Chapter 30

Kuirilia
The Storm Bringer’s Base
11:54 SET (19:54 EDT)
August 16, 12610 (August 15, 2019)

N’ardil was taken aback by the sudden appearance of Esriro in the transmission. She had been expecting to see Esriro when she accepted the transmission, but figured that the woman was dead if someone else was using the code they had setup so long ago.

“Esriro? Why are ... why does this man have your code?”

“I gave it to him,” Esriro said simply. “You still don’t look very closely at bounties do you? You just send off the closest team expecting that they’ll fulfill it. Do you know who this man is?”

“What does it matter? A bounty is a bounty!”

“It matters because this man is the son of Derech and Zandra Kidravia!” Esriro spat. “You tried to kill him and his sisters!”

“What are you talking about?! The bounty was for him and a woman named Zuni Alnanan! I know nothing of any sisters!”

“That doesn’t make any sense!” the man beside Esriro in the transmission said. “Why was she a part of the bounty?”

“How should I know? The bounty was made public three days ago and I sent a team when it came through. The only details on it were the names, locations, tracking data and reward.”

“That’s consistent with how bounties are handled, Jonuth. Dhir must have contacted the Hunter’s Guild to get the bounty placed. People don’t usually ask questions when a bounty is coming directly from there.”

“Whatever. I’ll asked Zuni why there might be a bounty on her head next time I see her. N’ardil Vilos is it? I’m going to explain what is going to happen if you don’t order your teams to ignore the bounty on Zuni Alnanan and myself. If either of us is hurt, Xigios Dryth will act on orders I will be giving him as soon as I end this transmission. Those orders will be to hunt down every single person in your organization until they are all dead, saving you for last. If you don’t think I have that capability, think again. Take it away, Abi.”

“Greetings, my name is Abi and I am an artificial crystalline construct created by a very advanced civilization millennia ago. I have been bonded to Jonuth’s family for thousands of years, and I take my duty to protect them very seriously. As soon as the ship piloted by the Hellraisers broke orbit of Earth, they sent you an encrypted report requesting instructions. I decrypted that report and know that you are currently on the planet of Kuirilia, which resides just inside the Scyftan border shared with The Confederation.”

“I have also hacked into the Hellraisers’ ship and have spent the last ten minutes downloading every scrap of information stored on their databanks. As a result, I now have the names of every member in a group like the Hellraisers, as well as the names and specifications of all fifty-six ships in your fledgling fleet. I will hand all of that information over to Esriro, and I will also use it to put out the biggest bounty you’ve ever seen if anything should happen to Jonuth. That bounty will be put on you and will be so large that friends of yours will be scrambling over each other to be the one to capture or kill you. It will be in your best interest to make sure that nothing happens to Jonathan or anyone else close to him. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” N’ardil said under her breath.

“Do you understand?!”

“Yes! Yes, I understand! I will send out a message to every group to ignore the bounty!,” N’ardil said, a very angry look on her face.

“Good. You better pray we never talk to each other again. You won’t like the outcome if we do,” Abi said, ending the transmission.

N’ardil was very tempted to throw her tablet across the room, but didn’t want to have another one replaced.

“Thasia!” N’ardil bellowed while reaching for the large bottle sitting on her desk.

The large door opened and a small Kobaloi woman entered the room, running over before standing in front of N’ardil’s desk with her head bowed.

“Write and send out a transmission to every group. State that The Storm Bringers are ignoring the bounty on Jonuth Kidravia and Zuni Alnanan, and no one should attempt it under any circumstances. They are also to prevent any others from trying to complete the bounty if they learn of it. I want every team to respond to the transmission confirming their orders. Go!”

“Yes, mistress,” the Kobaloi woman said, bowing before turning and running out of the room.

N’ardil took a long drink out of the bottle she was holding and then sat there, thinking. She knew she was careless when it came to bounties, only looking at how much they paid and what difficulty they were. There had been a few bounties over the years that her company probably shouldn’t have taken, but they all worked out in the end. This one however, didn’t seem like one that would work out in her favor. Not if she was going to be the one on the receiving end if anything should happen to Jonuth Kidravia. She needed help, and a lot of people owed her favors.

Picking up her tablet, she spent the next few hours collecting those favors.

Somewhere in the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy
The Indomitables’ Ship - Nira’s Revenge
12:09 SET (20:09 EDT)
August 16, 12610 (August 15, 2019)

“I still have some friends in The Storm Bringers,” Esriro said shortly after Abi closed the transmission with N’ardil. “I’ll contact them and get them to keep an eye on her. She isn’t one to take something like this lying down. She will fight back.”

“Fight back with what? She might win a fight on the ground but she doesn’t have a chance in space.”

“A lot of powerful people owe her favors, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she started collecting on those as soon as we ended the transmission. Many of those people won’t think twice about coming after you or have any qualms about fighting The Indomitables, either.”

“Could any forces she gathers beat The Indomitables?”

“Individually? No. Collectively? Yes. Many of the people owing her favors originate out of Confederation space and have their own private navies.”

“So what do we do?” Jonuth asked.

“Like N’ardil, I have people I can call to cash in on favors, and so does my father. We’ll start contacting them later today and put them on standby in case we need help. Besides that, there is nothing we can do right now. It will take bounty hunters a long time to get to Earth, so you will probably be safe until your fleet arrives. It will also take N’ardil a while gather forces, so she won’t present an immediate threat. She will need to be dealt with eventually, though.”

“Well, thanks for the help, I’ll let you get back to the women. Can you transfer me back to your father, please?”

“No problem. I’m not sure how much help I was, but it should buy us some time.”

“We’ll see just how much. It will have to wait until after we deal with Dhir, however. We cannot risk losing a large portion of our fleet before then.”

“I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that,” Esriro said with a smile. “I’ll pass you back to my father now. One moment.”

Esriro put the transmission on hold and then transferred it to her father. [Dad, Jonuth wants to talk to you. I’ve transferred him back to your screen.

[Thank you, I’ll talk to him now.]

Sol System
Jonuth Kidravia’s Ship - Abi
20:18 EDT
August 15, 2019

“Sir, I was told you wanted to talk to me?”

I nodded. “We learned that there is a bounty on me and a woman named Zuni Alnanan. Not my sisters. Esriro and I managed to get The Storm Bringers to back off for a while but we’ll have to deal with them sooner or later. We threatened N’ardil Vilos with the complete destruction of The Storm Bringers and the individual groups associated with them. Esriro thinks that she will start gathering a fleet to come after me. I have no reason to trust N’ardil, so we’ll need to begin preparations. How many of your ships need to undergo refitting when you arrive in Pygmaean space?”

“All but the newest ones, which leaves the around three hundred or so, why?”

“Abi has a plan but we can’t execute it right now. How do you feel about taking those three hundred ships and going hunting?

“Hunting? For what?”

“The Storm Bringers. Abi managed to get the names of every person in each team, as well as data on the ships those people are traveling on. That data includes engine signatures which will make them easier to track.”

“For what purpose?”

“If we try to go after N’ardil directly, she’ll probably recall all the teams to her location which makes it much harder to deal with them. If we capture those teams, then she can’t hide behind them. Besides, The Storm Bringers will cease to exist when I’m done, and I want to try offering the groups jobs.”

“Why hire them? They’re bounty hunters and mercenaries so all they’re interested in is money. What is stopping them from capturing or killing you and turning you in for a reward?”

“They’ll never get close enough to me to get the chance. The Spectres don’t have any specialized units like The Storm Bringers do, so I’m going to pay them handsomely to train the Spectres who will be leveling in Pygmaean space. Any of the people you capture are to be sent to the Warvyn shipyards where they will be injected with modified Inhibitor Nanites, whether they have agreed to work with me or not.”

“Modified how?”

“They will be impossible to remove once injected, for one. The important thing about them is that they will only activate when one of those people comes within a certain distance of me or my sisters, otherwise they will keep their abilities at all times. It’s something Abi came up with recently.”

“Well, that’s one way to deal with them,” Xigios said with a laugh.

“Abi is sending you the data she recovered. Make sure you keep your eyes open. Who knows, one of the teams might be in Pygmaean space when you arrive.”

“I will,” Xigios said a beep drawing his attention to the screen beside him. “Only fifty-six ships? I’d have thought they would have more by now.”

“They could have more, but if they do, they aren’t in the Hellraiser’s databanks.”

“Well, I’ll have one of our sensors passively scan for any of these signatures, and I’ll let you know if we get a hit.”

“Thank you. I’ll let you get back to your work, I’ve got something else I need to take care of. It was nice to meet you. I’m sure we’ll talk again soon,” I said, hearing footsteps in the adjacent hall.

“You as well, young man.”

I nodded and hit the button to end the transmission. Standing up, I left the bridge and was greeted by the Hellraisers who had their hands firmly secured behind their backs using Inhibitor Cuffs.

“Abi, which one of them is their leader?”

“The woman second from the back, Jonathan.”

I made my way down the line noting that they all wore the same red armor. It looked like dyed leather, but I was betting that there was much more to it than that. There were a bunch of different species making up the group including at least two Scyftans and a Pygmaean. I didn’t know the races of the others, but one of them reminded me of an orc, and another of a goblin. There were even two that looked like humanoid versions of animals, one of them a bird and the other resembling something like a wolf.

Judging by the look in their eyes, all of them wanted to kill me, especially the leader who looked much angrier than the others. None of them could voice their displeasure as they were all gagged, however. I stopped in front of the woman Abi said was the leader and looked her over. I assumed that she was the one who was hovering over the shield, but she was smaller now, which made sense since she was in her Scyftan form.

“What’s her name?”

“Illia Kulza is the name she goes by, but I don’t know if that is real or not.”

“And how much was the bounty on me and Zuni Alnanan?”

“Two hundred million credits for you, and twenty million for Zuni Alnanan.”

“How much of that goes to The Storm Bringers and how much goes to the Hellraisers?”

“Looking through transaction records it looks like the Hellraisers only get to keep ten percent of every bounty completed. The other ninety percent goes to The Storm Bringers.”

“It seems like you and your team are incredibly underpaid for what you do. I’ve got an offer for you, would you like to hear it?” I asked, looking down at the leader of the Hellraisers.

She couldn’t talk, so all she did was shrug.

“I’m sure you’ve heard of Spectres. I will be sending approximately four hundred of them to level up as much as they can in the next six months, so here is my offer. If you accept, I will split up those four hundred Spectres between all of you, so you will be in charge of forty, each. I will pay each of you ten thousand credits for every ten levels your group of Spectres gains over those six months, and I expect them to gain a lot of levels over that time. You see, every single Spectre I will be sending is between level three hundred and five hundred, and all of them have learned the Legendary Insight Perk. In six months, I estimate that each of you could make one several million credits. How does that sound?”

The other nine Hellraisers had wide eyes, and Illia was looking right at me. I could see that she wanted to talk so I gestured and the gag loosened.

“That offer is too good to be true. What’s the catch?”

I smiled. “There are two catches, actually. The first is that I want you to teach your respective Spectre groups how to work together to take down targets like your group is able to. You were about four minutes away from overloading the forcefield before being scared away. That is what you will actually be paid for. If you can increase the rate at which your group levels, that is just a bonus for you.”

“And the second catch?” she asked.

“This one is a biggie, and will happen whether you accept my offer or not. You’ve heard of Inhibitor Nanites?”

Illia nodded, her face changing to one of fear at the mere mention of the nanites.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to inject you with the ones developed by the Pygmaeans, these ones are different. Abi modified them so that they will only activate by proximity. Once injected, they will cause you and your team to lose all of your abilities if you come within a certain distance of me, or anyone else that is programmed into them.”

“What stops you from making them work like regular Inhibitor Nanites so we lose our abilities permanently?”

“You’ll just have to trust me. After you do this job, you’re free to go off and do your own thing, though there may be another job waiting for you if you want it. The Inhibitor Nanites will remain, however, so don’t even try to remove them,” I said, looking over to the Pygmaean man. “The ones developed by your people might be built to be removed by specialized equipment, but these ones are permanent.”

“How long do we have to give you an answer?” Illia asked

“A week,” I answered. “If you haven’t given me an answer by then, then you’ll probably spend some time imprisoned until I have something else for you to do. Abi, how long until we’re back?”

“I’m dropping us into the hangar now, Jonathan.”

“Good. Ask my mom to make her way to the hangar exit, along with a couple of Spectres, please. Tell her I’ve got some prisoners.”

I gestured and the gag fixed itself over Illia’s mouth once again. “Let’s go,” I said.

I led the group through the corridors until we got to the exit. Everyone had to jump since there still wasn’t a ramp, but everyone made it down with any issue and we continued on to the hangar door. Once there, I pulsed my mana at the lock and the large door began to slide open. It seemed my mom made good time, as she was waiting with the group of Spectres I requested.

“What’s going on, Jonathan who...” she asked before trailing off, looking at someone standing behind me. “Illia?”

I looked where she was looking and saw that Illia had wide eyes and was staring at my mom. “You two know each other?” I asked, looking back over to my mom.