Double Life

by S. Usher Evans

  "All right what?" Razia pressed.

  "All right, you're off probation," Dissident growled.

  "Pleasure doing business with you, Dissident," Razia said, leaning forward and ending the call.

  She watched her bounty for a moment, a smile growing on her face as it updated.

  "Leveman’s Vortex…" Razia said, putting her hands over her face. She sat back and tried to think, but her head was spinning. Who was she going to hunt first? Was she ever going back to the Academy again? What was she going to tell Harms?

  "So...?"

  Vel’s voice brought Lyssa back to reality. One last thing to take care of.

  "And how would you like to spend the weekend at home?" She smiled, setting a course for B-39837.

  She heard nothing but a disgusted sigh, and the sound of footsteps walking to go pack his things.

  ***

  Lyssa stood awkwardly in front of her ship, waiting for Vel to come down. Her hair was down and her attire decidedly pirate, but there weren’t any U-POL officers there at the Manor. She was fairly sure Jukin had recruited the entire force to search for her and Vel—at least that was what he'd been broadcasting over the news—but the very last place they'd ever look was Jukin's own childhood home on B-39837.

  She hated every inch of this planet, especially the Manor, and would not cry a single tear if the entire planet somehow got sucked into Leveman's Vortex (which was ominously visible from almost every angle of the planet). By the hand of the Great Creator, or an incredibly lucky combination of gravitational forces, only this planet remained in the only solar system to exist near the gravitational phenomena.

  It was discovered by her ancestor, a pious individual who believed the former was the case, and built an ornate Temple and even more ornate house to showcase his love for the Great Creator. Three hundred years and a thousand children later, it still stood in all its glory—now home to the Peate clan. There was probably enough gold and silver in the house to feed several planets for years, and there were fancy parties and galas almost every weekend.

  The dock she stood in mirrored the Manor in its ostentatiousness. Marble columns and high arches dominated the architecture, with gold-plated chandeliers hanging from the apexes. Lyssa always found it a bit much for a simple ship dock, especially considering the number of times she'd seen repair crews to fix damage from a careless ship pilot.

  One such repair man was deftly working on one of the marble columns, ignoring her completely. That was a fairly regular occurrence for the servants there—ignore and be ignored. She looked around the empty room and remembered how it would fill up to the brim on the weekends. Once Sostas had arrived at the wrong time and been unable to find a spot to dock his ship at his own house. She'd never seen him so angry.

  Well, until she'd ruined their last trip to Leveman’s Vortex.

  She caught herself reminiscing and stuck her hands in her jacket, annoyed. Luckily, the sound of wheels on the ramp of her ship drew her attention from thoughts of Plethegon.

  "Well, it's been terrible." Lyssa stuck out her hand to shake his.

  "So what am I supposed to do about my internship?"

  "I don't know. Call Pymus." Lyssa shrugged, uninterested in his problems. "Like I said, you have a selection of other brothers to choose from."

  "He’s not going to allow me to switch doctors."

  "Well, then," Lyssa said, a smile growing on her face, "tell him I quit the Academy."

  "And so what, you're just going to be a pirate now?" Vel asked, obviously not sharing her enthusiasm. "What is it, Razia?"

  "That's the long and short of it. I daresay this will be the last time you ever see Lyssa Peate—"

  They were interrupted by a loud, blood-curdling scream.

  A woman in her mid-fifties stood in the entrance of the docking station. She wore an exquisite blue silk gown, detailed with gold trim that pulled at her plump midsection, clearly (and barely) bound by a tight corset. Her hair, dyed blonde, was curled in ringlets meticulously pinned atop her head, although in her rush to run into the room, strands had fallen. Her face, normally superiorly calm and with a near-constant judgment of all she surveyed, was flushed red and her eyes wide and searching.

  Right behind her was another woman, twenty years younger, with the same concerned look on her face. She, too, was wearing a silk dress, but hers was cream, and simpler, and her hair seemed ever-so-slightly less meticulous, but put together none the less. A priest in black robes and no less than five servants, each wearing a crisp white shirt and deep gold-colored jackets rounded out the group.

  "Mother!" Vel said, his eyes lighting up. "I—"

  "Get away from my son!" The older woman, Eleonora Hedvig Serann Peate, formally known as Mrs. Dr. Sostas Peate, came barreling into the room, as loudly as a woman in her dress and station could do.

  "Oh he’s fine." Lyssa rolled her eyes. "You are so—"

  "You vile, evil woman!" she said, turning her attention to Lyssa. "How dare you kidnap my son?"

  Lyssa, about to fire back, was momentarily stunned. "What?"

  "Mother, this is—" Vel started, before being yanked away by the other woman, their eldest sister Sera.

  "Vel, you stay with me," she said, protectively wrapping her arms around him. "Did she hurt you?"

  "Sera, I’m fine," Vel insisted.

  Lyssa continued to stare at Mrs. Dr. Sostas Peate dumbly as a plump, ring-adorned finger pointed at her face.

  "You think you can threaten my family in this manner?" she huffed, the smell of her expensive perfume familiar and terrifying at the same time. "Do you think my son Jukin will let you get away with this?"

  Lyssa couldn’t even think about responding, nor could she wipe the shocked look from her face. She looked at Vel, who was being coddled and caressed by Sera. The priest, Helmsley, who'd been saying a prayer over him, now turned to look straight at Lyssa, his icy blue eyes piercing her.

  "You, my dear, will have a lot to answer for when your soul finally reaches the Great Creator,” he said superiorly. He hadn’t changed since she'd last seen him all those years ago.

  "What?" Lyssa responded, snapping out of her thoughts.

  "I suppose an evil, morally corrupt woman such as yourself has never been to a Temple," Mrs. Dr. Sostas Peate continued, her voice full of anger and vitriol.

  Helmsley shook his head and looked down his nose at her.

  "I have," Lyssa said dumbly.

  "When you die," Helmsley whispered dramatically, "your soul will travel to the place where it was created, the Great Leveman’s Vortex. And it is there you will pay the price for your miscreant, evil deeds!"

  "You lying, deceitful child!"

  She knew they were right; deep down, she knew. There was no escaping her fate now—she had indisputable evidence from the Great Creator himself. Their words in her ear were no comparison to the terrible fear she kept locked in her mind. The fear of falling into that damned river of fire—the ground giving way beneath her, and no one there to catch her. Nobody was ever going to catch her again.

  "You see, Lyssandra, this is what happens when you lie. The Great Creator does not reward bad little girls. He punishes them."

  Her evil soul was repulsive, and everyone knew it. First her father had left her, then her mother and her siblings had abandoned her. Even when she'd a gun against her head, even when she'd begged them to save her from the terrifying pirate keeping her hostage, they'd abandoned her.

  "Mother, please. He's gonna kill me."

  "Then perhaps you should call your father and see if he'll come for you."

  M-mother…"

  "I hate that it has come to this, but you have persisted in your lies and now you have to face the consequences. Call your father. I'm sure he will be obliged to pay whatever ransom this…miscreant is asking for."

  "Mother, I swear, I don't know where he is. He just left and—"

  "Then I suggest you find him."

  She looked up, eyes wide and breath caug
ht in her throat, the imaginary barrel of a gun held to her head. But she wasn't on that ship, she was standing completely alone in the silent dock, accompanied only by the quiet sounds of the servant patching the walls and a river of fire coursing in the back of her mind.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Razia stared at her reflection in the window of the drab shuttle, trying to force a smile onto her face.

  She was supposed to be happy, right?

  She was the thirtieth most wanted pirate in the universe, off probation, and able to hunt any pirate she pleased.

  Not to mention she had plenty of money to burn. She'd made a pit stop at the Academy—she did, after all, have a fully excavated planet to sell—and, thanks in part to the shocking kidnapping of Vel Peate, she'd sold the planet for one hundred and fifty thousand credits to a prospector eager to learn the sordid details.

  That money was needed, as Razia had yet to be added to whatever list the parking managers on D-882 used to provide prime parking to the top pirates, and was forced to park out in the outskirts of the city again. For some reason, she couldn’t even bring herself to even be the smallest bit annoyed by the hour and a half ride.

  She looked at her reflection in the shuttle window and heard her mother’s voice in her head.

  "God in Leveman’s Vortex," she whispered, looking at the ceiling of the shuttle. Her mind had been replaying those memories over and over again. She'd tried so hard to bury them, but spending just a few minutes at the Manor was enough to dredge it all back up.

  She let out a loud sigh in the empty shuttle, trying to clear her head. Lyssa Peate was officially done—a ghost. Now, she was going to be Razia, the best bounty hunter in the universe.

  She forced herself to smile, hoping that the happiness would follow. The shuttle pulled into the station and she popped up, adjusting her jacket and holding her head up high as she stepped into the dim light.

  ***

  "Well, I guess you didn’t need Evet Delmur after all." Harms was alone and grinned broadly when she slid into his booth.

  "I still found him anyway," Razia said, before giving him a knowing look. "Did you know that he was still in contact with Dissident?"

  "I…" Harms withered slightly. "I might have."

  "Yet you still let me go after him." Razia shook her head.

  "Oh, come on," Harms said, lightly batting her shoulder across the table. "You weaseled your way back into the web anyway."

  "That I did," she said with a pleased grin. "Figured Jukin had it coming, you know?"

  "How did you break into that place undetected?" Harms asked.

  Razia shrugged, figuring that vagueness was better than trying to make up some ridiculous story.

  "Be careful, or people will think you’re a good pirate." Harms winked. "So, Miss ‘Off Probation,’ which lucky gentlemen gets the honor of being your first bounty capture?"

  Razia stared at him. She hadn’t even looked at the pirate intraweb, let alone picked which pirate she was going to hunt first. She couldn’t very well tell him that she'd been moping—what did Razia have to mope about?

  "Oh, well," she said, trying to buy herself some time. She opened the pirate intranet news, scrolling down the list of pirate activity to look for a name—any name she could give Harms.

  Stenson was part of Dissident’s web—she couldn’t capture him.

  She tried not to smile—it would be nice to turn in Sage and get him back for all the grief he gave her. But, unfortunately, since he was in the same web, he was off limits.

  Without even opening his profile, she said the first name she could find: "Dal Jamus."

  Harms did a double take, nearly spitting out his drink. "Wh-What? You can’t be serious."

  "Why wouldn’t I be?"

  If Harms thought that Dal Jamus was too tough for her, it was definitely a good choice. She put down her mini-computer, as if she had been planning this all along.

  "He’s…a big bounty," Harms said, leaning forward nervously.

  "He’s like, twenty-five? So what?"

  "I mean, a big bounty."

  "I can handle it," Razia said, downing the rest of her water, and starting to get excited about this guy Harms obviously didn’t think she could take down. "After all, this is my very first bounty off probation. I want to make sure I make an impact."

  "Just make sure he doesn’t make an impact out of you…" Harms muttered.

  ***

  Razia could barely wait to begin searching for Jamus. Something about the way Harms was pleading with her to change her mind, told her that once she brought this guy in, she would be flying high.

  She didn’t have to search very hard to find literally everything there was to know about him.

  He had just one bank account, which he also used to pay his rent and buy his morning coffee around the corner. She tried to find any information on the charge that he'd beaten up a police officer, but there was no record of it.

  She considered calling Harms, but he hadn't seemed too happy with her when she left, so she thought better of it.

  Turning back to his bank statements, she wondered why he hadn't been caught yet. New pirates were normally this sloppy—they didn’t all realize the importance of having multiple aliases or trying to hide from bounty hunters. But someone this high for this long was usually a little more careful—or had already paid the price.

  Perhaps she was just the only one paying attention.

  He frequented a bar near his place nearly every day, so that was the first place she decided to check. She walked through the door and was bathed in darkness. The smell of old alcohol and dirt permeated the air, and as her eyes adjusted to the dark bar, she took stock of the place. The bar itself was against the wall, with dusty bottles lining the back, some barstools (bolted down) in front, and a crusty barkeep reading a paper in the corner.

  "You lookin’ for a job?" he asked her.

  "Not particularly," Razia replied, continuing to look around. There were a few tables lining the wall, and a few old men scattered around. But no sign of Jamus.

  She checked her mini-computer again. He hit this place every day, and he hadn't been there yet. So it was only a matter of time.

  She sat down at one of the tables to wait. In the meantime, she pulled up her news to see what the rest of the pirate community was doing.

  Santos Journot had jumped ten slots in about two weeks, she noted curiously, but there still wasn't a picture of him. He'd nabbed two of the top ten pirates—

  She felt a presence behind her.

  Acting normally, she pretended to scroll through her mini-computer, mentally readying herself to beat the living crap out of whoever dared to cross her now.

  The presence got closer, and she could feel a hand reaching for her.

  Without a sound, she stood up, grabbed the hand and flipped the man over her shoulder, splaying him out on the floor next to her.

  "...that was uncalled for," Sage said, eyes shut, lying on the floor.

  "Shouldn't sneak up on people," she grumbled, sitting back down and pulling out her mini-computer.

  "Wasn't trying to," he grunted, sitting up slowly and dusting himself off. "You're off in la-la land."

  "What do you want?" she snapped, not looking up at him as he sat down next to her.

  "Thought I would pop in for a drink," Sage said, motioning to the barkeep. "Water, please."

  "Really?" Razia narrowed her eyes at him. "Pretty odd coincidence that we both happened to go to the same, out-of-the-way bar. Because, you know, there are a billion places to get water and you stopped here."

  "Pretty genius move, kidnapping your own brother," Sage said quietly, but loud enough that Razia quickly forgot her suspicion and looked around nervously.

  "Shut up!"

  "Oh, relax." He chuckled as she growled at him. "What happened anyway? I thought you hated your family."

  "I do," she mumbled. "It's a long story. Bottom line is that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time."
r />   "Sounds to me like he was in the right place," Sage said. "I mean, you did get Dissident off your back."

  "Yeah, I did."

  "See?" Sage nudged her. "I knew you’d figure it out eventually."

  "No thanks to you," Razia said, pulling out her mini-computer to continue ignoring him.

  "Please," Sage said, tossing her a dirty look. "Who’s the one who helped you figure out how to find Evet Delmur?"

  Razia glared at him, but didn’t respond.

  "You know, for a bounty hunter, you're pretty blind sometimes. I mean, how do you know Dal Jamus hasn't already been here and left since you've been staring at that stupid thing of yours."

  She looked down at her mini-computer then back up at him. "You know, I'm not going to take criticism from you. Besides, I know he hasn't come in because—" She stopped, her eyes narrowing. "How did you know I was going after Dal Jamus?"

  Sage was momentarily saved by a loud slam. The door was wide open, and blinding light streamed in around a figure that took up nearly the entire doorway. He walked inside, and grew about six more inches as he stood tall. The door shut behind him and he came into focus.

  He was, without a doubt, the biggest, burliest man Razia had ever seen. He was so tall his head had to be scraping the ceiling. Not only that, but he had muscles so thick that he looked like he could break Razia in half with his fingers. He had a deep, brooding expression, and a thick, grizzled black beard. Three people sitting at the bar ran away when he looked in their direction, so he took up the three barstools that they'd vacated. He banged his thick hand on the table and the bartender shakily handed him a drink the size of Razia’s head, which he promptly downed in one gulp.

  She started to understand why he'd been in the pirate web for so long.

  "Well, Lyss, go get your bounty," Sage joked, giving her a nervous look.

  Razia swallowed and tried to hide her apprehension. Sure, he was big, and muscular, and could knock her over with his breath, but that probably meant he was slow.