The next two months dragged on hellishly for the remaining occupants of the ZCAV Triumph. For the two remaining crew members, Alyarus lived in constant fright that their mercenary hitchhiker would kill them at any moment. He had made it terrifyingly clear that while he could act nobly, which he proved by saving them from the prisoners and other dangers of the planet, at the same time he had no problem acting as a cold-blooded killer either. She mostly did her best to stay out of his way as much as possible and have as little contact with him as she could. She stayed at the controls when she needed, and her personal quarters all other times.

Alyarus’ plan seemed to work, for the mercenary did not seek her out for the remaining journey. She didn’t know what he did with his time and thought she probably didn’t want to know either. For his part, Lupis found the journey equally painful, though for much different reasons. For Lupis, he had been uprooted and taken away from his life, been forced to spend much of the past few months in a large box while being ridiculed by a few power-tripping security officers. He focused all of the pain he had endured, all of the anger on one person. And this old freighter ship simple could not travel back to Titan space fast enough for his taste. Every minute that went by during the two months that it took to reach civilized space once more was a minute too long.

One day, about a week after they had emerged from the sensor-scrambling void on the edge of Titan space, Lupis’ suit began receiving a transmission. He patched in with his Net-Comm and smiled when he saw that the message was a homing signal. As we went back over to his suit, which had been powered down at that time and recharging the power cell batteries, he patched through to his suit’s communication array and sent a command through the system to trace the signal back to its origin point. He took the power cells out of the wall charging unit and placed them back inside the Phantasm armor, snapped the back door shut on the armor and then climbed inside.

By the time Lupis had made his way back up to the cabin, the signal had been successfully traced back to a colony on a familiar looking planet. It was Tuscan, the Iscalian crime family-owned world inside the middle cluster of Titan space and the planet where most of this mess had started.

The doors to the cabin opened as Lupis, back inside his familiar armor, walked inside. Captain Alyarus had not been spending as much time up here lately, as he had been using his armor to keep track of the crew’s comings and goings. But as it turned out, she was there at that very moment, double checking the routing programs. She froze when he came in.

“Adjust the route. We’re going to Tuscan.”

“Tuscan? What’s on Tuscan?” She asked skeptically.

“Don’t worry, you’re dropping me off. After that, you two are free to do whatever you want.” He thought about saying more to soften his words, perhaps an apology for his actions, for what she had been forced to endure on that planet…but ended up saying no more.

Alyarus didn’t have to say any more, and neither did he. She knew there was an implicit threat behind his words, an unspoken “or else.” They would be free to do whatever they wanted as long as they did not try to hinder whatever plans he was looking to carry through on the notoriously lawless mobster planet. She made no argument, but began adjusting the course immediately, hoping that he was telling the truth, and planned to leave them soon.

“Twenty-three hours ‘til arrival.” She announced shortly after the computers finished calculating the route.

Lupis turned on a countdown within his suit’s computer system which began running subtly in the corner of his HUD before turning to leave without another word. Inside though, Lupis was leaping for joy, for the timer represented a countdown until they arrived on the planet Tuscan, and his beloved Rhapsody, which was broadcasting the signal to his suit.

* * * *

The small colony on Tuscan was built in the middle of a lush forest, on the banks of a winding river that eventually emptied out into the large lake a few dozens of miles away, the same lake the colony that he had previously discovered the runaway “cultists” that he had been tasked with finding sat upon. It really was one of the most picturesque sites in all of Titan civilized space.

Unlike Titan and Io and a few other planets within the primary solar system, Tuscan did not have an orbital spaceport, or any global tracking network that monitored and regulated all inbound and outbound space vehicles within the planet’s atmosphere. The Titan crime families seemed to be more on the anarchist side of politics when it came to such things. This made their landfall planetside much easier, but the large freighter drew much more attention than Lupis’ old vehicle. He knew many people would be able to spot it with their naked vision.

Captain Alyarus knew this also and wasn’t sure how to feel about this development. If it had been a civilized planet with proper authorities, she would have welcomed the attention, as it probably would have meant an armed Zenith escort arriving quickly to investigate their unauthorized landing. But here on Tuscan, anyone that noticed their landing would just be criminal mobsters, and she wasn’t sure if she’d be better off with them or the maniac mercenary.

The Captain was not expecting the armed welcome party that was waiting when the Triumph landed on the spaceport landing pad just outside of the town. Though devoid of a spaceport, obviously the denizens of Tuscan must have had some other, less visible means of tracking spacecraft on the planet. It was not the grizzled, two dozen or more armed mobsters that awaited her landing that made her nervous about the encounter though, for she was sure she would be able to talk her way out of any trouble waiting for her. She was after all, still a Zenith Corp official, and even the crime families were not eager to directly oppose the corporate empire. It was the fact that the mercenary aboard the ship had been silent and had all but disappeared during the last hour of their approach to the planet.

As the Triumph landed on the concrete landing pad and primary power was cut off and winding down, she had no idea what would happen next. It did not take long before the armed group arrived at the side port entrance and began demanding entry to board her ship. She reached out to the console and pressed a button that opened a 2-way comm to the entrance hatch. She wasn’t sure what the mercenary had planned or if she should be trying to stall for time. For that matter, she wasn’t sure which side she would route for if it came down to blows.

“Captain Alyarus of the ZCAV Triumph, Rank III officer of Zenith. What is your business with my vessel?” She forced a brave authority into her voice as she spoke.

“Toto Sausages.” Came the wry response a moment later in a gruff, heavily accented voice. “Barksdale pack capo. What is your business on our planet?”

“My business is official Zenith business, do you have a portmaster official?”

“Nah, but I’m the one in charge here. I really must insist that you open the hatch.”

The onboard sensors gave her a warning, and she flipped on the exterior cameras on the display to check for herself. The landing pad systems had applied magnetic locking clamps onto the landing gear. It was a fairly common practice in Zenith ports, but it was a move that surprised her on this outlaw planet. She really had no choice then, as her ship had no way of overriding these.

“Permission to come aboard.” She answered through the comms and opened the hatch.

A moment later and a dozen openly armed Titans were streaming inside the ship, while a dozen or more waited outside. Two of them walked up to the cabin and waited outside the door. She turned the chair to face them and opened the door.

“How many aboard this ship?” Toto Sausages, a smaller Canid mixed breed with long fur wasted no time as he entered the cabin.

“Now wait just a minute. I am a officer of Zenith. You don’t have the authority to just come aboard my ship and begin demanding…”

“Shut up.” The Titan gangster’s forceful reply was so fierce it sapped any authority from Alyarus’ demeanor instantly. “That might mean something in Zenith space, but you’re on Tuscan now. Zenith don’t hold no authority here.”

Alyarus wanted to argue at this arrogant Titan’s attitude, but reason won over and she thought best not to.

“It’s only myself and my essential systems officer.”

“A crew of only two?” The Titan replied warily.

“We were on a long mission and there were significant complications. Much of my crew was lost. We’re just here to restock a few essential supplies before we go back to a Zenith port.”

“What part of the galaxy was your mission?”

“That is classified sir!” Alyarus’ replied indignantly. “Under article two-four…”

“Were you out past the Void?” The mobster did not seem to be as preoccupied by Zenith Statutes as she had been.

Before any of them could act, there was a sudden commotion in the entryway and the commons area. She flipped on the monitors to see what had caused the noise. She was just in time to see the image of the familiar power armor come onto the display.

Lupis took the gang of armed Titans off-guard, dropping the cloaking system in front of them and launching into a savage attack before any of them could react. In one hand, his E-sword extended instantly, and effortlessly severed the head of the nearest mobster, before plunging through the chest of another standing nearby. The other hand reached out at the same time, engulfing another Titan’s head fully in an irresistible gauntlet and crushed his skull against the ship’s hull.

The other surprised mobsters spread out as much as possible within the cramped area and tried to mount a defense against this sudden attacker. Shots began ringing out from multiple angles at once, but the Phantasm armor had a rating against most forms of small arms fire, which mostly pinged harmlessly off the hard exterior shell. The mobsters were fearless but not trained soldiers, and in the heat of the moment forgot many things that a trained soldier would not have. Mostly this included positioning and field of fire, and a few more went down after being struck by the ricochets and crossfire.

Lupis whirled about on the mobsters, cutting down three more in an instant. That left only four left, in just a few blinks of an eye, the majority of the armed Titans were now laying in bleeding heaps at the feet of the mercenary. The last four Titan mobsters lost faith in attacking and tried to flee. Lupis ruthlessly cut these down too before they could reach the hatch to escape to safety.

“It is you!” Came the exclamation from their leader as the bounty hunter stalked into the cabin. “You’re Lupis.”

The mobster’s pistol was aimed at the armored chest of the bounty hunter, who looked down at the power armor where it was aiming and then back to the mobster. He received an answer only in the form of the E-sword flashing out and stabbing through his partner’s chest. Lupis withdrew the sword coldly from the body, which then slumped lifelessly to the floor. The mirrored helmet never moved its focus from the capo of the Barksdale pack.

“Look, hold on a minute here.” Toto Sausages lowered the pistol and held it away from the armored Titan before him. “We were all supposed to be wary of this ship and we were told to detain it in case it came back. Aside from that, I dunno what’s going on here, and I don’t need to know either. I’m guessin’ maybe you ran along the bad side of the boss, but I’m sure you and I can work something out here.”

The mirrored helmet made no move and the rest of the body of the power armor made no attempt to reply positively or negatively to the Titan. The mobster tried to remain calm, but a hint of fear could be detected on his face and within his eyes. And then those eyes froze in horror as the large gauntlet shot out and gripped firmly around his throat. Lupis lifted the Titan off the ground and effortlessly kept him there for several moments until the mobster ran out of air and the body went limp inside his strong grip.

Lupis released the body, which fell alongside the other one. He spoke not a word as he left the cabin, and the visibly shaken Captain forever.

* * * *

Lupis used his EEG feature to process a command to his two sensor drones to return to their docking ports within his armor. They came back soon after, the ports inside the shoulders opened for them momentarily, and then closed once again. He had no further use for them now, as he had thoroughly searched the area for remaining hostiles and was now confident that they were all dead. He pushed aside the body of the engineer slumped over the control panel and found the button to release the magnetic clamps holding both the ZCAV Triumph, and the Rhapsody in place within the landing ports.

After carving a bloody path to the traffic controller tower, killing any resistance he found along the way, he now made his way back. He left none alive within the tower, and after exiting the building he had turned into a tomb, he finally laid his eyes once more on his prized ship. He checked his excitement with some effort as he made his way down the long metal walkway, passing several empty landing pads and the one where the Triumph rested. Finally, at the end of the row, he made his way to where the Rhapsody sat.

His Phantasm armor alerted him to the presence of foreign tampering with the ship’s systems. These mobsters had apparently tried to disable his own programming. They could not have known that it had been physically attuned to both his EEG and unique scent signature. He placed the command through the armor to unlock the doors and the systems.

“Welcome aboard Lupis.” The response came back to him from his ship directly into his armor, which connected to his brain to approximate hearing for him.

As the rear hatch opened and unfolded the loading ramp, he stepped up onto it and into the scent chamber. The sensors read his scent and once approved, he walked back into his ship in the first time in what felt like forever. Once Lupis made his way back through the cargo hold and past his personal chambers, he sat back in the familiar pilot chair and took over the controls.

“Where would you like to go captain?” The Rhapsody’s AI asked.

Lupis enjoyed the familiar comfort of his own chair for a long satisfying moment before responding. Suddenly, all of his past ordeals, marooned on a distant planet faded away. He was once again back home where he belonged.

“Set course for Crescent Reach Rhapsody. Astracus station.”

The Rhapsody lifted off and quickly left the mobster planet far behind, and within a few minutes he was hurdling through space on a collision course with the space station where this had all begun months ago.

Underneath the mirrored helmet, a maniacal smile twisted across his muzzle.