100 Billion Grotzits
888
The going rate for taking down a Time Lord was one hundred thousand grotzits payable by the Gothic Imperator. However, Shavron Netz, was no normal bounty hunter. He'd been on both sides of the conflict, killed Supreme Daleks and Time Lord Castellans. He'd hunted the Bannerman leader Hagoor across the seven galaxies and destroyed his entire pirate gang. He'd even brought in a bounty on one of the Nightmare Concordancy, though he vowed never to do another one after what he'd seen. He was a very 'dead or alive' sort of bounty hunter, preferably taking his bounties in dead. So it was that when he saw the holo-poster on Calvarone he knew he had to take it.
One hundred billion grotzits for one Time Lord, it was almost unimaginable the wealth that kind of prestige could bring. One hundred billion grotzits was the kind of money that would put his family in luxury for generations. It was the kind of money interstellar empires were built from. It was the kind of money that came with a prestige that would put any doubt of his title of 'best hunter in the universe' out of its misery. Yet, surprisingly no one, not even KaaGar 'the indefatigable' had taken the bounty, it had been ignored by every and all hunters, even the young, bravado-filled morons had nearly blanched when they seen the poster.
He took a deep whiff of the air through his nose and suppressed the urge to frown. Tersurus's atmosphere was often described as pungent. This was a mistranslation of Felnarian word for noxious. The fact that the Time Lords had evacuated it was not surprising, considering that the large methane banks in the upper atmosphere made returning fire at orbital attackers suicidal at best. Of course the native fauna had had rather sensitive olfactory systems; some had even claimed the initial sentient life communicated by complicated and highly modulated digestive gas emissions, though such tales were unverified.
Shavron crouched down amongst the rocks of the plateau he had positioned himself on. He had followed his target for several months, gleaning bits of information about him as he did. The poster had named the target, or rather gave him a moniker, but he had only ever seen other people call the suspect this, and often seen the suspect refuse the moniker. None the less, the man looked right, his actions fit the description, and if all else failed Shavron was sure that the suspect was a Time Lord, at least worth hundred thousand grotzits which was by no means anything to sniff at, even on Tersurus. He looked through the scope, attached to his long sniper rifle. He could see the streets of the small abandoned settlement below.
His target had landed his TT-capsule on Tersurus approximately thirty-six hours ago. It had been an unexpected move by the target, but as Shavron had watched him, it had become apparent that he was scrounging for supplies. As Shavron looked through the scope he saw the shifting movements of someone in one of the small buildings to the west of the settlement, which was now three transits away. Earth imperial standard military sniper rifles had a base range of about one and a half transits away, and, though Shavron was not the kind to boast, with the right skills and augmentations you could double that range quite easily.
Shavron licked his lips lightly, and swallowed as a door that accessed the street opened. His eye shifted down and checked to make sure he was prepared to fire if the opening asserted itself. In the chamber of the gun was a polycarbide thermal eruptive bullet, which when fired would fly until it hit something, at which point the concussive force would trigger a small thermide ignition that would explode, effectively vaporizing whatever surface the bullet hit. Shavron had found it very effective in killing Daleks and Time Lords alike. It got through the Dalek casing and blew up the little bastard inside, and it blew off Time Lords' heads making sure they didn't snap back up again and kill you in a fit of post-regenerative pique.
The target was now walking in the street. The man appeared male, appeared to be quite old, wearing a tattered leather coat. A bolero hung across the target's torso, and a satchel was tossed over his shoulder. Shavron tensed. He always was anxious about this part. The adrenaline coursed through his veins, his heart skipped a beat or two, he struggled to chain down the glee that the idea of bringing in a hundred billion grotzit bounty. That was when the wind came up. A brief breath of hot, humid, turgid Tersurian wind flatuated into his face and across the valley below his perch.
Shavron silently cursed as he watched the target walking towards the end of street. He readjusted himself compensating for the wind that was now coming off of the ancient coast to the west. In his mind a calculation was being done to calibrate for the affect of the wind on the bullet's trajectory as it flew those three transits. He furrowed his brow as the numbers jumbled annoyingly in his mind and he closed his eyes to focus the mathematical image in his head, just for a second. The numbers once stared at by Shavron's intense mental glare quickly fell into line and the result was quick to announce itself to him. Shavron smiled as he reset the rifle and positioned himself behind it. His finger slid into the trigger position and he brought his eye to the scope.
The target was gone. Shavron cursed again silently. It was impossible. Even if the target had broken out in a galloping run, he'd never had made it to the end of the street. Shavron pushed out that thought and reassessed his condition and looked through the scope again, using it to survey the street. He had to have gone in another building. It was the only explanation. A few minutes passed and the target did finally reappear, emerging from one of the buildings. He was still carrying the satchel, but was also carrying what looked like placards.
The target walked into the middle of the street. He seemed to straighten himself up, dropping the satchel behind him. The target then turned, and stared, directly in Shavron's direction.
This made Shavron blink. Not even the Nameless Horror of Yntzalik had made him blink, though admittedly the Nameless Horror hadn't seen him coming, which was the point of the endeavor. Shavron's right eye twitched as he reacquired his target in his scope. His target was now writing something on one of the placards he was carrying. Shavron's eyebrows furrowed, as the man straightened back up and lifted the placard.
"I suspect you're that bounty hunter that's been following me across creation for the last several months." Was the message that the placard had scrawled onto it. The target then turned the placard to expose the backing, which said. "I've known your type, like to kill don't you? Well, get on with it then…pull the trigger if you think you've got the guts."
The initial shock of being found by his target, despite careful field-craft, despite opting for a high range cloaking device, despite being quite far from the target, had shook him. This taunt however, made Shavron angry. He grumbled and bit his lip trying to retain his composure as his finger itched at the trigger. Shavron had known these games. The target was trying to force Shavron to either flee because his cover was blown, or force him to take his shot on the target's time table or at the very least make him uneasy enough to make a silly amateur mistake. Shavron wasn't going to let him get taken in. He was going to take his shot, but on his time table, when he was ready. He looked again through the scope.
The man was holding another placard. "Well, come on then! I thought you were a bounty hunter, Shavron Netz? One of the best, most brutal bounty hunters out there. Didn't expect an old man with some placards to slow you down." The man turned the placard. Shavron wasn't sure how he knew when Shavron was looking, or if the man was simply flipping the placard periodically. Either way the back of the placard read. "Well, if you aren't going to shoot me…"
Shavron's eyebrow arched, and the man put down the placard and upon coming back up was pointing a small staser pistol in Shavron's direction. Shavron almost laughed out loud at the idea of the threat, there was no way that that pistol could even reach him, never mind that the old man could hit him from the distance he was at. Shavron could only mostly hedge his bets that he'd hit the target with his highly attuned, highly modified sniper rifle, and he had years of experience and training. He saw the man pull the trigger. Shavron almost smirked, and then there was a 'pow'. Shavron turned the small cloaking device he'd purchased was smoking. A precise staser bolt had hit an exposed wire, causing a short circuit.
He was shocked to say the least. The bolt was undoubtedly almost powerless when it reached his cloaking device, but there was enough energy that if it hit anything sensitive it would've shorted the device out. The target had to have exceptional marksmenship, no, marksmanship beyond the quality of a god to pull off that shot with that weapon. No even more than that, the shot wasn't just theoretically impossible it was factually impossible, to hit a tiny wire, THROUGH a cloaking field with a close-range staser pistol, the very idea of its possibility was so unimaginable even an improbability drive couldn't conjure it up. Shavron gulped and he looked again into his scope.
The target was holding his last placard. He still had the staser pistol pointed in Shavron's general direction. The placard had a simple message on it. All it said was, "Run!"
Shavron gulped as he watched the target's finger twitch on the trigger of the pistol. Shavron barreled backwards kicking away from the spot he'd been. There was a stinging sound, a buzzing electrical frizzing sound. Shavron looked in the direction of the buzzing; it was coming from his rifle. He could see the small sparks jumping from the barrel. That's when the thermite exploded.
Shavron didn't remember much over those next few seconds. The noise of the explosion, the heat, the pressure differential from the air's thermal expansion, it all coalesced into one giant 'gyuh' of an incident. However when the smoke had cleared, Shavron had realized how utterly stupid he had been. He realized what the others had known and understood and he now knew why they had avoided this target despite the payout and prestige. This target was not just another Time Lord.
Shavron had done his research on the target, but he hadn't believed half of what he'd read. No one could have survived that many close encounters with the Daleks, fought he kind of beasts the target had, done the acts that been ascribed to him. He'd thought it had all been Time Lord self-aggrandizement, but no, it was indeed true.
Shavron shuttered slightly as he contemplated what had just transpired. He considered the eyes of the old man who had impossibly stared at him from three transits away, glared at him with those stone cold eyes. The old man was never frantic, never worried' the fact that Shavron had had a rifle aimed at his head never concerned in him one bit. Chills swarmed down Shavron's spine as he realized that this whole expedition had been a failure since he first observed the target, maybe even sooner, maybe as soon as he had seen the holo-poster.
In the distance the TT-capsule could be heard. Silently Shavron, prayed a prayer of thanks to whatever deity was out there. He looked to the smoldering remains of his sniper rifle. He slowly inched away from it. He stood very slowly and as instructed he ran.