Only at your Local
Holovid Theatre
2003 short story by Jonathan
Hicks Three years after Episode IV – A New Hope
The
target area is a small traffic control and communications building next to
what is left of the old starport district on Wennicas, a mismatch of
architectural designs clawing their way to the sky. Most are tumbled down and
mere ruins, some still stand proud with the growth of the old forest slowly
climbing the sides. Grey metals, green foliage, brown rust, silver alloy.
Colours bleed into one another. Good news for Queed. His clothing is a conflagration of
design and colour, a patchwork of fashion and protection. His helmet is
repaired here and there with plate and weld, and if he stood still he would
appear as one of the decayed service ‘droids left scattered about the area. He is broad, is Queed. He stands tall, the armour
probably increasing his physique by a small factor, the glass of the
faceplate emotionless and unreadable. His weapon is tucked under his small
cloth robe and his seeker, a hand-sized globe that zips back and forth in
front of him, hums almost inaudibly. It hovers at a corner, sends images to Queed’s faceplate to show him what is ahead, and then
continues as the bounty hunter catches up. Queed also nurses a wound in his left leg, a cauterised
blast mark that hinders his movement. We will address this wound later on in
the story. He staggers every now and then as he moves quickly through the
run-down buildings. Now we see his pursuers. Twelve human men with smart dark
suits and minimal protection. All wear shaded nose-mounted eye protectors (it
is an exceptionally hot day today on this continent of the planet) and all
carry hand weapons of varying design. They clamber over the rubble, stretched
out in a long line like they are searching for something, talking to each
other over comlinks integrated into headsets. They
are obviously looking for Queed, and Queed is obviously trying to avoid them.
His wound hinders his mobility, and the six-legged long-snouted
barb-backed creatures the men are using as a form of tracking are leading
them straight to him. Things do not look good for Queed. So, although he blends in well with the surroundings, his
scent and wound will hinder him. This will enable the smartly dressed men to
catch up with him. Why they are after him remains to be seen. The men are calling out to each other to check certain
areas or to be cautious entering darker ruins. “He’s slippery!” they shout.
“Don’t be caught unawares!” The creatures howl and jabber. One man carries a small
short-range life form detector and sweeps it back and forth. “I’m not getting
anything on the scanner!” he shouts. He clambers to the top of a small mound
of rubble and looks out over the carcass of a huge hangar, the collapsed roof
like a broken ribcage. “I’m getting a faint reading from the far end!” The man with him lets the creatures loose and they run
screaming across the hangar. He watches as they leap over a mound and snarl
and growl as they attack something. He produces a lop-sided smile as he sees
blood splash up the wall, but when the limb of a Sraw rat flies through the
air he frowns. He whistles twice and the blood-muzzled creatures return.
“False alarm!” he shouts back to the other men who are heading in his
direction. Queed has been given a few moments of respite but he
knows that it will not last. He slits open a small furry creature he has
found and sprays it’s contents over the ground,
hoping the new scent will confuse the creatures. His suit will help against
the life form scanners, but it will not protect him at close range. His leg
is slowly hardening; the pain killing drugs he injected into himself have had
no effect. He knows if he slows any further he will be caught and killed. The
men are not trying to capture him. This is a simple locate and terminate
hunt. Quickly, with a lop-sided gait caused by the stiffening
leg, Queed hurries across an open patch and heads for a long wide metal tube,
covered in masonry and filled with garbage. He has seen a large pile of small
rodent carcasses and he hopes that the smell of rotting meat will confuse the
hunting creatures even further. A good idea in theory, but in practice the
tube is small and he will find it difficult to manoeuvre. Perhaps another
plan is in order. Queed summons his seeker. The small globe zips to him,
hovering with small squirts of escaping gas, spinning quickly, waiting for
instruction. Queed rubs a filthy glove against his wound and then smears his
fingers over the seeker, ordering it to head off in a tangent direction to
his route, in the hope the hunters will pick up this scent from the drone and
follow and at the very least split the packs to make them manageable. He heaves himself to his feet, trying to ignore the pain,
and then realises that he has almost reached a dead end. This part of the
district is so covered in rubble that high walls of fallen stone piles up,
almost impossible to climb with his wound. Has he made a serious error in
judgement, heading this way deeper into the collapsed buildings? Read on… An explosion sends dust and rocks into the air, and Queed
knows that the men are not taking any chances and are tossing grenades into
areas they think he may be using as cover. One after another great plumes of
smoke and debris tower into the air like geysers of dirt, and the longer
Queed waits the closer they get… Then a shout, and a howl, and he thinks he hears the
hunters heading to his left, away towards an old blast pit. He nods in
satisfaction as the seeker ploy is obviously working. At last, some good news
for Queed. But then a grenade lands at his feet. Now, Queed’s armour could be
filled with all sorts of gadgets and tricks, but these additions to an
already bulky and heavy suit were not attractive to the bounty hunter and so
he opted out. At this moment he could do with a single burst repulsor belt to
fling him from danger. A shame, really, that his pride in his abilities had
overruled his want for gadgets. The explosion is more of a concussion shockwave than the
tearing energy he was expecting. He is flung back and realises the hunters
are using flushers, grenades that force the enemy from concealment through
fear or force. They obviously want to shoot him face on so that the body can
be identified; ripping him apart with an explosive would mean identification
might take a while, and all they wanted was to get paid. That is, as long as they aren’t government employed. If
they are, then his problems are much bigger than he realised. He lands roughly on his back, the pain making his leg
curl up under him as he struggles to his good foot. He sees figures emerging
from the dust, realises he has to fight, then realising he’s lost his gun and
the two grenades he was saving for a real problem. For all the professional appearance, Queed is as clumsy
as any normal man. He scoops a rod of thick steel from the ground and hoists
it up as another figure appears atop the rubble to his left. Without the
seeker he can’t get a direct tactical layout of his area, so he decides to
risk it. Queed doesn’t like taking risks unless absolutely necessary, but his
situation is dire and he has been left with little option. He may be cornered
like an animal, so he’ll fight like one. He launches the steel rod at the man atop the rubble, the
metal whup-whupping through the air and
entering his head. A visual description is out of the question - the more
squeamish among you may not like the exact details of the rather horrible
death, but be assured that the end was quick and the man made no sound. The
blaster he owned dropped from dead fingers and Queed did his best to get to
it. However… The bad news is, the man had a hunting creature with him,
so not only does the blaster fall from the hands (and into the pit area Queed
is in), but also the leash the man is holding keeping the beast in check. The
creature barks, yowls, and leaps down towards the bounty hunter, whose luck
does not seem to be getting any better. Queed really wishes he had
bought the quick-burst repulsor belt as he throws himself at the fallen
blaster. He scoops it up and lifts it as the creature leaps at
him, jaws slathering, the two sets of eyes burning, the rows of teeth
glistening with saliva and the blood of rodents. So, Queed places the gun so
that the mouth of the creature falls onto it, and he blows it’s
head off. Once again, we will refrain from a detailed description. Just as Queed thinks he has done well to get this far,
three more men appear from over the lip of the rubble pile. They point and
shout at the bodies of the man and the creature, and the quickly retreating
figure of Queed who is trying to get out of the pit and out of danger. Queed
feels like he’s in a Ki-Ki fighter’s arena, and the
sloping sides are filled with cheering blood sport spectators. Then he hears the engine. And a small two-man cloud car appears over the lip,
piloted by men dressed the same as his pursuers. What else could possibly go wrong? It is at this point we will take a short break. Tired of failing equipment? Annoyed at the red tape
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Yapya Restaurant, Level 15, Northside, Unit 2150 – just five minutes from
this entertainment holovid theatre. Tonight, dusk bell. Only in this theatre – Jan Lomona and
the Sirens of Amagad, the first four chapters. Passion, deceit, danger… Jan
Lomona and the Sirens of Amagad, all languages, all visual receptors. Only in this theatre. Welcome back. The cloud car sweeps in low, the twin cannons firing at
the figure in the pit. The ground is torn up and rubble is dissolved – Queed
has no heavy weaponry with which to defend himself. This could mean trouble. The bounty hunter fires at the men on the ground, hitting
one in the shoulder, who screams and falls into the pit. Queed sees no other
course except up the side of the pit, as the route into which he entered the
pit is more or less blocked by the hovering cloud car. He knows that the
weapons on the vehicle are bulky and difficult to train on a small ground
target, so he moves in a zigzag motion up the debris as fast as his damaged leg
will allow. Explosions from the cannons tear up the space around him,
and the resulting smoke and dust obscures him and ruins the aim of the men on
foot. A bonus, but a small one. Then
the cloud car is forced into a sideslip by a huge ground explosion, from the
centre of the pit, that forces it into a rusting
docking stanchion and cracking open the left pilot’s pod. Queed is shocked
and amazed, and quite rightly so as he had nothing to do with the incident,
and the men chasing him had not thrown any high explosives tat he had seen. Then he remembers the gun and the grenades he dropped,
and wonders if the cheap blaster he had bought from Marcee Maulin had malfunctioned and taken the two grenades with
it – Queed smiles inside his helmet and for the first time is glad of a
weapon smith’s lack of skill. (The preceding sentence is a personal view,
and does not reflect the quality of product available from Marcee Maulins
Maintenance Mayhem Showrooms, Level 12, Southside, Unit
1762. Comm for a brochure today). He is at the top of the rubble, now, and he turns to see
how his pursuers are fairing. The men chasing him have been stunned or
injured by the explosion, and one staggers about clutching his face whilst
the other lies motionless on the ground. The Queed sees the cracked pilot’s
pod. So he takes aim. Fires. And misses. Queed is a competent professional. Do not take this as a
sign of lack of skill – he is injured, after all, and he has been on the run
from death for a long time. A little leeway is advised. But, the cloud car is badly damaged from the explosion
and the pilot realises that he is vulnerable. He comms the target’s position
and makes a run for it. Queed fires off some more shots to make sure he keeps
running. Then, it’s down the other side of the rubble and he sees
what he has been searching for; the main speeder lane, and the tall thin
dwellings beyond. He drops and rolls down the embankment, exhausted, and
crosses the lanes, ignoring the blaring horns and sirens of speeding
vehicles. He staggers to a huge double blast door, and as he
approaches it a scanner reads his signature and opens the doors. A large
Chortese is standing on the other side of the door, holding a blaster, with
several other figures standing about him. “Queed!” the
Chortese says. “I didn’t think you’d be in today. Are you okay?” “I’m fine,” says
Queed, “but getting to work these days is murder.” Lights up. Only at your Local
Holovid Theatre
2003 short story by Jonathan
Hicks Three
years after Episode IV – A New Hope Histories – It’s
up to you to figure out if this is fiction or fantasy, but one thing’s for
certain – this is currently playing at Dooth Stars Holovid Theatre, Level 14,
Southside, Unit 3478, just before the late night showing of Jan Lomona and the Sirens of Amagad. Cast
of Characters Queed |