Well, Kuiper was a bit of a mess; immediately killing off Kanes closest and dearest friend, Jess. You remember Jess, of course, Kane never shuts up about all his fond memories of him. He’s a regular character, he is! Turns out they were both hired to act as bodyguards for a cargo ship. They briefly consider changing ships, which would have added some dramatic stakes, but then, nah, they don’t. Anyway, beloved regular character Jess dies after being shot at by a ship way too far away to see, which violates all the laws of physics, and then Kane has to contend with all the pirates himself, which he does handily because, you know, Sword Breaker. Then he gets into a fist fight while trying to work off some steam from his friend dying and the lady he saves calls him a murderer for working with the cargo company.
Laser Guns is even more disjointed, but at Leas gives some closure, turns out that if Canal had done even a moments research into the cargo company she’d have realized that the cargo company was letting Pirates explode their ships as part of an insurance scam, and aforesaid ladies husband got killed as a result. So Kane gives her all the evidence the cops would need to arrest the company owner and then heads off to avenge beloved character Jess by tracking down the ship that murdered him. Which, as it turns out, is another Lost Ship, the Death Cloud (another Slayers reference; Death Cloud is one of the Dark Lords, along with Shabranigdo and Dark Star); the Death Cloud kills a bunch of cops in order to show off how powerful it is, and even Swordbreaker has a hard time beating it, but ultimately succeed because Kane and Canal have had years of experience fighting with a Lost Ship and these yokels have had it for, like, a week. But as soon as they do, an even bigger and way more intimidating lost ship appears, which terrifies Canal, and makes an overt threat to the, before leaving. Then we cut to the Nightmare headquarters, where the leader says that Kane and Canal are presenting too much of a pain in his ass so he’s going to have to get involved directly now.
Hey! I think the plots going to start now!