HELLO BEAUTIFUL

Outpost 17, been here for a while. Probably too long. I got comfortable. Sloppy. Maybe I’m just too damned old to keep doing this. Maybe just tired of running. A chunk of rock in the middle of nowhere, dragged out here so that miners with the Bellstar Mining company wouldn’t R&R anywhere else. It used to be that a merc would get his throat cut damn near the moment he landed here, a lot of miners being ex-cons with shine jobs. Used to be a safe place to go to ground. A lot has changed. Got sold out. Worse, I didn’t get tipped off about being sold out either.

Cold is setting in. Doesn’t have much to do with the temperature either, not under this fucking sun. Shock. I’ve lost a lot of blood already. If it was only a cut across my upper thigh, it wouldn’t be so bad, at least it would be a clean wound. Shot. Through and through, so no bullet to worry about, but it ripped the hell out of my leg, and I haven’t been able to get it patched up, other than tying the leg off.

Already been running on the wound a day, trying to get to the docks and get off this fucking rock. I can hear them, at the end of the alley. Only three left, of their four man crew. Killed the one that shot me. Should have been faster and killed him before I got shot. Gutted him and left him outside that bar. Don’t like that the kill was so public. Makes it a little hard to go quietly. Getting slow in my old age. Fucking mercs aren’t even trying to be quiet about it.

You’ve rested enough old man. Only a few streets from the docks. These fucking mercs had to have a plan for a pilot, a ship. Just a matter of who’s going to get there first.

The wall shouldn’t have given me any trouble. Only about eight feet. Razor wire at the top. There was a time when I wouldn’t even have thought about it. Course, there was a time when a four man crew would have been an insult, instead of something to be worried about. Land on the leg on the way down, opening a new cut across the arm, clipping it on the wire on the way down. Biting my hand to keep from yelping. Doesn’t matter, they’ve heard me anyways.

I can hear two of them, coming over the wall after me as I make a break for the end of the alley. Fuck, who am I trying to kid. I can barely keep on my feet. It’s not just pain. Blood loss, shock, the beginning of an infection. Be pretty goddamned surprised if I last the week, at the rate this is going. Leaning on the side of the alley, trying to get to the docks, any way I can. Get a ship, get this mess cleaned up before it kills me. Try to plan where the hell I’m going to run to next. I’m kind of running out of options. Except maybe the riskiest option.

They have to get me off this rock somehow, and none of these guys looks like a pilot. Not exactly a short hop, either. Three weeks in a ship with these mercs. Three weeks for this leg to heal. If I keep running, I’ll be in worse shape, and will definitely not be ready for it when that one thing goes wrong that I can use to my advantage. I’m not going to die in chains. But I’m not going to die in an alley, killed by rookie mercs that happened to get the drop on an old man, either.