Corey had never imagined himself defacing any graves -much less the grave of his own mother. But someone else had defaced it first. He knew she would rather have a pile of rubble above her grave than a headstone with the Church’s symbol on it.

The symbol of the Church of the Guiding Truth, two hands entwined around a fiery heart, cracked a little more as Corey swung the sledgehammer into it again. They’d taken his mother’s death as an excuse to “reclaim her lost soul” and put their symbol on her headstone. Never mind that her “lost soul” had been running from them for Corey’s entire life, trying to unlearn all the ways they’d brainwashed her, and forget the ways they’d abused her. Corey couldn’t stomach the thought of their symbol lying above her body for a moment longer, much less eternity.

Corey brought the hammer down again. A large crater formed in the center of the headstone, nearly obliterating the Church’s symbol. Corey wouldn’t settle for “nearly”. He had to make this right, since it was a little bit his fault the Church’s symbol was there in the first place. Not that he regretted punching his aunt in the face. Only that he’d done it in front of lawyers. They’d turned the assault around on him to reclaim power of attorney. The parasites in charge of that cult had better lawyers than Corey could afford to hire -but a good sledgehammer only cost forty bucks. They might try to rebuild the headstone, but Corey would keep coming back until they gave up.

Unless of course he got arrested for vandalism. The sudden illumination of a high-beam flashlight made that feel very possible. Somewhere on the other end of the blinding light, Eric thought he could see two human silhouettes illuminated from behind.

“Uh. I can explain,” Corey said. He made sure to take his hands off the sledgehammer.

“Forvush tocal Morrakesh nec fot.”

“What?”

The two silhouettes briefly turned away from Corey to focus on each other.

“Morrakesh prandeck nec nomot.”

“Nomot? Egbas Kentath-cuvos. Kimme regba ot.”

One of the two silhouettes pointed at the other -with one of six fingers.

“Hold on-”

Corey never got to raise any further protests. The second black silhouette pointed something at Eric, and an electric jolt pulsed through his nervous system, disabling it entirely. The two figures walked up to the broken gravestone and examined their paralyzed quarry with blood red eyes, then continued conversing in their own language.

“[Hundreds of lightyears into the outskirts of the universe and we’re still finding Kentath retrogrades. Looks like a fucking Gentanian in a wig.”]

“[The DNA will still be different,]” the other sneered. He parted deep purple lips in a fanged sneer.

“[Morrakesh can’t put DNA in his menagerie,]” the second hunter said, irritation seeping into his alien tongue. The dry atmosphere on this planet was starting to make his leathery skin itch. “[He’s not going to buy this as an ‘exotic specimen’.]”

“[We’ll call it a curiosity,]” the other suggested. “[He’ll be closer to having a ‘full set’ than anyone else in the galaxy.]”

In spite of his irritation, the alien’s partner shrugged in acceptance.

“[Fair play. He’ll go for that.]”

“[It’ll cover the cost of fuel to get out here, at least,]” the first alien said. “[Otherwise the trip’s just wasted. Come on, grab the thing and let’s get off this backwater rock.]”

The hunters shouldered their rifles and then shouldered Corey’s unmoving body, taking him back to their ship. The sledgehammer and the half-shattered grave were left alone in darkness once again as the ship ascended into the stars above, and then beyond them.

Corey woke with another jolt, this time self-inflicted. He’d barely regained consciousness when he registered the heavy vibration of metal beneath him, the heat of a lamp above, and the heavy weight of some kind of collar on his neck. Corey took in everything one by one. He was in some kind of cell/pit, surrounded by metal walls on all sides, except from above. The empty ceiling was about twenty feet high, and dominated by an odd looking square lamp that beamed harsh yellow light down on Corey.

Finally, the collar was, in fact, a collar. The thick metallic construct kept Corey’s head and neck upright and rigid, like a neck brace, and the metal construction had jagged edges that dug into his skin. Corey wiggled the brace, and only succeeded in stabbing himself in the neck a little more. It was locked tight.

“Messing with it won’t help you.”

Corey jumped, and the sudden movement made the collar hurt even more. He ignored the pain and pressed his back to one of the metal walls. Even while panicking, he noted the vibrations pulsing through it. Whatever he was on had a powerful motor. Thoughts of motors faded as he focused on his company in the cell.

Whatever it was looked roughly ninety percent human, but the remaining ten percent was enough to make Eric feel uneasy. It had blue-gray skin, slick with moisture, and bulbous blue eyes. It’s head was hairless, and the ears appeared to have become fused to the sides of its head over time. It held up a slimy blue hand in a gesture of greeting, then pointed to its own collar.

“For starters, even if you manage to unlatch them, they have a little bomb in them,” the slimy stranger said. Corey took his hands away from the collar. “Secondly, they probably dug your translator out of you. Collar’s the only thing letting you and me talk to each other, and believe me, you’ll want to understand what I have to say.”

“Translator? I don’t- What are you? Where am I?”

“Do you really not know?”

“No. Last thing I remember I was smashing...uh, a thing,” Corey said. He didn’t know where he was, but it was probably better not to admit to vandalism. “Now I’m here with you. Whatever you are.”

The slimy one put a hand on his forehead, and narrowed bulbous eyes.

“Oh, you must be an Uncontacted,” he said. “I didn’t realize there were any of you left. Especially not of the Kentath retrogrades.”

“I don’t know what any of those things mean.”

“Right, right, explanations. Well, the good news is, you’re probably the first member of your species to meet alien life forms.”

Corey took a moment to let that sentence hit him like a truck, because the “good news” implied the existence of “bad news” and he wanted to brace himself for that.

“The bad news is your first contact comes thanks to intergalactic slavers.”

“That tracks,” Corey sighed. Humanity had given him too many bad examples for Corey to assume alien races could be any better. “So we’re slaves now, you and me?”

“And a couple hundred others. We’re just in the same pod since they ran out of room.”

“Fantastic, I get a roommate. My name’s Corey Vash.”

“Good to meet you, Corvash. I am HobridHee.”

“It’s not- Never mind. So what happens now?”

“Well, usually we sit around and hope we get sold to the good Flesh Pit and not the bad one.”

“Why’s one good and one bad?”

“The Flesh Pit on Hoxxa is ‘flesh’ in the sex way. The Flesh Pit on Boccadum is flesh in the ‘fight to the death’ way.”

“Oh. Definitely hope for the Hoxxa one then, yeah,” Corey said. “You said ‘usually’ though, right?”

“Yep! You’ve got either really good timing or really bad timing, depending on how you look at it.”

“With the way my day is going, we should assume bad,” Corey said. “What’s up?”

HobridHee looked up at the edge of their pit and then wormed his way closer to Corey, and lowered his voice into a soft, bubbling whisper.

“Word is the captain of the ship’s deep in debt to a crime lord, and only turned to slaving to pay it off,” HobridHee explained. “Part of the crew doesn’t like the debt or the slaving, so they’re going to mutiny and turn the captain over to the crime lord, then free all the slaves.”

“Okay, cool. Where does the bad part come in?”

“Well, the mutineers don’t have the numbers to take on the loyalists or the ship security-”

“So they want to give the slaves guns and even the odds?”

“You got it.”

“Fucking fantastic,” Corey said. His mom had insisted they both get comfortable with a gun for self-defense, so he knew how to aim and shoot. Alien guns probably followed the same basic mechanics. He hoped. “What do you think?”

“I think there’s a good chance we all die,” HobridHee said. “But there’s also a non-zero chance we get free, and there’s a lot of things worse than death waiting out there for a slave.”

“Good point. I’m in.”

His own freedom aside, Corey would take any excuse to put a bullet (or a plasma bolt or a laser beam, as the case might be) in a slaver. The thought provided some comfort as he coped with the existential nightmare of being lost in space, a million miles from Earth, with no way home.

“I wish they could at least put in a humidifier or something,” HobridHee complained. “It’d make sense, right? Slaves with cracked skin are less valuable, yeah?”

Corey gave a grunt of acknowledgment. HobridHee was starting to get used to that response. Corey was not being a very good conversation partner, but considering everything he’d been through in the past few hours, HobridHee understood that. He just tried to keep talking to himself, to keep Corey’s mind at ease, and maybe slip in a few important details about galactic society while he was at it.

“You know my species is only one of about a dozen semi-aquatic Kentath offshoots,” HobridHee said. “Pretty weird, considering how many planets are mostly water, right?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess. What’s that Kentath thing you keep mentioning?”

“Well, it’s a long story,” HobridHee said. “You seem a little out of sorts. Maybe it can wait?”

“Ugh, maybe,” Corey grunted. “I’d nap if the ship weren’t vibrating so much.”

“It is a bit of a junker, yeah. Probably an ancient trawler they- Did you hear that?”

“I don’t hear anything but you talking, bud.”

“Your species must have weaker hearing. Stay quiet, keep your head down. Pretend you were asleep.”

HobridHee flopped on the floor like a dead fish and closed his bulging eyes. Corey opted for a more understated performance of curling up in a corner and lowering his head. They continued the routine for a few minutes while the sound of shuffling footsteps and muffled voices carried on overhead. Eventually the quiet footsteps came to their pit, and something knocked on the walls of their cell. They both feigned waking up.

“Ey, Hob -who’s this?”

“New catch. Uncontacted, out of his depth. But he’s in, same as me.”

“You been blabbing about the plan?”

“No names or times,” HobridHee said. “I’m good for secrets.”

“Well, fuck it, bit late to sell us out now,” the voice above the pit said. “Let’s get them out of there.”

A coiled ladder was lowered into the pit, and HobridHee climbed up first. Corey wondered why a spacefaring species still used ladders, but figured sometimes you just couldn’t beat the classics. His opinion of the spacefarers technological innovation changed quickly when he reached the top of the ladder and found a sickle-shaped device with multiple glowing components being shoved in his face. The alien waving it in his face pointed emphatically to various components.

“Press green button. Make hurt come out of blue end,” the sickly-looking alien said. He enunciated every syllable very clearly, as if speaking to a child. “Point blue end at person to hurt when press green button.”

“I know how a gun works,” Corey said. “And I can understand you fine.”

“Would not be first Uncontacted to kill self with plasma conductor,” the alien snarled. “All newcomers think they bigshot king of space, most die fast. See how you turn out.”

The alien armorer walked away and armed the next slave down the line. Corey turned the plasma weapon over in his hand and looked for any other buttons on it, though he kept his fingers far far away from all of them.

“Hey, buddy, how do I reload this thing?” Corey said, calling out to the pistol-bearing alien. “What do I do?”

The other alien ignored him, but Hob helpfully interjected.

“These things have about a hundred shots in them, assuming they’re fully charged. We shouldn’t burn through that many. Doesn’t look like they’re handing out spare cells anyway.”

“Odds are none of you will even need to fire a shot,” another alien shouted. He took charge of the room while his comrade finished handing out the last of the pistols. “Captain’s not a brave sort. Enough guns aimed at her, she should back down, we get this ship back on track, and send you all on your way.”

The muttering slaves didn’t exactly seem optimistic, but most of them didn’t have any better options. Corey tightened his grip on his weapon.

“Our girl’s in the hangar right now,” the commander of the mutiny said. “Let’s all make our way there nice and slow-like, stay calm, and keep your fingers off the triggers until I say so.”

The mutineer opened the doors to the slave pens and led his makeshift army out into the halls of the ship. Corey made sure to take in the structure of the vessel just in case, but he was more focused on the future.

“He said we’re going to the hangar,” Corey whispered to Hob. “Do you know how to fly a ship?”

“No, but I know how to boot an autopilot,” HobridHee said. “I can launch us towards the nearest inhabited star system and hope the distress beacon lets someone find us.”

“I’ve heard worse plans,” Corey said. “When the shooting starts, we bolt for the nearest ship.”

“I got your back, Corvash.”

“I- whatever, let’s get this done,” Corey said. The march to the hangar was short, and Corey didn’t have time to hash out the right way to pronounce his name. There were a lot of different aliens in the hangar -and the mutineers flinched when they saw the full expanse of the crowd. While some of the aliens wore uniforms matching the colors of the mutineers, there was another group wearing entirely different kinds of clothing as well, and a ship in the hangar that didn’t match the others. Unexpected visitors, maybe.

The presumptive leader of the third faction in the hangar, judging by his ornate robe and heavily jeweled chest, looked at the motley slave crew and let out a deep, throaty rasp that might’ve been his version of a chuckle.

“You better hope this is a merchandise showcase, rat.”

The leader of the mutineers nervously examined their new guest and the captain in turn.

“You said Morrakesh’s people would leave us alone,” he mumbled.

“We aren’t with Morrakesh,” the unexpected visitor grunted, before turning back to the captain. “Sounds like you’ve reached into one too many nests, my friend.”

The mutineer leader raised his rifle, almost but not quite aiming it at the captain.

“This ship’ll be under new management soon,” he said. “Stay out of the way and we can clean up this mess.”

The visitor responded by drawing a pistol -a much larger one than Corey’s, to his chagrin- and pointing it at the mutineer leader.

“We protect our investments here, traitor,” the visitor snarled. He’d barely gotten the words out before the captain pulled out her own weapon, and aimed it at the visitor.

“Nothing personal,” she said. “But I need you off my back.”

The visitor bared his teeth and glanced sideways at the captain.

“You couldn’t have waited three drops for us to take out those idiots?”

The captain glanced at the mutineers. Corey wasn’t good at parsing alien facial expressions yet, but he could tell she regretted a lot of things right now.

“Do you know who we’re supposed to be shooting at?” Hob whispered.

“I’m losing track. I think who’s not shooting at us is more important?”

Nobody was shooting right now, because everyone was too busy figuring out who they were supposed to shoot. The already complex equation got even more complex when a bright red vessel started hovering in the space outside the shielded hangar doors. It passed through the energy barrier that kept the atmosphere in and landed, as all guns in the hangar briefly turned towards it. Some of the guns turned away when it deployed guns of its own. Very large, ship-born cannons started to glow red.

“Captain Vysus Koll and associates,” the ship’s speakers boomed. “Baron Turrut and associates. You have been targeted for apprehension or termination. Lower your weapons and submit to custody for processing. Resistance will not be tolerated.”

“Are we associates?” Hob whispered. Corey responded by nodding to his weapon, which was already lowered, and Hob followed suit.

“Is everyone in the fucking galactic supercluster on my ship?” the captain screamed.

“No unassociated vessels detected beyond the three already present,” boomed the speakers of the red starship. The captain looked at the red ship, then at the ship the Baron and his associates had arrived in, and back at the red ship. He counted two.

“Three?”

A hatch at the back of the hangar opened, and three aliens of different shapes and sizes stepped forward. Two were mostly humanoid, like the other aliens Corey could see right now, but the third looked like an amalgam of a gorilla, a fish, and an insect. The odd trio took exactly two steps forward, guns drawn, before seeing the vast and mismatched forces arrayed against them, and promptly stepping backwards and behind the nearest crate to take cover. The most human-looking member of the trio peeked over the top of the crate to examine the scene again, before his eyes focused on the massive red ship.

“Oh hey, look at that, is that Heart Rippers? I know you guys.”

“Identify,” the ship boomed.

“Kamak D-V-Y-B and the crew of the Hard Luck Hermit,” he said. “Bounty Hunter’s Guild registration YX03201994.”

“Acknowledged. No active warrants detected. One unpaid fine of sub-five hundred units detected,” the red ship boomed.

“Unpaid fine? Doprel, did you forget to pay the docking fee on Elgam?”

“Maybe,” the odd hybrid creature grunted.

Kamak let out a loud groan and got back to the matter at hand.

“Anyway, we were here to claim a bounty on Captain Vysus Koll. Any chance we could, uh-”

“Unacceptable. Captain Vysus Koll and associates are legal bounties of the Xakatan Hegemony, claimed by the Heart Rippers,” the crimson ship boomed.

“Okay, that’s fine, that’s great,” Kamak said. “You were here first, and uh, you seem to have brought a better umbrella to this particular shitstorm, so how about we provide you some covering fire while we slowly back away and let you do your thing.”

“Non-obstructive participation will be tolerated,” the red ship boomed.

“Okay, great. Now, who exactly are we shooting at?”

A question that echoed across the hangar, and resulted in a lot of guns being pointed in a lot of different directions. Kamak shrugged.

“Oh, so it’s that kind of party.”

Corey didn’t know if someone’s trigger finger just slipped, or if someone decided to end the standoff, but the party got started in violent fashion. A single bolt kicked off a firestorm in every direction. HobridHee grabbed Corey and pulled him to the ground just as fourteen individual plasma bolts cut through the space where they had been standing. Corey tried to get his bearings and failed miserably as bodies started to drop on all sides.

“Where are we going?”

In the back corner of the hangar, the mismatched trio added their own bullets to the fray, though sparingly.

“Tooley, we need a pickup! This got a bit hotter than expected.”

“Kamak, guns up,” the strange hybrid creature roared. “Give those slaves some breathing room, they need to get out of here!”

“I like those guys,” Corey said. “Let’s go with them.”

Hob agreed, and the two got on their knees and crawled through the chaos in their direction. The third member of the bounty hunter trio, a red skinned, broad shouldered humanoid, was screaming and loosing plasma in every non-slave direction, creating a hailstorm of “covering fire” that kept Corey’s path mostly clear. By keeping low and ducking behind cover whenever possible, Corey and Hob managed to reach the same crate the three bounty hunters were hiding behind.

“Hi!” Hob said. Kamak jumped, but managed not to shoot their unexpected guest in his surprise. “Mind giving us a ride?”

“We’re hunters, not a rescue operation,” Kamak said.

“Come on, Kamak,” the hulking hybrid creature said. “We’re less than a swap away from the nearest station. We won’t even have to feed them.”

“You say that, Doprel, but five drops after we take off you’re going to be telling me how hungry they look,” Kamak snapped back. He ducked out of cover to drop a few targets -and found that two of them had already been dropped by Corey and his pistol. The two gunmen shared a nod of understanding and returned to cover.

“If it happens, I’ll feed them out of my rations,” Doprel assured his partner.

“Fine,” Kamak snapped. “But only because this one can actually shoot, and I want more covering fire for my ship. And they’re helping me buff out the blaster marks when we land, too!”

“Works for me,” HobridHee said. The diminutive humanoid kept his head down, not firing a single shot as the others cut down anyone who threatened their position. The roar of an engine eventually heralded the arrival of the bounty hunters’ ship.

“Farsus, drop some smoke!”

“It shall be as you say!”

The crimson skinned humanoid holstered his guns and grabbed two large grenades from his belt, raising them with a boisterous cry of exhilaration.

“Thank you for this edifying frenzy of death! It has been long since I gazed at such a maelstrom of chaos!”

“Stop thanking them for murdering people and cover our asses!”

With a loud cry for each canister, Farsus tossed the grenades into the room and let them burst into a thick cloud of blue smoke. While stray blaster shots still tore through the smoke on occasion, the obscuring haze diverted most of the attention. Doprel, the massive hybrid beast, grabbed their two new friends and pushed them in the right direction, leading them towards the open bay door of a small, boxy craft hovering in the hangar. Corey asked no questions, and made a beeline for the ship as the chaos continued behind him. Hob was the last one through the door, and a volley of blaster fire followed him, pinging off the inside walls of the ship just before the bay doors closed.

“Hey! You guys are polishing that too!”

Doprel gestured to the scorch mark on the wall, and then at their two new passengers.

“Kamak, give them a minute to breath! They- Oh no.”

Corey looked down at himself, and saw nothing out of the ordinary. Then he looked over his shoulder, and saw HobridHee face down on the ground, with a smoking hole in the back of his head.

“Oh.”

“Hm,” Kamak grunted, sounding almost disinterested.

Farsus walked over to the body and brushed his red fingertips against the outskirts of the wound, brushing ash and cauterized blood off of HobridHee’s blue skin.

“A high-intensity bolt, likely a Detarco X3 repeater rifle,” he said flatly. “Quick, clean, devastatingly powerful. Your friend likely felt no pain, stranger. I hope that brings you comfort.”

“He wasn’t my- We only knew each other a few hours. We were just...trying to help each other get out of there.”

“Still. Never feels good when someone dies on your watch,” Kamak said. “Did he, uh...say where he was from? What he believed?”

“He didn’t.”

“Right. Doprel? You want to handle spacing him?”

The hulking creature nodded. When in doubt, being ejected towards the nearest sun was the default way to handle a body in space. Before undergoing that macabre ritual, Doprel turned to Corey. His mandibles moved slowly as he spoke a single question

“Did he tell you his name?”

“HobridHee.”

Doprel gave a solemn nod and picked up the body in his massive arms. Farsus put both hands on his own massive shoulders and bowed in the direction of the body. Kamak showed a practiced indifference to the respectful scene.

“Speaking of. You got a name, stranger?”

“Corey Vash,” he said. Then he briefly pointed at HobridHee’s body, limp in Doprel’s arms. “That guy called me Corvash, for some reason.”

“Alright then, Corey and/or Corvash,” Kamak said. He gave Corey a rough clap on the shoulder. “Welcome aboard the Hard Luck Hermit.”