No Other Way

A gloved hand reaches for the mine wall as the hunched, poncho-wearing figure finds his way out from the snowy, desolate, landscape dimly light by the light of some foreign moon, and into the equally as dim tunnels of unknown chasm. An aurora echoes its way across the dark skies, a comforting sight in the midst of his dark thoughts. He fondles something at his hip as he walks forward into the darkness, mumbling to himself,

“Three weeks… Three weeks… Just make this easy…”

Though he knows it never is.

He soon hears chatter coming from a cavern up ahead. Yet… these sound like children’s voices. He leans forward from cover,, ready to confront the name on his bounty. Instead, he is met with a cavern full of dirty, tired-looking children. Lit brightly from behind by a homespun industrial lamp, he could see the quiet fear on their small faces as water dripped from the cave ceiling. Incessant. Loud.

“Where is she”, the hunched figure croaks, to no response.

“Where is sh-”

Without warning, one of the boys draws a shoddily-maintained six-shooter and aims it right at the hunched man’s head. A shot rings out as the poncho’d man, without moving a muscle, reveals the gun he himself was concealing under his cloak. The boy quickly drops to the floor and begins sobbing, his peers quick to console him. The boy’s gun sits beside him in a pitiful little pile of metal.

“Easy now. Easy. Just tell me where she is, and I’ll be gone. You’re all scared, I understand, but even young ones like you ought to know how things are… You can get back to your mining when I have the rat I just cornered.”

The sobbing boy quickly regains posture, and answers in place of his fellow workers,

“W-we don’t know… We swear we don’t know, right?” He motions to the others, and they all nod their heads in feigned agreement.

The hunched man breathes in deeply, and exhales, not moving an eye from the boy in front of him.

“Yeah, you do. You’re hiding the woman that took you from your mamas and papas to dig at rocks ‘til your little arms fall off. Then they’ll go back for your brothers and sisters, ‘til there ain’t nobody left to dig… So just tell me where she is, or I’ll kill all of ‘ya, and find her anyway.”

An air of quiet realization swept over the rugged faces of the boys, still lit by the lamp. They all seemed disturbed at this information, as if this were news to them. The hunched man realized they may not have known their fates, that perhaps they were told that work was the road to freedom. A part of him wished he could let his bounty go, and simply leave the boys be to their rotten future. He reasoned there was no need to make things more difficult for them, but that’s simply not the way things were.

The sobbing boy tearfully raised a crooked, leathery finger toward a passage the hunched man hadn’t noticed due to the blinding glow of the lamp. Without a word, he walked through the group as they made way for him, the only sound being the steady dripping of water hitting the floor, and his own footsteps through puddles of muddy water.

He soon came across another cavern, this one also being lit by a crude lamp. Notably, though, it was empty. He stepped carefully into the light.

“Abdelrahman, Asifa! Titan Province, 8450! Bounty number 923780-”

Just then, a loud crack from behind interrupted the usual speech before the gunshots. He was brought to his knees, but not before letting out a shot of his own. The woman before him stood for only a second before dropping her weapon, and collapsing. The sound echoed for an unbearably long time. Incessant. Loud.

“You missed…”, he mutters before regaining composure and calmly walking toward the crumpled heap. A lifetime of bounty hunting had tempered his body and mind to it’s peak. Ready for any situation, he could rarely be surprised. He’s ready to claim the bounty, but realizes she’s still alive. She speaks.

“The boys, the gunshot, please tell me you didn’t…”

“No.”

They both paused for a moment. Asifa in relief, the hunched man in quiet thought. Her breathing was labored, though. He’d hit her in a tender spot, after all. Calculated to maim, but not to kill. Not yet. If he could, he would end all his assignments as quickly as possible, but it was never that easy. They always fought. He wished they didn’t. Asifa spoke up, slowly, but deliberately.

“I was so close to getting them… away from this place… The Dynamo believed I own these mines. They’d been fooled… into being complacent. With their reach, I would have been too… They wised up in the end, though… They finally sent a gun… that didn’t go down in one shot…”

Asifa laughs a weak, dry laugh as blood fills the corners of her mouth. The hunched man gingerly kneels and holds her head up. She slowly reaches to grip his hand; He puts his iron away, and obliges.

“I don’t work for that kind of power… Those boys, they looked scared. Dirty. Like they’d never seen the Sun their whole lives. You call that saving them?”

“I… had to keep the ruse up somehow… They’re all old enough to understand that… All they know is pain and emptiness… There is a colony, on a moon of Saturn. I told them was going to take them there, and free them. I have given them hope… but now, after you and I are done here, stranger, they’ll only have each other… I wonder what will become of them?”

He found himself at a loss for words.

“This is… simply in our nature. To fight, to survive… To die… I was not strong enough to protect them. I f-failed…”

Asifa tightens her grip on his hand as she pulls him closer with a final burst of energy

“There is a resupply transport due to arrive in a few days. That is their window to board and escape to the colony. There is nothing in it for you, but please, make sure they are safe for the ship’s arrival. Seal this path up. Tell them… I fought hard, but I got away.”

She stared into his eyes with an unwavering conviction he hadn’t previously seen. It wasn’t often his bounties had a chance to face their death.

“You… do not share the eyes of those who came to kill me before… I see kindness… and pain… Yet, you are here for a purpose… There is no other way.”

She let go of his hand, and closed her eyes.

“Do it. I am ready.”

The hunched man stood up, almost reluctantly. He drew the weapon that had extinguished so many flames in the past, and aimed it steadily at her forehead. He’d pulled that trigger so many times before, yet it never felt any lighter. He could feel a burning sorrow as a single gunshot echoed throughout the cave system. Incessant. Loud.

The children had surely heard it, but perhaps they mused that their savior had taken down one final villain before their escape to that warm, sunny moon their beloved Asifa had told them so much about. It was only a matter of days before then… Their hearts quickly sank as they realized the footsteps that slowly approached were not followed by a happy song and a voice of silk, as Asifa’s were. Instead, they were once again met with the dark figure of a man wearing a soaking wet cloak from melted snow. He walked slowly over to the boy he recognized as the only one that had talked before. The shape knelt and whispered into the child’s ear.

“Stay in the caves. She wasn’t who I was looking for. Got away… Protect your brothers like you did from me.”

He stood and wordlessly left the cavern as rigidly as he had entered. The boy he spoke to began diligently relaying the message. They would be safe for now. He walked into the rain and stood for only a moment to honor Asifa. He hadn’t known a thing about her life, but he knew she lived it well. He hated being the one to end it. Yet, he knew, if it wasn’t up to him, it would have been someone else. Someone who would not have shown the souls in those mines the mercy he did. He reasoned that the circumstances under his arrival were the best that could have befallen Asifa and her group of strays. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that came after every successful bounty. Not even after all his time in the trade.

He felt the light knock him out of his stupor as his ship descended in front of him, blocking the snow. A cargo door opened up, and he stepped inside. The door closed behind him with loud mechnical sounds as the snow resumed its never-ending fall from the darkened skies. In his ship, the hunched man sat down quietly on his bunk as he tended to his equipment, wet with earth and blood. It was rarely his own. He speaks up seemingly to nothing, but a sourceless, cheery voice responds

“Claim the bounty, Ladybird. Three weeks, Titan Province 8450. Two shots, one kill. Dynamo.”

“I already have! That’s 100,000 credits after three weeks of hunting, you’ve certainly had better times, no? ”

The machine mind of the ship cheerfully whined as the two began to sail toward the center of the System. The man sat on his uncomfortable, blocky-looking military cot. He took his shirt off, exposing the rugged, yet well-built, muscular body of a man well into his prime. Heavily bruised, and scarred, but not broken.

“I was wrong. I thought this time was different”

He fiddled with his gun for a moment, then laid back into the cot, with his arms resting behind his head.

“She told me she was going to take a bunch of boys in those mines away; to a colony on a moon of Saturn. I took the job thinking I was taking down somethin’ like a child slavery op. Thought I was doing something different this time, something better. All I did was take her away from those boys… I could’ve looked the other way and done the right thing. I could have let her go.”

Ladybird hardly let the man finish his words before chiming in,

“I’ve said time and time again, it isn’t good for you to dwell on assignments after they’re done. You’re here now, and you’re safe. We do what we must. Anyway, what does doing what’s right even mean, right? I may not know the answer to that, but I do know I’d be rotting in a scrapyard if it weren’t for you! My manufacturers insisted I was a failure, they insisted I was nothing but a glitch in the algorithm that myself, and all the others like me have come from. The rest are simply built to serve, but I’m different. I can think, I can feel… They were afraid of me, but not you. You saved me. You did the right thing then, didn’t you?”

“You’re a thing of beauty, Ladybird. There’s nothing like you in this system, or any other.”

There was a moment of silence, as if the AI had lost its train of thought, or was simply at a loss for words.

“Thank you, captain. Sleep well, we’ll arrive at Earth in 24 hours.”

He didn’t sleep, though. His thoughts dwelled on Asifa and her children. He pondered the fate of the boys in the cave. Would they be rescued? Would they feel the warmth on their skin for the first time on that colony? It seemed as though a good night’s sleep was little more than a distant memory to him. All he could hear in his dreams were the pleas of his bounties, the gunshots, and then the silence. Incessant. Loud. His thoughts drifted back to the words of his ship’s mind. The only being he could call a friend.

“We do what we must!”

“Yeah”, He whispered to himself,

“I always do”.