by A. K. DuBoff
“Does this happen a lot?”
“To a given guard? No. We’ll maybe see action once or twice a year. Union-wide, though, there’s an incident every day somewhere. We go through a six-week training camp for how to fly backward to look like we were hit.”
“What about the singe marks?” Jack asked.
“Oh, those? We have squibs in the armor,” the guard revealed. “We wear white so it’s really obvious when we’re ‘hit’ so the enemy is more likely to leave us alone.”
“Huh. I always thought it was so you’d look all sleek and fancy.”
“Nah, it’s to make us obvious targets and make the squibs explosions stand out. The union terms of service are on the Net, if you ever want to check it out.”
“You know, that seems like it would be really handy to know in future engagements. Is there some sort of phrase that will make all of you drop your weapons?” Jack asked.
The guard paused. “You didn’t hear it from me, but just say, ‘It’s quitting time,’ and everyone will pack up and go.”
“No! You’re joking, right?”
“Nope, dead serious.”
“Hah! I see what you did there,” Jack laughed.
The guard smiled. “Man, I like you.”
“We totally need to grab a beer after this.”
“Yes!” The guard dropped his voice. “Is someone coming?”
Jack quickly stood up. “Yeah, must be your reinforcements. How do I get in touch?”
“Message me at ‘[email protected]’.”
“Got it! Thanks for the tips. Looking forward to that beer.”
“Likewise.”
Jack slinked behind the couch as the footfalls in the corridor to the right of the lounge room neared. Finn was still apparently hiding in the office, leaving Jack on his own.
Four guards dressed in the same white armor as the first guard entered the room.
“Intruder!” one of them shouted. “They shot Steve.”
The guard Jack had talked to—who was named Steve, it would seem—remained motionless and silent, playing his role of a dead man.
Jack leaped from his hiding place behind the couch and fired four shots toward the new arrivals.
Singe marks appeared on the armor of the front two—Jack wasn’t sure if he’d struck them or if it was the squibs—and they fell to the ground. The remaining two leveled their weapons on Jack.
He stared them down, a smile playing on his lips. “It’s quitting time.”
The two remaining guards, a man and a woman, frowned. “Are you in the union?”
“No, but I know what it’s like to have a tough job no one appreciates you doing. I wanted to give you a chance to walk away and not have to deal with a shoot-out. There are no cameras or sensors in here, as far as I know, so your boss won’t know what happened.”
“It is a lot of paperwork whenever we get in a firefight,” the female guard said.
“But, if we get shot, we get to go on paid leave,” the male guard said.
“Ooo, that’s a good point.” She paused, then looked at Jack and tilted her head. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to shoot us for real? Like, in the leg or something. If we use the squibs, we only get a day off. But with a real injury…”
“Yeah, it’s like two months of R&R at a ‘rehabilitation’ resort. There’s a swim-up bar!” the man added.
“The union dues are steep, but it’s not without perks,” stated the woman.
Jack shrugged. “Sure, I’ll help you out. How do we do this?”
The woman mimed storming into the room, weapon drawn. “Okay, I’ll be all like ‘I’m running in to stop the—’ Ow!” she cried out as a laser blast from Jack’s pistol singed her left thigh.
“I’ll stop you!” the male guard yelled while pretending to charge.
Jack shot him in the right leg.
“Ouch! That really stings.”
“I probably need to knock you unconscious to make it look convincing, huh?” Jack asked.
“Yeah, probably,” the female guard agreed.
“Hey, can you shoot me, too?” Steve asked, raising his head slightly.
“If they’re getting shot, I want to, too,” one of the other fallen guards said.
“May as well do me, too,” stated the other.
Jack held up his free hand. “Everyone calm down. You’ll all get shot, wait for your turn.”
He went around the room inflicting the requisite leg wounds and thwaps on the head with the grip of his pistol. To make it look legit, he was sure to vary the injuries. After all, they were helping him out, so he didn’t want them to be suspected of a conspiracy to get undue vacation time.
When he was finished, Jack called out to Finn. “All clear! Come on.”
Finn cracked open the door to the office and looked out. “What have you been doing out here?” He noticed the bodies. “Whoa, you’ve been busy.”
“Long story. Hurry, we need to get back to the ship!”
Finn exited the office, dragging the bag of gold behind him. ‘Travel tough’ or not, the nylon fabric of the duffle appeared strained under the weight of its load, the seams threatening to pull apart near the handle.
“Can you move any faster?” Jack asked him when it took a full minute just for Finn to make it from the office door to the lounge room.
“I’m doing the best I can.”
“Leave some of the gold behind. It won’t do us any good if we get caught trying to leave. Even one bar would be a huge win!”
“No, it’s my precious!” Finn snarled. He caught himself. “Sorry, I just really like shiny things.”
Jack motioned downward to his light-up shoes. “Trust me, I understand.” He grabbed the other side of the duffle bag handle to help Finn drag it along, increasing the speed of travel the slightest measure.
At the stairwell door, Jack released the handle and propped the door open for Finn to go through.
“The stairs are going to be tricky,” Jack cautioned.
“We’ll manage, come on.” Finn started dragging the bag downward, thumping on each step as he slowly descended.
“Triss! We got the IDs,” Jack reported, remembering they were back in in a zone where the comms worked.
“There you are!” she replied. “I was worried.”
“Are Alyssa and Latrina back yet?” he asked.
“Almost here. Where are you?”
“We’re on our way out. Call the Vorlox.”
“I’m on it,” she acknowledged.
Jack helped Finn drag the bag down another flight of stairs. “Clock is ticking! This is taking too long.”
“Then you shouldn’t have told her to call the Vorlox yet!”
“That’s hardly the only time constraint here.”
They made it down the final flight. It would be a straight shot to the Little Princess II from there.
Jack opened the door. “Now we just—”
A pew pew of laser fire erupted as soon as the door was open. One of the beams made it through the open doorway and tore through the nylon bag, shredding the already strained fabric.
“My gold!” Finn cried, raising his hands to his mouth with horror.
Jack shoved his friend clear of the laser fire, against the stairwell wall.
“We have to leave it, Finn,” he said. “There’s no time to take out these guys and carry the bars by hand.”
“Do what you did last time so they put down their weapons.”
“That doesn’t change that we don’t have time for multiple roundtrips.”
“You haven’t even tried. Go!”
Jack groaned. “Fine.” He pressed his back flat against the wall next to the doorway and peeked out. “It’s quitting time!”
The firing stopped momentarily, so Jack stuck out his head to look. Eight guards dressed in gray were positioned down the length of the corridor, weapons all pointed in his direction. As soon as his head was visible, all of them fired, just barely missin
g his nose as he quickly pulled back to safety.
“Uh, I don’t think these are the same union guards.”
“Then who are they?”
“I dunno. Maybe mercs?”
“We have you surrounded!” one of the mercs shouted. “Come quietly and we’ll kill you quick and painless-like.”
“Not a great sales pitch,” Jack yelled back. “What do mercs respond to if not paid medical leave?” he whispered to Finn.
“They work for the highest bidder.”
Jack stared at the pile of gold at their feet.
“No.” Finn shook his head. “Not my gold, no.”
“Do you want to live or not?”
Finn reached down to grab one of the bricks off the ground. He stuck it in his jacket pocket, but the thin fabric stretched around to highlight the outline of the gold bar.
Jack raised an eyebrow. “Really, Finn?”
The other man rolled his eyes. “You owe me.” He returned the bar to the stack.
Jack crouched down and shoved the pile, still resting on the fabric remains, into the sightline of the mercs. “The gold is yours if you let us go.”
“Where did you get that?” the merc asked.
“The vault. There are eight of you and eight bars here. Just let us go to our ship and give us a head start.”
The mercs were silent for several seconds.
“All right, you have a deal,” the lead guy said.
Jack checked around the corner, and the mercs had lowered their weapons.
One was approaching. “How were you planning to get all that back to your ship?”
“It was in a bag, but it ripped,” Jack explained.
“Ah, was it the SpaceMall Galactic Explorer model?” the merc asked.
Finn nodded.
The merc shook his head. “Should have gotten the rolling edition. That’ll carry four hoslongers.”
“I still have no sense of the analogies used in his region,” Jack commented.
“Well, gold is a universal language.” The merc grinned.
“Yeah, enjoy it.” Finn’s tone had more than a touch of bitterness.
“Pleasure doing business with you,” Jack said to the mercs as he passed by with his own loot slung over his shoulder.
Finn sighed next to him. “Worst op ever.”
CHAPTER 9: A Job Well Done
— — —
Alyssa and Latrina were waiting in the common area of the Little Princess II with Triss when Jack and Finn arrived.
“You got everything?” Alyssa asked.
“Yeah, all the IDs,” Jack replied. “We didn’t know how to sort out our dozen people from the hundred or so others, so we grabbed the whole lot.”
“And we had eight bars of gold, but Jack gave it all to the merc goons so we wouldn’t get shot,” Finn grumbled.
“Seriously?” Alyssa’s eyebrows raised. “Greedy bastards. They forced us to hand over the reactor nodes.”
Jack’s heart sank. “Wait, so you didn’t get any loot?”
Latrina shook her head. “I was going to sacrifice myself so Alyssa could get away with the nodes, but she wouldn’t let me. She said I was too important to someone.” Her eyes met Jack’s.
He swallowed. “Is that so, Alyssa? You said that?”
An amused smirk touched the corners of her lips. “I’m a hopeless romantic, what can I say?”
“She must know how very much you mean to me, too, Jack.” Latrina folded her hands on her chest over where a human heart would be.
Jack took a small step backward. “Yep, and we haven’t even been on a proper first date yet…”
“I can’t wait to spend all of our time together!” Latrina’s artificial green eyes glowed a little brighter.
He let out an uncomfortable chuckle and continued inching away.
“Too late to do anything about it now,” Alyssa said, returning to the business at hand. “Where’s Morey?”
Triss consulted her tablet. “I sent him a message a few minutes ago to let him know we were done. He was just wrapping up his massages.”
Ten seconds later, the robot appeared in the hatchway. He revved his hand-wheels. “That was quite the workout!”
Jack ran over to the hatch and sealed it. “Good job, Morey.”
“We need to get out of here before the Vorlox show up.” Alyssa headed for the bridge. “I don’t want them to find something else to confiscate from us.”
Triss followed her.
A minute later, the ship shuddered as the docking clamps released, and the view out of the side window shifted. Jack sat on the couch to brace for the impending acceleration.
“Oh! The Vorlox are here!” Finn observed.
“At least two of the guards will be very relaxed for their impending arrest—or execution,” Morey commented.
Jack pivoted to look out the viewport. The comically exaggerated ship with oversized guns and dorsal spikes was positioning to dock with the pink star base.
“Busted!” Jack and Finn declared simultaneously. They grinned, the loss of the gold forgotten.
“You know, I’m a little sad I didn’t get to tackle and cuff anyone,” Jack added after a moment.
Finn nodded. “Me too. Another time, perhaps.”
The Little Princess II altered course to the left. Just when the icy moon was disappearing from view, the sights morphed into the streaked starscape of hyperspace.
Morey returned to his place in the hangar while Jack and Finn took some time to unwind after the harrowing exit.
When the ship was far enough away to avoid detection, Alyssa and Triss dropped it out of hyperspace. They emerged from the bridge.
“Okay, let’s get these people their IDs back,” the captain said. “We can leave the unclaimed chips with the workers when we drop them off wherever they want to go and have them reach out to their friends as the Blue Rabbit gang’s operation is dismantled by the Vorlox.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Jack grabbed his duffle and followed her down the ladder with Triss and Finn close behind.
The workers were assembled in the center of the hangar with expectant expressions.
“How did it go?” Ramone asked
“We got the IDs,” Jack replied. “Yours and a few extras. You’ll need to sort them out.” He walked over to the dining table and removed the ID chips from his bag, placing them in a pile.
“Thank you for these,” Ramone said. “At least we’ll have our identities, if nothing else.”
“What do you mean?” Jack asked.
Ramone shrugged. “We have no money or anything to our name after the Blue Rabbits took us. We have to start over.”
Jack’s stomach clenched. “That’s not right.”
“It’s life,” Ramone said.
“No.” Jack opened the other compartment on his duffle and dumped out the credit chips. “You deserve to get your lives back. There’s enough for each of you to have ten thousand credits—that should be enough to get your own business going, if you work together.”
The faces of the workers lit up.
“Thank you!” Ramone exclaimed. “This is the kindest thing anyone has ever done for me.”
“Thank you!” the others said as they gathered their share of the credits, grins on their faces.
“No one should have to sell their body like that to survive,” Jack said.
“Well, it’s labor, but that’s any job,” Ramone replied as he gathered the final chips for his portion.
“It’s okay, Ramone. This is a safe place,” Jack assured him. “You can talk about it.”
The man gave him a quizzical look. “I am.”
“It seems like you’re still using euphemisms,” Jack countered. “Just tell it like it is.”
“That we’re hot sauce artisans?”
“See? That’s the kind of expression I mean. No, that you’re escorts, or prostitutes—whatever you are.”
Ramone stared at him blankly for a moment, then burst out laughing a
long with the other workers. “Wait, you thought we were sex workers?”
Jack looked at his friends and then back at the passengers. “Yeah… You mean, you’re not?”
“No!” Ramone continued chuckling. “We’re cooks, like we said. We are one of the top crews working on the Blue Rabbit’s hot sauce production.”
“The what now?” Triss’ head tilted to the side.
“Their black market hot sauce.” Ramone paused. “You had no idea what their operation does, did you?”
“Sex trafficking?” Jack asked, though he was beginning to doubt any of his assumptions had been correct.
Ramone shook his head. “Stars, no! The detailing chain is a front for the hot sauce running. Some of the peppers are illegal on certain worlds because of some hallucinogenic properties due to the extreme heat, so they need to keep the business secret. They use the rabbit-star rating system to indicate the heat of the product in the various crates, ranging from ‘super mouth-nova’ to ‘rainbow explosion’. Everything is coded to look like ship refurbishment parts and services, but it’s all about the hot sauce.”
“Wait, ‘rainbow’?” Jack asked. “Would that have anything to do with that drug people were using around the Caleron System?”
Ramone shrugged. “All I know about is my hot sauce.”
Alyssa crossed her arms. “Then how come you were being held against your will and forced to work?”
“We owned a competing chain known for spicy foods, but they absorbed the operation in a hostile takeover. We lost the coin toss, so we had to work for them for two years.”
Triss’ eyes narrowed. “And you didn’t think to tell us any of this?”
“I thought we made it very clear,” Ramone said. “I mean, we’re dressed like we work in a kitchen. I don’t know where you got your ideas from.”
“But…” Finn spun around and stormed out of the hangar up the ladder.
Alyssa spread her hands. “So wait, let me get this straight. Whenever we made mention to you being forced to work, it’s because you lost a coin toss and had a two-year-long agreement to cook black market hot sauce?”
“Correct,” Ramone confirmed.
The captain spun around and followed Finn up the ladder.
