Cataclysmic Daydreams

The Last Bounty

THE LAST BOUNTY: A Short Story (Space Western) 

It was just a bit past noon when the battle-worn Navigator sailed quietly into port, causing a small dirt storm to swell across the arid land beneath it. Once considered a best-in-class war ship, the Navigators were now obsolete and generally sold cheaply to independent cargo traders and bounty hunters. It hovered a few feet above the ground and attached itself to a large steal hitching post.

The port had not been used in at least four years. Tarson, once a hopeful replica for the planet Earth, was nothing more than a discarded afterthought these days. Limited rainfall kept the terraforming spores from taking root and the air was deemed as too poor of quality for sustainable growth. The small planet was repurposed as a mining colony, meaning clusters of lower class emigrants were sent there to work the land, gathering as many usable resources as they could to supply to the other more useful planets.

For such a large ship, there was only one man aboard. A computer screen that stretched across the whole panoramic dashboard of the ship displayed coordinates, terrain information, planetary history and a profile of the job at hand. After a few hours, when he felt he had memorized enough of the information, the man powered down the ship’s engine and disembarked.

The planet was desolate with very little life to show for its many years of existence. No sounds of birds or insects filled the air, only the whistling of the dry wind. The information he had just read warned of the hazardous breathing conditions but he wasn’t about to walk into town wearing a haz-mask. His arrival in and of itself was going to cause enough panic as it was.

The quiet stranger decided to leave his Rover on the ship and walk into town. He needed the time to think anyway. Along the way he passed a large field of wheat. Long complex irrigation tubing hummed loudly filling the otherwise quiet day. The man prepared himself to meet some of the towns working population. Making one’s self known as a bounty hunter was never a safe thing, you never knew who had something to hide. Everyone was a potential target.

He shouldn’t have worried, no men worked the fields. A small unit of Robotic Farmhands worked quickly and quietly, harvesting the long dry plants with heavy scythes. They paid him no attention. People used to be fearful of the machines, especially after they made them autonomous; but with decades of hard labor behind them, they had finally gained wide acceptance. It was no longer uncommon to see them used, even in these smaller dying planets. As he passed the last rows of farmland, he tipped his hat to two machines quietly taking their break, recharging their overused circuits. He enjoyed the quiet for the rest of his walk.

By nightfall, news of the strange ship’s arrival had swept into the small outskirt town just miles from the port. Miners, ranch hands and fielders alike gathered at Miller’s Saloon as soon as their day’s work was done.

“Ain’t no good coming from it, I can tell you that. Not a damn good thing.” An older man, in muddy overalls, spoke to the bar patrons and chugged back half his beer in one swallow. There was a chorus of heads nodding and murmurs of agreement from around the room. 

“I don’t know, could just be a cargo ship. Navs are almost always cargo ships, right?” The man behind the bar was younger than the rest, son of the original owner who had passed away of lung cancer the year before.

“Boy, you know how long it’s been since we seen a cargo ship out this way? It ain’t no cargo ship. No one has any use for what we got. Hell, I haven’t met a stranger in, what, four or five years.” The old man coughed heavily into a handkerchief he produced out of thin air and then shoved the dirty garment back into his pocket.