by J. N. Chaney
I sighed and pointed to the empty seat across the table from me. It would be best for both of us if we just got this over with.
She pinched her eyes shut and hesitated a moment more before stalking over to my table and sliding into the empty chair. Her dark hair coiled by her face as she frowned, her eyes locked on mine, and I figured she had a few choice words for me.
This would be fun.
“You?” she snapped, her nose wrinkling with disdain. “Really?”
“It’s a pleasure to see you, too,” I said as I sat back, crossed my arms, and smiled.
“I barely got out of there, you know,” she continued, as if I hadn’t said anything. “I could hear them shouting, but I couldn’t get the shuttle to work until the last possible second. You nearly got me arrested.”
“Don’t be so dramatic.” I rolled my eyes. “I made sure you had time.”
“Do you know how many credits you cost me?” she asked, her eyes narrowed.
“I sure do,” I said with a smug little grin.
“You ass. I needed that money.” She put both hands palm down on the table, hard enough to cause a little shake.
“And I don’t?” I raised one eyebrow in challenge. “Thing is, Max wouldn’t have given you the full amount. That’s who you got the job from, right?”
“Max who—uh, yeah, Max.” She cleared her throat and looked away. “Well, serves you right that he scammed you, then.”
I watched her for a second as her eyes darted around the cafe, and I could practically taste the lie. Every Renegade knew Max Ventrose, and that was part of why I’d gone to him. Word was he could get anyone a job, but now I knew how he could afford the contracts and lavish lifestyle he’d built for himself.
But this girl had just lied to me.
I leaned forward with my elbows on the table as I stared her down. “You’re not a Renegade at all.”
“Don’t be stupid. Of course I am.” She waved a hand dismissively.
“No, it makes sense now,” I said, rubbing my jaw as I pieced it together. “You couldn’t draw your gun fast enough to at least match me. You didn’t have an AI to ensure your shuttle didn’t get hacked. You don’t seem to know the first thing about protecting yourself on these missions. You just said that to piss me off, didn’t you?”
With an irritated groan, she ran her hand through her hair. “Fine. You got me. I’m just a freelancer. I’ve been trying to get an agent forever, but no one will take me on until I’ve got my own ship. I’m just doing this until I can save up enough to get started.”
“Let me give you some advice, then.” I looked her straight in the eye, serious. “Don’t go around telling people you’re a Renegade. It’ll get you shot.”
She snorted impatiently. “Noted, asshole.”
“You’re welcome.”
She studied my face for a moment before leaning back in her chair. “Well, the least you can do is buy me a drink. You did steal what I’d put all that effort into procuring, after all. You owe me.”
“Nah,” I said and shook my head.
She growled softly and curled her hand into a fist.
To be honest, I was kind of enjoying this. The girl was wound tight, and it was just too easy to get under her skin.
As she glared out a nearby window at the dozens of heads darting by through the crowd, my eyes drifted to her chest. Her tight jacket left little to the imagination, and a thin line of cleavage was visible beyond the half-zipped leather. I wouldn’t mind letting her work out her anger in my bed, but it would probably be best not to sleep with someone I’d stolen from.
Besides, she seemed like the type to stab me in my sleep.
“Do you still have my gun?” she asked while still staring outside. Her body stiffened with the question, and she refused to look at me, like she was afraid of the answer. Most people would have pawned a decent gun like that by now, and I figured she was trying to make peace with the inevitable.
It would probably be a good idea to lie. I doubted it would work out well for me if she knew the truth—about anything regarding me, really—but in this one instance, I didn’t see the point of being dishonest.
“Yeah, I have it,” I admitted. “Thought about selling it, just haven’t gotten that far yet.”
“Really?” She sat up straighter, her eyes widening. Her red lips parted with shock.
“You have absolutely no poker face, lady,” I told her.
She frowned, staring angrily at me again as her shoulders set. “Give me back my gun.”
“Nah,” I said again.
“What do you want for it?” she asked as she tapped her fingers on the table. “It’s sentimental.”
“You really need to learn how to negotiate,” I told her as I sipped again on my coffee. “Now I’m going to charge you double what I would have before if you want it back.”
“Gods, I hate you,” she said, then she pressed her lips together for a moment. “Fine. How much?”
I smirked. She was worse at negotiations than I thought. It almost made me want to go easy on her.
Almost.
After a moment of consideration, I pulled out my data pad from my pocket and typed out a number that I almost felt guilty writing down. I slid the pad to her, and the color drained from her face.
I suppressed a chuckle. “Like I said, you really need to learn how to negotiate.”
The girl groaned and rubbed her eyes as she slipped her hand into her pocket. I froze on impulse, my eyes narrowing as I watched her reach for something I couldn’t see. A knife, maybe. My hand darted to my pistol, and if she tried anything with me, I’d put a bullet between her eyes.
In the Deadlands, I couldn’t be too careful. Taurus might be a decently civilized station, but there were plenty of the unsavory types here too. Every place had its underbelly.
Instead of a gun, however, she pulled out the data stick and set it on the counter before subtly sliding it over to me.
I relaxed and reached for it. My fingers brushed hers as I took the stick from her, and her blue eyes darted toward me. She scowled and snatched her hand back as I pocketed the small item.
“I have to be honest,” I said, leaning my elbows on the table and leaned forward so I could speak low without whispering. “If I find out you swapped the real one for a fake, I’ll track you down. No one gets between me and a job, do you understand?”
“Don’t you threaten me,” she said in a dangerously low tone.
“I don’t need to,” I replied. “It’s a fair warning.”
For a moment, neither of us spoke. We simply watched one another, each daring the other to move first as the relaxing music played through the speakers overhead. A couple walked through the door behind her, and she didn’t so much as turn her head. Even though they strolled toward a counter on the far end of the shop, the girl didn’t even flinch at the movement. Either she didn’t notice people walking behind her—in which case she might find herself in an early grave if she ever did become a Renegade—or she was too busy hating me to notice.
“Don’t you dare pawn my gun,” she said. She stood, her chair scraping against the floor as the muffled conversation hummed around us. “I want it back.”
I had a feeling that this wasn’t the last time we’d meet. As she stomped off, I decided that if that was the case, I wouldn’t mind all that much.
7
I sat in the pilot’s seat of the cockpit on board the Renegade Star, staring at the little data stick in my hands as I waited for clearance to leave Taurus Station. In an ideal world, I would have just gunned it and left the station in the dust to get this delivery over with, but a station this big required protocol.
Boring, mind-numbing protocol.
To be fair, it made some sense. Even if I knew my ship inside and out and could fly through an asteroid field if I had to, most pilots relied on navigation controls and direction from someone who could see the big picture. If some egghead locked away in a control tower didn’t direct t
he traffic careening around the station, this place would become nothing but an orbiting junkpile of crashed ships and shrapnel.
The downside was I had to wait in line.
There was that patience thing again. Gods, I hated practicing it.
To occupy myself, I twirled the data stick in my fingers, back and forth, like the ticking pendulum of one of those Ancient Earth clocks in a kid’s cartoon. I never knew why they tried to shoehorn those historical facts into children’s programming. Educational, probably.
I held the stick aloft as I pivoted in my chair and set my feet on the dash. Through the side window of the cockpit, stars littered the black of deep space, blurry and out of focus as I studied the data stick.
I was getting paid a hell of a lot of money to bring this thing to deep space.
Too much money for a simple job.
Though I hadn’t been a Renegade for long, I’d survived this far by not being an idiot. If something seemed too good to be true, it usually was.
As I stared at the thing I needed to deliver, I had a growing gut feeling that this was going to be another one of those life lessons I’d have to learn the hard way.
Damn it.
I rubbed my jawline and watched the little device in my hand, seriously debating plugging it in and having Siggy take a look. Ollie had warned me they would be able to tell if I took a peek, but that could’ve been bullshit.
Probably not, but it was possible.
For such a great payday, there had to be something infinitely priceless on this stick.
Something people would kill for.
Something people might even die for.
I groaned. Lesson already learned: figure this shit out before you take jobs in the future.
For now, this one was going to get done one way or another. I needed that money, and some rich asshole needed to steal whatever was on this stick.
“Siggy, I’ve got a job for you,” I said.
“What’s that, sir?” asked the AI.
“Scan the externals on this,” I said, waving the little data stick in the air. “Whatever you do, don’t access the files on it. They can’t know we had a look, understand? I think Ollie’s intel might’ve been bullshit, but I’m not about to test that theory.”
“Of course, sir.”
I set the data stick on a small pad on the dash and leaned back in my chair as the scanner glowed beneath the portable device I was supposed to deliver.
Half of me expected him to find a bomb, or something insane that would make me want to hurl this thing into space. With the way my last few jobs had gone, that wouldn’t even surprise me at this point.
I fidgeted in my seat as the deep scan ran, eager to know the results already. As my foot brushed up against the dash, my Foxy Stardust bobblehead wobbled from her perch by the holo, like she was agreeing that I should be concerned about this.
“Scan complete, sir,” said Sigmond.
“And?” I pressed.
“There’s a tracer on the stick that is currently emitting our coordinates,” said the AI in a soothing, calm voice.
My body went still with dread, and for a moment I couldn’t speak. “There’s a godsdamn tracer on that thing?!”
“Yes, sir,” said the AI. “This is most unfortunate.”
“Most un—Siggy, this is bad.” I pushed myself to my feet and paced the cockpit with my hands on the back of my head while I tried to think of what to do.
“There is good news, sir,” assured the AI. “Since we are surrounded by other ships, it would be impossible for anyone to pinpoint our exact location amongst all of the other vessels. For the moment, we are fairly easy to overlook.”
“For now,” I pointed out. “The moment we launch, we’re fucked.”
“Eloquently put, sir.”
“Can’t you turn it off?” I asked, ignoring the AI’s snark.
“That does not appear possible, sir,” replied Sigmond. “I’ve analyzed the tracer in depth, and it has a failsafe built in that would erase all data on the device should I attempt to deactivate the trace.”
I smacked my fist against the back wall by the door, and for a moment, I simply rested my forehead against the cold metal so that I could collect my thoughts.
Sigmond had a point. For now, we were safe in a sea of other vessels, and since traffic control was still figuring out who was ahead of me in line, I had a little while to think up a plan.
Suddenly, waiting in line didn’t seem so bad.
If the girl who’d dropped this off hadn’t been intercepted despite carrying it a vast distance through the Deadlands, it was probably her lack of a ship that had saved her ass. Ironic, really, since she’d said that was all she wanted right now.
It was probably the only reason she didn’t have a bullet in her back, truth be told.
Now, the stick was my problem, and I was about to become a very easy target in the middle of space. I wouldn’t be able to hide in a throng of ships if I was going to deliver this to the middle of nowhere.
A thought flickered to life like a bad light popping on in the back of my brain. Maybe that girl who had dropped it off was in on this. After all, the chances of seeing her on Taurus were slim to none. What were the chances that she just happened to be there taking the same job I had, again? Maybe she had turned me in out of some screwed up attempt at revenge and this was all a set up.
As soon as the idea hit me, I waved it away. It didn’t seem plausible. Even if she really wanted my head on a spike, it was all too coincidental. That look of hatred and surprise when she’d seen me sitting at her mark’s table had been too real.
Besides, if she got me killed, she would never get her precious gun back.
“Alright, so you can’t disable the trace,” I said, piecing my new plan together as I spoke. “But can you scramble it? Screw up the transmission so that they don’t know for sure where it’s coming from?”
“That may be possible,” answered the AI. “However, it would be an imperfect solution, even in theory. There will still be an element of traceability, and depending on who is receiving these coordinates, they may be able to bypass my attempts to scramble the tracer. If I attempt this, sir, it’s important to remember that it will be a short-term solution.”
“Then we need to get this delivery job done as soon as possible,” I said, plopping down in the pilot’s chair and grabbing the controls, eager to get it over with.
“Shall I make an attempt, sir?”
“Yeah, Siggy, do it,” I snapped. “Just don’t trip the damn failsafe. If we lose all the data, we’re screwed. That means both of us, pal.”
“Understood, Captain.”
As I tightened my grip around the controls, eager to move but utterly unable to go anywhere, I glared at the dash as if it were going to do something. As if it would have the answers I needed. At any moment, traffic control would order me to leave, and I couldn’t risk giving up my place in line. I’d been waiting ages already, and I didn’t want someone pinpointing the Star while I waited to depart. If security caught wind of what I was doing, they would lock down the ship and detain me.
Even though this thing was being traced, I needed to get into the void and put distance between my ship and the people who might try to blow a hole in it. At least out in the black I could evade capture. The universe was a big place and I had a few tricks up my sleeve.
Down here, I was just a sitting duck.
The risk of getting caught seconds from leaving the station set my nerves on fire, and my eyes kept darting toward the data stick as it sat on Sigmond’s scanner.
If I didn’t get my full payout for this, I was going to bury the people who took it from me. A man didn’t need this kind of stress in his life.
“Sir, it appears we are receiving a communication from the control tower. Shall I put them through?”
I groaned and pinched my eyes shut.
The timing for this couldn’t have been worse.
“Yeah, Siggy, let them thro
ugh,” I said with an irritated sigh.
“Controller to Renegade Star,” said a man’s voice through the speakers. “You are cleared for departure. You have thirty seconds to initiate the departure procedure before we move to the next in line.”
“What’s the wait?” I asked.
“The wait?” the man stuttered, like no one had ever asked him that before. “If you give up your place in line?”
“Yeah.”
“Two hours.”
“Damn it,” I muttered. “Alright, we’re going.”
“Twenty seconds left,” replied the man, not bothering to mask his own annoyance.
“I’m going, I’m going,” I snapped. “So impatient.”
“The transmission has ended, sir,” said Sigmond. “Initiating departure sequence.”
“While you scramble the tracer, tell me where we’re going,” I instructed as I eased the controls into action.
The ship rumbled around us, and the holo activated in front of me. The mechanised arm holding us in the bay eased us out into space and shuddered when it reached its full length. As the thrusters activated, we peeled away from Taurus Station and angled toward the stars beyond.
“We will require six SG Points to reach our destination,” answered Sigmond. “The total estimated travel time will be several days at a minimum.”
“Good thing Ollie gave us that first-timer discount,” I muttered. “We’re going to need it just to pay for fuel. Any updates on scrambling that tracer?”
“None yet, sir,” answered the AI. “It is highly advanced software.”
I cursed under my breath and took my sweet time guiding us away from the station, probably half as fast as I would usually be flying, just to give Sigmond more time. The folks in the control tower were probably cursing my name, but I didn’t care.
I didn’t want to get into deep space before Sigmond had the chance to scramble the device currently tracing my location.
“Nearing first Slip Gap Point,” said Sigmond.
“You’re still scrambling that tracer, right?” I asked, frowning as I guided the Star toward the SG Point. “That’s priority number one, Siggy!”