I was still trying to wrap my mind around the thirty thousand credits it had cost. That was pretty much the profit from all the jobs we had done in the last three months. Not to mention after refueling and resupplying, this job was probably a negative earner until we got the credits delivered for the ship we sent into the guild. Then we would come out way ahead which meant this extravagant trip wouldn’t look so bad on the books. Once we had a clear cargo bay, I could share the good news with the crew.
Truth be told, I was looking forward to a little downtime. Things had been hectic for such a long time that it would be nice to unwind a little. Having our license pulled from the guild had almost killed me and our shot at staying in the black. Getting our license reinstated had almost gotten all of us killed, but that was more of an actual death than the gut-wrenching emotion I felt when they took away our livelihood. Gun wounds I could deal with, being stuck on the ground, not so much.
The princess was waiting down below as the women continued to scatter into the space station. She motioned for me to join her. I gave Maze a gentle nudge and then headed down into the chaos that used to be my quiet ship.
Feigning a bit of nonchalance, I gave the princess a slow grin. “So where to next, Princess?”
“Oh, I’ll be around. I’ve got a world to win back after all.”
Well, she obviously didn’t bring me down here to share. So that begged the question. “What can I do for you?”
“I might have need to call on you again, Captain. Would you heed my call to arms if I asked it of you?”
“Depends on the credits and the job.” I held up my hand to stall her. “I’m done fighting other people’s wars. I just want to be free.”
“So do the people of Narshatal. My father sees things differently. Can you believe he tried to marry me to some prick from Cantisis? As if.”
I could believe it. That’s what kings with daughters did. “If you need something smuggled, I’m your man.” I tried to play it off, instead of delivering an outright refusal to join her cause. It didn’t hurt to have a few high ranking friends scattered throughout the verse.
“You’re so much more than that, Captain.” She patted me on the shoulder. “Expect my call.”
She turned to walk away, and I stopped her with a brief touch to her arm. “But really, what will you do with all of them?” I waved my hand at the chaos unfolding as the women moved deeper into the spaceport.
“All of the women we brought with us for cover have been paid and can go wherever they choose. Although, we have decided to retain a few of them as well as some of the victims from the pirate ship. Setting them on a new path is the least I could do.”
“And every war needs more soldiers,” I spat it out, disgusted with what I was hearing.
“Indeed it does, Captain.”
This time when she walked away I let her go. That was one call I’d be happy to ignore if it ever came. I was done with that shit. I wasn’t a pawn to be used, I was my own man. The companies and people that hired us liked to think we worked for them, but they learned quickly that Drake looked after two things, himself and his crew. Everything else was just stardust scattered across the black. I moved up the stairs and back to my position next to Maze.
Gabe was waving at the last of the girls to leave the ship. He had a big dopey grin on his face that told me he hadn’t wasted a moment of the time he had been given with the girls. He looked out the back of the ship until the last one disappeared into the crowd and then hit the button to seal up the Talon. Richard was standing there looking at the closed door, probably wondering if he had done enough to help those poor girls. Even if he hadn’t, he had shown them more kindness than anyone else had in a long while. It wasn’t so long ago we had rescued him from a ship just like that.
I shouted down towards the two men. “Meet us on the bridge.” They both nodded their heads as I wrapped an arm around Maze’s waist and headed in that direction. She leaned her head against my shoulder, and I took comfort in having her body pressed tightly against mine. This woman had been by my side longer than anyone else, first as an employee, then as a friend, and now as something more. If I ever lost her, my life would never be the same.
We broke apart as we entered the bridge. Maze went to talk with Ice and the other ladies while I leaned against the wall and watched them waiting for the boys to show up. I didn’t have to wait long for a happy looking Gabe and a disheveled looking Richard to show up. Once everyone was inside I made my announcement. “I booked us a bungalow on Telgerus.”
A collective groan answered my announcement. “Not again,” Ice said shaking her head before bending over in her chair and placing it between her knees like she was going to be sick.
I almost laughed at their response. I mean how long was it going to take them to get over that one shitty vacation. It had been years ago. “Despite your disturbing lack of faith, I think you are going to be happy this time.” Reaching over to the wall, I swiped my hand against it to dim the lights and then brought up pictures of the bungalow on the large screens at the front of the bridge.
“This is where we will be staying. We will have our own personal chef, and access to a twenty-foot boat whenever we want.” I let the pictures of the four thousand square foot bungalow built out over the water flash across the screen. I heard more than a few ahhs as the images continued to play. “This is my chance to say thank you for being the best damn crew a captain could ever ask for.”
Kyra bounced up from her seat and pulled me into a fierce hug. “We love you too, Cap.”
After disentangling myself from my most joyful and over-enthusiastic crew member, I beamed at the rest of them. “So get ready to relax, we’ve got a full week scheduled to do absolutely nothing. Enjoy it, cause with this kind of price tag it won’t be happening again for a while.”
A little pillow hit me in the chest. Where in the hell did someone get a pillow on the bridge? A series of boos greeted me at my announcement of a long grind between vacations. “Stop your whining, or I’ll see if they still have rooms available on Malstrom.”
I got hit with the pillow a few more times before Maze dragged me from the bridge. As we left, I heard the tops of a few beers crack open. “Maybe we should have stayed for the pre-party.”
She looked up into my eyes with a hunger that made my knees quake. “Oh, I reserved us a bit of champagne. I thought maybe we could finish what we started in Club Morte.”
Oh man. That had been so hot, but all of it had been a ruse to keep security off of our backs while we had to rescue Kyra from a cult of killers. Now it sounded like I was going to find out what would have happened if we hadn’t had to kill a bunch of people to save Kyra’s life. I couldn’t say it wasn’t a fantasy that hadn’t played out in my mind before, but the real thing was always so much better.
Five days had passed since we landed on Telgerus and I was already starting to get itchy. It was that I’ve been on the ground too long with no one to shoot kind of feeling. The one where I was starting to feel the walls closing in, despite the fact that everything was fine. Maybe that was born from spending most of my life skirting the law. Staying in one place was never advantageous for a man like me.
Wanderlust wasn’t an affliction that happened to everyone. Maybe you had to be born with it, but that didn’t really matter. What mattered was my need to always be moving. Being stuck in one place for too long was a good way to end up dead. Worse, it was a good way to end up bored. Bored men do stupid things, and I’d done more than my share of stupid in this life already.
Ice was sitting at the bungalow’s bar sipping on something that looked frozen and fruity. One arm was casually draped across Kyra’s bare shoulders. You could tell the two of them were in love from a mile away. Samantha said something, and they laughed. She caught my eye and pointed out the wide open doors to the porch. Gabe was climbing out of the water, a massive fish flapping on the tip of his spear. It looked as though I wasn’t the only one getting antsy. I wond
ered if our cook would be adding Gabe’s fish to the menu tonight.
Maze covered my hand in hers. “You’re already feeling the pull of the black, aren’t you?”
I shook my head slightly and gave her a sad smile. She knew me so well. “I hate to say it, but I’ve had about all the rest I can stand.” She laughed, and the sound was like music to my ears.
“Why don’t you go prep the Talon then, and look for our next job while you’re there.”
“You know that doesn’t sound like a bad idea. That might be just enough to take the edge off.” She patted my hand again before I swung my legs out of the hammock and headed towards the bar. “Ice, bring your drink, we’ve got some work to do.”
“Why am I getting roped into working? Just because you can’t relax? I mean seriously, Cap, we’ve only got two days of paradise left,” Ice declared, spinning around to face me sloshing some of her drink on the floor in the process.
Kyra and Samantha both started to giggle. Seems like a few someones broke into their Ikrillian hash a little early today. “Ice, you’re the only one that’s not totally spaced right now. You don’t even have to get dressed, we’ll be back in less than an hour.”
Ice looked down at herself and then back into my eyes. I saw defiance there and maybe just a hint of playfulness. “What’s your woman going to think about us running off together?” She moved her hands up and down. “Especially when I look this good, and have almost nothing on.”
I looked at her in her bikini, and my mouth froze. I didn’t have a good answer for that or a witty comeback. I had to think about it for a moment before responding. “Honey, what do you think about it?”
“Please take him. I can’t stand his broodiness when he doesn’t have something to do.” Maze replied, waving her hand over her shoulder before returning to her drink and gazing out over the ocean.
Ice sneered at the wink I gave her and turned towards Kyra in disgust. “Help me out here, babe. I’m hot, and I’m dangerous.” Ice threw a hand on her hip and posed in a way that let Kyra know she better say the right thing or she was going to be in trouble.
Kyra just broke into giggles again. “Whatever you and the captain get up to when I’m not around isn’t any of my business.” The laughter really started to roll out of her then. “Get up to.” She pointed at Samantha. “Get it?”
Samantha was laughing so hard she fell off her stool and hit the ground. Her voice drifted up from where she had fallen behind the bar. “Maybe you should put a shirt on, Drake. You’re converting the lesbians.”
Ice slammed her drink onto the bar and looked for someone to be angry with. The only person that wasn’t laughing or ignoring her was me. Once she realized none of the crew was going to bail her out, she tied some kind of cloth around her hips and started moving towards the door. “Fine, I’ll go, but you had better save some of that damn hash for when I get back.” She stomped off swaying slightly. “See what I get for always being the responsible one.”
The girls broke out into another round of giggles as I turned away. Maze smiled at me as I passed her and tossed me a shirt. Pulling on the shirt, I couldn’t help but grin. I kept that goofy ass grin on my face until I reached the door. Paradise had its own set of perils that you had to navigate. Might not be enough excitement for me just yet, but in twenty years I could see myself retiring somewhere like this. That is as long as I still had the Talon so I could leave whenever I wanted. That and I’d need a few million credits in the bank before I could even think about it.
John, our private concierge, was waiting for us at the end of the dock. “Anything I can do for you, Mr. Drake?”
“We just need a quick ride over to our ship and then back to the house.”
“Of course, Sir.” He tapped a few commands into his datapad and then a hover cart pulled up. “Enrique will be happy to escort you.”
“Thanks, John.” I tossed him a hundred credit chip and climbed onto the back of the cart. Ice sat down next to me, and Enrique got us moving. Five minutes later we were standing outside of the Talon, and I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. I walked towards her placing my hand on her hull and whispered, “It’s good to see you, girl. We’ll be back in the black soon.”
“Don’t make me tell Maze you’re cheating on her, Cap.”
“Oh, she already knows how much I love this old girl.”
“Yeah, but if you put a ring on the Talon first, she might not be so understanding.”
Ice was obviously still feeling a little raw that I pulled her away from her drink, but even she couldn’t frown as she started walking forward. “You have a point.” I hit the code to the cargobay ramp and started to walk in. “I’ll try and make this quick, I’m just going to grab my datapad and check some messages. When we get back, I’ll scan for a few jobs.”
“Did you really need me for that?” Ice said with a scowl.
“Nope. I need you to check out the Talon. Make sure we are refueled and that our preflight checks are ready to go.”
“We aren’t leaving for three days, Cap.”
“No reason not to be ready. I mean with our luck, you never know when we might need to make a quick getaway. Plus I didn’t want to do it myself. Perks of being the captain.”
“Next time just bring your damn datapad with you,” Ice growled, sounding a bit like me when I was angry.
“Maze wouldn’t let me, but if you’re nice to me I promise to pull something out of the private reserve for later.” That wasn’t something I did too often. I’d scored that hash years ago, and they didn’t make anything in the verse like it, at least not anymore.
“Now we’re talking.”
Now that I had her full attention, and possibly even the tiniest hint of a smile, it was time to get in and get out. “This stuff is going to make your toes curl. It makes that stuff the resort is selling look like the back end of an Ikrillion goat.”
“I don’t know, Cap. They seemed to be having plenty of fun.”
“Trust me, they don’t even know what fun is yet.”
“Whatever, I’m the one who’s not having fun right now. So let’s get this wrapped up so I can get back to my lady.” Ice walked towards the bridge.
Ice was probably right. It wasn’t fair for me to pull her away from a good time just because I was feeling a bit jittery. I could have checked the ship myself after grabbing my datapad. Then I could have started scanning for jobs while reclining in the hammock as Maze ran her fingers along my chest. It was too late to send her back now without looking completely foolish. Still, I’d feel better after I checked my messages. The last thing we needed now was another nasty surprise.
Popping the hatch, I slid down the ladder into the cabin I shared with Maze. It didn’t feel quite as rustic as it had before. Shit, who was I kidding? The thing didn’t feel much like me at all. You would have never known it by looking at her, but Maze really enjoyed color and comfort. Everything in here now was soft and brightly colored. The one thing I hadn’t let her toss out was my chair. A man has to have a chair that is all his own. Mine was leather, and it reclined. Sure it had seen better days, but that was part of its charm.
Moving around the room, I picked up a few things that had fallen to the ground from our landing or in our haste to exit the Talon for the bar. After replacing them, I picked up my datapad from the bedside table and opened it, sending the images to the screen on the wall. None of Ice’s programs had picked up any mention of us in the feeds, but it did pick up a story about a substantial decrease in pirate attacks from a certain part of space that we had just left.
No one had sent word about a job. It wasn’t the first time that I wondered if our exit from the mercenary’s guild, however brief, had permanently damaged our reputation. Sure we had taken jobs over the last six months, but all of them had been low hanging fruit. The kind of job any star jockey could have handled. We still had clearance for the top level jobs after our full reinstatement, but I hadn’t tried to secure one yet. Maybe now was the
time to see just how far we had fallen. In the smuggling game, your reputation was everything.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, I scanned through my personal messages not seeing anything of note right away. A message in my spam box caught my attention. Looks like I had won a billion credits and a trip to Serenity Station. I started to move it towards the trash when I noticed who had sent the mail, Maximillion’s Billions. It couldn’t be, had that crafty bastard done it again. I opened the message hoping I wasn’t about to infect our whole system with a virus. Ice was already pissed off, the last thing I needed was to push her over the edge. I mean just because a guy has a healthy porn addiction, and might have possibly downloaded a few things that weren’t strictly on the up and up doesn’t mean it was his fault, right?
There wasn’t much there, just a bunch of bullshit about how I had been entered into a lottery during my last visit to the station. Everyone in the verse knew this game. What a crock of shit, but something in the print caught my eye. It said, “By now you have no doubt caused millions of credits worth of damage to the station and gotten an old friend killed.” Around it was a bunch of information about how the Royale Casino was looking for arrogant pricks to give a bunch of free shit too.
Max had kept it pretty subtle but added enough flair to let me know it was him, and he was still pissed about what had happened to all his gear back on the station. I was going to have to ask him how much it cost to have the body double made. Then again, maybe I wouldn’t ask. Some things only gave the aggrieved party something more to bitch about. There was a link at the bottom of the email. Before I risked clicking it, I was going to talk to Ice about securing my system or if there was a better way to handle it.
Smuggler's Legacy Page 9
