Excerpt!

Logan Mitchell never fucked around when it came to business.

     He was a rarity, a half-breed who had survived the purge, born of a brief illicit affair between a charismatic human rebel and a sympathetic female alien from the planet Lonegal. He was an outsider.

     Logan had inherited his father’s good looks and his mother’s iridescent blue eyes. His skin was tanned and he had the strength of the Lonegal alien race. He carried his father’s name; the only thing he had of his, since his father had been one of the first victims of the Purge. He’d sacrificed himself so that Logan’s mother, pregnant with him, could escape.

Logan was a charismatic rebel leader; but like all half-breed, he was regarded with disdain and disgust by the majority of both sides of his genealogical tree.

     Faced by discrimination on both sides, he took the only job open to most Lonegal half-breeds; the profession of Bounty Hunter. Lonegalians were known for their tracking capabilities, especially when crossbred with humans.

     The natural inquisitiveness of his human nature, coupled with a thirst for vengeance that knew no bounds, left him driven. He was burdened to the point of obsession with a need to make all Lonegal criminals suffer, and the human villains ones pay, for their debt to society.

     Logan was good at what he did. Indeed, some said he was the best.

Planet Earth had been laid to waste. It was still trying to recover from the rape of its natural resources. Despite everything, he called the planet Home; he wanted the bastards responsible to pay for the havoc they had wrought. And those who had the misfortune of being left behind were first on his hit list.

     He walked into his Kentucky office and let the door slam behind him. No one would complain about the noise. The Lonegals had strip-mined every last square inch of it, then razed most of the forested area.

       He smelled coffee. His secretary, Elizabeth must’ve come in already. She was good at what she did; undercover assignments, research, errands, interviews... She did a lot of leg-work, that, quite frankly, he didn’t have the knack for.

     He poured himself a cup of coffee, a picked up the pack of cigarettes sitting next to the pot. Déjà vu, he thought.

     He went to his desk, and plopped down in his chair. He lit up and took a long, hard drag. He opened his desk drawer. The Jack Daniels was missing. “Elizabeth!” He shouted, more than a little annoyed.

     Elizabeth was old enough to be his mother; sometimes she had the annoying habit of trying to act like her. Truth be told, he didn’t want to think about his mother. Or be reminded of her. It was too hard. Emotional thoughts unsettled him, so he tended to avoid thinking of his parents as much as he could. But he could never avoid random moments like these.

     “Logan, you’re going to need everything you got to track this one down,” Elizabeth said dropping a thick file on his desk.

     The bounty hunter community had once been linked by an interglobal computer database. But once the humans drove the Lonegals off of the planet, they decided to kill the internet as the world had once known it, in the hope that it would keep other predatory aliens at bay. So far it had worked. At least, they thought it had.

     He opened the file and riffled through it. “What’s her crime?”

     “She was labeled a terrorist by the Lonegals, and she was supposed to a part of the bounty the Lonegals took in return for a mass release of human slaves.”

     “Alabama Newsome, what did you do to piss off my mother’s people?” he asked out loud. “Escaped Lonegal prison. Responsible for the deaths of two Lonegals. Has evaded capture on multiple occasions. Seems to have a sympathetic support base. Political criminal. Known contacts: Logan Mitchell Senior. Update: Still missing. Additional information: Logan Mitchell Senior; recently deceased January, 2025.”

     He closed the file and let the gravity of what he’d just read sink in. The woman in the picture couldn’t be much more than thirty years old. Which would have made her not even conceived when his father was first taken prisoner in his mother’s place. Yet if what he had read was correct, the father he had long thought deceased had only recently died. He would’ve been sixty years old. He opened the file again. Why wouldn’t he have gotten in touch with his mother? He flipped the page. Alabama believed to be a Lonegal-Human half-breed. Also believed to be pregnant with Mitchell’s child. Early stage of pregnancy. Wanted alive for testing purposes.

     He exhaled and closed the file. “Elizabeth.”

     She set the bottle down on the desk. “Keep in mind that the Lonegal General indicated will be here in about an hour to talk about it.”

     He unscrewed the top of the bottle and poured a generous amount into his now tepid coffee, and took a swallow. “Elizabeth, how long have we known each other?”

     “Oh I don’t know. Since you started this thing when you were a boy.”

     “I was nineteen. So, what, twenty-one years?”

     “You needed a secretary, and I needed a job.”

     “Did you trust me?”

     “Honestly, I was a little scared of you at first. My experience with Lonegals was all negative and I wasn’t exactly predisposed to like half-breeds. But you weren’t exactly predisposed to trust anyone, either. I’d say we’ve come a long way.”

     “Have I told you about how my mother would leave a candle in the window as a signal to my father that she was still waiting for him?”

     “Yes.”

     “Then why is it, you think, that those who want this girl sent her case to me?”

      “The same reason you think they did, Logan.”

     “I haven’t allowed myself to think anything other than my father was dead for the last ten years. I’m glad mom is dead. This would destroy her.”

     “Your father and mother were young when they were separated. She loved him, Logan. It was a different time. War is hell, and if he escaped he may not have wanted to endanger you or your mother.”

     “Is that why he took up with a woman half his age?” He asked, hurling his coffee mug across the room, narrowly missing Elizabeth’s head, shards of ceramic and whiskey-laced coffee making a mess against the wall and on the floor.

     Elizabeth pushed back her hair with both hands. “Crazy situations create strange bedfellows.”

     “What’s that supposed to mean?”

     “You’re older than this half-breed girl right?”

     “By at least ten years.”

     “You do realize what her pregnancy means.”

     “That I have a half-sibling on the way. Yeah I’ve thought about that. And no matter what I think of the girl, that child will die if I hand her over to the Lonegal forces.”

     “You don’t feel the least bit sorry for her? She loved your father. His death must be just as hard for her as it is for you.”

     “What does she know of hard? You grow up looking into the eyes of a woman slowly dying everyday because the man she believed to be her soulmate was gone. Yeah, she has it real hard.”

     “That girl is pregnant, scared, and all alone. She’s a political refugee, and a half-breed. She knows all about hard. You’re jaded, but you’re not that cynical. If she falls into the hands of the Lonegals you know she’ll die a horrible death.”

     “How and why is that my problem?”

     “Because the Lonegals, especially their military members and scientists, would like nothing better than to have an excuse to claim that you and every other half-breed are enemies of their state, and demand your return. And you know what it means, my jaded friend, for you to be included in that club.”

     He was about to explode, when the door opened and a Lonegal in military uniform walked in. He was tall, thin, and deceptively weak-looking; his bars and ribbons and medals attested to his bloodthirsty and murderous nature.

     His badge read Runyon. His eyes were a glassy black, with no whites or irises, and his skin was white and pasty. He gave Elizabeth a look of disgust and Elizabeth looked at Logan.

     “I’ve got this,” he said in a low tone.

     “You need anything, Logan, you just call me in.” She lightly touched the gun on her hip, and Runyon turned his attention to Logan.

     As she went to the reception area the Lonegal said, “You need a human woman defend you?”

     Logan stood up and closed the door behind the general. “You will keep snide comments about my friends to yourself. But you should know, if she had wanted to kill you, you wouldn’t have stood a chance.”

     “You smell of alcohol, cigarettes, and cheap women. You’ve been with a human. You sully your heritage by doing that.”

     Logan popped out a cigarette and lit up. “And you’re a prick, so I guess we’re even. Now, what do you want with me?”

     “Half-breeds,” Runyon said shaking his head.

     His temper snapped and he snatched Runyon’s throat and hissed, “You should watch your fucking mouth when you’re asking for something so outrageous.”

     He flung the general down into a chair and exhaled a stream of smoke into his face. “What if I say no? Have you thought about that? Don’t you know you disgust me as much as I disgust you? No, you couldn’t possibly know.” Logan walked around behind his desk and sat down.

     “Don’t you want to know? Aren’t you curious about whom your father chose over you and your mother?”

     “You think this is my first trip to the show? You want to manipulate me, make me do your dirty work. You’re going to have to do much better than that. Now take your money, and your bond, and your heavy-handed attempt to make me bring in your political prisoner.And get the fuck out of my office.”

     Runyon stood up, clearly shaken and said, “You don’t understand the ramifications of your inaction.”

     “I understand you want a lab rat, and that a half-breed Lonegal pregnant with a human baby is the perfect subject for your experiments.”

     “So you’re a sympathizer. Half-breeds…” Runyon sneered.

     Logan leapt across the desk and punched the general in the mouth. “I said get the fuck out.”

     Runyon’s eyes narrowed with fury. “You’re making a dangerous enemy.”

     Logan drew his fist back, preparing to strike again. The general stumbled out the door. Elizabeth came back in and looked at him. “You really going to throw her to the wolves like that?”

     “Alabama Newsome has far bigger problems than General Runyon and the Lonegals. She has me on her horizon. Get my bag put together, I think a trip is in order.”

     He picked up the bottle and took a huge swig. Logan wished his father was there. If only so he could hit him the way he’d just hit General Runyon.