Chapter 12: Hunter | page 6

The Temptation, equipped with faster SL engines than those on the Blue Phoenix, made the return journey from Stray to Axis in only five days. The pirate ship was a quick one. Little but pure data transmissions could travel faster.

Coldhand spent most of the time in his quarters. He had no desire to mingle with the ship’s crew and no need for company. The Ixthian doctor returned three more times to inspect his patient’s progress, pronouncing him healed after four days.

Beside contact with the Temptation’s healer, Coldhand made the effort only once to speak to anyone aboard the ship. The third day out, he followed the yellow stripe painted on the wall of the hallways, marked mess hall in stenciled Aver. It was early in the day and the mess was almost entirely empty. A pair of burly humans arm-wrestled in one corner, stopping to watch Coldhand as he entered.

The bounty hunter dismissed the pair of sweaty men off hand. They would not have what he wanted. He raked the room with icy blue eyes. A group of a half-dozen men of assorted races clustered around another table, watching a svelte Mirran woman with a pale mask of golden stripes on her face performing some sleight of hand for the amusements of her fellows. The men laughed and applauded her efforts. Coldhand moved on.

A thin human sat alone in the back of the mess, a small computer open on the table in front of him. The sleeves of his faded black jumpsuit were pulled down over his arms, but Coldhand could make out a dark tracery of the man’s veins in his pale neck. His curly brown hair had been cut utilitarian short not so long ago, but had not been maintained and now puffed from his scalp in unkempt tangles. Startled, the man jerked as Coldhand took a chair across the table. He sat bolt upright and stared at the hunter.

“I didn’t do nothing,” the man squealed. “Please, don’t kill me!”

The others turned to watch at the panic in their crewmate’s voice. Upon seeing that it was their infamous passenger that menaced him, they did nothing. They turned back to their pastimes, hoping not to garner Coldhand’s attention.

“Help me! He’s going to rip out my heart!” the man screamed to his fellows.

The bounty hunter’s cybernetic hand darted across the table, grabbing the other human’s bony wrist. Coldhand pushed up his sleeve to the elbow. The imprisoned man’s thin arms were lined with dark needle runs and clumsy punctures in his waxy skin. His eyes were wide, dilated unnaturally. He was jumpy and nervous, writhing fearfully in the hunter’s metallic grasp.

Exactly what I want.