The Z Team: A Sci-fi Thriller | Books 1-2

Chapter 1: Bounty Hunters

One cycle earlier

The icon for the freighter Tegado crossed into the threshold of Atan's channel region—the vast torus-shaped zone in the interplanetary medium between three lifeless inner planets and an outer stretch of thin asteroid belt and a single planetoid.

Seated on the bridge of the Relentless Pursuit, the three recovery agents watched the icon disappear from the main display as the freighter displaced from the system.

"Great bounty hunters we are, watching our stupidly lucrative bounty slip away," Parr said, using the colloquialism for their profession to purposely irk the pilot. The stocky man—officially a "recovery agent" per the legalese of their licenses—sat at the systems station behind the pilot and navigator chairs. His goading allowed a hint of a smirk to interrupt his ever-present scowl and a smudge of warmth to enter his cold, beady eyes. Thick and strong, with unkempt jet-black hair, he walked with the presence of a larger man.

"The kid isn't on it, like I've already said," Cutter said, seated at the pilot's station of his ship.

He ignored Parr's instigation attempt. The reality of the recovery agent profession was far less sexy and exciting than portrayed on the entertainment vids. The job required persistence, patience, and covertness. Cutter embodied these traits. Of average height and build, with short hair and a trim beard, he appeared unassuming from the outside. A closer look beneath the calm exterior would reveal a military-spec skinsuit atop a lean yet muscular body, the efficient composition of a deadly predator. Hunting was in his blood, forged from a youth spent in the wilderness. An upbringing the majority of modern civilization had neither the ability or desire to partake.

Parr was undoubtedly persistent, a biological wrecking ball to be sent after a dangerous target. A trait he appeared to have possessed since birth, and honed in a military stint. But he lacked the needed amount of the other two traits, in Cutter's opinion. Parr's recruitment hadn't been up to him. The anonymous client handpicked the team. There had been no negotiating on that.

"I think Cutter's right," Bloek said. He was tall and dark, with blond dreadlocks extending to his mid-back. A brainy university graduate who somehow ended up in a dirty profession. With a chiseled face and defined cheekbones, he was the opposite of Parr; pristine and sharp, like the wicked extendable blade he'd begun to carry on his hip as if it were an extension of his being.

"And I think you're both wrong," Parr said. He placed his feet atop his station in another move designed to irk Cutter. "But Cutter's the lead on the contract, so it's not my ass on the line."

Cutter inhaled deeply and let out a long, soothing breath. The multi-cycle contract had been the most protracted and frustrating of his career. It was also most unusual: a multi-agent, non-disclosure-enforced private contract—meaning the bounty didn't appear on any public boards. No one else would be after the target, only Cutter and crew. Even the manner in which he'd been contacted was out of the norm. He'd returned to Tavel after a job retrieving a rare feline from some unscrupulous trader. While he was waiting for his freshly roasted stim beverage from a vendor, a pair of SecForce officers accosted him about the caged animal in his possession. They brought him into an interrogation room and grilled him about transporting restricted organisms, despite his retrieval contract. The whole thing was a farce, something Cutter had dealt with many times before. It ended as suddenly as it started. The officers left, and a plain-looking man entered the room.

He sat across from Cutter, a vacant glaze behind his eyes. Cutter watched—a tinge of alarm tickling his spine— as the man placed a PD on the table and offered a secureComm. Cutter accepted, then watched the man's face shift and warp in his overlay. He was a bio-mod courier; a person with embedded comm tech to minimize chances of hacking. A shadow-draped man appeared over the courier's face, the details sparse; a tip of the nose, a sliver of lips, a glint from dark eyes. The user—close enough on the habitat for real-time communication—spoke to him through the secureComm.