A Sci-Fi Bounty Hunter Origin Story – Prequel to The Emberlight Archive Novella Series

YouTube Audiobook Version of Embers

Gosh darn it, Jim, I’m an author, not a professional narrator! So be nice and don’t laugh too loudly. I really did try. I decided to post these recordings of me reading this story in case someone prefers audiobooks to reading.

Part 1

“You could have saved him.”

Corporal Torin Keth of the Intergalactic Police Force let the burnt chunks in his gloved hands fall to the ground, sinking into the snow. A sharp wind sliced across the frozen plain, biting at his exposed cheeks and ears, and making his eyes water. Besanth was a mining colony situated on a moon with only an alphanumeric code for a designation orbiting a dead blue gas giant with no official name at all. When people referred to the system, the planet, or the moon, it was all just Besanth.

Keth had been assigned to the tiny IPF force here to keep the peace between the Confederate mining colonists and the native semi-aquatic rodent-like Lepshers. But since arriving six months ago, he hadn’t kept the peace so much as defended the colonists in an unrecognized war.

Today, however, it hadn’t been a run-in with a Lepsher at all. An angry miner whose job it had been to keep the tunnel entrances free of ice had learned that his friend had been having an affair with his wife. He’d burnt his friend where he’d stood, then chased his wife down to mete out the same fate.

When Keth had heard the call, he’d hurried as fast as he could to intercept the murderer, but it hadn’t been fast enough to save the woman from being incinerated.

Keth stood, slowly turning to face the speaker: A Rivan, a pale, gaunt humanoid alien with sunken, dark eyes and spidery clawed fingers. Her hands held the wrists of the murderer wrenched behind his back. In the snow at their feet lay the twisted metal wreck of a flamethrower.

The man groaned.

“You caught him.” Keth’s voice was hoarse from yelling.

“Yeah.” The Rivan pulled a blaster pistol off her hip and buried it in the murderer’s back. She squeezed the trigger. The man dropped to the snow with a soft whump. Keth gave a startled yelp and started towards him, but the Rivan pointed the pistol at Keth. The corporal froze.

“Don’t worry,” the Rivan said. “He’s still breathing. Worth more alive than dead.”

Keth glanced down at the murderer, and indeed, his chest was rising and falling with shallow breaths. Keth eyed the blaster. “Didn’t know he had a price on his head.”

After waiting a few seconds to ensure Keth wouldn’t lunge at her, the Rivan holstered her blaster. “Ideo Jaa. Bounty hunter.”

“Corporal Torin Keth. IPF.”

“Well met, Corporal.” She gestured at the fallen murderer. “He was hiding out here after a drug deal went bad,” she said with a shrug. “I’m surprised it took him this long to expose himself. If you’re not going to haul me off to your station, help me get this fevo to my ship.”

Keth hesitated. He probably ought to take this woman in for questioning, or at least to check her credentials. But at this moment, with the charred remains of the dead woman staining his gloves, he didn’t particularly care who’d paid for this cretin’s head.

He stooped to grab the man’s arm. Together, they dragged him, feet trailing in the slushy snow, to the bounty hunter’s ship. Jaa locked him in a holding cell, then came back outside to face Keth.

“I saw what you did,” she said. “Why didn’t you catch him yourself? You had him and let him go.”

Keth ground his teeth. “Protocol stipulates that under the circumstances, I didn’t have the authority to detain him unless he proved himself to be an imminent danger, which he could not until he’d injured someone. I had no idea he’d already killed someone. I disarmed him and let him off with a warning, as per policy. By the time news of the murder reached me, he’d already found his wife.”

“Oh.” The Rivan’s face fell. Then she laughed, a single cold, hard laugh, shaking her head. Her words turned mocking. “All that bureaucratic language to say your hands were tied by the people expecting you to protect them.”

Keth stiffened. “There need to be rules to protect people. There are circumstances where–”

Jaa held up a hand to stop him. She examined the young corporal’s face, as though searching for something. Her voice took on a hard edge. “And how’d that go for you? How’d that turn out for that woman?”

Keth looked down at his glove, still dusted in black ash. He shivered despite the environ-tech in his suit designed to protect him from Besanth’s sub-zero temperatures.

“If it weren’t for me, he’d be halfway to Borhal,” Jaa said grimly. “These weren’t his first kills–who else would he have incinerated along his way?”

Keth bared his teeth. “You’ve made your point. But what was I supposed to do about it? I’m not like you. I have to follow the law.”

The Rivan shrugged. “You wouldn’t have to if you were a bounty hunter.”

Keth snorted. “Me? A hunter? You’re joking.”

“The galaxy has enough useless IPF agents. It could use a few more real lawmen.”

At Keth’s glare, Jaa shrugged and tapped something on her glove. A network of wires across her bodysuit glowed a soft red, and between them flickered an orange energy shield. The shield flowed up over her head, encasing her in glowing energy that bathed her pale skin in sunset colors and lit up her hair like a nova. An anti-grav suit favored by bounty hunters to protect them from the rifts they used to jump instantaneously across the galaxy.

“All I’m saying is maybe think about it, yeah?” the Rivan said, her voice buzzing slightly through the energy field. “Pays well, and you’ll be in a much better position to actually stop monsters like this fevo.” She swung up into her ship without a farewell.

Keth watched her ship thunder up out of the atmosphere. Once it had receded to a speck, he turned and trudged through the thick snow over to his own airship, a battered IPF shuttle. As he reached up to pull the door release, his ashen glove left black and grey streaks across the frigid metal.

A chill ran down his spine.

Keth recoiled, ripped his glove off, tossed it from him, and plunged his hand deep into the snow. Ripping its mate off, he scrubbed at his hands, disgust roiling through him. At the ashen remains, soiling his hand, at himself, for not saving her, at the bounty hunter, for suggesting he could ever be like her.

Finally, he fell back, head falling into the snow. He stared up at the crystalline clear sky.

An Emberhelm embraces violence in order to protect his flock.

His father’s words drifted unbidden through his mind. If he closed his eyes, he could almost see the elder Keth’s face, though now dimmed by time.

“I’m not an Emberhelm,” he whispered to the sky. The same words he’d said then, when he was a boy.

His father had laughed warmly and wrapped his arm around Torin. “You will be, someday, son. When you hear the call, do not be afraid.”

Ash. Charcoal. A single remaining earring. All that was left of a laughing, dancing woman. The way her face had changed from joy to terror in an instant.

Keth’s fist clenched, his teeth grinding. A single tear leaked out the side of Keth’s closed eye. He surged to his feet and stalked back to the shuttle. He climbed into the shuttle and blasted away.

The bounty hunter was right. But rules were what kept people safe. He couldn’t just dismiss them out of hand. If he did, he’d be no better than the criminals he chased.

Part 2

Two Weeks Later

IPF Squad Office, Besanth

Keth hesitated with his hand on the door release, hand shaking. Icy water dripped from his soaked uniform, pooling beneath his sodden boots on the rough metal floor of the IPF squad office. But that was only part of the reason he was shivering violently. He knew what awaited him on the other side of that door.

I did what I thought was right, Keth reassured himself, balling his hand into a fist. I don’t care if he agrees with me. I’ll take his punishment.

“Corporal Keth!”

The lieutenant’s bark from the other side made Keth jump. He instinctively slapped the door release and strode to the middle of the room, then snapped to attention. Feet together, back stiff, eyes straight forward.

Lieutenant Grand, leaning up against his desk, arms crossed and eyes narrowed, didn’t say anything for a long moment. Keth felt the silence eat into him like the chill gnawing at his bones. Finally, Grand straightened and paced towards the corporal.

“When you first came to us,” Grand said quietly, “nobody knew who you were. You didn’t tell us where you came from, or why you left. I could tell you were running from something; but did I press you? No. No, I saw a man hungry for the fight. I gave you a chance when no other IPF office would even consider your application.”

“I am grateful for the opportunity,” Keth replied, eyes still fixed on a point straight ahead.

Grand’s lip peeled back from his teeth in disgust. Grand leaned forward, his cheek almost right up against Keth’s.

“Grateful? A grateful man would have paid more careful attention to detail so he wouldn’t kive up the assignment he’d been so graciously given.”

Keth swallowed hard. The bluster and confidence he’d had out in the hall withered away under the lieutenant’s glare.

Grand pulled back. “Your rash actions have brought disgrace upon this department. As such, you are hereby suspended for two weeks without pay.”

Keth’s stony composure cracked. He turned his head and glared at the lieutenant. “Under the circumstances, my actions were justified. If I hadn’t tackled him, he would have gotten away–”

“As he should have!” The lieutenant shouted in Keth’s face. “You had no legal authority to pursue him into the river! All waterways are protected areas, outside our jurisdiction–outside Confederate-owned space. You want to cause a war here?”

Keth bit his lip. “No sir. But with that scum off the streets–”

Grand snapped. “No buts, Corporal. That’ll be another week for arguing with a superior officer.”

“That’s not fair,” Keth growled, despite the dangerous look in the lieutenant’s eye. “That treaty means we can’t do our job. Good citizens are at risk–”

“Two months, corporal,” the lieutenant said. “Our job isn’t to decide what’s fair or not–it’s to uphold the law and ensure everyone obeys it, whatever it is. That is how we keep people safe, by keeping the peace between the miners and the Lepshers. By preventing an all-out war. If you can’t do that, it might be time for you to hand in your badge.”

Keth’s jaw snapped shut so fast it clicked. “No, sir.”

“Good.” Grand circled his desk and sat, pulling a slowly-blinking datapad over to himself and pulling out a stylus. “Dismissed.”

Keth turned on his heel and marched as fast as he could out of that office and back to his tiny rented flat. Once there, he ripped off his uniform and slammed his fist into the wall over and over until the wall ran with blood and he heard the snap of bone.

With a strangled sob, Keth slid down into the only chair he owned at the small table. He scrubbed at his face with his good hand, rubbing away the moisture collecting in his eyes, and stifled another frustrated sob. He took a deep breath.

In the center of the table rested an old helmet, broad visor dark. Keth stared at it. Though his father had been dead for years, Keth could still feel the weight of his presence.

Keth wilted before the helm’s gaze. He dropped his head into his elbow and cradled his broken hand to his chest.

He should have kept his mouth shut. He should have obeyed protocol. But the arcane obtuseness of these laws chewed away at him like an insect burrowing under his skin.

A knock sounded on the door. Keth looked up, dread filling him. The only person he could think of who might visit at this time of night was his lieutenant.

Keth grabbed the helmet and stashed it in an empty cupboard, then strode over to the door and hit the release. It slid aside, revealing an old gnarled woman and her granddaughter, his landlords. Their eyes went to Keth’s bloodied hand.

The granddaughter gave a wordless exclamation and bustled in, quickly grabbing a towel and wetting it. The old woman pressed Keth back into his chair, hushing his protestations. Together, they cleaned it, pausing only to scold him.

“I can take care of it myself,” Keth said, guilt rushing through him as he caught sight of the dented metal wall. But the two women weren’t paying attention to his words.

“Ay-yah! Who did this to you?” the old woman exclaimed. “Did you get in a fight?” 

“Of course he did,” her granddaughter scolded. “Look at him. Look at this hand! I want to see how the other guy looks. What did he do? Did he kill somebody?”

“He was a drug dealer,” Keth said, trying to pull his hand away. The women caught it and held tight.

“Oh,” they said together, nodding their heads knowingly. The desperation of the mines led many to find reprieve in any of half a dozen illegal substances. Everyone here was either an addict or knew several personally.

“Well, we came over to thank you,” the old woman said. She indicated a tray of sweet bars that had appeared on the table while Keth wasn’t looking. “You don’t know how proud I am to tell everyone that the finest IPF officer lives in my building.”

“She tells everyone!” her granddaughter beamed. “Ugh, look at this, ummah. Look what our brave officer must endure. Why did you not go to the hospital? You should really have them look at it.”

“It’s fine–” Keth began.

The old woman stole the towel from her granddaughter and flicked it at Keth. The point of it snapped right on Keth’s cheek.

“Ow!”

“Serves you right. It is not fine. It is broken, stupid man. Go to the hospital. Now. Or I will flick you with the towel again.”

Keth rolled his eyes and received an answering sting on his other cheek. He grabbed the towel away and stood, turning away from the two women.

“He’s in a bad mood today,” the granddaughter mock-whispered.

He rounded on them. “Yeah, well, you would be too if you were suspended for doing your job wrong.”

They both blinked at him.

“Wrong? You arrested a drug dealer today, no?” the old woman said.

“By breaking the law,” Keth growled. He sighed.

“Did you kill somebody?” the granddaughter asked.

“No,” Keth said, surprised. “Of course not.”

“Did you steal something?”

“No. Why would I do that?”

“I don’t know! Many people around here steal. But if you didn’t steal something or kill anybody, what’s the problem?”

Keth flexed his bandaged hand, wincing. It probably was broken. “I arrested the criminal in the river, out of my jurisdiction. I put the treaty in danger and could have caused a war.”

Both women snorted and tried to hide their laughter under their hands.

“You?” the granddaughter said. “The only way you’re starting a war is when you flex your muscles.”

The old woman’s jaw dropped. “Gia!”

“What! He’s handsome when he’s so serious.”

“This isn’t anything to laugh at!” But Keth felt an embarrassed smile creeping onto his face and a little of the weight of his situation lift slightly. Even in the middle of a storm, his landlady was still trying to hook them up. Somehow, it made things feel a little more…normal.

“I’m sorry, officer,” the granddaughter said, sobering. “But that’s the only way they could stop you, huh? By throwing a broken treaty at you? Nobody follows that treaty but you IPF officers.”

Her grandmother nodded sagely. “Maybe if your boss stopped worrying about a treaty, you might actually be able to do your job, and my granddaughter wouldn’t have to worry about me going to the shoppette alone.”

“We have to have laws,” Keth insisted.

The old woman shrugged. “Sometimes laws save you, sometimes they get in the way of doing what’s right. You know?”

A month later when he was back on the job, his hand aching but healed, Keth couldn’t help but hear the old woman’s words echoing in his ears every time he stopped to chat with a citizen going about their day. Wrapped in layers upon layers of furs, each one hiding an illegal blaster in the folds to protect themselves from the ruffians that prowled the streets, many of them numbed by cold and illegal stardust.

As Keth checked in on the family of a miner, the children’s gaunt faces still happy to see him though their play had slowed from hunger, he wondered just how far he’d be willing to go to protect these people.

Part 3

Six Months Later

Snow fell silently around Torin Keth, clogging the narrow ice-walled slot canyon where he stood, alighting on the standard issue police uniform he wore over a non-standard enivronsuit and dusting the corpse at his feet. Blood stained the virgin snow a dark crimson in the falling night.

It shouldn’t have been so quiet, he thought. Storms should howl, rip, and tear. He should hear it echoing and wailing through the canyon. But this one didn’t. Even the smell of it, the clean scent of frozen water, washed away some of the stench of blood. In the distance, Keth could hear police sirens approaching. Their flashing blue lights flickered off the canyon walls.

An alarm in his environsuit squawked at him, warning that the temperature was quickly dropping dangerously low. Besanth would soon be far too cold for humans to survive.

But Keth couldn’t go back to town. Not now. He stared down at the long IPF blade in his hand, its edge frosted with scarlet ice. With a shudder, he tossed it beside the corpse.

Panic seized Keth. He knew his chances of convincing Grand that he had killed this man in self-defense were slim to none. But Keth had nowhere else to go. He quickly began kicking snow over the corpse. He was far enough from town that perhaps he could hide the body and claim they got away.

A crunching sound farther down the slot canyon made Keth grab his blaster off his hip and freeze, training the muzzle into the darkness.

A slender figure emerged. Not dressed in police blacks, nor the scruffy, utilitarian clothes of the underclass of criminals and beggars–no, she wore Melkarian clothing, her sleek pants tucked into crisp boots, an oversized jacket worn jauntily off one shoulder. A cultured messiness hung about her hair. A strand fell into her face, but she ignored it.

She stopped a few meters away from Keth. Her eyes fell to the half-buried body. Keth tightened his finger on the trigger of his blaster.

“Your brothers will be here in less than five minutes,” the woman said, her voice lower and rougher than Keth had expected, “and I’d wager you won’t be able to hide the evidence before they get here. You’ll spend the rest of your days locked in a windowless cell for what you’ve done.”

Keth swallowed hard. The way she said it was so matter-of-fact, so certain, like a death knoll. Keth raised the blaster up, aiming right between the woman’s eyes.

She knew what he’d done. If he had any hope of hiding this and walking away, he needed to kill her too.

Emotionless, she watched him struggle, watched the blaster waver, then fall.

“I can make this all go away,” she said gently.

Keth’s sharp laugh cracked the air like a spear of ice. “I won’t run. They’ll lock me up for this, no matter why I did it.”

He could feel the ice creeping in, not just into his body, but his heart as well, cooling its staccato beat. Like the translucent ice-walls around him, his future crystalized, clear and solid.

Keth smiled bitterly at the strange woman. “And you know what? They’d be right. I’m no better than this animal I killed. It just took awhile for me to see it. A cell is right where I belong.”

The woman stalked slowly around the cop, looking him up and down. Keth’s skin crawled uneasily as he watched her take in his lanky frame, the tight fit of his uniform over his environsuit, the cut of his jaw. He didn’t notice his blaster lowering as he watched her right back.

“You know what you’re doing. That much is apparent. I can put you to use. I can give you the same purpose you crave–but without the shackles of this uniform.” She plucked at the snow-dusted black of the IPF uniform. Keth flinched.

“Like I said,” Keth spat, “I belong in a cell with them.”

She finished her round and stood before him. Only a little shorter than him, with tightly-pulled back reddish hair and the faint smell of spiceflare trailing her, he realized she would have been quite beautiful, were it not for the scars lancing down her face.

“You’re too young to say such things,” she said, frowning. “You’ve seen a little of the darkness and you want to run and hide, is that it?”

Keth ground his teeth. “I’m not afraid of anything.”

“You’re afraid of something. Otherwise you wouldn’t be so eager to hide in a jail cell.”

That brought him up short. He wanted to deny it, bluster, wave his blaster around in her face to get her to back off. But the truth was, she was right. Unfortunately, no matter where he ran or whatever hole he hid in, he could never run from himself.

The woman took a slow step forward. Keth leaned backwards uncomfortably, but refused to take a step back.

“Or maybe you hate yourself,” she whispered, her voice carrying like a shout in the eerie quiet of the snowstorm. “Maybe that’s why you think you belong in a jail cell.”

At that, Keth did take a step back and raised his blaster once more. “Who are you?”

She gave him a small, triumphant smile that made his gut twist. “Lera Burns, bail bondsman in charge of criminal reacquisitions for Sector 12 of the Confederacy. Forget about the cell. Flogging yourself for whatever it is you’ve done won’t do the galaxy any good. I’m giving you a chance to put your skills to use, and put away criminals like these animals without fear of reprimand or legal action. Meet them where they stand, fist to fist, blaster to blaster.”

“Why me?”

“I need men like you who don’t mind stepping over the line.”

“The line is there for a reason.”

She gestured at the corpse. “Do you regret what you’ve done?”

“Of course I do,” Keth snapped. “I murdered him.”

Burns studied him for a moment. “You regret stopping his murder spree?”

Keth looked down at the dead man. No, he didn’t, he realized. The realization left him a little colder than it should have. He was supposed to care, wasn’t he? He was a police officer.

He shook his head, trying to clear the confusion churning through his mind.

“I am a defender of the innocent,” he said, quoting the IPF creed. “He killed a little girl. I had to stop him.”

Burns’ mouth tilted into a smile. “And you will be jailed for meting out justice. Is that right?”

“They say it is.”

“What do you say? Would you rather go to jail for doing your job, or be allowed to use whatever means necessary to make the galaxy a safer place?”

Keth’s voice cracked. “How?”

“Become a bounty hunter for the Confederacy. Help me hunt down those who escaped the law.”

Keth’s blaster lowered. The sirens were louder now. He turned and saw IPF officers jumping out of their airspeeders, charging towards the slot canyon. At his feet, the corpse was still only half-buried, its exposed skin going pale in the frigid air.

He turned back to Burns, but she was already walking back down the slot canyon, the heightening storm erasing her footsteps as quickly as she made them.

Keth had only moments to decide.

He looked down at the dead man whose blood was now freezing around him. Guilt clenched at Keth’s gut, the familiar old dichotomy of the Emberhelms tearing him in two directions. He groaned.

“I don’t know what to do, Father,” he whispered. An Emberhelm is marked for death, a memory whispered in his mind. An Emberhelm is cursed.

He felt cursed. Even now, thousands of lightyears from home, his past dogged his steps. Keth clenched his eyes shut and swallowed hard.

The sirens were louder now. Even the storm couldn’t muffle them any longer. They’d be here in seconds.

Though everything around him was frozen, and the cold was quickly seeping in through his suit, Keth felt a blaze of cold against his collarbone. His hand instinctively went there and found a small square pendant. His fingers traced the rune carved in bone: Raithoa. Journey. The most sacred Endoran rune.

An Emberhelm protects, another memory said, this one softer, kinder. His mother.

Keth exhaled, and felt some of the tension go out of him, replaced by a bone-deep loss. He could almost feel her palm cradle his face.

Be the Emberhelm that protects, she’d whispered. Be what no one else can.

Keth opened his eyes. The IPF was there, blasters trained on Keth, though they waited, uncertainly looking at the crumpled form at his feet.

“Freeze!” Grand’s voice echoed around the slot canyon.

Keth reached up to his shoulder and ripped the IPF patch off his uniform and dropped it on the corpse. A dozen blasters whined as they were simultaneously charged. Keth held up his hands in surrender, then slowly stooped down to pick up the helmet he’d dropped.

As soon as his fingers curled around the rim of the helmet, Keth dropped and rolled away. Laserfire lit up the canyon, shattering ice, and slammed into him, shredding the police uniform, exposing the sleek armored environsuit beneath. Wherever lasers landed, the armor flared golden, but held.

Ice shards became lethal spears that lanced down into the fray. Keth scrambled out of the way, then glanced back for a split second at Grand. The lieutenant’s face was twisted in fury as he shouted, raised a heavy blaster, and took aim.

Keth ducked. Grand’s blast slammed into the canyon wall just above Keth’s head.

The ice-wall exploded. Keth threw up his arms to shield himself. Then, shrouded by the fog of ice, he darted down the slot canyon, disappearing into the darkening storm after Burns.

If you enjoyed Embers, read more about Torin Keth’s adventures in the novella The Wolf Who Stands Watch, available for purchase on Amazon.