## Act I: The Cloak and the Low-Power Hum
Brakka did not like the plan.
This was completely normal behavior for the old man.
Brakka disliked roughly ninety-five percent of the plans Kallard brought to the primary flight deck on principle, especially when those plans involved boarding a hostile corporate vessel, trading plasma fire with black-market arms smugglers, intentionally annoying the regional Galactic Patrol, or placing any shred of professional trust in a bounty guild posting that utilized the phrases “simple extraction” and “minimal resistance.”
According to the old mechanic, the words “minimal resistance” were nothing more than a universal galactic code.
They meant the client was either actively lying to lower the premium, already dead somewhere in a ditch, or entirely too stupid to understand their own security logs.
In this particular case, it was highly probable that the client checked all three boxes.
### System Diagnostic: *The Wayfarer* (Cloaked State)
The *Wayfarer* drifted in a low-power stealth configuration within the long, jagged shadow of a shattered iron asteroid.
Every non-essential internal system had been systematically shut down to lower their thermal profile.
The primary interior cabins were dark, illuminated only by the weak, amber glow of the secondary diagnostic monitors.
The ship’s swept wings were angled sharply toward a blocky, ugly cargo freighter hanging motionless above the main docking structures of Kessik Yard.
The smuggler vessel looked like a floating brick of armored alloy—expensive, heavily reinforced around the primary airlocks, and modified with hidden turret panels concealed beneath the standard cargo shields.
MONITOR FEED: SYSTEM STATUS
STEALTH STATE: ACTIVE (92% THERMAL DAMPENING)
TARGET DISTANCE: 1.2 PARSECS
ACTIVE THERMAL SIGNATURES: 8 INTERNAL (CARGO BAY ARC)
REACTOR STATUS: COMPROMISED WIRING (LEAKING OZONE)
“`
Kallard sat in the co-pilot’s leather chair, his left combat boot braced firmly against the lower edge of the display console to keep himself steady in the shifting gravity pocket.
His arms were crossed tightly over his modified green-and-black chest armor, the matte paint cold against his forearms.
He wore his dark bandana low over his forehead, keeping the short, uneven spikes of his black hair firmly out of his eyes.
Beneath his heavy canvas tunic, his brown furry tail was wrapped tight around his waist under layers of thick leather strapping and alloy reinforcement plates, pinned down so securely that it didn’t even twitch when the ship’s stabilizer gyros adjusted for a stray solar drift.
The red-lens scouter clipped to his leather utility belt gave a soft, rhythmic electronic click every few seconds, its internal software attempting to resolve the weak energy signatures moving inside the smuggler freighter’s hull.
Brakka sat in the primary pilot’s seat to his left, all four of his unblinking eyes narrowed into tight slits as he kept his organic left hand flat on the main thruster controls.
His heavy titanium right hand hovered directly over the primary weapons panel, the metal fingers flexing with a tiny, hydraulic whir that filled the quiet cockpit.
“I count eight distinct heat blooms moving around the primary cargo deck,” Brakka muttered, his gravelly voice sounding exceptionally low in the darkened bridge.
“Maybe a ninth if that shifting shadow behind the main reactor bulkhead is an actual living guard and not just another example of their terrible structural wiring.”
Kallard leaned forward, his dark eyes fixed on the schematic display.
“Is Varkos Rill showing up on the scanner?”
“He’s up on the secondary deck, moving back and forth like he owns every bolt in the hull,” Brakka grunted, his upper pair of eyes shifting to check the ship’s fuel pressure gauges.
“He does own the hull,” Kallard noted dryly.
“Then he should be profoundly ashamed of how his engineers routed the primary coolant lines,” the old man spat, wiping a smear of fresh grease off his blue-gray chin.
“The whole engine bay is throwing off enough stray radiation to bake a ration bar from fifty yards out.
It’s a complete joke of a setup.”
A faint, grim smile touched the corner of Kallard’s mouth.
Brakka instantly cut his lower two eyes sideways, glaring across the console with deep, professional suspicion.
“Don’t do that.
Stop that right now, kid.
Every single time that mouth of yours starts curving upward like that, it means your brain is about to settle on something incredibly reckless and expensive.”
“I was just going to suggest that we ensure we take him alive,” Kallard said, his voice flat and even.
“Which is exactly what I mean by reckless,” Brakka growled, turning his attention back to the steering handles.
“The guild posting says alive is *preferred*, boy.
It says dead is *fully accepted*.
Those are my absolute favorite two words in the entire mercenary dialect, right after ‘paid completely upfront’ and ‘no return policy.'”
Kallard reached out his right hand, his callused fingers tapping the edge of the secondary touch screen.
A rotating, three-dimensional holographic image of Varkos Rill appeared in the center of the console, the light casting a pale blue tint over his armor plates.
The silver-skinned arms dealer looked remarkably narrow and snake-like, featuring a long, flexible neck, four thin limbs loaded down with rings, and a pair of wide, bright orange eyes that managed to look completely guilty even in a static security archive photo.
“Varkos doesn’t just smuggle standard blasters, Brakka,” Kallard said, his voice dropping into a serious register.
“He’s the primary logistics coordinator for this entire border sector.
He moves factory-wiped scouters, high-voltage neural restraint collars, bootleg imperial ship registration codes, specialized ki-dampening cuffs, and restricted Frieza Force route data chips.
If we just slide a plasma bolt through his chest plate and collect the base bounty, we lose every single buyer list, hidden transport coordinate, and contact name currently stored inside his private data core.”
Brakka let out a low, rumbling grunt from deep within his broad chest.
It was a specific mechanical sound Kallard had learned to recognize over the last three years—it meant the old man knew the logic was completely airtight, but he absolutely hated the fact that he couldn’t find a valid excuse to argue against it.
“He also sells those neural restraint collars directly to the deep-core slave syndicates on the outer rim,” Brakka said quietly, his mechanical fingers tightening around the weapons joystick until the titanium casing creaked.
Kallard’s expression went completely cold, the faint green pulse deep within his pupils flashing for a microsecond before he forced his emotions back into a dark, locked box.
“I know exactly what he does with his inventory, old man.
Which is why I want his data core before he drops into a hole.”
## Act II: The Arrival of the Cop
The cockpit fell back into a heavy, silent stillness, the only sound being the slow, rhythmic *squeak-clack* of the secondary ventilation scrubbers filtering the air.
Kallard didn’t enjoy these kinds of contracts anymore.
When he had first started running jobs with Brakka after the destruction of Planet Vegeta, he had been too panicked, too desperate to survive, to care about the specifics of the names listed on the slates.
A contract was just a collection of numbers that translated into high-grade fuel cells, fresh medical packs, and dry ration biscuits.
Hunt the target, break their guard, bring them back to the fence, and try not to bleed too much on the ship’s clean deck plates.
But three years of watching the slow, grinding cruelty of the Frieza Force along the border lanes had sharpened his internal rules into an unyielding, iron framework.
He was a Saiyan by flesh, possessing all the terrifying, predatory instincts coded into his DNA, but his human soul held the leash with an absolute, unbreakable grip.
He didn’t hunt for the sake of the thrill.
He didn’t collect on runaway laborers who had broken their chains on a mining moon.
He didn’t touch corporate enforcement jobs against starving agricultural workers who were trying to keep their crops from being seized by an imperial governor.
But men like Varkos Rill?
The merchants who sat in clean, expensive coats inside fortified spaceports, counting their profits while they sold the tools of oppression to the highest bidder?
Varkos didn’t swing the whip himself, but he was the one who manufactured the leather.
He didn’t conquer the worlds, but he sold the tactical maps to the generals who did.
The galaxy was full of mass graves dug with equipment he had personally delivered for a premium.
Kallard had zero patience left for that specific brand of galactic cowardice.
Suddenly, the *Wayfarer’s* primary proximity sensor let out a sharp, high-pitched chime.
Brakka’s upper two eyes jumped to the long-range scanning array, his gray-blue brow furrowing deep.
“We’ve got a small patrol craft dropping out of hyperspace on the eastern lane.
It’s heading straight for Kessik Yard’s primary docking ring.”
Kallard shifted his weight in the seat, his hand moving toward his red scouter.
“Is it an imperial scout squadron?
Did Frieza’s logistics cells track the meeting?”
“No,” Brakka muttered, using his mechanical thumb to zoom the visual feed on the central viewscreen.
“It’s something significantly more annoying.”
Kallard turned his head toward the monitor.
A sleek, polished, and intensely reflective white-and-blue patrol vessel was currently attempting to execute a standard docking maneuver at Bay Six.
The ship looked like a giant, aerodynamic bug covered in chrome trim—the unmistakable design philosophy of the Galactic Patrol core divisions.
The vessel settled toward the platform clumsily, its lower stabilization thrusters firing at a completely uneven angle.
It hit the edge of the landing marker with a heavy, visible jolt, bounced once against the guidance rails, attempted to correct the alignment far too late, and ended up scraping its pristine port-side hull clean against the iron safety barrier, creating a massive shower of yellow sparks that they could resolve even through the *Wayfarer’s* filtered visual sensors.
Brakka just sat there, staring at the screen with all four of his eyes wide open, his mouth slightly agape.
Kallard blinked twice, rubbing his temples beneath his bandana.
The silver canopy of the bug-ship slid open with a dramatic flourish.
A small, white-skinned figure wearing a bright purple mask and a high-collared white uniform climbed out onto the wing.
The alien instantly struck a bizarre, highly exaggerated heroic pose—one hand planted firmly on his hip, the other pointing dramatically toward the ceiling of the hangar—before turning his head around in a slow circle, as if he were checking to see if a massive crowd of adoring fans had assembled to document his arrival.
Kallard let out a long, slow breath through his nose.
“That’s Jaco.”
Brakka turned his head around slowly to look at him.
“You know that decorative little insect?”
“Not personally,” Kallard said, his voice dry.
“But his face is all over the historical logs I managed to download from the old Patrol databases.
He’s an elite officer from the central divisions.”
“Useful?” Brakka asked, his tone skeptical.
Kallard watched the visual monitor as Jaco hopped off his ship’s wing, marched confidently past the main security gate, turned down a completely dark corridor, and proceeded to slide straight into a large, unlit metal hatch that was clearly labeled as a primary laundry exhaust vent for the station’s lower decks.
Jaco’s white boots vanished down the chute in less than a second.
Kallard closed his eyes, his head dropping back against the headrest.
Brakka leaned back in his pilot’s chair, crossing his multi-jointed arms over his chest.
“Useful, kid?
That is your professional tactical assessment of the situation?”
“In theory,” Kallard muttered.
“In theory, my old mechanical left knee can win a regional dance competition,” Brakka snorted, tapping his fingers against the console.
“The odds of that happening are significantly higher than that purple-masked idiot surviving more than five minutes inside Varkos Rill’s cargo bay.
He just checked himself into the commercial cleaning line.”
## Act III: The Calculation and the Core
Several minutes passed in absolute stillness.
The visual feed from Kessik Yard remained quiet, but Kallard’s scouter continued to click, tracking the sudden shift in the energy signatures inside the smuggler freighter.
The eight guards on the cargo deck had stopped moving in their regular patrol loops.
They were centering their positions around the wire storage bins near the center of the bay, their weapons drawing high-frequency energy cycles that showed up as bright, jagged spikes on his scouter lens.
Brakka was watching Kallard’s face through the amber light.
“No.”
Kallard didn’t move.
“I didn’t say a single word, old man.”
“You don’t need to say anything, boy.
Your eyebrows are currently forming a full-scale, non-profit rescue mission,” Brakka snapped, pointing his torque wrench at the display.
“He went into that hull after Varkos on his own accord.
It’s an official Patrol operation.
Let them handle their own laundry.”
“He got caught,” Kallard said, his eyes tracking a sudden thermal shift on the screen.
“Look at the pattern.
The guards aren’t searching anymore.
They’re surrounding a single point.”
“Probably,” Brakka grunted.
“Which means he’s currently being turned into a political bargaining chip or a target practice dummy.
Still not our problem.
We are bounty hunters, Ronin.
We hunt for profit, not for the sake of public relations.”
“He’s an elite Galactic Patrolman, Brakka,” Kallard said, turning his body around in the chair to face the old mechanic.
“Think about the logistics for a second.
An officer of his rank carries a primary identity key that has direct access to the central Patrol databases.
Restricted hyperspace routing files, active bounty tracking logs, imperial troop movement warnings, Frieza Force communication frequencies…
if we save his neck from Varkos’s crew, we don’t just clear a bounty.
We establish a high-level asset inside the only law enforcement agency in the galaxy that isn’t currently taking orders from Frieza’s governors.”
Brakka stared at him with all four of his eyes, his mechanical hand remaining perfectly still on the console.
The silence between them stretched out, heavy and filled with the slow, rhythmic ticking of the cooling engines.
Then, the old man let out a long, defeated sigh that seemed to drag the air straight out of his broad chest.
“I absolutely hate when you start talking sense, kid.
It makes maintaining my professional cynicism a hell of a lot more difficult than it needs to be.”
“So?” Kallard smiled faintly.
“So I’m still saying it’s a terrible, financially ruinous plan,” Brakka grunted, his fingers moving to hit the primary thruster engagement toggles.
“Do not look at me like that.
Stop it.
You’re being intensely manipulative with that warrior-of-justice routine.”
“I learned everything I know about tactical leverage from you, old man,” Kallard said, unbuckling his security harness and standing up from his chair.
“That is an absolute piece of criminal libel, and I will be charging you an extra five hundred credits for damage to my personal reputation the second we clear this sector,” the mechanic growled.
The *Wayfarer’s* primary tactical sensor let out another low beep.
The thermal display shifted, resolving a fresh image from within the smuggler vessel’s cargo bay: a small, white-skinned heat signature was currently suspended completely upside down from a central moving cargo hook, swinging back and forth in a slow, pathetic circle beneath the steel ceiling rails.
Brakka squinted at the outline, his wide mouth twisting into a flat, deadpan expression.
“He is literally hanging from the roof by his ankles, kid.”
“Looks like it,” Kallard said, pulling his black combat gloves out of the side storage rack and tightening the leather straps around his wrists.
“For the record,” Brakka muttered, shifting the thrusters into forward gear, “I hate every single aspect of this operation.”
“Noted, old man.
Keep the engines warm.”
“And if that purple-masked idiot attempts to issue us an official fine for illegal bounty hunting after we cut him down from his hook, I am personally going to launch him back through the laundry vent without a spacesuit.”
“That’s completely fair,” Kallard said, his face turning serious as he walked toward the primary drop hatch located in the center of the lower deck corridor.
“What kind of entry are we looking at?”
Brakka’s wide mouth split into a small, genuinely malicious grin, his mechanical fingers clicking against the weapon panel toggles.
“A loud one, boy.
A beautiful, high-pressure industrial opening that’s going to give their insurance providers a complete heart attack.
I’ll punch a hole right through their port-side cargo seam near Bay Three.
You enter low through the smoke cloud, and I’ll keep their main hull turrets completely blind from orbit.”
Kallard planted his combat boots firmly against the iron drop hatch plates, his breathing dropping back into that slow, rhythmic cadence that kept his energy signature suppressed down to its absolute baseline of nine hundred.
The volatile, heavy pressure of his six thousand eight hundred base power level sank deep into his bones, hidden behind a solid wall of mental discipline that not a single scouter in the room would be able to pierce until the hitting started.
“There’s my reckless boy,” Brakka’s voice crackled through the internal comm-speaker on the wall.
“Don’t go getting shot in anything that requires expensive medical serum to fix.”
“I’ll protect the chest armor, old man,” Kallard said, his hand gripping the manual release lever.
“I wasn’t talking about the armor, you idiot.
I was talking about your internal organs; I’m entirely too old to clean the upholstery in the medical bay again.”
## Act IV: The Breach and the Brawl
The *Wayfarer* moved out from the asteroid’s shadow like a silent, black blade slicing through the dark void of space.
Under the full coverage of its advanced stealth cloak, the cutter slid toward the port side of Varkos Rill’s cargo freighter, its primary navigation thrusters emitting nothing more than a faint, microscopic trail of cold gas that vanished against the background of the distant stars.
Brakka angled the ship’s nose with absolute, professional precision, lining up the forward plasma cannon directly with the primary structural seam of Cargo Bay Three.
*Decloak.*
For a single, brief microsecond, the black-and-green hull of the *Wayfarer* became visible against the neon glare of Kessik Yard.
*BOOM.*
The forward cannon fired a single, highly concentrated pulse of superheated blue-white shipfire point-blank into the freighter’s side doors.
The five-inch-thick reinforced alloy plates bent inward like thin tin foil, the primary locking bars shearing apart with a loud, structural scream that echoed through both ships.
The doors blew open into the void, a cloud of decompression sparks filling the gap, but before the air inside the cargo bay could fully vent into space, Brakka slammed the *Wayfarer’s* automated magnetic docking collar directly over the breach, sealing the pressure line and creating a secure, high-speed ingress lane.
The drop hatch beneath Kallard’s boots snapped open instantly.
He dropped through the hole like a stone, his heavy combat boots hitting the metal floorboards of the smuggler ship with a dense, structural *thud* that shook the nearest cargo crates.
The air inside the bay was thick with black smoke, burning synthetic oil, and the deafening, high-pitched wail of the ship’s internal emergency alarms.
He moved before the first guard in the room could even finish turning his head toward the explosion.
A massive, green-scaled reptilian mercenary was standing three meters away, his yellow eyes wide with shock as he scrambled to raise his heavy pulse rifle.
Kallard crossed the intervening distance in two short, explosive strides, his movement creating a sharp vacuum in the smoke cloud.
He slammed his left palm upward against the underside of the rifle barrel, driving the weapon toward the ceiling at the exact instant the guard pulled the trigger.
A rapid torrent of hot red plasma rounds tore through the iron roof plates, raining sparks down onto their helmets instead of piercing Kallard’s chest armor.
With his right hand completely free, Kallard drove a short, brutal hook straight into the center of the mercenary’s scaled stomach.
He didn’t use full power—he kept his output strictly controlled within his three thousand baseline—but the sheer physical density of his Saiyan framework was more than enough to handle the job.
The heavy steel chest armor folded inward with a sickening metallic crunch, every single drop of air blasting out of the mercenary’s lungs in a wet, ragged gasp.
Kallard twisted his torso, yanked the pulse rifle free from the guard’s limp fingers, and smashed the heavy alloy butt of the weapon directly across the side of his helmet.
The plastic visor shattered into a dozen pieces, and the mercenary dropped to the deck plates like a felled log, completely unconscious.
“Intruder!” a second guard shouted from behind a large wire shipping bin thirty yards down the deck, his plasma pistol leveling toward the smoke cloud.
“All units to Bay Three!
We’ve got a solo hunter on the floor!”
*Zap.
Zap.
Zap.*
A rapid sequence of hot red blaster bolts cut through the black mist, the energy lines skimming past Kallard’s thighs and boots as he executed a low, sliding sprint across the oil-stained floorboards.
One stray bolt grazed the outer edge of his left shoulder guard, chipping away a significant chunk of the matte paint and leaving a glowing, scorched black score mark across the green trim.
*Brakka is going to complain about the paint logs for the next three days,* Kallard thought to himself, his jaw tightening.
He flicked his right index finger toward the flash of the guard’s weapon.
A tiny, marble-sized pellet of green ki energy snapped from his knuckle, traveling across the cargo hold with the high-velocity speed of a sniper round.
It struck the guard’s plasma pistol directly at the main receiver seam.
The weapon exploded instantly in a bright flash of orange sparks and melting plastic, taking the guard’s operational nerve right along with it.
The man screamed out in terror, staring at his bleeding fingers as he staggered backward into the shadows.
Kallard closed the gap in a heartbeat, appearing in front of the panicked smuggler like a ghost walking out of a fire.
A single, clean downward chop to the side of the neck silenced the scream, and the guard crumpled into the dirt.
## Act V: The Battle on the Grates
Suddenly, a loud, crackling sound echoed from his right side as two short, thick-bodied high-gravity mercenaries rushed out from a narrow access corridor.
Their heavy muscles were packed dense beneath their leather vests, making them look remarkably wide and solid, and both were carrying long iron stun batons that hummed with thousands of volts of yellow electricity.
They moved with a surprising, explosive agility that didn’t match their blocky frames, their boots clicking against the metal grates in a fast, coordinated flanking maneuver.
The first fighter jabbed low, his crackling baton aimed straight for Kallard’s left knee joint.
Kallard shifted his foot back four inches, letting the yellow energy prongs clear his armor by a fraction of an inch, the static electricity singing the edge of his canvas tunic.
The second mercenary used the distraction to swing high, his heavy baton whistling through the air toward Kallard’s exposed ribs.
Kallard didn’t try to back away.
He thrust his left hand straight out into the path of the swing, his gloved fingers wrapping tightly around the guard’s thick wrist mid-motion.
The sheer, immovable density of his Saiyan biology brought the strike to an instantaneous, jarring halt.
The yellow electricity from the baton crawled down the metal casing, snapping into the fabric of his glove and biting into his forearm with a sharp, stinging heat.
Pain flared bright along his nerves, but Kallard didn’t even blink.
Three years of enduring Brakka’s electric restraints had turned his tolerance into iron.
He narrowed his dark eyes, yanked the mercenary’s wrist forward with a violent jerk that pulled him off his feet, and delivered a massive, unshielded headbutt straight to the center of the man’s face.
*CRACK.*
The solid, bone-shattering impact echoed through the cargo bay.
The guard’s nose broke instantly, his yellow eyes rolling into the back of his head.
Before the limp body could even hit the deck plates, Kallard pivoted on his heel, using his grip on the unconscious man’s collar to swing him around like a heavy leather sack, thrusting him straight into the path of the first fighter’s next baton strike.
The first mercenary couldn’t check his momentum in time.
His crackling iron baton slammed directly into his partner’s stomach, the high-voltage electricity snapping into the wrong body with a loud, blue static flash.
Both outlaws let out a short, tangled shout of confusion and pain.
Kallard completed his rotation, his right boot snapping out in a heavy front kick that caught the first fighter squarely in the center of his chest vest.
The immense physical weight of the blow lifted the mercenary completely off the floorboards, launching his body fifteen yards across the bay where he slammed into a row of stacked weapon crates, turning the wood into a cloud of splinters and loose scouter components before he stayed down.
The second, headbutted guard got shoved face-first into the structural stone wall of the corridor, crumpling into a quiet heap on the floorboards.
From the ceiling rails directly above his head, a loud, motorized servo whine began to echo through the smoke.
Kallard sensed the danger a full second before the mechanism even cleared its protective housing.
It wasn’t the traditional, spiritual ki-sensing that the martial artists of Earth utilized—machines possessed no internal life flame, no living spirit to track through the ether.
But three years of sleeping in cargo bays, tuning old thruster blocks, and surviving ambush traps on dead moons had trained a completely separate, practical instinct within his body: a hyper-sensitivity to shifting air currents, the specific high-frequency whine of an electric servo motor charging its capacitors, and the subtle, mechanical drop in a room’s ambient power lines when a weapon array drew from the primary reactor core.
He looked straight up through his green visor.
A heavy-duty, automated twin-laser defense turret had unfolded from a concealed ceiling panel, its red targeting lens locking onto his chest armor.
*Pew-pew-pew-pew-pew!*
A relentless, heavy torrent of superheated red laser rounds rained down across the central deck plates, chewing massive, smoking holes through the metal grates and turning the loose floorboards into puddles of molten alloy.
Kallard moved in a series of sharp, broken bursts of speed.
Left.
Forward.
A hard right angle that defied momentum.
A clean, five-foot leap off the side of a wire shipping container.
A low, dirty slide beneath a structural support beam.
He didn’t attempt to fly; flying inside a low-ceilinged cargo hold was nothing more than an excellent strategy for turning yourself into an oversized, helpless target for an automated tracking computer.
He skidded to a halt beneath a heavy cargo rack, brought his right arm 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 internal 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.
Kallard 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 gantry walkway at the rear of the hold.
## Act VI: The View from Below
“I was just about to execute that exact same demolition sequence myself,” a small, muffled voice called out from directly above his head.
Kallard paused, his dark eyes shifting upward through his visor to track the sound.
Hanging from a heavy steel cargo hook four feet above the center deck was Patrolman Jaco.
The elite officer was completely upside down, his white-gloved hands pinned tightly to his sides by a pair of heavy iron chains, his white boots bound securely to the hook’s central ring.
His white cape had fallen completely over his head, looking like an oversized laundry sack, but he had managed to clear a small gap through the fabric with a furious shake of his chin, his large yellow eyes staring down at Kallard with an expression of intense, unadulterated smugness that completely defied the laws of gravity.
Kallard just stood there for three seconds, his arms hanging loose by his sides as he looked at the space cop.
“Galactic Patrol?”
Jaco lifted his chin as high as it would go in an inverted position, which made his neck look remarkably long and awkward.
“I am Elite Galactic Patrolman Jaco, chief defender of order in this sector!
And I had this entire situation fully under control before you entered the bay without an official invitation, civilian.”
Kallard’s scouter clicked, reading the low voltage humming across the thick matte-black iron ring clamped around Jaco’s neck.
“You’re hanging from the roof by your feet.”
“An intentional, highly calculated tactical observation post,” Jaco shot back, his silver ear ridges twitching with irritation.
“It allowed me to inspect the structural flaws in Varkos’s lower hull plating while his men were distracted.”
“You’re a hostage,” Kallard said plainly, his voice deadpan inside his helmet.
“A temporary, strategic operational inconvenience!” Jaco shouted, his face turning a vibrant shade of pink as he swung gently back and forth on his hook.
“Subsection 4-B of the manual explicitly states that an officer must utilize every available vantage point to gather evidence!
Do not look at me with that non-standard scouter, boy!
It’s highly disrespectful to the uniform!”
“Sure,” Kallard muttered, turning his head back toward the far end of the cargo bay.
“Do not say ‘sure’ with that specific tonal inflection, civilian!
I am recording your identity parameter for a formal citation regarding insubordination during an active investigation—”
Suddenly, a heavy, thunderous footstep shook the metal deck plates, cutting off Jaco’s lecture.
The thick black smoke at the far end of the bay parted, revealing the massive, gray-skinned horned brute.
The colossal mercenary had a primitive, hand-cranked mortar mounted to his shoulder, the three barrels currently spinning up with a terrifying, high-pitched mechanical whine that smelled heavily of old gunpowder and sulfur.
Kallard’s red-lens scouter clicked rapidly, the green numbers flashing across his visual field as it calculated the target’s power
SCOUTER ANALYSIS: TARGET DETECTED
SPECIES DESIGNATION: UNKNOWN (HIGH-DENSITY GRAY INFRANTRY)
ACTIVE POWER RECKONING: 2,900
THREAT LEVEL: MODERATE (CAREFUL ENGAGEMENT ADVISED)
Twenty-nine hundred.
It was a solid, veteran-level number for a border mercenary—strong enough to cause serious structural damage to his armor plates or snap a human bone if he got careless during the exchange.
Kallard’s lips curved into a tiny, grim smile beneath his visor.
*Finally.
Someone worth putting some weight into.*
## Act VII: The Horned Brute
The gray brute didn’t waste a single second boasting.
He slammed his large hand down on the mortar’s manual crank handle, the three barrels releasing a massive, concussive torrent of orange plasma fire that roared across the cargo bay like a living wall of flame.
The intense heat of the blast was high enough to instantly warp the metal support pillars along the walkway, the air turning thick and wavy with thermal distortion.
Kallard didn’t try to block the energy.
He planted his boots firmly against the deck, executed a high-speed diagonal leap toward the side wall, and slammed his boot hard against the iron structural plating.
The metal cracked under the force of his launch, sending him rocketing through the red emergency air at a thirty-degree angle, a green ki afterimage trailing behind his cloak.
The orange mortar blast tore through three stacked crates of black-market tech directly behind his heels, releasing hundreds of bootleg scouter monitors that went spinning across the floorboards like shattered glass insects.
Kallard reappeared directly above the brute’s head, dropping through the smoke cloud with his right elbow cocked back at a sharp angle.
He drove the joint down with maximum velocity straight into the center of the shoulder mortar’s primary barrel housing.
*CRACK.*
The heavy titanium casing of the gun shattered under the impact, the internal gears twisting into useless scrap metal.
The mortar fired one final, unstable round, but the ruined mount jerked violently to the left.
The orange blast tore straight upward through the ceiling gantry, carving a jagged, glowing red hole through the upper walkway and sending a massive shower of molten metal drops raining down onto the deck.
Before Kallard could clear his feet, the gray brute let out a deep, animalistic roar of fury, reached back over his own shoulder with a speed that didn’t match his massive size, and wrapped his thick, stone-like fingers tightly around the edge of Kallard’s green chest guard.
With a single, violent lift of his massive back muscles, the brute hoisted Kallard over his shoulder and slammed him brutally down onto the hard iron floorboards.
*BOOM.*
The structural impact was hard enough to leave a permanent, two-inch-deep body indentation in the metal grates.
A sharp, white-hot flash of pure agony shot straight up Kallard’s spine, his breath escaping his lungs in a short, ragged gasp as his vision spotted with gray patches.
The brute strength of a twenty-nine hundred power level was completely real; it felt like being struck by a falling cargo hauler.
The giant mercenary didn’t hesitate.
He lifted his massive, steel-toed combat boot into the air, aiming a crushing downward stomp straight for Kallard’s exposed face visor.
Kallard didn’t panic.
He rolled his torso violently to the left, his cheek scraping against the oil grates as the heavy boot came down.
*CRUNCH.*
The brute’s foot crushed the iron floorboards exactly where Kallard’s head had been a fraction of a millisecond earlier, the metal plating tearing apart like wet paper under the pressure.
Kallard completed his roll, twisted onto his back, and extended both of his open palms straight toward the brute’s exposed right knee joint.
He reached deep into his abdominal reservoir, pulling a tight, highly unrefined pocket of concussive ki energy to his knuckles.
“Static Buster,” he growled.
It wasn’t a refined, beautiful beam technique like the ones he would one day see on Earth—it was still an ugly, chaotic dump of energy, a compressed pulse of raw survival ki that detonated with a high-frequency, crackling shock burst instead of a clean explosion.
*BANG-BOOM.*
The localized shockwave struck the brute’s knee joint point-blank.
The heavy gray scales on his leg peeled back, the muscle tissue underneath smoking as the high-frequency vibrations forced the joint to lock up completely.
The colossal mercenary stumbled backward with a loud grunt of pain and surprise, his balance broken as his huge body tilted toward the left side of the bay.
Kallard rose into the fall like a spring-loaded trap, his boots pushing off the floorboards before the dust could even settle.
He grabbed the brute by the ruined metal straps of his shoulder mortar, anchored his weight against the ground, and drove his right knee straight into the center of the giant’s face.
Once.
The stone-like skin cracked across the nose, purple blood spraying through the air.
Twice.
The giant’s jaw shifted with a loud, sickening click, his yellow eyes turning glassy.
On the third consecutive hit, the brute’s massive frame completely gave out, his giant gray body collapsing backward into the mud of the lower bay with a thunderous *thud* that shook the entire ship’s gantry rails.
He lay there perfectly still, his breath coming in slow, wet wheezes as his single horn dropped into the dirt.
Jaco’s cargo hook swung gently back and forth directly above the fallen giant, the white-clad officer looking down through his laundry cape with a slow blink.
“I had successfully weakened his structural parameters for you, civilian.
It was a classic display of psychological erosion.”
Kallard stood over the giant, his chest heaving as he wiped a line of fresh sweat from his visor.
He looked up at the inverted Patrolman, his voice deadpan.
“You weakened him?
With what, exactly?
Your presence?”
“Morale pressure!” Jaco shouted back, his silver ear ridges vibrating with intensity.
“An elite officer’s presence on the battlefield creates an unyielding undercurrent of legal dread that lowers the target’s coordination values by up to thirty percent!
It’s explicitly documented in the division manuals!”
Kallard let out a short, tired sigh through his nose.
“Sure, white bug.
Whatever keeps your archives clean.”
## Act VIII: The Standoff on the Gantry
“Enough!” a sharp, high-pitched whistle of a voice cut across the howling of the alarms.
Kallard turned his head around slowly, his dark eyes locking onto the upper walkway at the rear of the cargo hold.
Varkos Rill was standing there on the gantry, his long silver neck fully extended like a startled snake as he looked down at the five unconscious mercenaries covering his deck plates.
His expensive silk coat was torn at the left sleeve, revealing his shimmering tin-like skin underneath, and all four of his thin arms were currently occupied with separate, frantic tasks.
One hand held a long, silver plasma blaster aimed straight at Kallard’s visor.
A second hand held a small, rectangular electronic remote control device with a pulsing red light on the rim.
A third hand gripped the gantry railing to keep his balance, while his lower right hand clutched a heavy, glowing blue cylinder to his ribs.
The data core.
His orange eyes were wide and bloodshot, but he wasn’t completely panicked yet.
Outlaws like Varkos only lost their nerve when they ran out of other people’s bodies to throw into the fire; as long as he had leverage in his hand, his merchant brain was still calculating the margins.
The small red light on the remote control blinked with a fast, dangerous cadence.
Directly above the floor, the thick matte-black ring around Jaco’s neck began to emit a steady, high-pitched electronic beep.
*Beep.
Beep.
Beep.*
Jaco went completely rigid on his hook, his white-gloved hands freezing against his sides as his yellow eyes narrowed into small circles of genuine terror.
He knew exactly what that frequency meant—it was the primary arming sequence for a corporate mining restraint collar, a device designed to turn a laborer’s brain stem into charcoal if they moved outside their assigned sector zone.
Varkos Rill smiled, his silver lips curling back over his sharp yellow teeth as he leaned over the railing.
“Bounty hunter.
I know that black-and-green chest plate of yours.
You’re the one they call Ronin on the border boards, aren’t you?”
Kallard didn’t answer.
He let his arms hang completely loose by his sides, his posture relaxed, his energy signature dropping back down toward his deceptive nine hundred baseline.
“Your professional profile on the independent network states that you have a distinct preference for live captures whenever the premium is high enough,” Varkos whistled through his teeth, his upper hand lifting the remote control an inch higher into the red light.
“An admirable trait, really.
Very practical for business.
But let’s establish some fresh boundaries here, kid: you take one more single step toward this walkway…
you make one more microscopic movement with those knuckles of yours…
and I hit this primary toggle button.
I’ll dump forty thousand volts of raw reactor current straight through the Patrolman’s collar line.
He’ll turn into a smoking pile of white ash before your boots can even clear that turret crater.”
Jaco swallowed hard, his vocal cords clicking against the metal ring around his throat.
“The…
the operational probability of an elite collar failure under field conditions is remarkably low,” he muttered upside down, his voice cracking slightly as the red light blinked faster.
“However…
for the sake of the record…
I would highly advise against testing the merchant’s wireless transmitter range, civilian.”
Varkos Rill let out a short, wheezing chuckle, his orange eyes flicking down toward Kallard’s belt.
“Look at you.
A low-tier rim scrapper carrying an old, broken scouter trophy like a kid playing soldier.
You think you’re a real problem because you can punch through some low-grade infantry armor?
I have buyers in the core worlds whose names would cause your blood to turn to ice, monkey.
Lord Frieza’s logistics division values my reliability.
You kill me today, and you become a massive logistical problem for the regional governors.
You capture me, and you turn into a public example for the rest of these border rats.”
Kallard didn’t look up at the merchant’s face.
His dark pupils were moving slowly beneath his visor, mapping out the structural parameters of the room with a cold, geometric clarity that didn’t belong to a seventeen-year-old mercenary.
Walkway distance: twelve meters straight up, eight meters forward.
Jaco’s cargo hook: suspended from the secondary electromagnetic rail line.
Remote control: secured in Varkos’s upper right hand.
Plasma blaster: leveled from his lower left hand.
Data core: clutched tight against his lower right ribs.
Emergency panic beacon: likely stitched into the silk lining of his long coat.
Exit doors: two directly behind the gantry, one heavy security hatch beneath Kallard’s own boots.
Brakka: silent on the internal comm-line, but currently holding the *Wayfarer’s* automated defense turrets locked onto the freighter’s life-support vents from orbit.
Outlaws like Varkos always talked when they felt safe behind a wall of leverage; they needed to hear the sound of their own voice to convince themselves that they were still running the meeting.
Kallard was more than happy to let him finish his speech.
Every syllable the silver alien uttered was another millisecond his brain spent focusing on his mouth instead of his fingers.
“You sell a lot of these neural restraint collars, don’t you, Varkos?” Kallard asked, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that sounded remarkably calm, completely conversational under the red glare of the beacons.
Varkos Rill blinked his orange eyes, his silver eyebrows furrowing with sudden, professional confusion.
“I…
I provide logistics solutions to the corporate mining syndicates, you trash!
What’s my inventory to you?”
“It means you’re an engineer,” Kallard said, taking a slow step forward, his boots making a soft scraping sound against the grit.
“And a professional engineer always mounts the wireless receiver antenna at the very top of the collar housing so the metal shipping containers don’t block the signal when the loaders are moving the cargo.”
Varkos’s long silver neck twitched violently, his thumb shifting a fraction of a millimeter off the red button as a sudden spike of survival-driven paranoia hit his thoughts.
“What the hell are you talking about, monkey?”
“I’m talking about your line of sight,” Kallard whispered.
His right boot suddenly snapped out in a short, blindingly fast crescent kick.
## Act IX: Flash Trigger
He didn’t launch his body toward the upper walkway.
He drove the steel heel of his boot straight into the stock of the short guard’s discarded plasma rifle sitting on the grates near his toes.
The heavy alloy weapon spun upward into the red air like a high-speed propeller, its metal barrel reflecting the crimson glare of the emergency beacons as it rose straight toward the ceiling rails.
At the exact same instant, Kallard lifted his right hand, his middle finger snapping against his thumb with a sharp, mechanical *crack*.
A tiny, needle-thin beam of green ki energy—no thicker than a single strand of copper wire—shot from his fingertip, bypassing Varkos Rill completely as it tore across the hold.
The needle-beam struck the primary electromagnetic release core of the ceiling cargo winch directly above Jaco’s cargo hook.
*Zap.*
The internal magnetic gears inside the winch housing demagnetized instantly, the heavy iron brake pads snapping apart under the sudden loss of potential current.
The iron cargo hook dropped like a stone, the chains rushing down the ceiling rail with a loud, metallic scream that filled the entire bay.
Jaco fell.
“Ahhhhh—!”
The sudden, vertical drop took the small Patrolman completely out of the remote control’s primary transmission arc, his white-clad body falling four feet through the red mist in less than a millisecond before hitting the hard metal deck plates with a loud, unglamorous, and thoroughly structural *thud*.
Varkos Rill’s orange eyes went completely wide with shock as his target vanished from his line of sight.
His thumb contracted automatically, slamming down onto the remote’s large red button in a panic response.
*Click.*
But before the electronic command signal could even clear the remote’s primary transmitter antenna, the spinning plasma rifle that Kallard had kicked into the air completed its trajectory arc.
The heavy iron barrel of the gun struck the remote control directly out of Varkos’s silver hands, the sheer physical force of the impact shattering the plastic casing into a dozen tiny pieces and sending the internal lithium battery cells flying across the gantry walkway.
The red arming light on Jaco’s neural collar snuffed out instantly, the ring returning to its passive dampening state before a single volt could clear the line.
Varkos Rill let out a high-pitched, pathetic wail of pure despair, looking down at his empty, bleeding silver hand.
“My…
my remote!
You crazy piece of trash, I’ll turn this whole station into—”
He didn’t get to finish the threat.
Kallard reached down into his abdominal core, releasing the wall of discipline around his energy pool and allowing his combat power level to jump straight up to its true baseline of six thousand eight hundred all at once.
*Flash Trigger.*
He didn’t open the tap for the *Primal Instinct* state—Varkos Rill wasn’t worth the immense physical tax or the burning muscle trauma that came with the emerald eyes.
He simply forced his base ki to explode through the muscle groups in his thighs and knees in a single, highly concentrated pulse of kinetic force.
The world went completely still around him.
The red emergency lights stopped pulsing, the smoke cloud froze mid-air, and the sound of the alarms died away as he moved faster than the local atmosphere could register.
The metal floorboards beneath his combat boots buckled downward by three inches from the sheer physical launch force, leaving a pair of permanent cracked depressions in the alloy plates.
He vanished from the lower cargo floor entirely.
He reappeared a fraction of a millisecond later on the upper walkway gantry right in front of the arms dealer, his tattered gray cloak snapping through the red mist like a solid shadow.
Before Varkos could even lift his four silver arms to shield his face, Kallard drove his left fist straight into the center of the merchant’s expensive silk coat.
He held his strength back, keeping the impact strictly controlled within his baseline parameters to avoid turning the fragile, unarmored silver alien into a wet puddle of bone paste on the wall.
But the sheer physical density of the blow was more than enough to fold Varkos Rill completely around his knuckles.
*Oof.*
The arms dealer’s orange eyes bulged out of his head by a full inch, every single drop of oxygen blasting out of his lungs in a wet, ragged wheeze that spray red onto Kallard’s visor.
Kallard wrapped his right hand tightly around the collar of the silk coat, executed a tight, three-hundred-and-sixty-degree spin on his heel, 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 old rope as his two custom blasters slipped from their leather holsters and clattered onto the lower deck plates below.
The heavy blue cylinder slid from his lower right fingers.
Kallard’s left hand snapped out, catching the data core by the upper handle before it could hit the walkway grates.
He held it up to the red light, verifying that the primary data seals were unbroken, before clipping it securely to his own utility belt.
“Mine,” Kallard whispered into the quiet air.
Varkos coughed violently, a line of dark purple fluid trickling from his silver teeth as he gripped the railing with his remaining strength.
“You…
you crazy low-class rat…
you don’t have a single clue whose inventory you’re stealing from…
Lord Frieza’s logistics cells will hunt you down to the edge of the galaxy…”
Kallard leaned his face down close to the merchant’s ear, his dark eyes boring into the alien’s skull through his visor.
His voice dropped into a low, terrifyingly calm whisper that made the smuggler’s skin turn a pale shade of gray.
“I know exactly who pays your salary, Varkos,” Kallard whispered.
“And I know exactly what kind of ships they use to haul your cargo.
Tell your governor that if he wants his route maps back…
he can come look for Ronin in the dark lanes.”
For a brief, fleeting second, a single spark of that ancient, heavy green light flickered deep within Kallard’s pupils.
Varkos saw it, his mouth opening in a wide, silent gasp of pure, primordial terror as his body went completely limp with fear, his merchant brain finally realizing that the person standing over him wasn’t an ordinary rim bounty hunter.
It was a remnant of a storm they thought they had snuffed out three years ago.
Kallard eased his energy back down, pulling the green light back into its cage.
He clipped a pair of heavy iron restraints around the smuggler’s four wrists, shoved him down onto the walkway floorboards, and looked down over the railing at the lower bay deck.
## Act X: The Review on the Floor
Below him, Patrolman Jaco was currently lying flat on his face in the center of the deck grates, his white uniform covered in black engine grease and white dryer lint, his white cape wrapped around his ears like an oversized bandage.
He let out a long, dramatic groan that echoed through the circular hold.
“I…
I executed that landing maneuver entirely with intentional tactical parameters, civilian.
It was a high-level absorption sequence designed to test the floor’s density.”
Kallard walked down the gantry stairs, his boots clacking against the bent iron rungs with a slow, relaxed cadence.
He stood over the inverted officer, looking down at his greased mask.
“You landed directly on your nose, white bug.”
Jaco pushed himself up onto his hands and knees with a massive display of great theatrical dignity and absolutely zero physical grace, smoothing down his white tunic with his dirty gloves.
“My elite facial structure was specifically engineered to soften the impact velocity during a vertical tactical insertion, Ronin!
Subsection 9 of the security manual explicitly recommends using the torso alignment to preserve your weapon line!”
“That is definitely not how faces work, Jaco,” Kallard said, reaching down to unclamp the heavy matte-black iron restraint ring from the Patrolman’s neck.
“But if it keeps your incident report looking professional, you can write whatever numbers you want in the logs.”
“It is exactly how elite faces work!” Jaco shouted, standing up straight and patting the dust off his shoulders like nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.
“I had this entire syndicate operation completely handled before your ship breached the port-side hull plating, bounty hunter!
The arms dealer was practically on the verge of a full-scale legal surrender!”
Kallard just stood there, his dark eyes fixed on the Patrolman’s mask through his green visor.
Jaco stared back, his silver ear ridges twitching with a nervous, defensive energy as the red emergency lights continued to pulse across his white uniform.
The silence between them stretched out for ten long seconds, the only sound being the steady, low-frequency wail of the ship’s internal alarms.
“Sure,” Kallard said plainly, his voice deadpan.
Jaco instantly pointed a stern, white-gloved finger straight at his visor.
“Again with the ‘sure’!
I am officially ordering you to alter that tonal inflection, civilian!
It is highly detrimental to my professional authority parameters!”
Suddenly, the heavy iron bulkhead doors at the far end of the bay slid open with a loud, pneumatic *hiss-grind*.
Brakka stepped into the ruined cargo hold, carrying a compact, smoking plasma cutter under his primary organic left arm, while his upper utility limbs carried a large iron wrench and a diagnostic scanning meter.
He was wearing his oversized leather coat, his four eyes scanning the five unconscious mercenaries, the destroyed ceiling turret, and the bent gantry railing with a look of profound, deep-seated professional annoyance.
He stopped three paces from the center of the floor, looked at Jaco, looked up at the empty cargo hook hanging from the ceiling rails, and then turned all four of his eyes toward Kallard.
“This…
this is the high-level sector contact you wanted me to risk my ship’s cloaking seals for, kid?”
Kallard unhitched his visor, sliding the green shield up into his bandana to reveal his dark face.
“Potentially, old man.
He holds an active clearance badge.”
Brakka turned his head back around slowly, his lower pair of eyes squinting at Jaco’s lint-covered tunic with an expression of intense, unadulterated skepticism.
“He holds a substantial amount of rope burns around his ankles, boy.
That is the only physical asset I can currently resolve on his framework.”
Jaco immediately placed his white-gloved hands firmly on his hips, his chest puffing out until his insignia stretched.
“I am Patrolman Jaco, elite defender of the galactic peace and primary enforcer of order in this quadrant!
Those structural marks on my uniform are the direct result of a highly advanced tactical restraint durability test!”
Brakka didn’t blink a single one of his four eyes.
He looked back at Kallard, his voice a flat, deadpan rasp.
“He means he got himself captured inside a laundry vent, doesn’t he?”
“I do not!” Jaco screamed, his voice cracking slightly.
Brakka let out a long, heavy sigh that rumbled deep inside his broad chest, shaking his white mane.
“I absolutely hate that I left the surface of my planet for this kind of display, Ronin.
The fuel bills for this jump are going to look completely offensive.”
## Act XI: The Strategic Agreement
Kallard walked over to the gantry stairs, dragged the unconscious, bound form of Varkos Rill down to the cargo floor, and tossed the heavy iron restraint chain straight into Jaco’s white-gloved hands.
Jaco blinked his large yellow eyes, looking down at the silver merchant writhing in the dirt, then back up at Kallard’s dark face.
“You…
you are officially surrendering the primary target manifest to my custody, civilian?”
“Yes,” Kallard said, crossing his arms over his chest armor.
“Voluntarily?
Without a formal premium negotiation or a secondary credit distribution discussion?”
“I already stripped his private data core from his coat,” Kallard said plainly, pointing a finger toward the blue cylinder clipped to his utility belt.
“I also took three high-grade Frieza Force hyperspace route chips from his console, and I’m currently using my wrist monitor to drain his hidden fuel account codes down to our ship’s primary ledger.”
Jaco glanced down at Varkos, who let out a low, pathetic groan from the dirt, then looked back up at Kallard with his eyes narrowed suspiciously.
“That…
that is an extremely illegal appropriation of evidence, bounty hunter.
Subsection 12 explicitly states that all black-market technology must be processed through the central Patrol laboratories.”
Kallard tilted his head slightly, a small, knowing smirk touching his lips.
“So are your unpaid docking damages and structural rail fines over in Bay Six, Patrolman.
I’m pretty sure the station manager is currently drafting a formal complaint to your internal affairs office regarding a ruined security barrier.”
Jaco froze instantly, his white-gloved hands locking around the iron chain as his three antennae went perfectly rigid on the top of his bald head.
Brakka’s upper two eyes instantly lit up with a malicious, deeply satisfied professional interest.
He leaned his broad frame against a cargo crate, his mouth twisting into a wide grin.
“Oh?
Did the elite defender of galactic order manage to crash his shiny bug-ship into a stationary loading dock?
Please recount that part of the log, Patrolman.
I am an engineer; I appreciate an excellent comedy script regarding structural stress parameters.”
Jaco cleared his throat quickly, his eyes darting toward the open airlock doors as his face turned a bright shade of pink.
“A…
a completely irrelevant detail, mechanic.
The docking platform layout had been altered without proper sector notification keys.
It was an environmental anomaly.”
Kallard took a half-step forward, dropping his voice into a low, serious whisper that didn’t travel past Jaco’s silver ear ridges.
“Let’s make this simple, white bug: you take Varkos Rill back to your cruiser.
You take the full, public credit for breaking up a major black-market arms syndicate in this sector.
The Galactic Patrol gets a high-value Frieza Force supplier on their books, your internal review board thinks you’re a tactical genius, and I get to fly out of this ravine without having to deal with three cycles of official Patrol bureaucracy and registration forms.
It’s a perfect margin for everybody.”
Jaco narrowed his large eyes, studying Kallard’s dark face with a deep, defensive suspicion.
“And what exactly do you get out of this arrangement later, Ronin?
An elite officer doesn’t become a clearinghouse for questionable civilians without a tactical return vector.”
“Information,” Kallard said plainly.
“Ah,” Jaco nodded his head quickly, his tone shifting back into a smug, theatrical register.
“Blackmail.
A classic underworld leverage strategy.”
“I prefer to call it a mutual favor protocol,” Kallard said, his voice level.
“Strategic blackmail,” Jaco insisted, pointing a finger at him.
“But…
given the highly extreme parameters of this sector’s security line, I am officially authorized to form a temporary, classified tactical understanding with unregistered regional assets.
Call it whatever makes you feel heroic inside your little black armor, civilian.”
Jaco extended his right white-gloved hand across the table of crates, his chin rising with an arrogant tilt.
“I will allow you to slide through the nets this one time, Ronin.
Provided your transponder remains active on my private frequency.”
Brakka let out a low snort from the corner, picking up his plasma cutter.
“Calling this kid ‘questionable’ is an incredibly polite piece of vocabulary, officer.
If you saw his training logs, you’d be calling him a public hazard utility.”
Kallard reached out his right hand, wrapping his callused fingers around Jaco’s white glove in a firm, steady handshake.
“We’ve got a deal, Patrolman.
Try not to hit any more rails on your way out of the system.”
Jaco’s grip was firm, highly theatrical, and somehow managed to convey a sense of supreme vanity even while his uniform was covered in grease lint.
“I am an elite pilot, boy!
The rails were completely at fault during the entry vector!
I shall allow you to clear my deck now before my official extraction detail arrives to document my triumph.”
Kallard released his hand, his smirk widening as he slid his green visor back down over his eyes.
“Sure, Jaco.
Whatever looks best on the poster.”
“Again with the ‘sure’!” Jaco huffed, turning his back to them and grabbing Varkos Rill by the chain to drag him toward the primary ramp.
“Move along, you silver merchant of misery!
You are officially under the unyielding hand of the law!
Do not attempt any comedy scripts during the transit; I am in no mood for structural analysis!”
## Act XII: The Looting of the Bay
Brakka walked past them toward a large, unbroken shipping container near the rear wall, his mechanical hand already humming as he engaged the plasma cutter’s primary torch.
“If you two idiots are officially finished flirting with the galactic legal system, I’m going to start systematically stealing high-grade components from this supplier’s inventory.”
Jaco spun around instantly on the ramp, his hands flying to his hips.
“Hold it right there, mechanic!
You cannot openly declare an intention to commit industrial theft directly in front of an active Patrol officer!
It is a complete violation of Subsection 4!”
Brakka paused mid-stride.
He turned his broad gray-blue body around slowly, all four of his unblinking eyes locking onto Jaco’s mask with a completely flat, deadpan expression.
Then, with absolute deliberation, he reached down with his titanium fingers, ripped the entire metal lid off a heavy-duty crate of factory-wipe imperial scouters, and lifted the box onto his shoulder while maintaining unbroken eye contact with the cop.
Jaco’s mouth opened.
His antennae twitched in a rapid, confused circle.
He looked from Brakka’s massive, scarred shoulder to Kallard’s dark visor, then down at the electronic credit transfer currently flashing green on his own wrist screen.
The small Patrolman let out a long, dramatic huff, turned his head completely toward the ceiling rails, and crossed his arms.
“I currently resolve absolutely zero visual data parameters in that sector of the room.
My optic sensors are experiencing a localized temporary blackout due to the red emergency beacons.
Proceed with your extraction, civilian asset.”
Brakka split his wide mouth into a large cackle, turning back toward the cargo ramp with his box of parts.
“Useful after all, kid.
I’m starting to appreciate his parameters.”
Kallard let out a genuine laugh, the last drops of tension leaving his chest as he followed the old mechanic back through the magnetic seal into the lower deck corridor of the *Wayfarer*.
They left Varkos Rill bound in the cop’s custody, the freighter’s cargo bay turned into a smoking ruin of molten alloy and shattered crates, the smuggler’s regional logistics network cracked wide open for anyone with the brains to read the data.
It was a messy, chaotic, and thoroughly unglamorous operation—but as the *Wayfarer’s* airlock doors slid shut with a heavy, pressurized *thud-lock*, Kallard knew they had just laid the foundation for something that would change the tracks of the entire sector.
## Act XIII: The Cryon Schematics
The *Wayfarer* detached from the smuggler vessel with a soft, pneumatic hiss, her sub-light maneuvering thrusters firing once to clear the docking platform before her advanced stealth cloak engaged, turning the black-and-green hull into a transparent shadow that vanished against the cold dark between the stars.
Brakka sat at the primary pilot controls on the upper bridge deck, his multi-jointed arms moving with a relaxed, familiar rhythm as he guided the cutter away from the Kessik Yard asteroid belt, heading toward the safer, deeper lanes of the outer rim.
He cut his lower two eyes sideways, looking across the central console at Kallard, who was currently sitting in the co-pilot’s station, the blue cylinder of Varkos’s data core held firmly in his callused fingers.
“So,” Brakka grunted, his gravelly voice dropping its biting mechanic edge.
“Was it actually worth the paint damage to my port-side wing guards, Ronin?”
Kallard leaned his head back against the leather padding, slid the blue data core straight into the console’s primary interface slot, and hit the activation toggle with his thumb.
“Let’s find out, old man.”
*Whine.*
The primary viewscreen flickered twice, the black space outside replaced by a massive, complex network of glowing green and white tactical maps that filled the entire bridge with a bright, clinical light.
Rows upon rows of classified logistics data, hidden buyer registration numbers, corporate factory coordinates, and imperial troop transit schedules began to scroll down the screen in a fast, geometric cadence.
Kallard reached out, his finger tapping a single, pulsing red coordinate marker located on the absolute perimeter of the regional map—a small, isolated system dominated by a single, dark blue icon labeled as *Cryon-7*.
The screen instantly zoomed in on the sector, displaying a full-scale structural schematic of an old subterranean mining shaft bored deep into the ice crust of a frozen moon.
Along the bottom of the schematic, a line of classified Frieza Force text resolved into a clear, translated message:
DATA LOG: RECONNAISSANCE TRAFFIC
TARGET ID: KRELL (DESERTER STATUS ACTIVATED)
SPECIES REGISTER: APPULE LOGISTICS EXTENSION
CURRENT ASSET: COMPLETE IMPERIAL SECTOR FREQUENCY KEYS (CHIP INT-4)
TACTICAL STATUS: HIGH-PRIORITY TERMINATION CURRENTLY ASSIGNED
“`
Kallard’s dark eyes went completely still, his pupils widening as the green light from the screen reflected across his jawline.
The unyielding, serious warrior mask returned to his face, every drop of the casual bickering from the cargo bay vanishing from his expression in less than a second.
“An Appule-species logistics deserter,” Kallard said, his voice dropping into a low, absolute whisper that sounded like cold iron striking iron.
“He didn’t just steal standard cargo manifests, Brakka.
He’s holding the complete, factory-encrypted frequency keys for every single imperial communication relay station in this quadrant for the next six months.”
Brakka stopped his fingers on the controls, all four of his unblinking eyes widening into tight circles as he looked at the schematic.
The old mechanic’s gray-blue back tensed up beneath his leather coat, his breath coming in a long, low whistle through his sharp yellow teeth.
“Of course he is,” Brakka whispered, his voice completely stripped of its usual cynical humor.
“Because a simple, low-risk contract for a couple of loose credits is an absolute mathematical impossibility whenever you’re the one pulling the slates, kid.”
“Frieza’s regional enforcers are already deploying active scout squads to that frozen rock to finish the contract and secure the chip before the encryption lines leak to the guilds,” Kallard said, his fingers tightening around the steering handles as he adjusted the ship’s primary heading indicators.
“The manifest says the target’s power level is barely eleven hundred, but the sector lockdown is already entering its execution phase.
We leave in six hours, old man.”
Brakka stared at the glowing green map for five long seconds, his mechanical hand flexing with a slow, rhythmic hydraulic whine that filled the quiet bridge.
Then, he let out a short, dry chuckle through his nose, his wide shoulders dropping as he settled back into his station.
“Make it eight hours, you reckless, non-profit idiot,” Brakka grunted, hitting the switches to engage the primary hyperdrive capacitors.
“I need at least that much time to install these bootleg scouter processors I just stole directly in front of a law enforcement officer into our main scanning grid.
If we’re going to go pick a fight with Frieza’s personal hunter squads on an ice moon…
I at least want my long-range radar running on maximum performance parameters.”
Kallard stood up from his leather chair, sliding his green visor back up into his bandana as he turned toward the lower bridge ladder corridor.
“I’m heading down to the lower cargo deck to resume my conditioning drills.
I need to get the compression sequences on the *Starfall* technique stable before we hit the atmosphere on Cryon.”
Brakka pointed a heavy, grease-stained finger straight at his chest plate, his lower two eyes narrowing.
“Kallard.”
Kallard stopped dead in his tracks on the first rung of the ladder, his muscles freezing up as he turned his dark face back around to look over his shoulder.
The old mechanic rarely utilized his real name—in the three years they had spent running the dark lanes of the rim together, Brakka had almost exclusively referred to him as kid, idiot, or the walking debt log.
Using his true birth name meant the borders of the professional theater had completely dropped away.
Brakka’s face softened by a single, microscopic fraction of an inch, all four of his eyes looking at the young Saiyan warrior with an expression of deep, paternal pride that was completely unshielded by his usual sarcasm.
“You did a damn fine piece of engineering work inside that cargo bay today, boy,” the old mechanic said quietly, his voice a low, steady rumble.
“Your posture held tight, your tail didn’t twitch a single inch during the standoff, and your line of sight on that winch core was absolute perfection.
Morga would have called you an over-wound idiot…
but she would have taken a drink to your name tonight anyway.”
Kallard stood perfectly still on the iron ladder rungs, a sudden, heavy warmth filling his chest that made his throat tighten up until he couldn’t swallow.
He looked at the old man’s scarred gray face for three seconds, his own dark eyes softening beneath his bandana before he managed a single, firm nod of his head.
“Thanks, Dad,” Kallard whispered, his voice small but steady.
Brakka instantly jumped an inch out of his pilot’s chair, his mechanical right arm twitching violently as he dropped his secondary diagnostic slate directly onto the console’s primary interface board, resulting in a shower of tiny blue static sparks.
“Hey!
What did I tell you about using that specific vocabulary parameter during active mission cycles, you manipulative little green menace?
That is an immediate five-hundred-credit penalty for unauthorized emotional leverage!
Get down that ladder before I use my heavy plasma torch to weld your bunk shut for the duration of the jump!”
Kallard broke out into a genuine, bright laugh that echoed through the iron corridors of the bridge as he slid down the ladder handles, his combat boots hitting the lower deck plates with a loose, relaxed, and perfectly balanced rhythm.
“I’m going, I’m going, old man!” he called back through the hatch, his voice full of a warm, unshakeable confidence that didn’t belong to a lonely survivor.
“Just make sure you don’t go throwing any more tools at your own feet while I’m down there training; the medical packs are getting low!”
“Get out of my engine line, you destructive idiot!” Brakka roared back down the hole, his white mane shaking as he frantically adjusted his instruments to clear the static error codes from the monitor.
Kallard walked down the narrow metal companionway toward the reinforced training bay, a quiet, unyielding sense of absolute determination settling behind his ribs.
Behind him on the flight deck, the primary hyperdrive computers completed their final tracking calculations, the *Wayfarer’s* sub-light thrusters emitting a single, deafening roar as the black-and-green hull jumped into the white-hot blur of hyperspace, vanishing completely from the Kessik sector.
Ahead of him waited the frozen mountains of Cryon-7, deadlier bounty contracts, stronger imperial enemies, and a long, bloody road across the stars that would eventually lead him toward a blue-and-white planet he hadn’t reached yet.
But tonight, as he wrapped his hands in fresh training cloth under the yellow halogen bulb, Ronin knew he was no longer just running from a fire in his past.
He had gained a direct line to the law, a list of imperial targets to break, and a family inside a junk ship that was worth bleeding for.
And the galaxy…
despite all its cold, endless cruelty…
was finally starting to turn in his direction.