Learning the Hard Way 3

by H. P. Caledon

  “Copy, you are cleared to land in the dock. Your passage permit will be assigned upon your safe arrival.”

  Mike thanked the operator, and the tug in the ship indicated they were being hauled in by a tractor beam.

  “Bellows, you have been assigned quarter thirteen. Please stay in your ship and keep the ramp closed until you have been placed.”

  Their ship backed into the quarter, and the hangar door closed. A lamp above it shifted from red to green.

  * * * *

  Keelan stayed in his seat and looked around the tight quarters. He’d never been on a space station before. The triangular one above Verion Four functioned mostly as an extra control post, and he’d heard about lawmen staying over up there instead of in the spaceport due to personal safety. But that was rare. The spaceport was actually one of the safest places on Verion Four. Probably because of money.

  “What’s that?” Mike asked.

  Keelan turned to see him point at the kitbag he’d secured next to Misery before landing. “That’s everything Misery didn’t lock away in her room before landing. So she can put it away now.”

  Misery sent him a less than amused look. Mike smothered a grin and left the cockpit.

  “How about just telling me before we landed?” Misery asked.

  “Did that when you were given a tour and told all the stuff that has to be done and ready on a ship,” Keelan said.

  “Like that’s a habit you get into in a week!” she exclaimed and grabbed the kitbag, yanking at it. It didn’t budge.

  “Now it’s secured,” Keelan commented.

  If looks could kill. Man, she looks like her mother.

  In her anger, she spent a full minute yanking at the bag and fighting the buckles before she finally got it free and stomped out the cockpit with it.

  Mike had to stand flush against the wall to give her room as she passed him. Once she’d left, Mike continued toward Keelan while checking his uniform and weapons.

  “Wipe that smile off your face, or I’ll help you with it,” Keelan growled.

  “You didn’t expect it would be easy with a teenage daughter, did you?” Mike asked, rummaging through a drawer by the door.

  Keelan rolled his eyes, making Mike chuckle.

  “I once heard a mother curse her own daughter,” Mike continued. “The curse went something like this... I hope you have girls, preferably two at a time!”

  “Good luck asking her about her size.”

  “Did that, and I’m ready to go.”

  Kaleb gaped, and Mike at least looked like he had the decency to hide a gloating smile.

  “Earpiece, have it on you at all times. I’m going in armed, and I need you ready.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Keelan mumbled and pulled it from his breast pocket. He’d expected Mike to request it.

  “You need anything?”

  “A book about raising teenage daughters?”

  “Write it and you’ll earn millions, because I don’t think the ones published so far will work in your situation. Titles like how to raise murderous and wanted teenage daughters on the run with an imposter and a murderer using fake identity don’t exist.”

  Keelan went for an utterly unimpressed expression. Mike smiled theatrically and left the cockpit.

  Shaking his head, Keelan followed. “Can we even protect her when she doesn’t know?”

  “Sure, the safety lies in her not knowing.”

  “But she has to learn about fleeing and how not to get caught. Rather—”

  “Yes, she does.” Mike turned to face Keelan fully. “But you and I have to agree on a study plan before we embark on that quest.”

  Keelan capitulated, thinking Mike was right. So he popped the earpiece in and activated it.

  * * * *

  Mike left the ship, locked the ramp, and headed to the market square. People gawked at him, and he knew why—only mercenaries wore uniforms with the lawman logo.

  A woman came to stand in front of him. “Are you here for the bounty?”

  “Do you know who he is?” Mike asked.

  The woman looked irritated and pulled a lawman shield from her cleavage. Mike finally understood her irritation. She expected him to steal her bounty.

  “Then I’m not,” Mike said and shrugged.

  “Good, because he’s my catch.”

  “Goody. I’m here to shop.”

  “Lingerie for the girlfriend?” she jeered.

  “None of your business,” Mike jeered back and entered the store. “K, there’s a bounty running around on the station and two bounty hunters on the market square,” Mike mumbled as he headed for a rack with bras and panties.

  “Anything of importance to us?”

  “No, the bitch just wanted to know if I was here for her target.”

  “May I help you with something?” a woman asked behind Mike. He turned to find a smiling lady with a name tag.

  “No, I think I found what I’m looking for. Thank you.”

  She looked into his basket. “Gifts for the girlfriend?”

  “Not really.” Mike tried to avoid further conversation by stepping around her.

  “We have an offer on—”

  “Just this, please, if you’d ring it up.”

  The sales woman’s smile froze on her face while she went through the items and drew the payment from Mike’s M-card. He stuffed the goods into his kitbag and left the store.

  * * * *

  Keelan was sitting in the common room with a pad writing down an idea for Misery’s study plan when Mike called in a message about a female bounty hunter. It took away his concentration, and he went to the cockpit to see if he could figure out who she could be.

  So far, Misery had stayed in her room, and Keelan hated himself for feeling relieved by her absence.

  He looked for female lawmen and found one thousand three hundred forty bounty hunters and one hundred seventy mercenaries. Without a description of her, he couldn’t figure out who she was. The same with the target, because without knowing which end of the scale she was in, he couldn’t find much. He did find a remark about a wanted criminal named Gerald Amino who’d been spotted on a transporter which had stopped there, and the passenger list had found they were one short upon departure. Retina files hadn’t picked any up, though, but he found that there was an eight-grand bounty on Amino’s head.

  Keelan tried crossing the retina profiles of the female bounty hunters, and two popped up as being seen on that station. Sisters, actually. Keelan saved their information and looked closer at the one they might be after. A rapist.

  “M, it’s two sisters who—”

  “There, now everything in my room is completely locked down. Wanna check?” Misery asked as she left her room—loudly enough for her voice to carry all the way to the front of the cockpit.

  Keelan leaned back in the chair to see her standing in the middle of the common room staring at the empty sofas. “Not really,” he said, trying to remember what he’d been telling Mike.

  “I thought you were out there,” she mumbled and slumped in a seat close to him.

  “K, what did you say?”

  “Don’t remember... oh, yeah. The woman you met is probably either Lucy or her sister, Polly. They’re here for a rapist—it’s the only criminals they go for, and the bounty is eight grand.”

  “Oh, great, don’t wanna.”

  “Okay, just a heads up.”

  “Thanks, I’m on my way back. Did provisions arrive?”

  “Nope.” Keelan closed down his investigation.

  “Are you going after him?” Misery asked.

  “Nope,” Keelan said and got up.

  “Can I search something?”

  “Nope.”

  “Did your hard drive stall or something?”

  Keelan snorted and smiled at her. “Nope.”

  She erupted in a loud sigh.

  “What do you want to search?”

  She looked at him skeptically.

  “Your flight bu
ddy?” It looked like Keelan had just given her the idea, because her mood brightened in an unexpected way.

  “Can we?”

  “Yeah, but I’d suggest we wait until we’ve left. We’re in dock, and that diminishes our signal enough to have to search on a borrowed connection. And it’s not anything I want to search on one of those.”

  “Okay.”

  “And to make this easier, you’re gonna have to tell me a bit more about him.”

  Trust was the furthest from what he saw in her eyes, and it pained him.

  I’m her dad—she’s supposed to trust me.

  “You’re not gonna go after him, are you? Or have some friends do it?”

  “Absolutely not, and you have my word on that.”

  She didn’t look convinced.

  Keelan turned to face her fully. “Misery, trust is very important here. Especially since we’re trying to hide you from the law right now. We have to be able to trust you, but I know from hard learned lessons that I can’t trust those who don’t trust me.”

  “But—”

  “And trust is earned. So how about you and I spend some time earning each other’s trust?”

  “Does that mean we have to tell each other everything?”

  “Everything relevant is important, and everything important, you can’t lie about.”

  Misery looked at him with a contemplative frown on her young face.

  “You’re my dad,” she finally mumbled and looked away.

  “My dad was a bastard as far as I know. Don’t think I’d have trusted him just because we share genes.”

  “And your brother?”

  “Is dead.”

  “But would you have trusted him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you even know him at the end?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When were you separated? When he went to juvie, right?” Misery asked and sat forward.

  Keelan tried to nod his head, but it felt wrong and became a kind of lulling his head instead.

  “Did you and Mike ever try to hide him? Help him on the run?” Misery continued, and now Keelan knew what the many questions she’d held back were.

  “Yes,” Keelan said, and he didn’t feel like he was lying because Mike had gotten Keelan out of Irgang.

  Misery beamed at the answer. “Did he know?”

  Keelan contemplated his answer but was interrupted by the sound of the ramp lowering. Relief flooded him, and he smiled at her. “Come on. Let’s go see what Mike bought for you.”

  Chapter Three

  Mike set the table before dinner. Since getting her new clothes, Misery had spent the time in her room, while Keelan had worked in the cargo hold to make room for all the supplies they’d received an hour before they took off. They were finally in route again, and Keelan packed away their supplies.

  Misery came into the kitchen wearing clothes that definitely made her look more like a young woman than the stumped teenage boy she’d passed as for so long. Her hair was still a disaster to look at, though.

  “How does it look?” she asked and turned.

  “Looks good. Now we just have to wait for your hair to grow out.” Mike smiled at her lifted spirit as she plucked at her uneven locks.

  “You must have bought a lot of stuff for your sister. Is she nice?”

  “Of course she is, she’s my sister. But she hates your dad.”

  “Why?”

  “Their first meeting was a bit awkward. Ke—Kaleb and I haven’t always been the best of friends.”

  Misery looked at him skeptically. “Sounded like you almost called my dad Keelan for a second.”

  “No, I just changed the story because... whether it’s relevant to know that Keelan once tried to murder me... ” Mike shrugged.

  “Why, because you’re my dad’s partner?”

  “Nah.”

  “Then why? Because you and my dad tried to help Keelan on the run? Did he even know? Dad didn’t get to answer me because you came home and interrupted.”

  “Oh, well, no. Keelan didn’t always know. And you won’t get the rest of this story now. Would you finish here? I’ll go tell your dad that dinner’s ready.”

  Mike almost ran for the cargo hold. He found Keelan working on strapping a box to a wall. “What have you told her? She’s asking all sorts of questions about Keelan and says we helped him on the run.”

  “You sprung him from Irgang, remember?”

  Mike wanted to say a whole lot of things, but Keelan continued.

  “I know you have a lax attitude regarding the truth, but has it occurred to you that I have to lie to my own daughter every time I open my mouth? How am I supposed to gain her trust if I lie? And if I gain her trust, and she finds out I’ve been lying to her from day one, then I can never regain that trust.”

  Mike deflated. “We can’t tell her the truth, either.”

  “That’s why I’m giving her as much of it as I can,” Keelan said quietly and tightened the rope.

  “Trust isn’t abundant between the two of you.”

  “Or the two of you,” Keelan shot back.

  “And trust is earned. How?” Mike hopped up on a crate and looked at Keelan, more open to the truth streak.

  “We’re gonna look for one of her friends. The guy she ran with that day. I promised her.”

  “What did you two talk about when I was shopping?”

  Keelan sighed and let go of the rope to take a seat across from Mike.

  * * * *

  Misery sat in the kitchen and looked at the food on the table, thinking it odd that Mike and Kaleb hadn’t come up from the cargo hold yet. She got up and went to the door to listen for boxes being shuffled around, but it was quiet. So she tiptoed to the stairs and crouched.

  “We can’t help her friends from here. To go back for them and hide them too will put her in too much danger after the Delta Zeich incident,” Mike said.

  “Great, so now it’s both me and Misery who’re hiding? Even though me and Keelan Hunter don’t have the same retina profiles?” Kaleb asked angrily.

  “You know how greedy this business can be. They’ll shoot you first and check the retina afterward and oops, wrong profile, which was worth a lot.”

  “That would cut their bounty by two-thirds. Do you really believe they’d shoot?”

  “Since the profile says apt at killing both bounty hunters and mercenaries, you can bet your ass they’ll shoot first, and it’s not easy running with an ass full of child-friendly ammo, my friend.”

  “Should we ask Lewis?”

  “Absolutely not. You and I are the last people in the worlds he wants to see or hear anything from right now.”

  Silence followed before Keelan spoke again. “Could we hide in the Frontiers?”

  “Sorry, not possible. Those communities are so small that everybody knows everything about everybody.”

  A longer silence followed, and Misery gathered courage. She tiptoed back to the kitchen before stomping her way to the hatch. “Are we eating or what?”

  “Coming!” they shouted.

  * * * *

  Keelan glanced at Misery upon entering the kitchen. For a second, he was floored by how beautiful she looked in normal women’s clothing that fit, but the conversation with Mike had given him too much to think about to be able to come up with a proper compliment. He certainly had a few more ideas for that study plan. No matter how he viewed it, he couldn’t shake the feeling that they had to tell her the truth about his identity, and soon—Mike’s reasons for keeping it quiet be damned.

  Keelan smiled at her as they took their seat at the table. They poured the food and ate in silence for a few minutes.

  “How did you find me?” Misery asked.

  Keelan hesitated, filling the void of conversation behind chewing his food. When he swallowed, he stared at Mike to give the answer instead.

  Mike drew a sigh and sat back. “We walked all of Verion Four and tried to find you and the others you ran awa
y with,” Mike said. “We ran into Jasper, who told us that you and a few others had gone to Motáll. So we brought Jasper with us and secured his future. He’s serving a tour on a Spec Edit now. We looked through all the databases and found some bounty hunters hot on your tail. We found you first and left before they knew we were even there.”

  “So... my file is kind of what you know about me?” she asked.

  Keelan nodded, picking at his food. “We know that you’re wanted for murder. That’s about it.”

  “Okay.” Misery imitated him, poking at her own food. “He wanted to collect me to become a slave.”

  A violent rage erupted in Keelan, and he worked to suppress it. She shouldn’t see that. Not that she would, since she kept her focus on her plate.

  “So you killed him?” Keelan finally asked.

  “Yeah. Cracked him on the head. Enough for him to let go of me, and then I ran into an alley because I knew the route over the rooftops.” Still with her focus on her food, she didn’t see the proud smile Keelan flashed at Mike. But she continued. “But he was too quick, and he called for backup. Halfway up the fire escape, I knew he’d be able to catch up to me up there, so I jumped into a container and found a weapon.”

  “The handle of an old skillet?” Mike asked.

  Misery nodded. “He jumped in after me, and I just thrust. I didn’t care where I hid, I just needed his hands occupied somewhere so I could go for the throat.” Misery still didn’t look up, but Keelan’s smile spread further. “I never got to see the other guy he called for. That Hallett guy.”

  Keelan’s smile fell. “Cecil Hallett?”

  Mike looked whipped. “Are you sure about that name?”

  “He just said Hallett. Why?”

  “He was locked up before this happened, right?” Keelan asked, looking at Mike.

  “We interrogated him. Me and the physician. He sang loud and clear and was extradited. I don’t know anything about prison. Ratkins and I went after Pierre based on the information we got from Hallett. That guy Seth, that Keelan killed in the alley, was seen with a slave buyer named Selina who had a meeting with Pierre on Verion Four. Those were the two we were after when... Keelan tried to kill me,” Mike said, looking at Misery.