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Bounty hunter (man, dark hair, blue eyes, weathered skin, cowboy hat, worn leather duster, scuffed leather boots, holstered pistol on his hip, futuristic blaster in one hand) and his yellow Labrador Retriever walking toward viewer across snow-covered rocky terrain. Futuristic alien starcruiser hovers behind them on antigrav thrusters that hum and kick down swirling downdrafts across the snow. Alien world rugged terrain rising into backdrop of snow-capped mountains, stunning oversized moon glows softly in hues of blue and violet, otherworldly ambiance. In the styles of Roger Dean, Boris Vallejo, Stephan Martiniere. Wide shot, eye level. --mod asymmetric composition --mod milky way band sky --mod painterly science-fantasy realism --mod eye-level wide composition --mod clear silhouette separation --mod rugged alien alpine terrain --mod antigrav downdraft snow swirl --mod colossal hovering starcruiser --mod blue-violet moon glow --mod warm-cool atmospheric contrast --mod weathered frontier character design --mod detailed leather and metal textures --mod realistic Labrador anatomy --mod cinematic environmental depth
Kellan Rook had crossed six systems for men who thought distance was armor. To
him, distance was only fuel.
This one had chosen Khepri-9, a frozen mining moon beyond the customs lanes,
where mountains sawed the horizon into knives and the nearest settlement sold
oxygen by the hour. The warrant named Vask Orr: bond thief, ship killer, three
murders proved. Orr was not human. His kind could slow their pulse to nothing,
bleed cold, and fold into rock shadow until thermal scopes swore the landscape was
empty.
Rook brought a dog.
Mara moved beside him through knee-deep powder, coat dusted white, nose
working the wind. No implant, no armor—just ears that heard machinery cooling
beneath snow, a nose that could separate blood from hydraulic fluid at two hundred
meters, and eight years of learning which change in Rook's breathing meant wait,
down, circle, kill. Behind them the cruiser hung above the valley on blue antigrav fire,
immense enough to make weather and already irrelevant. Ships found worlds. Boots
found people.
Orr had chosen an abandoned survey station because there was one approach
across the basin. Rook saw the geometry and disliked it. Mara stopped so abruptly
that he nearly passed her. Her head turned left. Rook kept walking three steps
because a man who reacts to nothing tells a hidden rifleman exactly where to aim;
then he stumbled against a buried rock, dropped to one knee, and let his coat cover
the blaster rising in his hand.
The shot burned through where his chest had been.
Mara was already upslope. She did not chase the muzzle flash. She cut across the
scent cone feeding it. Orr fired again, blasting snow from Rook's shoulder, and Rook
rolled behind black stone and answered twice—not to hit, but to force Orr's eyes
onto him. That was how they worked. Rook was the visible problem. Mara was what
happened while you were thus preoccupied.
Orr unfolded from the rocks twenty meters above, four-limbed, slate-skinned, rifle
swinging after the dog too late. Mara hit behind the knee. Orr screamed, hammered
her with the rifle stock, tried to wrench free. She held. Rook climbed through the
snow with one arm numb and the other steady.
“Call her off!”
Rook stopped ten paces away. Orr had survived prisons, border wars, vacuum, and
bounty crews. Now he stared at the Labrador locked onto his leg as though the
universe had insulted him personally.
Orr reached for the pistol under his coat. Mara changed grips and applied even more
pressure. Rook fired once.
An hour later Orr lay cuffed in the cargo bay, alive because the warrant paid more
that way. Mara slept beside the ramp with blood on her muzzle and one paw over
Rook's boot. Outside, Khepri-9 vanished beneath cloud as the cruiser climbed.
Orr had hidden at the end of the known space because he believed one man would
decide he was not worth the trip.
He had forgotten to count the dog.
