DarkGemini24601
Well-Known Member
Taxor_the_First: “Icefire”
Most people tended to give her a strange look when she mentioned she did not have a personal transport. In the eyes of many, it would seem that the mental image of an interstellar bounty-hunter catching the bus between systems was incongruous. Bizarre. Wrong, somehow. She ignored them and booked her ticket, as usual. Their disapproval was irrelevant. They knew nothing of her. And certainly, she doubted any of them would make an imprint on the universe even half as large as hers. They would live, eke out an existence, convey their genetics, and die. She would safeguard those genetics by stopping those deviant strains that attempted to assert dominance – criminals, both petty and not. And in so doing, she would be in part responsible for whatever part their lines would inevitably play. A long-term investment.
An almost cold way of thinking, perhaps, but the end result was the same. Innocents would be protected. Deviation would be culled. Order would be maintained. Thus, Haya would contribute to the prosperity of society.
The shuttle trip passed in silence, aside from the obligatory noisy child in the ‘quiet’ compartment. She drowned out their squeals and bored whining with a set of noise-cancelling headphones, nestled under a soft curtain of rose-gold hair. A quiet compartment of her own, localised to the space directly around her ears, filled with whatever noise she desired. Even so, she gave the child a cold stare when he looked her way, almost feeling satisfaction at the way he shrank and returned to clambering over chairs in an attempt to amuse himself.
A taxi was waiting for her. The human pilot gave her a surprised look – obviously not expecting a Tamearin passenger – before skilfully and professionally discarding it for a cheery smile. “Destination?” he prompted.
“Golden Wind,” Haya answered, sliding into her seat. Her belongings were on their way separately – carting a box full of sidearms and some not-so-side-arms into a taxi might have done more than raise a few eyebrows. “One of the ships docked here.” She checked her reference, and rattled off the collection of numbers and letters detailing which dock exactly she needed to be taken to. The driver nodded, punched in the location, and started navigating. He refrained from attempting to engage her in conversation, evidently having dealt with a normal Tamearin before. She accepted his silence gratefully, and busied herself examining the world out the window.
Boarding was uneventful and dry, aside from the VI greeting her. She treated the disembodied voice with the cool disdain it deserved, and quickly dismissed it once she had directions to her quarters. It was only on her way there that she encountered a being of flesh and blood at last, a tall, well-dressed thug of a human wandering around seemingly-aimlessly. “Hello,” he greeted, in the manner of a predator sizing up prey. “What do we have here?”
“A colleague, most likely,” Haya answered brusquely, not rising to the bait. Even his wandering eyes provoked no visible reaction from her, which only seemed to cause him to make them more obvious. “Unless you’re a stowaway.”
“I wouldn’t be wandering the halls if I was,” was the response. He bowed, an oddly-formal gesture considering his manner. “Kentaro. Bounty hunter. You?”
“Haya. Tamearin bounty hunter.”
Kentaro grinned. “Ah, I know that name. So you’re the clever bitch I’ve heard about a few times. Turned down prestigious universities to kick scum ass, huh?”
No physical response, aside from the normal pacing of her blinks. “Correct. You know this how?”
“I keep an eye on rival, ah… ‘brokers’.” A snicker. “Out of curiosity, monkey, how many years with the typewriter did it take for you to churn out Hamlet?”
More blinking, and silence. Then: “You’re attempting to get a rise out of me.”
“No, me? Really?”
“You’re several weeks too early, or a few days too late. Try again in just under a month.”
Confusion slipped onto Kentaro’s face. “Whuh?”
She’s referring to her Sahc-diy-deuh, I assume. You really shouldn’t be so insensi-
You’re not my mother.
Now a flicker of confusion on Haya’s own countenance. “I’m not your…?”
The human tensed. “… you were reading my mind.” Psion. She heard my thoughts. Shit. That complicates things.
“Then you didn’t know?” The confusion turned to suspicion – intense. With practiced eyes, Kentaro noticed her hand drift slightly towards her hip. The holsters hanging on each side were empty, but… “If that’s the case, then who were you talking to? I find it difficult to believe-“
Ah, I see. She heard my half the conversation, not Hi- …hers. I’m still safe, for now. He held up a hand. “You want to stop right there, trust me.”
“Or?”
All trace of jubilance or mocking had vanished. Kentaro was suddenly, scarily, deadly serious. Yet if there was a threat gathering on his lips, he converted it into something else even as his mouth opened to deliver it. “You got any secrets?” he asked. “Things you’d prefer nobody know? Kinks, mistakes, guilty pleasures, other sources of shame… things that would make people view you differently?”
“Of course. Everyone has those.” One of her eyes was half-masked by an errant lock of hair, which Haya made no move to displace. Indeed, she was almost disturbingly still. A viper waiting to strike.
The tension eased, perhaps forcibly, from the human’s large frame. He spread his hands in a ‘what can you do’ gesture. “Then you can understand why I might not like you poking around in my head. Maybe you Tamearins do things different, but in this neck o’ the woods, we don’t tinker with what’s on people’s minds. Even taking a peek is considered a breach of privacy, you get what I’m saying?”
“You’re saying I should stay out of your business,” the Tamearin summarised blandly.
The half gracious, half smug smile broadened. “Exactly. Can you do that, or are we gonna have a problem?”
Haya did not answer immediately. “I find it’s good practice to know what potential threats are thinking,” she said at last, still almost frozen in place, glaring at him. “For all I know, you intended to kill me. If you had, and I hadn’t checked, I might be dead.”
He snorted. “Bitch- c’mon. Do I look like an assassin or a gunslinger?”
“No. Do I?”
“No-“
There was a pistol barrel in his face. In truth, Kentaro couldn’t even say from where it had come – Haya had moved too fast for him to see. “Surprised you haven’t learned this lesson yet,” she muttered coldly. “Appearances deceive.”
She lowered the pistol, and he exhaled. Fortunate – all the plans he’d concocted in those few seconds involved leaving her wounded at the very least, which would have been difficult to explain to the captain, and would have left an irrevocable scar on Haya’s perception of him. The less he stood out, the better. The human scowled as she tucked it somewhere beneath the voluminous folds of her trenchcoat. No wonder he hadn’t thought her armed. She had her holster-belts on, but left them empty. He’d foolishly assumed those were all she had.
“In any case,” she continued, as if nothing had happened. “I will not attempt to aggravate you further. I shall withhold psionics use around you unless we are on a job from now on.”
Kentaro’s mouth twitched. Aggravation? But that had been his approach! The womanly voice in his mind chuckled at the reversal, almost prompting a second admonishment. “Good,” he answered cleanly. Two could play the polite mindgames, even if her ability to see his hand was a disadvantage.
Haya held up a finger, interrupting the path between one of her eyes and him. A blessing in disguise for Kentaro – her glare was vicious in its own right. Two eyes might have actually made him flinch. “However. If I suspect whatever ‘secrets’ you hold will be a threat to me or to anyone on this ship, or to any innocents we encounter, then I will no longer respect that privacy you hold so dear. Whatever you’re hiding will become known to me. Am I clear?”
Ugh, another strict-lady type? I’ve already got one of you in my head, I don’t need a second. He smiled – warm, empty. “That’ll only happen if it gets out in the first place,” he noted with a smirk. “Self-fulfilling prophecy, Haya. You heard that phrase before? Stick out of my business, and my business will stick out of you.”
Her rust-brown eyes narrowed ever-so-slightly. But- “Fine. We have an accord.” Haya gave him a brusque, dismissive nod before slipping past him, boots striking the ground like hammers on softened metal. Her trenchcoat swished around her, a matador’s cape flaring, before slipping around the corner, and she was gone.
Kentaro breathed a sigh of relief. Too close. Himi, keep an eye on my head from now on. If that woman tries anything else-
I will monitor as best I can, was the response. And we – or rather, you - should be more cautious around our crewmates, at least until we know who is psionic and who is not. Lest the same thing occur.
A grimace. Yeah.
Most people tended to give her a strange look when she mentioned she did not have a personal transport. In the eyes of many, it would seem that the mental image of an interstellar bounty-hunter catching the bus between systems was incongruous. Bizarre. Wrong, somehow. She ignored them and booked her ticket, as usual. Their disapproval was irrelevant. They knew nothing of her. And certainly, she doubted any of them would make an imprint on the universe even half as large as hers. They would live, eke out an existence, convey their genetics, and die. She would safeguard those genetics by stopping those deviant strains that attempted to assert dominance – criminals, both petty and not. And in so doing, she would be in part responsible for whatever part their lines would inevitably play. A long-term investment.
An almost cold way of thinking, perhaps, but the end result was the same. Innocents would be protected. Deviation would be culled. Order would be maintained. Thus, Haya would contribute to the prosperity of society.
The shuttle trip passed in silence, aside from the obligatory noisy child in the ‘quiet’ compartment. She drowned out their squeals and bored whining with a set of noise-cancelling headphones, nestled under a soft curtain of rose-gold hair. A quiet compartment of her own, localised to the space directly around her ears, filled with whatever noise she desired. Even so, she gave the child a cold stare when he looked her way, almost feeling satisfaction at the way he shrank and returned to clambering over chairs in an attempt to amuse himself.
A taxi was waiting for her. The human pilot gave her a surprised look – obviously not expecting a Tamearin passenger – before skilfully and professionally discarding it for a cheery smile. “Destination?” he prompted.
“Golden Wind,” Haya answered, sliding into her seat. Her belongings were on their way separately – carting a box full of sidearms and some not-so-side-arms into a taxi might have done more than raise a few eyebrows. “One of the ships docked here.” She checked her reference, and rattled off the collection of numbers and letters detailing which dock exactly she needed to be taken to. The driver nodded, punched in the location, and started navigating. He refrained from attempting to engage her in conversation, evidently having dealt with a normal Tamearin before. She accepted his silence gratefully, and busied herself examining the world out the window.
Boarding was uneventful and dry, aside from the VI greeting her. She treated the disembodied voice with the cool disdain it deserved, and quickly dismissed it once she had directions to her quarters. It was only on her way there that she encountered a being of flesh and blood at last, a tall, well-dressed thug of a human wandering around seemingly-aimlessly. “Hello,” he greeted, in the manner of a predator sizing up prey. “What do we have here?”
“A colleague, most likely,” Haya answered brusquely, not rising to the bait. Even his wandering eyes provoked no visible reaction from her, which only seemed to cause him to make them more obvious. “Unless you’re a stowaway.”
“I wouldn’t be wandering the halls if I was,” was the response. He bowed, an oddly-formal gesture considering his manner. “Kentaro. Bounty hunter. You?”
“Haya. Tamearin bounty hunter.”
Kentaro grinned. “Ah, I know that name. So you’re the clever bitch I’ve heard about a few times. Turned down prestigious universities to kick scum ass, huh?”
No physical response, aside from the normal pacing of her blinks. “Correct. You know this how?”
“I keep an eye on rival, ah… ‘brokers’.” A snicker. “Out of curiosity, monkey, how many years with the typewriter did it take for you to churn out Hamlet?”
More blinking, and silence. Then: “You’re attempting to get a rise out of me.”
“No, me? Really?”
“You’re several weeks too early, or a few days too late. Try again in just under a month.”
Confusion slipped onto Kentaro’s face. “Whuh?”
She’s referring to her Sahc-diy-deuh, I assume. You really shouldn’t be so insensi-
You’re not my mother.
Now a flicker of confusion on Haya’s own countenance. “I’m not your…?”
The human tensed. “… you were reading my mind.” Psion. She heard my thoughts. Shit. That complicates things.
“Then you didn’t know?” The confusion turned to suspicion – intense. With practiced eyes, Kentaro noticed her hand drift slightly towards her hip. The holsters hanging on each side were empty, but… “If that’s the case, then who were you talking to? I find it difficult to believe-“
Ah, I see. She heard my half the conversation, not Hi- …hers. I’m still safe, for now. He held up a hand. “You want to stop right there, trust me.”
“Or?”
All trace of jubilance or mocking had vanished. Kentaro was suddenly, scarily, deadly serious. Yet if there was a threat gathering on his lips, he converted it into something else even as his mouth opened to deliver it. “You got any secrets?” he asked. “Things you’d prefer nobody know? Kinks, mistakes, guilty pleasures, other sources of shame… things that would make people view you differently?”
“Of course. Everyone has those.” One of her eyes was half-masked by an errant lock of hair, which Haya made no move to displace. Indeed, she was almost disturbingly still. A viper waiting to strike.
The tension eased, perhaps forcibly, from the human’s large frame. He spread his hands in a ‘what can you do’ gesture. “Then you can understand why I might not like you poking around in my head. Maybe you Tamearins do things different, but in this neck o’ the woods, we don’t tinker with what’s on people’s minds. Even taking a peek is considered a breach of privacy, you get what I’m saying?”
“You’re saying I should stay out of your business,” the Tamearin summarised blandly.
The half gracious, half smug smile broadened. “Exactly. Can you do that, or are we gonna have a problem?”
Haya did not answer immediately. “I find it’s good practice to know what potential threats are thinking,” she said at last, still almost frozen in place, glaring at him. “For all I know, you intended to kill me. If you had, and I hadn’t checked, I might be dead.”
He snorted. “Bitch- c’mon. Do I look like an assassin or a gunslinger?”
“No. Do I?”
“No-“
There was a pistol barrel in his face. In truth, Kentaro couldn’t even say from where it had come – Haya had moved too fast for him to see. “Surprised you haven’t learned this lesson yet,” she muttered coldly. “Appearances deceive.”
She lowered the pistol, and he exhaled. Fortunate – all the plans he’d concocted in those few seconds involved leaving her wounded at the very least, which would have been difficult to explain to the captain, and would have left an irrevocable scar on Haya’s perception of him. The less he stood out, the better. The human scowled as she tucked it somewhere beneath the voluminous folds of her trenchcoat. No wonder he hadn’t thought her armed. She had her holster-belts on, but left them empty. He’d foolishly assumed those were all she had.
“In any case,” she continued, as if nothing had happened. “I will not attempt to aggravate you further. I shall withhold psionics use around you unless we are on a job from now on.”
Kentaro’s mouth twitched. Aggravation? But that had been his approach! The womanly voice in his mind chuckled at the reversal, almost prompting a second admonishment. “Good,” he answered cleanly. Two could play the polite mindgames, even if her ability to see his hand was a disadvantage.
Haya held up a finger, interrupting the path between one of her eyes and him. A blessing in disguise for Kentaro – her glare was vicious in its own right. Two eyes might have actually made him flinch. “However. If I suspect whatever ‘secrets’ you hold will be a threat to me or to anyone on this ship, or to any innocents we encounter, then I will no longer respect that privacy you hold so dear. Whatever you’re hiding will become known to me. Am I clear?”
Ugh, another strict-lady type? I’ve already got one of you in my head, I don’t need a second. He smiled – warm, empty. “That’ll only happen if it gets out in the first place,” he noted with a smirk. “Self-fulfilling prophecy, Haya. You heard that phrase before? Stick out of my business, and my business will stick out of you.”
Her rust-brown eyes narrowed ever-so-slightly. But- “Fine. We have an accord.” Haya gave him a brusque, dismissive nod before slipping past him, boots striking the ground like hammers on softened metal. Her trenchcoat swished around her, a matador’s cape flaring, before slipping around the corner, and she was gone.
Kentaro breathed a sigh of relief. Too close. Himi, keep an eye on my head from now on. If that woman tries anything else-
I will monitor as best I can, was the response. And we – or rather, you - should be more cautious around our crewmates, at least until we know who is psionic and who is not. Lest the same thing occur.
A grimace. Yeah.
