“Your race is scum. You are scum.” The mark said from his chair behind his desk. He couldn’t move, couldn’t go anywhere. The blaster of the bounty hunter was trained on his head. All he could do was wait and see what happened. His security officers should have been on their way but the fact that they had not arrived yet told him that this bounty hunter, this Karrel scum, had already disposed of them. “Who put the bounty on me? Whoever it was… I’ll pay double if you go kill them.” The bounty hunter continued to stare at the mark, not saying a word, not moving. “Say something!” the mark yelled, getting up.
“Very well.” The hunter said in a deep masculine voice, proving that the soldier within the un-gender-biased Karrel armour was either a male or had a filter on their helmet microphone. “Goodbye.” The blaster fired and for the Mark that was it.

The Bounty hunter turned away from his mark and placed a hand on the communications device mounted onto the wrist portion of his full body armour. A projection appeared. It was an alien, a Diqua to be precise. The snake like eyes and nostrils combined with the feathery forehead and chin were a dead give away. Besides those oh so obvious features, and the claws on the end of its arms, the Diqua species looked human. This Diqua had long dark hair, green eyes and a sour expression. He stood staring at the bounty hunter. “Shemai?” the Diqua said, narrowing his eyes at the dark armoured hunter. “You’re contacting me early.”
“The Mark has been eliminated.” Shemai said, stepping aside and allowing the hologram to view the corpse, still sat upright at the chairman’s desk of his company.
“You were ssssupposssssed to take him alive. He’sssss only worth half asss much dead.” The Diqua said, hissing in anger across the holo-feed.
“I’m Karrel.” Shemai said back in a stern voice. “He insulted my people… he’s lucky I needed you to be able to identify the body or I’d have used my Meh-Sal. Taken my time…” The hunter known as Shemai moved back into the holo-field, staring at the skewer that now protruded from the wrist section of his armour. This was a trademark of Male Karrel. The Meh Sal grew roughly at the age of puberty. It was a weapon within their own body, when they had nothing else, they had that. To be killed by a Meh-Sal was either a great honour or a great horror… it depended greatly on how the Karrel that did it felt about you.
“Put that away.” The Diqua muttered back, lessening on the hiss and returning to his normal tone of voice. The hunter complied and allowed the skewer to slide slowly back into his forearm. He could move it quicker than the eye could see when he wanted or needed to, but the slow retraction of a Karrel Meh-Sal was a site that made near enough every creature in the galaxy shudder in fear. It was a reminder for the Diqua that, even though he served as the middle man between him and the contractor, he was replaceable. He was not the boss here.
“Thank you Shemai.” The Diqua said, sighing a little with relief as it ended. “The Credits will be wired to your account as soon as I relay the images to the contractor.”
“How long?” Shemai asked, leaning back onto the desk.
“Once this conversations over… twenty… thirty minutes. Galactic standard.”
“All right…” Shemai turned his helmeted head to look out of the large windows that looked out over the capitol of the planet Fendao VIII. “Do I have a new contract yet, Vec?”
“My name is Vectaa. It is an insult to my people when one shortens a name. it changes the meani-”
“Then prepare to be insulted…” Shemai said, no hint of joking within his tone. “For a good long while you should hope... or I’ll find another middle man. You guys aren’t too hard to find you know.”
Vectaa’s gaze moved away from the bounty hunter for a moment, as if he was considering it, but then he was staring back into the eyes of his colleague. “One contractor has specified you and there are a number of open contracts on the black book.”
“Take the specified and send the details to my ship.” Shemai said, standing up and turning off the communicator. He didn’t want to hear what the Diqua, Vec, had to say. They all said the same thing, ‘You don’t want to hear the details first?’ like it mattered. There wasn’t a mark in the galaxy that Malten Shemai would not go for, and there wasn’t a detail in the verse that could make him fear taking someone out. The only thing he cared about was the minimum one million credits he earned for each kill or capture.
Mal stepped into the elevator that opened up into the office, stepping past the body pinned to the side wall by a long thin blade that was absent from the corpses own sheath. Shemai pulled the blade out and allowed the guard to drop to the floor. The bounty hunter placed the sword next to him, pressing a button at the top of the large array of numbers that made up the lift controls.
It was a strange feeling, standing in a lift that was moving as fast as a car. The dampeners in the small metal pod lessened the impact a lot, but it still felt… odd. The elevator reached the roof of the office building within a second or two. The doors opened and allowed Mal to step out. He stepped over another body and passed the several that littered the landing platform, a testament to his obstinacy. They didn’t want him to get in… they were hired guns… they were dead.
The hunter stopped beside the only ship on the platform. It was a long, thin ship with little more than a pilots section and a place to put a prisoner at the back. No room to move around, but enough space to keep a prisoner if the need arose.
The doorway slid open and allowed the hunter to step in and sit down. He pulled off his helmet and allowed the door to slide shut.