The Galactic Patrol Internal Affairs Office did not have windows.
Jaco thought that was an absolute tragedy.
In his professional opinion, any proper law enforcement office worth its funding should have windows.
Preferably large ones, polished ones, heroic ones that stretched from the floor to the high ceiling.
Windows gave an elite officer the perfect opportunity to stand dramatically with his hands resting on his hips, his cape catching the light of a distant star, while delivering an incredibly important, spine-tingling speech about the unyielding march of cosmic justice.
Windows also gave you something very interesting to look at when a conversation inside the room started turning entirely too uncomfortable.
This room had nothing of the sort.
There were only four flat gray walls made from soundproof synthetic polymer, a cold silver table that had small, jagged scratches near the edges from years of old handcuffs, three hard metal chairs that offered zero lumbar support, a single overhead halogen light that hummed with a flat, annoying pitch, and two Galactic Patrol investigators who looked like they had collectively forgotten that laughter was a biological possibility.
Jaco sat on his side of the silver table, keeping his back perfectly straight, his chin tilted upward at a very dignified angle, and his white-gloved hands folded neatly over his lap.
He was trying his absolute best to project the deep, unshakeable calm of a seasoned warrior-poet, combined with the pure, legal innocence of a man who had definitely not been hanging upside down from a dirty ceiling hook by his ankles less than three standard hours ago.
Across from him sat Investigator Maalo.
She was tall, sharp-featured, blue-skinned, and terrifying in the specific way only a no-nonsense woman with perfect posture, a tightly pinned hair-bun, and immediate access to disciplinary suspension forms could be.
Her dark blue Patrol uniform didn’t have a single wrinkle on it.
Her eyes were completely devoid of mercy.
Her mouth was set in a thin, hard line that looked like it had once attempted to smile during her childhood, immediately regretted the lack of discipline, and filed a formal complaint against itself.
Beside her sat her partner, Investigator Regg.
He was a small, round alien with pale yellow skin, large glossy black eyes, and three delicate, wire-like antennae protruding from the top of his bald head.
Regg had not looked up from his digital datapad once since Jaco had walked into the room.
His thick fingers moved constantly over the glowing blue screen, creating a relentless, rhythmic sound.
*Tap.
Tap.
Tap.*
Jaco absolutely hated the tapping.
It didn’t sound like typing; it sounded like the slow, steady approach of professional consequences.
Maalo reached out with a long, blue finger and slid a small, silver recording orb into the exact center of the table.
The device clicked twice, a soft green light activating on its rim to signal that the audio log was running.
“Patrolman Jaco,” Maalo began, her voice a flat, level rasp that sounded like dry paper sliding across iron.
“This is a formal internal incident review regarding your unauthorized, solo infiltration of Varkos Rill’s commercial supply vessel, your subsequent forty-two-minute disappearance from all standard Patrol communication frequencies, and the ultimate capture of Varkos Rill by a currently unregistered, unlicensed independent bounty hunter known in the border sectors only as Ronin.”
Jaco blinked his large, yellow eyes.
Then, he let out a short, breezy laugh and adjusted the silver ridges on his ears.
“A small, minor correction, if I may, Investigator.”
Maalo just stared at him, her eyelids not moving a millimeter.
Jaco lifted one white-gloved finger into the air, leaning forward slightly.
“The successful capture of the notorious arms dealer Varkos Rill was entirely made possible by my elite, highly calculated tactical operation.
The civilian bounty hunter you mentioned merely rendered a small amount of minor, secondary assistance after I had already systematically created the strategic opportunity for an arrest.”
Regg’s fingers stopped moving over his screen.
For the first time since the interview began, his yellow face tilted upward, his three antennae rotating like independent radar dishes as he looked at Jaco.
Maalo didn’t say a word.
The silence stretched between them for five heavy seconds, the overhead halogen light humming its flat tune.
Jaco cleared his throat nervously, his finger slowly lowering back to the table.
“Very minor assistance, mind you.
Mostly just handling the doors and a couple of the low-tier guards while I was…
occupying the leadership.”
Regg let out a soft, wet sigh through his nose, looked back down at his datapad, and resumed his work.
*Tap.
Tap.
Tap.*
Maalo leaned back in her hard chair, crossing her blue arms over her chest insignia.
“Start from the very beginning, Patrolman.”
Jaco nodded solemnly, his chest puffing out beneath his white tunic.
“Of course.
The beginning.
An excellent place to begin a chronicle of triumph.
I actually chose that starting point myself during my initial mental draft of the report.”
Maalo’s face remained as rigid as a stone fortress.
“We are waiting, Jaco.”
## Act I: The Grime of Kessik Yard
“I had been tracking the movements of Varkos Rill for three standard weeks,” Jaco said, his voice taking on a grand, theatrical quality that belonged in a holovid theater rather than a windowless gray box.
“He is an arms dealer of the lowest order.
A smuggler.
A black-market supplier.
An incredibly slippery individual who has slipped through the nets of three separate planetary sectors.
He specializes in the distribution of illegal heavy blasters, modified neural restraint collars, bootleg imperial scouter upgrades, false ship registration codes, encrypted Frieza Force routing keys, and quite possibly, a massive shipment of counterfeit luxury snacks.”
Regg’s antennae twitched, and he looked up again.
“Snacks?”
Jaco pointed a stern finger across the table at him.
“Do not underestimate the destabilizing nature of snack fraud, Investigator Regg!
When a hard-working freighter crew opens a crate expecting high-grade caramel nutrient bars and finds nothing but compressed chalk and flavored moss, it completely destroys their operational morale!
It is a gateway crime to full-scale piracy!”
Maalo slammed her palm flat against the silver table.
It wasn’t a loud strike, but the sheer authority behind it made Jaco jump an inch out of his seat.
“Stay with the weapons, Patrolman.
We don’t care about the candy.”
“Yes.
Naturally.
Staying with the high-caliber ordnance,” Jaco said quickly, smoothing down the front of his uniform with a slightly trembling hand.
“Varkos Rill was no common street criminal.
He possessed direct, established connections to several low-priority Frieza Force purchasing cells operating along the border lanes.
He was being paid handsomely by Lord Frieza’s regional logistics officers to move heavy military equipment through neutral, independent spaceways where an official imperial transport ship would attract too much attention from our local long-range scanners.”
Maalo’s eyes narrowed by a fraction of an inch.
That part of the story, unfortunately for her desire to throw Jaco into a detention cell, was entirely true.
The Galactic Patrol’s intelligence files had been tracking Varkos Rill for months for that exact reason.
The silver-skinned smuggler was dangerous precisely because he was useful to the empire.
He wasn’t physically strong, he had zero concept of warrior honor, and he wasn’t even particularly brave when a blaster was pointed at his chest.
But the man could get his hands on anything, anywhere, for the right price.
He could find you surplus blasters from dead moons that had been wiped out ten years ago.
He could get you high-grade medical pods stolen from imperial medical convoys before the tracking signatures were even logged.
He could find you batches of old scouters with their factory registries completely wiped and reprogrammed to ignore regional identification keys.
He could get his hands on old Cold Force armor plates from abandoned storehouses, illegal power-dampening fields, and those horrific, heavy metal restraint collars utilized by private slave militias and border syndicates to keep their laborers from mounting a defense.
If an outlaw crew had the credits, Varkos had the merchandise.
And if an outlaw crew had no credits, Varkos was more than happy to buy the crew themselves and sell them off to the nearest deep-core mining operation.
“My investigation led me straight to an incredibly ugly, lawless asteroid-port known as Kessik Yard,” Jaco continued, his eyes rolling toward the ceiling as he visualised the place.
“A miserable, hollowed-out chunk of volcanic rock floating on the absolute edge of Sector 9.
The entire structure is nothing but a chaotic hive of illegal docking tunnels, flickering neon signs written in seven different unregistered dialects, terrible air ventilation scrubbers that smell constantly of burnt copper and stale grease, and individuals who look incredibly guilty even while they are completely asleep.”
In Jaco’s official, highly romanticized retelling of the event, he had entered the lawless asteroid port like a blinding ray of pure, unyielding justice made flesh, his golden boots striking the metal grates of the promenade with a sound that made the local cutthroats tremble in their boots.
In actual, gritty reality, he had miscalculated the pressure variance on his ship’s docking clamp, entered the station through a secondary airlock that was currently designated for waste disposal, tripped over a loose high-pressure fuel hose within three steps of the threshold, and spent the first four minutes of his elite mission screaming at a broken vending machine because it refused to accept his official Galactic Patrol credit chip for a bottle of sparkling water.
But Internal Affairs didn’t need to be burdened with those kinds of minor operational details.
“I infiltrated the primary cargo sector of Kessik Yard with absolute, textbook precision,” Jaco declared, puffing his small chest out until his tunic stretched.
Regg quietly tapped his screen three times, his face completely expressionless.
“By absolute precision, Patrolman Jaco, do you mean to say you entered through the primary maintenance access hatch of Docking Bay Nine?”
Jaco froze, his yellow eyes widening slightly as his hands locked around the edges of his chair.
“I…
yes.
Docking Bay Nine was an integral part of my approach vector.”
“Your official flight log states that your patrol vessel was registered and locked at Docking Bay Six,” Maalo noted, her voice dripping with a cold, bureaucratic malice.
“Which is on the complete opposite side of the asteroid structure.”
Jaco’s mouth opened.
Then it closed.
Then it opened again, his brain working at maximum capacity to spin the data.
“A decoy!
A brilliant, masterfully executed tactical decoy!
I left my ship at Bay Six to confuse the local syndicate scouts, forcing them to focus their surveillance on a stationary target while I moved on foot!”
Maalo leaned forward, her blue face illuminated by the harsh light of the recording orb.
“Jaco.
Investigator Regg is looking at the station’s layout manifest right now.
The access hatch for Docking Bay Nine isn’t a corridor.
It is a three-foot-wide exhaust vent for the station’s primary commercial laundry facilities.”
Jaco raised a single, defensive finger into the air, his tone turning remarkably sharp.
“Exactly!
No one expects the unyielding hand of galactic justice to emerge from a pile of low-class industrial laundry, Investigator!
It is the absolute pinnacle of stealth doctrine!
Subsection 4-B of the training manual explicitly states that an officer must utilize every available environmental feature to maintain the element of surprise!”
Maalo rubbed the bridge of her blue nose with her thumb and forefinger, her breath coming in a long, exhausted hiss.
“Just continue with the narrative, Patrolman.
Before I decide to revoke your fuel allowance for the next three cycles.”
## Act II: The Smuggler’s Manifest
Jaco cleared his throat, smoothing down his bandana and settling back into his chair with as much dignity as he could muster.
“Very well.
Having successfully navigated the laundry ingress vector, I established a secure observation post from an immediate position of concealment.”
He had, technically.
The position of concealment was a massive, eight-foot-wide wire bin full of coarse, gray industrial blankets caked in dry lint and machine oil that he had accidentally fallen into face-first after sliding out of the exhaust chute.
But as far as he was concerned, if a criminal couldn’t see you, it was a tactical blind.
From his position within the coarse fabric, Jaco had peeked through a gap in the wire mesh, his yellow eyes locking onto the center of the cargo deck.
Varkos Rill was standing there, surrounded by crates.
The smuggler was a narrow, elongated creature with shimmering, silver-colored skin that looked like polished tin, a long, flexible neck that kept turning from side to side, and four thin, multi-jointed arms that moved with a frantic, nervous energy.
His bright orange eyes were wide and unblinking, tracking the movements of his workers.
He was wearing an incredibly expensive, long silk coat lined with hidden personal shield generators that crackled with a faint blue light whenever he moved too fast.
A pair of heavy, custom plasma blasters hung from low-slung leather holsters at his hips, and a small, spherical security drone orb hovered near his left shoulder, its red lens scanning the shadows for intruders.
Moving around the silver merchant was a personal guard detail consisting of eight heavily armed thugs.
Two of them were massive, green-scaled reptilian mercenaries from the outer rim systems, their thick hides caked in gray salt deposits, both carrying heavy pulse rifles that hummed with unstable battery cycles.
Three more were short, blocky, thick-bodied aliens from a high-gravity moon, their muscles packed dense beneath leather vests, each carrying an iron stun baton that crackled with orange electricity.
Standing at the rear of the group was a colossal, horned brute with stone-like gray skin and a primitive, hand-cranked shoulder mortar that smelled strongly of sulfur and old gunpowder.
And completing the squad were two genuine Frieza Force deserters, still wearing their scuffed, white-and-brown imperial chest pieces, though they had attempted to scrape the official Lord Frieza insignia off the center plates using a rough hand file.
They had done such a terrible job of it that anyone with a working eye could still see the exact shape of the imperial seal beneath the scratches.
Varkos Rill held a digital scouter in his upper left hand, while his lower right hand checked off items on a glowing datapad manifest.
“This primary shipment needs to be loaded onto the southern transport before the station’s next rotation cycle,” Varkos growled, his voice a high, wheezing whistle that sounded like steam leaking from a pipe.
“The neural restraint collars go straight to the mining guild representative at Platform Four.
The upgraded scouter batch needs to be delivered to the Frieza Force relay station in Sector 12.
Do not mix the crates up again like you idiots did last week.
Last time, one of the loaders tried to scan a high-value political prisoner with a high-voltage neck restraint collar because he couldn’t read the labels.”
One of the blocky thugs let out a loud, stupid laugh, slapping his thick knee.
Varkos turned his long, silver neck around slowly, his orange eyes locking onto the laughing guard with a freezing intensity.
The thug’s laughter died instantly, his hand dropping back to his stun baton as he looked down at the floor grates.
“I absolutely hate comedy,” Varkos whistled through his teeth, his four arms adjusting his coat.
“Comedy is bad for the margins.
If I want entertainment, I’ll buy a circus moon.
Pack the crates.”
Jaco, burrowed deep within the lint-covered blankets inside the wire bin, let out a tiny, involuntary whisper.
“Same.
Real professionalism is entirely dead in this sector.”
And then, his wrist communicator beeped.
Loudly.
*BEEP.
BEEP.*
It was the automated check-in reminder from the Patrol’s central sector hub—a pre-programmed signal that Jaco had completely forgotten to silence before entering the exhaust vent.
The sound cut through the quiet, humming air of the cargo bay like a physical blow.
Every single guard stopped what they were doing, their heads snapping around in perfect unison toward the wire laundry bin.
Varkos Rill’s silver neck elongated by three inches, his orange eyes locking onto the wire structure while his security drone orb zoomed forward, its red scanning beam illuminating the gray blankets.
The two reptilian mercenaries immediately raised their heavy pulse rifles, the barrels glowing with a dangerous blue energy as they clicked off their safety selectors.
Jaco realized, with the brilliant clarity of an elite officer, that his masterfully arranged ambush had reached its execution phase a fraction of a second early.
He threw the gray blankets aside, emerging from the wire bin with all the grand, dramatic dignity he could manage while covered in a substantial layer of white dryer lint.
“Criminals!” Jaco declared, thrusting his right hand out to draw his standard-issue Galactic Patrol blaster, his voice echoing off the iron walls.
“You have been officially cornered by the unyielding, elite hand of the law!
I am Patrolman Jaco, and you are all under formal galactic arrest!”
A heavy, dead silence fell over the cargo bay.
The eight guards looked at the small, white-skinned alien standing in the laundry bin, then looked at each other, their faces filled with a profound, unadulterated confusion.
Varkos Rill blinked his orange eyes twice, his silver hands dropping to his sides.
“Who the hell is this guy?
Is he part of the station’s cleaning staff?”
The insult pierced straight through Jaco’s professional pride.
“I am an elite officer, you four-armed merchant of misery!” he screamed, his finger tightening around the trigger of his blaster.
He fired.
The bright blue stun shot streaked across the dark cargo deck, clean, true, and perfectly aimed.
It struck the closest reptilian mercenary directly in the center of his salt-crusted chest plate.
A massive web of blue electricity crawled across the armor, the mercenary’s body turning completely rigid as his scales smoked, before he collapsed face-first onto the metal floorboards like a chopped tree.
It was an excellent shot.
An incredibly heroic shot that would have looked magnificent on a recruiting poster.
Emboldened by his immediate success, Jaco attempted to execute a high-level tactical leap onto a nearby stack of cargo crates to claim the high ground for his next engagement.
Unfortunately, the corner of his left boot caught on the edge of one of the gray industrial blankets still dragging behind his heel.
Instead of a majestic, soaring leap, Jaco flipped forward through the air completely upside down, his blaster firing twice by pure accident into the ceiling.
The stray shots struck the main localized power transformer for the bay, resulting in a massive flash of green sparks and a loud *pop*.
The primary overhead lights died instantly, plunging the entire cargo bay into a deep, dim red glow provided by the station’s automated emergency backup generators.
Jaco completed his flight by crashing face-first onto the hard metal floorboards, his blaster skidding away across the deck into the dark shadows.
“Get that little idiot,” Varkos Rill said, his wheezing voice sounding thoroughly bored.
## Act III: The Art of Tactical Suspension
Back in the internal review room, Jaco leaned forward over the silver table, spreading his white-gloved hands with an air of complete, undeniable satisfaction.
“And that, Investigators, is the exact moment where I allowed the criminal syndicate to believe they had completely overwhelmed my position.
It was an essential phase of the operation.”
Maalo did not move a single muscle in her blue face.
She slowly folded her arms back over her chest, her voice sounding colder than the ice moons of Cryon.
“Essential, Patrolman?”
“Yes.
Absolutely crucial to the final outcome.”
Regg looked up from his screen, his three wire antennae twitching in a slow circle.
“Crucial to what, exactly?”
“To the plan, Investigator Regg.”
“What plan?”
“The advanced, multi-tiered tactical plan that I had been developing since my ingress through the laundry facilities,” Jaco said, his chin rising with an arrogant tilt.
Maalo’s eyes narrowed into two dangerous, blue slits.
“Patrolman Jaco.
Let us review the objective facts of your ‘advanced plan.’ In order to gather evidence from within the smuggling vessel, you initiated what you are calling a tactical hostage maneuver?”
Regg’s fingers stopped moving over his datapad again.
He stared at Jaco with a look of pure, unadulterated marvel.
“You were completely disarmed,” Maalo noted, her voice flat.
“Strategically disarmed,” Jaco corrected her instantly, lifting a finger.
“It removed their immediate sense of caution, making them overconfident and talkative.”
“You were slapped with a class-four neural restraint collar,” Maalo continued.
“And then you were suspended completely upside down from a heavy-duty moving cargo hook in the center of the hold by your ankles.”
“A superior vantage point for observation,” Jaco declared proudly, crossing his arms over his chest as best as he could while sitting down.
“It allowed me to inspect the structural welds on their lower hull plates and monitor the exact distribution of their black-market inventory without attracting suspicion.”
Regg let out another soft sigh, his fingers returning to his screen with a fast, angry rhythm.
“I am recording that specific phrase in the official archives under the heading: ‘Unprecedented Operational Delusion.’ Please let me know if you would like me to capitalize the letters, Patrolman.”
The actual, physical reality of the capture had been significantly less elegant than Jaco was willing to admit to the Internal Affairs board.
The moment the lights had gone red, one of the thick-bodied thugs had stepped up behind Jaco while he was still trying to untangle his boot from the gray blanket, driving a heavy iron stun baton straight into the small of his back.
A massive surge of orange electricity had slammed into Jaco’s nervous system, causing his limbs to lock up instantly as his blaster dropped from his fingers with a metallic *clank*.
The massive, horned brute had stepped out of the shadows, reaching down with one giant, stone-like hand to grab Jaco by the back of his white collar, lifting him off the floorboards like a misbehaving domestic pet.
Jaco had tried to execute a high-level defensive kick toward the brute’s jaw, but his locked muscles had only managed a weak, pathetic twitch that didn’t even clear the man’s chest armor.
The brute had looked down at him with a completely unimpressed, deadpan stare, his single horn glinting in the red emergency light.
Jaco had let out a small, high-pitched, nervous laugh, trying to adjust his silver ears with his thoughts.
“You…
you have made a completely terrible mistake, my large friend.
A mistake of galactic proportions.”
Varkos Rill had walked up to him slowly, his four arms tucked neatly inside his shimmering silver coat, his orange eyes wide and filled with a mild, mocking curiosity.
“Have I really, little white bug?
Let’s look at the parameters: I am currently standing on my own deck surrounded by seven armed men and twelve crates of unregistered military technology, and you are currently hanging from my loader’s hand like a sack of dry moss.
Which part of this equation looks like a mistake to you?”
“Several parts!” Jaco had shouted back, his voice cracking slightly under the pressure of the brute’s grip.
“First of all, the design choices on your coat are entirely too shiny for a proper criminal operation; it creates an immediate visual marker for sniper units!
Second of all, your men possess a completely pathetic lack of modern formation discipline; they are practically standing on top of each other!
Third of all, I am an elite Galactic Patrolman with a personal record of over forty successful arrests, and fourth of all…
when my massive tactical backup detail drops out of hyperspace in about three minutes, you are going to deeply regret—”
*CLACK.*
Before Jaco could finish his sentence, Varkos Rill had reached out with his upper right hand, snapping a thick, heavy matte-black iron restraint collar straight around Jaco’s neck.
The heavy metal ring locked into place with a sharp, pneumatic hiss, the internal power cells immediately activating a high-frequency dampening field that traveled down Jaco’s spine.
His voice cut off instantly with a small, pathetic squeak, his vocal cords completely paralyzed by the local neural suppression wave.
Varkos Rill had smiled, a small, wheezing whistle of a laugh escaping his silver teeth.
“I sell these exact models to the deep-core mining syndicates down in Sector 12, little bug.
I know exactly how many volts it takes to keep a big talker from ruining my margins.
Toss him into the ship’s cargo bay.
We can figure out if he’s worth a ransom from the Patrol hub later, after the Frieza transport clears the gate.”
The guards had broken out into a loud, coarse chorus of laughter as Jaco was dragged up the ship’s primary boarding ramp.
They searched him thoroughly, stripping him of his two hidden backup blasters, his emergency survival beacon capsule, his official identity chip, three compressed fruit-paste snack capsules, and a tiny, silver tactical comb that he had spent ten minutes insisting was a standard-issue piece of elite survival equipment necessary for maintaining aerodynamic efficiency.
Then, they had secured his ankles with a pair of heavy iron chains and attached him directly to a moving cargo hook hanging from the ceiling rails of the ship’s primary storage hold.
He hung there completely upside down, suspended four feet above the metal deck plates, his tattered cape falling over his face until he managed to clear his vision with a furious shake of his head.
The indignity of the position was absolutely severe.
He was an elite officer of the galaxy, hanging from a common iron hook like a piece of salted meat inside a butcher’s freighter.
Varkos Rill had stepped into the cargo hold one last time before locking the heavy bulkhead doors, his orange eyes looking at Jaco as the small Patrolman swung slowly back and forth like a pendulum in the dim red light.
“Comfortable enough for you, officer?
The ventilation in this bay is a bit dry, but it keeps the dust off the merchandise.”
Jaco had managed to glare through his mask, his neural collar clicking as the internal power cells hummed against his throat.
He couldn’t speak, but he forced his lips to form a series of silent, highly offensive words that translated roughly to an ancient planetary insult regarding Varkos’s mother and a broken hydro-wrench.
Varkos had simply smiled, adjusting his silver sleeves as he turned back toward the corridor.
“Justice is a very pretty word, little bug.
But unfortunately for you and your uniform…
justice isn’t listed on today’s manifest.”
The heavy iron bulkhead doors had slid shut with a loud, mechanical *thud-lock*, leaving Jaco completely alone in the red twilight of the hold with two armed guards sitting on a pair of crates near the exit, playing a boring game of chance with a set of electronic dice.
## Act IV: The Ingress of the Ronin
For the next forty-two minutes, Jaco had conducted what he later formally defined to the Internal Affairs investigators as an extensive campaign of high-level psychological warfare.
Given that his vocal cords were completely suppressed by the neural collar, this campaign had primarily involved a relentless, unyielding series of intensely aggressive facial expressions, rhythmic wiggling of his silver ears, and occasional attempts to swing his entire body back and forth on the cargo hook to disrupt the guards’ concentration.
“He was completely silent, Maalo,” Regg noted, checking a separate file on his slate.
“The ship’s internal security logs show that the target didn’t utter a single sound during the entire duration of his confinement.”
“A tactical silence!” Jaco shouted, slamming his fist against his knee.
“An intensely intimidating, masterfully executed display of mental discipline!
I could tell from the way those two guards kept checking their dice that they were completely unnerved by my unblinking gaze!
They were practically on the verge of a psychological breakdown!”
“They were actually ignoring you completely, Patrolman,” Maalo said, her flat voice cutting through his excitement like a laser through butter.
“According to the audio logs we recovered from the ship’s bridge, one of the guards actually asked his partner if they could throw a blanket over your head because the constant swinging was creating an annoying reflection on his dice monitor.”
Jaco deflated slightly, his shoulders dropping as his mouth twitched.
“A…
a minor misinterpretation of the data by the local recording units, no doubt.
The sensors in those low-tier smuggler ships are notoriously prone to environmental interference.”
He cleared his throat quickly, eager to move past the suspension phase.
“Regardless of their internal emotional states, my tactical observation window reached its planned conclusion when the entire vessel suddenly experienced a massive, violent structural impact.”
It hadn’t been a standard docking maneuver or the gentle shudder of a ship clearing an asteroid gate.
It had been a massive, bone-rattling explosion that roared through the outer hull plates of the smuggler vessel, causing the primary emergency lights on the bridge to flicker twice and die completely, leaving only the dim, pulsing red emergency beacons to illuminate the cargo hold.
Jaco had been sent into a wild, uncontrolled three-hundred-and-sixty-degree spin on his iron hook, his cape wrapping around his face until he managed to kick his legs straight to stabilize his rotation.
One of the guards sitting on the crates had dropped his electronic dice, his face turning pale as he scrambled to his feet, grabbing his plasma rifle from the wall rack.
“What the hell was that?
Did the station’s automated defense turrets just lock onto our signature?”
Varkos Rill’s wheezing voice had suddenly crackled through the ship’s primary internal communication speakers, his tone completely stripped of its previous bored confidence, turning into a frantic, high-pitched scream.
“Who the hell is firing on my hull?
Get the secondary shields online!
There’s a black cutter docked at Platform Nine, and someone’s tearing through the main loading bay doors with high-caliber ordnance!
All units to the primary ramp—”
*BOOM.*
Before the speaker line could even cut off, a secondary explosion, infinitely louder and more concussive than the first, had ripped straight through the ship’s primary cargo doors at the far end of the hold.
The heavy, five-inch-thick reinforced titanium bulkhead doors didn’t just slide open; they completely blew inward, the locking seams turning white-hot before the metal plates sheared apart under the immense pressure of a brilliant, green-white ki blast.
One of the massive iron doors went spinning across the deck like a tossed coin, crushing a stack of weapon crates into splinters before embedding itself three inches deep into the structural wall.
The secondary door flew straight toward the rear of the bay, striking the massive, horned brute who had just stepped into the room, the sheer force of the impact launching his four-hundred-pound frame through a pile of stolen scouter monitors before he hit the deck and stayed perfectly still.
A thick, boiling cloud of black smoke and ionized ozone filled the entrance of the bay, the red emergency light casting long, demonic shadows through the mist.
A single figure stepped through the ruined threshold, his combat boots clacking against the metal floorboards with a slow, heavy, and completely unhurried rhythm.
He was tall, broad-shouldered, and carried himself with the cold, absolute certainty of an apex predator walking into a familiar hunting ground.
He was wearing a heavily modified, scuffed suit of matte-black chest armor lined with deep green trim along the ribs—armor that looked like it had spent years absorbing plasma fire and asteroid grit.
A long, tattered dark gray canvas cloak hung loosely over his left shoulder, hiding the contours of his torso and his waist from view, while a thick black bandana was tied tight around his forehead, keeping his wild, short-cropped black hair out of his eyes.
Clipped to his thick leather utility belt was an old, scratched red-lens scouter that was currently clicking with data, its small screen illuminating the side of his dark jaw with a faint crimson light.
It was Ronin.
Kallard, though Jaco wouldn’t learn his real name for years to come.
The young bounty hunter didn’t look like a hero from a holovid.
He looked like a scrapper who had crawled out of a junk pile specifically to collect a debt.
His dark eyes scanned the interior of the cargo hold with a calm, almost bored expression, his power level suppressed down to its deceptive baseline of nine hundred, making him look completely harmless to any automated scanning grid.
Then, his head tilted upward, his dark pupils locking onto the small, white-skinned alien currently hanging upside down from an iron cargo hook in the center of the room.
Jaco stared back at him through his purple mask, his silver ears twitching as he tried to project an aura of intense, authoritative command despite being completely inverted.
Ronin stopped walking, his hands resting loosely by his sides as he checked the digital display on his wrist monitor.
He looked back up at Jaco, a dry, flat tone escaping his lips.
“Galactic Patrol?”
Jaco tried to fold his arms across his chest to show his elite status, but the physics of hanging upside down caused his cape to instantly fall back over his eyes.
He cleared his vision with a frantic shake of his head, his face turning a light shade of pink.
He couldn’t speak through the collar, but he managed a single, sharp nod of his head, trying to convey the phrase: *Yes, officer, I have the situation completely under control; you may join my detail.*
Ronin’s gaze drifted slowly down the length of the iron chains, noting the heavy locks around Jaco’s ankles, then slid back to the two armed guards who were currently trembling behind a stack of crates, their plasma rifles aimed straight at his chest plate.
A dry, hollow smirk touched the corner of the hunter’s mouth.
“Clearly.
You’ve got them right where you want them.”
## Act V: Choreography of the Warhound
The closest guard, a thin, four-armed mercenary with jagged black teeth, let out a terrified shriek and pulled the trigger of his plasma rifle.
*ZAP.*
A bright, superheated red bolt of plasma tore through the black smoke, a hot line of lethal energy aimed straight for the center of Ronin’s chest plate.
Ronin didn’t panic.
He didn’t execute a dramatic, high-flying flip or scream a battle cry.
He simply shifted his weight one inch to the right—a microscopic, incredibly efficient movement that allowed the plasma bolt to zip past his left shoulder guard close enough to singe the edge of his gray cloak, before it exploded harmlessly against the structural wall behind him.
Before the guard could even reset his weapon’s charging handle, Ronin vanished from the threshold.
*Hiss.*
The movement was so blindingly fast that Jaco’s yellow eyes couldn’t even track the blur.
A sudden vacuum of air rushed through the smoke cloud, and Ronin reappeared directly in front of the four-armed mercenary.
He didn’t use a massive energy beam; he simply dropped his shoulder low, drove his right fist straight into the center of the guard’s rifle receiver, and exploded his ki outward in a tight, localized pulse.
*CRUNCH.*
The heavy steel plasma rifle didn’t just break; it completely collapsed inward under the sheer density of the blow, the internal battery cells exploding in a bright flash of orange sparks that scorched the guard’s hands.
The concussive force of the strike traveled straight up the mercenary’s arms and into his chest, launching his body twenty feet across the hold where he slammed into a metal support pillar and dropped into the dirt, completely unconscious.
The second guard, a short, blocky thug from the high-gravity system, let out an angry roar and lunged forward from behind the crates, swinging his heavy iron stun baton through the air in a wide, vicious arc aimed straight for Ronin’s knee joint.
The baton crackled with thousands of volts of orange electricity, the air humming with ozone.
Ronin didn’t step back.
He stepped *into* the attack.
He caught the guard’s thick wrist mid-swing with his left hand, his callused fingers locking around the leather sleeve like an iron vice.
The brute strength of the Saiyan biology made the guard’s arm freeze instantly in mid-air, the orange stun baton hovering three inches from Ronin’s leg, unable to move a millimeter further.
Ronin pivoted on his heel, his left shoulder driving deep into the guard’s chest to break his balance, while his right elbow snapped upward in a sharp, mechanical arc that struck the thug squarely beneath the jaw.
*THUD.*
The sound of the impact was dense and heavy, the sheer physical weight behind the blow lifting the blocky, two-hundred-pound mercenary completely off the deck plates before he crashed back down into the metal floor like a sack of lead, his stun baton skidding away into the dark corners of the hold.
Fast.
Quiet.
Completely efficient.
There wasn’t a single wasted movement, a single dramatic pose, or a single second spent boasting about his power.
The young hunter fought like a machine designed specifically to clear a room without attracting attention.
Jaco, still suspended upside down from his cargo hook, blinked his large eyes through his mask.
*Okay,* the small Patrolman thought to himself, his silver ears twitching with a very reluctant appreciation.
*Slightly impressive.
For an amateur civilian scrapper, his physical density parameters are remarkably high.*
Suddenly, a loud, mechanical clicking sound echoed from the ceiling of the hold.
A heavy-duty, automated automated twin-laser defense turret dropped down from a concealed ceiling panel directly above the center rail, its automated tracking sensors glowing with a bright, dangerous red light as it locked onto Ronin’s energy signature.
Ronin looked up, his dark eyes narrowing as the turret’s primary barrels began to glow with a bright, superheated blue light.
*Pew-pew-pew-pew!*
A relentless, heavy torrent of high-caliber laser rounds rained down across the cargo hold, tearing massive, smoking holes through the metal deck plates and turning the nearby supply crates into clouds of burning splinters.
Ronin moved through the path of fire in short, explosive bursts of speed.
He didn’t fly; he stayed low to the ground, his combat boots pushing off the iron floorboards with enough force to leave shallow dents in the alloy grates.
He shifted left, pivoted right, vanished into a complete blur for half a second, and reappeared three meters away at a completely different tactical angle, the blue laser rounds striking the floor exactly where his boots had been a microsecond earlier.
One stray laser round grazed the edge of his left shoulder plate, chipping away a chunk of the deep green paint and leaving a glowing red score mark across the alloy, but Ronin didn’t even flinch.
He kept his focus locked on the machine above.
He skidded to a halt beneath a heavy cargo rack, brought his right hand down to his waist, and focused his mind, his breathing dropping into that slow, rhythmic cadence he had practiced in the desert.
“Let’s see if the alignment holds under pressure,” he muttered to himself.
Five tiny, marble-sized spheres of brilliant green ki energy formed in a neat, rotating row along his right forearm, hovering just above his skin.
They hummed with a high-pitched, vibrating whine that filled the entire hold, the localized heat vaporizing the white laundry lint still floating through the air.
*Starfall.*
Ronin thrust his right arm upward, his fingers snapping open like a claw.
The five green marbles of energy fired in perfect, rapid succession, traveling up toward the ceiling turret like a string of tracer rounds.
The first two spheres struck the turret’s primary automated energy shield, causing the blue force field to flare violently before shattering into a cloud of harmless static sparks.
The third and fourth rounds drilled clean through the heavy iron emitter mounts on the side of the casing, the intense heat melting the primary control circuits instantly.
The fifth and final round punched directly into the barrel housing, detonating inside the main battery core with a spectacular, deafening roar.
The automated turret burst completely apart, raining hot shards of scrap metal, copper wiring, and smoking circuit boards all over the central deck plates.
Ronin dropped his arm, a single trail of sweat running down his dark cheek as his breath came a fraction faster.
He didn’t check the wreckage; his eyes snapped straight back toward the upper walkway at the rear of the hold.
Varkos Rill was standing there on the metal gantry, his long, silver neck fully elongated as his orange eyes bulged with pure, unadulterated panic.
His four thin arms were shaking violently, his upper left hand gripping a small, rectangular electronic remote control device with a single, large red button in the center.
“Stop right there, you black-armored freak!” Varkos shrieked, his wheezing voice cracking completely as he backed up against the gantry railing.
“One more step…
one more single movement toward this walkway, and I hit this primary toggle!
This remote is hard-synced straight to the Patrolman’s neural collar!
I’ll dump forty thousand volts of raw electricity straight into his brain stem!
He’ll turn into a smoking pile of white ash before you can even cross the deck!”
Ronin froze, his combat boots stopping exactly three inches from the edge of the turret’s smoking crater.
He didn’t look at Varkos; his eyes shifted sideways, locking onto the small, white-skinned alien still swinging back and forth on his hook like a pendulum.
Jaco’s yellow eyes widened behind his mask.
Through the glass, he could see the thick, matte-black ring around his neck begin to beep, a small red light on the rim flashing with a fast, dangerous rhythm that indicated an active command sequence.
The small Patrolman forced his face into a look of absolute, unyielding bravery, though his silver ears were vibrating with a substantial amount of biological terror.
He couldn’t speak, but he looked straight at Ronin, trying to project the phrase: *Do not be swayed by his pathetic leverage, civilian asset!
An elite officer is entirely prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of the archives!*
In reality, his internal thoughts were screaming something significantly simpler: *Please do not move!
Please do not move!
I am entirely too attractive and important to be turned into a pile of ash over a smuggling contract!*
## Act VI: The Kick and the Collar
Ronin stood perfectly still in the red twilight of the hold, his dark eyes tracking the silver merchant’s fingers on the remote control.
His scouter clicked twice, calculating the distance between his boots and the upper walkway—roughly fifteen meters at a forty-five-degree upward angle.
Against a normal opponent with a power level of twelve hundred, he could cross that distance in less than a hundredth of a second.
But Varkos Rill already had his thumb resting flat against the red button.
The muscle contraction required to press that switch took less than three milliseconds; if Ronin lunged, Jaco’s neck would snap before his boots even left the deck plates.
The young hunter’s mind worked with a cold, calculated precision that didn’t belong to a seventeen-year-old warrior.
He didn’t look at the remote anymore; his gaze flicked down toward the floor near his boots, noting the location of the short guard’s discarded plasma rifle, then shifted up toward the heavy-duty iron winch motor mounted on the ceiling rail directly above Jaco’s cargo hook.
He saw the calculation click together behind his eyes.
“You sell a lot of these neural collars, don’t you, Varkos?” Ronin asked, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that sounded remarkably calm, almost conversational, echoing through the quiet hold.
Varkos Rill blinked his orange eyes, his silver hand tightening around the remote.
“I…
I sell solutions to the mining guilds, you trash!
What’s it to you?”
“It means you’re an engineer,” Ronin said, taking a slow, casual breath.
“And an engineer always puts the primary receiver antenna at the top of the casing so the cargo containers don’t block the signal from the bridge.”
Varkos’s long neck twitched, his thumb shifting slightly on the red button as a sudden spike of confusion hit his panic.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the line of sight,” Ronin said.
His right boot suddenly snapped out.
It wasn’t a lunge toward the walkway.
He drove the heel of his combat boot straight into the stock of the guard’s discarded plasma rifle sitting in the dirt.
The heavy weapon spun upward into the air like a propeller, its metallic frame catching the red light of the emergency beacons as it rose toward the ceiling.
At the exact same instant, Ronin lifted his right hand, his middle finger snapping against his thumb with a sharp *crack*.
A tiny, microscopic needle-beam of green ki energy—no thicker than a piece of copper wire—shot from his fingertip, bypassing Varkos Rill completely.
The needle-beam struck the primary electronic control housing of the ceiling cargo winch directly above Jaco’s head.
*Zap.*
The internal electromagnetic gears inside the winch released instantly, the heavy iron brake pad snapping apart under the sudden loss of power.
The iron cargo hook dropped like a stone, the chains rushing down the rail with a loud, metallic scream.
Jaco fell.
“Ah!”
The sudden, vertical drop took him completely out of the remote control’s primary line of sight, his body falling four feet in a fraction of a second before hitting the hard metal deck plates with a loud, unglamorous *thud*.
Varkos Rill’s yellow eyes went completely wide with shock as his target vanished from his sights.
His thumb contracted automatically, slamming down onto the red button of the remote control.
*Click.*
But before the electronic command signal could even clear the remote’s transmitter chip, the spinning plasma rifle that Ronin had kicked into the air completed its arc.
The heavy iron barrel of the weapon struck the remote control directly out of Varkos’s silver hands, the sheer force of the impact shattering the plastic casing into a dozen tiny pieces and sending the battery cells flying across the gantry.
The red light on Jaco’s neural collar snuffed out instantly, the device returning to its passive dampening state.
Varkos Rill let out a high-pitched, pathetic wail of despair, looking down at his empty, bleeding silver hand.
“My…
my remote!
You crazy piece of—”
He didn’t get to finish his sentence.
Ronin vanished from the lower deck in a massive burst of concussive speed, the metal floorboards beneath his boots buckling downward from the sheer physical launch force.
He reappeared directly on the upper gantry walkway right in front of the arms dealer, his tattered cloak snapping through the red mist like a shadow.
Before Varkos could even lift his four arms to shield his face, Ronin drove his left fist straight into the center of the merchant’s silver stomach.
He didn’t use full power—he kept his output strictly controlled within his three thousand baseline to avoid turning the fragile, unarmored alien into a wet stain on the wall.
But the sheer density of the blow was more than enough to fold Varkos Rill completely around his knuckles.
*Oof.*
The silver smuggler’s orange eyes bulged out of his head by an inch, every single drop of air blasting out of his lungs in a wet, ragged wheeze.
Ronin wrapped his right hand tightly around the collar of Varkos’s expensive silk coat, spun his body around in a tight circle, and slammed the merchant face-first into the heavy iron gantry railing with a loud, structural *BOOM*.
The metal railing bent three inches around Varkos’s silver spine, his four arms hanging limply over the edge like loose pieces of rope as his blasters slipped from their holsters and clattered onto the lower deck plates below.
Ronin leaned his dark face down close to the merchant’s long silver ear, his voice dropping into a low, terrifyingly cold whisper that made the alien’s entire body go completely stiff with a survival-driven dread.
“The guild contract slate explicitly says you’re worth twelve thousand credits alive, Varkos,” Ronin whispered, his dark eyes boring into the side of the smuggler’s head.
“Don’t make me work harder than I have to today.
I’m already in a very bad mood about a water pump.”
Varkos Rill let out a small, trembling whimper through his silver teeth, his head nodding weakly against the bent iron rail as he completely lost consciousness, his body turning into dead weight in the hunter’s grip.
## Act VII: The Review of the Record
Back in the Internal Affairs review room, Jaco spread his white-gloved hands with an air of absolute, undeniable triumph, his voice taking on a very grand finish.
“And that, Investigators Maalo and Regg, is the exact chronicle of how my masterfully arranged civilian asset completed the final capture phase of the operation under my direct operational oversight.”
The room fell into a long, heavy silence, broken only by the steady, flat humming of the overhead halogen bulb.
Investigator Maalo didn’t move an inch.
She didn’t blink her blue eyes.
She slowly reached down to the silver table, picked up the recording orb, and turned it off with a sharp, mechanical *click*.
Jaco perked up, a bright, cheerful smile spreading across his white face as he smoothed down his bandana.
“Ah!
Wonderful!
Are we officially finished with the review phase?
I have a holovid scheduled at the Patrol lounge in twenty minutes, and I’d hate to miss the opening credits; they have an excellent orchestral score—”
“We are not finished, Patrolman Jaco,” Maalo said, her flat voice cutting through his excitement like a block of ice falling onto a glass table.
Jaco deflated slightly, his smile faltering.
“Oh.
Is there a secondary form I need to sign regarding the snack fraud?”
Maalo reached over to her partner’s station, took the digital datapad from Regg’s hands, and turned the glowing blue screen around so it faced Jaco across the silver table.
“Investigator Regg, please activate the recovered video file from Docking Bay Nine’s security hub.”
Regg tapped a single key on his console.
The blue screen flickered once, a sharp, black-and-white security camera recording activating on the display.
The angle was high and wide, showing the interior of Varkos Rill’s primary cargo hold during the red emergency light cycle.
Jaco’s yellow eyes widened in pure, unadulterated horror as he watched the monitor.
The video footage was crystal clear.
It didn’t show an elite, masterfully disciplined officer executing a high-level tactical suspension maneuver.
It showed a small, white-skinned alien sliding out of a laundry exhaust chute face-first, landing with a comical *thump* in a giant pile of dirty blankets, and then immediately shooting out his own light transformer while trying to climb onto a crate.
The footage continued, showing Jaco hanging completely upside down from the cargo hook by his ankles, spinning around in a frantic, undignified circle like a loose toy while his cape wrapped around his head, while the two guards below casually tossed their electronic dice, completely ignoring his existence until the doors blew inward.
Jaco’s face turned an intense, vibrant shade of crimson that completely matched the emergency lights on the monitor.
He reached out with both hands, trying to cover the screen with his white gloves.
“A…
a complete forgery!
A masterfully executed cybernetic deep-fake created by Varkos Rill’s technical syndicates to destroy my professional reputation within the archives!
The frame rates are completely non-standard—”
Maalo pulled the datapad back, her expression completely unchanged.
“The footage is fully encrypted and verified by the Patrol’s primary digital forensic cells, Jaco.
You fell completely on your face within four seconds of entering the bay.”
Jaco cleared his throat quickly, his hands dropping back to his lap as his silver ears twitched with a deep, profound embarrassment.
“A…
a grounded variation of the tactical ingress, Investigator.
It was designed to lower their expectations regarding my agility parameters.”
Regg let out a short, wet chuckle through his yellow nose, his fingers moving across his screen with a fast, mocking rhythm.
*Tap.
Tap.
Tap.*
Maalo leaned forward over the table, her blue face inches away from Jaco’s mask.
“Let us speak plain, Patrolman.
We know exactly what happened inside that cargo hold.
We know that this independent scrapper, Ronin, blew through the main loading bay doors, systematically dismantled an entire squad of high-tier border mercenaries in less than twelve seconds, destroyed an automated ceiling turret using an unlisted energy compression technique, and saved your miserable, lint-covered life by disabling the winch core before Varkos could turn you into a pile of grease.”
Jaco sat perfectly still in his hard chair, his mouth closing into a tight, thin line.
He looked down at the scratched silver table, his voice losing all of its previous theatrical energy, turning small and quiet.
“So…
am I being formally dismissed from the service, then?”
Maalo stared at him for five long seconds, her dark eyes evaluating the small officer.
Then, she let out a long, slow breath through her nose, leaning back in her chair with a heavy, professional sigh that sounded remarkably tired.
“No, Patrolman Jaco,” Maalo said, her voice dropping its cold, bureaucratic bite, turning into a flat, pragmatic tone.
“You are not being dismissed from the service.”
Jaco blinked, his head tilting upward.
“I…
I’m not?”
“Officially,” Maalo said, pointing her blue finger at the recording orb, “the digital incident report will state that Varkos Rill was successfully captured during a highly classified, deep-cover sting operation conducted personally by Elite Patrolman Jaco.”
Jaco’s yellow eyes brightened instantly, his chest beginning to puff back out beneath his tunic.
“Ah!
I knew the archives would recognize the true artistic merit of my approach—”
“Do not finish that sentence, Jaco, before I change my mind and throw you into a labor camp on a penal moon,” Maalo snapped, her sharp tone freezing him in his seat.
He closed his mouth instantly with a soft *click* of his teeth.
“Publicly admitting that an unlicensed, unregistered independent bounty hunter from the outer rim managed to infiltrate a high-security Frieza Force arms supplier, rescue an active Galactic Patrol officer from a cargo hook, and hand us the criminal on a silver platter would make the entire central command structure look completely incompetent,” Maalo said, her voice dripping with a deep, professional disgust.
“The regional media networks would spend the next three cycles laughing at our expense.
For the sake of the Patrol’s recruitment numbers and our institutional reputation…
your name is going on the arrest manifest.”
Jaco nodded quickly, his white gloves smoothing down his tunic.
“Of course.
Institutional discretion.
One of my many secondary talents.
I am more than happy to carry the burden of this public accolade for the sake of the organization.”
“You will not speak a single word about Ronin’s involvement to anyone, Jaco,” Maalo warned him, her dark eyes locking onto his face with absolute authority.
“You will not exaggerate this story in the spaceport bars.
You will not recount your ‘heroic capture’ to the servers at the restaurants.
You will not mention a single syllable of this file to the other officers in the Patrol lounges.”
Jaco looked deeply offended.
“Investigator Maalo, please.
I am a professional—”
“And you will absolutely not try to use this fake report to impress attractive civilian witnesses during your next planetary patrol deployment,” Maalo added, her voice deadpan.
Jaco looked significantly more offended now, his silver ears turning a dark shade of pink.
“That…
that is an entirely uncalled-for insinuation regarding my personal character parameters.”
Maalo stood up from her hard metal chair, smoothing down the front of her unwrinkled uniform as she picked up the recording orb from the table.
“The review is officially concluded, Patrolman.
You are dismissed.
Go back to your sector deployment lines and try to avoid falling into any more laundry vents for the rest of the cycle.”
Jaco stood up quickly, clicking his golden boots together in a sharp, military salute that looked remarkably practiced.
He lifted his chin with all the grand, theatrical pride of a warrior-poet who had just cleared his name from a major charge.
“Justice always prevails, Investigator Maalo!”
Maalo paused at the gray stone door, turning her blue head back around to look at him with a cold, deadpan stare.
“Justice didn’t do a damn thing in that cargo bay, Jaco.
Paperwork and bureaucratic embarrassment prevailed today.
You merely managed to survive the experience.”
Jaco considered mounting a grand, philosophical defense of his operational record, but as he looked at the cold, unyielding lines of the windowless gray room, he decided that survival was a remarkably underrated outcome for a Tuesday afternoon.
He turned on his heel and walked out of the Internal Affairs office with his head held high, his boots clacking against the metal promenade grates with a steady, heroic rhythm.
## Act VIII: The Item in the Pocket
As he walked down the long, sterile white corridor toward the station’s primary hangar deck, Jaco reached into his right belt pouch, his fingers brushing against a small, cold metallic object hidden beneath his identity chip.
It was a small, independent long-range communication transponder orb—a piece of custom, matte-black technology lined with deep green trim that Ronin had carelessly tossed into his lap right after cutting him down from the ceiling chains on Varkos’s ship.
“Keep the frequency open, white bug,” the young hunter had grunted, his dark eyes looking through his green visor as he secured the unconscious arms dealer to a heavy loader crane.
“If you find any more Frieza Force logistics targets or arms suppliers worth my time while you’re running your sector routes…
call the channel.
I’m always looking for a good paycheck and a dirty fight.”
Jaco had let out a loud, dramatic scoff at the time, adjusting his silver ears with a look of intense, elite disdain.
“I am an elite Galactic Patrolman, you unlicenced scrapper!
I do not call common civilian mercenaries for assistance during my official operations!”
Ronin had simply stopped, turned his dark head around slowly, and looked up at the rusted iron ceiling hook still swinging on its rail above the deck plates, before looking back down at Jaco’s boots.
Jaco had cleared his throat quickly, his face turning pink as he adjusted his cape.
“Often.
I do not call them often.
Only during extreme multi-faction parameters.”
Now, walking away from the gray walls of the Internal Affairs bureau, Jaco pulled the small black orb out of his pouch, looking down at the tiny green indicator light blinking slowly on its side.
It was a direct line to the *Wayfarer*—a direct line to a kid with a red-lens scouter and a power level that didn’t make sense to any standard scanning grid.
The galaxy was an incredibly large, lawless space.
The criminals were many, the Frieza Force supply lines were spreading deeper into the border sectors every single cycle, and the Galactic Patrol’s standard disciplinary paperwork was entirely too thick to handle every single shootout on an asteroid.
And Ronin…
despite his complete lack of uniform discipline and his incredibly rude attitude parameters…
was an remarkably useful asset to have in your pocket.
Jaco let out a short, cheerful laugh, tossing the small black orb into the air and catching it cleanly with his white glove before sliding it safely back into his utility pouch.
“A temporary, strategic operational cooperation,” Jaco muttered to himself, his bright smile returning to his face as he reached the hangar doors, his white cape snapping lightly in the ventilation breeze.
“A masterfully arranged civilian contract system designed to maximize the efficiency of my sector patrols.
Yes.
That sounds significantly better for the official logs.”
He hit the primary door control, the heavy hangar gates sliding open to reveal his sleek, silver Patrol cruiser sitting on the landing pad under the bright stars of the open sector.
Jaco climbed into the cockpit, his fingers hitting the ignition switches with a fast, heroic rhythm as the ship’s engines warmed up for his next deployment line, his mind already spinning the story of Kessik Yard into a magnificent chronicle that the lounge servers would be hearing about for the next three cycles.