Bounty at the Dark End by Tom Koperwas

Bounty at the Dark End by Tom Koperwas

Jo Quick had just completed the fly-by of the fading white dwarf star and was racing toward its fourth planet when he caught a glimpse of the Mannem Gang’s ship entering its upper atmosphere. Quick and his two androids had already caught or killed most of the men who’d robbed Affluence—a rich mining world in the frontier system at the bottom of the Cargyle Wormhole, far from The Beaten Trek, those well-traveled space lanes used for commerce and colonization. But three members of the gang had managed to evade capture, and Quick was determined to tie up the loose ends. The pursuit of the desperadoes had led him out beyond the fringes of surveyed space, to the Dark End,thesavage worlds of a depleted stellar remnant.Quick smiled when the infrared signature of the gang’s ship appeared on his computer screen. Then he dropped the bounty ship Blue Grabber into the planet’s atmosphere.

The blue insect-shaped craft glowed red hot, like a demonic blow fly, as it rapidly descended. Quick sat in the round head-like quarters next to his android scout Cody*, staring out of one of the semi-hemispherical eye-shaped windows at the small object descending below. The bulky android Crouch sat in the transparent blister atop the central thorax section of the ship, gripping the large rotating laser gatling in anticipation of action. Outside, he could see the Grabber’s surface, decorated with victory marks, and the long, retracted solar panels resembling a pair of translucent wings. Far behind, in the abdominal end of the ship, the holding cells and cryogenic units awaited the unwilling desperadoes… or their remains.

Crouch fired several bursts from the laser gatling at the gang’s ship, landing at least one solid hit as it dove through the thick clouds and mist hanging over the scattered forests of twisted dwarf trees. Dodging and weaving, the burning Mannem craft raced through the dim light to the badlands ,wheeling about its numerous red pinnacles and spires, the Grabber on its tail. Suddenly, a cloud of dark smoke burst from the damaged vessel, enveloping its pursuer. Pulling the Grabber up out of the smoke, Quick looked about for a sign of the damaged quarry. 

“Over there!” cried Cody, pointing to an oily plume rising from the ground. 

Quick dropped the ship toward the source of smoke.

“A decoy!” he shouted angrily, eyeing the black cloud gushing out of the smoke machine dropped by the wily gang. Quick’s gimlet eyes stared at the infrared signature forming on the ship’s computer screen. “Found ’em!” he cried, racing the ship toward the source of heat on the top of a large ebony butte.

Quick brought the bug-like ship down next to the burning wreck, landing it on its six crooked legs. A ramp dropped from the bottom of the Grabber‘s midsection, releasing the four- foot-tall man-like Cody. Securing his sidearm and tightening the pack on his back, Cody ran off toward a narrow crevice in the butte’s rocky surface. Two of the gang had escaped down the narrow fissure, leaving the third member of the party, Red Willis, on the surface. Willis fired his laser at the android running at him at eye-blurring speed—and missed. Firing on the run, the android blasted a hole through the robber’s heart, killing him instantly. The diminutive android removed an anti-grav disc from his pack and affixed it to the body. Lifting the lifeless figure into the air, the disc flew it back to the Grabber.

Jo Quick had received the kill confirmation from his scout, and was waiting outside the ship. Tall, slim, with a wiry build, he wore a long, black coat over his dark clothes, embossed with The Miners’ Association corporate logo and his bounty hunter authorization number. His large, square face, marred by a deep scar running across his cheek, was framed by long black hair streaked with white.

Towering over him was Crouch, a massive android that resembled an oversized fullback with perpetually bent knees and enormous booted feet. Wrapped in bulky weapons belts, he brandished a large flechette pistol in one of his thick hands. The android had assumed a defensive posture to guard the bounty hunter from any unknown dangers.

Quick’s scout on point had done a good job of scoring the first termination of the hunt. Now everyone had a role to play. Removing the anti-grav disc, Crouch took Willis’ body into the Grabber and registered the kill with the ship’s computer. Consequently, a new victory mark in the shape of a skull appeared on the ship’s surface. Crouch then carried the corpse to the cryogenic unit in the rear of the vessel, so it could be preserved for the bounty reward from the Miners’ Association.

Quick, in turn, was scanning the butte’s surface for alien life forms through his transparent virtual glasses. Finding the rocky face devoid of life, he looked up and examined the pale dwarf star faintly illuminating the planet’s murky atmosphere. He’d never been in the Dark End before. The robbers must have been desperate to have fled to such a dismal place as this. He wondered if he was crazy to have followed them.

His attention was drawn to the sound of an explosion in the distance. Cody had taken a charge from his pack and detonated it to widen the narrow opening of the crevice. More room was needed to allow the massive Crouch to descend below the surface if he were to assist in the manhunt down there. 

Quick hurried to his scout’s side. Spotting a small piece of twisted metal on the ground, he picked it up. “It’s the remains of a rappelling device, Cody,” he whispered. “That explains how they got underground so fast. They must have left it on the surface when they fled. Your charge destroyed it…  but never mind.”

He peered over the edge into the dark crevice, his virtual glasses penetrating the shadows and measuring its depth. Turning to Crouch, he said, “It’s forty feet to the bottom. Provide us with a line so we can rappel down.”

Crouch, silent as ever, unwound a strong line from one of his belts. Quick took hold of it and waited as the big android reached out his arm and suspended him over the crevice. Then he lowered himself down the rope’s length to the cavern floor below. Cody followed a moment later. Crouch returned the line to his belt before stepping off the edge into the air, descending slowly, the anti-grav discs in his boots gently lowering his massive body into the fissure. 

Quick’s virtual glasses shielded his eyes from the bright light of the magnesium flash powder Cody used to illuminate the cavernous chamber. The robbers Lou Striker and Luke Carver had evidently fled. Cody and Crouch switched on their UV lights when the vivid light faded, fluorescing the calcite. All about them, the curtains and towers of rocks glowed red, pink, green, blue, and orange. Suddenly, four large greenish-blue bioluminescent creatures ran out of an adjoining tunnel entrance and scurried frantically across the floor, exiting in the rear.

“Four unusually large millipedal life forms,” observed Cody. “At least four feet in length. Their hormones and neurotransmitters registered intense fear.”

“If those big, ugly critters are scared of something, it must be bad,” muttered Quick, nervously brandishing his sidearm. Standing stock-still, he listened to the silence.

Two bloodcurdling screams roiled the darkness, the echoes reverberating throughout the chamber.

“Burn some more magnesium, fast!” shouted Quick.

The bright flash illuminated an immense swarm of wolf spiders held in abeyance by the intense white light, the tips of their long, hairy legs protruding into the underground chamber. Back in the shadows of the tunnel, their innumerable eyes glittered ominously, like blood-red rubies. Quick held his breath as the magnesium flame sputtered and died.

The bounty hunter fired his laser wildly into the cluster of fluorescent spiders as they poured out of the tunnel like a tidal wave of glowing death. Crouch followed suit, blasting away with cloud-like bursts of destructive darts. But nothing could stop the innumerable reddish-gold creatures. Rapidly overrunning the defenders, the spiders raced on in pursuit of their ill-fated prey, the millipedes, having trampled and repeatedly bitten Jo Quick.

Crouch and Cody, firing in every direction at the alien arachnids, saw a tall robot suddenly stride into their midst and take hold of the stricken bounty hunter, lifting him high into the air. The androids ceased fighting and stared at the robot, which had a caduceus on its chest.

“I am registered Med Rob 362, intervening to save this human life,” it uttered, as it carried the unconscious bounty hunter toward a narrow opening in the cavern wall. “Do not interfere.”

The androids watched as the robot disappeared into the wall of the cavern. Then a large boulder rolled in front of the opening, sealing the compartment behind it from the crawling horrors in the dark chamber.

& & &

 Quick’s right eye drooped open limply. He was lying on his back, looking up at a bright light. A woman, her face small and distorted in his vision, was standing beside him, holding a long hypodermic needle.

“Looks like you got him here in the nick of time, MR362,” she said, addressing the tall robot standing next to her, a large caduceus flashing on its chest. The woman brought the needle down toward Quick’s arm. The light went dark… then he was falling through space toward a black hole.

& & &

Quick’s eyes fluttered and opened wide. He was too exhausted to move a muscle.

“Welcome back to the world of the living, Mr. Quick,” said a little woman with a small, childlike face and tiny, delicate hands, wearing a black lab coat. “I am Dr. Francis Bane, venomologist. You are in my lab in an abandoned spider hole in the heart of Bug Central. It’s a lucky thing for you that Med Rob 362 picked you up on the sensor web we’d spread through the chamber to detect arachnid and insect life forms. You’d received several bites from the native wolf spiders. Their venom is highly toxic. When MR362 brought you here, it afforded me the opportunity to test one of my new antivenoms. Evidently it worked.”

The tall medical robot gently lifted Quick’s head with one of its metallic hands, then stuffed a pillow under it with the other. Quick’s eyes wandered over the interior of the rocky hole filled with lab equipment and racks of bottled venom. A two-foot long spider strapped onto a table was having its venom milked through capillary tubes attached to the tips of its fangs.

“This is my second stint on this world,” the doctor continued. “The arachnids and insects went underground a long time ago, after the white dwarf began to fade. That makes Bug Central an ideal site to collect venoms for the Medical Research Ship from the Beaten Trek. I’m going to rendezvous with it in a couple of months. I expect I’ll earn enough money to return up the Cargyle Wormhole to retire on one of the Home Worlds with a research firm of my own.”

“You’re a brave woman to work here alone,” whispered Quick. “In a place this dangerous.”

“Thank you,” said the doctor. “And I must say that you’re a brave man to come all the way out to the Dark End to hunt killers in Bug Central. MR362 told me all he’d learned about you from your android helpers Cody and Crunch: your bounty career, record of kills and captures, and the fabulous bounty ship you call the Blue Grabber. You have a most fascinating career.

“Now, I’m going to give you some final injections,” she said, inserting a hypodermic needle into his arm. “You will sleep a little longer while your body is being strengthened and rejuvenated. I will escort you to the surface when you awaken.”

& & &

Quick tightened his gas mask. Stepping out of the spider hole, he followed Doctor Bane through the murky gas-filled chamber.

“The wolf spiders on this world are pack hunters, unlike the solitary wolf spiders of Earth,” said the doctor through her gas mask. “The sensor web informs MR362 and I of their movements, their hunts and the rare lone pursuit. The gas anesthetizes all the life forms in the chamber when we need venom.”

The doctor led Quick to the bottom of the crevice and affixed an anti-grav pad to his back, Quick doing the same for her. The pads lifted them up slowly through the gas-filled air to the surface, where Cody and Crunch were waiting.

“We’ve taken the bodies of the fugitives to the ship,” reported Cody.

The bounty hunter gave a thumbs up to his android companions, then smiled at the doctor.  “May I take your hand?” he asked.

 “If you wish, Mr. Quick,” replied the doctor, shyly.

Quick kissed her hand and said, “You saved my life, Doc. And for that I’ll always be grateful.”

The bounty hunter turned and headed off toward the Blue Grabber, waving when he came to the ramp.

The doctor waved back. Then she donned her mask and reentered the crevice.

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Tom Koperwas 2025

Author’s Note: Quick’s android, Cody, is named after William Frederick Cody, a.k.a. Buffalo Bill, who was a civilian scout for the U.S. Army during the Indian Wars.