Twinks in Space: Fantastic Voyage - Part Two - 6. Chapter 6 - The Choice

An unknown amount of time had passed while Phentrom was unconscious, and eventually a loud hiss followed by a series of clicking noises caused him to wake again. One of the walls of his prison cell disengaged and revealed itself to be a door. It opened, and the darkness was flooded with glaring harsh light. Phentrom brought a hand up to shield his eyes, and he realized bars still blocked the doorway.

A man stepped into the opening and began to say, “We’re about to arrive at…” but he was interrupted by a ringing alarm in the hallway behind him. He turned and checked his wall-mounted communicator, and when he saw who it was, he answered, but the bounty hunter was startled by what he heard.

“Quigley, I have your wife and daughter,” a cold voice stated through the speaker.

The man named Quigley slammed the door to the cell, but before it was sealed, Phentrom heard him shout, “Who is this?!”

The mandroid was shocked; Phentrom knew the threatening voice on the other end of the call. “Fonith,” he whispered to himself, but he was weak, and unconsciousness swallowed him again.

Outside the cell’s sealed door, Quigley was in a state of disbelief. “Do you know who I am?” he raged at the voice on his communicator. Quigley knew Fonith, but not well enough to recognize her by voice alone, and the Cometskipper’s encoded communication device did not reveal to Quigley who had called him.

“Bring Phentrom to the Hope 9 medical frigate, which is stationed above the planet Gilian-Exometh in exchange for my two prisoners,” the voice demanded.

“How dare you!?” Quigley screamed. “I’ll kill you for this!”

“Your wife and daughter are being held in a warehouse rigged with explosives on a forty-eight hour timer. You will receive the location and the detonator’s deactivation code once Phentrom is in the care of the medical team on the Hope 9.”

The call disconnected from the other end, and Quigley roared at the silenced speaker. The computer on his ship chimed with a thirty-second warning that it was about to exit hyperspace, and Quigley’s hands clenched into fists. He turned and headed to the bridge just as his ship reentered normal space.

An enormous battleship was hovering in the void in front of his shuttle. It hailed him.

“This message is for the starship Burn Throne. Hunter Quigley, welcome to the destroyer End Vision. A docking code has been transmitted. Proceed to airlock three. We anxiously await delivery of your quarry.”

Quigley glanced over his shoulder at the cell where Phentrom was locked. He squinted his eyes shut and saw his wife and daughter in his mind. Why were they targeted when I grabbed this mandroid? What does my family have to do with this? He turned and looked out the window at the battleship. Those assholes sent me on this hunt, and now my family’s in danger because of them. Quigley scowled. He punched a destination into his ship’s computer and activated his engines.

“Where are you going?!” the voice over the speakers exclaimed in alarm. “Get back here! Do you have our target? Did you capture the android?”

Quigley disconnected the call. “Godsdammit,” he growled to himself.

His ship, the Burn Throne, entered hyperspace and rocketed through the void.

Now the End Vision is going to come after me, he thought. He wondered if it had the capabilities to track his ship through hyperspace.

Twenty-seven minutes later, the Burn Throne arrived at a green and blue planet. The ship descended until it was hovering above a house where another starship’s landing gear had recently left deep divots in the front garden. An umbilicus extended from the Burn Throne down to the house below, and Quigley descended into his home.

His wife and daughter were gone.

The bounty hunter cried out in dismay. He suddenly wanted to murder his quarry. Capturing this rogue mandroid had led to losses that Quigley never could have imagined would befall him. He took his wife’s jacket out of a closet, pulled it close to him, and whispered her name, “Finnow.”

Quigley walked down the hall, stepped into the doorframe of his daughter’s room, and picked up a stuffed toy. He brought it to his face and breathed deeply of its aroma. He bared his teeth and said through them, “If my little Riah’s been hurt…”