Fiction: The Hunter part 1

So my wife and I had a wedding to go to today, and what with one thing and another I didn't have time to get anything written for the Blog today. However, I think it's important to make sure that even if I don't have anything I'm still maintaining a schedule of posting, in order to get used to the idea of maintaining order and holding up my end of the deal. After all, you can't improve if you don't practice. And it's not just writing that I need to practice, but setting and keeping to one post per day, at least as far as major posts. If I don't post enough people will forget, and I'll forget, and the whole thing falls apart. It I post too much, it loses meaning, and starts to become too much for people to keep up with, so they decide not to bother with it, then suddenly I have no interest. 

And interest is honestly what keeps me going with doing this. I know that not everyone comments, and that's fine, but I know you're reading because I see the page views, which have been fairly impressive for me. And when I talk to people they tell me that they liked what I'd written. Thanks for that everyone.

But today I'm going to post part of a short story I've already written. Keep in mind this is a first draft, with very few corrections, other than spelling corrections. The way I came up with this story is that I went to the TV Tropes website and used their Story Generator, which gave the the following:

 Setting: Space Base
 Plot: Deserted Island
 Narrative Device: No Party Like A Donner Party
 Hero: Great White Hunter
Villain: Demoted To Dragon
Character As Device: Schoolyard Bully All Grown Up
Characterization Device: Terrified of Germs

The idea was, I had to wrap my mind around these concepts, and find a way to merge them into one coherent story. It was entertaining, and I think I've done a fairly good job for a first draft.

So here's the story in it's current form. If it seems like something worth expanding, or doing more drafts, then I may do that. Let know what you think. 

Enjoy!

The Great Nate Golden, last of the Great White Bounty hunters of the Space Age, had tracked his nemesis the nefarious Draconis to a hidden Asteroid base in the Kuiper Belt, in the middle of a Nickle and Iron rich cluster of asteroids, making radio communication difficult, if not impossible. As our story begins Nate hurtles toward the asteroid in a borrowed shuttle.

"Are you there yet?" Jefferson's voice came through the speaker, as his face appeared on the veiw-screen in front of Nate, his bald head and goggles  giving him a very Mad Scientist aspect.

Nate frowned curling his lip around his cigar, and narrowing his eyes at Jefferson. "Not yet," he growled. "I'm trying to sneak up on him, so I'm bleeding speed, and using that cloaking field you gave me."

"Yeah, if you come in to hot he'll be able so see right th... HEY! Are you SMOKING on my ship!?"

The end of the cigar glowed blue as Nate puffed. "Relax doc, it's electronic. I'm not gonna ruin your precious ship with my cigar." He blew the Molecular cloud, which looked a lot like cigar smoke out the opposite side of his mouth.

An alarm went off on the console.

"What is that!?" demanded Jefferson.

"I'll call you back." Nate calmly but firmly slapped the comm button, shutting Jefferson out. He took a look at the readouts on the big holograph in front of him, then past them out the viewport in front, and swore, standing up from the command chair. He started looking around the cabin for all the things he would need. He grabbed his gun belt, and gun, and shoved them into the airtight bag along with his duster. He was just grabbing his hat to shove in when the Comm came back on.

"You can shut me of like that, this is MY ship!" Jefferson watched concernedly as Nate ignored him and continued gathering items from the cabin. "Nate...? NATE! What's going on?"

"Sorry doc, but it looks like Draco's sensors are better than your cloaking field." Nate zipped up the bag and tossed it next the to the pressure suit by the airlock. He stepped into the suit with practiced ease, and it closed around him, the helmet clamping down over his head, switching him to the suit radio. He puffed on his cigar. "Time for me to go."

He picked up the bag and opened the airlock, both sides. The air all rushed out all around him, but that wouldn't matter any more. He unlocked his boots and leaped headfirst out the hatch, riding the rushing air.

For almost a minute he floated away from the Shuttle until the ballistic rockets he'd detected tore through the ship gouging huge holes until they reached the reactor, then the whole shuttle exploded in blue and orange flames.

Nate sat calmly and watched the whole thing, rolling the cigar around his mouth, occasionally puffing, the "smoke" dissipating quickly.

After the show died down, and the the debris had all drifted past he set a course for the asteroid, the suits thrusters taking him on a slow journey toward the only haven left him.

Several hours later Nate floated outside the asteroid looking through the force-field that would let anything larger than air to pass easily through. It was visible only as a haze, like static snow hovering transparently in the air. Nothing moved on the other side, and there were only parts of spacecraft, nothing that would fly. He drifted forward, expecting a trap, but not surprised when there wasn't one. He shoved his bag forward through the field, to check the orientation of the artificial gravity. They fell the same way as the wreckage on the ground.

A few moments later Nate stood decked in his duster, with nano-particle shielding, his wide brimmed hat, with its neural interface and optical kit. His Multi-Phasic-Plasma-Particle cannon resembled nothing so much as a slightly over-sized revolver complete with a revolving cylinder in the center, and was slung low on his hip. His short barreled protonic disruption gun rode his back, within easy reach. He brushed off the white dust from his previous job, when he'd had to blast a couple bad guys down to protonic dust.

He rolled the cigar around his mouth, and took a deep breath in through his nose. The air wasn't stale, but it stank a little bit. So, the air scrubbers were up and running, but they weren't enough to deal with whatever was currently living here. Super.

Nate wasn't worried. Nate never worried.  Once you get to be a certain age, the only things you could count on were taxes, and death. Nate wasn't afraid of death, he'd lived so close to it for so long it was like an old friend.

He found four doors at the back of the abandoned hanger, but only one was open. He smirked. A trap then. Without the slightest trace of hesitation or caution he strode through the open door, and down the hallway. He turned left to go down another corridor when the attack happened. Four gibbering mutants like howler monkeys came screaming down from the rafters with voices like nails on a chalkboard. The first one dropped from a steel beam down on top of the old bounty hunter...

...Or at least on top of where he was. Nate stopped a step early, and drew the revolver, which spun up with a green fiery glowed. As the mutant fell past him, Nate held revolver out, and pulled the trigger just as it fell past the barrel of the gun. It's thick khaki colored blood splattered down the hallway.

Nate was already moving as the next monkey came down at his back. He spun away, and backhanded the ugly little creature with the heavy barrel of his hand cannon. It smacked between his gun and wall of the hall, and it's head cracked open, and it fell limp to the ground.

The third monkey-mutant had dropped to the ground and was now leaping toward the old hunters feet. Nate lifted his leg at the last moment, and the thing grabbed the bottom of his shoe, so he stomped down on its spindly fingers, as the fourth was rushing his back…

"...Damn monkeys."

Nate continued through the corridor, a little less cautiously now that the trap had been sprung. Minds like the one that thought of the  Flying Monkey trap wouldn't waste time with other traps. It was a mind that just wanted you to know that IT knew you were there.

He reached a hatch, and the indicator said that it was safe to open, and there was no lock, so he opened it. It led to a control room of sorts, full of holographic displays, and controls and complicated looking equipment. Nate didn't bother with the equipment or the controls. He wouldn't know what any of it did, and they likely were locked out anyway. He did look at the displays though. They were full of cages. Rows and rows of cages.

...And they were all empty.

"Aha, you can see now, the gravity of your situation."

Nate rolled his eyes, and turned to see exactly what he'd expected or rather, almost what he'd expected. What he'd expected was a larger-than-life hologram of Draco hovering over a console gloating at him, and explaining why he was doomed. What he saw was someone else gloating at him. He raised an eyebrow. "Who the hell are you?"

The figure looked offended, but decided to be gracious. "As you are about to die, I suppose I can tell you." (Nate grinned inwardly at this.) "I am Draco's second in command, the Mighty Erwin, and I will succeed where he has always failed; defeating the mighty Nate Golden." He smiled in what he clearly thought was a vindictive and smug manner.

Nate took the cigar out of his mouth, and swaggered forward a few steps. "You ah... might want to work on that name Erwin. I mean I'm hardly quaking in my boots here." He gestured to himself. "You're not really inspiring a lot of respect or fear out of your enemies if you go around calling yourself the Mighty Erwin."

The Mighty Erwin looked angry for just a moment, but then looked thoughtful. "You know, it was calculated to get my enemies to underestimate me, but perhaps your right. Maybe fear is better. Take a look at this." The monitor flickered over to a scene of a humanoid, but more feline, strapped to a table getting injections. "They're as smart as humans, but with none of the stupid emotions or other ethical concerns that come along with the shape. A perfect killing machine." Nate shook his head, and rolled his eyes again. Villains, he thought. They never understood.

"You don't like the name Erwin then? Well how about, The Mighty Killer of Nate Golden!?"

Nate yawned. Conversations like this were useful in their own way, and sometimes entertaining for a little while, but only if the other person was fairly clever and “Erwin” clearly wasn’t. Certainly this whole thing may have been a cleverly disguised ruse to lull him into a false sense of security, but somehow, he doubted it. Erwin was a lackey, and lackeys in general tended to be overambitious, and overly eager to prove themselves.

Nate drew his protonic shotgun, turned it on the holo-emitter, and blew it into mono-atomic dust. The transmission abruptly cut off. Erwin would still be able to see him he knew, but at least Nate wouldn’t have to listen to him anymore. The odd thing was, that he got the nagging feeling that he knew this… Erwin. But there wasn’t really time for that right now. Now it was time to find another way off this rock.

And he was in a control room. 

He decided to re-assess his initial conclusion about the uselessness of the equipment.

Well that's it for part 1. Tomorrow will be part 2, the exciting conclusion.