Dangerous Gamble

By

S.N.McKibben

Corran Antilles is having a bad life. Schlepping cargo for the Federation doesn't pay. Even worse, the corporate hauler assigned to him malfunctions inside Trevithick Station. Before Corran's ship trouble costs him his life, he's able to land, but at the price of his job. Down on his luck, with no money and no way to get home, Corran thinks he’s hit the jackpot when a stranger approaches and offers him the chance of a lifetime. But of course, nothing in the Federation is free, and there's always a catch.

The Landing

“HLR-4296, you are cleared for docking at pad thirty-eight.”

“Finally,” I moaned at the ever-so-gracious Trevithick control tower.

I pushed the throttle and shifted the HOTAS to line up with the toaster slot to get inside the station.

“Good girl,” I said to my hauler. She wasn’t acting up today. Well, it wasn’t my hauler. It belonged to Kingsley Enterprises—but someday, I, Corran Antilles, would own my own ship.

The joystick in my right hand became conspicuously loose and I pulled the stick up and out of its cradle. As I stared at the now useless control stick in horror, I tried pulling back on the throttle. No go. The handle was stuck. I tried jiggling the bar. No good. Oh crap. I was going in the space station with no brakes and no control stick. The blue lights of the tunnel entrance illuminated a one-way ticket to being blasted to dust. My hauler drifted upward as we sailed through the hall of light.

Button, push the button. Joystick still in hand, I depressed the vertical thrusters. Nothing. The control stick was completely separated from the panel.

“Why now?” Out of all the endless megameters of space, why did something have to break here, when I had only millimeters of room? A stream of severed wires sparked on my right side.

I dropped the stick in my lap and pulled the wires out from the panel. What the hell? Rust coated the wires splayed out in my hand. Wear and tear had caused the malfunction. Hadn’t this thing been in the shop last week?

A layer of civilization occupied every available space inside the Trevithick dock and I was drifting ever closer with no way to stop. The ship maintained its forward momentum, and if I didn’t act fast I’d start hitting the walls and buildings inside the station. If I did enough damage they’d start firing at me. Who could blame them, with all those lives clinging to the walls? I’d become a Corran Antilles burger, if there was anything left of me at all.

A horrendous metal screech echoed inside the station as I passed the last of the lights going through the “mail slot”. Crap. No time.

I matched up two wires and squashed them together. My hauler started rolling in a slow spiral. No. Wrong wires. I held up the joystick and tried to stop the ship’s slow spin.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, I have time.” The station had some wiggle room. All was not lost. Just reconnect the wires and I’d have control back. Next, I twisted two blue wires together.

The nose of my hauler drifted up. Okay, now I had pitch. Instead of rolling into the corporate accounting office ahead, I was tumbling toward annihilation. No. No. No.

“I get my paychecks from there! Wings off the accountants!” I pushed the rudders back and forth, back and forth, at the exact moment my pitch turned away from the building.

Luckily, the thrusters were on low and the initial inertia kept me on a steady pace forward. But if I didn’t get a handle on it, my thrusters would have me going every which way.

In an acrobatic fly-by the nose of my hauler tapped the edge of the Kingsley building. Panicked faces looked right at me as I heard over the comm, “HLR-4296, please maintain a direct course to pad thirty-eight. This is your first warning.”

“Fuck!” Along the walls, gun turrets followed my ship’s progress. Fantastic. My feet pushed faster. Pitch and yaw, pitch and yaw. I got the ship to stop spiraling, but now my nose was making little circles as my hauler drifted upward. The opposite direction of pad thirty-eight.

I hooked up two white wires. Vertical thrusters lifted me higher.

“Ahhhh!” I positioned the joystick as if it were still attached to the base and pushed the attitude thrusters to go down. We did. Too fast.

“Crap.” Flight assist was still on. I flipped it off and finally felt a little more in control of the plunge of death.

My hauler pointed down and twirled. To keep from crashing nose-first I yawed left and right with a little bit of upward pitch. Finally, she straightened.

Coming into pad thirty-eight from a slip, I let her drift and lowered the landing gear. Another humiliating metal screech bounced off the walls of the space station. I turned and winced to see I’d hit the platform tower of the landing pad.

“Sorry!” I hit the vertical thrusters, which were working only intermittently. Going in sideways was not the intended strategy for a ship that landed from a dead drop. Nor was the landing spot ideal for coming in at a sideways glide. Not with a tower and buildings surrounding the pad.

The landing gear hit solid ground. A horrendous metal scraping that seemed to go on forever was probably making everyone in the station deaf.

My ship’s thrusters started pushing us toward the Zorgon Peterson outlet.

“Damn it!” I pulled on the thrusters. “Stop, already!”

The control was still stuck. Crap. I was done. All that effort to become a blazing ball of fire. If I didn’t stop soon I’d go crashing into the building after semi-landing. My thrusters sputtered. All engines powered down. The whine of my hauler indicated I’d run out of fuel.

Over the comm an operator said coolly, “HLR-4296, docking complete.”

A wave of dizziness set my ass back in my pilot’s chair. Breathe. I picked up the joystick and looked at it once more, wires and all.

A tap from outside the hull reverberated through the ship. Exhausted, I pulled myself up, taking the joystick with me. Sparks protested as the wires separated. Dragging my feet to the bay doors, I hit the button to let the station team collect the cargo. Dragging my hand over my face, I tried wiping off my fatigue.

“Hey, Corran,” the team lead smirked at me. “Hell of a landing.”

“Up yours, Trip.” I handed him the joystick. “Here, have a present.”

“What the… hey, why’d you rip the control stick out?” Trip turned the controller around in his hand.

“I didn’t!” My voice echoed over another ship’s blasting thrusters. I clambered down the ramp, needing a drink. “Someone needs to repair this ship.”

Trip leaned against the frame, letting his guys do all the work. While he blathered on, men in Federation uniforms drove full dollies in and out of the cargo bay.

“Wasn’t this thing in maintenance just last week?” Trip was close to accusing me of causing the problem. Just like every other jack-hole in this place, he was looking out for number one. He tossed the joystick towards me. Out of reflex, I caught it.

“Hey, man, what am I going to do with this?”

Trip crossed his arms and watched his guys haul out loads of boxes. “Not my duck.”

“Well, it isn’t my problem either. I’m not maintenance.”

“No, you just wreck ships and stations.”

“Screw off.”

The click-clack of heels with an attitude rounded the corner. Ourora Kingsley was headed this way. Trip and his men scrambled to get the cargo out.

“Sorry, man, wish I could talk.” Trip picked up a dolly and started helping the guys pull freight. They all beat feet in a hurry to escape The Wasp coming straight for me. Ourora Kingsley was CEO of Kingsley Enterprises. She was technically my boss, and she toted a reputation as a prim, cruel man-crusher with a side of good business sense.

Because she was looking and walking toward me, I stood my ground. Albeit I had the sudden urge to pee, but I suspected she evoked that response in most people.

Cold, dark eyes with about as much warmth as a black hole stared me down. With pointy glasses and an hourglass figure, accentuated by a tight dress suit, she could turn heads. But she was a Grade A queen wasp. A nasty piece of work to whom I now had the pleasure of explaining the damages to the ship and the station. In more ways than one, I felt like bait. No one lingered. Hell, no one was around. Everyone had scattered as soon as the click-clack of her heels came within hearing range. No fuel trucks, no repair guys, no docking officials, and no Trip or his team.

“Corran Antilles.” The echoing heels stopped and the woman stood three feet from me. “You’re late.”

“There was a complication.”

“I’ll advise you that destruction of company property is deducted from your wage.”

“It just came off in my hand!” I waved the joystick at her.

She tracked the control stick’s every motion. “That too will come out of your last check.”

“What? It’s not my fault you don’t maintain the ship!”

“It was scheduled for maintenance five days ago and passed inspection.” She adjusted her glasses.

“The only thing that saved me was the fact that I hardly had enough fuel to make one round.”

Ourora’s dower expression never changed. “There are no excuses for your subpar piloting.”

“Subpar?” I sent the joystick skidding down the landing pad. “If you want subpar, take a look at the ship.”

“You should see the control tower, Mr. Antilles, or the station’s access corridor.” She pointedly eyed the tread marks on the pad where I’d landed.

“None of that was my fault.”

“Corran Antilles, on the grounds of your constant tardiness, and the damage done to this station and company property, you’re fired.” She turned and sauntered back the way she’d come.

“How am I supposed to get back home?” I railed.

“That’s your problem.”

“Great,” I muttered. “How much of my measly pay is left?”

“None, if you don’t return the pilot suit you were issued,” she said over her shoulder.

I looked down at my ratty over-clothes. The standard-issue pilot suit peeked from behind the many holes of my dirty shirt and worn pants. Still, if there was a wear and tear competition between my overalls and the ship I used to drive, the hauler would lose.

My Last Paycheck

After I dropped off the suit and picked up my check, I had enough money to sit and drink two shots at the Star and Garter. No ship. No money. No one here to trust and I smelled like week-old trash. Felt that way, too. I took a shot of the potts-dim liquor—the cheapest crap you could buy that didn’t have the consistency of used oil. It would burn the nose hairs, though, which helped to keep from smelling myself.

“If it isn’t the pilot himself.”

That would be me. Apparently no one else who ever sailed into Trevithick had ever made a mistake.

I pulled up my shoulders to my ears and lowered my head, as if hiding my face would hide my shame.

An older gentleman with small, round, black-framed glasses sidled up to me. He wore a pilot suit under a deep red velvet robe with an Imperial insignia clasp at his collar bone.

“Yep.” I swallowed the last of my paycheck down my gullet and climbed off my stool. “If you’re looking for compensation then all I have is a sorry and the skin off my hand.”

“I was actually looking for a drinking partner.” He sat on the stool next to me and flagged the bartender.

Dalton, the barkeep, stepped up to the man, eager to take his order. “Yes, sir?”

“Bast snake gin?” the old Imperial asked hopefully.

The bartender frowned and shook his head in disappointment. “Still not here.”

The old Imperial sighed. “Then two rounds of what my friend here is having.” He smiled at me and clapped a hand on my shoulder.

I raised my hands. “I don’t have a way to pay for more.”

“It’s on me,” he said, and thrust a greeting hand forward. “The name is Felix Wulfhart.”

I shook his hand. “Corran Antilles.”

Dalton placed two shots of amber liquid in front of us and Felix downed his.

Unsure of the situation, I did the same. I didn’t want to piss off anyone else in this place.

“So why the long face?” he asked.

My eyebrows rose. “Have you seen pad thirty-eight?”

He laughed deep and hearty. “Yes, son. In fact, I was watching you from the Peterson building when you came in.”

“Great, so you got a front-and-center view of my humiliation.”

“Better than being shot to molecules by Trevithick guns.”

“Maybe,” I said. There wasn’t a place on this station that would put me up for free. Mom and dad didn’t have the money to get me back home. I’d have to find a way to get planet-side by myself.

“So, Corran, what’s next?”

Seriously? “Yeah, I thought I’d jet over to Fairbairn Station. See how well a half-baked hauler bounces around in their docks. Hell, maybe they have rubber walls.”

“Well, I suppose that’s your choice.” Felix assessed me. My impression was that he was taking my measure.

“Choice?” I said. “None of us has a choice.” I waved my hand at the other patrons. “It’s starve with a job or starve on welfare. Look around.”

He glanced at the people in the bar and returned his attention to me. “So you give up?”

“No,” I pouted. “But there’s only so much to go around.”

“Well, with that mentality there sure is.” Felix waved a goodbye to Dalton, turned around and left me looking at his long drape of a robe. Pompous prick. Just because you have money… Now it was a matter of pride. I chased after him down the metal hall of the station.

When I caught up, I demanded, “What do you mean by that?”

The biggest grin seemed to crack his face in two. “I mean, Corran Antilles, you reap what you sow.”

“So you do think it was my fault the ship broke down. Do you know how hard it is to steady a hauler with a stuck thruster with only rudders for steering?”

Felix stopped. “I thought it was only the control stick that malfunctioned.”

“Che, well, if you ask me, everything on that ship malfunctioned except for the cargo ramp.”

Felix wrapped an arm around my shoulder and pulled me next to him like a mother bird would her chicks. “Ah, my dear boy, you are better than I expected.”

He led me down a corridor going to the landing pads.

“Better than you expected?”

“How would you like to fly for yourself?” Felix asked.

“Wait, are you offering me a job?” Was he crazy? What did he want me to haul? Probably something illegal.

“I’m offering you the break you always wanted.”

“Hey, um… I can’t ship illegal cargo. I have family.”

Felix laughed. “You can decide what you carry.”

We entered the port toward an orange Sidewinder with a racing stripe on the left side.

“Okay,” I said. “But I don’t have a ship.”

He gestured at the Sidewinder. “Yes you do.”

I stared at the box of a vessel. “That’s not mine.”

“It is now.” He stepped up to the cargo ramp and waved me inside.

The maneuverable wing of a ship looked like a tent, but if she was mine I didn’t give a flying flag. I raced up the ramp. “What do you mean it’s mine?” Mine as in mine?

“Corran, I’d like to be your benefactor.”

“Whoa, benefactor?” What the hell was a benefactor? “Wait,” I waved my hands and stepped back. “I’m not into guys.”

“No, Corran.” Felix took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “The ship—I’m giving it to you. Your pilot’s dues are paid. All you have to do is find cargo and get it to the destination.”

I still wasn’t convinced. “And what do you get?”

He put his thick bottle-caps back on. “Bragging rights and a pilot I can depend on every so often.”

“Nothing illegal?”

“I wouldn’t recommend it, and you should check the system you’re going into if you’re concerned about such things.”

Standing there bewildered, I tried to wrap my head around everything. My own ship? I could go anywhere?

“You’ll need a pilot’s suit, but the vessel is fully fueled.”

Felix added more confusion to the mix. Why was he giving me this? What was the catch?

“You’ll find credits in your account,” he said. “I suggest you take a shower first.”

I looked inside the cockpit in awe. “Shower first. Got it.”

Any moment now I’d wake up on the floor of the Star and Garter.

“Good luck, Corran.” Felix left me there standing inside the Sidewinder, trying to slap myself awake.

3 months later

As stars went by I sat back in my pilot’s seat, marveling at the Sidewinder’s supercruise ability. This was so cool!

My fifth job put me in Imperial space. I figured if my patron was an Imperial, maybe I should be there too. Silly logic, I know, but I felt a certain amount of obligation to Felix. Another part of me was, as they say, waiting for the second engine to blow.

For now, I was trying to find jobs. A harder prospect than I’d thought. They were increasingly difficult to get. Trust was never my strong point. Maybe it had to do with that.

The Sidewinder rattled and stuttered. Shit. Here it comes. I was so used to ship malfunctions I wasn’t looking at my controls. Everything reported normal. What the hell? The blue sheath that normally surrounded me in supercruise shifted in a whirlwind like I was caught in a twister. Great. I’d heard about this, but I’d never thought I’d be victim to one. Traveling from planet to station never involved interdictions.

“Bask in the Emperor’s glory—by crashing into a sun, you nerf herder.” I swung towards the escape vector, trying to turn left and down. It felt like pushing string through mud. My Sidewinder shuddered and pitched right.

Spiraling for my escape, the guy behind me stayed on my tail.

“You’re good, I’ll give you that,” I said.

My ship was pulled out of supercruise. The frame shift drive wouldn’t recharge in time to get away. I was stuck out here with this ass.

A voice filled with hostility came over the comm. “Who the hell are you?”

“Excuse me, dickless wonder, but you interdicted me.”

“Dickless wonder? That’s rich. You didn’t even bother to change the paint job. You thought you were so high and mighty you’d shove it in my nose, didn’t you?”

What the hell was he talking about? “Who are you?”

“I’m Aurellio Crown, and you’re in my damn ship.”

There it was. If something was too good to be true… it usually was. “I swear I didn’t swipe your ship. It… it was given to me, okay?”

Aurellio howled. I heard a crash, then crackles on the comm. “Fucking Felix!” he hollered.

“Hey! Don’t talk about Mr. Wulfhart like that.” If what Aurellio said was true, I felt sorry for him, but I wasn’t going to hand over my one chance to get out of the hell I’d been born into. “Look, I don’t know what’s up between the two of you, but this ship is mine now.”

Silence.

“Hello?” With my luck, he was getting ready to blow me out of the galaxy.

“You’re right,” Aurellio said finally. “So, I got replaced by you?”

“Replaced?”

“Felix is your patron now?”

“Yeah.” This whole situation smelled fishy. “So wait, was he your patron before me?”

“Well, he’s not my patron anymore.”

Did that mean the same thing would happen to me? Would Felix dump me after a time? What had Aurellio done to lose his favor? “Why would he do that?” I mused, mostly to myself.

“Because he’s an Imperial ass.”

“There has to be more to it than that.” And stop calling Felix an ass. But before the same happened to me, I was going to find out how to avoid or prevent it. “You did nothing to lose his favor?”

Aurellio sighed. “Not unless being the best is cause for it.”

“Oh, the best, huh?”

“A little space rat like you wouldn’t know who I was, or my reputation.”

True, but… “Well if you’re so high and mighty how come I haven’t heard of you?”

A pause. “The hell! Did you not hear my name? Aurellio C-R-O-W-N.”

“And?”

“I’m the Senator’s son.”

“So?”

“Are you incredibly dense? You’re in Imperial space. That means, if I wanted, I could kill you without recourse.”

Well this conversation turned dark fast. “So why haven’t you?”

“Because I’m better than that.”

“Then why do you want this starter kit back? Why don’t you get your daddy to buy you a super-cruiser like a Clipper?” Some guys were just born into wealth. Meeting Aurellio proved I never wanted to come across another rich kid again. Prick.

“It’s a matter of honor. You wouldn’t understand, space rat.”

“Hey, Sunshine, I bet if I had a privileged lifestyle like you I could do better.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Meet me at the Star and Garter,” I said. If we went back to the start maybe I could find some answers.

“At Trevithick Station?”

“That’s the one.”

“Tsk. Before all this I’d never been there,” Aurellio uttered sourly.

“Sorry for making you come down to the slums, Sunshine.”

“Whatever.”

Some guys always had to have the last word. I wasn’t that petty.

Inside Joke

“If it isn’t the Jackpot Winner himself.” Dalton, the barkeep at the Star and Garter, had become my number-one fan for some reason. After seeing me meet with Felix a few times, Dalton treated me with more esteem.

“Why do you always call me that?”

“Because…” he shrugged. “It’s true, right?”

Dalton poured my favorite. Potts-dim liquor still quenched my palate even after I’d tried several more expensive types of alcohol. At least now I knew how the top-shelf drinks tasted. Before, I’d never had enough money to indulge in such trivialities.

“So, you do know anything about my patron?” I asked.

Dalton eyed me in warning. “It’s best not to go poking around a patron’s business.”

“I know something about Felix,” a voice from behind me said.

I turned around and saw a cloaked man. His hood covered his face, exposing only his nose, lips and days-old beard scruff.

“Oh?” I said.

“For a price,” the drifter elaborated.

Of course. “How much?”

“I want to hear it.” A blond, blue-eyed jock plopped down a credit stick. I recognized the voice. The blond could only be Aurellio. Mr. Sunshine looked every part of the quintessential rich kid. He wore the best pilot suit money could buy. Toting a dashing velvet red cape—much like Felix’s, Aurellio looked, sounded and smelled like money. Only, I knew his patron chucked him overboard like rotten meat. That must have been a devastating blow. For a guy like him, born with a silver spoon up his ass, coming down to the Federation hell-hole was actually a little dangerous. I never worried for Felix. The old man seemed to know how to handle himself. But Aurellio might get jumped. I’d have to tell him to tone it down a bit around here or risk getting mugged.

Aurellio sat next to the hooded drifter, slid the credit stick towards the man and crossed his arms over the table.

The hooded stranger stared at the credit stick Aurellio had put on the table. The drifter took a sip of his drink, grabbed the credit stick and inserted it into a scanner. From the lack of haggling, I figured he was impressed with the amount offered. Not good. I looked around to see who might notice Aurellio throwing around his credits. Shit this guy was clueless. Money around here brought out the smell of people’s desperation.

“I was here when Felix was talking to the resident CEO.” The stranger’s nose turned to me. “You might know her,” he smirked. Great. For there being no one around during my merciless firing, it seemed everybody knew about my abasement at the hands of Ourora Kingsley.

“It seems you two were just play pieces,” the drifter said.

“Harbinger,” Dalton growled.

The hooded man flipped off the bartender. “As I recall, you won a great deal on the bet.”

“And this is your way of compensating yourself for losing?” Dalton said.

“Bet?” Aurellio scowled. “What bet?”

Harbinger took a sip of his drink. “Don’t you know your ex-patron, Golden One?”

“What were the terms?” I asked.

“You two can’t work that out?” Harbinger stood up.

“Hey, that’s it?” Aurellio lifted his palms as if to say what gives?

Harbinger shrugged. “That’s all I’m allowed to say.” He turned his face to Dalton.

Aurellio strutted over next to me at the bar, eyes glaring at Dalton. “What do you know?”

I watched Harbinger slink out of the bar and fade into the shadows.

“Just like he said, boys,” Dalton said.

“You bet in my favor and he didn’t?” I turned to the barkeep. “Thanks!”

Dalton smiled.

“Does that mean I get free drinks?” I grinned.

“No.”

Worth a try. “So it involved Felix becoming my patron. Was that why I was fired?”

“That old biddy would’ve fired you anyway.” Dalton cleaned a glass with his white rag. “That’s just who she is.”

“Come on,” I said. “Tell me why you won if you’re not going to share in the profits.”

“I won because you won.” Dalton ran the rag over the counter.

“All I’m doing is making a living,” I said.

“Precisely.” Dalton folded the rag and tossed it under the bar.

“So Felix bet on him and Ourora bet on me?” Aurellio pointed a thumb at himself.

“Not exactly,” Dalton said.

I threw up my hands. “Will you just say it?”

The barkeep rolled his eyes. “Think of it in terms of Federation versus Imperials. It’s the same morals that govern the two factions.”

Aurellio’s forehead hit the bar top.

“Are you all right?” I said.

“I know.” Aurellio rolled his face toward me without lifting his head off the bar. “It was based on our success.”

“Explain,” I said.

Mr. Sunshine lifted himself up off the counter. “Here’s how it would go. Felix would pull me out of my ship, stop being my sponsor, and dump me in some backwater Federation hellhole, knowing I’d get back to Imperial space. Not only that, I’d get up and running again. You can’t stop a Crown.”

“Okay.” I lifted my eyebrows. A little full of ourselves, aren’t we? But it did sound like he’d been shoved into a situation much like mine before I met Felix.

“But you, a space rat, given the opportunities I had, would succeed.”

“So you’re saying he bet on us both achieving our goals? You’d get back what was taken from you and I’d find a better life?”

“Damn it!” Aurellio pounded on the bar top. “And we won him the bet.”

“You reap what you sow,” I quoted.

“Imperials believe you can achieve anything if you’re given a chance and set your mind to it,” Dalton said.

“While the Federation believes no one can do anything without government intervention,” I continued. That belief was all too well implied in everything they did. Screw that.

“What was the bounty?” Aurellio asked.

Dalton pulled a decanter from under the bar. “Care for some Bast snake gin?”

6 months later

“Corran! Get over here!” Aurellio yelled over the comm. “He’s here, and he’s with that snooty CEO.”

“I’m almost there!” I shot back.

My new Viper was a hell of a lot faster than the Sidewinder, but trying to maneuver this thing after honing my circle technique was a bitch. After landing, I ran to the Star and Garter. Skidding to a halt just outside the entrance next to Aurellio, I leaned over to catch my breath.

He held a decanter of Bast snake gin in one hand while peeking inside the bar.

“You first,” I heaved between breaths.

Aurellio didn’t need a second invitation. He strutted over to the table where Felix and Ourora were conducting their business. I listened in and watched a few heads follow my friend and co-conspirator. He didn’t hesitate and walked up to them like an invited guest.

“Felix!” Aurellio set the booze on their table. That was his idea to punctuate his acknowledgement of the indignities he’d overcome during this whole event. “I just wanted to say, thank you for the past.”

Mr. Wulfhart smiled with a knowing pride. If I had to guess, I think Felix had expected Aurellio to confront him about his dangerous gamble.

I pushed off the wall and headed for their table. Ourora looked peeved. She didn’t appreciate the interruption. Too damn bad. I ignored her and stepped up next to Aurellio as he said, “If I’d known you liked Bast snake gin so much, I would’ve spared you the effort.”

“That was not the point,” Felix mused with a know-it-all grin.

“Hello, Mr. Wulfhart,” I said.

Felix flashed me a brilliant smile. His owl-like persona was intensified by the glasses distorting his eyes. “Greetings, Corran. How are you?”

“Very well, thank you, sir.”

Felix beamed at us like a proud father. “How are you liking your new Viper? Faster, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir.”

The weight of Ourora’s murderous glare almost pulled my attention away from the conversation. Thank goodness for Aurellio jabbing me in the gut.

“I wanted to return your Sidewinder. It’s in excellent working order.” Unlike some haulers I’ve flown before. “I’m no longer in need of it.”

“Oh?” Felix said. “The Sidewinder is yours. No need to return it.”

“I appreciate that, sir, but I’d rather you allowed someone else to use it. Preferably someone who’d like to get out of this Federation shithole.”

By the twinkle in the Imperial’s eyes, I’d done something that tickled him pink. “Very well. I’ll do that.”

I stuck out my hand and he shook it.

Aurellio gave a salute, turned and walked off. I followed at first. Then, unable to resist, I turned back and said, “Oh, and sir, if you happen to want a hauler for small cargo or need a bounty hunter, I’m for hire. Unfortunately I don’t take Federation jobs, but I’m willing to drop by if you’re ever in need.”

Felix tilted his head back and let out a triumphant laugh that startled some of the bar’s customers. I could still hear him cackling as we walked out of the bar. Whatever the bet he had with Mrs. Kingsley, I was sure I’d just won it for him—tenfold.

∞ End ∞

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Table of Contents

The Landing

My Last Paycheck

3 months later

Inside Joke

6 months later

∞ End ∞