by Logan Jacobs
“That’s fair,” Leon said slowly. He leaned closer to the copilot’s chair and glanced around as if someone else might hear us. “It was a job for the Unified Liberation Army.”
“I thought the Petty Talon had a lot of ULA sympathizers?” I asked innocently.
“This man is testing our patience,” Honey Bee chimed angrily enough to rattle the inside of my skull.
“It does,” the lean smuggler answered. “But the job I just took is for the ULA, only it doesn’t look like it’s for the ULA. They all think I’m a traitor to the cause.”
“But you’re a smuggler.” I shook my head. “Don’t they know that makes you a freelance agent?”
“Nah, I got too much conscience for all that,” Leon sighed. “It’s ULA or bust for me.”
I couldn’t do shit with a man with a self-confessed conscience. I nodded as if I agreed, but I just looked over his shoulder at the coordinates he had entered. They weren’t any I had used before, and my chip whirred inside my skull as she ran them through her databases.
Leon’s eyelids were drooping shut, and I reached for my gun to finish the job and knock him out. A low groan sounded from underneath the controls. I held my hand still. Was this ship so old it was about to just break apart in the middle of space?
“Life form,” Honey Bee chimed softly.
Another groan came from under the controls, but this time, it was followed by movement. A big ball of walking fuzz rolled out from under the ship’s controls and gave a yawn that sounded like a growl. As the creature stretched itself out, I saw that it was easily as tall as Leon but not quite as tall as me. Every inch of it was covered in fur, but it was all matted from how he’d been sleeping, and it looked like he had a bad case of mange.
“Anybody you know, old pal?” I nudged the half-asleep smuggler.
Leon’s eyes blinked open, and he just waved with a little smile. The fuzzy creature cocked its head to one side when it saw me, and I glanced at its huge claws. I didn’t know if I was more surprised or irritated by the appearance of another creature on the Skyhawk.
“That’s just my first mate,” the smuggler sighed. “He tends to hibernate when we’re on-world.”
“Super,” I muttered. “Well, would your first mate care for a drink?”
The strange creature yawned again, but he settled into a sitting position and held out his hands for a glass. I poured another round of clear liquor for both of them. They knocked it back like it was water, and I pretended to do the same. I planned to ditch them both by the time they noticed the little puddle of alcohol behind my seat.
After they each downed two more glasses, the smuggler started to slur his words. His first mate didn’t say anything but an occasional grunt or growl, but he seemed content to chug as much of the hooch as I poured him.
“You’re… good man,” Leon slurred. “Good in… shoot good.”
“Yeah, I know, buddy.” I clapped him on the back and poured him another drink. If he didn’t pass out soon, he was probably gonna give himself alcohol poisoning.
His first mate growled for another drink, and I was happy to oblige him. After another round, Leon only spoke in the same series of grunts and growls that his first made did. And then just as we got to the bottom half of the bottle, the smuggler’s head slumped toward his chest, and the first mate curled up in a ball on the floor of the bridge.
I rolled my eyes. It took them long enough. It would be easier to steal their ship now and not have to fight them for it, but we had already wasted fuel going toward whatever fool coordinates Leon had input, so it was time to get down to business.
“Find out anything?” I asked my chip.
“Coordinates unknown,” she answered. “They are not registered in any database as a planet.”
“Are they for a space station?” I guessed.
“A good guess,” Honey Bee chimed. “But if so, it is not a registered space station.”
“Great,” I groaned.
I looked at the fuel gauge. It was almost full, but me and Honey Bee quickly figured out it wouldn’t be enough to make it back to the Alexandria. We would have to stop at a planet or some other space station to refuel before we could head back to Grith.
“We can wait until we are closer to the coordinates,” Honey Bee suggested. “We can scan it then and tell what kind of station or thing it is.”
“You mean, you can scan it,” I corrected.
“I said, we can scan it,” she chimed happily.
I rolled my eyes behind my glasses and felt her laugh. If it was some kind of space station, there was a good chance I could use it to refuel. And if it turned out to be some kind of place I’d rather not go, I knew there was a supply outpost station not too much further than that. I might skid into it on fumes, but then again, I was feeling pretty lucky.
I glanced at the sleeping smuggler and his fuzzy first mate. Now I just had to get rid of these two idiots, and I would be one step closer to my next payday. I had Honey Bee scan the ship more closely as I studied the control panel.
“There are two pods,” my chip chimed. “Emergency only, limited reserve oxygen.”
“Enough for what I’m thinking?” I grinned.
“If deployed in… three minutes.”
I thought, and not for the first time, that I should have asked Grith for more money. I waited until Honey Bee told me where the emergency pods were, and then I grabbed the fuzzy first mate by his hairy arm and tugged. If Leon woke up, I could knock him right back out again, but I didn’t want to have to deal with his first mate’s claws if I could help it.
The two escape pods were off the galley, so I dragged the first mate down the stairs and into the galley. I locked the door behind me and went back for Leon. Once I got them both to the galley, I found the hatch that led down to both escape pods. There should have been one on both sides of the ship, just in case this side took too much damage in a fight, but the Skyhawk didn’t have much about her that made sense, unless I considered that it was just a piece of junk and they had removed the other pods to cut costs.
I shoved them both into the same escape pod. They should have just enough oxygen between the two of them to get back to Ineocca. Then they would be on their own, but at least I wouldn’t have to see or deal with either of them again.
I input the coordinates for the small shipyard back on the planet. The gamblers were probably long gone by now, and even if they weren’t, that sounded like a Leon Cotranis problem. Not a Trevor Onyx one.
Too bad. So sad.
As soon as the escape pod released, I grabbed a beer from the galley and headed back through the main hold. I had just put my foot on the lowest step leading back up to the bridge when Honey Bee chimed a warning in my head.
The sound of a shotgun chambering a round came from behind me, from the direction of the cargo hold.
Just how many people were hiding on this piece of shit spaceship? I turned around slowly to see who had me at gunpoint this time. But it wasn’t some two-bit smuggler or a half-drunk gambler who held the shotgun.
It was the most beautiful brunette I’d ever seen. Long legs spilled out from the slits in her floor-length white dress, and thick dark-chocolate brown hair was twisted in an elaborate braid that reached halfway down her back. She was slender except for her very generous, and very distracting, cleavage. The heavy red gemstone that hung from her neck should have been a pendant, but instead, it was just cradled between her full breasts.
“Who the hell are you?” the brunette demanded. “And where the hell is Leon?”
Chapter 9
“Well, I’m sure as shit not Leon,” I answered the brunette. “Now who the hell are you?”
“I asked you first.” She adjusted the weapon against her shoulder. “And I’m the one with the shotgun.”
“And where the shit did you come from?” I asked as I ignored her reference to her weapon. She was right, of course, since she did have the shotgun, but I figured I could keep her talking and she might forget abou
t it.
I wondered suddenly exactly what kind of smuggling Leon was into, if he’d had a woman hidden on board in the cargo hold. I leaned back against the stair railing and looked at her again. She didn’t look mistreated in any way, but I couldn’t think why a beautiful woman would be stashed on board without a word from the self-important smuggler about her presence.
“We can do a retinal scan if her gaze remains in one place long enough,” Honey Bee chimed softly.
“Where are we going?” the long-legged woman asked again. “Did we change coordinates? Where is Leon Cotranis?”
“Why don’t we back up there, sweetheart?” I exhaled. “Leon ain’t here, alright? He’s back on Ineocca with his first mate. So since it’s just you and me, how about we just take a second and rethink how you wanna play this?”
The brunette’s hands were shaking where she held the shotgun, but she kept it against her shoulder.
“Have it your way, then,” I sighed. “Either way, you’re not gonna shoot me,” I sighed.
“I swear to whatever god you pray to that I will,” she fired back.
“No,” I sighed again. “You’re not.”
The brunette swung the shotgun around to point at the ground beside me and blasted a hole straight into the floor of the main hold.
“What the fuck!” I swore.
“I think you can see that I’m serious,” the long-legged woman said again, with a toss of her rich brown hair.
“What I can see is that you just blasted a goddamn hole in the middle of the ship, while we’re flying around in the middle of fucking space,” I answered.
“Well, we’re not dead, are we?” the brunette pouted.
“Not yet,” I exhaled, “but all that means is that you didn’t hit an engine, and you didn’t blast a hole straight through the hull.”
She just stared at me.
“The hull,” I said again. “The bottom of the ship.”
“Well, that’s good,” the woman replied, with her chin in the air.
“Good?” I repeated. “Look around, sweetness. This ain’t the biggest or the sturdiest ship in the galaxy, so chances are you just blew the hell out of something we needed.”
“Our retinal scan was interrupted,” Honey Bee chimed in. “Her eyes need to stop moving around.”
“I just want some answers,” the brunette said in a small voice.
“You and me both, sweetness.” I smiled. “You show me yours, and I’ll show you mine.”
I took a step toward her and away from the shotgun hole in the floor. I’d have to assess the full extent of the damage later.
“You’re foul,” the woman declared.
I took another step toward her, and she took a step back. She had handled the shotgun like it wasn’t her first time with such a weapon, but she still trembled as she retreated across the main hold. The heavy red gemstone between her breasts swung back and forth with the movement.
I strode toward her as she backed up, but she was so jumpy that she glanced all around instead of at my face long enough for Honey Bee to scan her. Without a scan, we wouldn’t know if there were any reports of missing women or other information that would help me identify her. So far, the brunette herself wasn’t exactly helpful.
Her back hit the wall of the main hold, and I saw panic flash across her green eyes.
“You’re not gonna shoot me,” I said again.
“I will,” she tried.
“You won’t.”
I reached across the space between us, wrapped my hands around the shotgun barrel, and calmly pulled the gun out of her hands. Then I dropped the gun to my side, and she just stared at me with her mouth slightly open.
“If you were gonna shoot me, you already would have,” I told her. “If you knew how to fly this ship, you would have shot me in my face as soon as you found out that asshole is ground-bound on Ineocca. But since you didn’t, that means you most definitely don’t know how to fly this thing. So clearly, you need me.”
“Asshole?” she asked.
“Yeah, that Leon I’m-the-greatest-smuggler-who-ever-cheated asshole.”
“What are you gonna do with me?” she whispered.
“Well now that depends on a couple things, doesn’t it? Like first off, what kind of damage did you do to this ship when you decided to blow a hole in her floor?”
“I didn’t think about--”
“Of course you didn’t,” I interrupted her. “Now let’s you and me get up to the bridge and see what we’re working with, and then we’ll see about getting down to some answers.”
I gestured to the stairs with the shotgun. I thought for a second that she might tackle me, but she thought better of it and climbed the stairs to the bridge in front of me. I grinned as I watched her ass push against the back of her dress when she moved up the stairs. Not that I would have minded all that much if she had decided to tackle me.
“Still unable to complete her retinal scan,” my chip informed me.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I muttered.
“Pardon?” the long-legged woman asked.
“Not talking to you, sweetness,” I said casually as my eyes continued to roam her backside. “Just keep moving.”
The white dress fit her snugly around the hips. It should have been too tight for her to walk in, if it wasn’t for the slits on both sides that cut out all the way up to her mid-thigh. I whistled, but she probably thought that was meant for somebody else too, so she didn’t turn around.
When we reached the bridge, I nodded at the copilot’s chair. She seated herself gracefully and crossed one long leg over the other. Honey Bee laughed in my ear.
“I need to scan her retinas, not her legs and ass,” my chip chimed.
I had a goddamn comedian implanted in my brain.
“Now, am I gonna have to strap you in?” I asked the brunette. “Or will you sit there and try not to cause any trouble while I see what kind of damage you did to the old girl?”
“I’ll sit here,” she pouted.
I kept an eye on her anyway, or at least, I let Honey Bee watch her as I turned my attention to the control panel. Nothing blared or screamed at me right away, so it wasn’t anything to be immediately concerned about. But in the corner of the panel, where all the monitors were for on-world controls, one little light was blinking furiously red.
It was for the landing gear. The leggy brunette must have damaged it in her wild shotgun blast to the floor. I didn’t know exactly how fucked up it was, but I did know we were screwed. It would be a while before we had to land anywhere, of course, but when we did… well, that would sure be interesting.
There was nothing to do about that now. I’d have to go inspect it myself at some point, but first I had to deal with this very angry and very scared woman in the copilot’s seat. And the best way to do that was to get her to hold still so that Honey Bee could scan her retinas.
“I need you to look at me,” I told her. “Take a breath, and just look at me.”
“That might be easier if you’d take off your sunglasses,” she said as she crossed her arms.
“What, you don’t know where somebody’s eyes are unless you can see them?” I laughed.
She glared at me, and I knew I’d won anyway.
“Now look,” I started, “I don’t know what Leon’s plans were for you or where you were headed--”
“They were my plans,” she snapped. “He was just doing the job I hired him for.”
“Oh, was he now?” I smiled. “And why would you have planned any kind of job with a sack of shit like that?”
“There’s a Dominion bounty on her head,” the chip chimed in my ear.
Of course there was. That was the only explanation for why a beautiful woman like this was dealing with the likes of Leon Cotranis. She was wanted by the Dominion.
“Name, Orla Medalla,” Honey Bee continued.
I felt like I should know that name.
“None of your business,” Orla Medalla said.
“But if you take me where Leon was taking me, I’ll pay you the same rate I was going to pay him.”
“I don’t know, I’m pretty set on the coordinates I’m headed to now,” I lied. I leaned on the control panel to keep her from seeing our destination coordinates displayed.
“It’s more money than someone like you has ever seen,” the brunette said sharply.
Honey Bee hissed, but I couldn’t tell if it was from irritation or from the heat she then released through the vents in my shielding glasses.
“Listen, sweetheart, you don’t know the first thing about someone like me,” I growled. “So unless you want the same thing that happened to Leon to happen to you, I suggest you stop making assumptions about me.”
“What happened to Leon?” she asked with a little tremble in her voice.
“Oh, he’s probably bouncing back down onto Ineocca right about now in the escape pod I shot him and his first mate off in.” I leaned back in the pilot’s seat.
“What--” the woman started. “What did Leon ever do to you?”
“Orla Medalla,” Honey Bee continued with a little click. “Daughter of Julius Medalla, Supreme Commander of the Dominion. The Supreme Commander put the bounty on his daughter’s head with the specific condition that she was alive and unharmed upon return. She is currently believed to be a captive of the Unified Liberation Army.”
I grinned. This was getting interesting.
“Well, for one thing, he almost got me shot,” I sighed. “More than once. And he almost crashed my speeder, and he has some really questionable taste in liquor, and most importantly, he got in my way.”
The daughter of the Supreme Commander of the Dominion looked scared, but she held her chin high.
“There’s another escape pod, you know,” I teased. “I don’t think it has enough oxygen to make it all the way back to Ineocca, but it could be all yours if you don’t start cooperating.”
“Fine,” the long-legged woman exhaled. “You start. What’s your name?”
“Alright,” I agreed. “I’m Trevor Onyx.”
“I’ve never heard of you,” she said loftily.
“Well, I’ve heard of you.” I smiled and stretched my arms back behind my head.