Rogue

I selected ROGUE.

The universe disappeared.

When it came back, I was staring at the largest pair of breasts I had ever seen. I mean there were worst views to materialize into your direct line of sight. They belonged to a woman sitting three tables away beneath the faded awning of a cantina. Late twenties, possibly thirty. Dark hair spilled around bronze shoulders, enormous sunglasses covered half her face, and the sleeves of her white blouse had slipped down her arms. The shirt itself was tied beneath a chest straining to spill free of the fabric.

She brought a cigarette to her blood-red lips.

The man sitting across from her raised his right hand. Everything below his elbow was polished metal, scratched and dulled from use. He lifted his thumb and a tiny blue flame sprouted from its tip. She leaned forward until the cigarette met the flame, her generous chest resting against the edge of the table as she took a long drag. The man with the mechanical arm was her husband, my target.

A translucent red box appeared around his face.

MATEO VEGA

WANTED: ARMED ROBBERY / SMUGGLING / MURDER

BOUNTY: 18,000 XENS

ALIVE: 18,000

DEAD: 6,500

Eighteen thousand Xens. That was more than enough to get my life started in this new world. I leaned back in my chair and pretended to be interested in my drink, watching the little islands of ice melt underneath the heat of two equally scorching suns. The town was equally as dull a sight. Sand-colored buildings lined a dirt road crowded with merchants, miners, drunks, robots, and several things I couldn’t immediately determine were people or livestock. All looking equally miserable in this heat regardless of species. A six-legged animal drank eagerly from a rusted trough outside the cantina while its four-armed owner shouted obscenities at a malfunctioning vending machine.

Beyond the rooftops, spaceships rose and descended through the hazy orange sky, their engines kicking great clouds of dust across the landing fields.

Vaqueros.

A lonely little planet in the Dust Rim of the Outer Territories, far beyond any meaningful jurisdiction of either Imperial or Federation-controlled space.

I recognized it immediately. Desert climate. Binary white suns. Mining settlements scattered across the equatorial badlands. Enough smugglers, pirates, bounty hunters and fugitives passing through its ports that local law enforcement was less of an institution and more of a polite suggestion. It had been one of the first planets Rogue players could visit in the original Infinite Space Frontier Online. Which meant I knew exactly where I was. That should have terrified me. Instead, I couldn’t stop smiling.

My attention returned to Mateo. More specifically, his arm. The mechanical limb disappeared beneath the rolled sleeve of his jacket just above the elbow. Other than the lighter built into his thumb, I couldn’t tell what modifications it carried. That was a problem.

Cybernetic weapons were everywhere in Infinite Space Frontier. Concealed pistols. Shock emitters. Heat blades. Micro-rockets. I remembered one particularly obnoxious boss who’d hidden a plasma cannon inside an arm that looked completely normal until he vaporized half my party with it.

For all I knew, Mateo could scratch his nose and blow my head clean from my shoulders at the same time. Best not to find out while sitting twenty feet away. My hand drifted toward the table. There was a pistol beside my drink, concealed under an old sweat stained bandana that had been left on the table.

Black metal. Wooden grip. Squared barrel. I knew that gun. I discreetly picked it up.Heavy, cold, familiar. Frontier Model 3 Magnetic Pistol. The same pistol that had been sitting in my bedroom. Not one like it but actually mine. My thumb found the little scratch along the wooden grip where I’d dropped it against my desk months ago. I’d bought the thing as a collector’s piece because the Frontier Model 3 had been one of my favorite weapons in the original game and because it unlocked a custom weapon skin in the game of course.

Whatever Mateo was hiding up his sleeve, I could at least hope to stand my ground. Across the street, Mateo’s wife laughed. I glanced over. She had removed her sunglasses. Dark eyes watched her husband through the cigarette smoke while he said something I couldn’t hear. Mateo didn’t look amused. She said something else. His jaw tightened. Interesting.

Mateo pushed his chair back. His wife reached across the table and caught his wrist, the mechanical one. He looked down at her hand. Whatever she said next wiped the smile from her face. Mateo pulled himself free. He tossed a few Xens onto the table and headed down the street without looking back.

His wife remained beneath the awning, alone. She took another drag from her cigarette and watched her husband disappear into the crowd. I looked from her to Mateo. My target was walking away. His wife was sitting twenty feet from me with nobody watching her back and her front was catching my eye. I watched a bead of seat slide its way down all the way from beneath her chin, down her slender neck and into the valley of her glistening cleavage.

“Shit.”