## Act I: The Shape of a Lawsuit
Ronin had a rule.
Actually, if you sat down and looked through his personal data logs, he had several very specific, unyielding guidelines that kept his boots on the ground and his chest plates from being turned into slag.
Do not take bounty contracts on escaped laborers or slaves who had broken their chains.
Do not place a single drop of professional trust in a client who utilized the word “simple” within the first paragraph of their brief.
Do not, under any circumstances, eat anything Brakka pulled from the galley stove and described as “technically full of protein.” Do not open the tap for the Primal Instinct state inside an enclosed space unless the only other available option on the table was immediate physical death, and even then, try to be remarkably polite to the ship’s bulkhead walls before you let the fire loose.
But the most important rule—the one that sat at the very top of his internal ledger in bold, cold mental script—was significantly simpler:
If the Ginyu Force dropped out of hyperspace and landed on the exact same planet as you…
you leave.
Immediately.
You do not pause your boots to check the local bounty boards for a higher premium.
You do not stay behind to finish the current extraction phase of your mission.
You certainly do not climb up onto a high rock shelf to watch them from what you consider a safe distance because your internal curiosity has put on a fake mustache, called itself a tactical strategy, and convinced you that you’re smart enough to map their movements.
You just pull your landing gear locks, hit the primary throttles, and clear the atmosphere before the sky catches fire.
That specific rule had not existed in his mind when the sun came up over the red ridges that morning.
By nightfall, Kallard would take a cold iron chisel and carve it deep into the very core of his soul.
The planet was called Veyra-Tal.
It was a dusty, high-gravity trade world sitting right along the jagged, bleeding edge of Frieza-controlled territory—important enough to possess a massive network of orbital fuel docks, repair hangars, and lawless black-market depots, but entirely unimportant enough that none of the high-ranking imperial generals cared if a few residential blocks exploded during a business transaction.
The planet’s primary capital city, known across the sector as Talbur’s Rest, had been built directly inside a colossal, winding canyon system of deep red volcanic stone and hanging rusted iron bridges.
Massive cargo transports were docked along the sheer cliff faces like giant parasites clinging to a wall.
Down below, the market stalls glowed beneath thick, oil-stained canvas tarps, their lanterns casting long, flickering yellow shadows across the crowds.
High-pressure steam pipes ran overhead like a web of iron veins, spitting white clouds of chemical vapor into the dry air with a constant, rhythmic hiss.
Traders shouted prices in ten different galactic languages all at once.
Bounty hunters, independent smugglers, and mercenary dropouts moved through the narrow walkways with their gloved hands resting loosely near their holster belts.
The entire city smelled of heavy spice, hot red dust, burnt synthetic grease, and incredibly bad decisions.
Kallard liked the place almost immediately.
It had a gritty, honest kind of lawlessness that reminded him of the lower-tier sectors he had cleared during his first year in the rim.
Brakka, naturally, did not share his appreciation for the local scenery.
“This whole city is shaped exactly like a massive, multi-sector lawsuit, kid,” Brakka’s gravelly voice rasped through Kallard’s ear speaker, the audio line caked in a thin layer of static from the local power noise.
Kallard walked through the crowded market promenade with his long gray canvas cloak pulled high up over his shoulder guards, his dark bandana tied low across his forehead to keep the short, uneven spikes of his black hair completely hidden from view.
His thick brown furry tail was wrapped tight around his waist beneath his leather utility belt and matte-black armor plates, pinned down so securely that it didn’t even twitch when a local loader droid rumbled past his boots.
He kept his energy signature suppressed down to his absolute baseline of nine hundred, his physical mass folded inward so tightly that most cheap commercial scanners in the market would read him as just another low-tier scrapper who wasn’t even worth the price of a plasma charge to rob.
“That doesn’t make a single lick of sense, old man,” Kallard muttered into his collar microphone, his dark pupils scanning the crowd.
“A city can’t be shaped like a legal document.”
“It can if more than half of the primary skybridges are missing their safety railings, boy!” the old mechanic growled back from the bridge of the *Wayfarer*.
“Look up at the gantry lines above your head.
The structural engineers in this sector must have been blind, drunk, or running an active scam on the iron procurement contracts.
The whole upper deck looks like it’s held together with nothing but grease and good intentions.”
Kallard lifted his eyes slightly, tracking the shape of a rusted iron footbridge that groaned loudly as two heavy-set horned traders dragged a crate of fuel tablets across the center seams.
One corner of the support frame was sagging badly, a small shower of rust flakes dropping down into the market below.
“Okay,” Kallard said, shifting his boots around a puddle of stagnant water.
“Point taken.
The maintenance logs down here are definitely garbage.”
The *Wayfarer* was currently locked into a secondary docking pad three levels up along the eastern cliff face of the canyon.
The advanced stealth cloak computer had been left inactive to avoid drawing suspicion from the port authorities—to anyone passing the pad, the cutter looked like nothing more than a slightly ugly, heavily repaired cargo scow that had spent too many cycles hauling scrap metal through asteroid fields.
It had no visible imperial markings, no clean paint, and absolutely zero features that would cause a security drone to pause its patrol loop.
Which was exactly how Brakka preferred to live his life.
“Remind me why we’re risking our landing gear on this particular piece of red dirt again, Ronin,” Brakka grunted, the sound of a metal wrench clanking against an engine block audible in the background of the transmission.
“Because the premium on the guild terminal was listed in solid credits, old man,” Kallard said.
“You say that word like it automatically explains the structural risks involved, kid.”
“It does.”
“No, it doesn’t, you idiot!
It explains why we are currently running low on fuel cells and why you find a valid way to get yourself concussed at least twice a month!”
A faint, grim smile touched the corner of Kallard’s mouth beneath his collar.
He stepped around a large group of four-armed merchant guards who were currently shouting at a local customs clerk, his eyes never stopping their slow, methodical scan of the cantina entrances along the lower promenade.
“The target designation is Marn Vesh,” Kallard said, his voice dropping into a flat, business-like drone.
“Former senior quartermaster for a mid-level Frieza Force logistics hub in Sector 9.
Two weeks ago, he stuck a data core into the main command terminal, copied the primary payroll codes for the entire regional guard, took three supply ledgers detailing restricted arms drops, and ran off into the rim with a sealed imperial communication relay key.
The logistics officers want his head back in a bag, but the independent brokers are paying double if we bring him and the data core back alive.”
“A former senior quartermaster means he’s an accountant with a lot of armed friends, boy,” Brakka muttered.
“And accountants who carry sealed imperial data keys have a remarkably consistent habit of turning into cold corpses or live bait before the bounty hunter even clears the docking tubes.”
Kallard slowed his pace, his combat boots coming to a smooth halt outside the entrance of a neon-lit cantina that had been built directly beneath a massive, overhanging volcanic stone ledge.
Two heavily armed guards were standing on either side of the reinforced iron doorway, their postures stiff, their hands resting flat against the handles of their heavy pulse rifles.
They were trying entirely too hard to look like casual patrons who were just enjoying the evening air, their eyes scanning the market crowd with a sharp, hostile intensity that didn’t match the cheap, low-tier aesthetic of the bar behind their backs.
“Found his hole,” Kallard whispered into his microphone.
## Act II: The Fashion Crime
Brakka’s voice sharpened instantly on the line, the sound of his wrench stopping.
“Already?
You’ve only been on the pavement for ten minutes, kid.”
“Like you said, old man, he’s an accountant who’s terrified for his life,” Kallard said, leaning his broad shoulders against the wooden frame of a nearby fruit stall to blend into the scenery.
“He picked a cantina that charges two credits for a sour drink, but he’s got two professional enforcers standing outside the door carrying high-caliber infantry rifles.
It’s a complete layout mismatch.”
“Could describe half the security setups in Talbur’s Rest, boy.
Outlaws are stupid about their margins.”
“One of the guards is wearing standard-issue Frieza Force combat boots, Brakka,” Kallard noted dryly, his dark pupils tracking the scuffed white polymer plates caked in red dust on the closest guard’s ankles.
“The imperial serial numbers have been filed off the heels, but the structural reinforcement lines are unmistakable.
He brought his uniform with him when he deserted the logistics wing.”
“Ah,” Brakka grunted, a tiny line of satisfaction in his tone.
“A combination of treason and poor fashion choices.
That is a remarkably reliable clue for our workspace.
What’s the plan for the entry vector?”
Kallard pretended to inspect a round, heavy purple fruit sitting in a wooden crate in front of his hands.
The thing was covered in small, prickly spikes, and the moment his gloved fingers touched the skin, a tiny set of needle-thin teeth snapped open from a central seam, biting viciously at his leather thumb strap.
Kallard didn’t even flinch.
He simply squeezed the fruit’s sides with a fraction of his Saiyan density until the teeth clicked shut in a panic, and dropped it back into the crate.
The alien stall owner gave him a look that could have curdled milk, his hand moving toward a heavy club beneath his counter.
Kallard ignored the glare completely, his eyes fixed on the dirty glass window of the cantina across the street.
Through the greasy lens of the pane, he could resolve the interior layout of the bar.
Sitting in a large, semi-circular booth at the very rear of the room was Marn Vesh.
The former quartermaster was a pale, long-nosed creature with thin gray skin, a pair of watery yellow eyes, and a gray fabric coat that looked entirely too large for his narrow shoulders.
He was clutching a pair of heavy, reinforced silver data cases tightly against his ribs, his long nose twitching with a frantic, sweaty terror every single time the front door shifted.
Five more armed mercenaries were positioned around his table, their fingers resting flat against their blasters as they watched the room.
“Visual on the primary target is fully confirmed,” Kallard said, his voice flat.
“What’s the guard count inside the casing?” Brakka asked.
“Five inside the booth, two outside the hatch.
Seven total,” Kallard said, his scouter clicking twice on his belt as he ran a quick, un-amplified energy pass through the glass.
“Their individual outputs are pathetic, old man.
The lowest grunt is registering barely under eight hundred.
The highest enforcer in the back booth might touch two thousand if he’s having a good day.
It’s a low-tier security configuration.”
“Then you should be more than capable of handling the arrest phase without breaking every piece of furniture in the room, Ronin,” the mechanic grunted.
“Where’s the artistic fun in that, old man?”
“Kallard.
I am dead serious about the margins this time.
I am entirely too old to spend my evening writing replacement console values into the ship’s ledger.
Take the target alive, and make sure you preserve his data core.”
“I’m on my way across the lane,” Kallard said, pushing his shoulders off the wooden frame of the fruit stall and pulling his tattered cloak back over his green armor trim.
## Act III: The Cantina Brawl
He crossed the red dust street with a slow, steady stride that didn’t attract a single eye from the market crowd.
The white-booted guard standing outside the cantina door spotted his approach when he was five yards away, his yellow eyes narrowing into a hostile glare as his right hand dropped straight down to the handle of the plasma blaster holstered at his hip.
“The rear room is completely reserved for a private transaction today, scrapper,” the blue-skinned guard growled, stepping his broad frame directly into Kallard’s path lane.
“Turn your boots around and go find a drink on the upper levels.”
Kallard didn’t slow his pace down by a single millimeter.
“I’m not here to rent a room, big guy,” he said plainly.
The blue-skinned mercenary didn’t get the opportunity to formulate a response or draw his weapon from its leather casing.
Kallard’s right fist shot forward in a short, mechanical jab that caught the guard squarely in the center of his soft abdominal lining, right beneath his filed-off imperial chest plate.
*Oof.*
The physical density behind the three-thousand-power strike was absolutely monumental for an eight-hundred-power grunt.
Every single drop of oxygen blasted out of the mercenary’s lungs in a wet, ragged gasp, his yellow eyes bulging out of his skull by an inch as his entire body folded completely around Kallard’s knuckles like a piece of wet canvas.
He dropped to his knees in the dirt, unconscious before his forehead even touched the grates.
The second guard, a wire-muscled bipedal alien with dark markings under his eyes, let out a terrified shriek of surprise and frantically tried to raise his heavy pulse rifle to level the barrel at Kallard’s face.
Kallard didn’t try to step back to clear his guard lane.
He lunged forward, his left gloved hand snapping out like an iron vice to lock around the mercenary’s wrist mid-motion.
He twisted the joint violently to the left with a sharp mechanical *click* of the bone, forcing the guard’s fingers to contract around the rifle’s trigger switch while he angled the barrel straight toward the cantina’s primary iron door lock.
*ZIP-BOOM.*
The superheated pulse round detonated point-blank against the reinforced locking seam, the internal gears turning into a cloud of melting white sparks and shattered iron pins.
The heavy doors blew open with a loud, concussive bang, sliding back into their wall tracks with a violent screech.
Kallard stepped straight through the ruined threshold into the dim, red-lit interior of the cantina, using his grip on the second guard’s broken wrist to drag the screaming mercenary along behind his cloak like a human shield.
The entire bar went dead silent in less than a microsecond.
The local patrons—a collection of independent loaders, spaceport smugglers, and low-tier gamblers—froze with their clay mugs halfway to their mouths, their eyes wide as they looked at the green-and-black armored shadow standing in their doorway.
Marn Vesh’s watery yellow eyes went completely round with a sudden, blinding terror as he resolved the shape of the hunter’s chest plating.
He jumped up from his rear booth so fast his iron chair toppled backward onto the floorboards with a loud *clank*.
“That’s…
that’s the hunter they call Ronin!
Kill him!
Erase him from the room before he clears the data lines!”
The five guards inside the booth didn’t wait around for an official command.
They ripped their blasters from their belts, their fingers pulling the trigger switches in a frantic, uncoordinated panic response.
*Zap-zap-zap-zap-zap!*
A rapid torrent of red and yellow plasma fire tore through the dim air of the bar, a wall of lethal energy lines cutting across the room.
Kallard shoved the second guard’s limp frame straight into the path of the first incoming volley, the plasma rounds turning the mercenary’s leather vest into a smoking ruin of caked fabric before Kallard dropped his weight low to the floorboards.
He executed a fast, five-foot horizontal slide beneath a large wooden gambling table, the red blaster bolts tearing through the air directly above his dark bandana close enough to leave three lines of hot steam curling in his wake.
One stray round clipped the outer edge of his left green shoulder guard, chipping away a significant chunk of the paint and leaving a scorched black score mark across the alloy, but he ignored the sting completely.
A heavy-set mercenary standing near the bar counter raised a massive, double-barreled industrial scatter-rifle, his red eyes locking onto the edge of Kallard’s cloak as the barrel expanded with a high-voltage power hum.
The gun fired, a massive, sweeping cone of concussive metal buckshot filling the center of the lane.
Kallard didn’t try to duck—he reached out his right hand, grabbed a heavy solid iron serving tray from a nearby dining table, and angled the metal face at a sharp forty-five-degree tilt directly into the path of the blast.
*BANG-CLANG.*
Half of the concussive metal shot deflected cleanly off the iron tray, rocketing upward to shred the cantina’s primary overhead light fixture into a cloud of glass dust and sparks.
The secondary half of the blast clipped Kallard’s reinforced thigh plate, the sheer kinetic weight of the impact spinning his broad frame sideways across the floorboards.
He caught his balance on his right palm, his boots pushing off the wood grates in a fast, spring-loaded launch that carried him straight through a stack of dining chairs, sending the wood flying into the shins of the two closest guards.
The primary overhead lights died completely, plunging the entire cantina into a deep, pulsing red twilight provided by the canyon’s external neon signs.
“Flash Trigger,” Kallard whispered through his teeth.
## Act IV: The Service Alley Chase
He forced a short, highly concentrated pulse of base ki energy to detonate through the muscle groups in his knees, his velocity jumping straight to his maximum baseline in less than a millisecond.
He vanished from the center of the floorboards, appearing behind the bar counter in a green afterimage blur that the scatter-rifle guard couldn’t even track with his eyes.
He shoulder-checked the heavy mercenary straight over the counter taps, the man’s massive three-hundred-pound frame smashing through dozens of glass liquor bottles before hitting the wall shelf and dropping into a quiet heap.
Patrons shrieked out in a panic, throwing themselves flat against the floorboards to clear the exit lines, while one old, wrinkled alien gambler sitting in the corner booth simply continued sipping his clay mug of grain alcohol as if a bounty brawl was nothing more than an expected piece of evening entertainment.
Marn Vesh didn’t stay behind to watch his guards clear the room.
He clutched his two silver data cases tight against his ribs, shoved his pale gray coat through a narrow service exit door at the rear of the booth, and sprinted out into the canyon alleyways at full speed.
Kallard vaulted over the bar counter in a single, fluid leap, his boots clearing the broken glass fragments without a sound.
Before his feet could touch the floor grates, a short, wire-muscled guard lunged out from behind a support pillar, throwing his entire physical weight straight onto Kallard’s back plates, his thin arms wrapping tightly around the hunter’s throat armor in a desperate choke-hold.
“I’ve got the monkey locked down!” the mercenary screamed out to the room.
“Clear an angle and shoot him through the ribs!”
“That was an exceptionally poor career decision, scrapper,” Kallard muttered inside his helmet.
He reached up over his own shoulders with his right hand, his callused fingers locking around the guard’s canvas collar like an iron vice.
With a single, effortless lift of his back muscles, he hoisted the two-hundred-pound mercenary completely off his armor plates, flipped his frame entirely overhead, and slammed him face-first into a heavy wooden dining table below.
*CRACK.*
The table caved inward down the center line, the structural wood splitting into a cloud of splinters before the guard went completely limp against the floorboards.
Brakka’s gravelly voice instantly crackled through his ear speaker, the tone caked in a deep professional exhaustion.
“That…
that specific audio signature sounded remarkably like a three-hundred-credit piece of commercial hardwood being turned into sawdust, Ronin.
Please tell me you didn’t just break the main counter.”
“Wasn’t my table, old man,” Kallard gasped out, his boots already running through the open service exit hatch.
“The local owner is the one who’s going to be drafting the invoice.”
“That is entirely not the point of my warning, you destructive little hazard!” the mechanic growled back as the radio cut off into static.
Kallard punched his boots through the rear doorway, entering a narrow, dimly lit service alleyway that had been carved directly into the red volcanic stone face of the canyon.
A long, rusted metal walkway suspended over a five-hundred-foot drop-off connected the cantina ledge to the primary cargo platforms on the eastern cliff.
Marn Vesh was already eighty yards down the length of the walkway, his thin gray legs moving with a frantic, adrenaline-driven speed that Kallard hadn’t expected from a logistics clerk.
He was clutching one silver data case under each arm, his long grey coat flapping through the canyon wind like a pair of wings.
“Marn!” Kallard called out, his deep voice carrying over the howling of the wind with absolute clarity.
“Stop running your boots along that rail before this exchange becomes incredibly embarrassing for your professional record!”
The former quartermaster snapped his head around in a terror response, his watery yellow eyes widening as he resolved the black-and-green chest plate closing the gap at high speed.
He reached into the wide sleeve of his coat with his thin fingers, pulled out a small, circular electronic demolition disc, and slapped the device flat against the metal grates of the walkway beneath his heels.
Kallard stopped his boots instantly, his dark pupils tracking the small red light blinking on the disc casing.
*BEEP.*
The walkway exploded.
A massive, concussive flash of yellow fire and black smoke ripped through the center of the rusted iron support gantry.
The five-inch-thick metal floor panels snapped upward under the force of the blast, the structural connections shearing apart from the stone face completely as the center section of the bridge vanished into a five-hundred-foot drop-off of empty air.
## Act V: The Saiyan Cardio
For a fraction of a second, the cold canyon wind swallowed Kallard’s frame whole as the grates beneath his combat boots gave way completely.
He could have easily triggered his internal ki propulsion lines to fly across the gap—the energy pools inside his flesh were more than large enough to carry his weight across a hundred miles of open sky.
But he knew that Talbur’s Rest was currently caked in hundreds of automated port surveillance drones and independent tracker networks; if he unleashed a visible flare of green Saiyan energy in the open air of the canyon, it would leave a permanent electronic signature on the local grid that an imperial scout squadron could resolve within the hour.
He dropped his weight downward through the falling smoke cloud, his right hand snapping out like an iron clamp to catch the jagged, twisted metal edge of the remaining bridge support gantry.
His fingers locked around the iron rail with an unyielding vice grip, his broad frame swinging slowly back and forth over the five-hundred-foot abyss like a pendulum.
He didn’t pause to appreciate the view; he anchored his boots against the sheer red volcanic stone face of the cliff, bent his knees low, and executed a massive, physical kick-off that launched his body thirty feet upward into the air.
He completed a tight mid-air flip, cleared the smoking edge of the blast crater, and landed back on his boots along the remaining section of the gantry grates, his momentum never dropping below a full sprint as he resumed the chase.
Marn Vesh let out a high-pitched, ragged sound from his throat that settled somewhere between a terrified scream and a corporate tax audit.
“How…
how the hell are you still vertical?
That was a high-voltage industrial demolition charge!
Your legs are supposed to be caked in scrap iron at the bottom of the ravine!”
Kallard closed the physical distance between them in three short, explosive strides, his tattered cloak snapping through the wind.
“Basic Saiyan cardio, master Vesh,” he muttered inside his helmet.
“It’s a standard configuration for my workspace.”
The accountant didn’t possess the vocabulary parameters to understand the reference.
Kallard lunged forward, his broad shoulders tackling the long-nosed alien straight through a large stack of cargo tarps at the very end of the bridge platform.
*BOOM.*
They crashed heavily onto the metal deck plates of a lower cargo platform, rolling through the dirt and the plastic sheets in a tangled heap.
One of the silver data cases popped open under the force of the collision, dozens of small, glowing blue imperial data chips spilling out across the floor grates like a handful of loose glass beads.
Kallard dropped his heavy left knee straight into the center of Marn’s narrow chest armor, pinning his physical frame flat against the metal plates while his right hand locked around the accountant’s wrist a fraction of a millisecond before the thin fingers could reach a secondary hidden device inside his coat sleeve.
“The independent brokers explicitly listed your name as an ‘alive-required’ contract, master Vesh,” Kallard said, his breath coming smooth and level beneath his visor.
“So stop trying to adjust the parameters of the meeting before I decide to break those fingers of yours to keep you from typing.”
Marn wheezed out a thin stream of gray saliva, his yellow eyes wide with a total, primordial understanding of his own mortality as he looked up at the dark face beneath the bandana.
“Who…
who are you working for, hunter?
If it’s the regional logistics generals…
I can give you the secondary encryption codes for the entire payroll file!
I can buy my freedom thrice over!”
“I work for the guild ledger, and I work for my own ship’s maintenance hours, accountant,” Kallard said plainly, reaching down with his free hand to systematically gather up the loose blue data chips from the dirt, shoving them back into the silver case before clicking the primary lock shut.
Brakka’s gravelly voice suddenly crackled through his ear speaker, the tone quiet but intense.
“Status report, Ronin.
Tell me you’ve secured the asset before the local port guards lock the platform gates.”
“Target is fully secured, old man,” Kallard said, hauling the shivering accountant up by the back of his large gray coat collar with a single firm pull.
“The data core is mostly intact inside the pouch.”
“What do you mean by the word ‘mostly’, kid?” the mechanic growled.
“We experienced a minor structural discrepancy regarding a bridge assembly along the alleyway,” Kallard muttered, checking the seal on his belt utility rack. You are reading on novelping dot com, the official source.
“But the data chips didn’t take any physical damage from the fall.”
“I knew it,” Brakka sighed deeply.
“The second my monitors registered a localized thermal spike in that sector, I knew my repair log was about to grow another page.
Get your boots back to the pad before—”
## Act VI: Five Trails of Fire
Before the old man could finish his sentence, the sky above Talbur’s Rest completely screamed.
It wasn’t the regular, high-pitched mechanical whine of a commercial cargo hauler clearing the atmospheric gates, or the low-frequency rumble of a port security cruiser running its routine patrol loop.
It was a deafening, bone-shattering roar that split the atmosphere lines across the entire canyon system like a physical blow.
Kallard froze dead in his tracks on the cargo platform, his hand freezing on Marn’s collar as his dark pupils snapped upward through his visor to track the upper clouds.
Five distinct, white-hot trails of burning atmospheric fire were tearing through the orange sky of Veyra-Tal at terminal velocity.
They didn’t move in the scattered, irregular configuration of a merchant squad or a common pirate fleet; they traveled in a single, perfectly symmetrical V-formation that was so synchronized it looked like a single high-tech weapon slicing through the air lines.
The chaotic noise of the market promenade down below died away in a matter of seconds, replaced by a heavy, suffocating silence that rolled across the canyon as thousands of traders and smugglers stopped their boots to stare up at the sky.
Even the distant cargo transport engines along the cliff faces seemed to drop their power outputs in a panic response, the whole planet holding its breath.
Kallard’s blood went completely, terrifyingly cold inside his veins, every single muscle group beneath his black undersuit locking up into a hard iron knot as an ancient, television-born memory rushed back into his thoughts with the force of an artillery shell.
*No,* his brain whispered, his fingers clenching so hard around Marn’s coat fabric that the canvas caved inward.
*No, no, no.
Not here.
Not today.
The timeline isn’t supposed to bring them to this sector for another two cycles.*
The five white-hot pods cleared the upper ridge lines of the canyon, their sleek, circular designs glinting in the red neon light of the city.
They weren’t the standard, mass-produced capsules utilized by the common infantry grunts of the Frieza Force; they were the customized, high-luxury space pods utilized exclusively by the highest-ranking elite specialists in the imperial core—vessels manufactured from polished white alloy with deep purple trim along the tracking sensors.
The pods didn’t execute a slow, calculated landing sequence.
They dropped through the air lines with an absolute, theatrical precision.
The lead pod performed an entirely unnecessary, high-speed axial spin mid-descent—a flashing display of pure pilot arrogance—before stabilizing its thrusters a fraction of a second before impact.
*BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.*
All five capsules struck the primary landing platforms of the central market district simultaneously, the collective kinetic force of the landings resulting in a massive, concussive explosion of red dust, shattered concrete gravel, and white vapor that filled the central promenade like a tidal wave.
Kallard couldn’t see the figures stepping out through the hatch doors from his position three levels down the cliff face.
He didn’t need to.
His human mind was already filling in the details of the picture with a cold, terrifying accuracy before the smoke could even clear the platform.
The colors.
The armor.
The poses.
Recoome.
The giant brawler with the wild orange hair and the thuggish grin.
Burter.
The massive, blue-skinned speedster whose velocity indicators didn’t make sense to any standard scanning grid.
Jeice.
The red-skinned officer with the long white hair mane and the theatrical core accent.
Guldo.
The small, four-eyed white creature whose internal ki signature was twisted into a slippery, disgusting knot of telekinetic noise.
And standing in the exact center of the line…
Captain Ginyu himself.
The Ginyu Force had officially cleared the gates of Veyra-Tal.
## Act VII: Theater Kids with Murder Stats
Marn Vesh was twisting frantically inside Kallard’s iron grip, his pale long nose twitching with a sudden, blinding terror as he resolved the shape of the white pods on the upper platforms.
“What…
what the hell is that noise?
Those aren’t standard port patrol ships!
Who just cleared the atmospheric gates?”
Kallard didn’t answer him.
He didn’t even look down at the accountant’s face.
His hand reached up to his ear speaker, his voice dropping into an absolute, terrifyingly urgent whisper that Brakka had never heard from him since the day they met.
“Brakka.
Start the ship.
Now.”
The old mechanic paused on the line for a half-second, the sound of his tools completely vanishing from the audio feed as he recognized the pitch of the kid’s voice.
“Kallard?
What’s going on down there?
The primary hull pressure monitors on the bridge are throwing a massive vibration warning from the upper docks.”
“Start.
The.
Damn.
Ship.
Brakka,” Kallard growled through his teeth, his boots already dragging the accountant toward the entrance of a dark, narrow maintenance corridor beneath the platform.
“Disconnect the primary docking clamps and get the main hyperdrive capacitors warming up on a hot standby cycle.
We have less than two minutes to clear this rock before the whole planet turns into an open grave.”
Brakka didn’t ask a single follow-up question regarding the logistics or the data codes.
He was a veteran of the engine lines; he knew exactly what that tone of voice meant from a Saiyan warhound.
“The…
the starters are turning over right now, boy.
The sub-light engines will be clear of the cooling loops in forty seconds.
How bad is the threat count down in the market?”
Kallard peeked out through a small drainage vent in the corridor wall, his dark eyes fixed on the massive rising dust cloud three levels above his forehead.
From somewhere far off across the central promenade, a booming, amplified voice roared out through a high-powered communication system, the syllables echoing off the red volcanic stone canyon walls with an absolute, theatrical pride:
“ATTENTION, CITIZENS OF VEYRA-TAL!
THE ELITE SPECIAL ENFORCEMENT UNIT OF THE IMPERIAL CORE…
THE GINYU FORCE…
HAS OFFICIALLY ARRIVED TO RESTORE BALANCE TO THE manifest!”
A second, loud voice immediately crackled through the open frequency, complaining loudly about the acoustics.
“Hey!
Captain!
I explicitly told you we should have rehearsed the central entry alignment in lower gravity before we cleared the pods!
My left shoulder plate is completely out of the frame line from this angle!”
A third, red-skinned officer’s voice jeered back.
“You completely ruined the entrance symmetry, Recoome!
You were supposed to hit your pose three frames after the hatch opened!
It looked completely sloppy from the gantry!”
A fourth voice muttered something entirely too fast and high-pitched to resolve through the static.
And then, five massive, world-shattering power signatures flared bright across the city all at once, their raw energy outputs deliberately allowed to leak into the lower frequencies to establish dominance over the local population.
Kallard’s entire skin surface prickled with a cold, biological dread, his internal ki-sensing grid completely short-circuiting under the immense weight of the numbers clearing the market.
His current resting base power level was around seven thousand three hundred units.
If he opened the tap completely and let the *Primal Instinct* state tear his muscle tissue apart for thirty seconds, he could spike his output past twenty-one thousand—a terrifying number that was more than enough to turn entire pirate crews into scrap iron and make regional Frieza Force captains run for their transport ships.
Against these five monsters?
His maximum power level wasn’t just insufficient; it was an absolute, hilarious joke.
It was a statistical rounding error on a primary logistics spreadsheet.
Recoome alone was carrying an active combat rating of over sixty thousand units of raw brute force.
Captain Ginyu was sitting on a world-ending peak of one hundred and twenty thousand.
If any single member of that squad took a step down into his canyon lane…
he wouldn’t even live long enough to click his manual override switches flat.
The red-lens scouter clipped to his leather utility belt suddenly clicked on automatically, triggered by the massive, unprecedented influx of energy clearing the upper frequencies.
The green numbers flashing across the lens lens spun out of control in a frantic, screaming series of electronic alarms.
*WARNING.
SCALE OVERLOAD.*
*WARNING.
DATA CAPACITATION EXCEEDED.*
*ERROR.
ERROR.*
*AUTOMATED SYSTEM LOCKOUT INITIATED.*
The scouter lens let out a tiny puff of gray smoke from the secondary capacitor seam and went completely dark before the circuits could melt.
Kallard hit the manual manual toggle, shutting the frame off completely.
“Kallard,” Brakka’s voice came back through the ear speaker, dropping into a low, terrifyingly calm rasp that sounded remarkably steady.
“Talk to me, boy.
Who just dropped out of the sky?”
Kallard hauled Marn Vesh up by the back of his canvas coat, his boots moving down the dark corridor at a frantic, low-to-the-ground sprint.
“Five of them, old man.
Frieza’s personal hunter squad.”
“The…
the elite collectors from the core worlds?” Brakka’s breath caught in his throat.
“The ones the trading pilots call the freaks?”
“Yeah,” Kallard growled, his jaw locked tight beneath his high collar.
“A bunch of theater kids with world-shattering murder stats.
And right now…
they’re standing exactly three levels above our landing pad.”
## Act VIII: The Underbelly Run
Marn Vesh stumbled blindly beside him through the narrow maintenance corridor, his thin gray legs shaking so hard he could barely keep his balance on the iron floor grates.
“Wait…
wait a single second, hunter!
You can’t just drag me out of the city like a sack of scrap!
Those are the elite collectors!
If Captain Ginyu is personally clearing the platforms on this rock…
it means Lord Frieza wants these payroll codes back more than life itself!
They’ll tear the whole canyon apart to find me!”
Kallard shoved him violently forward through a narrow pipeline junction, his dark eyes scanning the exit lanes ahead.
“Then you should be exceptionally proud of your popularity metrics, accountant.
Move your boots before the theater gets violent.”
“You don’t understand, you idiot!
They won’t just arrest us!
They’ll turn this whole planetary sector into a cloud of burning gravel to clear the data leak!”
“I’m fully aware of their operational style, master Vesh,” Kallard whispered through his teeth, his hand locking around his side ribs as his fractured bones flared with pain.
“That’s exactly why we’re currently executing a high-speed tactical retreat from the workspace.”
The entire canyon city above their heads had completely transformed from a nervous, quiet trade depot into a chaotic, screaming hive of pure survival panic.
Thousands of independent traders and smugglers were frantically scrambling to pull their cargo tarps down, slamming their iron security bulkheads shut, and starting up their transport ships’ engines in a desperate rush to clear the port gates before a lockdown order could clear the imperial relays.
Somewhere far down the promenade, an overconfident mercenary guard fired a heavy blaster bolt toward the market platform in a panic response—and the sound of a short, concussive explosion immediately followed as Recoome cleared the shooter’s block from existence without even using a weapon.
A massive, kinetic shockwave rolled down through the stone maintenance corridors, sending a thick shower of red dust and loose gravel chips raining down from the ceiling grates onto Kallard’s bandana.
Marn let out a high-pitched yelp, his hands flying up to cover his long gray nose.
Kallard came to a sudden, sliding halt at a major pipe junction intersection, his dark pupils narrowing as his primitive sensing grid resolved a sudden displacement in the energy signatures ahead.
A group of six of Marn Vesh’s remaining cantina guards burst into the corridor from a secondary access hatch twenty yards down the lane, their plasma rifles raised high as they ran from the market chaos above.
Their leader—a scarred, bipedal alien carrying a double-barreled scatter-gun—spotted the black-and-green chest plating of the hunter through the red twilight and pointed a sharp finger straight at his visor.
“There he is!” the leader screamed out, his voice cracking with a frantic panic.
“The hunter’s got the master quartermaster!
Shoot him through the core plates!
We can use the accountant’s data cases to buy our own asylum from the collectors!”
Kallard didn’t have a single second of free time to waste on a low-tier street fight.
He threw Marn Vesh violently backward into the shadow of a heavy water pipe, stepped forward into the center of the lane, and brought his right hand down to his waist, his callused fingers snapping open like an iron claw.
“Starfall Cannon!” he growled.
Six rapid, highly concentrated green pellets of baseline ki energy shot from his hand in less than a hundredth of a second, the tracer rounds lighting up the dark pipeline corridor with a blinding emerald glare.
He didn’t aim the blasts to kill—he didn’t want six fresh corpses clogging his exit lane while the Ginyu Force was tracking signatures in the district.
The first green sphere struck the leader’s scatter-gun directly across the receiver seam, the localized explosion turning the heavy weapon into a cloud of melting white sparks that scorched his fingers.
The second and third rounds struck the stone walls directly beside the guards’ heads, showering their helmets in a massive wave of hot rock chips and blinding static light.
The fourth round punched clean through a high-pressure steam line mounted to the ceiling, a massive column of white, superheated chemical vapor instantly filling the corridor to block their line of sight.
The fifth and sixth spheres detonated flat against the concrete floor plates directly beneath their boots, exploding upward in a concussive blast of gravel and metal fragments that launched the remaining mercenaries backward into the access hatch, completely breaking their formation.
Kallard didn’t wait to see them hit the ground.
He grabbed Marn Vesh by the back of his gray coat collar, spun his body around, and ran through the thick, boiling smoke cloud before the guards could even reset their charging handles.
One stray blaster bolt from a panicked shooter cut through the mist blindly, the red energy line skimming past Kallard’s left side, leaving a long, burning score mark across his mesh underlayer fabric.
Pain flared bright along his rib cage, but he ignored the heat completely, his boots hammering against the grates until they reached the entrance of the lower service lift shaft.
## Act IX: The Drop down the Shaft
The primary transport lift cabin was completely locked and sealed behind a heavy row of iron security bars, the platform computer having shut down the local power lines to conserve potential current for the upper docks.
Kallard didn’t pause to locate a manual override bypass switch or a data key console.
He pulled his right leg back and drove the heel of his combat boot straight into the center of the iron security gate with all the physical weight of his seven parsec baseline output.
*BANG.*
The three-inch-thick iron bars bent inward by four inches, the locking pins groaning under the kinetic force.
Kallard executed a second consecutive kick straight to the center seam, his teeth grinding together as the metal plates sheared completely apart from the stone walls.
Marn Vesh stared at the ruined gate with his watery yellow eyes wide open in pure, unadulterated disbelief.
“Are…
are you completely, profoundly insane, hunter?
You’re tearing the platform’s structural features apart with your feet!”
“Frequently, accountant,” Kallard muttered, his hands reaching out to yank the bent doors wide open, revealing the pitch-black void of the vertical lift shaft inside.
The shaft dropped six levels down into the lower cargo bays of the canyon, a sheer two-hundred-foot drop-off with nothing but a set of rusted iron guide rails running down the stone face.
Marn peeked over the edge of the threshold, his face turning an intense, sickly shade of yellowish-gray as the cold canyon wind blew past his nose.
“No…
absolutely, profoundly no, Ronin!
I refuse to commit my boots to that drop lane!
It’s a complete mathematical execution!”
Kallard grabbed him by the front of his gray coat lining with both hands, his green visor sliding down over his jaw with a pressurized *hiss*.
“The transaction is officially approved, master Vesh.
Hold on to your data cases.”
They jumped.
Marn Vesh screamed out a high-pitched, ragged cry of pure, unadulterated terror that filled the entire vertical shaft, his legs flailing wildly through the dark space as gravity caught their weight.
Kallard kept his broad frame completely straight in the air lines, his right glove holding the accountant tight against his chest plates while his left boot occasionally snapped out to strike the rusted iron guide rails along the wall face.
He didn’t unleash a massive, visible flare of green ki propulsion to slow their descent—he knew that an energy spike inside a vertical shaft would act like a massive neon beacon for Guldo’s telekinetic tracker droids above.
Instead, he utilized short, microscopic bursts of baseline ki against the rock fractures, his boots scraping a long trail of bright yellow sparks from the iron rails to bleed off their terminal velocity as they plummeted through the dark.
They hit the concrete platform at the absolute bottom of the shaft with a heavy, concussive *thud* that left a pair of shallow cracked depressions in the floor plates.
Kallard’s knees buckled slightly to absorb the structural weight of the stop, his muscles groaning, but his framework remained completely intact.
He shoved the shaking, hyperventilating accountant forward through the open exit hatch.
“Move your boots, master Vesh.
The platform is getting crowded.”
Behind their backs, the vertical lift shaft above their heads suddenly exploded with a deafening, thunderous roar.
A massive, three-hundred-pound physical shape caked in a white-and-brown imperial chest piece had just smashed straight through the upper security gates two levels up, plummets down through the dark shaft with the casual agility of a brick dropped from a cliff face.
Recoome’s deep, thuggish voice echoed down the stone corridor with a terrifyingly loud clarity that made the grates shake.
“Hey!
Captain!
I’ve officially resolved a visible trail of metal sparks dropping down the lower transport shaft!
I think the little bandana rat and the thin accountant just committed their boots to the cargo bays!
I’m going down to clear the clearing!”
Kallard’s heart slammed once against his ribs, a cold sweat breaking out across his forehead bandana.
*Too close.
He’s entirely too damn close.*
He grabbed Marn Vesh by the collar, abandoned every remaining shred of tactical subtlety, and broke into a full-scale, unsuppressed sprint down the main loading tunnel, his combat boots clearing the gravel at an impossible speed.
## Act X: Recoome’s Sniff
They burst out through the primary cargo hatch into a wide, open-air loading platform that had been carved directly into the western cliff face of the canyon.
The *Wayfarer’s* primary sub-light thrusters were already emitting a deafening, house-shattering roar directly above their heads, the matte-black hull of the cutter descending through the red fog sheets of the canyon like a hunting bird clearing a forest line.
The ship was entirely too large for the narrow dock space, her green-trimmed wings clearing the rusted iron cargo cranes by mere inches, but Brakka was piloting the sticks with a frantic, angry genius that didn’t care about the port codes.
The primary side airlock hatch of the cutter slid open mid-hover, the boarding ramp extending downward into the wind with a long pressurized *hiss*.
Brakka’s gravelly voice roared out through the ship’s external public address speakers, his tone completely furious.
“Run faster, you muscle-brained idiot!
The port radar grids are already turning a solid block of imperial red!
You’ve got exactly twelve seconds before this pad gets completely erased from the manifest!”
Kallard sprinted toward the edge of the ramp, his hand pushing the accountant forward.
But before his boots could clear the last five yards of the concrete pad, a massive physical shadow dropped out from the upper cliff walkways, landing squarely in the center of the exit lane with a thunderous *BOOM* that shattered the concrete floor plates into a cloud of red dust.
The giant brawler, Recoome, stood up slowly from his one-knee landing posture, his wild orange hair caked in dust, his white-and-brown elite chest armor completely scratchless despite the drop.
A massive, thuggish grin split his broad face, revealing rows of thick white teeth as he crossed his massive arms over his chest plates.
“Well, well, well!” Recoome cackled, his deep voice carrying over the roaring of the ship engines with absolute ease. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
“What do we have clearing the cargo line down here?
A little black-armored bounty rat trying to skip out on the transaction before the primary performance is even finished?
That is highly unprofessional for the sector, kid!”
Kallard froze dead in his tracks five yards from the giant, his dark pupils narrowing into tiny needles through his visor as his entire framework went completely rigid.
Every single primitive, hot-blooded Saiyan instinct inside his DNA roared out at the challenge, a violent ancestral urge screaming at him to step forward, to open the tap for the *Primal Instinct* state, to open his knuckles, and to test the density of his fists against an elite specialist of the core worlds.
The warrior pride was like a physical fire boiling his blood, demanding a fight to the death to prove his lineage.
The human mind wrapped both hands around the leash with a desperate, white-knuckled grip, dragging the beast back into its dark box with absolute, unyielding discipline.
*No.
Do not engage.
Do not hit him.
You are seven thousand base; he is sixty thousand brute.
If you swing a fist at his face…
you die in less than a heartbeat, and the story ends right here on this red dirt.*
Recoome tilted his broad head to the left, his eyes tracking the scuffed green trim on Kallard’s armor.
“You’re the scrapper they call Ronin on the border boards, aren’t you?”
Kallard didn’t answer a single word.
He stood perfectly still, his energy signature clenched down to its nine hundred baseline, his face completely unreadable.
The giant brawler cut his eyes sideways, looking at the long-nosed accountant shivering behind the hunter’s cloak.
“The Captain explicitly wants the thin gray clerk brought back to the flagship alive.
Lord Frieza’s orders, you see.
Very important logistics metrics.”
Marn Vesh let out a small, high-pitched squeak, his data cases rattling against his ribs.
Recoome turned his gaze back to Kallard’s face, his broad nose suddenly wrinkling up as he took a deep, dramatic sniff of the air lines through the clearing.
His thuggish grin widened by a fraction of an inch, a cold, curious spark appearing deep within his pupils.
“And you…
you’re an exceptionally strange scrapper for a rim hybrid, kid.
You smell…
you smell remarkably interesting.
Like an old brand of meat the empire cleared out of the core sectors three cycles ago.”
Kallard’s blood went completely to pure ice beneath his plates.
*He knows,* his brain screamed, the terror hitting his chest like a physical blow.
*He spent years fighting alongside Saiyan squads before the planet blew up.
He recognizes the biological scent lines of the race.*
Behind his back, the *Wayfarer’s* side airlock ramp dropped another two inches through the wind, the old mechanic’s voice screaming through the microphone mesh.
“Kallard!
Move your damn boots!
The trackers are locking on!”
Kallard made his decision in less than a millisecond.
He didn’t draw a weapon, and he didn’t trigger an energy blast toward the giant.
He reached out his right arm, grabbed Marn Vesh by the back of his large gray coat fabric, and hurled the accountant’s two-hundred-pound frame completely across the five yards of open air space straight into the *Wayfarer’s* open airlock hatch.
Marn shrieked out a final, terrified tax audit scream as he flew through the opening.
Brakka’s primary mechanical titanium hand shot out from the interior corridor, caught the accountant cleanly by the collar mid-flight, and dragged his gray frame inside the hull like a sack of dry moss.
Recoome blinked his broad eyes once, surprised by the sudden velocity of the throw.
“Hey!
That’s a complete violation of the negotiation parameters, kid!”
Kallard brought both of his open palms down toward the concrete deck plates beneath his boots, his breathing dropping into that low, rhythmic cadence as he pulled a tight pocket of *Static Buster* current to his knuckles.
He didn’t fire the energy toward Recoome’s chest plates—he knew the elite armor would absorb the concussive shock wave without a single scratch.
He drove the green pulse straight into the primary structural iron support struts running along the ceiling gantry of the cargo platform.
*BANG-BOOM.*
The high-frequency kinetic vibrations detonated point-blank against the old, un-railed metal supports.
The entire three-ton iron gantry ceiling sheared clean away from the red stone cliff face, a massive avalanche of volcanic boulders, shattered steel girders, and loose cargo tarps plummets down into the clearing with a thunderous concussive roar.
Recoome let out a loud, delighted cackle from the other side of the falling mountain as the stone blocks closed the lane.
“Oh, that’s cute, kid!
A localized geological countermeasure!
I love a good structural script!”
The rubble hit the deck with a deafening crash, completely burying the exit lane beneath a ten-foot wall of solid volcanic stone.
Kallard didn’t wait to see the giant break through the stones—he knew a sixty-thousand power framework could clear ten tons of rubble in less than a second.
He triggered his *Flash Trigger* pulse, his boots clearing the concrete pad in a single, explosive vertical launch that carried his broad frame straight onto the edge of the *Wayfarer’s* descending boarding ramp.
His glove locked around the airlock frame, his body pulling inside the hull corridor as he slammed his palm flat against the manual close switch on the wall panel.
“Brakka!
Punch the lines!
Clear the pad!”
## Act XI: The Canyon Flight
Brakka didn’t waste a single millisecond bickering.
He slammed the primary thruster levers into full forward gear, the *Wayfarer’s* custom sub-light engines releasing a world-shattering roar of white fire that vaporized the remaining concrete guidelines on the pad.
The black-and-green cutter rocketed forward through the narrow red canyon alleyways at terminal velocity, her wings clearing the rock walls by mere inches.
*ZIP.*
A sudden, brilliant red blaster bolt shot down through the upper fog deck from a high angle, grazing the outer edge of the cockpit viewport glass and leaving a long, smoking black score mark across the frame.
Hovering five hundred feet above the city bridges was Jeice, his long white hair mane flying wildly through the canyon wind as he held his right hand extended toward the cutter, his face twisted into an expression of intense, theatrical irritation.
“Oi!
Captain!
The little black cargo scow is remarkably fast for a border vessel!
They’ve got the accountant inside their hold!
Track their escape vector!”
A sudden flash of blue light cleared the smoke cloud next to his shoulder plates as Burter appeared in an instantaneous blur of speed, his massive blue-skinned framework hovering completely motionless in the high gantry air.
“He’s not faster than my primary acceleration parameters, mate,” the speedster grinned, his red scouter lens clicking rapidly.
“Watch the closing line.”
Inside the *Wayfarer’s* bridge, Kallard dragged Marn Vesh down into a reinforced steel restraint chair in the galley corridor, slamming the automated magnetic cuffs shut over his wrists with a sharp mechanical *clank*.
The former quartermaster was completely hyperventilating, his thin gray legs shaking violently beneath his wool blanket.
“You…
you crazy, non-profit lunatic!
You just committed an official planetary kidnapping operation against the Ginyu Force!
They’re the highest-ranking elite specialists in the core worlds!”
“I just executed a highly successful asset rescue operation from a dangerous workspace, master Vesh,” Kallard gasped out, his hand clutching his bleeding left shoulder joint as he staggered toward the bridge ladder.
“The premium parameters are still completely active on my ledger.”
“They wanted me alive to clear the data leak, you idiot!
They would have brought me back to a clean flagship!”
“Yeah, well, I want you alive for the exact same reason, accountant,” Kallard growled back over his shoulder.
“And my ship’s galley kitchen has a hell of a lot better menu layout than a Frieza Force interrogation cell does.
So stop complaining about the travel times.”
*BANG.*
The entire eighty-foot frame of the cutter suddenly lurched violently to the starboard side, a massive kinetic shockwave rolling through the deck plates as the ship clipped a hanging rusted neon sign, sending the iron structure spinning down into a residential block below.
Brakka’s furious voice roared through the internal intercom speaker from the console.
“I absolutely, profoundly liked that deep green paint job on my port wing guard, Ronin!
That is an immediate three-hundred-credit deduction from your personal account for poor steering navigation!”
“Wasn’t my wing plate that hit the sign, old man!” Kallard shouted as he climbed onto the bridge deck, his hands grabbing the back of Brakka’s chair for balance as the ship executed a violent, eighty-degree bank around a volcanic stone ridge.
“The blue speedster is right on our tail nozzles!
He cleared the market platforms in less than a second!”
“I can resolve his signature on my short-range radar screens, boy!” the old mechanic growled, his multi-jointed arms wrestling with the main steering column as the canyon walls narrowed ahead.
“Look out the side window!
The freak is running alongside our hull plates on foot!”
Kallard snapped his visor around to look through the thick glass of the starboard viewport.
Burter was literally running along the jagged volcanic rock shelves of the canyon wall directly alongside the moving ship, his massive blue legs moving with a fast, circular blur that completely defied the physical parameters of momentum.
He was keeping perfect pace with an eighty-foot cutter running on full thruster potential, his red eyes looking through the glass window straight into Kallard’s face with a wide, mocking grin.
He lifted his white-gloved hand and gave the hunter a casual, breezy wave through the glass before vanishing from sight in an instantaneous blue afterimage blur.
Brakka just sat there at the controls, staring blankly out at the empty air space for a fraction of a second, his mouth slightly open.
“I…
I absolutely, profoundly hate that blue freak, kid.
His acceleration parameters are a complete piece of garbage philosophy.”
“He’s shifting his vector line to drop down onto our upper engine housing from above, old man!” Kallard yelled, pointing straight toward the dark canyon split ahead.
“The corridor is caked in old, abandoned mining cables!
Look at the layout!”
## Act XII: The Clothesline Protocol
The narrow red stone canyon ahead was completely packed with a dense network of thousands of rusted iron mining cables and old heavy-duty transport lines that had been left behind by the corporate extraction guilds ten cycles ago, the thick steel wires hanging across the parsec gap like a series of long gray fences.
Brakka’s upper two eyes narrowed into tight points of light, a grim, malicious smirk splitting his wide gray-blue face as he locked his fingers around the primary thruster overrides.
“Ah.
A classic piece of industrial wreckage cluttering the workspace.
Now you’re finally starting to speak my language, dramatic bounty boy.
Hit the manual release switches on the side airlock hatch!”
“Why the hell am I opening the airlocks mid-flight, old man?” Kallard asked, his hand grabbing the wall panel.
“Because we’re about to make the blue speedster entirely too confident in his own parameters, boy!” the mechanic cackled, his hand slamming a red button to fully drop the advanced stealth cloak field, the cutter’s primary sub-light nozzles flaring into a brilliant, sun-bright white light that illuminated the entire canyon.
“Drop the stealth lines completely!
Let him think the prey has run out of options!”
Burter saw the bright flare of the ship’s engines through the red mist and let out a loud, triumphant roar of laughter across his squad frequency, his body accelerating into a final, blinding blue blur that shot straight down toward the *Wayfarer’s* upper deck plates.
“I’ve got the scow cornered, Jeice!
The little monkey’s engine core is overloading!”
At the absolute last microsecond—exactly three inches before Burter’s white boots could touch the outer hull plates—Brakka slammed his foot down on the primary lateral vector thruster pedal, while his hands cut the main engine throttles to absolute zero potential current.
The *Wayfarer* dropped straight down through the air lines like a heavy lead stone falling into a pool of water, her hull descending twenty feet in a fraction of a millisecond.
Burter’s massive blue-skinned frame completely overshot the target lane, his physical momentum carrying his body straight forward into the open space of the canyon at ninety miles an hour.
Kallard stepped out onto the edge of the open side airlock ramp, his right hand gripping the frame rail while his left hand brought his palms together at his waist, his green aura flaring bright for a single brief second as he focused his baseline energy.
“Starfall Cannon!” he shouted into the wind.
Six rapid green pellets of baseline ki energy shot from his hand fanwise, the tracer rounds traveling across the gap to strike the six primary iron anchor bolts that secured the old mining cables to the volcanic stone cliff face.
*BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG.*
The six structural anchors shattered all at once under the force of the compression blasts, the thick iron mining cables instantly snapping loose from the rock face to whip wildly across the canyon path like a series of loose steel whips.
Burter hit the loose cable network at full velocity.
The rusted iron wires didn’t possess enough structural density to break his sixty-thousand-power bones or cause permanent physical trauma to his blue skin—he was entirely too durable for a common steel wire to turn him into paste.
But the sheer, unexpected mechanical resistance of the whipping cables caught him completely off guard, the steel lines wrapping around his chest plates and his white boots with a violent, snapping force that clotheslined his body mid-flight.
The blue speedster let out a sharp, terrified shout of surprise through his mask as his orientation parameters were completely broken, his massive frame spinning out of control through the air lines like a tossed coin before crashing heavily into a soft mud shelf on the opposite cliff face.
Half a second of total operational disruption was all the old mechanic required to clear the line.
Brakka slammed the primary ignition switches back into full potential current, the *Wayfarer’s* custom sub-light thrusters releasing a massive, house-shattering roar of fire that launched the cutter straight into an old, narrow industrial mining tunnel carved through the side of the canyon wall.
The black-and-green hull scraped violently against both sides of the rock face as it cleared the opening, a massive trail of bright yellow sparks and melted stone dust flying along the wing edges with a horrific mechanical screech that shook the bridge floorboards.
“I liked that green paint!” Brakka screamed through his teeth, his four eyes wide as he guided the ship through the pitch-black tunnel shaft at full speed.
Behind their tail nozzles, deep within the open air of the canyon, Jeice’s red-skinned voice crackled faintly through the unencrypted sector frequency, his tone caked in a deep, mocking amusement.
“Burter, mate…
did you…
did you just seriously get yourself completely clotheslined by a bunch of old mining cables?
That was the most pathetic display of speed tracking I’ve ever witnessed in the field!
The Captain is going to make you do the central pose at the back of the line for the next three cycles!”
Burter yelled back an incredibly furious string of imperial profanity that was completely drowned out by the roaring of the wind as the *Wayfarer* punched through the far end of the tunnel shaft, rocketing straight out into the open, clear sky of the planet’s upper atmosphere.
## Act XI: The Look of the Captain
The wide, dark expanse of outer space opened up across the panoramic viewscreen ahead of the nose, the pale orange world of Veyra-Tal rapidly shrinking behind their tail nozzles into a small, dusty marble.
Kallard climbed back onto the bridge deck, his right hand clutched tight over his bleeding left shoulder joint, his breath coming in short ragged plumes as his chest plates relaxed.
He looked out through the rear viewport glass, his dark pupils narrowing as his internal ki-sensing grid suddenly resolved a single, final energy signature rising from the central market platforms three hundred miles below.
A purple-skinned figure was hovering completely motionless in the upper atmosphere layers of the planet, his white-and-brown elite chest armor pristine, his arms crossed over his chest gantry as he watched the black cutter rocket toward the orbital gate.
Captain Ginyu.
He didn’t trigger his propulsion lines to give chase—he knew the *Wayfarer* had already cleared the planetary gravity well and was entering the primary hyperspace threshold where a sub-light interceptor couldn’t close the parsec gap.
He simply stood there in the cold void, his red scouter lens flashing with data as his unblinking eyes tracked the ship’s flight line with a slow, methodical calculation.
Even across three hundred miles of empty space, Kallard could feel the immense, suffocating weight of that look—a cold, heavy pressure that seemed to slice straight through his armor plates and read the exact frequency of the blood running through his heart marrow.
It wasn’t the thuggish curiosity of Recoome or the arrogant vanity of Burter; it was the sharp, dangerous calculation of a master general who had just realized that a very unusual anomaly had slipped through his fingers.
*He feels it,* Kallard thought to himself, his fingers locking around the back of the pilot seat until the leather creaked.
*Ginyu knows there’s something hidden beneath this suppressed baseline.
He’s going to report the signature frequency straight to the high command hub.*
“Hyperdrive computers are fully aligned and locked into the primary exit lane, kid!” Brakka’s gravelly voice shattered the silence of the bridge, his organic hand slamming the master throttle handles forward with a sharp click.
“Engaging the jump…
now!”
*Whine-BOOM.*
The stars ahead of the *Wayfarer* stretched out into long, brilliant needles of white fire, the entire eighty-foot frame of the cutter jumping into the white-hot blur of hyperspace with a sudden, violent surge of speed that pressed both passengers deep into their seats, wiping the red planet of Veyra-Tal from the screens completely.
## Act XII: The Discipline of the Retreat
Only when the ship had cleared three separate, manual corridor jumps and entered a quiet, unmapped drift sector four parsecs south of the border lines did Kallard finally allow his broad shoulders to drop, his chest letting out a long, ragged breath that had been trapped behind his ribs since the pods hit the market.
He walked down the iron ladder toward the lower deck galley, his boots heavy, every single muscle group inside his Saiyan framework caked in a deep, bone-weary exhaustion from the suppression grind.
Marn Vesh was still sitting locked inside the reinforced steel restraint chair, his pale gray face caked in a layer of cold sweat, his long nose trembling as he looked up at the hunter’s entrance.
He had stopped shouting forty minutes ago; he was now just staring blankly at the metal deck plates with the hollow, defeated look of an accountant who had realized his files were no longer his own.
Brakka walked into the galley corridor from the engine access tubes, carrying a fresh roll of elastic medical tape and a bottle of green antibacterial healing gel under his organic arm.
He didn’t say a single word as he pushed Kallard down onto the med bench, his mechanical hand moving with a slow, calculated precision to strip the torn pieces of the mesh tunic away from the bleeding shoulder joint.
The old mechanic worked in absolute silence for ten long minutes, his four eyes fixed on the jagged plasma score caked into the kid’s flesh.
Kallard leaned his head back against the warm cabin bulkhead, his eyes closed beneath his bandana.
“You’re remarkably quiet tonight, old man,” he muttered hoarsely.
“That’s usually a clear engineering sign that you’re preparing a massive lecture regarding the repair bill logs.”
“I am currently preparing a very precise legal draft for your ghost, kid,” Brakka said flatly, driving a medical needle through the edge of the skin with an intentional, sharp jerk that made Kallard grunt.
“We ran.
We pulled our landing gear and we ran away from an infantry detail without firing a single lethal beam toward their leader chest plates.
That is the exact metric clearing my monitors tonight.”
Kallard opened his eyes, his dark pupils locking onto the mechanic’s four eyes.
“Yeah.
We ran, Brakka.
We tucked our tails and we cleared the sector before the performance was even finished.”
Brakka stopped his fingers on the medical tape, all four of his eyes softening by a microscopic fraction of an inch as a small, genuine smirk touched his gray-blue cheek.
“Good, boy.
That means my engineering instructions haven’t been a complete waste of data hours over the last three years.
You saw a mountain that was entirely too big for your knuckles to break…
and you had the goddamn discipline to turn your boots around instead of standing there baring your teeth like a proud moron until the fire turned you into charcoal.”
Kallard turned his head around slowly, looking out through the small cabin port at the infinite stars spinning slowly past in the deep space drift.
The primitive, hot-blooded Saiyan part of his biology absolutely hated the memory of the retreat—it felt like a cold stone caked into his ribs, a permanent mark of shame that made his blood boil with an unyielding frustration.
Every warrior instinct in his flesh was screaming at him because he had chosen to run from an elite specialist, because he hadn’t stayed behind to test his limits against Recoome’s fists.
But the human part of his soul—the part that carried the memories of a screen and the knowledge of how large the universe actually was—knew that running was the only real victory available on the slate today.
True strategy wasn’t about being too proud to run; it was about living long enough to ensure that when you finally stood your ground…
the other guy was the one who ran out of options.
“One day, Brakka,” Kallard whispered into the quiet cabin, his right hand clenching into a tight, heavy fist.
“One day…
I’m not going to have to pull my throttles back when those white ships clear the upper atmosphere.”
Brakka let out a long, dry snort, tossing the remaining roll of medical tape back onto his tool rack.
“Wonderful, kid.
Put that specific project on your long-range target list, right below ‘replace the primary hyperdrive coolant pump’ and ‘stop naming your energy blasts like a dramatic teenager in a holovid chronicle.’ Until that day clears the gates…
we stay in the dark lanes, we hit the low-priority targets, we collect the data chips, and we build your baseline strength until the container is solid enough to hold the fire.”
He turned his four eyes toward the shivering accountant sitting in the restraint chair, his mouth splitting into a wide, malicious grin that revealed his sharp yellow teeth.
“Now then, master Vesh…
let’s speak plain about the metrics on those silver cases of yours.
Start with the Frieza Force payroll codes, move along to the hidden logistics depot coordinates in Sector 9, and then explain exactly what kind of encryption keys you took from the captain’s terminal.
If I resolve a single drop of false data clearing your lips…
I’m going to let my green-eyed boy out here practice his new *Galaxy Breaker* compression sequence right next to your long gray nose.”
Kallard raised a single thick eyebrow, his smirk returning to his face as he leaned back against the wall.
Marn Vesh swallowed hard, his orange eyes darting toward the smoking green score marks covering Kallard’s chest plates, before his mouth opened and he started talking.
He talked for forty-three uninterrupted minutes, his voice a frantic, desperate drone that laid out every single secret he had taken from the empire’s ledgers—including an imperial report detailing a low-level officer named Cui purchasing bootleg scouter processors, a regional inspection schedule for general Zarbon’s transport wing, and a minor tracking log confirming that general Dodoria was still holding a massive, multi-sector personal grudge against *”some unknown low-class thief who stole an enforcer’s space pod and left him stranded on a fungal moon three years ago.”*
Kallard let out a short, genuine laugh at that particular line of the data, his fingers gently tracing the smooth violet Yardrat stone hidden inside his tunic lining.
“Don’t go getting nostalgic about an old attempted execution file, boy,” Brakka grunted, recording the last payroll code line on his data slate with a sharp click of his finger.
“We’ve got a long road ahead of our nozzles before this ledger is completely cleared.”
Kallard stood up from the med bench, his baseline power level inside his head settling back down onto a solid, newly integrated peak of seven thousand four hundred units of raw output—a quiet, steady growth born of honest labor and sharp discipline.
He looked out through the viewscreen at the open galaxy stretching out before his ship, his fist closing tight around his belt pouch.
He was still a long, bloody road away from that blue-and-white planet named Earth, and he was nowhere near ready to face the high-level horrors waiting for his lineage in the core worlds.
But tonight…
as the *Wayfarer* vanished into the quiet dark between the suns…
Ronin knew that he had just cleared the most difficult baseline test of all: he had learned how to turn his back on a fire to ensure he was the one who held the road until the final act started.
And one day…
the Ginyu Force would look back at the red dust of Veyra-Tal and deeply regret that they hadn’t looked a hell of a lot closer into the canyon shadows before they opened their hatch doors.