"Impressive bit of weaponry" Hasek commented as he held Gene's Caster aloft.
Gene did nothing but glare at the one-armed sheriff. Next to him were Suzuka, Aisha and Jim. They looked more like unruly students who were sent to the principal's office rather than the dangerous convicts the O'Riley brothers insisted they were. After decomissioning them and having them turn in their weapons, Hasek sent the O'Riley brothers back to the mines.
He placed the empty Caster on top of his desk, just out of Gene's reach. "....and what can you tell me about this?" he asked as he held a small plastic vial filled with the tiny chips of dragonite that they had managed to dredge from the lake's surface.
"Are you going to charge us or what?" Jim asked defiantly
"That depends on some of your answers." He reached beneath his desk and pulled out his detatched, mangled prosthetic arm, placing it on the desk."What am I supposed to do about this?"
Aisha grinned a little bit sheepishly. She had the perfect answer, but her telling the sheriff exactly what she thought he should do with his cyber-prosthetic wouldn't help matters that much. She thought it would be best to keep quiet altogether.
"I could...." Jim started to say.
"And believe me, I'm VERY interested in knowing exactly where you got this." He interrupted, rattling the vial of dragonite chips.
"And what exactly is it worth to you?" Suzuka asked. She noticed that Gene was exceptionally quiet for this sort of situation. Each second they were wasting with the lawman, the pirates were getting further and further away with Melfina. Considering the treatment they had recieved from Hasek and his deputies, the four of them were being exceptionally polite.
"It could be worth your freedom." the sherriff said.
Suzuka edged forward a little bit, non-verbally challenging the sheriff. Hasek didn't take the bait.
"I can repair your arm if you'll let us go." Jim offered.
The sheriff chuckled slightly. "It goes a little beyond that, kid."
"So extortion's your game?" Suzuka asked.
"HAH! More like reciprocity. IF you can fix my arm and tell me where you got the dragonite, then I'll consider dropping the charges against you."
"You mean the charges you made up." Jim dourly replied.
"My, aren't you the young cynic?"
"Reciprocity? Cynic? Those are big words, sheriff." Suzuka cooly chimed in. Hasek could only chuckle weakly and his response were angry glares from the four outlaws.
"Ok then, if you can fix my arm and tell me more about the dragonite, you can take your ship and be on your merry little way and give law-enforcement ulcers in some other part of the universe."
"Not good enough." Gene finally spoke up.
"Why's that?" Hasek asked. As far as extortion went, that was a reasonable offer.
"The pirates kidnapped our navigator, we can't get home without her." he said, without betraying any of the remorse that was eating away at him.
"Hey now, I had that fruity pirate in my sights when he had to butt in!" Huntsman defensively yelled before taking a sip of coffee and pointing at Jim.
"You would've hit Mel...."
"Dammit kid- I'm the best shot on this planet, I wouldn't have...."
"Great- you're the only one on this planet who isn't so inbred that they're cross-eyed! That doesn't make you a crack shot!"
Hasek was caught off-guard and found himself laughing out loud at Jim's impudence. This was certainly the oddest group in recent memory to set foot on Anaconda, to say the least.
***
Melfina was lying unconcious on her back, still in her skirt and blouse. Her ankles and wrists were strapped to the edge of the table but it was unlikely she would regain conciousness. That was just a precaution. A wire led from the base of her neck to a little computer in Lan's palm. The small node in Melfina's neck was designed to look like a mole or birthmark- this was another invaluable bit of information they gleaned from hacking into Prof. Khan's database. Daro stood quietly above them, watching the proceedings.
"Looks like she has a thing for the red-haired Outlaw". Melfina's life experiences ever since waking up in that barn back in Sentinel were now showing up on the monitor of Lan's computer as encrypted bits of data.
"Aww....isn't that cute? The little doll has a heart." Khali said, roughly fondling Melfina's right breast. The piratess frowned a little bit. It wasn't any fun if she didn't resist. "And what about the XGP?" she asked impatiently.
"I'm trying to get to that. There's a lot of perephrial information to go through to get to it."
"Can't you delete it?" Khali asked.
"I could, but then we'd risk losing all of the information she has on the XGP and the Leiline." If she is indeed the maiden of the Leiline, he said to himself. "Give me twenty minutes and I should be able to retrive enough data to set up a trap for the others." After going through some more data, he matter of factly announced "Did you know that planet we just got off of has Dragonite?".
"Ask me if I care. What's the XGP's location?"
"Hasn't even left the surface yet. How badly do you want the Outlaw and his ship?" he asked, wondering how she'd react if the XGP was damaged beyond reapir from the ambush.
"Very badly." Khali growled. She ran her finger over the healing burn on the side of her face while eyeing her brother, rendered mute by a single blow from the white-haired Ctarl Ctarl. "I want the Outlaw and all of his friends."
***
In theory, there was nothing preventing them from walking out of Hasek's office. Every second they negotiated for their release was one more second Melfina was getting further away from them. Suzuka and Aisha could've easily taken out the deputies while Gene and Hasek could've settled things mano-a-mano. It wasn't some long dormant gentleman's instinct on Gene's part that was telling him it wouldn't be fair to pick a fight with a cripple, either. He had a feeling that there may be some sort of purpose to this delay.
"OK, you get your gun back, walk out of here free...er..." Hasek paused, looking at Aisha ".....people and you can start looking for your navigator once you repair my arm and tell me more about the dragonite you found."
His only response was the group shaking their heads almost collectively. He sighed as he tossed Jim his severed arm, hoping the lad would start working on it. Instead, he paused and looked as though he was going to hand it back to him.
"All right- answer me this then. Did the Dragonite come from anywhere on Anaconda?"
Jim silently nodded.
"Hot damn!" the sheriff triumphantly said to nobody in particular as he opened up his desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of vodka. As Hasek pulled the cork out with his teeth, Gene swore heard something roll around in the drawer and caught a glimpse of what looked like a Caster shell.
"What's that?" He asked.
"Huh? These?" the sheriff pulled a #7 shell out of the drawer. "Ammunition of some sort- I'm not really sure. A few years back, a Silgry transport crashed at the spaceport. It was pretty bad- nothing really survived the explosion. But I found some of these on the ground afterwards." he pulled out another shell- a #16- and placed it next to the #7 "I've never really seen anything quite like these...." he started to say. Then he got a good look at the Caster and realized it's dimensions were suited to chamber the mysterious shells lined up on his desk. He protectively snatched them away before Gene could get a closer look. Hasek didn't want to lose any bargaining chips.
"Of course! Mana......Old Magic. Unbelieveable! A few weeks after that crash, I found out that the transport's point of origin was from Planet Tenrei. I didn't think much of it at the time. This whole time I thought it was just a myth- Wizards, Casters and Spell Guns!"
"You've heard of that? How many of those did you find?" Gene asked. The pirate they encountered at Anaconda's spaceport was right- Old Magic does show up in some interesting places.
"Couldn't have been more than ten of 'em. I'm not sure how well they'd work, though. The ones I found survived the explosion OK, but they were soaking in puddles of water and flame-retardant for a few days. They wouldn't have done me much good in any case. There's nothing in our arsenal but your run-of-the-mill ballisitc weapons. Before today, I hadn't even seen a Caster". He paused, thinking out loud. "Somebody on that ship must've been trying to smuggle them back to the Silgry homeworld."
Gene produced a second vial of Dragonite from the pocket of his cloak. "We'll give you all of the Dragonite we've unearthed so far for those shells."
"NGYAA...?" Aisha asked, her jaw slack.
He tossed the vial of dragonite to the sherriff. Hasek wasted no time in producing a magnifying monocole from another desk drawer- Gene was pretty sure he heard some more loose Caster shells rolling around the drawer.
"Remember....I'm not just the sheriff, I'm also the assesor." He said. After putting the Dragonite from the second vial under some scrutiny, Hasek let our a long whistle of admiration. "OK, just a cursory glance, but this right here is no less than 80% pure. Quality stuff that could fetch a good price no matter what the market."
"It's yours." Gene said
"And the catch?"
"Depends. How many of those shells do you have on you?"
***
Melfina opened her eyes, but only the dimmest of light was visible. She tried bringing her hand to her forehead, but no luck. Her ankles and wrists were still restrained.
"Welcome back, Melfina." a sinister voice spoke up.
"Wh...where am I? Who are you?" she asked groggily.
Khali stepped out of the shadows. "My- you're full of questions today, aren't you?"
"What do you want with me?"
The piratess chuckled softly. "Power. Revenge. Immortality. Everything the Leiline has to offer. And you're going to help me find it, Melfina."
A horrible sensation came over the bio-android. Gene, Jim, Hilda, Aisha, Suzuka, Gillium and even poor misguided Harry; none of them were real. It was all some sort of dream she had while being kept in stasis. A vivid, strange and enigmatic dream, but one where she felt wanted and appreciated. However, the dream was over and this was her new reality. She knew that wasn't true, but she couldn't completely banish the thought, either.
"I won't help you." she said, her voice unwavering.
"Brave talk for a girl strapped to a table. You make it sound like you have a say in the matter."
Mel said nothing. There was a low mechanical hum as the table that Melfina was tethered to rose and she now caught a glimpse of a clear glass tube filled with a translucent gel in front of her. It was similar to the one on the Outlaw Star except it was bigger and looked like it was fixed in that location instead of being able to sink into the floor.
"What is that?"
"Your new home. We worked very hard on it." Khali said.
"I won't get in there."
"Aren't you the defiant little puppet?" Khali said as she stepped in undid the top button of Melfina's blouse. Mel tried in vain to pull away. "I'm going to enjoy breaking you."
"Stop it...."
"You really like the Outlaw, don't you? What would you say if we could delete all memories of him from your system in no more than two minutes? Hmm?" Khali whispered into her ear.
Melfina chose not to dignify that with a response. Khali continued resumed unbuttoning Mel's blouse. Mel did nothing, since she knew she was powerless and sensed that resisting would only further entice her captor. She wasn't going to tell Melfina, but Khali wanted the Maiden of the Leiline to grant her fondest wish. It wasn't power, and it wasn't riches. She wanted it so that she and Daro would be the only two people in the universe. Forever with her lover/brother and nobody to interfere or diapprove of their union. And Melfina was the key to that blissful eternity with her beloved Daro, she could almost taste it.
"KHALI!"
The piratess turned around. Lan was standing a few feet behind her. "What do you think you're doing?"
"I was just prepping Melfina for the tank." she lied unapologetically.
"Right." the pirate said skeptically. "The last thing we need is to have her awake on the bridge". All this time spent tracking down the XGP and the Maiden of the Leiline would be wasted if Khali got careless and kept using the bio-android as a plaything.
"Mmm...well, those clothes of hers have to come off some time." she said as she reluctantly took a few steps away from Melfina. Lan stepped up next to the bio-android.
"It was you who broke my mason plate." he quietly murmured, loud enough for Mel to hear, but too quiet for Khali to understand. Almost gladly, Melfina was plunged into darkness.
***
Hasek handed over the Caster shells in exchange for the second vial of dragonite. It turned out he recovered eight differnet shells from the crash site. Another cursory glance revaled that this was as good as the first batch. The dumbfounded sheriff couldn't believe his luck- close to one million wong in unrefined dragonite in exchange for some old, obscure and most likely useless ammunition. At least it was useless to him, he mused as he was mesmerized by the purple gleam of the precious stones.
Jim raised his goggles and looked up from the prosthetic arm that he had been working on with a feeling of deja-vu.
"....and you're not the least bit interested in where we found that?" Jim asked.
"Huh? No, not really...." Hasek said. This was met with skeptical glares from the four of them.
"You don't expect us to believe that...." the assassin started to say
Hasek cut her off. "Huntsman!" he yelled out "open a line to the Symka 8 trading post and order as much prospecting and mining equipment as this will buy. Then have this couriered out as payment." he held up the 2 vials of dragonite. "Even if you gave me the most accurate directions, I could spend the rest of my life up there looking for Dragonite and not make a single crown." he explained to the outlaws.
"But if you went ahead and purchased an abundant supply of mining equipment with unrefined dragonite as payment, word would spread very fast and you could start your own dragonite rush right here.....very shrewd, I must admit." Suzuka said.
"Not to mention I could sell the equipment to the prospectors who show up here for at least triple what I paid for it."
"OK, try it now." Jim said as he handed back the sheriff his prosthetic arm. Hasek gingerly reattatched it and then alternated between spreading out his fingers and making a fist. It worked quite nicely, but there was a loud mechanical whirring as he did this.
"It's just a quick patch-up job, but it should last you until you can get some spare parts brought in." the boy genius cautioned. "Until then, you should add oil every other day to avoid friction."
"Excellent." he said, using his freshly repaired prosthetic to toss a key to Gene. "That's the key to the padlock on the dock's elevator. Now get the hell off my planet."