by Layla Nash
“I don’t like it,” Wyzak said.
“We know,” she said. She propped one boot on top of the other, studying her legs as they stretched out in front of her. “You’ve mentioned it before. Several times.”
“Isn’t there something useful you could do?” Faros asked, his irritation clear as his scales shaded orange and red. He scowled at the viewing screens, scanning the surrounding quadrants for any hints of trouble or possible targets. The pirate captain wouldn’t overlook an opportunity to take down a soft target even if it meant being late to pick up Gemma.
The option of jumping in an escape pod and making his way toward the spaceport started to look better and better.
Violet sighed and held out a tablet to Wyzak as he paced near her chair. “Here. Look through these bounties and research their statuses. It doesn’t look like anyone has formally accepted the bounties on the rest of the crew, but yours is still grayed out. I don’t know if that means Gemma still technically has the bounty or not. See if you can figure it out.”
“And look for some lucrative targets while you’re at it,” Faros called as Wyzak took the table and stalked toward the comms desk. “This bounty hunting bullshit could be an excellent source of income, since we happen across all sorts of scum these days. Taking prisoners and turning them over for coin would be a nice break from ambushing ships.”
“With the added benefit of being legal,” Violet added. She pressed her fingertips to her eyes as she shook her head. “You’re not even pretending to be a privateer any longer, I hope you realize? Now you’re just straight-out being a pirate.”
“You didn’t like the pretense,” Faros said, and their bickering went on.
Wyzak tuned them out as he searched the database of bounties that Gemma had shown them. She’d left her credentials so they could access the underground information that only bounty hunters seemed to know about, or perhaps Violet had just stolen it. Despite the lawyer’s protests about keeping things legal, Wyzak had definitely noticed her high ethical standards slipping after time spent with Faros.
He hated feeling useless, and doing research definitely counted as useless when he was more accustomed to breaking things. Wyzak scowled at the damn thing as he searched for any indication that someone else was actively hunting him or the rest of the Sraibur crew. There didn’t seem to be any way to “claim” a bounty, at least not without negotiating with the originator of the bounty, and he wasn’t about to contact the Tyboli to see whether they’d had any more takers.
At least the descriptions of the Sraibur crew were entertaining—all were described as barbarians with super strength but little intelligence, a bunch of lying tricksters who would talk their way around any possible charges. It was a wonder Gemma had even talked to him. Wyzak tried not to be offended at his own bounty—described as the humorless first mate and second-in-command, following orders without much imagination. The Tyboli painted him as an easy grab, which was probably why Gemma and her partner targeted him above the rest of the crew.
He ground his teeth until his jaw cracked. There was no reason to be annoyed that the Tyboli didn’t believe him to be as dangerous as Faros and Harzt. His bounty was still the second highest, after Faros, due to his rank and knowledge of the rest of the crew. The Tyboli viewed him as a key to taking down the rest of the ship. Wyzak clenched his fist and almost destroyed the tablet, though he remembered to ease his grip before it did much more than crack it. They’d gone through a lot of panels since Gemma arrived on the Sraibur; Faros had already muttered about making her pay for the damage to the panels and tablets that her metal hand caused.
Wyzak knew the captain was mostly bluffing, since the Xaravians were a hell of a lot harder on the ship than a single Earther female.
He frowned and kept searching the database for useful information, anything that would help protect the crew, find the Tyboli, or convince Faros to stop harassing ships that were easy to board but seldom carried anything of real value. The ships transiting ungoverned space with useful cargo always had heavy guards and heavier shields, not to mention Fleet-class weaponry. The Sraibur was fast and agile, but they couldn’t outfight a battleship disguised as a cargo transporter.
He scrolled past one entry and then paused, returning to it in order to reread. It couldn’t be...
The entry started with a description of an Earther who was wanted for violating an agreed-upon deal to deliver specific cargo at an appointed time. The Earther failed to deliver, attacked the crew that offered the bounty, and caused them to be attacked by a larger, faster ship, leading to significant damage. The bounty was offered for the Earther’s capture and delivery to the crew at a specific port, not far from Proxima, within a standard week. The clock was ticking. And the amount offered was... significant. Almost as much as the twenty thousand credits they’d offered for Wyzak.
His mouth went dry and his scales rattled as he checked the files attached to the advertisement. The creeping feeling of unease turned to outright panic when the file opened to show an image of Gemma, taken during the chaos of the confrontation on her ship. They also provided her last-known coordinates and expected direction of travel.
Wyzak croaked as he lurched to his feet, the panel crushing slightly in his grip. The rest of the crew stared at him, and Faros slowly stood, his expression guarded. “What is it? What did you find?”
Gemma. She was alone and there was a massive bounty on her head, and they’d just sent her into a nest of bounty hunters, into a lawless feeding frenzy of the worst sandsnakes in ungoverned space.
“The Tyboli…put a bounty on her.” Wyzak jabbed at the malfunctioning panel and managed to transfer the data to the main viewing screen, so everyone on the bridge could see it. Her image flared to life. Her fierce expression as she fought off the Tyboli and tried to protect her fallen partner made his hearts beat faster. She’d fight. She would certainly fight, and those damn bounty hunters would hurt her, if not kill her. The bounty didn’t specify whether she had to be alive, although he knew that she’d regret it if the Tyboli got their hands on her while she lived.
Violet cursed and took the panel from him, quickly reviewing all the data that Wyzak had already seen and internalized. Her lips pursed as she surveyed the evidence in front of them. “They must suspect something. There’s no way they’d want to spend that much money just to get one bounty hunter. If they’re tracking her, they know that she’s been on the Sraibur since they tried to double-cross her. If she shows up on Proxima...”
The lawyer trailed off and Wyzak’s hearts sank. His hands went cold. “They’ll know she’s there because we let her go. Because we sent her there.”
“So either the bounty hunters on Proxima know she’s a huge payday if they get her to the Tyboli, or the Tyboli know she’s valuable to us and want to use her against us.” Faros frowned, absently studying the viewing screens. “The bounty hunters could consider her a snitch if they figure out she’s carrying a message for us, or maybe they’ll believe her story about the Tyboli double-crossing her. The Tyboli have done far worse; it isn’t a stretch to think she got the bad end of a bad deal.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Wyzak growled. He needed to destroy something, to crush something with his fists, to hit someone hard enough to make them bleed. She was alone, and he was too far away to help. “We have to go there. Now.”
When Faros started to argue and Wyzak snarled louder, ready to brawl if there was even a hesitation about turning the ship immediately toward Proxima, Violet sighed and elbowed her mate aside. “Izyk, set a course for Proxima. We have to get to Gemma.”
And it was a testament to how fierce she was that the crew did as she said, without waiting for Faros to confirm that was what the captain wanted. Wyzak didn’t have time to listen as Faros grumbled about stopping on the way to target a large generational transport ship. Wyzak sank into the comms chair and gripped the armrests until the metal bent, staring at the viewing screen with all of his focus.
He would
get to her in time. He would protect her from the Tyboli and the haugmawts waiting for her on Proxima. His scales rattled and he sat forward, willing the ship to move faster. Gemma had to be safe. He didn’t know how he would survive if anything happened to her. He’d never forgive himself for allowing her to go into danger alone. Rage built in his chest. The Tyboli would pay with their lives and their ships. Anyone who touched a hair on Gemma’s perfect head would die a slow, agonizing death.
They would meet a true Xaravian barbarian, and no one survived to tell that tale.
Chapter 36
Gemma
Gemma thought something was off, although it might have been the liquor. The bartender was very generous with pouring shots and encouraging her to drink more, which should have been enough of a warning. She concentrated on eating though, and answering the occasional question that came up from bounty hunters who wanted more information on the Tyboli. Some of them wanted advice on how to capture the Xaravians, since they only took away that she’d been successful in trapping Wyzak.
More than one asked her to join their crew, some of them more intensely than others. It made her skin prickle but she couldn’t afford to alienate anyone. Not yet. So she deferred by saying she just wanted to rest and recover, and would start looking for a new gig after she got over her hangover.
In reality, though, she wanted to find something faster than that and get the hell off Proxima before anyone else knew she was there. Something wasn’t right, and though she couldn’t put her finger on it, she’d learned to trust her instincts.
Gemma got up from the stool she’d occupied at the bar, putting her hands flat on the metal surface as the room wobbled, and frowned at the ordering panel. It looked like her bill had already been paid. She glanced at the bartender and pointed at the panel. “What’s up with that? What’s my total?”
“Been covered,” he said, shrugging. “On the house. Last gift from Milo, you could say.”
She swallowed a knot in her throat and nodded. “Thanks. You know where I can get a cheap room for the night? Some place without bugs and peepholes.”
He tilted his head to the right. “Three doors down that way. The Hiway Rest Stop. Tell them Mike sent you.”
“Will do. Thanks.” Gemma took a few careful steps toward the door, testing her balance, and was glad she’d dumped the last three shots into her food so she didn’t have to drink it. Playing the part and needing a drink were one thing, but getting sloppy drunk in a dangerous situation was just stupid.
And she wasn’t stupid.
So she didn’t go to the Hiway Rest Stop, although she headed in that direction. She didn’t have a reason not to trust the bartender, but enough people overheard what he told her that she didn’t feel comfortable taking his recommendation. Gemma checked the comms unit on her arm as she made it to the door, wondering whether she should signal the Sraibur that things were underway. They weren’t expecting any messages from her for a while. No reason to get the pirates all worked up, though. She could just imagine the damage if Wyzak thought she was in trouble.
Gemma snorted as she headed down the street, keeping a tight grip on her bag. She just needed to deal with being on Proxima for a day, at the most. She didn’t go immediately to a guesthouse she vaguely remembered Milo talking about but took a longer route that brought her back to the docks and the Yyurl mechanic’s shop.
It smiled with anticipation as it saw her approach, and practically rubbed its tentacles together with glee. “There is much damage.”
“I know.” She sighed and leaned against the greasy, dented counter in the tiny shop. She let her attention wander to elsewhere on the docks as foot traffic picked up. Odd that there were so many crews and teams circulating around docked ships. “How much to fix it all?”
The Yyurl flicked at an old model panel to show her a list of figures. “To make spaceworthy with basics, this much. To make spaceworthy with enough power that you can actually do your job, this much.”
Gemma groaned as she took the panel and pinched the bridge of her nose. She knew it was going to be a lot, but to have the numbers in front of her... “I don’t have ten thousand credits right now.”
“Pay upfront for any work,” it said. At least it looked regretful. “We don’t trust your kind.”
“My kind?” Gemma handed the panel back, and caught the mechanic looking at her mech arm. She clenched her jaw but refused to react too visibly, instead drawing her mech arm back slowly. “What kind is that, precisely? Earthers? Females?”
The mechanic shrugged its tentacles and brought up a different invoice on the panel. “Altered. Enhanced.” And it pointed at her arm.
Gemma hadn’t expected it to just point it out. She was used to others staring at the arm and whispering to others about it, but not outright admitting the arm freaked them out. Maybe it was the liquor, but she needed to know why. She cleared her throat. “Why? What difference does the... enhancement make?”
“Too clever,” the Yyurl said. It held up the panel again, though its multifaceted eyes tracked her without a hint of shame. “Enhanced recognize shortcomings and try to improve them. Can’t trust something too clever. If you want to sell the ship, this is price.”
Gemma almost couldn’t drag her attention to the panel. It thought she was clever for having her arm replaced with a monstrosity of metal and code? She shook her head and squinted at the numbers that ran across the panel’s scratched surface, and swallowed another groan. It wasn’t anywhere near what the Memphis was actually worth, even if just in terms of pounds of metal. “You’re kidding. You’ve got to at least double this.”
“Lots of trouble to get rid of ship like that,” the Yyurl said, blinking rapidly. Its attention strayed to something behind her, and the tentacles began to recoil. “Especially when half this quadrant looking for it.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Why would half the quadrant be looking for my ship?”
The mechanic chuckled, or at least made a sound sort of like a chuckle. It waddled and rolled to the other side of the small shop and swung a large viewing screen around so she could see as it pulled up some kind of list. “Big news around here—new bounty. Big money. More teams than normal out here searching for place to start.”
A new bounty? Gemma edged closer so she could squint at the screen, wishing she hadn’t had quite so much to drink so the words didn’t blur as much. It looked like...
Her heart sank. It couldn’t be.
“Could you, uh...” She gestured at the screen, but the mechanic had already opened up the file on the new bounty, and Gemma found her own face staring back at her. “Shit.”
“Wondered why you came in here with confident look,” the Yyurl said. One eye blinked, then the other. “Even for enhanced, was strange. You sure you want to leave ship behind?”
“No,” Gemma said. She gripped the counter and turned away from the screen so she wouldn’t see her terrified face in the file with an enormous bounty attached to her head. Dead or alive didn’t seem to matter. She assumed it was the Tyboli who wanted to even the score or at least drag her back under their control. They’d threatened to take her captive and then sell her on to somewhere else. Her stomach turned over at the thought. She’d rather die than end up enslaved. “But this is... not part of the plan.”
“So you have plan.” The mechanic made the raspy chuckling sound again. “It did not seem so when you arrived.”
She wanted to groan and bang her forehead against the counter. Gemma dared a look back out the window of the shop and realized that the half dozen bounty hunter teams lingering on the docks were probably there to capture her. No wonder the bartender and everyone else gave her odd looks in the bar. Maybe they’d all known about the bounty and were too shocked to just tackle her there in public.
Or maybe they were trying to figure out how one of their own ended up on a Tyboli hitlist. Maybe there was a chance that the bounty hunters would be on her side and would believe that the Tyboli had double-crossed her..
.
“You should perhaps change plan,” the Yyurl said. Its tentacles whipped into a frenzy as it moved past her and locked the door. “There are…many interested parties.”
The disparate groups of bounty hunters milling around on the docks had begun to shout at each other, maneuvering for position, though it seemed like most were still looking for her. None had focused in on the mechanic’s shop, instead paying attention to the Memphis and its spot at the end of the untended dock. Gemma forced herself to breathe normally, not wanting her racing heart and shaking hands to take over. She didn’t have time to panic.
She didn’t have anyone to trust, although the Yyurl had been straightforward with her so far. Gemma took a deep breath and kept to the side of the office, staying out of sight of the windows so the growing crowd wouldn’t riot and rampage into the mechanic’s business. “My plan is completely fucked. I... might need some assistance.”
“Smarter to stay neutral,” the mechanic said. Its eyes blinked at her one after the other, and a tentacle spread across the counter to retrieve the panel with all the estimates on it. “Not taking sides means business from all sides.”
Gemma ducked under the counter as the sound of the crowds increased and intensified, growing closer or at least more agitated. Shouting and a scuffle broke out and sent her scrambling to search for a back door or a better place to hide, barely grabbing her small bag before she scooted out of sight. “If you’ve got a way out of here, friend, I’ll make it worth your while.”
The blinking eyes tracked her across the room, though it stood out of the way as she headed for what looked like a back room. “With what?”
Her heart ached but she knew it was the only choice. “The Memphis is yours if I get out of here in one piece and on my own. I’ll trade her to you for a small ship, anything that will get me off this port and give me a chance to outrun some of those guys.”