by J. N. Chaney
Just silence.
The muffled hum of a discussion filtered through the doorway that led into the main shop, and I stood in the darkened hallway as I listened. It was hard to make out the words, but I heard a woman’s voice and Ollie’s familiar baritone.
“…I’m sorry but I can’t,” he said, his voice momentarily loud enough to make out.
She huffed, and the clack of heels on the floor followed. Ollie sighed, and the sound of his doors shutting followed shortly after. The light in the room faded, and I figured he’d turned on the window tint on the storefront displays to signal he was closed.
“What a mess,” he muttered under his breath as his footsteps neared the hallway where I was hiding. “I never should have given her those—”
He rounded the doorway into the hallway. As he saw me with my gun raised, his eyes went wide. He yelped and flattened his back against the wall, his hand on his heart as his breathing quickened.
“Jace, you ass,” he said, closing his eyes as a wave of relief washed over his face. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m going to give you one chance,” I said. “And only one chance to tell me the truth. Did you send a Union operative to my ship?”
This was the element of surprise I’d been after, and now I had one opportunity to use it. I had to use it well, and I had to be quick about it. Whatever he said next didn’t matter—what mattered were his expressions. His tone of voice.
A liar couldn’t keep up the charade in a moment like this.
At first, he didn’t speak. His brow wrinkled with confusion, and he tilted his head like I was talking in another language. He didn’t even look at the gun—he just looked at me like I was insane.
“Jace,” said Ollie calmly as he stared me down. “What the actual living fuck are you talking about?”
From the look on his face and the utter bewilderment in his voice, I could see he was telling the truth.
“Why’d you leave the back door unlocked?” I asked, still not completely convinced.
“Because you were on your way here!” He gestured toward me with a frustrated look on his face.
“Good,” I said as I let out a breath of relief and holstered my gun.
I really hadn’t wanted to kill him. I didn’t need more blood on my hands, and he would probably be instrumental in me getting myself out of this disaster.
He crossed his arms and frowned. “Now that the gun’s out of my face, can you tell me what the hell is going on?”
“A Union operative came to my ship,” I said. “He got on board under the pretense of a simple transport job. Said he wanted to get to the next star system. Then he pulled a gun on me the second the doors were shut and tried to torture me for intel.”
Ollie gaped at me, a look of horror on his face. “And you’re alive? Jace, I knew you were good, but killing a Union operative—”
“Yeah, I know.” I nodded and scratched the back of my head, still a little bewildered from the surreal experience, myself. “This whole thing is crazy.”
“A Union operative…” Ollie wandered into his workshop in the back, and I trailed after him as he muttered absently to himself.
He sat at his workbench and stared at the floor, his eyes glazing over with thought. I leaned against the doorframe and crossed my arms. Whatever was going through his head, it was clear he needed a moment to figure this out for himself.
“What did you do, Jace?” he asked.
I didn’t answer. I just stared him down and let the silence speak for itself.
He still didn’t need to know about the data stick, mainly because I didn’t want to lose the first decent agent I’d come across. He probably wouldn’t care about my reasoning—though, being an RBO agent in the middle of the Deadlands, maybe he would realize the stake he had in keeping the Sarkonians from conquering his shop and everything in it.
For the moment, I kept my mouth shut. I could always change my mind later and tell him, but I wanted to be completely sure it was a good idea before I did that.
“You know what,” said Ollie, waving his question away in the lingering quiet. “It doesn’t matter. The fact is, you’re one of my Renegades and the Union is after you.” He rubbed his jaw, lost in thought again as he stared at his piles of trash.
“I need this to go away, Ollie,” I said.
“Yeah, Jace, you do,” he responded with a scoff. “First thing’s first, you can’t stay on your ship for a few days. It won’t be safe. If that Operative knew about it, others will, too. Was he working alone?”
I shook my head. “There’s at least one other. Maybe more.”
“Gods, this is bad,” muttered Ollie as he rubbed his eyes. “Look, Jace, you can stay in a room I have on a lower deck of the station. It’s not mine, just an extra one I have for situations like this. It’s registered under an alias, and you can use it any time you’re on Taurus Station.”
“That’ll help me a lot,” I admitted, impressed with his generosity—and also a little skeptical of what it might cost me. “What do I owe you for that?”
“It’s a glorified closet with a bed, Jace,” said Ollie as he shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. Keep me as your agent, and I’ll consider us even.”
My first impulse was to ask what the catch would be, but he just kept talking.
“I need to check something.” He pulled a data pad out of his pocket. His fingers flew across the screen as he scanned the information I couldn’t see from this angle. “I need to know if there’s a contract on you that I somehow missed. I’ll check the gal-net and the Renegade network. Give me a minute.”
As he flicked his finger across the screen, consumed by whatever he was reading, my body tensed. Part of me didn’t want to know what he might find, but I had to brace myself again for the worst.
If I had an open contract on my life, I was screwed. Renegades would pour out of every nook and cranny until I was dead, and I’d likely spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. An open contract would mean an early grave or an early retirement—or maybe both.
The life that defined me and the ship, and that I’d sacrificed everything to get, were both at stake here, and it all depended on what Ollie found in his search.
“I don’t understand.” He squinted, as if he’d misread something on the data pad.
“What is it?” I asked, just wanting him to spit it out already and get this over with.
“There’s nothing.” He set down the data pad on the workbench and stared off again at the piles of trash. “Nothing at all.”
I hesitated, not entirely sure I understood his confusion. “That sounds like a great thing to me, Ollie.”
“No, I mean there’s nothing,” he repeated, looking at me this time. “No warrants. No mention of you at all in the gal-net or Renegade networks. If you had an operative after you, there should be something.”
“He mentioned he was acting under the radar,” I said with a shrug. “Maybe it’s confidential or locked behind some high-level security access.”
“But you’re just a Renegade,” said Ollie with a bewildered shrug. “Why would they keep mention of you behind some advanced security?”
“Hey,” I muttered, a little offended.
“It’s a fair point.” Ollie raised one eyebrow, daring me to disagree.
I shrugged. He wasn’t wrong.
“Let me reach out to my contact in the Union,” said Ollie, returning to the data pad as his fingers tapped along the screen again. “Maybe they have something.”
“You have a contact at the Union?”
Ollie smirked and gave a modest shrug. “I have contacts in a lot of places.”
While he worked, and since I had nothing better to do than sit in the stress of wondering who else wanted me dead, I took a closer look at some of the stuff he had stored in the back of his shop. It looked like he’d spent a fortune on adhesives. Some of the labels littered across the shelves said they were supposed to dry clear, while others were
meant to simulate welds when properly applied. They had all kinds of warnings on the labels, along with grotesque icons involving burned fingers and sizzling flesh, which I guessed were supposed to demonstrate how dangerous the stuff was.
I picked up a can of welding gel and turned it around, examining the warning labels more closely.
“Please don’t touch anything,” said Ollie without looking up.
“I wasn’t,” I lied as I set the tube down.
“There’s nothing here.” Ollie groaned and rubbed his neck, still staring at the pad. “The Union has zero data on the secured channels about you at all. As far as they’re concerned, you’re just a citizen.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” I said as I paced the room behind Ollie.
I couldn’t keep still anymore. With the near-death experience and a Union operative after me, I had to fidget or I’d lose my damn mind.
“No, it doesn’t make sense at all,” agreed Ollie.
“If there’s nothing on me in the system, what does that even mean?” I asked, still pacing as I tried to piece it all together. “If a man claiming to be a Union operative cons his way onto my ship with an empty suitcase, handcuffs, a hidden gun, a comm in his ear, a partner somewhere on Taurus Station—”
“Wait.” Ollie lifted his hand to interrupt me. “I’ve got it. If there’s no formal Union contract on you, even in the secured channels, then this might be a private organization posing as the Union.”
“That’s a risky move.” I rubbed my jaw, wondering who would be ballsy enough to try such a thing.
Even though I still had people on my tail who wanted me dead, my shoulders relaxed at the comforting hope that the Union hadn’t really sent them. If they didn’t have the full power of the Union military and security forces at their disposal, I stood a far better chance of surviving this.
“They know I’m on Taurus Station,” I said, starting to piece a plan together. “They know I have the Renegade Star. Both are bad.”
“Yes,” agreed Ollie as he set his data pad on the workbench.
“So, what if they thought I left Taurus Station?” I asked. “We forge a sale of receipt for the Star, and I camp out here on station for a few days before leaving.”
“That could work,” admitted Ollie. “I could leak a few hints that you’re leaving on the public transport tonight to throw anyone else who’s chasing you off your tail. If they don’t think you have the Star anymore, perhaps they’ll leave the ship alone.”
“Even better,” I said. “Let’s get them off station, and I’ll camp out in that room you offered me until this blows over.”
“It won’t blow over, Jace. Not until these people are dead.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” I leaned against the wall by the door to the hallway and set the back of my head against the cold steel.
I was in deep shit, all to protect the Deadlands from invasion.
I sighed and rubbed my eyes. In the end, it would be worth it.
Hopefully.
As long as I didn’t die in the process.
“So where’s the dead operative?” asked Ollie.
“On the Star,” I confessed. “Still staining my lounge floor,” I added bitterly.
“I’ll handle that for you.” Ollie returned to the data pad and began tapping away at the surface.
I scoffed. “You’ll handle it? How?”
“If you let some of my cleaners on the ship, they’ll make it look like he was never there.”
“I don’t know, Ollie,” I said. “I don’t like people on the Star without me there, and there were a lot of gunshots. There’s a lot for them to fix.”
“It’s handled.” My agent shot me a look that dared me to fight him on this. “I’ve got it, and they won’t touch anything they’re not there to either fix or remove. Promise.”
I frowned, torn between getting rid of the body and not wanting to add to my body count if these assholes tried anything while on board the Renegade Star.
“Have your AI narrate the process if you want,” said Ollie with an annoyed flourish of his hand while he worked. “Or patch a video feed through if you want to watch. I’m not asking for the deed to your ship here, Jace. I just need to handle this.”
“Why?” I asked, the familiar skepticism resurfacing. “What’s in it for you?”
Ollie laughed. “It’s part of my job as your agent. Why do you think I have access to cleaners? This is what I do. We’re partners.”
I hesitated, watching the man as he returned to his data pad to work his magic. I’d never really had someone looking out for me before. Even though I kind of liked it, I didn’t know if I could trust it. Not yet.
“Alright,” I conceded with a long and weary sigh. “Let’s get this over with.”
16
Three days had passed since I’d killed the man who claimed to be a Union Operative. The cleaners had scrubbed the blood away and repaired the holes on the Renegade Star. They’d even bought me a new couch, which was identical to my old one by some miracle, and I’d watched it all through the holo television in a room roughly the size of the kitchenette on my ship.
I hadn’t left the room since Ollie had given me access to it, and I was climbing up the godsdamn walls.
I reclined on the bed, the plain gray sheets strewn aside and an empty whiskey bottle buried somewhere in the blankets. My foot smacked against the glass as I adjusted myself on the mattress, and I grimaced as pain shot through my ankle.
I’d find it eventually. Right now, it didn’t matter.
My head hit the wall when I leaned back to get more comfortable, and I winced as a bolt of agony shot down my neck.
Ollie had oversold the room, really. This wasn’t just a glorified closet with a bed in it. This hole in the wall was a matchbox with a door, and I didn’t know how much more of my so-called “vacation” I could take.
The holo television at the foot of the bed flickered briefly as I adjusted again to get more comfortable. Some news program was on, and a newscaster I’d never seen before droned on in a soothing voice about the continuing safety of the Union planets and how happy the lives of citizens truly were. About how lucky any Deadlands planets who were accepted into the Union—or what we out here called forced at gunpoint—would be.
It was all horseshit. Every bit of it.
As she talked, I rooted around in the sheets for that empty whiskey bottle, finally determined enough to find it. My hand smacked against it through the blankets, and I cursed with pain as I tried to extract it.
“…and that’s why I’m grateful to be a Union citizen,” said the blonde reporter with a broad smile. Her eyes crinkled with manufactured joy as she stared into the camera, and I wondered how deluded someone had to be to swallow that much propaganda with that broad of a grin.
“Thanks, Haley,” said another reporter as the screen changed, showing an older blonde this time. She lifted a data pad in front of her and smiled into the camera with the same false happiness as the first woman.
They looked like clones, honestly, just hatched maybe a decade or two apart.
I finally found the empty bottle and hurled it straight through the reporter’s face. It whizzed through the hologram and smashed against the far wall, and the low-budget holo television flickered again as the glass hit the floor.
“Union shills,” I slurred.
I wondered if they had a brain cell to share between them or when the last time they’d had an individual thought might’ve been.
In the drunken haze I’d built by consuming three full bottles of whiskey over just a few days, the world around me spun briefly. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the wall to settle the spins.
Even though I thought I’d moved slowly and deliberately, my head smacked hard against the wall behind me yet again.
I cursed loudly and rubbed my scalp while the alcohol-soaked spins got worse.
Nausea burned in the back of my throat, and I pressed my fingers against my eyes
to stem the surge of disorienting motion sickness. I swung my legs tenderly over the side of the bed that wasn’t crammed against a wall and leaned my elbows on my knees. The stubble from several days of not shaving irritated my face, and I absently ran my fingers through it to quell the discomfort.
“This ain’t the vacation I planned, Siggy,” I admitted into the comm in my ear.
“I’m sorry to hear that, sir,” said the AI. “I know how important having some time off was to you, and you seemed so excited about it before the operative incident.”
“The operative incident, huh?” I chuckled. “That’s a bit of an understatement.”
“I suppose it is,” answered Sigmond. “Still, perhaps there’s something we can do to fix your unpleasant time off. How can I improve the experience with the limited resources we have at the moment?”
I hiccupped, my body teetering from side to side with the movement, and I pressed the comm deeper into my ear in case it was close to popping out. I hadn’t taken the device off since I’d isolated myself in the bedroom, if it could really be called that.
The comm was my only connection to Sigmond, and I didn’t like being so far away from my home and office.
The Renegade Star wasn’t just my ship. It was my freedom. My escape from everything the Union wanted me to be: obedient, complacent, and quiet. The Star was my one and only escape from the ordinary and the mundane.
It was and always had been my ticket to a better life, and it was sitting in an isolated docking bay, rotting.
Like me.
“I can’t,” I slurred. “I can’t do this anymore.”
“Can’t do what, sir?” asked Sigmond.
“Can’t sit here rotting!” I shouted as I smacked my fist against the wall that was too close to my head. “Every man has his limit, Siggy, and this is mine. Lying here, doing nothing. Being nobody. Useless.”
I didn’t even know if my inebriated rambling made sense—not that Sigmond would judge me. The point was, I’d reached the boundary of what I could stomach.
No matter how long Ollie wanted me to lie low, I was done.