With A Trace

The stars hung low over charred smokestacks, the red brick buildings cold and dark. Tall cranes shone in the moonlight. Mismatched piles of dull shipping containers sat guarded and full of secrets. Between the roads and train tracks and wire fences and weeds - a sizzle bit the air, left it crisp and burnt. Heavy boots crunched the gravel. A bounty hunter had come.

They always do.

"Stricker," she spoke under her breath. "I snagged the trace - he didn't have time to wipe it. I'm still planet-side, not too far from his hideout."

"It could be a trap, Pacho. Be careful." His voice was low in her earpiece.

"Maybe." Pacho stalked the chuffed lines of gravel. She turned at the bend of each crooked little weed.

She would have told anyone it was for justice. That it was for the twenty undersized coffins all sitting empty at the central depot, their parents' faces blank and cold and already drained of tears. Their families twisted and upturned into whirlwinds of paperwork and sympathy and uninvited gifts. She would have insisted that her duty was the law. That she was here to right a wrong.
And she would have been lying. Because she was sprinting now; a shadow flung on the scent of prey.

"Slow down, Pacho. Your heart rate's gaining. He'll hear you."

She ignored him. There was blood in the water.

"He could jump again! You need to slow down!"

She burst through a door that was cracked open with a busted lock. Barrels and shelves lined the warehouse aisles and stacked to the ceiling. A bright light on her shoulder flared at the dusty concrete floor.

"Footprints, Stricker. New footprints. One set. He's hiding -- afraid," she spoke loud, wanting to be heard.

"You need to be quiet. He's going to be armed -- he's a wanted fugitive. Subdue him quickly."

No -- then he'd have blown her head off at the door. He was cornered and he knew it. If he jumped again, she'd trace it even faster the second time. Here, he had nothing to defend himself with but some old tools. No hostages. No one but the two of them.

"Going dark, Stricker," she said. "He could have a communications weaver."

He didn't. But it was easy enough to believe.

Pacho took some light cables and wove a knot to hold the doors shut. She walked along the walls quietly, tying more on the other entrances. It was nearly pitch black, with squares of light from the waning moon probably all he thought she could see. She tied more cables between the shelves, taut across the aisles at ankle height. After maybe half a dozen of those she'd figured out where he was -- cowering in a space between stacked pallets.

She sighed. It wasn't even fun. He wasn't even trying. His breathing was held fast... but still sometimes sharp through his nose. She heard the jingling of gears on the old wrench he was holding. She smelled his sweat and bloody hands. Probably cut himself a few times just running here.

So she kicked the boxes, and he screamed as they fell in.

"About a month ago," she spoke loudly, "Chenzin Tak piloted a stolen commercial freighter ship straight through a residential cluster. Sound familiar?"
Chenzin flung off the boxes and stood up quick, already starting to swing the old wrench at her. Pacho's suit shot out a white beam that struck his arm and held it rigid, as the wrench fell to the ground and clattered. He strained and grunted.

"No, I guess it doesn't." She kicked it away and freed him with another beam.

And he ran away, tripping immediately over one of her cables as she followed.

"Children died, you know. Their insides were sucked out in space and vaporized by the frigate engines."

He scrambled to his feet, heading for a door only to trip again in the dark. She stepped over the wires carefully behind him.

"The doors are all tied shut," she said. "At least try to make it interesting."

He backed up against the door, looking both ways and shaking. "I have money," he pleaded. "Smuggling money. You want the bounty? I can pay you. Please! I never meant to kill them... I'd never driven one before!"

"A distraction," Pacho said. "Because you're already punching in jump coordinates, ready to open a warp."

"No, it's not--" and he fell to the floor as she paralyzed him again with the white beam.

She knelt down. His wrist terminal was open, coordinates already pulled from a memory link.

"I get it," she said, entering a new set of coordinates into the jumper. "You want to run. You think there's a way out of this if you keep trying. That the hunt can end if you just... get away. But it's over. It was over a long time ago. Probably before you even smashed into those kids." She stared into his unblinking eyes. "Pick the version of fate you like best."

She confirmed the coordinates, watching his pupils widen. "It'll go off in a few minutes," she said. "The nerve emitter will wear off in an hour on its own, but you already know that doesn't really matter." She stood up and left him there. If she listened closely, she could probably hear his pounding heart, his frantic thoughts...

No hunt. No blood. Just a pathetic man hiding in a hole. Pacho cut the cables and kicked a door open, heading back to Chenzin's last trace. On the way she felt something like an earthquake; a great gust of wind that flew through her, then a crash of metal.

"What's his status?" Stricker asked as she opened her channel.

"He jumped again, but looks like he made a mistake. Sending you the sister trace coordinates."

Stricker was quiet for a moment, then gasped. "That's... that's nowhere. Empty space."

"Have Ero colony send a collector. Not my problem anymore. I'm going back to my ship."

"Surprised it all worked out so neatly," Stricker said.

"Something like that. Send the cut when you get it."

In her ship, she looked out over the rows of shacks and lean-to hovels she'd tracked him to. She wasn't really sure why he'd jumped from here to some factory hellhole, but chalked it down to a lack of better options. Closing her eyes, she imagined him floating in space with pallets and shelves and chunks of whatever else had come with the jump. His lungs ruptured, his skin frozen, and his insides out. Poetic justice for those little kids.

But she was livid -- another one had gotten away from her.

They always do.