The Ballad of Bessie Bishop

[Big Bison Bessie]

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As Coyote II arced up away from the badlands, the sour sky continued to turn. The smog and dark clouds slowly boiled in the distance as she gained altitude. Her timing seemed to be impeccable. A rancid storm had been brewing in the north, spurred on by the ceaseless discharge of industry and shifting hot air flows, it came together in a wall of rancid cancerous air. Her vector out of atmo had been muddled by this, and she shifted her route to take herself parallel and eventually over the wall of wretched air that stretched out towards the horizon. The thought of being down there disgusted her, and made her worry about the health of anyone who was in the area below that thing.

The turbulence of the air grew around her, rocking her ship as wayward crashes of lightning lit up the clouds intermittently with wild flares of blue and purple. The sheer amount of pollution and energy in the air had started to distort her sensors, something she realized when a flash of lightning briefly illuminated the shape of something off her port. It was small, distant, it may as well have been a bug on her canopy, but she was sure she saw something in that cloud. It drew her eye and gave her pause, and in a moment it vanished before she could get a good look at it. Suddenly, a creeping feeling crawled into the pit of her stomach. That was a ship, wasn’t it? Had she been cut off? She began cycling through different scanner settings, trying to cut through the ionization of the air and heavy pollutants it had dragged up into the storm. Run off and metallic particulates from nearby mining operations had turned her sensor screens into static.

Another flare of light off to her side as her ship rattled amidst the turbulent air, and this time, she saw it. Two shapes. A pair of ships, old Liberty ships, Xenos fighters like the one she had torched. Bessie sat there, staring at them as a knot seemed to form in her stomach. She couldn’t say she was too surprised to see some, but the timing of running into them had her worried in a way that began to dry her mouth. This wasn’t a coincidence in the slightest. They’re here for her, and her specifically.
Immediately her target lock indicator screamed at her. And surprisingly an unencrypted communication pinged her comms. They wanted to talk, that was unexpected. Bessie toggled the safeties off on her lasers and skirted the edge of the storm as her curiosity got the better of it. They hadn’t fired yet, which in itself was unusual enough to warrant some investigation. But part of her gut was telling her to book it, just bail, don’t bother. Despite her curiosity, the hunter wasn’t about to do anything overtly stupid however. She vectored up and away, accelerating and trying to gain some altitude and some distance as they slid in several hundred meters away behind her. Won’t be easy to shake them now. With a sigh and shake of her head she snatched her mic and clicked it on.

She listened to the static piping through a moment before speaking.

“Howdy, boys.” She locked onto the lead ship as she spoke. She zoomed in and had the computer run the markings and ID signature, hoping she could at least ID who she was talking to. As it chewed on her request, she spotted what looked like a hooded snake adorning the hull, fierce looking and with a fiery, piercing gaze. She adjusted her camera’s magnification again. A feeling of familiarity gnawed at her.

“Hello.” The garbled comms squawked back at her, drawing her eyes to the old speaker bolted to the side of her console. The voice that filtered through was smooth spoken, silky, but dripping with determination and arrogance. “Would you be interested in negotiation?”

“And what’d we be negotiating about?”

While she waited for a response, she cleared her last set of waypoints and locked in on the nearby spaceport’s nav beacon, hoping for a faster way into space. Originally she wanted to break atmo in the middle of nowhere to avoid someone spotting her and following her or warning someone, but that ship had sailed.

“I believe you have one of my Knights aboard your ship. I am sure we can make an arrangement, we may even let you walk away too. If you’re willing to discuss this like the civilized individual that I am sure you are.”

“Civilized individual eh? Well heck I ain’t had a complement like that in a heck of a long time. What’s your game, Xeno?”

“I am not here to make enemies. But I am not about to simply let you walk away with one of my crew. Come, let us land and we can make this work.”

“I ain’t so keen on just rolling over.” Her computer pinged back a result; Cobra. The leader of the Xenos Alliance.

Well, fuck.

Of course her luck would burn down to nothing and she’d be stuck with that ruthless bastard out there behind her. What the fuck was he doing here, now? She swore under her breath, realizing how much trouble she was actually in now. She could fight him, try to take him and his wingmate out… but she didn’t like those odds at all, not when they were already in her kill slot. She had to cut her losses and get out.

It’d take too long to burn straight into space. She wouldn’t survive for that long with them so close on her ass. However Allegheny Starport was nearby. Running through the storm to the space port was sounding like a better idea with each passing moment, one she was reluctantly tempted by. It was right below the docking ring, which meant that the weather control devices, force field tunnels and all that jazz would make a straight shot into space significantly easier and far far faster. Less time in atmo with these guys. Then it’d be a straight shot to the trade lane out of orbit. If she made that, she’d be home free. If she could get there.

“That so, hunter? I urge you to reconsider. We can land and… discuss this. I am not unreasonable after all.”

“Uuuh, sorry, can’t hear you.” She said sarcastically, arming her mine launcher as she spoke. “Can you speak up?”

“Now don-”

“Listen, uh, I gotta go.”

Bessie slammed her flight stick hard over, jamming the left rudder pedal hard and gunning the throttle in one swift move that had the Coyote II roll up, across, over and then under the Xenos fighters’ flight path. Her launcher clattered and clanged somewhere behind her as the deployment arms inside the chute released their volatile payload before preparing another from the magazine. All the while the horizon spun inside the cockpit as the wayward sun half hidden behind the clouds made light dance about her. She saw the flash of red in the camera as the fighters split away from one another, the blazing flares of their engines growing distant as one of them pulled off with their shields sparking wildly.

“Fine. Harlequin, her engines if you please.” The transmission squawked and ended.

“Guess they don’t mind if you get banged up, eh, Alice?” Nervously she smiled, knowing it was on now.

Bessie wasn’t going to wait for the invitation to arrive, and took the brief opening she had to roll on into the storm wall, the entire cockpit going dark save for the red instrumentation. Out before her she could only see the brilliant floodlights on the prongs of her ship that shone into the darkness. They caught rain and pollutants for but a few feet before the rancid fog consumed the light. Biting the inside of her mouth, she pushed her whining engines to full as her ship rattled around her, the momentum of her turn dragging her to the side of her seat and then far back into it as the dampeners struggled to suck down all the Gs. Her heart started to beat faster as she checked her rear view camera feeds for signs of the fighters.

As Bessie dipped into the storm wall, the turbulence increased dramatically all the way in with the wind howling wildly all around. Even with the dampeners running, she could feel her ship being tossed around in the wind, and the down drafts were forcing her lower with a distinct lack of nuance. She knew the Xenos would follow her in, but they’d be half blind and struggling to fly straight. Just like her. With any luck that’d actually help. Though her luck hadn’t been kind to her so far.
She was sure they could beat her in a straight line speed test given how overclocked Alice’s engines were. Chances are these two had a similar set up. She had to come up with something else. Flying into the storm would only delay them, not guarantee her escape. Her canopy lit up red with a new holo-display as her ship’s terrain scanners drew a scratchy wireframe of the ground below upon the transparent metal windows. Flying by instrumentation only wasn’t exactly her first option, but with any luck the sheer amount of shit in the air here would give her a chance. Though if they hit her ground scanner she’d be nearly blind in here, having nothing more than an altimeter, horizon line, compass, and the spaceport’s beacon.
And just like that, the dust and toxic rain flashed red around her as a blast came from behind, a volley of red particle bolts came screaming past her ship and lit up her canopy in a brilliant flash. Her red targeting scanner screens showed the glittering gold outline of the two modified F-337s in grainy detail, the pair of them having slid inside her turn and following close on her tail. The screens with their mix of night vision and thermographic imaging produce a blurry, but still menacing image of the ships on her six.

“So much for negotiating.” She nervously groaned, bouncing in her seat as a particularly nasty downdraft knocked a few hundred feet off her altitude with an unnatural shuddering. “Guess they don’t care if you eat shit, Alice. Shit this was a terrible idea…”

Allegheny wasn’t far out at this point. If she got there she could make a break for the docking ring. She had to get them off her ass first though.

Another flurry of red shot past her, and one of the blasts clipped her ship, nearly throwing her onto her control panel with the force of impact. Recovering from the feeling of someone rear ending her, she cranked the poorly working inertial dampeners up higher to compensate for the stupid planet’s gravity, but the system was already strained with flying this close to a planet’s surface. The ship systems display showed worrying data; it drew red highlights around the aft portion of her shield bubble on the display, signifying their compromised state as they threatened to collapse entirely.

Another stupid idea crossed her mind with a nervous sigh she committed to it.

Easing her stick over she pulled up and went into a narrow corkscrew. Her sensors showed the two Xenos fighters pitch up and arc right after her. She found herself staring at the little icons on her radar and scanner display, watching them dance behind the icon representing her ship. Each obvious movement and gambit for position they made, even as tiny pixels, was something she had to put physical effort into avoiding as her seatbelts kept her pinned amidst the torrent of G-forces the dampeners couldn’t eat up. Coyote II climbed wildly at her command, going into a vertical climb that was punctuated with the roar of her engines at maximum power. She felt the controls shudder in her hands as she constantly shifted her yaw and roll, red blasts rocketing by as the sky suddenly opened up. The yawning tan expanse of distant spinning clouds beckoned her skyward. Down below the two fighters breached through the cloud tops, dragging black smog with them towards the distant sun.

“Okay…”

With a frustrated grunt she cut her engines, and cartwheeled up and over. The high pitched growl was snuffed out as power to her thrusters cut out, leaving the cockpit eerily devoid of that omnipresent white noise. The massive flat side of Coyote II slammed into the open sky like a massive air brake and ground her velocity down violently. Half her canopy filled with a flash of white vapor for an instant from the shockwave of the turn. It forced her into the side of her seat as her bulky armored body heaved against the restraints. The discarded tube of Synthpaste clattered off her canopy windshield mid turn. As her ship floated on and up, it finally hung in the air for the briefest of moments as gravity seemed to fade from her world. Slowly her nose pointed towards the distant Xenos as she gently finished the stall turn. Then she went full power, the sudden shock pressing her firmly back as she burned towards the Xenos and the ground.

The Coyote II’s gimbaled guns centered in on her crosshair as it tracked across her canopy towards the lead fighter. As she wheeled around it finally lined up with a resounding rapid beeping as the targeting computer finalized the firing solution. A squeeze of the trigger and the three of them exchanged fire simultaneously; near misses blasting holes in the lead fighter’s shields as they both slammed her with charged particle rounds simultaneously. A loud THOOMP and the scream of capacitors somewhere deep in her ship, coupled with a violent rocking mean she’d been hit. Her master systems display screamed back at her about the shields on her forward quarter and she groaned back at her ship. She reached up above her and pulled power from her reserve batteries and dumped them right back into her shields to keep them intact as they tried to collapse and leave her exposed. She rocketed past them, the Coyote II diving wildly towards the ground and away from her aggressors.

The enemy ships fired off another volley, hitting nothing but air, before curving wildly away and into the sky behind her, dragging contrails of errant vapor with them into the distance. They hadn’t been ready to brake that hard, that was gonna cost them time and distance. Slowly they wheeled around, but Bessie had already dived back below the cloud tops, loosing another mine as she did with hopes they’d not see it in time.

Coyote II dipped low, descending out of thirty thousand feet as she made a run for the ground below, forcing as much speed and distance out of her maneuver as she felt she could. Another wayward volley red energy shot by, lighting up the storm around her. A moment later a series of small explosions illuminated the ground below in the distance where the shots vaporized some rocks in a volent torrent of molten slag that rained down through the air in flaming orange sparks and droplets. The HUD’s terrain wireframe flickered wildly amidst the storm as she descended down to one thousand feet. Mountains and mesas suddenly looked ominously close, and she found herself struggling with her ship’s speed as she dipped down into a valley and then up over a mountain, both hidden just beyond her terrain scanner in the torrent of black. Her eyes went wide, her ship’s wings narrowly missing a mesa by mere meters.

“Aaaaaaaah come on, you second hand piece of shit!”

She rolled up and over one of the cliffs and into the adjacent valley, her scanners showing the two fighters right on her ass still, descending from on high. The mine she dropped had flown wildly past them and exploded in the distance with a dull flash. She brought up her anti-pursuit laser and had it fire several volleys, but the damn thing didn’t have an automated gimbal. She had to get one, eyeballing shots with this thing like this was a disaster waiting to happen. Only one volley managed to clip a Xeno fighter, the other two barrages went wide and vaporized distant bits of rock. The Xenos responded in kind. A volley of shots from behind lit up the space red around her and with a loud electric crack the computer announced to her what she already knew:

“Shields failed.” It said amidst the screaming alarms and rapidly beeping indicators as a piece of her armor had been blown away too, leaving something rattling in a horrid way she couldn’t identify.

“Aaah, I’m sorry, baby, hold it together…”

Another bang shook her ship and nearly threw her off course, Bessie felt as if it had been yanked out from under her as her stomach turned and she yelped. Amidst the alarms and flashing red indicators she saw that her anti-pursuit laser had been blasted off, no doubt leaving a stump of power conduits and cooling assembly hanging from a smoldering spot on the hull. A glance at her cooling unit confirmed her fears as she saw the temperature readouts begin to creep higher as coolant pressure dropped. The ship couldn’t help but groan as if in pain as it strained under the pressures of atmospheric flight.

“Alright, Coyote,” She took her hand off the throttle and gave the control console a quick pat. “Get me through this and I’m gonna buy you a brand new power distributor as a treat…”

She had hoped that a big chunk of this cash could have gone to paying off the money she owed the Hogosha Syndicates, but at this rate she’d be lucky enough to cover the repairs to her ship. If she could even collect on the bounty that is. It was a worrying notion.

In an instant the sky opened up before her as she crossed into the weather control grid. Coyote II tossed up a stream of dust as she went zipping across the desert floor, screaming wildly towards her easy ticket off-world. Amidst the calm air the distant city came into view, and above it, the faded darkness of space and distant stars from where the docking ring and associated ground based kit opened up the sky. Shapes moved between the antennas and spires in the distance, little pinpricks of light that were in fact the engines and lights from massive freighters and transports. Slowly they funneled up or down from the lane leading to the docking ring in orbit, forming a steady string of lights like cars on the road. Her way out. She only could acknowledge it for a moment before her comms chirped to life.

“Attention, Bounty Hunters Guild ship, you, this is Allegheny air traffic control, you have entered a speed restricted zone. Decrease speed immediately, or you will be subject to fines and or arrest.” The comms garbled to life on the open frequency line. She clicked her comms on and started yelping, frustration easily rising to the surface. This was the last thing she needed.

“I’m being chased by Xenos fighters, you idiots! Worry about them!”

“If you- wait, man she’s right - attention Xenos Alliance ships, you have no clearance to be here, advise you turn around immediately or you will be fired upon!”

“Hell if they’re just as sharp as a bowling ball…” The hunter grit her teeth.

“Unlikely. Last chance Hunter. Land your ship.” Cobra’s garbled comms crackled to life again.

“Go fuck yourself!” She reached up and tried to dump more power into her shields, but found her backup batteries had completely drained. The blast that hit her rear turret must have damaged them, and she could not help but cuss under her breath. “Oh son of a bitch…”

“It’s Bishop right? I heard Andre’s whore was a feisty one.” Cobra’s communication channel crackled to life again, his smooth voice coming in mockingly with details he shouldn’t have.

It gave her pause, catching her completely off guard.

“... how?”

“I know you ran my identification, did you not think I’d run yours? I don’t suppose you were the one to help him escape? Then again, given what you’re doing now, you seem more like a traitor than an accomplice. Is tha-”

“You don’t know jack shit about what you’re talking about!” Her flightstick creaked as her mighty grip threatened to crush it.

“Maybe I’d be doing Andre a favor if I killed you then.”

Bessie was seeing red. And she caught it in time.

Stop. He’s trying to get to you. Don’t take the bait. Turn it around.

“Whatever happened to your rescue mission?!” She yelped back at the speaker on her console. “Are you willing to kill one of your own so easily?”

“An acceptable risk. Harlequin, paralyzers. Ground that ship.”

A flicker of pixels on her scanner and immediately her missile alarm screamed and the warning light began rapidly flashing on her console as Coyote II shared her rising panic. These guys really were psychotic.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?! You’re gonna get us all killed!”

Bessie tried to gain altitude, accelerating away and dumping countermeasure flares as the pair of missiles careened her way. The violent hum of her engines increased in pitch as she pulled above the city, blocks and industrial parks shrinking away under her. The structures of the spaceport loomed closer as Bishop dragged the missiles along. The missiles finally veered off course behind her and exploded on her countermeasure flares. The blast of the EMP force caused a surge of static to scatter across her screens, but with the distances involved she escaped any truly detrimental effects. Down far below, lights on one of the city blocks flickered off.

“They’re still closing! Activate the defense grid!”

The Coyote II veered past the control tower, the antennas passing just a few dozen meters away from the cockpit as Bessie accelerated, swinging down towards the larger of the loading docks after circling the tower. A massive Imperial Shipping train her computer tagged as the ISS Mosel had just taken off, loaded up with thousands of tons of refined metal. The ship, a massive set of engines and servicing module strapped to a dozen massive cargo pods lumbered to life sluggishly, oblivious of what was unfolding around her.

Bessie dove for the gap.

Her world bobbed and seemingly dropped out from under her as she swung the Coyote II down and rolled under the looming Imperial Shipping transport with barely enough clearance to spare. Her proximity alarms loudly and rapidly let out a series of ear piercingly shrill beeps to ensure she knew about the potential collision, something that wasn’t helping her stay calm. A mighty blast of air was dragged through with her, toppling nearby loading trucks and rolling them across the pad below. It was a narrow gap that Coyote II barely fit through on her side, and Bessie dumped the last of her blindingly bright countermeasure flares into that gap as she zipped on through. The closest Xeno veered wildly off course at the last moment to avoid getting flashbanged in such a small space and risk turning into fire and metal confetti. Bessie lost track of the fighter in the chaos and she made a break for it.

The vertical climb was easier than before, once she crossed up out of ten thousand feet she crossed into the orbital elevator. The force fields, weather control systems, and other complex machinery she didn’t understand kept this lane of traffic from the space port and up to the docking ring in a tunnel of very low air pressure. It let ships easily move to and from the planet’s surface without burning too much fuel or burning up physically from atmospheric friction. Wonder of engineering, she was sure.

But now she was flying headlong into the traffic moving to and from the ring above. The scanner filled with strings of pixels as her computers identified dozens of ships constantly triggering collision warnings on her HUD. The ass end of dozens of freighters and small shuttles glittered before her as tiny pinpricks of light and tiny flames in the distance. Though some monstrously large ships were far closer, and avoiding the engine wash of large, chunky ships like the pair of Gateway transports was something that required a more involved maneuver. Their fusion torches threatened to incinerate anything within a hundred meters of their rear end with their superheated engine wash. She really wanted that shield right about now, but something must have malfunctioned, some capacitor or power conduit, because the damn thing hadn’t recharged.

A glance back and she could see one of the Xenos pulling into the lane behind her, weaving between the larger ships. They both shot upwards and into the tunnel heading to the docking ring and the black patch of space beyond. From somewhere behind and below her a volley of blue blasts shot skyward past her. Her rear view cameras showed several turrets near the space port had sprung to life, one of the Xenos still hot on her tail as the second strafed the tower below. Their blue lasers desperately tracked the Xenos fighter, missing crucial shots.

“Holy shit, we’re under fire!”

The transmission cut to a burst of static as distant puffs of smoke and fire appeared around the space port. It was the briefest of distractions that led to a red blast slamming into her ship on her starboard forward wing. The flash of the blast and force of impact caught her entirely off guard as the force of the crash mixed in with the screaming of new alarms. A big chunk of her starboard wing was singed black, glowing red and orange at the point of impact as sparks and smoke streamed out. The floodlight and laser mounted to the wing were blown to bits, leaving little more than gnarled wreckage. The laser’s assembly snapped off and crashed into Coyote II’s chassis with a crunch before bouncing away and vanishing into the sky behind her. New warnings flashed to life as the damage to the cooling system became too much for her old ship to handle. Out beyond the cockpit, the radiators at the rear of her wings were glowing red hot as they desperately tried to pump heat away from the ship’s core with what little coolant they had left. Her nano-repair system had patched several of the holes in the lines, but not all of them, and not quickly enough.

“Come on and hold together you piece of junk!”

A flurry of encrypted comms on the Liberty Police Incorporated channels was as detail she almost missed, but as space crept closer her scanner continuously lit up with new contacts as she ducked and weaved between the transports in the lane to the docking ring. Each one she zipped by she tried to duck in front of to get some cover. It partially worked, particle blasts from the Xeno fighter behind her exploded off of the shields of random ships she cut in front of in a shameful display of collateral damage. As the chaos unfolded, the forces of order descended down from space.

Out past all of them, a small group of four LPI fighters charged down the lane straight towards the dogfight. Bessie could only see the glint of them in the distance, but her scanner display showed them clearly as a flight of Patriots; little silver, dart shaped ships with distinct flared double tails. Her computer showed them broadcasting a string of communications directly to the Xenos ships, and they must not have liked what the cops had to say.

Somewhere from behind her a missile rocketed past her cockpit and into the formation of fighters in the distance as they just opened hailing frequencies. What came over the comms was the dying electronic squeal of a transceiver array as the lead LPI ship’s IFF transponder vanished from her sensors. With the blue flash of the EMP missile, one of the fighters went silent, her running lights flickered off, the glow of her cockpit vanished, and the ion trail from her engines ceased. Bessie watched on, morbidly curious, as it eerily passed her by. The ship committed to a deathly quiet somersault as it fell to the ground like a discarded toy. The other three fighters broke formation and loosed their own missiles towards the Xenos ships, the second from farther back having nearly caught up to her leader now. The Xenos broke away to deal with the cops.

Bessie had no reason to stick around any longer, and made a break for the docking ring up above her as the LPI swung around and fell in behind the terrorist ships. The last vestiges of sky bled away as the horizon fell far behind her. The Coyote II finally rocketed through the rings at the top of the orbital elevator, and left them far behind as she vectored for the nearby trade lane. She couldn’t help but stifle a nervous laugh. The bounty hunter had finally cleared her way past the massive structure in low orbit, emerging into space amidst a parking lot of freighters and transports and random advertisements between Pittsburgh and the nearby trade lane. Not far beyond that, a massive trash field of scrap and debris surrounded the planet and glittered like bits of broken glass. Once she was able to make it to the trade lane, she’d be home free. On the other side of the lane sat Fort Bush and Baltimore Shipyards, massive installations which would have more than adequate protection to cover her as she made her way to the Colorado jumpgate.

Unfortunately as she looked back, the Xenos were still following her, even while under fire from the LPI and several random cargo ships in the area that had begun taking pot shots at them. The evasive action they were taking was more than enough to slow them down and let her get some distance from them. The trade lane ring was practically within arm’s reach. The massive ring would accelerate her ship out of this damn place.

“These fucking guys don’t know when to quit.”

With numerous private comms coming in from all the transport she cut in front of, Bessie forced her own activation codes through to the trade lane’s terminal as she came rocketing in. She had to throttle down and burn her retro thrusters to get into position, something the Xenos tried to capitalize on as they made one final pass at the bounty hunter’s ship. But Coyote II’s engine two powered down completely as she tried to throttle back, one half of her main drives sputtering to a stop abruptly. Error messages appeared across her fuel computer screen as the interlock chamber on her lower engine finally fused and burnt out amidst the heat and the stress of constantly forcing a full power burn. She started repeatedly hitting the restart switch. A desperate act that yielded no results.

“Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck.”

Whatever, she didn’t need it now, she was almost at the trade lane ring.

In her cockpit, her computer beeped optimistically as the tollbooth on the lane accepted her codes and took her credits. Before her, the massive trade lane ring shimmered to life for just a moment. In a flash of blue the Coyote II accelerated out at superluminal speed through the trade lane’s compressed field of space/time, leaving Pittsburgh a shrinking brown marble in her rear view cameras. A volley of red blasts flew through the space that Coyote II occupied an instant ago, hitting nothing but the vacuum and space dust.

Her heart was pounding, and instinctively she cycled through her sensors for any sign of them being on her six. Nothing. With a mighty sigh she ran her hand down her face. She undid her harness and half fell out of her seat with an absolutely tectonic groan. Her weary eyes drifted to her poor ship’s status screen, noting her cooling system was pushing one hundred and fifteen percent thermal load.

“Oh, Christ this better be worth it.”

Cautiously she started to shut off some non-essential systems and take the thermal burden off her core systems. Maybe, just maybe, her backup cooling unit could stop any further damage. Powering down her broken ass shield generator, her weapons, some of her sensors, it all seemed to help. With the auxiliary cooling unit going she saw the thermal load of Coyote II finally start to creep downwards.

As the tension finally began to bleed away from her body, she sat up, snatching a cigarette and a lighter from a nearby storage compartment. With another long and exhausted exhale, she stuck the cigarette in her mouth and cupped the lighter in close. She sat there, breathing, exhausted, and finally feeling a tinge of relief. With her nerves calmed some she turned to her security console, bringing up the image of the woman in her cell strapped to her seat.

“Eighty thousand credits, eh?” Her eyes lazily drifted back to her master systems display and the myriad of red indicators on it. It immediately drained her energy, and she slumped down into her chair. “Better be worth it.”

With a loud electric snap her instrument panels and lights all went dark.

“... uh oh.”

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☆The Ballad of Bessie Bishop☆ | ☆Elizabeth Bishop LPI Records☆ | ☆Feedback☆