by Elin Wyn
“So, you’re in charge of all this?” I heard her ask, sounding awed at the grandeur of this run-down dock.
“That’s right.” He waved his arm to indicate the entire facility. “I run this whole thing. Lots of folks pay a pretty penny to have my discretion.” He smiled down at her and cupped her face in his hand. She played off a slight shake of revulsion as a fascinated shiver.
“You must know so many interesting people.” Lynna’s eyes widened. “Do you have holos with them or autographs? Why don’t you show me your office?” She put extra play into her voice, and it worked.
He was hooked.
With a smile and a grunt, he led her to the office. Keys jangling, he unlocked the door and walked in.
Lynna followed, leaving the door open an almost unnoticeable crack.
I snuck as close as I dared and waited, listening to their voices inside as he showed her his office, explaining what was done in there.
She did a great job of playing along and sounding impressed, answering all his comments with ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs.’ When he suggested they go into a private room in the back, she giggled again. “Oh, you dirty man.”
His growl of excitement brought me to attention. I was about to bust through the door and twist his head off, but I stopped with my hand on the doorknob.
I had to trust her. I had to let her do what she was doing.
But every single minute that passed made it harder to fight the rage. We needed to be done with this mission, I needed to get her back onto the Rogue Star, and she’d never, ever leave it again.
No matter how prettily she asked.
Their voices faded and I heard a door close from inside. I snuck in quietly. The office was a verifiable disaster area. Three desks, a couple of tables, and half a dozen chairs furnished the room, while several bulletin boards adorned the walls. To my left was a small kitchenette and the door to a relieving room. In front of me was one desk, the cleanest of the three. It was organized, decorated with pictures of family, and the small vase of flowers in the left corner looked fresh and well-maintained.
While I knew many men that were clean and organized, there weren’t many that I knew who would willingly place flowers on their own desk. And the man Lynna had led away was anything but organized. Obviously not the property of our target.
To my right was another desk, surrounded by three tables. The board on the wall behind the desk was filled with what looked like manifests, schedules, and cargo lists. The third desk, the one close to the door that Lynna and the dockmaster must have used, was the messiest of them all, and it also had a small placard on it with the dockmaster’s name and title.
I approached that desk as quietly as I could, refolding and reholstering my rifle as I did. The top of the desk resembled a war-torn recovery site, papers everywhere. Mixed in with the papers were folders, stationery items, and what looked to be various bills and invoices.
I cycled through the contents quickly, discarding anything that didn’t match what I was looking for. Nothing on the desk looked like what I needed, so I turned my attention to the drawers of the desk. They were locked, but I felt a small button under the edge. I slowed down and forced myself to look at the desk itself. It hit me that the desk he was using was identical to my own. That button that I had found was a universal unlock button for all the drawers in the desk.
I also knew that by pressing that button, the drawers would unlock in rapid succession, the noise of which would sound like a short burst of fire from a weapon. I couldn’t push the button, and I couldn’t break it open, so I was forced to pick the lock. Luckily, I had been forced to pick the lock on my own desk so many times that I could do it with my eyes closed.
I unlocked the upper right drawer and searched through it. At the bottom of the drawer was a folder, and upon opening it, my hopes soared and crashed in less than an eyeblink. It was a collection of invoices for ships that weren’t listed on any of the boards, but there was no mention of The Terror on any of the sheets.
I dropped the folder on the desk and moved on to another drawer. The conversation inside infuriated me, but there was something different in the tone. His was becoming a little more insistent, hers a bit more restrained. In the second drawer, I found another file with invoices, manifests, and delivery schedules for more ships not on the boards. Either these were older deliveries, or the dockmaster ran an impressive illegal service here.
It was in the third drawer that I found what I wanted.
But it wasn’t much.
One sheet, with what we’d started calling the sigil of Enclave at the top.
Below it, a long column of dates, each matched with a different mark. Five of them, mixed and repeated in no order I could recognize.
Some sort of code. The marks were familiar. With a flash, I recognized one. The one that had been branded on the bounty hunter’s wrist.
I turned my attention back to the desk, hoping to find some sort of source book for the rest of the marks.
Just as I was closing the final drawer, the tone from inside the back room changed. His voice grew loud and angry. It was apparent that he had expected things from Lynna, and she had refused.
“You dare come here and flirt with me, then don’t deliver?” I heard him growl. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end as a small snarl escaped my lips. “I could dump your body in the far corner of the docks, and no one would care. You would just be another used-up whore that died,” I heard him say. “But, instead, I’m going to have you arrested for propositioning a city official. It’ll be more fun to watch you on trial.”
Lynna started to say something, but her voice faded into the background as he thundered through the door.
He saw me standing at his desk, my hand hovering over one of my weapons.
He started to reach under his jacket just as Lynna came out of the room behind him.
She was safe and I had what we wanted.
Finally, I didn’t have to be restrained.
Lynna
I hurried after the dockmaster, tempted to call out something seductive, try to buy Valtic more time, but I knew that battle was already lost.
Somehow, I’d managed to avoid letting that greasy dockmaster touch any more of my painted skin, but I still wanted a shower. Many, many showers.
When I stumbled into the main office, I froze.
Valtic stood, shoulders squared, facing the dockmaster, his hand hovering above one of his guns. His face was a hardened mask of pure aggression.
It was hard to believe I was looking at the same sweet man who told me all about his tattoos yesterday.
This was Valtic when the rage he held within broke free.
The dockmaster stood with his back to me, his hand poised over a weapon hidden beneath the greasy leather flap of his long jacket.
“Do you think you can outshoot me?” the dockmaster snarled.
“I know I can.” Valtic grinned, but no light reached his eyes. “For your sake, you should leave while you have the chance.”
The dockmaster had the audacity to laugh. “Give me one good reason not to splatter your brains all over my schedule board.” He gestured to a film-covered board mounted on the wall.
“Who do you think The Terror crew is going to blame when they realize you were keeping confidential information in such a public place?” Valtic gestured to the room around him. “How much are they paying you? Is it worth your life? Is it worth the lives that are lost to that ship?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the dockmaster sneered dismissively. “There ain’t no ship by that name.”
“Right. The files on the table belong to a different ship called The Terror,” Valtic scoffed.
The dockmaster must have seen something I didn’t, realized something important was out of place. “If you walk out that door, my life is over,” he insisted. It was a hollow, desperate sound. “It’s an easy choice on my part.”
“We can offer you protection.” Valtic’s off
er caught me off guard. I felt ashamed that I hadn’t considered it myself.
It made sense. We were already offering Itair protection. Perhaps more people needed to be saved from Enclave or The Terror than just the women they auctioned off.
“You can’t protect me,” the dockmaster growled. “If you think that’s an option, you don’t understand what’s going on. No one is safe from them.” His hand moved for the weapon in his jacket.
He wasn’t going to take Valtic’s offer.
He thought there was only one way to save his own life.
Well, I was going to do whatever I needed to protect Valtic’s.
I pulled a narrow syringe filled with a sedative potent enough to keep a Shein male unconscious for a day from my pocket.
I wasn’t sure what it was going to do to the dockmaster. Hell, I didn’t even know what species the dockmaster was.
But it was him or Valtic. The choice was easy.
I pulled the syringe out of my pocket and removed the protective cap over the needle. In one step, I was directly behind the dockmaster’s exposed neck. I jabbed him quickly with the precision I’d exercise on any regular patient.
On a fully grown Shein, the sedative took about ten minutes to take effect. I’d tripled the dose. The dockmaster slipped into unconsciousness before he could turn around. I leaped back with a yelp as he crumpled to the floor.
“Please tell me I didn’t kill him,” I whispered more to myself than to Valtic. I crouched down beside the dockmaster and felt for a pulse. It occurred to me as I poked my fingers into his flabby neck that his veins probably weren’t located in the same place mine were. I pulled my hand away and watched for breathing instead. His breathing was slow, but steady.
I let out a sigh of relief.
Valtic gave me a strange look. He still looked furious. I saw the muscles in his jaw working. His hand gripped the hilt of his gun.
“You found something?” I asked, looked at the files opened on the desk. “You said confidential information.”
Valtic’s response was a curt nod.
“Are you all right?” I asked him.
Something was clearly going on in his mind. He was looking through me instead of at me, the grim expression on his face not softening, even though the threat was gone.
“This shouldn’t have happened,” he growled.
“You found useful information and no one died.” I drew my brows together in confusion. “Why don’t you consider this a success?”
Valtic opened and closed his fist over and over. I watched his chest rise and deflate as he tried to calm down. I couldn’t understand why he was so worked up in the first place. Everything had gone well, hadn’t it?
“Are you mad that I changed the plan without talking to you first?” I asked. “I know, it was stupid and risky. I was only trying to prevent an open firefight on the docks. If you’d gotten hurt, all of us back on the Rogue Star would be screwed.”
Valtic didn’t say anything to me. Instead, he started organizing the papers on the desk into a file for easy transportation, seething as he worked.
“I’m not intimidated by you,” I said suddenly. “You can be angry and look terrifying all you want but I’m not afraid of you. I will not apologize for doing what I felt I needed to do to make sure you made it back to the ship.”
“I don’t want you to be afraid,” Valtic said sharply.
“Then what do you want? You’re clearly angry.”
Valtic roughly slammed the folder’s cover and tucked it under his arm. Without another word, he stormed out of the office. I scrambled to keep up with him. I leaped over the unconscious dockmaster, accidentally kicking him in the head.
“Sorry!” I whispered to him.
The sedative occasionally affected short-term memory. With any luck, the dockmaster would never remember me, Valtic, or the information from the desk that we’d stolen.
I ran out of the office. Valtic waited for the space of just one breath, then walked briskly to the Skimmer in silence.
I wanted to shout to him to wait for me but there could’ve been more dockworkers lurking in the shadows. The thought alone made me shiver. Fear crept in on the outskirts of my consciousness, but I couldn’t let it get to me now.
I focused on Valtic’s shimmering bronze figure ahead of me. He was only a step ahead, I would be fine. He wouldn’t walk so far ahead that I’d lose him. Even if he was lost in rage, he wouldn’t leave me behind.
When we reached the Skimmer, Valtic swung me into the passenger seat, tucking my skirt around my legs with careful movements.
His hands were shaking, but still he said nothing.
I didn’t expect any conversation on the way back. Valtic glowered, unfazed by the ice-cold air whipping by. I hunched my shoulders and tucked my head down to hide from the cold.
The more I thought about Valtic, the more confused I became.
For a moment there, it seemed like we were becoming friends. He’d trusted me to go with him, to help with this. If he was angry about me going off script with the dockmaster, he would’ve said so when I asked, right?
It had to be something else, but if he refused to talk to me, I couldn’t help.
I jostled in my seat as Valtic landed the Skimmer. Qal was waiting for us.
“Put this away,” he barked at Qal as he jumped out of the Skimmer. Qal shook his head and walked over.
“Mission go wrong?” he asked me as he climbed into the pilot seat as I climbed out.
“No,” I replied. “It went well. I don’t know why he’s acting like this.”
“That’s just how he is.” Qal shrugged. “He’s the finest soldier I’ve ever encountered, but he’s also the biggest prick.”
“There’s more to him than that,” I said, anger driving away the cold. “Why does everyone say that?”
“If you say so.”
By the time I got back inside, Valtic was nowhere to be seen.
I was cold and tired, and wanted a shower. Hopefully somewhere on board was a bathtub.
I slumped against the corridor wall. Maybe Qal was right.
Maybe everyone was right.
I felt stupid for putting so much of my energy into Valtic’s well-being when he clearly didn’t want friendship. Or any kind of positive relationship.
Or any relationship at all.
As I walked back to my room, I decided that I wasn’t going to go out of my way for him anymore.
Not until he showed me that he was worthy of my kindness.
No matter how much the memory of that one dazzling smile still made my heart leap.
Valtic
I stormed off through the ship and made my way to Captain Dejar’s office. Kovor was on the bridge and gave me a questioning look. I nodded and held up the file to show that we had found something.
He turned his attention back to whatever he was working on. I would never entirely understand what his responsibilities were, and I didn’t wanted to. My job was to protect the people of the ship, not lead it, and I was comfortable with that.
I buzzed the captain’s office and the door opened. I entered to find that Dejar was not alone, Aavat was with him.
“You got something?” he asked.
I nodded. I walked over to the captain’s desk and placed the folder down. “Delivery schedules, locations, invoices, and other things that I haven’t had a chance to review. For a wide variety of ships. But not The Terror.”
“Why did you bring these?” Dejar leafed through the portfolio, tapping at a name here, a location there.
“It may not be vital intelligence to our current situation, but leverage is always useful.”
Aavat raised an eyebrow. “True. And until our situation becomes more regularized, it wouldn’t hurt to know who else is on the shady side of the Dominion.”
Dejar made a muffled noise, then handed Aavat a sheet. “Even if the raid was a bust on our primary target, this is good work. Thank you, Valtic.”
I pulled the f
ilm with the sigil of the Enclave from my jacket. “There was also this. But that was all that had the mark.”
The two ignored the stack that had moments ago been so interesting to study the single sheet.
“It’s Enclave, alright.” Dejar traced the oval sigil, the warped variation of the one worn proudly by officers of the Dominion.
“But what’s all this?” Aavat tapped one of the smaller marks that marched down the page in a column.
“I believe that is the mark that the bounty hunter Hurd wore, and that Kovor reported was used by the Enclave group on Qasar,” I answered.
Aavat frowned. “No, not that one, nor this.” He tapped another. “This one we found on the list of the women we rescued at Katzul. I’ve stared at them long enough to know either of those anywhere. This one.” He traced over a third mark and scowled. “I’ve seen it before. Maybe somewhere with Shenna?”
“A pet shop?” Dejar prodded. “Does she need a songbird to add to her collection?”
“That’s it!” Aavat snapped his fingers as Dejar groaned.
“No, that’s not it, I’m begging you.” Dejar covered his face. “No birds. It’s hard for me to ignore the rest of the menagerie. Strange birds flying around the ship would be impossible for me to deny knowledge of.”
“Not that,” Aavat grumbled, but refused to meet Dejar’s eye for a moment.
Scro.
There was already a bird somewhere on board, wasn’t there.
“But the songbird. The singer at the first auction that Shenna and I stumbled into. She wore a thing around her neck.” He waved at the area of his collarbone, at a loss for the word.
“A pendant, sir?” I ventured.
“One of those,” he nodded. “And this mark was on it.”
Out of the five marks, we’d seen three somewhere. I still couldn’t decipher an order to them, they seemed to repeat down the column at random.
“Was that the date of the auction?” I wondered to myself.
Aavat quickly checked through all the dates that seemed to match with the symbol he’d seen.