Nero wondered what they were trying to negotiate.
A table a little distance away from him caught his attention in particular. Two people were sat at it, both human, a male and a female. Unlike most of the people in Mikkel’s, these two looked like they enjoyed the constant meetings they seemed to be having. Nero kept hearing laughter echo across from the table, and they always greeted their guests enthusiastically. Perhaps the most encouraging sign, however, were the guests who most often left with a smile on their face. Or if not a smile, at least they didn’t look hostile.
When a table nearer to the two humans freed up, Nero quietly moved closer to them, in the hope of hearing some of their discussions. He slipped into the vacant seat and placed his nearly-empty mug on the table.
“...tomorrow, or the day after at the latest,” the woman was saying.
“Wonderful, signora. That would be wonderful.” The alien sat opposite the pair had a strange accent, and was a species Nero had never encountered before. Its skin was a dull blue in colour, and its limbs were very strangely proportioned. When it stood up to leave, it towered above every other person in the room.
“Impressive reputation,” the man said, turning to face the woman once the alien had left.
“Yeah,” she replied, hesitation evident in her voice. “But something struck me as a bit odd about him. He seemed... I don’t know. He didn’t seem right.”
“I know what you mean,” the man replied. “Let’s see how the next one does. She’s apparently very skilled with hand-to-hand combat.”
Nero watched as the man got up and went over to the bar, bringing back another few mugs of pale, golden liquid. He sat down again, and then he and the woman huddled closer to talk, talking quietly enough that Nero couldn’t make out what they were saying over the general din of the bar. He contented himself with sitting back, and downed the last dregs of his drink. It sounded like these people were recruiting, though for what, he didn’t know.
Ten minutes later, a human woman walked up to the pair’s table, and Nero looked up, interested. She exchanged pleasantries with the pair, and then sat down, looking utterly confident in the seat. Nero was impressed already.
“So you know why you’re here?” the man started, addressing the other woman. “We’ve heard good things about you, and we’re looking to find someone new to join our team. Someone who has certain skills, if you know what I mean.” Nero’s ears pricked up.
“And I’ve heard of you,” the woman replied. “Reese Anjek and Trix Stefanik. You’ve built up quite the reputation in the old smuggling circle.” The pair exchanged looks, her bluntness obviously an annoyance, though she didn’t seem to care.
Nero quickly became bored as they went through some mundane questions with the woman, but it didn’t matter. He’d heard what he wanted to hear. It was exactly the sort of job he needed, something that wouldn’t draw much attention, and would take him away from this planet, where he was still at risk of being found by Aegis. He involuntarily glanced towards the door at the thought; it was surely only a matter of time before they tracked his shuttle.
The woman stood up from the table after a time, bringing Nero’s attention back to the present. She abruptly turned and walked out of the bar, her confident air now more of a cocky one. The pair, Reese and Trix, gave each other wry looks, obviously dismissing her out of hand. Nero couldn’t say he blamed them. She had rubbed him up the wrong way, and he wasn’t even speaking to her.
Another person came and went from the table, an older man this time, before Reese and Trix decided to leave. Nero, his head swimming slightly from the strong drink, stood up after them, and at a discrete distance, followed them out of the bar.
They emerged into the night, darkness having descended over the sandy city. Reese and Trix glanced about as they stepped out the door, and then headed off in the direction Nero had arrived from, towards the spaceport. He followed, the crowds allowing him to stay close to the pair of smugglers without being noticed.
Arriving at the spaceport, they pushed through the dense crowd of people in the entrance, and once inside, Nero watched as they boarded a medium-sized transport ship. It was maybe a hundred metres long, and was covered in the scorch marks that indicated heavy use. He smiled, knowing he’d found a crew he could work with.
But that was for the morning. For now, he wasn’t nearly drunk enough to forget his troubles, and so headed back out of the spaceport, and back along the street to Mikkel’s. He still hadn’t seen the attractive young woman from the spaceport, and after having had a drink, that thought had become a lot more important.
Weaving through the crowds, which if anything seemed even denser than when he’d arrived in the daylight, he re-entered the seedy-looking bar that was Mikkel’s. He managed to order himself another couple of drinks from the bar, and this time, didn’t get a table. Instead, he simply stood with his back to the bar, and watched the crowds of people.
He had downed a couple of drinks by the time he saw her, sat at a table across the room, chatting with an alien dressed in the same spaceport overalls. Shrugging to himself, he got a fresh round, and decided to head over there. He felt in need of the company.
****
Sunlight streaming in through the window woke him up in the morning. He groaned, and rolled over in the bed, feeling as if he’d only had a couple of hours sleep. Rubbing his eyes, he glanced at the time in his holodisplay, and realised it really had been just two hours. He let out a louder groan, and stared at the peeling paintwork on the ceiling.
A movement from the other side of the bed startled him, and he looked over to see the woman from last night lying there, covers rucked up around her. What was her name? He couldn’t remember. Everything after he’d gone over to join her table last night had become a bit hazy, with just the odd fleeting image making its way into his mind. The image of a dancing alien was one of them, which struck him as a bit strange.
Slowly easing out of the bed, he found his trousers, and his jacket, both carelessly strewn on the floor, and slipped them back on. Then he simply watched her for a moment, as she breathed in and out, her chest rising and falling. He contemplated waking her up, but then thought better of it, and slipped out of the room instead. He wanted to be off this planet as soon as he could, and for that, he needed the smugglers and their ship.
When he arrived at the spaceport, Trix was walking down the ramp of her ship, casually tossing an object into the air and catching it. She walked around to the front, and then used the object to open a maintenance hatch. Nero walked over to her, and stood behind her. He hadn’t realised how small she was before, having only seen her from a distance.
“Nice ship,” he said, startling her. She spun around to face him, looking up into his eyes.
“Erm, yeah, it’s actually a piece of crap, but I appreciate the sentiment.” She turned back around, and lent back into the hatch. “What do you want?”
Straight to the point, Nero thought. “I hear you’re recruiting,” he replied simply. “And I’m looking for a job.”
She glanced at him before responding, as if to determine whether he was serious. “And what gave you that idea?” she asked.
“Oh, you know, I hear things. I’m not wrong, am I?”
“No...” she admitted.
“Excellent,” Nero replied, a slight rumble making him look up at the sky. He froze when he saw the shuttle that was coming in to land, causing Trix to glance up at whatever had attracted Nero’s interest. She looked back at Nero, a curious expression on her face.
“You know that shuttle?” she asked, a slight smile on her face. Nero looked down, failing to hide the expression on his face.
“You could say that,” he said, having recognised the high-tech shuttle from the night he’d abandoned the warehouse. The night he’d seen it fly back towards the city.
“And...?” Trix prompted after waiting a moment.
Nero wasn’t forthcoming, instead watching the shuttle land on the other sid
e of the spaceport. The pilot surely couldn’t have seen him, he thought, but he didn’t want to stay out in the open any longer. He glanced over at the small single-seater ship he’d arrived in, sure that Aegis would recognise it. He turned back to face Trix. “Why don’t we go into your ship?”
She gave him a wry look, before agreeing with some reluctance. They walked around to the back of the ship, past the ion engines that were currently off and angled downwards, and climbed up the boarding ramp to enter the main cargo area.
“So,” Trix said once they were just inside, turning to face Nero. “Let’s start over, shall we? I’m Trix.” She held out her hand.
“Nero,” he said, shaking her hand.
“Good, so now are you going to tell me why you’re so interested in that CSG ship? Or will we have to cut this conversation short?”
Shit, he cursed under his breath. He hoped he could trust these people. “I think they’re looking for me. I had a minor run-in with some CSG forces on another planet.” He didn’t want to mention that this was actually an Aegis ship. CSG was bad enough.
“And you think employing you wouldn’t be a bad idea then, with the CSG looking for you?”
“I think you want to avoid CSG notice anyway, regardless of who is on your ship. If you know what I mean.” She gave him a look, as if to inquire what he knew, but then thought better of it.
“You’re an interesting man, Nero. You seem to know all about us, and you have the CSG looking for you. And you look to be more machine than man,” she said, glancing down at his augmented arms. “So what can you do, Nero? Would you be any use to us?”
Nero smiled. “Give me a test,” he said, conscious of the truncated timetable he had for finding a way off the planet.
“A test? Alright, hang on.” She walked towards the back of the cargo area, and climbed the stairs that presumably led to the living quarters. Nero took the opportunity to look around the ship, noting the current lack of cargo. There were a few hover-boards at one side of the cargo hold, leaning up against the metal walls, and there were also a couple of small crates scattered around. But otherwise the hold was empty.
Trix returned a couple of minutes later with Reese in tow, who introduced himself. He took one look at Nero before proclaiming “So I guess you’re good in a fight, then?” Nero glanced down at his augmented arms, before nonchalantly shrugging.
“I thought so,” Reese continued. “Okay, you might be able to help us out. We had a buyer for some goods lined up, when we got here. Some valuable goods, if you get my drift. But when we visited him, he decided that, nope, he wasn’t going to pay that much, and offered us half what he’d originally said.
“If you can convince him to up his offer, then maybe we’ll find a place for you here. I can’t promise anything, though.”
****
Trix watched as Nero walked down the ramp, black metal limbs glinting slightly in the harsh sunlight. She turned to Reese once he had disappeared from sight. “What do you think of him?” she asked, always ready to listen to Reese’s opinion. More than once his instincts had saved them from a risky situation.
“I’m not sure, Trix,” Reese replied, a thoughtful look on his face. “I like him, there’s something genuine about him, and I’m sure he could be deadly with those limbs.”
“But...?” Trix prompted, when Reese paused.
“But, I’m not sure. He’s obviously running from something, or someone. Maybe that’s good for us, maybe it’s not.” Reese shrugged and turned around. “Let’s see how he does with that buyer.”
They walked up the steps, and entered the ship’s living quarters. They walked along a narrow corridor, passing closed hatchways, and entered the small bridge. Trix went to the captain’s chair, and sat down, bringing up the ship’s scanners as she did so.
“I want to have a little snoop around that CSG ship,” she explained. She leaned over the ship’s console, waiting for the scanners to tell her what was inside the sleek shuttle. But after a minute, nothing had come up, and the ship instead flashed an error.
“‘Unable to scan’?” Reese said, leaning over the console as well. “Well, I’ve never seen that before. What sort of shuttle is it?”
They both looked out of the panoramic window in front of them, at the futuristic shuttle parked on the other side of the spaceport.
“I don’t know,” Trix said. “I don’t know.”
****
He ran, slightly crouched, across the rooftop, and jumped off the end. He went sailing through the air, and smashed through the window of the adjacent building, the glass shattering into a thousand shards as he did so. He rolled on the floor of the room, and leapt up onto his feet.
The door burst open to the room, and three heavily-built men came in, brandishing ancient laser rifles. Nero smirked at the state the weapons were in, before he crouched down, stuck his leg out, and spun, sweeping all three off of their feet at the same time. Nero stood back up, stepped over the men, and walked out the door.
Outside, a fourth man was running towards him. Nero gave him a disdainful look, and sprinted forward, arm out to the side, and knocked the man flat to the ground. He heard a thud as the man’s head impacted the floor, knowing that he would have a splitting headache when he regained consciousness.
Nero kept going, aware that the first three, if they were particularly dense, would be following him. At the end of the corridor, he turned right, and entered the open-air court in the centre of the building. Stood in the middle of that court was the man that Reese had described, surrounded by a few other men and women, both human and alien.
“Sol?” Nero asked, walking up to the stunned man.
“And who the fuck are you?” he demanded. He turned to the beefy man stood next to him. “Get him out of here,” he ordered, turning back to Nero.
“I just want a quick word,” Nero explained, watching the large man approach, and giving him a sinister smile. The man hesitated briefly, perhaps noticing Nero’s arm augmentations, but continued on regardless.
Nero sighed, and once the man was near enough, he used the power of his legs to jump up and over the man’s head, landing directly behind him, facing his back. Nero pushed, hard, and the man went flying forward, and headbutted the hard wall in front of him. Nero winced at the sound.
“Ouch,” he said, turning back to Sol. “Anyway, as I said, I just want a little chat. But your men are being very unhelpful. I had to come in the side entrance.”
The man, a small, pathetic looking specimen, had a nervous look on his face, and was looking at his bodyguard, sprawled unconscious on the floor. His beady eyes then flicked back up to Nero’s face.
“Look, I don’t know who you are, or why you’re here, but I don’t want any trouble.” The man backed away a step, and Nero edged closer. “Maybe we can work something out, okay? I’m a businessman, maybe we can come to some arrangement, yes?” The man glanced around as he was talking, as if looking for an exit. None came to light.
Nero smiled, amused at the man’s discomfort in spite of himself. “That’s very generous,” he said, still approaching the businessman. “And good to hear, since I’m actually here with a business proposition in mind.”
“Oh?” the man asked, wariness evident in his tone.
“Yes,” Nero replied. “Perhaps you remember Trix and Reese?”
Comprehension dawned on Sol’s face, which seemed to give him a little bit more confidence. He stopped retreating at any rate. “Ah. I already offered them a deal, but they--”
“You offered them one deal,” Nero interrupted, “And then changed it. They didn’t appreciate that, so I’m here to renegotiate on their behalf.”
“Look--” the man said.
“Yes?” Nero prompted, stepping close to the smaller man again.
Sol hesitated, once again losing his cool. Nero was amazed at how easy this businessman was to manipulate. Perhaps things were run more honestly on this planet, as unlikely as that seemed.
“I
appreciate they didn’t like the new deal, my friend, but I have a business to run. After we negotiated the first deal, a couple of other ships brought in more of the same stock, and the prices plummeted. I couldn’t pay over the odds just as a favour, could I?”
“Look, Sol,” Nero said. “I don’t really care for reasons. I am simply here to ensure you pay what you agreed.” He shrugged. “I’m not going to leave until you do.”
Sol looked around again, at the few people still standing in the court. They were all watching intently, some with a slightly predatory look in their eyes. They smelled weakness, Nero realised. “Shall we go somewhere more private?” he asked.
The businessman agreed, and led them back inside the building, heading into what was obviously his own office. There was a large desk in the middle of them room, which Sol promptly sat behind. He placed his arms on the desk and leant forward, in an obvious effort to exert some dominance. Nero remained standing up, arms folded.
“So?” he prompted.
Sol sighed, and slumped slightly. “Very well. But don’t broadcast the fact, yes? I have a reputation to maintain here.”
Nero tilted his head, accepting the terms.
“Have Trix and Reese bring the stuff here. I’ll pay them when they get here, okay?”
“Superb, Sol,” Nero said, turning to leave. “Maybe stick to your word next time, yes?” he added, and stepped out of the room.
****
Pieces of fabric were draped from the walls, lending the small cabin a cosy atmosphere. There was a small bed that folded out from one wall, and a large holodisplay covering the opposite wall. At the far end was a desk and a chair. Not bad, Nero thought as he looked around his cabin. It would do. It was more than he deserved, he realised, as his thoughts briefly returned to Ami, and to Talyah, and to those who had died because of him.
On Galaxy's Edge: Ascendance Page 26
