---

KNIFE'S BARGAIN
Trigger warnings :  abusive family, hard drugs, violence, death, gore.


Everything Riley Talon did, she did for her. In return for endless devotion, Riley received freedom, though sometimes it only felt like an illusion. Now they were back home, but it didn't feel like home.

She was a C-52 cargo shuttle. With her bulbous hull, stubby side fins, and tall dorsal fin, she resembled an injured sunfish. Scarring the aluminum hull were laser burns, though the holes were no longer smoking. Beneath the dirty white paint was her stenciled name in bulky letters 'SKYLIGHT.'

The pirates had taken all of her cargo, and left her stranded in the desert when she landed after the warning shots damaged her right engine. They took everything inside which wasn't nailed down, but not the ship itself. 

"What a piece of junk," one of the pirates had exclaimed before leaving.

Riley knew her ship intimately, and somehow she was able to take off with just one engine, and limp her way to the nearest city, which turned out to be the wasteland trading post of Catloch.

That was yesterday. Currently, Riley was in the cheapest hangar that would let her wait to pay until she left fixing up Skylight.

When she bought her, Riley felt like Skylight secured her future. She had done everything she was supposed to do - going on well established trade routes selling cargo that made small but reliable profits, yet she just hadn't been able to make money. Now she was bleeding funds, and fixing the damage the pirates caused wasn't a great help. She needed to change her strategy fast, or else her next voyage might be her last.

Riley liked to be called 'captain' even though she didn't have a crew - not anymore after she couldn't pay them. Captain Talon was suspended off of a rope tied to the railing on Skylight's flat upper deck. Welding rod in her teeth like a cigarette, she wiped the sweat off of her forehead. 

Boots planted against the side of the hull, she felt around inside of the big leather sack on her side and pulled out a metal plate. Everything was pitch black with the welding goggles on. She used the gun in her hand to weld it over the laser burn. Now she could see, thanks to the blindingly bright spark.

Riley had been working all day. Her wrists were tired. Her calves felt like they were going to snap on Skylight's hull. There were still so many holes to weld. Taking a moment, she looked up at the engines under Skylight's side fins. One of them was red, while the other was shiny unpainted aluminum - brand new to replace the one the pirates had crippled. That had been the real challenge to fix, and had taken a whole day by itself. She had to pay a drug addict to help her drag it up there, suspend it with rope similar to how she hung now, and then climb up on a ladder to put it in place while her hired help pretended to hold the ladder stable.

She worked for a few more hours.

She slightly regretted paying him early and asking him to leave. "Four more holes to go," she huffed. They were out of reach, so she fastened the gun to her belt, and grabbed the rope as she walked up. Upper body strength was useful for climbing, but so was being 5ft tall and skinny. 

After her work was 'done,' Riley took a satisfied look at her ship and decided she'd have it repainted after her next journey, if she could. It was good enough for right now! Anyway, it was time to unwind, and celebrate that the pirates hadn't managed to kill her. She headed for the nearest cantina.

She was slightly nervous that the pirates would be waiting for her near the same skies, but she pushed the thought out of her head. Catloch was a dangerous place period, so it would be likely that whatever fleet shot her out of the sky would be a totally different group of pirates!

She didn't find that very comforting, and decided to stop thinking. Numbness of alcohol sounded nice, to drown her worries away. She had felt so accomplished a moment ago.

On her way out of the spacious hangar she glanced at the other ships. Mostly bulky cargo vessels owned by smugglers such as herself, but also shark finned X-13s piloted by bounty hunters looking for those same traders. Men and women with guns and insidious looking black hoods served as protection from theft. A metal hatch opened directly into the Free City of Catloch.

Everything was built of scrap metal on crowded unplanned streets which could be unpaved or asphalt depending on who was willing to pave them. Just about the only permanent thing outside the huge hangar was a stone statue of the Wise Founder Katlan - depicted as a bearded cowboy. Fed up with the Empire's high taxes, Katlan had led a group of like minded ranchers to settle in the middle of the desert far from their influence. Satisfied that they had achieved freedom for themselves, the Catlochs set about enslaving the robots who had already called the land here home. Located in the middle of a wide swath of wasteland between Koshi and the Imperial Port of Chalcedon, Catloch had became quite the prosperous gas station over the years. 

Riley dodged a group of bare chested prostitutes who walked around wearing nothing but ornamental clothing and very functional holsters for their guns. 

A peddler tried to offer her one of a set of very nice looking watches before swinging a small bat at a thief's hand before the young mutant slipped away.

Riley knew right where the bar was and walked in. She regretted the fact that she had been here before. Cattlemans' was a safe place to drink - more than could be said about a lot of the taverns in the free city. Even still, it was filled with the kind of yuppies who own airships and just want to pass through Catloch without dealing with the criminal element - that and the ranchers who actually owned land in the countryside worked by their robot slaves. Cowboy hats and bow ties as far as the eye could see. Riley couldn't wait til she was drunk enough not to hate them all. She looked around and wondered if maybe, if she hadn't been such a coward, and were willing to deal with the more risky people, if she wouldn't find herself in a place like this with a damaged ship and no crew calling herself 'captain' with nobody to lead. She sighed and ordered a shot of whiskey. Maybe she could work up the courage to go to somewhere riskier later.

The bartender, dressed in a striped shirt with a bow tie, handed her a shot while glaring. It burned going down her throat but felt pleasantly warm inside. Riley saw all of the well dressed people discussing business deals and investments and then looked down at her own clothes. Greasy black jumpsuit, cut off sleeves, which ended in legs that had been cut into shorts. Last time she had come here she had fit in more, in her big blue dress which now occupied space in a landfill somewhere. Briefcase full of stolen money, she bought Skylight from a traveller. Back then it felt like such an easy decision abandoning the life her parents had wanted for her. She ordered another shot and drank it. It was difficult, but it would always be an easy choice. She would never be a slaver like her parents.

Feeling more motivated, she stood up maybe a bit too quickly. Only two shots turned out to be a lot for a lightweight. She glided past the patrons through the gas lamp lit corridor between chairs towards the door.

"Riley! Little Riley Talon! You don't look like you belong here. What happened?" A raspy familiar voice boomed out from across the room sending a shiver up Riley's spine.

Immediately noticeable was his clunky mechanical arm that ended in a big blunt claw. A big man, both in muscle and weight stood before her. He looked like he hadn't shaved in three days, but Riley knew that he had. Under his eye bags was a tattoo of a sharp mechanical gripper clamp with sharpened edges that looked like talons. It matched Riley's.

"You know what happened." She looked him up and down, strangely regretting what she was about to say. "Leave me alone, Knife. I'm not your niece anymore."

His eyes grew before he let all his pent up air escape in a wavering sigh. "Arrr I'm still your uncle, yet I get it. I do. Not everyone's cut out to be a roboticist. Its a hard line of work." He flexed his mechanical arm as if to underline the danger posed by rival families.

"Just stop Knife."

For a moment she saw genuine fear in his eyes, which were the only soft part of his grizzled face. "Truth is, my darling... I'm thinking about leaving the family business too. Won't you give a salty air dog one last visit before disappearin into the big blue all over again? Please, for old times eh?"

They ordered drinks, found a table and sat. Riley felt sure of herself from the liquor, and for some reason she couldn't explain, she felt herself blaming Knife for her present predicament. "What's going on, Knife? Why would someone like you leave the business. Surely it isn't ethical concerns. You were the worst of em." Riley looked into her glass and saw droids being led at the point of cattle prods into Knife's sleek ship.

"Ayy, it wasn't at first my darling. I admit it. With the growing power of the other families, its becoming dangerous to be a Talon outside of the designated safe zones such as this place. I've been fantasizing about a way out for a while now, and I think I found it - if you're willing to help."

"So it really is just all about self preservation. I should have known someone like you wouldn't grow a conscience." Drink.

"Its much easier to grow a conscience when evil doesn't go your way. I feel for the poor machines. I'd like to become a trader like you."

"You have a ship. What's stopping you?"

"Wellll your father. My brother. He noticed my new leanings and eh, appropriated my ship. Can't have me disrupting things like you politics being what they be. I saw you and instantly knew you were my ticket out of here!"

"You're desperate." She paused and took another shot before her voice softened. "...but I believe you. I've missed you so much."

"Arr that's my girl!" Knife drank his first drink of the night before reaching over the table to rest his thick hairy hand on her shoulder.

"Of course, I'm not doing too well either. If you're joining my crew, I won't be able to pay you. Skylight's cargo bay is empty, looted by pirates. I don't know how much longer I can keep up this life. We might have to sell her and join the crew of some merchant."

"Stop right there. I knew right when I saw you that you wouldn't show your face her unless you were desperate too." He gave a gold toothed grin. "There's quite the money making opportunity, if you don't mind making enemies."

"It's not like I'm coming back here. Tell me."

Over more and more liquor, Knife told her the tale. His raspy voice and thick enjoyment over the chance of gold gave his words weight. "Koshi has always been a major source of spice and tea for the world. The merchants there have allllways had contracts to deliver shipments of spice to the other cities on a schedule. Like clockwork the shipments arrive, and the spice merchants get rich. All that spice got stored in a great big warehouse owned by their king, so he could take his cut. As it turns out the warehouse burnt down. The merchants are all scrambling to fulfill their contracts. I know it sounds like selling ice to a Westessi, but those merchants will pay any price if we just showed up with a cargo bay full of it."

Before Riley could even question it, Knife kept talking. "I got the ambition for this plan just a few days ago. I bought a full load of spice and stocked it up in my ship, but then your father seized my ship. It's parked at his estate. I say we go there, take back whats mine, and then solve all your problems at the spice city of Koshi."

Riley agreed. There was a great release of pressure. Relief washed over her, and for reasons she couldn't explain she ended up laughing. Knife joined in, but there was a dark edge to his laugh that made her stop. He kept going for several seconds. They drank into the night, celebrating their new cooperation. As Riley got drunker and drunker, Knife never seemed to be affected.



They stayed up drinking for hours, until the world seemed to move when she wasn't talking and Riley was certain that the plan was to do all of this tomorrow night. When she had came here she was certain that she was doomed, but now it felt like all of her problems were going to be solved. Her eyes were heavy. She slid down until she rested her head on her arms on the table. 

Small hands jostled her awake. Suddenly the air smelled like tobacco. She looked up to see Knife smoking an oversized cigar. To her side was a man, almost a boy, with soft features and an eye patch. His body was bony and covered in bruises beneath the tattered clothes that he wore. Knife said something that blurred into reverb from the force of Riley's headache. The boy flinched away as if he were about to be hit before whispering to Riley "Please get up miss Talon. It's time."

Fearful of what might happen to the boy and remembering Knife's temper from her upbringing, Riley tried to pull herself up, and wiped the drool off her face smearing her lipstick in the process. "Well... HallOOOoo. You're so shorrrt!" She extended her gloved hand.

He paused before he shook it, as much to keep her from falling over as out of politeness. His movements were always stiff, even his scared expression "I'm -"

Knife interrupted. "His name's Gurgle." He buried his face in his meaty palm. "Four Divines. I only wanted you a little drunk. Liquid courage and all that. Argh. Let's go." 

Cattleman's didn't have any windows, so when Gurgle practically carried her outside she was surprised that it was dark. A few yards down the dirt street was a parked box truck for 'Yummy's Candy Shoppe' Knife opened the door and Gurgle gently guided Riley into the back. Knife got in with her and Gurgle closed the door. For a moment it was pitch black except for Knife's cigar. Footsteps emanated around the van before Gurgle got in the unseen drivers seat and turned it on, which activated the lights. The van began moving.

---MIGHT WANT TO RECONSIDER THE DEAD DELIVERY BOY---

As Knife spoke he reached into his elaborate long coat's pocket. "This was supposed to be for the victory lap afterwards, but you clearly need it to be worth a damn. Learn to hold your liquor, my darling niece." There was uncomfortable contempt in that last part. He pulled out a bag of crushed pink crystals that shimmered in the yellow light. "Anthraxian Amphetamines." As he spoke he rolled up a 30 credit bill into a makeshift straw. He cut a fat line. "Snort it."

Riley looked down at it to avoid his eyes as he loomed over her. Too weak to resist, she felt like a little girl again in the worst possible way. She was suddenly reminded of more reasons why she had fled from her family. The thought of Knife being a crew man on her ship made her shudder, which thankfully could have easily been mistaken for the alcohol making her sick. She snorted the line, which took several attempts as she was not used to doing this. It burnt down her nose and trickled down the back of her throat in a repulsive powdery sharp snot.

Pain and dizziness left her head replaced by warmness and the sensation of being on strings. Her heartbeat was unstoppable. The air felt sweet. She was more awake and alert than she had ever been, and felt surprisingly like herself - more like herself than usual in fact. Knife's facial expression softened in a way that made her feel like everything would be okay.

"That's my girl. Good to see ya got a laser at your hip as well." He eyed the pistol holstered on her side.

Knife sat down in the back of the van, picking up the laser rifle that slid around loosely and examining it as they crested an unseen hill in the windowless van. She walked towards the drivers chairs as the van moved. Gurgle hadn't said anything at all yet.

"Hello Gurgle. I was wondering -- Four divines there's blood everywhere!!" In the passenger seat was a Yummy's Candy Shoppe delivery man with a hole in his head. It wasn't the first time Riley had seen death, but she didn't expect it. The middle aged corpse had an expression almost as vacant as Gurgle's. Dark blood was dried down the corpse's head and neck, saturating the uniform and ruining the carpeted floor.

Knife sauntered up to them. "What's all that commotion - oh boy. Gurgle. Why'd you do such a thing?"

He tilted his head and spoke robotically. "No witnesses."

Riley was outraged. "You said you had changed." 

"Nah." Knife snorted his reply. "I said I wasn't a slaver. You don't have a choice now anyway, unless you want to end up like delivery boy, you'll help me get my ship and spices."

Gurgle stared at the road like a mannequin. Riley didn't say anything. Knife went back to loading his laser rifle. 

Silence lasted a long time. Gurgle's eye was teared up. He moved so stiffly. He looked so young. He reminded her of when she first killed a man. "It can be hard the first time, but after today we won't have to do that again."

"Don't be telling the boy lies."

"Shut up, Uncle."

Knife grumbled something and there was long silence again. Gurgle drove slowly, avoiding the occasional pedestrian walking in the middle of Catloch's dirt roads.

Riley tried once again to break the tension. "So uh, why are you called Gurgle. Is that a nickname?"

"Its the sound I make when Master chokes me."

Knife cried out angrily "And you'll both be quiet if you know what's good for you!"

Riley noticed the black bruise that wrapped around Gurgle's neck, as if a metal claw had been crushing his neck. She pondered with disgust that word Gurgle had used 'Master.' Then she felt a cold rifle barrel at the back of her ear, and she became concerned with more immediate problems.

"Give me that pistol at your hip, won't you dear?"

"You sold me out... your own niece."

"Aye, yet I seem to remember you saying that slavers were no family of yours."



Amphetamines pumped through her icy blood with each heartbeat that hit with the force of a jackhammer. Still sitting in the passenger seat next to Gurgle, she wondered if she was going to die. Nothing to do but watch the rackshamble streets of Catloch pass her by from inside the candy store van. She began to wonder if it was all worth it.

Knife stood between them and must have seen her facial expression. "Don't get all philosophical on yourself." He smiled grimly and put his finger against her lip. "Shhhh. If you cry I'll kill you early and say you were brave." He looked a little teary eyed himself as he said such a horrible thing.

The van travelled through the denser part of the city until buildings gave way to open grass. Riley knew these roads. A few fences all around reminded travellers of the existence of human beings and not just cows.

[Surely you can put a longer description of the landscape here. Should you even?]

All around the Talon mansion was a gargoyled iron fence that wouldn't look out of place around a graveyard in a ghost story. The van rolled through the gate, which was conspicuously open and unguarded since clearly the family was expecting a guest. Riley soaked in the length of this punishment. She wished that she could just die now and get it over with. No gun, and outnumbered she had no hope of survival.

----REWRITE AND BAD TEXT AHEAD-----

Silent and vacant as ever, Gurgle led her at gunpoint out of the van where Knife was already waiting and conversing with two men wearing black hoods. 

To everyone's surprise, one of the men shot Knife! Gurgle returned fire, hitting one of them. For a moment Riley thought she was saved until the men shot at her and missed. He tried to duck behind cover, but Gurgle shot him instead. 

"Get in" was all Gurgle said as he tossed her her pistol.

Knife was behind them, screaming after them and clutching his bleeding belly. As the van started to move he jumped in through the back, ranting and raving about how they ever could have abandoned him.

"Confound it blasted thing. Remember who has your remote!" He brandished a tiny remote he retrieved from his pocket.

Suddenly Riley was sure that Gurgle wasn't human at all.

A car behind them followed, shooting as it did so. Gurgle turned to her. "Can you drive."

She nodded in response, and Gurgle simply got up without warning. As fast as she could, Riley took the wheel and stabilized the van just before they went off road.

Pow Pow pow. The car behind them swerved off the road in Riley's view from the mirror. 

"We should leave Catloch before they send more people!" Knife said in an exasperated voice.

"Yes we agree." They both said in unison as the writer really wanted to get to 833 words today.

----REWRITE AND BAD TEXT ABOVE-----



From the rear view mirror, Riley watched Gurgle stand motionless and statuesque holding his gun as if at any moment another car would materialize. Maybe it would, for all she knew. The streets of Catloch were unplanned and filled with alleys and five way intersections. Stop lights didn't exactly match the lawless philosophy of the Free City. Gurgle continued to stare in the same direction through the open roller door, unfazed by Knife's moaning whimper.

"Won't you shut up? We aren't gonna pity you." Riley turned her head away from the road just longer than she should have. An open topped hovercraft careened from an alley on a collision course with the candy van. Fingers wrapped so tight around the wheel that they stung, Riley swerved hard. The cherry red hovercraft blurred past. Her brief moment of triumph was interrupted and her cheer turned into a scream as gravity shifted to the right. As the van flipped over she fell backwards from the drivers seat into the broken glass next to the passenger seat. The van slid across the dirt, eating a hole in her jumpsuit and singing her back. Fortunately, the van collided with a ramshackle house before her back could be melted into a meat crayon. Metal screeched as the small building collapsed.

For a moment there was no Gurgle, Knife, or anything else. All Riley knew existed in the world were her bloody fingertips and the dirt they dug into as she crawled over the broken glass and out of the van. The twisted mascot on the side still smiled holding his candybar, now splattered with blood. 'Whose blood,' she thought?

Reality came back. She heard Knife still whining, and saw Gurgle dragging him out of the still open back of the van when she crawled around. As she struggled from her knees to her feet she supposed that it didn't matter whose blood it was, either a bystander or the person who owned the now destroyed shack. She had to get away, and something made her want better for that child Gurgle.

"How can you seriously be helping him out of there? Gurgle what is wrong with you? Why do you do everything he says when all he views you as is a possession?"

Gurgle didn't speak but Knife let out a choking laugh as he desperately clutched his bleeding belly. "I know his password. One simple word from me, and he's off forever. It doesn't matter what I do. He'll never be brave enough to say no."

"Will you be brave enough to say it though?"

"What-"

She repeated herself and kicked him while he was down. "You're the one without a gun here. Gurgle - come with me if you want to be free, or don't. Maybe for once you can make a choice."

Gurgle looked back and forth between them. Deep breath. He followed Riley and smiled.

"Come back here Gurgle. You were my paycheck. Oh fine that's it! Ava-" He hesitated. "Avari-" He finally shut up as Riley pulled out her gun.

"Good choice." She spoke to both of them.

Broken and bloody, Riley felt a little comforted being able to lean on Gurgle as she limped. He felt much stronger and more solid than his appearance suggested. She still worried that at any moment men with guns and talon tattoos matching hers would make all this pointless. A gust of wind kissed her bare bloody back. She became concious of how her jumpsuit had fallen apart. A single sleeve and her shorts remained. Her bra had been equally eviserated. Near naked and very afraid, she leaned on Gurgle but tried to lead.

"Where are we going?" He sounded just as scared and uncertain as she felt.

"I have an airship ... parked in a hangar ... somewhere." Riley didn't like how hard it was to talk, or how her chest heaved with each breath, or that stabbing pain in her side.

She fell asleep, twice - just long enough to catch herself on Gurgle's shoulder. It was a long walk to the hangar, and she was certain that her father's men would be waiting at the hangar. The armed thugs with guns outside the hangar turned out to be the normal force of guards. Riley muttered the password and the guards stood aside without saying a word.

The same friendly fat hangar lord from earlier sat behind his counter, feet up on the table smoking a cigarette. His eyes nearly bulged out of his sockets as what looked like a pair of walking corpses stumbled in his front door. He quickly regained his composure.

"Don't come back now, ya hear!" He spoke with the same friendly inflection as before.

"W-what?"

"Some Talon men came lookin for ya. Had to turn em away cus I got a reputation as a safe hangar. Still, don't like turnin away men representin the other families. Bad fer business. So..." He cleared his throat. "Don't come back. Ya hear me?"

Riley nodded. She and Gurgle made their way to the ship ---HOW DOES SHE ENTER THE SHIP? SHOULD I EVEN ELABORATE ON THAT?---



One fresh change of clothes later, Riley was wearing another jumpsuit (this one blue with all its sleeves). The leather pilot's chair felt comfortable. Her aches and pains were easier to ignore. It felt good to be home. Taking off was as easy as pushing the yoke forward, adjusting a few dials, flipping a few switches. 

She'd have prefered to have time to recover, but the longer she waited the more likely there would be ships waiting to shoot her out of the sky the moment she left town. Heck, she thought, that might still happen. She cackled cynically and was surprised when Gurgle joined in. She had never seen him laugh before.

"So this means I'm free now?"

"Yeah."

"I don't like my name."

"You could always change it."

"Any idea what you'll pick?"

"No." His smile was positively beaming.

They flew towards the rising sun.