Can't Shoot Straight Gang Returns

by Blaze Ward

  Of course, that was when the mice were most likely to get up to mischief. Look at Handsome Rob, for instance.

  And at the end of the day, Rob was a patriot. He just had a weird way of expressing it. Looking around the table he nodded to the rest of them. They all had weird ways of being patriotic.

  But Corynthe was still technically the enemy. Anything that weakened a rogue Governor, even a nice one, helped secure Lincolnshire’s future, if this Queen Jessica could turn Corynthe into a legitimate threat to Salonnia.

  “So I have one get-out-of-jail-free card here?” Rob asked, doing the math in his head.

  “Probably two,” Jorge’s seriousness was back. “If you play the first one right, you won’t have to blow your cover until later, but let’s assume that our first mistake is critical, if not terminal to this mission. You set to play the patsy, kid?”

  Rob grinned.

  “You mean I stopped, with you people?”

  Roxy leaned close enough to punch him in the shoulder, but there was no force behind it. He really did belong with this team now.

  Which was good. He was going to have to swindle an entire planet of cutthroat pirates next. While not getting caught.

  9

  Finn didn’t like the ambitious look in Aoki’s eyes when they got back to their suite. He had about an hour until he had to go into a an entire afternoon of meetings, but he could still play a little hooky with his wife. She just didn’t look like she wanted to fool around.

  “You think he’s serious?” she asked absently.

  “Which conversation are we having?” Finn grinned at the woman.

  “Huh? Oh. Longbow,” she finally got him on the right page of the hymnal. “Could a second album be as easy as finding the right songwriter?”

  Finn shrugged. He knew next to nothing about how music worked, other than you hit the play button and sat back to enjoy it.

  “You aren’t already scheming how to find him one?” she turned to him with some level of surprise, however mock and contrived it was.

  They had been married more than thirty years.

  “Do we think he wants one?” Finn shot back.

  “What do you mean?” her gorgeous brows knit together.

  “Maybe he’s afraid to try it again, dear,” Finn said, taking a spot on the couch and patting the seat. She settled in and leaned against him. “Think about fighter pilots who go through that level of trauma and manage to survive. How many of them ever really make it back to flying?”

  “You think he can’t face it?” she asked, eyes pensive.

  “I think it has been over twenty years, Aoki,” Finn said. “And the original album made enough money that someone would have tried, before now. Probably, he had a shitty contract and didn’t feel like going through all that again. That might be why he does soundtracks. Someone left a hole in the legalese, and that gives him an out.”

  “So we shouldn’t try?” Aoki asked.

  “We shouldn’t necessarily expect to succeed, which isn’t the same thing,” Finn said.

  “True,” she agreed. “Plus, you’d have to go through that pimp in the shiny suit to do anything.”

  “Him I’m not worried about,” Finn grinned. “I’ll just throw him in jail if he gets pissy. But I need to handle that task delicately, at least for now.”

  “Why is that?” Aoki asked. “When have you ever had to walk on eggshells with a foreigner?”

  “It’s not him,” Finn said. “I need to see what kind of hold he has on the others. What kind of control he has. They obviously trust him to get this movie thing made, so just cutting that punk off at the knees might ruin everything that they were trying to accomplish.”

  “You might help him anyway?” she was a little aghast, but she was a school teacher by training, not a politician. Even if she hadn’t been in a classroom in a decade.

  “Maybe,” Finn admitted. “Maybe not. For now, I’m just going to watch him. Or rather, Steafan is. If he steps over a line, then I’ll throw him in jail.”

  Finn’s comm rang before she could reply. Checking the readout, it was Steafan.

  “Got news?” Finn asked as he answered.

  “Maybe,” his First Officer replied. “Those folks delivered a copy of the script. An actual, paper printout marked DO NOT COPY. I have someone reading it. We might have a problem.”

  “Okay?” Finn said. “What kind of problem?”

  “It’s pretty good, from what they tell me.”

  10

  This was a little more like it. Handsome Rob looked around the dive and counted noses as he made his way to the bar and grabbed an empty bar stool at one end.

  It was weird being in Corynthe. Not this dive, particularly. He had been in hundreds just like it on dozens of planets in his previous jobs as a courier and field agent. No, the gender breakdown was off, at least subconsciously.

  Any other place, on any other planet, it would probably be two to one males over females. Not a true reflection of the sort of gender equality you found in ship’s officers, because a lot of women didn’t necessarily hang out in joints like this. But they were around.

  Here, there were no female officers in sight. No, scratch that. Two. Maybe. Two more that Rob would have qualified as wives if pressed. Five others had the look of professional escorts about them.

  Yeah, only two women in here looked like they came off a starship.

  It had been a decade since that Aquitaine captain, Keller, had stolen the throne of Corynthe, killing a massive block of folks who didn’t think a woman had the balls to do something like that. Women were freer to pursue naval careers. Rob even knew that a few had succeeded, but they were far between.

  To see two in here surprised him. He presumed they were from out of town or something.

  At least he was dressed not to stand out quite so badly as professional women did, as he looked around and ordered a beer.

  There seemed to be a uniform look among the men so desperately not-belonging to an organized military. Rob grinned. All alike in their non-conformity, as his mom used to say.

  Tall boots that buckled on the sides, usually either metallic silver of some shade or a hardened plastic shell, mostly black. A few had old-style leather boots once called cavalry.

  Tight pants that tucked into the boots. Again, usually black, or at least a very dark shade, not counting the one guy in the corner with neon yellow boots and hot pink pants.

  There was always one.

  The planet above was a desert, but they were underground here, and temperature rarely moved by more than a few degrees. Ships were pretty much the same temperature at all times, except when you dialed your cabin down to sleep.

  Pullover shirts, generally tight enough usually to show off muscles, in some stretchy, jersey-like material. And there were muscles. Queen Jessica might have generally outlawed dueling as a thing, but these men had gotten to be officers and captains by knife fighting, most of the time. You had to be big and fast, or small and even faster to survive and thrive.

  The shirts were where their personality showed. Colors. Patterns. Images or logos printed on the front. Long sleeve or short or medium. Nothing Rob could see there qualified as a uniform. Heavens forbid. Hot pink pants were paired with a burgundy shirt that actually had white lace at the collar in a way that managed to look almost regal, rather than silly.

  Score points for hiring a good tailor.

  About half the men were wearing an outer shell of some sort, be it a light jacket, a dressy vest buttoned up, or a light vest open like a jacket. Here, the men came back to conservative colors, usually monochrome. Over the burgundy shirt, the one man was wearing a white vest, almost skin tight like a corset, done with green paisley patterns.

  Loud, but somehow not obnoxious. Perhaps stylish at a level nobody else in the room was capable of understanding, let along achieving. He would stand out anywhere except perhaps Anameleck Prime, the industrial and financial capital of Aquitaine that also billed itself as a fashio
n capital.

  It helped that seated with him was one of the two women in here that looked like officers rather than hookers or office girls looking for a meal ticket. Rob made eye contact with the garishly-colorful captain while sipping his beer, tilting his head in a way that hopefully communicated a desire to talk without necessarily interrupting. He didn’t mean to accidentally be making a pass at the man. The mission didn’t call for that. Yet.

  One eyebrow, almost delicately chipped out of stone, went up as the man stared back, perhaps taking Rob’s measure as Rob had his. A quick nod of assent. A murmur to his companion, who glanced back and shifted her chair around a bit to watch the room better.

  It probably wasn’t accidental that the captain was in the corner, facing out.

  As Rob approached, he studied the man himself. Most of Corynthe was made up of two, dominant genotypes that had managed to blend well over the millennia, especially as you got closer to the capital world of Petron. Northern Europeans and Japanese had been the two ethnicities one found most commonly, this far out on the fringes of the galaxy.

  The captain was a blend Rob had never encountered before. Like his clothing, it worked, while being utterly unique. The man’s skin was somewhere between the dark brown of the African Diaspora, somehow mixed evenly with the golden tones of Nihon, the parent colony that sent so many children further out. Bronze was as good a color as Rob could find to describe the man.

  His face had hard planes to it, which reinforced the association. Clean shaven. Curly hair that wasn’t the tight rings of his African ancestors, kept short enough that nobody could easily grab a handful in a fight. Brown eyes alive with intelligence and humor.

  The woman with to him was dressed like the rest of the men. Steel plates and buckles on black leather boots. Black pants cut just baggy enough that they didn’t call attention to her legs. Mustard cream shirt, again a little loose. Shell jacket in medium gray.

  What stood out was how short the woman appeared, but also how broad. Maybe five feet tall, from what he remembered when she walked in, depending on her boots, but shoulders like many of the men in here, broad and muscular. Thighs like she lifted massive weights on a hip sled every morning.

  Her face was neither homely nor comely. Broad and flat in a way that suggested Chinese Diaspora, but red-gold hair cut to a short length just a little longer than a buzz. She didn’t smile, but didn’t scowl angrily at him either.

  Rob counted the whole as a win. He had only come in here to scout things so that later they could get serious about casting. But this might be too good to pass up.

  The noise level in here was a dull, throbbing murmur, but there was no music trying to compete, so people could talk without yelling.

  “Roberto Segura,” he introduced himself as he got close. “May I?”

  The captain nodded and gestured to the spare seat, himself in the wrap-around corner of the booth.

  Up close, the man was armed, but so was everyone in here. Belt knives, telescoping batons, and pistols, depending. You had to be deadly committed to start trouble in a joint like this, so probably nobody ever did.

  “Okonkwo Nakano,” the man replied with a pleasant-enough smile as Rob sat. “Captain of Wild Duck. You are not from around here.”

  “What makes you say that?” Rob asked.

  With his free hand, Nakano gestured to Rob’s outfit.

  “Not the height of piratical fashion,” he said with laughter in his eyes.

  Rob looked down and considered. No, probably not, but he wasn’t trying to fit in here. His job was to stand out, rather like bait, and see who nibbled.

  Laced up ankle boots in rough, brown leather, tied in white. Gray knee socks with a red stripe on white at the top. Pale, gray flannel knickerbocker pants. Not even the Plus-Fours that were making the rounds again. Darker gray jacket with several external pockets, two slit and two patch, as if he was going shooting and needed a place for his shells. White, dressy shirt that buttoned up with a foldover collar containing a blue tie rather loosely knotted. Collar on the jacket up.

  With the middle button on his jacket as the only one fastened, he was the model of stylish, fashionable gentleman on Ramsey. Here, he just communicated wealthy foreigner in conscious and unconscious ways.

  As was his goal.

  “No,” Rob agreed. “Not from around here. Lincolnshire.”

  “Indeed.” Nakano mused. “My Tactical Officer, Lilijana Kozel.”

  She just nodded, the hard, silent type.

  Rob was already halfway in love with her as a character for the movie, even before she spoke.

  “Charmed, madam,” Rob nodded.

  She didn’t hold out a hand to shake, so he didn’t either. He suspected that the woman defied most gender stereotypes consciously, as she dealt with pilots and crew who might only now be coming around to the future, if at all. Rob would have guessed her in her mid-twenties, maybe about a decade and a half younger than her captain.

  “What brings you to 6940 Draconis, Segura?” the man asked. His accent was hard to place, and his eyes were attentive and bright in a way that Rob wasn’t fooled by.

  The man was still a pirate captain in a pirate realm.

  “I’m making a movie,” Rob grinned as both of them grew a little hesitant and confused.

  “A movie?” Nakano echoed the words, as though perhaps he was a cow digesting his cud. “What kind?”

  “It’s kind of a pirate romance,” Rob offered. “With a healthy dose of betrayal, comedy, and action sequences, both on the ground and in space.”

  “I see,” Nakano replied in a vague, almost bland tone. “Well, you may have come to the right place to do your research.”

  “Oh, we’re past research at this point,” Rob brightened. “Had a meeting yesterday with the Governor about permits and financing and such to film as much of it as possible around here. Right now, I’m in casting mode. Looking for local flavor. We could have done this back on Ramsey, but Jorge wanted real pirates. Men and women who lived the life, rather than actors trying to somehow look tough.”

  “Casting,” Nakano repeated distantly.

  Kozel brightened from her general glower and leaned forward just a hint.

  “Don’t let him fool you, Segura,” she explained in a smooth, alto voice that the sound systems would just love. “He is the very model of a modern major general.”

  Bronze could blush. Flush a little, anyway. Eyes dilated.

  “Hush,” Nakano ordered without much authority.

  Rob grinned at the woman. He didn’t understand the reference, but it was obviously something theatrical he could look up when he got back to the ship. Probably Jorge would know it off the top of his head.

  Jorge was like that.

  “Okonkwo, you were made for the screen,” Kozel grinned along with Rob.

  “Actually, I’d like to talk to both of you,” Rob said.

  It was her turn to blush now, at least briefly, before she turned bone white.

  “Oops,” Nakano grinned. “And here I was, hoping you were looking to smuggle something interesting in or out of Lincolnshire space and needing an expert.”

  “That might also be on the menu,” Rob offered vaguely. “Jorge’s looking for as much realism as we can afford, so that might involve some action sequences with real guns fired at mock up targets.”

  “Jorge?” the woman seemed more interested in the show biz side of things than her captain did. Or at least than he let one.

  “Jorge Royo, the actor,” Rob said matter of factly. “Executive Producer, Director, Star. Mrs. Jones is also along on this one for one last, big thriller while she still can.”

  Rob liked the way the woman’s face grew intent. She turned to her captain and some invisible, silent conversation went back and forth that Rob couldn’t really parse.

  “We have a schedule,” Nakano finally said aloud.

  “Bergier has a schedule,” Kozel corrected him. “What’s it hurt if they don’t end up getting ch
ased on a run? Especially if we don’t tell them and they panic anyway.”

  Some of Rob’s confusion must have showed.

  “A Salonnian operation,” Nakano explained. “We have a retainer from one of their competitor, another of the Syndicates, to disrupt things as much as possible. Keeps my pilots sharp and the crew fed and happy.”

  “What’s your ship?” Rob asked, suddenly deep into Field Agent mode. Hopefully, invisibly.

  “Wild Duck?” Nakano inquired. “A 3-Ring Mothership of the older school. Like you, far from home.”

  “Older school?” Rob followed up.

  “King David is building newer, heavier 4-Ring ships these days, and standardizing both the hulls and the flight wings. We’re too far from the centers of power to get upgraded in my lifetime, plus, we don’t really defer to Petron all that much.”

  3-Ring Mothership. Built something like a goose with a big head at one end and a big body at the other. Bridge forward, engines and most of the defensive firepower aft.

  In between, literally three rings of smaller craft around that long neck, usually Starfighters, maybe with cargo containers and a tug, depending. According to Lincolnshire Naval Intelligence, as they had absolutely refused to shut up about while he was there, no two fighters were identical, except for the new, Royal squadrons. Mostly just rebuilt junkyard scrap with guns.

  “So if we wanted to perhaps hire you and your ship for some things, you might be able to make space in your schedule?” Rob asked in that hopeful, lawyer voice.

  “That would depend on the contract offered, Segura,” Nakano replied, suddenly a hard captain on his deck again, and not just a fashion plate in a bar.

  Two of them, with Lilijana Kozel. Rob was pretty sure you had to have your shit together and dangerous, if you wanted to stand out this much, compared to the other captains. And while a 3-Ring wasn’t as dangerous as the bigger, 4-Ring monsters, it was still likely to be a capable vessel.

  Rob nodded to them. He slipped a hand into one of his jacket pockets and pulled out a pair of business cards Raef had printed up for them, with local contact information. He made a point of including Kozel in the conversation.