by Logan Jacobs
But the second I thought about it, I knew what my answer would have to be. I was a free agent, and I’d die before I let someone else call the shots again. The Vespidae had damn near stolen my free will from me permanently, so I’d be damned if I walked willingly into that trap again.
“I’m afraid so,” I answered. “I’m available on a contract-only basis. No permanent position for me, but I thank you for your consideration.”
“As you like,” Grith responded. “That does, however, mean that I can only offer you sixty-five percent of my original offer for the Skyhawk.”
“Let’s say eighty, and call it a day,” I countered.
“Should we just say seventy and be done with it?” the crime lord asked with a smile.
“I think we could say seventy-five and be done with it,” I suggested.
“Seventy-two,” the mustached man offered.
“I tell you what,” I exhaled. “I’ll take your seventy-two, if you supply me with a ride to get off the Alexandria.”
“Sixty-eight, and you get a ride,” Grith said.
“That sounds almost fair, but why don’t we just bump that up one to my favorite number?” I suggested.
“Alright,” the crime lord laughed, “sixty-nine percent of my original offer, and a ride off the Alexandria. Plus you can keep your ride, so no need to return it to me unless you’d care to join me for brunch again at some point in the future.”
“I’m not a big fan of being indebted to anybody,” I warned.
“Oh, it’s no debt,” Grith explained. “The ship will just be part of your payment, that’s all. And why not? You did, more or less, keep up your end of the deal.”
“Why not?” I echoed.
“Something is not right,” Honey Bee chimed softly.
I had to agree with her. I had expected the crime lord to offer me as little as half of the original price for the smuggler’s relic of a ship, and then after a hard bargain, I had anticipated that he would pay me sixty-five percent.
It would have been less than what I wanted, of course, and it wouldn’t have been exactly what I considered fair. But the Skyhawk was damaged, and sixty-five percent wasn’t bad. Especially since the original offer price had been for much more than the old piece of space garbage was actually worth.
So sixty-nine percent, plus a ship thrown into the bargain? No, something was definitely not right, but I couldn’t put my finger on precisely what was wrong. I didn’t get the sense that the crime lord wanted to kill me, or even have me killed. It was something else, and I would have put money on the fact that it had something to do with Grith’s interest in the Skyhawk’s controls.
“Sixty-nine percent plus a ship,” I agreed. “I’ll just take my money, and you just point me to a ship, and I’ll get out of your hair.”
“So no brunch today, I take it?” Grith pressed.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it damn near dinner time?” I asked. “I know I’ve been off-world for a little while, but I thought that’s what the display said when I landed on your station.”
“Brunch is whenever I say it is,” the crime lord said.
His expression had lost all trace of a smile, and I found it even more unsettling than his actual smile itself.
“No brunch today,” I said simply, “but maybe next time.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” the mustached man responded. “Come with me then, and I’ll get you set up on a new ship.”
I followed him back down off the bridge and into the hangar of the Alexandria again. I glanced up and down at the other ships in the hangar, but I didn’t see any that were shitty enough for him to just give away, even as part of a payment for a job. Only the Skyhawk was beat up enough for that, and I already knew Grith wasn’t about to part with that piece of junk.
The crime lord didn’t lead me to another ship in the hangar. Instead, he started toward an exit from the hangar, so I stopped and cleared my throat. Grith turned back toward me.
“Is there a problem?” he asked.
“I hope not,” I exhaled. “I don’t mean to rush you, but I had really better be going.”
“Oh, and you will,” Grith said. “Just as soon as I get the money to pay you, I’ll bring you back to a ship. Of course, you’re welcome to just wait in the hangar while I get your payment.”
“Do you think he knows that everything he says sounds like a trap?” Honey Bee asked inside my skull.
I got the very distinct feeling that Favian Grith most definitely knew that, and that it was one of the greatest pleasures in his life.
“I think I’ll just come along, if you don’t mind,” I told the crime lord. “I’d like to get another look at this beauty of a space station.”
“A lovely idea,” the mustached man said. “Oh, and Trevor?”
“Mhm?” I responded.
“Speaking of beautiful things, are you sure there wasn’t any other cargo on board the Skyhawk?” the crime lord asked casually.
“Just the medical stuff,” I answered.
That was another thing about lying. Once you made up a lie, you had to stick to it. Even when somebody called you on it, even when you were positive that they somehow knew that you’d had a princess on board the ship, you just had to stick to the lie. People always got themselves in trouble when they tried to add explanations and extra information to make up for any gaps. Stick to it and keep it simple.
“If you say so,” Grith agreed. “I’m touched you’d rather come with me than wait in the hangar.”
I was pretty sure that he would have said the same thing if I’d chosen to stay in the hangar. If Favian Grith was anything, he was a man with a fucking plan. I followed as he led us deeper into the Alexandria. I wasn’t ready to pull my gun just yet, but I was suddenly thankful for the pack full of ammo that was slung across my back. And if push came to shove, the two grenades and the flare that I had left wouldn’t hurt either.
I didn’t know what kind of trap I was about to walk into, only that it was a well-laid one. And whatever he intended, I was positive that Grith assumed I would be well-armed. But what the crime lord didn’t know was that I had something else up my sleeve, something no one could even kind of anticipate.
I had Honey Bee.
“We’re glad to know you care,” she chimed in my ear. “The feeling is mutual.”
The crime lord rounded a corner and held his hand up to a screen at the same time he pressed his eye up against a retinal scanner.
“And to show you that we care,” Honey Bee continued, “you ought to know that we register a number of heat signatures on the other side of the door.”
“How many?” I muttered.
“We estimate two platoons worth,” my chip chimed.
The door slid open as it recognized Grith’s fingerprints and retina. Instantly, I saw that Honey Bee was right. In the room ahead, close to sixty soldiers stood at the ready, but that wasn’t even the most surprising thing.
The most surprising thing was that they all wore the distinctive shade and uniform of Dominion navy blue.
“Motherfuckers,” I swore.
“I do love a good surprise,” Favian Grith laughed.
I glanced behind me, but I saw that my escape route was blocked at the same instant Honey Bee warned me that more heat signatures were coming around the corner. More Dominion troops filled in the gap behind me, so either way I ran, it would be face-first into the government’s soldiers.
“We’ve been looking for you,” one of the soldiers sneered.
“Well, congratulations,” I said dryly, “but if we’re all going to be honest with each other, I’m pretty sure the credit goes to Grith here for finding me. You just came to collect, isn’t that right?”
The man stared at me, and I realized I had probably used words too big for him to understand, like ‘credit’ and ‘collect.’ I pushed down a laugh.
“Gentlemen,” the crime lord announced, “may I present to you your prize? Unfortunately, he doe
s not come with the princess attached, although I think I might be able to remedy that for you as well. But please meet the great smuggler Leon Cotranis.”
“Well, that’s an interesting development,” Honey Bee observed.
Two rows of troops stepped toward me, one from my front and another from behind. I considered fighting right away, but instead, I decided to let two of the soldiers pin my arms behind my back.
I wanted to let them think they had won for a minute. They would all congratulate themselves silently, and they would all think they were personally responsible for the capture of that self-important asshole. And as they congratulated themselves, they would relax and let their guards down, and that would be all the opening I needed.
“I am not Leon fucking Cotranis!” I protested.
“Don’t try to deny it,” Grith exhaled. “They already know who you are.”
“If you wanted me to bring you Leon as a part of his godforsaken ship, I would have,” I growled, “but don’t try to pawn me off as that fucker now.”
“If you have papers that prove you’re someone else, then by all means, you’re welcome to show them,” the crime lord offered.
He knew damn well that I wouldn’t have papers. Favian Grith might not know that I hadn’t had any papers since my time with the Vespidae, but he knew that as someone engaged in less than legal activities, I wasn’t likely to have any documentation that proved who I said I was.
I wanted to ask why, but I already knew the answer. The answer was always the same, in the end. Even for men as powerful and impressive as Favian Grith, it was the same. It all just came down to money, and at the moment, the Dominion had the most to offer.
I estimated the force it would take to break free of the two men who pinned my arms behind me, and Honey Bee worked to figure out the best escape route from the room. Even with my arms held behind my back, I stretched my arms toward the hunting knife concealed at the back of my belt. This was damn near worse than when we’d been trapped by the Dominion on Orpheus, only at least then I’d had Orla and her shotgun as backup.
“No papers, then?” the mustached crime lord taunted.
“Nope,” I said shortly. “Not that it would matter. I don’t have any papers to prove I’m not Leon, and you don’t have anything to prove that I am.”
“I have the Skyhawk,” the crime lord reminded me.
“You do,” I admitted, “even though you know that doesn’t really prove anything. And yet here we are.”
“Here we are,” Grith echoed.
“And here we go,” I said with a grin.
Then my fingers reached the handle of my hunting knife.
Chapter 17
The two Dominion soldiers who held my arms were the first to fall. I easily broke free of their grip, and my hunting knife found a home between the bottom two ribs of the first soldier before it moved across the throat of the second man.
“Get him!” Favian Grith shouted at the soldiers when their own captains failed to give orders.
“Affirmative!” the captains finally responded. “Capture but do not kill the suspect!”
Only then did the men dressed all in navy jump toward me, but by then, I was ready for them. I dropped into a crouch on the floor and did a quick spin around to knock the legs out from under the soldiers closest to me. A few of them slipped and stumbled on the blood of the first two soldiers, and it gave me an idea. I just needed to get far enough away from the thick of the fighting to carry out my plan.
We were all too close together for the soldiers to shoot me, so I rammed the handle of my knife into the jaw of a soldier behind me, and then I slammed it forward to plant the blade in the jugular of one in front of me. The Dominion gunners might not value its fighter crafts enough not to shoot them out of the sky in an effort to get me, but the soldiers were still human enough not to shoot at me when any missed bullet would kill one of their own.
Now if they’d been droids, I might have been screwed. But then again, I was a lucky son of a bitch, so I wasn’t too surprised.
We were also all pressed too closely together for me to break out the machete from my bag. It would have been more of a liability than a help at the moment. Some martyr-minded asshole would have grabbed the long blade of it and shredded his fingers in the hopes that one of his buddies could take advantage of my distraction.
The machete would come out to play, but not just yet. Instead, I lashed about with my hunting knife, and more bodies piled up around me as the soldiers continued to try to arrest me. They should have just tried to kill me, but if they thought I was Leon, I bet money on the fact that they’d been ordered not to kill me. I needed to be arrested and interrogated to find out where the princess was.
I grabbed a man’s wrist when he touched my vest, and I bent it backward so he cried out and fell to his knees. Then I twisted it just a little further, and the bone cracked. Immediately, I released the man, so he flailed away from me and took out two more soldiers in his dance of agony.
Another soldier grabbed my vest from behind, and I elbowed him straight to the throat, while my blade plunged into the eye of the man beside him. I sliced off the fingertips of another soldier who just brushed against the bottom of my vest.
“Don’t. Touch,” I exhaled, “the vest.”
I whirled in a circle to cut down the ring of attackers closest to me. Before the next wave could move in to replace them, I tossed my knife to my left hand and pulled out one of my projectile guns with my right hand. I didn’t waste the bullets on the crowd around me. Instead, I aimed directly at the central beam overhead.
It was the main source of light in the room, but more than that, it also looked like it was connected to every other smaller source of light in the room. It made for a nice latticework effect of lights on the ceiling, but I was glad to see that I had finally found a flaw in the crime lord’s otherwise faultless space station design.
I emptied my whole magazine as I shot the light straight down the length of the ceiling. I had just a second to look around to get my final bearings before the room plunged into complete darkness. In that second, I saw that Favian Grith had retreated to the side of the room, but he didn’t look like he planned to leave any time soon.
“Of course not,” Honey Bee chimed. “He wants to make sure they take you so that he can get paid for the capture of Leon Cotranis.”
“If somebody calls me that name one more time,” I swore.
I didn’t finish my threat. I was too busy grabbing supplies out of my pack while the soldiers all tried to find me in the darkness. I felt the first grenade and pulled it out, and then my eyes adjusted behind my shielding glasses. After all, thanks to the chip inside my skull, I could see perfectly fine in the dark. I saw the flare in the bag and grabbed it too.
I yanked the pin out of the grenade and tossed it up and away from me, into the middle of the room. Three seconds later, it exploded. If the room had been in chaos when the lights went out, it went fucking mad now.
Half the soldiers thought I had somehow managed to sneak away to the other side of the room in the darkness to throw the grenade, so they ran toward the explosion. The other half assumed I had run toward the only door in the room after I threw the grenade, so they ran in the direction of the exit. That left me nice and safely in the middle, at least until someone figured out a way to get some lights back on.
I planned to be long gone before anybody got that far.
I ran along with the crowd of soldiers that moved toward where the grenade had exploded. I shot off an occasional round to keep them panicked, and then I grabbed my laser gun to fire a hole in the screws holding one of the air vents in place overhead until the vent cover clattered to the metal floor. A few more well-placed laser rounds had other tiles fall from the ceiling, so no one could be sure where exactly I was or where exactly I was headed. I raced forward, knocked the legs out from underneath a soldier in my way, and catapulted myself through the air off his back.
I landed with
my fingers on the edge of the open air vent. As soon as I hauled myself up through the vent, I managed a small turn so I could pop off the end of the flare, light it, and send it back down into the middle of the crowd below. It was halfway to the floor when I shot two laser rounds through it.
The flare shattered into three segments, and each one sprung off in a different direction. Since the exploding flare shards looked a little like the flash of a grenade, the soldiers below all ran away from each segment, but of course, they only succeeded in all colliding with each other.
I flipped myself back around in the air ducts and headed away from the Dominion troops just as fast as I could crawl through the ducts. The Alexandria was a big space station, built more for comfort than speed, and that meant that these air ducts could lead anywhere. I also wasn’t sure where exactly I wanted them to lead. If they dropped me back in the hangar, I’d have to fight through a whole crowd of assholes, and then have to hotwire a ship to get the fuck off of this space station.
“Unless we take the Skyhawk again,” Honey Bee suggested.
“No can do, sweetness,” I muttered. “I’d rather get shot than fly that piece of shit again.”
I also knew the Skyhawk needed some serious repairs before she would be fit to go airborne again. Plus the little fact that the Dominion would recognize the ship anywhere I took her, and that meant some asshole would be bound and determined to call me Leon Cotranis again.
And if that happened, I couldn’t be held responsible for whatever came next.
I came to a fork in the ducts and let Honey Bee scan the area below us to see if one of the paths was better or worse than the other. There was a cluster of heat signatures down the ducts to the left, but she registered fainter heat to the right.
“To the right it is,” I growled.
It was a slow crawl, but I was just impressed that I was able to keep moving. The air ducts were small, and they’d definitely never been intended for someone to crawl through them with a pack strapped to their back.
