by Logan Jacobs
“She really is,” Leon said, and his face relaxed now that he thought he had my approval.
“Just look at that cockpit,” I went on. “I mean, there she is, all off-centered and at a wonky angle where she attaches to the rest of the ship, but I bet that makes her all the better to fly, doesn’t it?”
“You know it does,” Leon agreed. “It gives me a better angle of looking at things.”
“Well, sure,” I said flatly. “Why look at things head-on when you can just look at them off-center and tilted?”
“Exactly.” The smuggler was taking every bit of my sarcastic praise seriously.
“She’s probably fast too, right?” I knew it was a lie, but I wanted to see how far I could take my sarcasm before the smuggler picked up on it.
“Fastest ship in the galaxy,” the smuggler bragged.
“Yeah, I bet,” I muttered. “What’s she got on impulse? I bet you’re working with--”
“Wanna see?” he grinned.
“Oh, you bet.”
“It’s the least I can do, considering you helped them lose our trail.”
“Helped?” Honey Bee repeated.
I echoed her feelings, but I kept my irritation to myself. It was like Leon Cotranis somehow still thought he was the hero in all this. I watched as the smuggler scanned his retinas at the entrance to his dock and then went to input the access code to open the boarding ramp. I pretended not to memorize the numbers he punched in. They were probably the numbers of his birthday.
When the boarding ramp lowered, I let him lead us onto the ship. A stale smell seeped from the metal around us as we entered the main hold. It was old, sure, but I wondered how long it had been since the Skyhawk was properly cleaned. I almost felt bad for the ship.
Leon was rambling on ahead of me about something. I thought I heard him mention the Strait of Jiltar, and I exhaled. I did not want to hear again about his record time or any other obsession he had with himself. I couldn’t wait to take this asshole’s ship. Maybe then he’d be a little slower to brag about his prowess.
“Sorry, Leon, old pal,” I murmured.
I raised the butt of my gun to knock him unconscious, but a sudden noise from outside the ship stopped me. I turned around, gun lowered back to my side.
“Did you hear that too?” the smuggler asked.
Before I could answer, a laser round burned through a pipe beside Leon’s head, and water started to spray at the same time as a hail of gunfire.
Chapter 8
I ducked behind the closest metal crate in the main hold of the Skyhawk. Those fuckers must have found a way to track us, even after we lost them at the train crossing. Water kept spitting out of the burst pipe, and I grabbed a dirty rag from the floor and chucked it at Leon.
He wrapped it around the hole to stop it from raining on us, but it did nothing to stop the leak itself. Instead, water just streamed down into a puddle on the floor of the main hold. If he had any smuggled goods hidden under the floor, it would only be a matter of time before the water leaked through and damaged them.
The initial burst of gunfire paused, and I poked my head out long enough for Honey Bee to scan the situation.
“Too many,” she chimed. “We are trapped on this ship like--”
“Like fish in a barrel,” I finished for her.
All it would take was one well-launched grenade up into the main hold, and it would be so long to the Skyhawk and my payday. Favian Grith had been quite specific when it came to the condition he expected the ship to be in, and I didn’t think he’d appreciate a giant hole in the middle of the Skyhawk. Even if it was a piece of garbage.
Leon fired a couple rounds back down the boarding ramp, but I knew he couldn’t see what he was shooting at. We were at a real disadvantage when it came to our line of sight.
“I don’t suppose you have any idea how these assholes found us, do you?” I yelled at the smuggler over the sound of the gunfire.
“I thought they’d give up,” he shouted back. “I didn’t think they’d actually come here.”
I popped out from behind my hiding spot to shoot a few rounds down the ramp. I knew I wouldn’t hit anything, but I at least wanted to discourage our shooters from trying to come up the ramp at all.
“You mean to tell me that they knew where your ship was docked?” I groaned.
“Everybody does,” Leon defended. “How are people supposed to hire me if they can’t find me?”
“Then why in the hell didn’t they just jump you here?” I growled.
I already knew the answer. They would have probably been content just to get their money back, but the moment this asshole gave them an excuse, they’d been happy to use it as a reason to kill him. And lucky fuck that I was, I’d pretended to make friends with him just in time for the big show.
The water had quickly soaked through the dirty rag, and it started to spray again even through the fabric. I fired off two laser rounds down the ramp, since at least that wouldn’t waste any bullets. The water spattered against my shielding glasses, and I wiped it away with the back of my hand.
“Can’t you turn that fucking thing off?” I snarled.
“Yeah, hang on,” Leon answered.
It was like the thought hadn’t even occurred to him before I suggested it. The lean-faced smuggler crawled across the floor of the main hold to reach the emergency shut-off valves. He turned the wrong one and powered down the motion lights that had flicked on when we first boarded the Skyhawk.
“Try again, motherfucker,” I grunted under my breath.
He turned the lights back on and tried another valve. This time, the water sputtered out and then stopped pulsing like a nicked artery. Maybe now I could fucking think without water spraying me in the face every two seconds.
Honey Bee chimed a warning, and I heard a pin drop from the bottom of the ramp. Time slowed as my chip’s processors flared up, and I jumped out of my hiding spot as the grenade soared into the hold. I caught it as I leaped across the room, and I immediately pitched it back the way it came.
The explosion rattled the Skyhawk. I didn’t know how much damage it had done, but at least it had been toward the outside of the ship. What I did know was that we needed to get the hell out of here before they threw more at us than we could spit back at them. I grabbed the smuggler by his splinter-covered vest.
“Alright, almighty Leon, you think you can fly us out of here?” I challenged.
“Oh, I think I can handle--”
A bullet whizzed by overhead and took out one of the lights.
“Then you better do it now,” I told him. “I’ll hold them off. You just get us in the air.”
The smuggler nodded and took off up the stairs toward the bridge. I would much rather have piloted this old pile of metal myself, but I knew I’d do a better job of keeping our attackers from boarding. I didn’t trust Leon as far as I could throw him, but I thought we had a better chance of making it out of here if he was in charge of flying instead of returning fire.
I shoved one of the metal crates toward the boarding ramp. I might not be armed with grenades, but I had two things the mob outside didn’t. I had the fact that I was goddamn Trevor Onyx, and I had--
“Me,” Honey Bee whispered.
“Exactly.” I grinned. She almost always said ‘we’ or ‘us,’ so she must be feeling particularly pleased with herself today.
I kept pushing the crate down the ramp as I kept my body low so the crate covered me as bullets and laser rounds buzzed by above my head.
I was halfway down the boarding ramp when I felt the Skyhawk start to vibrate. Her engines shook the whole ship as she powered on, and again, I couldn’t help but wonder what a man like Favian Grith wanted with such an old piece of shit.
I paused when I saw the singe marks and a small hole in the floor from where I’d thrown the grenade back. It hadn’t been enough to burn completely through the ramp, but it would definitely need some repairs at some point soon before it got too weak
to hold up against the pressure of space.
I guessed I was close enough to the boarding exit now that I would be able to see my attackers once I popped up from behind the crate. I just needed to get them off the ramp long enough to shut the door. And by then, I hoped the Skyhawk would have enough power that Leon could take off and keep my payday from taking any more damage.
I poked my head up to get another scan for Honey Bee.
“Five on board,” she told me. “The rest are still on the dock.”
“Perfect,” I answered.
I holstered my laser gun, pulled out my two projectile pistols, cued up Honey Bee, and jumped out from behind the crate. My finger feathered the trigger as bullets left my guns in slow motion. The chip made my aim true, but even still, I hoped that the self-proclaimed best smuggler in the galaxy had a bunch of ammo on this ship.
Cause I was about to use a bunch killing all these assholes.
The three men closest to me fell in a rain of bullets, but I just kept walking down the ramp. The two other men on the ramp got caught between trying to retreat and trying to return fire, so instead, they just caught half a dozen rounds to their stomachs. I reached the end of the boarding ramp and kept shooting.
The Skyhawk rumbled underneath me as she started to take off, and the mob of gamblers outside all dove out of the way. The assholes left their cover as they ran away, so I fired off a few more shots into a few more backs just in case they decided to get cheeky, change their minds, and then return fire once they were safely away. Then I holstered my weapons and hurried back up the ramp to dump the bodies.
There were few things less pleasant than being stuck on a spaceship with a decomposing body. And unlike most ships, I didn’t trust the Skyhawk to withstand opening the airlock in the middle of nowhere. For all I knew, that would be the final straw, and she’d just shudder apart into pieces.
As the ship jerked off the ground beneath me, I grabbed the first two bodies by their hair, hauled them toward the end of the ramp, and threw them onto the dock. The Skyhawk hovered just above the ground now. I ran back, grabbed the next two, and dragged them by their arms to the end of the ramp. I kicked them off unceremoniously.
The last body was a big fucker, so I grabbed him underneath his arms and tugged him toward the Skyhawk’s exit. The ship was high enough now that the gamblers couldn’t board, but then Leon jerked higher into the air. I staggered, almost lost my balance, and dropped the corpse at the end of the ramp. The ship lurched again, and I grabbed onto a half-torched metal beam as I kicked the last body off the ship.
It fell silently for a few seconds before it landed with a thud on the dock below.
I mashed the button on the inside of the boarding ramp to close her up as the dock grew smaller below. I had to keep one hand wrapped around a metal support as I ran back toward the hold. The ramp helped propel me forward, but the ship pitched back and forth like it was in a storm.
I wondered if that was Leon’s piss-poor piloting skills or just the state of the Skyhawk itself.
I reached the main hold again just as the boarding ramp hissed completely closed. I knew that Leon was busy flying the ship, so I took the opportunity to study the hold. It was round, like the Skyhawk herself, and different hallways branched off it in every direction.
I poked my head in each of them. Two of them led to sleeping quarters, and I guessed one was for the pilot and the other for any passengers he decided to take with him. Another hallway led to showers and the john, but I doubted that anybody would be taking a shower any time soon. Not until that water pipe had been fixed.
The third hallway off the main hold led to the galley. I wondered what kind of food Leon had on board, and I hoped he hadn’t been so stupid that he hadn’t already restocked his provisions. That was the first thing I did whenever I landed somewhere new. You never knew when you needed to make a quick retreat, and you sure as shit didn’t want to be caught off-world without any supplies.
That left only the stairs up to the bridge and one more hallway. The Skyhawk shuddered, and I knew I’d have to take control of the ship before too long. I didn’t know what Leon’s plans were, but I sure as hell didn’t want to land anywhere back in the city of Thage. I’d just as soon leave the whole damned planet of Ineocca behind us.
That was, of course, if the smuggler had remembered to refuel the Skyhawk.
I peered down the last hallway and guessed it must lead to the cargo hold. Regular cargo would be stored out in the open, and any less-than-legal goods would be stored in hidden cavities both in the cargo hold and here in the main hold itself. I was about to go see if Leon had any extra ammunition when the ship angled sharply up and damn near knocked me off my feet.
It looked like I was gonna have to take charge of the ship even sooner than I thought.
I set aside thoughts of ammunition and the cargo hold for the moment and bounded up to the bridge instead. The Skyhawk had an easy layout, I’d give her that, because I found the bridge almost as soon as I reached the top of the stairs. Leon was in the pilot’s seat and had jerked back on the throttle so hard that he looked painted onto the back of his chair.
I saw nothing but open sky through the cockpit window. That meant we were headed almost straight up, so the smuggler must be planning to take us into space. I couldn’t say that I was sad to leave this heatstroke of a planet behind us. Still, I wondered where Leon intended to take us. And more than that, I wondered why he was headed out of atmosphere with a total stranger in tow.
“Perhaps he finds us charming,” Honey Bee offered.
“Well, I know we’re charming,” I muttered, and then I leaned forward against the force of the Skyhawk that tried to knock me off my feet again. “But only an idiot heads off-world with someone they don’t know.”
The movement ended a moment later, and I sighed as I made my way toward the bridge.
“Oh, hey,” the lean smuggler said casually as he heard me approach behind him. “Glad to see you’re still with us. I thought you might have fallen off the ramp when I first took off.”
“It would take a little more than that to shake me loose,” I gritted.
This asshole. Now I was curious if the Skyhawk flew that unsteadily all the time, or if Leon had actually been trying to throw me overboard. I buckled myself into the copilot’s seat as the sky above us grew even darker.
“So, where you headed?” I asked like I wasn’t part of this whole shindig now.
“Just a second,” Leon answered.
He fumbled with the controls as we got ready to leave the atmosphere. He flew as sloppy as the splinters still on his non-functional vest, but this was not the right time to try to take over. Leaving atmosphere was as precise a dance as entering it, so I let the smuggler do his thing while I glanced around the controls to get my bearings.
A beeping sound from the radar distracted me. There looked to be a ship entering the atmosphere at our four o’clock just as we were leaving it. Its classification appeared manually on the control screen, since only new ships like Grith’s grade 4 transport were able to project them above the panel.
It was a Dominion vessel, and I held my breath as we passed each other in the outer limits of the planet’s atmosphere. She didn’t hail us. I hadn’t expected her to, but I still exhaled when she disappeared from our radar. She was probably too busy trying to control her approach to Ineocca to worry about who else was coming or going from the planet.
“Good thing we were both passing through the atmo at the same time,” Leon exhaled.
“You bet. You’re not a big fan of the Dominion?”
“More like they’re not big fans of me.” He shrugged and finally brushed off some of the splinters from his dark red vest.
“I take it the Dominion doesn’t approve of the little operation you've got going on,” I pressed.
“Something like that,” he laughed. “They just don’t seem to like me very much.”
“You’re not well-liked by many people, are
you?” I sighed.
“What do you mean?” the lean-faced smuggler asked. “Oh, can I get you a drink?”
“Well, sure,” I answered. “We gotta do something to celebrate getting away from those ground-bound assholes, right?”
Leon steadied the controls as the blackness of space stretched out before us. Once he input some coordinates I couldn’t see, he grabbed a bottle of clear liquor from an overhead compartment. He poured a hefty amount into two glasses and handed me one, but the smell of the hooch singed the little hairs inside my nose. I’d almost rather have had Grith’s port wine. The smuggler knocked back a shot like it was the smoothest gin this side of the universe, and when his head was back, I dumped mine to the ground behind me.
“Anyway, you were saying?” he said.
“That’s some good stuff,” I lied. “I was saying not a lot of people seem to like you, old pal. Or was I the only one who took that shit back in the Petty Talon personally?”
“Well, I guess I’m not much liked by them either,” Leon admitted.
“What’d you do to them anyway?” I offered him another drink.
“Oh, any number of things. Most lately, I took a smuggling job that they weren’t too fond of.”
“But you’re the best smuggler this side of the galaxy,” I said seriously. “Don’t they know smuggling isn’t about the cargo?”
“What do you mean?” Leon asked again.
“It’s about the thrill of the job. And money. It’s also definitely about the money.”
I poured my next shot back into the puddle behind me when he wasn’t looking, but Leon just chugged his. I needed to have a clear head when I took control of the Skyhawk, and besides, his liquor smelled like fermented water from the toilet.
“Oh, yeah,” the smuggler laughed. “It’s definitely about the money.”
Finally, something we could agree on.
“So what was the job?” I pushed. “If you don’t mind me asking, of course. But seeing as how we’re friends now, old pal, I’m just curious. Whatever it was about, they shot at me too, remember?”
