Jessica walked carefully over the edge,
barely having enough room for her feet to move around. The mountain that she
was in dominated the jungle below and, in any other context, she would have
been able to appreciate. But being just millimeters away from death, the least
of her interests were the magnificent views. She grabbed herself to the dirt
and the rock of the mountain and could finally pass the tricky section in a
matter of minutes. She decided to rest a bit after that, and she only had a
small space to do so as the mountain was not kind to any visitors.
As she rested, she noticed a big bird-like
creature raising from the jungle. It appeared to be fighting something off but
the other creature, or whatever it was fighting, could not be seen. After a
couple of minutes, the bird appeared to be toppled from the ground and
disappeared from sight. Jessica knew right then that this planet was definitely
not a good one for life in general but she had no choice in the matter of
visiting it. After all, her mission was there.
A couple of days earlier, a skinny man going
by the name of Renzo Uto, contacted with her team in order to ask for an
extraction. Normally, that meant rescuing someone from some horrible place,
most often jails or some kind of internment camps. There were lots of both of
those in the galaxy and they had a vast experience getting people out of both.
But instead, Uto wanted them to rescue an object.
They almost had to torture him in order to get
a basic drawing of the object he wanted to retrieve. Well, torture is a bit
extreme. But Jessica’s companion Jimmy, a very big and tall Glafarian (species
with the appearance of a dog) was asked to make the client talk fast or to
expel him immediately from the ship, by any means.
Of course, Uto was so scared he did a drawing
in less than thirty seconds but he clarified that the object could change form
whenever someone attempted to grab it by force. The drawing he had made showed
a very simple cube but he said it only looked like that when at rest. If
someone when near it, the object would change into any type of thing that would
lure the person into a false sense of security and then it would kill them.
They really wanted to ask Uto why someone
would want that type of object. But their motto was “We don’t ask questions”
and they couldn’t just violate that. Bounty hunters had to keep a little bit of
their dignity and, if that meant seeking for an object hey didn’t really know
existed, they had to do it. But Yera, the ship’s pilot, reminded Uto that the
team only worked for days. So depending on his pay, they would determine the
number of days they would look for his weird cube.
Uto, of course, had no tons of money. So he
was able to pay them for only three days worth of work. The team then agreed on
setting course for the jungle planet, which didn’t really have a name and now
Jessica was on her second day looking for the damn object. According to Uto,
she wasn’t that far away now. After the dangerous mountain pass, she had to go
through a razor sharp field of rocks between that mountain and the next one and
then descend a bit to find a cave. The cube was supposed to be there.
The razor sharp field of rocks, a straight
line that united two summits well above the jungle level, was easier than the
pass but still a horrible experience, mainly because some sorts of animals
paraded around the site and launched themselves at Jessica. She had to use her
ray gun several times but the little creatures were very fast and attacked with
some sort of liquid that smelled really bad. It didn’t hurt or anything, just
smell really awful. She crossed the field just before nightfall.
At the other end, she found a suitable place
to sleep and decided to pull out her sleeping bad and protective shield from
her special belt. The belt had been an old gift from her mother, a former
bounty hunter herself. Now she lived at peace in a farming colony where she
could just relax and not worry about someone blowing her head off. Her mom was
a legend among the people Jessica knew and she was proud of her.
The belt had been created by the most advanced
civilization in the galaxy. They were able to construct things like that, were
size and space and even time did not matter. She could fit an endless amount of
things in there and only had to press a button and think really hard about
whatever she wanted from her belt. So that night she was protected from the
creatures by the shield and slept warmly in her sleeping bag.
The next day she woke up screaming. Her face
hurt, as well as her arms and some of her chest. The stinky liquid had
transformed, somehow, into something that had apparently burned her skin and
was now penetrating more and more into it. She felt a horrible burning
sensation and tried to pour water over herself to feel better or look for
something else in her belt, but it was useless. It hurt and she could barely
move.
It was the last day for Uto and could have
been the last day for her if she hadn’t decided that the liquid might actually
be the best weapon she could ever have. To put it simple, the cube supposedly
transformed into something false, in order to kill the person that wanted it.
So it would transform into a cure for the liquid if Jessica showed up. But
then, it would be obvious to her that the cube was there and she would just
fire away.
Thinking the plan was far simpler than doing
it. Her body really hurt, as if she had been very badly burnt by the sun. Her
legs though, had been left untouched by the creatures, so they still had their
agility intact. She started trembling halfway down the mountain but she focused
on the prize, which was something she could have never imagined. Although Uto
had almost no money to pay them for their days of work, he did offer something
else if they actually gave him the cube he wanted.
There was an information network called the
Omen. It was a very big and important piece of information as it had records on
every single living creature in the galaxy intelligent enough to do stupid
things. It was like a criminal record center for the entire galaxy and, of
course, Jessica and her group were in there. What Uto had told them was that he
could be able to remove every single one of their names from he list
permanently. Not even erase the crimes but their names altogether.
At first, they didn’t believe what he was
saying. Jimmy threatened to eat his hand and Yera told him it was impossible.
But then he simply asked of them to look for his name in the Omen. Everybody could
access the network so it was easy for them to see that Renzo Uto did not appear
in any part of the Omen. They even scanned his head to look for him, but it
just wouldn’t work. He wasn’t there and that was more than enough proof that
what he said was real.
The cave was only a few meters away when
Jessica collapsed. She was trembling too much in her upper body and felt really
sick. Not even her healthy legs could get her away from danger or from the
pain. She stayed down for a good while and, once again, she gazed at the jungle
and saw the trees moving and what looked like tentacles rising above the treetops.
She only thought about how insane that planet was before she fainted.
She woke up hours later in a nice room. A
beautiful nurse came to her bed and asked her if she was ok. Her face and body
didn’t hurt anymore. She touched her skin and every single centimeter was
normal. Then, the nurse smiled and told her she was going to be all right. Se
turned around but Jessica had recognized her. And the only thing she could do
was pull out her gun and shoot right in the center of her body.
The illusion fell to the ground like a house
of cards and so did the cube, a rather normal transparent cube that fell to the
ground and Jessica put inside her belt. Her face still hurt horribly and she
was sure she was in a worse state than before. She turned to the jungle one
last time, watching the tentacles and the moving trees, as she pressed another
button for her ride to come pick her up.
