Book five in the Bounty Hunter series.
2397 AD - A top-class bounty hunter discovers a colossal starship under construction deep inside a mountain. When the ship launches its demonic purpose becomes frighteningly clear.
Excerpt:
The stench was unbearable!
Ogus Torquefester screwed up his sagging, folded face in disgust. “What in flesh’s name is that?”
Getting heavily to his feet, he hauled his massive frame around and smashed open the kitchen’s double doors with his gut. Smoke billowed out. Ogus instantly vomited down the front of his tent-like apron as the smell totally saturated the air around him. He made his way forward, wiping away the half-digested noodles that clung to his many chins. Pots and pans littered the floor of the filthy kitchen, covered in a black tar-like substance of unknown origin. “Explain yourself, you flatulent little dung smoker!”
At the other end of the kitchen Ogus’s cook looked at him from behind the carcass of a skinned racing cow. “It is not my fault.” The cook said, pushing the slaughtered animal away. It smacked onto the tiled floor and oozed vital fluids. “I could not have predicted this fiasco.”
Ogus snarled. “I said explain yourself, damn it!”
The cook approached the abundant mass of his boss. For an underling of such low status he showed an amazing lack of fear. “There was no barf-beetle blood left to add to the Dredd-Sour sauce I was making. I decided that dim-cat blood would make an ideal substitute, so I added that instead.” He pointed.
Ogus looked to where his cook was pointing. His beloved pet was hanging over the sauce pot, blood still dripping from its slashed throat.
The cook continued. “As you can see, it reacted badly with the other ingredients and generated the putrid fragrance that currently fills the air. It is therefore the cat’s fault. I am vindicated.”
Ogus Torquefester grabbed the cook around the neck with his large left hand and squeezed. “You ignorant little puff weasel! It’s common culinary knowledge that dim-cat blood is far too volatile and unpredictable to ever use as an ingredient in anything!”
The flab ridden restaurant owner held his cook up against the window in one of the kitchen’s doors and pressed his face hard against the glass. “Look! Everyone’s left! And they haven’t paid! You’ve lost me an entire evening’s profit, and you killed my beloved pet, Douglas!” Ogus swung the cook around and with his right hand smacked him hard across the face. The cook’s silly looking hat fell into a vat of boiling oil and disintegrated. The cook’s scarred and crusted bald scalp was exposed, his only hair being two matted black clumps behind his ears. “Is this how you repay me after all I’ve done for you?!”
The cook stared at his boss. “You have done nothing for me.” Ogus bellowed with anger. “I found you torn and broken in a refuse pit on the city limits! You were skin and bone and could hardly talk! I gave you food, a job, and free accommodation in my cheese cellar! I saved you from deterioration beyond reason!” With a mighty swing of his arm, he threw the cook into a pile of saucepans. The noise was deafening. “Clean this place up!”