Kennedy Chris - Salvage Conquest

All but unconscious, I dangled limply over the opening to the pit of Hell.

The soundthe awful roaring, shrieking sound, echoing up from the depths belowdidnt register with me at first. Neither did the glaring, blinding orange light that flared up along with it. No, I remained pretty much comatose despite all of that.

As I look back now, I think it was the sound of the short hairs on the back of my neck sizzling from the heat that brought me back to my senses. The soundand the smell , too. And the near-certain knowledge that, in a few seconds, the rest of me would be burning.

Awake thenawake, and scared as all get-outI kicked my feet and thrashed about, and as I did so, my vision focused on what was directly in front of me: the eyes of my would-be killer.

Black fire danced in those eyes. Black fire and madness. Madness, to do all the things Id witnessed him doing. Madness, that hed seemed to enjoy every bit of it. Enjoyed killing themhurling every one of them to their doom.

I had no doubt whatsoever that I was about to follow the others, right down into that blazing pit. Right into that burning, stinking maw, served up as a meal for whatever lurked at the bottom.

Was it really Hell? I have no idea. Im not a shepherd to strive to make sense of such things. Not a scientist, either, to be able to tell you what it really was. No, Im not a specialist in either physics or metaphysics, so youll have to ask someone elsesomebody with high-falutin degrees, maybewhat exactly that godawful big stinking pit was. The one whose opening I was hanging right above. I can only tell you one thing about it for certain: Death waited at the bottom. Death, or something even worse. And I was two seconds, at most, from finding out first-hand.

* * *

But Im getting a mite ahead of myself. Knowing my situation there at the midway point of the story, more or less, doesnt exactly explain who was trying to murder me, or how I came to be able to tell you the tale later.

So let me back up just a tad and fill you in on how I, Jonas Kanadee, chief of a planetary salvage crew, came to find myself on Eightballa world so remote, so lost, so far out on the other end of the other arm of this big spiral we call the Milky Way, that nobody I know had even heard of it. Nobody but Randall Chark, that is. Randall Chark, who showed up at the cantina on Nearside where my little band of scavengers and mercenaries liked to lay low between jobs. Randall Chark, who threw around easy money and easy promises and lured my whole band in, hooking them with a story of untold treasure just waiting to be claimed on a previously unexplored world out along the rim. Randall Chark, who convinced us to accompany him on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity; an opportunity to get rich beyond our wildest dreams. And all we had to do was help him go and get itjust scoop up a mass of treasure that happened to be waiting on the other side of the galaxy.

In hindsight, this was all far too good to be true. But times were tough and money was tight, and my team likely wouldve believed the promises from any smooth-talking con man who came along. Chark was not lacking in that skill set. He had a bill of goods to offer, and we bought in. We wanted to believe in somebody, selling something. In response to his request, we laid out for him the various talents we each possessed, and he responded that we were, in fact, precisely what he needed. And so we agreed to accompany him on his job.