Double Life

by S. Usher Evans

  Which meant she could spend the rest of her time doing what she actually wanted to do.

  ***

  After a long shower, Lyssa climbed back up to her bridge, toweling her long hair. She now wore a black tank top and cargo pants. If she was planning on leaving her ship, she would've paired the outfit with black boots, but her feet were bare. Tossing the towel on one of the jump seats that lined the wall of the bridge, she sat down on the squishy black chair and cracked her fingers before setting them on the dashboard.

  The star maps and gauges disappeared and a different set of programs appeared in their place. She selected the third application and sat back, as the ship connected with the communication satellites that the Academy had placed out this far. Once she was back in touch with civilization, the windows displayed a long list of unsavory-looking men, each with a name, number, and crime.

  Her gaze lingered on the last line—Sage Teon—but not because the man pictured was young and handsome, with shaggy blond hair and green eyes, but rather because the very thought of him made her want to punch something.

  Her attention moved to the top of the list, as it had just updated with a new entry.

  "Hm." She opened his full bounty poster information.

  "Hm-hm."

  She moved the bounty poster to the left window, then returned to her application list. The middle screen filled with a search bar displaying the logo of the Universal Bank—the central banking organization for the Universal Beings Union. Because the reach of civilization was so widespread, the UBU was established to provide a standard set of laws, trading partners, and, most importantly, currency system. Universal credits, or "Cs", were the only money accepted and used across the universe—even and especially by pirates.

  Normally, access to the Universal Bank was highly restricted, but thanks to the Piracy Act, Lyssa was able to see the transaction history of anyone in the UBU with a C-card. Passed eighteen years ago, the act was a huge conglomeration of laws, bylaws, and political trickery intended to make it a lot more difficult to punish pirates. Buried deep in the ten thousand page document was a single line: A pirate cannot be arrested if they belong to a union.

  Now, there were four main unions—known as pirate webs—that vied to have the most "most wanted" pirates among their members. There were two ways. First, a pirate would steal, pillage, or plunder, and the person violated (or, usually, their insurance company) would add an additional bounty to the pirate's head. The more egregious the offense, the higher the bounty.

  But the second, and more common method was to capture the top pirates in a rival web. And the best way to accomplish that was to track the pirate through their bank account activity.

  As a result of bounty hunters pawing through their accounts, pirates began to create multiple aliases—which, under normal circumstances, could send someone to jail for thirty years. Again, thanks to the Act, it was not unheard of for a pirate to use five or six C-cards in just one sitting. The tactic could throw novice bounty hunters off their trail, but could also result in leaving a loose connection of activity that could be tracked if one had enough patience.

  The pirate known as Dalton Burk had been around for a long time, and he was no slouch. But Lyssa had already done some preliminary research on him, and since he'd piqued her interest, and she had time to kill, she decided to continue it.

  Moving the Universal Bank search screen to the right window, she scrolled through her applications until finding her notebook application. She'd thrown together a rudimentary program to keep track of the pirates she was hunting, which made it easier to pick up where she'd left off.

  Although she was hunting Burk, seeing Relleck's name always prompted her to check on him. She'd been holding onto these four aliases for a few weeks now, and wanted to make sure that she was the only one who knew about them still. Relleck had been actively using all of the accounts at casinos, with prostitutes, and in hotel rooms. When she calculated the times between the transactions across the different accounts, there were no significant gaps to suggest that he'd created another alias—another sign that he was feeling confident about his ability to hide in plain sight.

  She snorted; based on the amount of money he'd lost in the casino recently, at least he was confident about something.

  Satisfied that Relleck hadn't done anything worth researching further, she turned back to Dalton Burk. When she tapped on the first alias, the right screen executed a search function to that account in the Universal Bank.

  There was nothing out of the ordinary: coffee, dinner, and a female companion over the past day. She searched on the second name:

  It appeared as though he'd left D-882 for a brief moment yesterday, picked up some coffee and probably his bounty, then returned back to the planet to spend some time with his female friend.

  With a yawn, she checked on the third alias transaction history:

  She chuckled to herself—he'd apparently paid the same woman twice—but then she paused, curious. Normally, buying the company of a woman also included drinks at the same place. But neither account had any record of those kinds of purchases. To boot, he paid her twice—a good indication that he was plastered.

  She sat back for a moment, smiling. Burk must've created a new alias she hadn’t found yet.

  Before she could start a search for transactions on the house where Burk had spent the night, she angrily turned around and smacked her dashboard to answer the video call that had been coming in repeatedly since she logged onto the pirate web.

  "For crying out loud, what?"

  "That’s not very nice, now, is it?" Smiling, Sage Teon leaned into his video camera eagerly.

  "Go on, what do you want?" she said, crossing her arms over her chest.

  "Just to chit-chat," he said sarcastically. "What with your charm and charisma, who wouldn’t want to talk to you all day long?"

  She stared back at him, silent.

  "I mean, you're just a fabulous person to talk to."

  She blinked at him.

  He blinked back.

  She blinked again.

  He blinked back.

  "Oh come on, Lyssa!" he said finally, sitting back. "What crawled up your ass today?"

  She turned sharply to him. "Don't call me that."

  "Fine, Razia, whatever," he said, rolling his gaze.

  "It's not whatever," she snapped at him. "One of these days, Lyssa Peate is going to disappear, and all that will be left is Razia."

  "Who'll be the most wanted pirate in the universe. Yeah, I got it. Old habits, you know."

  "Well, break them. I don't want your crew finding out."

  "Re-lax. They're off celebrating anyway. Just me on the ship today."

  He was doing that annoying thing where he wanted her to ask more, but she didn't, because she knew exactly why he was calling. Instead, she left the call open and turned back to the application. She compared the three known aliases with a timeline of purchases from the bar and a different one the night before, seeing if any of the same names popped up.

  "Well, if you must ask…"

  "I didn’t." She was trying very hard to keep her focus on the list of names she was comparing and not on Sage's stupid face.

  "Have you seen the news lately?"

  "No," she snapped, scrolling through the names of people who'd purchased drinks at the same time. A few names she recognized, but a few she didn’t, so she searched on each of the unknowns to see where else they—

  "Lyssa," Sage whined.

  "Oh Leveman’s freaking Vortex, yes, I saw it." She turned to look at him. His face was pressed close to the camera again, a wide smile on his face.

  "And?"

  "You broke in somewhere and you stole some stuff. What else is new?"

  "No, no, no," Sage said, sitting back. "That security system was brand new, and was supposed to be one of the most impenetrable out there. I knocked it down in just under two days and took a whole bunch of diamonds."

  "Uh-huh," she said,
crosschecking the names of the men at the house with their bank accounts. Most of them seemed only to have one account—that was, they had multiple transactions on the same day, spanning back weeks. She just knew that—

  "Soo..."

  "God in Leveman's Vortex," she said, swirling around again to glare at him. "Go bother someone else!"

  "I can't," he said, folding his arms over his chest. "My stupid bounty's up to eleven."

  Her gaze widened, and she sat back, pursing her lips into a thin line.

  "I mean, not that that’s anything good or anything. I mean, it’s…er… What’s your bounty at now?" Sage squeaked, clearing realizing he'd really stepped in it.

  She shot him the meanest, iciest glare she could muster. "Well, it’s certainly not eleven."

  "Oh, come on," Sage said, trying to salvage the situation. "I’m sure it’s not that bad—"

  She turned back to the pirate news and typed in the name Razia.

  Only one profile appeared—a picture of her, two or three years younger, and the following information:

  "Five hundred ninety-four," she deadpanned, exiting out of her profile. "And still on probation."

  "Oh." Sage swallowed. "Dissident hasn’t taken you off yet?"

  She glowered at him. He knew the answer to that question. Membership of the webs was tightly controlled by the runners. After all, they only wanted the best pirates in their webs, so when a new pirate or bounty hunter wanted in, they were put on probation. For bounty hunters, the runner would tell them which pirate they were allowed to hunt and capture. Once they proved their merit, the pirate was promoted to a full member of the web.

  "Two years," Razia grumbled. "Two years I’ve been on probation."

  "Well, at least you’re hunting someone, right?" Sage said, in the tone of voice he used when he was trying to look at the bright side. It was quite literally the most annoying thing he ever did. Besides existing.

  "I realized Dalton Burk has another alias, but can I go after him? No!"

  "Oh, what other alias?" Sage asked curiously.

  "I know I'm good enough, I know I can do this. But stupid Dissident and his stupid—"

  "No-girls-allowed, rule?"

  She glared at him. "Tauron thought I was good enough."

  "Yes, I know. And so do I. And if I could change Dissident’s mind, you know I would've done it by now," Sage said gently. "You gotta keep doing what he wants."

  "Seven hundred. The bounty he wants me to capture is the seven hundredth most wanted person in the universe. That’s a seven, with two zeroes. He’s worth two hundred credits."

  "Ouch."

  "That won’t even pay for the hour of parking it will cost me to go find him and take him to the bounty office." Which was why she was headed to the Academy to sell the planet she'd just excavated.

  "Look, the offer is still open," Sage said, folding his hands behind his head. "You know Dissident is always yelling at me to do more bounty hunting. I could really use someone like you on my crew—"

  "Ugh!" she cried, throwing her hands up. "I don’t want your help!"

  "Well then, I guess you’ll just have to stay on probation until Dissident decides he wants a girl in his web. Which will probably be never, knowing him."

  "Get sucked into Leveman’s."

  "Bye Lyss." Sage smiled sweetly before ending the call.

  Halfway to calling him back and tearing him a new one for hanging up on her, her external pressure gauges beeped, sensing an increase in gravity. Closing out all of her bounty hunting research, the windows grew transparent. A small, white vortex was visible—but even from this distance, the ship was being drawn in.

  She turned off her engines, though momentum and gravitational pull kept her ship moving forward. She searched through her application list again, locating a simple program that she'd coded herself. It performed a calculation based on a set of variables—the weight of the ship, the distance and angle to the center of the vortex, the location of celestial bodies, among others. Right now, it was displaying red.

  A few taps on her dashboard, and her smaller engines flared to life, tilting the angle of her ship until the program displayed green. Then she engaged her autopilot and strapped herself to her chair.

  Her body began to feel heavier, as if something were pulling her into her seat. Even her eyelids grew heavy as she kept an eye on both the autopilot and the application, still showing green.

  Then, as if something had reached out and grabbed her ship, she was hurtling toward the Vortex, now so large it filled the width of her front windows. Comets and asteroids were being pulled in as well, and they, on a slightly different path, crumbled to pieces in the gravity. Her gaze was back on the program, and the green status.

  Then, instead of a great force on top of her, the ship leaned to the right, and Lyssa went with it. She would've flown out of her chair, save for the straps that kept her in place. Her ship was speeding up, growing closer to the white center.

  Then the green status blinked red.

  Lyssa kicked on the dashboard to jumpstart her engines and she was propelled back into her seat so hard she almost saw stars.

  In fact, she did see stars. But these were outside her ship, as she was now safely being flung in the direction of the Academy purely on the forward momentum of the vortex.

  As her gravity stabilizers slowly re-engaged (having been overpowered by the incredible force of Leveman’s Vortex), she unbuckled her straps and stood up, to keep working on Dalton Burk until she reached the Academy.

  But Sage’s words still rang in her ear.

  Sighing, she sat down in her chair, staring out into the blackness of space with a slight pout.

  It wasn’t fair that Dissident treated her differently because she was a girl. It wasn’t fair that Sage had everything handed to him, and she'd practically had to beg on bended knee. It wasn’t fair that other pirates were on probation for maybe two months, and she was going on two years.

  It just wasn’t fair.

  But even with all that unfairness, the humiliation, and the struggle to be seen as something other than a pain in the ass, being Razia was better than being Dr. Lyssa Peate.

  Razia had the freedom to do whatever she wanted. Razia didn’t take crap from anyone and she could stand up for herself. Razia didn’t need anyone’s help.

  After all, Tauron Ball, one of the most well-known pirates of the last twenty years, had faith in her. Razia had been his secret weapon, the brains behind all of his most-advertised take-downs. But when he'd died two years ago, it was as if she'd never existed on his crew. It had taken her almost six months to get her first bounty assignment from Dissident, and she hadn't done much better since.

  And until Razia could make some money, Dr. Lyssa Peate would have to foot the bill with yet another planet sale.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Planetary and System Science Academy was the official planetary discovery and classification body of the UBU. The Academy included a school and its graduates, whose labs filled all the levels of the Odysseus station, an extra planetary ship that orbited the last moon in the capital system, S-864.

  Planetary space was at a premium in the UBU—with every new civilization added came the pressure to find a place for all them. Corporations would sometimes buy entire systems to house their corporate headquarters and employees, and even schools and universities claimed planets for their students. The military was also a big buyer of planets, using them to house and train soldiers, and—for planets with little other value—test weapons and other explosives. DSEs sometimes made millions of credits on planets; it was one of the most lucrative careers in the UBU.

  For her part, Dr. Lyssa Peate was hoping this latest planet would give her enough extra credits not to have to return there for a long time.

  Now dressed in her DSE-appropriate clothing—white button-up shirt, with dull gray pants—she'd pulled her long brown hair into a bun, donned a pair of black thick-rimmed glasses, and completed the look with
a white lab coat.

  Before leaving her ship, she checked her backpack for anything she might need with her to complete her presentation. Most of the information was stored on her mini-computer, but some of the paper receipts might come in handy. She also found a half-eaten meal bar buried in the bottom of her bag, and popped it into her mouth to tide her over.

  She was still chewing on the bar when she walked out onto the dock, looking around for anyone that knew her. Two U-POL officers walked right by her without a second glance, probably headed to the Academy's renowned hospital wing. With all the odd injuries and lost limbs that came with planetary exploration, the Academy had developed a reputation for having top-notch medical doctors.

  After one more glance around the room, she felt confident that the coast was clear…for now.

  She used her mini-computer to lock her ship, then walked briskly to one of the seven lifts on the back end of the docks. The room itself was cavernous, big enough to house large DSE ships. Most DSEs worked in large teams, working for weeks on a single planet to get a good price. Recent graduates of the Academy—many light on experience and funds—were hired by more established scientists, who took full advantage of having a team to do all the work for them. Most of these scientists, without having to focus on planet excavation, became more involved with the Academy itself, publishing papers and researching mundane topics like the pollination patterns of flowers on medium-sized planets with high concentrations of nitrogen in the atmosphere. But some DSEs spent their time focusing on the universe’s mysteries, such as Leveman’s Vortex.

  Lyssa picked up the pace toward the lift.

  It was these scientists she dreaded the most. Dr. Sostas Peate, Lyssa’s father, was infamous for his almost obsessive work on the vortex. He never published a paper nor gave a presentation, and his long absences from the Academy only increased his aura of mystery. By the time the four-year-old Lyssa became his young assistant, he was renowned for his secret work.