BONUS CHAPTER - First Draft of First Starting Version

Author Note: This is NOT a replacement for the two chapters due today, but just showing off how the first version of blackmarket started. I wrote a total of ten different versions, and this one nearly made the final cut.

Chapters today will be later by about 2 hours or so (e.g coming out 1600 UTC+0)

The man struggled to breath, until the suffocating bag was pulled off, with a bright lightbulb illuminating the man, his face sunken and body sullen. He was restricted and bound by the legs with advanced handcuffs, which were locked tightly.

“Never thought I’ll finally see the day with you in front of me like this,” A burly muscular guy chuckled lightly as his biomechanical right arm gripped an ornamental pistol tightly, with coiled dragons running down the barrel. He sat on a stool, opposite the malnourished man who was slumped against a metallic wall.

The malnourished man didn’t respond, his green eyes staring blankly at the wall with his face vacant.

“Answer me, you piece of shit! Do you know how many years it took for me to pull this off? How much pain I went through?” The muscular guy leaned forward, using the barrel of his pistol to slap the malnourished man, a blemish of blood skin ripped off the cheek by sheer force. “You’re going to suffer right under me, and you’re going to hell in the next world.”

Slightly incensed at the further lack of response, the muscular guy snapped his fingers, motioning two guards behind to manhandle the malnourished guy. Each of them took out a syringe, jabbing them deep into his arms, pumping an eerie green liquid into his veins.

The pupils of his eyes narrowed as the stimulant caused his body to jerk violently before he began breathing heavily and looking around like a scared little rat. “Who are you? What’s going on? Where’s my exosuit?”

“Ahah, welcome back to the world of the living, Kyle Hawthorn,” The muscular guy grinned widely, finally getting the fear he desired to see. He stood up to his full height, towering over Kyle whose legs were dangling as the guards lifted him and tossed him onto the floor again on all fours.

“My name is Inirya Mondigo, and you killed my father. Prepare to suffer for eternity in a hole where you’ll never see starlight again. Enjoy the paste.”

Inirya laughed and left the holding room with the two guards, leaving Kyle alone and cuffed. A pipe at the corner of the room rattled violently before a brown sludge began to form as a large goblet, about to drop.

Kyle scrambled on all fours towards the paste, flipping himself on the grimy floor and opening his mouth wide to let the sludge fall into his mouth. The taste was horrendous, but Kyle gulped all of it down.

Soon his face turned green, before vomiting out his entire insides on his sides, retching sounds filling the room.

Inirya sat into his captain’s chair, the wide grin still plastered on his face as he watched the camera feed of Kyle’s vomiting. “Oh, nothing tastes better than sweet revenge. How long more till we’re out of FTL?”

“Twenty minutes, sir.”

“Good, take a break for ten minutes. We’ll need all eyes and ears once we hit the warp beacons in order to avoid the patrols. Who knows if his underlings are going to come running.”

“Yes, sir.” The two guards returned to their bunks, while Inirya continued to smile as he watched Kyle squirm uncomfortably as small drips of vomit trickled down the side of his lips.

What Inirya couldn’t see was a small little spider-like bot that was vomited out by Kyle. The drone began to crawl upwards onto the walls, aiming for the camera.

He was too focused on looking at his father’s photo. “Oh Father, I have taken revenge for you today! The name of Mondigo will once again strike fear all across the star sector! Once I rip the information of the Vaults from him, my rise will be unstoppable.”

Inriya leaned back comfortably in the reclining chair and began to pull out his logistics and inventory sheet of the corvette that they were currently in, checking the ammo count and weapon systems. “As much as I would like to believe that, one must be prepared for all uncertainties…”

A few minutes passed as he verified he had enough ordnance to blast through an FTL blockade if necessary, along with enough fuel and battery charge to sustain defence modules. He glanced back at the camera feed, noticing Kyle still squirming and twisting on the floor, putting yet another smile on his face.

The guards returned from their break, returning to their designated weapons and piloting stations at the helm to prepare for the end of the FTL.

Inriya suddenly felt everything had been too easy. This was Kyle fuckingHawthorn they were talking about. One of the largest crime lords in the known Beyond, and he and a small-time crew somehow managed to catch him out on a vacation to an ocean world. He was previously blinded by pure revenge, but he wondered if he even caught the real one, or was it a doppelganger?

“No, impossible, cloning technology can’t last as long as he did, this is the real one, I even did a DNA test…” Inriya looked back at the camera feed but soon noticed the pattern of Kyle’s squirming was being looped. “Shit, he’s hijacked the camera system!” Inriya slammed the gas button, intending to flood the holding cell with a paralyzing agent, but nothing responded.

“Sir, we’re coming out of FTL now!”

At the edge of an unknown star system, a portal opened with the modified corvette shooting out of it without a sound. However, it was not alone.

Large klaxons went off in the helm’s section of the corvette as the energy shields were immediately pounded by a barrage of railguns and lasers, the hue of the energy shield glistening brightly with radiance.

“Don’t think you can take down a Mondigo this easily! You, go stop whatever the fuck Kyle is doing!” Inriya pushed the guard off the weapon station, locking on to the dozen corvettes nearby and blasting away. “Full thrust away! Get us out of here!”

The engines of the corvette roared to life, the acceleration temporarily jerking Inriya and the guards back before the artificial gravity system counteracted the thrust. A chase in deep space soon began and Inriya had nowhere to hide, forcing him to focus on boosting the point defence system to target any incoming missiles, while managing the power budget to the energy shields.

“Fuck, fuck fuck!”

A large crashing sound along with the sound of blood gurgling could be heard over the rumbling of point defence cannons firing non-stop. Inriya turned around only to see an energy beam nail the last remaining guard in the head, the hole sizzling as a mist of blood filled the air.

“KYYYLEEE!”

Inriya got off the weapon station, retrieving his pistol to fire at Kyle. But before his right biomechanical arm could even complete the action, two energy beams from Kyle knocked the pistol out of his hand, along with burning the surface of his arm.

Inriya roared and charged at Kyle, throwing a right hook but was instantly countered by Kyle who deftly avoided it to the right and tripped Inriya, before using his own elbow to smash Inriya’s jaw into the ground.

“There, that should get you to shut up.”

Kyle aimed his energy rifle and fired a long-duration beam, slicing off three of Inriya’s limbs, causing him to let out a muffled scream while coughing out blood. “Your biomechanical arm has worth, I’ll find a way to disable it later.”

[Sir, are you finished?] Kyle’s corvettes had stopped firing, moving one over to pick up Kyle.

“Yes. Pick me up and send a squad to sweep the corvette for traces. I want to know who and how they funded this.” Kyle responded through his communications module, stepping over the whimpering Inriya.

“Yu…! Yu’ll pay for tis! I swaer on my faturs name!” Inriya roared with his broken jaw, his face still on the ground and unable to move.

“I don’t even remember who your father is,” Kyle said without a tinge of emotion as the boarding party entered through the airlock, bringing Kyle back to his allied corvette through a transfer tube.

“Welcome back sir. You look terrible.” A cyborg butler bowed and passed him a formal suit to change into.

“I had no choice, none of our other methods weres working. Whoever is plotting against me is embedded far too deep in our organization for me to hunt. But, with this, I’ll be able to pinpoint exactly who it is. No one can hide a black market weapons deal from me.”

“Indeed, sir.”

“Send all collected data to me, I’ll go over it on the way – “ Before Kyle could say anything more, the modified corvette suddenly exploded with a loud boom, the vibrations transmitted through the transfer tube. Large chunks of debris broke through the energy shield of the allied corvette, causing Kyle to stumble and red klaxons to go off within.

“Turn off the klaxons and start thrusting, get us into FTL now!” Kyle ordered the pilot through communications.

“Sir?” The pilot was confused until the remaining eleven corvettes began to fire upon them as well, helping the pilot to understand what was going on.

“I did not know the betrayal had run this deep…” Kyle grimaced but began to don his exosuit in the event of depressurization. He leapt up to the helm’s section, taking over the weapon system and firing back as much as he could.

[Kyle Hawthorn, your reign as one of the Six Drug Lords of the Beyond is over.]

“Xanius, you slimy fucker. Don’t think you can simply take over the reins and nothing will happen to you. We started this venture together!” Kyle spat with a boiling rage as he pulled the trigger, firing a giant railgun that ripped through the engines of a chasing corvette, stalling it.

[Sure, whatever you say. Dead men tell no tales either way.]

With a coordinated barrage of missiles, the corvette on Kyle’s ship was blasted to bits, twisting and shredding the entire hull frame in a series of explosions. Kyle was flung out into deep space, only the blood trickling down his forehead and the heavy breathing within his helmet accompanying him, as he floated off into the void. “I’ll be back you fuckers, mark my words!” Kyle groaned as he tried to activate his cryofreeze function in the exosuit. Maybe he wouldn’t wake up for five hundred years, but at least he would still be alive.

However, the last thing he saw was a giant energy beam rushing straight at him, before the world was a sharp spike of pain, and then nothing.

The moonlight shone through the forest, illuminating the trees and foliage. It was a beautiful scenic view if it was not for the mass graves that stuck out like a sore thumb in the centre of the forest.

Hundreds of corpses were piled up, decomposing flesh that had maggots and vultures gorging on every exposed bit of flesh they could find. Two men wearing  light vests pushed a wooden wheelbarrow, before positioning it at the edge of the crater and dumping yet another bunch of corpses.

The corpses were varied in all ages and genders, decaying and mostly wrapped in pus-soaked clothes that gave off a deep pungent smell that assaulted the senses.

One of the recent corpses was a young man, tumbling down from the wheelbarrow and rolling, only coming to a stop against other bodies before being covered by even more.

The two men were unfazed by the amount of bodies, simply doing their jobs in silence and pushing the wheelbarrow back.

A few minutes passed in silence, before three goblins popped out from the trees, entering the mass pit and scavenging for anything they could use. They scared away the rats and vultures, while grabbing the maggots happily, stuffing them into a worn pouch for future food storage.

One of the goblins was more daring, grabbing human limbs that were still fresh and ripping them off. He tied the limbs together with a thin piece of cloth, slinging them over his back for easy transporting back to their den.

He noticed a fresher pile of corpses, heading over and sorting through them. Just as he was about to reach deeper to grab a good-looking arm, the good-looking arm instead burst through the corpses, grabbing the goblin’s arm and tugging it downwards, slamming it into the top surface level.

With a loud cracking sound, the goblin’s arm was broken, causing it to cry out in pain. The other two goblins immediately wielded their blunt flint daggers, running over the corpses towards the crying goblin.

The crying goblin was suddenly jerked deeper into the pile of corpses, its body disappearing.

The crying stopped.

The two goblins glanced at each other, before deciding to advance further, holding their daggers at the ready. They flanked the previous position of their comrade, one left and one right.

Without warning, a body was flung outwards, slamming right into the left goblin and toppling him over.

A young man crawled out of the corpses, before lunging at the right goblin with a similar broken flint dagger, stabbing it right into the eyes. With a swing, he chopped through its thin neck and off came the head of the goblin.

The left goblin tried to recover, but the young man was already in front of it, slicing down through its chest with a reverse grip swing of his left arm, killing the goblin instantly.

The young man panted slightly, the moonlight glistening off the dark blue blood splattered from the killings as well as the murky yellow tinge of his degraded cloth tunic that was more like a rucksack with holes. He tested his grip a few times, wincing slightly at the exhaustion of his muscles.

“Hmm,” the young man mused, turning his head to survey the surroundings. “ Hell doesn’t seem to live up to its name. Doesn’t look like it either.”