They all hit the ground in the little alley out the back in a clatter of rifles.
Kohl looked over his shoulder at Joni. “Wait here a second,” he said. He slipped out into the alley. No one else here, which wasn’t what he expected. Five was a better number for this, and for there to be only three spoke of budget cuts or incompetence. He bent over, checking bodies. No ID, no insignia, no tags of any kind. Not even a fashion label on their underwear. Huh. Well, that didn’t matter much; the captain didn’t want intel, he wanted a quick getaway. He hefted the bodies out of sight behind a dumpster, the side of it sporting a bright Thank you for being a tidy citizen! He yanked the door to the bar back open. Joni was still there.
“Kohl,” said Joni. “Kohl? I’ll be going now.”
“Okay,” said Kohl. “Maybe don’t come to work for a couple of days.”
“What work?” she said, head jerking behind her.
“Right,” said Kohl. He cocked his head, looking up. No drones, which was odd in itself. No sirens, which was odder still. He palmed his communicator, tapping the screen. No signal. Huh, again. “Maybe you want to let me go first.”
“Maybe I do,” said Joni, her own communicator slipping back into a pocket of her pants. “What’s going on, October?”
“Above my pay grade,” said Kohl. “I’m a deck hand.”
She laughed at him, all jangled nervousness. “You are not a deck hand.”
He shrugged, holstered the blaster, and walked to the end of the alley. To the left, the main entrance to the bar. Smoke, a few bodies. Holo stage was out, leaving just a blank hole. Not many folk milling around, because smart money said run when people started firing. He crouched low, shuffled to the entrance to the bar, and took a look inside. Just a couple of soldiers or whatever they were walking around inside the charred wreckage. The coins he’d counted on the bar wouldn’t cover this, but to be fair, this wasn’t a typical event at a bar. This was what happened when black ops wanted something, and wanted it bad. That Navy lieutenant had been hiring Nate for a job, and it looked to Kohl like that contract was one that black ops didn’t want fulfilled.
He’d have to tell the captain about this.
As October Kohl left the smoking bar, Joni hurrying in the opposite direction, he was left with a perplexing thought. He rarely spent a lot of time thinking about things, because why bother, the universe kept on turning about the core no matter what you did, but in this case it seemed worthwhile. The thought he couldn’t shake was that if black ops didn’t want the job fulfilled, there were better paths. They could send someone with a fruit salad on their chest right into the Naval office here on Enia Alpha, knock on a couple of doors, and say: Yo. We are all on the same side and this is bad. And then the Navy would get upset, but they’d stop, because Republic black ops were not people with whom you wanted to fuck.
Yeah. He’d have to tell the captain about this.
CHAPTER THREE
Nate and Grace were walking along one of the beautiful tree-lined avenues of Arlington. Nate was aiming for a stride with a little more speed, a little less rush. You didn’t want to look like you were trying to get away when you were … trying to get away. It took practice, but he’d had a lot of that.
Arlington was the spaceport on Enia Alpha that Nate had docked the Tyche at two days ago to deliver cargo, refuel, and get another job. He had the feeling he’d got the job just fine, but it came with strings. The damn Republic never let things happen easy. They always wanted an upper hand, a control in something, and that’s why he liked pulling the tiger’s tail so much.
That, and they’d destroyed the Empire. That was a thing that would never sit well with him.
He had his thumbs tucked into his belt — one gold-plated, the other flesh — as a bunch of soldiers ran past him, back towards the bar. At that point, his feeling about strings solidified. The feeling became uncomfortable, because he was certain one string was walking at his side with an athletic stride he couldn’t hope to match with his metal leg. Sure, the prosthetic was fine, it had good feeling and range. The Empire had paid top credits to put him back on his feet, but it always felt to Nate like something was missing. Which was true: he was missing his left arm below the elbow and left leg below the knee. Top credits meant top work, but top work didn’t mean just like you were born with. They were good enough, just no longer good enough for government work, which was why he was here, and not dead along with most of the other people he’d known. Since the Mercury Accords there was no AI left around to give a helping hand to the movement of his limbs. Which was a blessing; without the Guild’s intercession, the AI would have killed them all. You didn’t want a computer devil living in your arm or leg.
“A coin,” said Grace, “for your thoughts.”
“Republic?” said Nate.
“Of course,” said Grace. “Be worthless otherwise.”
Nate paused as a hovercar roared over the top of them, and he turned to watch it slew to a stop close to the bar they’d just come out of. Holo signage was still promising cheapest drinks in Arlington and Spacers Welcome! as men and women holding rifles poured from the car and stormed the bar. Now there is something you do not see every day. “Uh,” he said, and turned back to see Grace already sprinting away, a hand steadying her scabbard as she ran.
Now there’s a good plan.
First things first. He flipped out his communicator. “El?”
There was a moment of silence from the communicator before his Helm answered. “What’s up, Cap? You get yourself in trouble again?”
Nate looked at the men and women storming the bar, listened to the sound of blasters, and then looked down at the communicator. “What would make you ask that?”
“No reason,” said El, her voice coming through crystal clear on the comm. The good part about the damn Republic? Everything worked, even comm links on ass-end edge worlds like Enia Alpha. They probably figured that it was difficult to suck all the hope, joy, and free will out of people if you couldn’t shout at them first. Although that might have just been the phantom ache in his leg talking for him.
“Here’s the thing,” said Nate. He paused. “We need to be ready to dust off in, I don’t know, let’s call it an hour.”
There was a pause from the comm, and then — again, crystal clear — El’s voice came through, this time with a tone that could only be called a shriek. “An hour? Have you lost your fucking mind?” And then, when he didn’t answer, she finished it with, “Captain.”
“Still got that,” said Nate. “I’ll need you to get in touch with the Republic. They’ve got a crate for us, and that crate needs to be on my ship in less than one hour. Did Hope get those repairs done?”
“You say that,” said El, “like fixing the cascade generator on an Endless Drive is an easy thing to do.”
“I say that,” said Nate, “like a Captain who doesn’t want his entire ship’s crew to be in jail in one hour and ten minutes.”
The communicator clicked, then Hope’s voice: “She’ll fly true, Captain.”