do not open this door for any reason for the next hour. At least." I thought a little more. "No matter what you hear."

     The guard gave me a quizzical look. "I don't know, what about-"

     "I've already told everybody inside, they're taken care of. Don't open this door, ok bud?" I slapped him on the arm and stepped off down the ramp.

     I shivered in the shadows of the dockyard. It was almost seven o'clock and even though daylight flooded the docks, it was still windy and cold. I clutched the hideous idol to my chest as I waited for the bride of Frankenstein. I made sure to keep my back to a stack of crates to avoid being snuck up on. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

     "I see you have returned," said a voice in my ear. Goddammit. "And you have my treasure; excellent."

     "I got it," I said. This woman seriously gave me the creeps. "And I almost got killed doing it, so I hope you've got the money."

     "Give it to me," she said, ignoring me.

     I handed it to her and she took it reverentially, like someone being handed a baby.

     "Finally," she muttered. "Finally..."

     "Uh, ok," I said. "You ok, lady?"

     She began to run her hands over the idol, feeling its tentacles and creepy pointy bits. She hummed to herself as she fondled it, painting an image unsettlingly reminiscent of a mother cooing over a child. Suddenly a circlet of light appeared around what could loosely be called the thing's head, and the top of it popped off and fell to the ground with a heavy thunk. Inside was a large orb that let off an eerie green light. She lifted it out and let the idol join its head on the blacktop.

     "Yeah, I'd really like my money now," I said.

     Her humming grew louder as she cradled the orb in her hands, and then she shoved it into her mouth with both hands. She moaned orgasmically.

     "You're weirding me out, lady," I said.

     She began to laugh uproariously. Like, head thrown back, maniacal belly laughs.

     "Finally, I have a seed pod of the Girguan tree! After a thousand years trapped as this wretched larva, I have the energy source to complete my metamorphosis!"

     "Cool," I said. "How about my money?"

     She continued to laugh, ignoring me further. Her laughter eventually turned to shrieks as her scarlet overcoat began to ripple and convulse, like something was pushing at it underneath. The overcoat flew open, looking like the wings of a huge, grotesque bat. Underneath was a mass of legs and tentacles, each one covered in pointy, chitinous spikes. Her mouth opened impossibly wide and her teeth were long, sharp fangs. The writhing mass extended and she straightened until she at least twelve feet tall. Holding her arms out, her fingers now possessing four segments each, she bent over and shrieked in my face.

     I reached into my pocket, pulled out the singularity grenade, and lobbed it into her mouth.

     Immediately, she reared back, clutching her throat. As I sprinted for cover I heard her gagging and roaring behind me.

     One one-thousand. I my legs protested at the sudden call to action.

     Two one-thousand. The shrieks grew louder.

     Three one-thousand. I turned the corner of a little building and dove into a pile of scrap next to a dumpster. There was a sudden absence of noise as the grenade created a miniscule, unstable black hole. A deep whooshing noise meant it had started to implode and suck in everything in the surrounding area. I just hoped I had made it far enough away in time. I stuck my fingers in my ears and hoped for the best.

     After ten seconds, I opened my eyes, stood up, and peered around the corner. There was a deep circular pit in the ground where the woman-monster had been, about fifty feet across. The crates were gone, and random supplies and ship parts were strewn about the blacktop.

     There went my payment, and with it my chance of leaving the planet.

     "Look, it's a service piece, ceramic infused steel, intricate inlay, eight bullet drum, with an ivory handle. It's probably from before the Gauldian war, the damn thing belongs in a museum!" I looked across the countertop at the pawn shop owner, who was short, balding, and looked very unamused.

     "Three hundred credits, firm," he said. "Take it or leave it."

     Later, back in the Frans bar, I rested my head on my arms, which were on the counter. The sun had long since set, and I had lost count of how many rounds in I was.

     Three hundred credits. Not enough to buy a rocketship ticket, let alone a rocket. It was enough money to buy a sufficient quantity of alcohol to kill me, but I was still saving that as a last resort.

     "I just dunno what I'm gonna do," I was saying. "I just wanna get off this planet, get to a busy, more fun one, and sink into a life of being a rogue and a scoundrel. Is that so much to ask?"

     Fran, indulging in her usual hobby of wiping the grease around pint mugs, said something noncommittal but positive.

     My brain continued to simmer gently in its bath of cheap alcohol. I barely registered the hands that were placed on my shoulders, massaging them while someone breathed gently on the side of my neck.

     "Hey baby," Clarissa's voice purred into my ear. "I know you're feeling down right now. I just want you to know that I like you a lot. You've always been nice to me; you've never hit me or made me do anything I didn't wanna do. I think you're a real stand-up guy, and if it would help at all, you and I could go up to a room, cuddle, and bitch about life and our problems until we lose consciousness and slip into an alcoholic stupor. Whaddaya say?"

     I looked up from my arms blearily as the corners of my vision undulated gently. Slowly I stood up, and then grabbed Clarissa and pulled her into a deep kiss. I reached into my pocket and slammed some money on the counter. "One bottle of whatever your finest stuff is, Fran," I said.

     Maybe things weren't so bad after all.

     Hi! My name is Sterling, and I'm an aspiring writer. I mostly write humor, although I do have a few serious pieces. If you liked my story, please leave a comment! If you didn't like my story, leave a comment anyway! I'm always looking to improve and I never turn away feedback. If you really liked my story, consider subscribing to me; this story is over but I'll try to post something new about once a week.