Dragon's Bargain Read online

  The inside of the Immortal smelled of old oil and dirty people, but it was familiar stench. Leslie led her to the bridge, the chipped metal airlock opening before him. Old consoles and flickering holos were much as they’d been last time Grace was here. A handful of crew waited with Captain Topham, all movement frozen at Grace’s intrusion.

  Captain Topham swiveled on his worn acceleration couch, taking in Grace, then Leslie. His beard was trimmed like she remembered, dappled with snow. The captain was in his forties, weathered like he sailed seas of salt and brine rather than the heavens themselves. He sighed. “How’d you screw this up, Casque?”

  “Sir, I—”

  “Save it.” Topham glared at Grace. “You owe me good Empire coin.”

  “Maybe.” Grace shrugged. “If the man to my left doesn’t stop moving for his blaster, I might owe you a crew member too.”

  Topham turned his glare on the errant crew member. “Unless I tell you to fire, keep your weapon in its holster, son.” He pushed himself from his acceleration couch. “Your name’s not Ayako Tanaka, is it?”

  “No.” Grace didn’t offer her real name. Topham might not be on the level but knowing Grace’s name could get him killed. She would spare him that. “But you can still call me Ayako.”

  Topham scratched his chest absently. “Ayako, you’ve got data to sell. I’m a courier. Can we do business?”

  “The data I have isn’t the kind I’ll hand to a courier with promised payment at some future date.” Grace kept a mask in place, impassive and unyielding. “I need the coin here.”

  Topham looked at the deck as if it might hold a treasure trove of answers. “You need a buyer on Starfire?”

  “I do.”

  “Okay.” Topham paced. “I’ve an idea. Leave it with me. I’ll get idiot child,” he jerked his chin at Leslie, “to speak to your man Cam when I have something.”

  Grace detected guile/cunning/planning but no direct lie. Her palms sweated with anticipation borrowed from the captain. “Be quick,” she suggested.

  “Aye. Now get off my ship.”

  “No problem. I’ll show myself out.” Grace turned, glared at Leslie, then left the bridge.

  Leaving the Immortal was a good idea, but Grace had something she had to do first. She slipped into Captain Topham’s cabin — he still hadn’t replaced the security codes on the door — and went to work on his portable console.

  What she found didn’t surprise her, but it meant Cam could get hurt. Captain Topham had messages from Max Conyers. He already had a buyer. It meant Grace was a loose end; Captain Topham didn’t need another partner, and he needed heat from the Empire less. Grace thought a lot about whether she could go through with this, unsure of when Cam passed from business partner to friend. Fighting with blades was easy. Watching a friend die felt much harder. Grace fingered the hilt of her sword, feeling sick to her stomach.

  Chapter Two

  Grace and Cam walked together in one of Starfire’s atriums. The system’s sun shone golden yellow light through huge laminate windows. The star’s light was unable to warm Grace’s heart. She felt cold to her core. She’d risked herself before. Putting Cam in harm’s way seemed … wrong. Her father would have shaken his head in disappointment, and that alone made Grade trust her gut. This is wrong. You’re doing the wrong thing.

  “I’ll be fine.” Cam’s voice sounded like he’d put his voice box through a mincer. It was strained and ragged, at odds with his words.

  “I can do this alone,” Grace insisted. “I told you about the risks, so you wouldn’t come.”

  “Hell. If I let you go alone, you could take all that good Empire coin and leave me on Starfire.” Cam’s joke fell flat, both knowing his heart wasn’t in it. They stopped at a small food cart, the smell of frying mycoprotein good enough to make Grace’s stomach rumble. “You want something?”

  “Please.” Grace chose a doner kebab sandwich. She didn’t want to die, but if she did, she wasn’t going out on an empty stomach.

  They munched while walking. After a while Cam stopped to look out the huge windows at the starscape beyond. “I don’t like the idea of you going in either.”

  Grace paused mid-chew. “Why not?”

  “Because you’ll get shot.” Cam turned his face away, the gray and yellow of his station uniform out of place with the haunted look in his eyes. “You’re a kid.”

  “I can look after myself.”

  He laughed, but there wasn’t any humor in it. “Yeah, I’ve seen. And you can look after me. But there’ll come a time when there’s so much plasma flying around, a stray blast will hit you. You’ll die. It won’t be glorious. There’s nothing but a long dark silence at the end for all of us, Grace.” He reached a hand out to her, and when she stiffened, let it drop. “All I’m saying is, I can do this myself.”

  “Me too.” Grace stopped eating. She felt more sick than hungry now.

  “I guess we’ll die together, then.” Cam balled up his napkin, tossing it in a recycler.

  “I guess.” Grace thought about how he’d reached out. To comfort her, rather than hurt. About how human contact can be a solace for the giver and the receiver both. She sighed, taking the three steps to Cam’s side and putting a hand on his arm. He turned, surprised. “But it’d be better if neither of us ended up dead.”

  “I’m on board with the plan.”

  “Then let’s go.” Tossing her half-eaten meal into the recycler, she spun away, leading toward the rendezvous. They had an Empire to rob for the second time.

  Topham’s contact was a legitimate buyer. Ryan McCabe berthed a ship near the bottom of Starfire, near the main thruster cluster nudging the massive station further away from the system’s sun when it got too close. The area was noisy, the rent cheap. Grace was unsure of McCabe’s ability to pay the coin their data was worth, but a little snooping in Captain Topham’s console showed Ryan McCabe didn’t live on Starfire.

  His ship was the Pandora, currently running with a faulty transponder. Grace doubted there was anything defective about it. Pirates, her gut whispered. They were the type to run hidden in the hard black.

  Only two things mattered. Ryan McCabe had good Empire coin, and Captain Topham was selling her out.

  The meet wasn’t set in a wide-open area with lots of sight lines. This worked well for Grace. Sight lines meant you could see people coming for you, but it also implied people with long-range blasters could shoot you from afar. A topsy-turvy place with lots of dark corners worked better for her, despite the increased chance of traps ready to gobble the unwary.

  Cam was their decoy. He met Ryan McCabe in a dark, cosy nook. Grace ghosted well back, walking through massive hissing machinery, looking for trouble. She didn’t expect Ryan to break faith. At least, not until he knew what they had to sell.

  Captain Topham, on the other hand, worked for the Empire. When Max Conyers pried Leslie Casque from the Immortal, agents wearing the Emperor’s falcon slipped aboard and made Topham a proposal he couldn’t refuse. Work for us or disappear.

  The good captain wasn’t a fool, fingerprints in his files showing how he meant to play this. Ryan McCabe was a legitimate buyer, Topham’s cut a modest ten percent. Money might not change hands, but Topham would get coin for Grace’s capture, and McCabe might make something from that.

  The real question Grace had was, who was Ryan McCabe working for? A freighter captain working alone in the hard black didn’t seem the type to have such a large sum of coin. Thus, Cam went ahead to sound out the situation. The trick would be whether they could get the information from Ryan before the Empire arrived.

  Grace watched the meet from a shadowy crook between a massive capacitor and an old thruster coil. Rust welcomed the touch of her black jacket, smudging her sleeve. Cam met with Ryan, shook hands, and leaned close in a conspiratorial whisper. Captain McCabe was clean-shaven, late thirties, and had the broad shoulders of a man used to doing his own dirty work. From this distance, Grace couldn’t hear what they sai
d, but she didn’t need to. She could feel the emotions of people. Grace knew when they lied, or if they wanted to hurt her.

  Suspicion/caution came from McCabe, but that was to be expected. It reassured rather than worried her. The freighter captain spoke with Cam like they were negotiating the price of bulk pears from the Venus hydrofarms. Neither man looked concerned.

  Grace thought things might go smoothly until she heard movement from her left. She hunkered back in the shadows, catching glimpses of movement. Black armored soldiers, moving fast and low. Surprise/anger from Ryan McCabe as he saw who was coming, and resignation/fear from Cam as the first plasma bolt spat to their location.

  The Empire had come, pulling their dragnet tight around two would-be conspirators. Ryan dropped behind a discarded drive cowl, returning fire. Cam threw himself beside the pirate.

  Walls and doors opened, disgorging pirates in motley. They returned blue-white plasma fire on the Empire forces. Ryan McCabe had come in good faith, but he wasn’t stupid. He flew under no Empire flag, and his crew boiled from all the dark, dirty cracks to fight.

  Grace sped from the shadows, running on noiseless feet. She had to take care of the Empire. While the pirates used blasters just like the Empire, they weren’t shooting at Cam. Ryan was — so far — playing a straight game.

  Run! She came up behind a pair of soldiers, sliding low. Grace’s scabbarded sword hit the back of one’s knees, dropping the hapless woman in a tumble. Her plasma carbine spat fire at the ceiling, molten metal spraying. Her comrade took one look at Grace as her sword hissed free and sprinted in the other direction. Grace rose, dropped a punch into the fallen soldier’s face, then followed.

  The runner passed a crossroads and sprinted straight through. He made it to a T intersection ahead, whirling to face Grace. His plasma rifle roared. Grace twisted, feeling the blistering heat of the blast as it raged past her. She threw her scabbard, collecting the soldier’s rifle and knocking it aside. The soldier kept firing, bolts chewing at the wall. Grace reached him, her sword licking out in a silver-blue arc as it reflected the light of plasma fire. The blade sliced through the soldier’s weapon, the battery discharging in a crackling ball of electric fury. The soldier fell, chest armor smoking.

  “GRACE GUSHIKEN!” Grace spun, taking in the sight of Max Conyers standing where she’d hidden before. The giant grinned wide with glee, holding a rotary plasma cannon as if it weighed no more than a child’s toy. He stood, feet planted at the end of the corridor like he owned it.

  If there is one person who should die today, it’s that horrible man. Grace ran for Max. As she reached the crossroads, a soldier collided with her from the left. It surprised Grace, but the soldier more on account of Max choosing that moment to fire his rotary cannon. Blasts of blue-white plasma hit the hapless soldier, shredding armor, and spraying molten metal and ceramic about the intersection.

  Grace scrambled for cover. The soldier’s fallen weapon lay amid the destruction of metal and ceramicrete. She rolled, collecting it as she moved, shoring up in the cover of the opposite wall. Grace couldn’t hit a stationary target from a meter away, but Max didn’t know that. She shoved the plasma rifle around the corner, holding the trigger down.

  The weapon spat its blue-white fury. As expected, Grace hit nothing but air and walls, but it made Max run. He headed to the right. Grace snarled, following. She let the plasma rifle fall, favoring her blade.

  Rounding the corner, she saw Max disappear around the dark bulk of a fabricator. Grace pushed herself faster. Max was almost where Ryan and Cam were. She sped around the corner, foot slipping on old oil. The spill saved her, a fusillade of fire from Max’s cannon tearing the wall apart behind her.

  She screamed, tossing her blade at him. He ducked, her steel missing. Grace crouched on the floor, weaponless, Max above her with a gloating smile. “You shouldn’t have tried to sell the data, Grace.”

  “Uh huh.” Grace wiped sweat from her face. “Since we’re trading advice, I’ve got a piece for you.”

  “What do you think gutter trash like you can help me with?” Max’s sneer was in full effect.

  “You shouldn’t turn your back on the enemy.” Grace watched the tiny moment of confusion hit Max’s face before his entire body went rigid. The giant jerked, a tick-tick-tick sound coming from behind him. Max dropped like a felled tree, revealing Cam Redwood holding a shock rod. “I didn’t think I’d make it in time.”

  Cam looked at the shock rod, Max, then Grace. “You didn’t.”

  “Whatever.” She’d made it. Cam was still alive. Grace stood, retrieving her sword. The metal glinted in the sullen gloom of Starfire’s belly. “Where’s Ryan?”

  “He screamed and ran about ten seconds ago.” Cam’s hands shook. “I think I need to sit down.”

  “You do that.” Grace offered Cam a smile, free of masks. “I’ll be back with our money.”

  “Sure. I’ll be here peeing myself.” Cam sat on an upturned crate.

  Grace jogged away, leaving Cam to compose himself. The sound of blaster fire grew more erratic as pirate and Empire forces either died or took the fight elsewhere. Grace didn’t care about them. She needed Ryan McCabe and the good Empire coin he promised.

  It wasn’t hard to follow the freighter captain. Grace headed in the direction of plasma scorching, the scent of ozone heavy in the air. She passed the T intersection where she’d thrown her scabbard at the soldier. Grace bent to retrieve it, sliding her blade home. She didn’t want Ryan thinking she wanted to kill him. There’d been enough double-crossing today.

  You started it. You and your clever idea to sell data you’d taken from the Empire. The deal was good, but you wanted more. Her father would have been proud of the deception. It meant Grace had made the wrong call. Lying, cheating, and stealing isn’t how you get ahead was what he would have said.

  It might also be how you survived. Alone on a strange station with nobody to trust? She needed every advantage she could get.

  You’re not alone. Cam Redwood’s your friend.

  Grace looked back the way she’d come. Cam had entered a fight with a giant to help her. Sure, he’d hit Max in the back, but it took courage to fight the Empire. Cam did it for Grace. She needed to pay him back.

  Grace needed to get their money.

  She caught up with Ryan McCabe two decks up. He’d stopped running, blaster back in its holster like nothing in the universe was amiss. Beside him stood Captain Topham. The captains met in an old warehousing area, empty of crates, worn metal walls stretching ten meters above. They both wore smiles. Grace sidled closer, keeping to the shadows.

  Topham nodded to Ryan. “How’d it go?”

  “It went as you said. The Empire came. Double-cross.” Ryan McCabe looked around as if the Empire were in the very walls. “But I got away clean.”

  Grace slid closer, her feet padding noiselessly across metal deck plates. The lighting above her was out, a dark area for darker deeds. She paused for a heartbeat. Lights aren’t out anywhere on Starfire but here. This is a setup. A trap. Someone’s taken the lights out because they don’t want the cams to see what’s going on.

  “Good.” Topham’s blaster cleared its holster, the muzzle leveled at Ryan’s chest. “I’m real sorry about this.”

  Ryan took a step back in surprise. “But we’re friends!”

  “We’re business partners. And ten percent is a lot less than the ninety you’ll get. I’ll get the data and sell it. Maybe retire somewhere nice.”

  Grace thought fast. Captain Topham lied from the start. He meant to set them up, building a plan with the Empire to send them downstream. Ryan McCabe, on the other hand, agreed to meet and hadn’t shot at either Grace or Cam, nor lied to them. Topham’s crew included Leslie Casque, a devil in a skinny ship suit.

  There wasn’t much of a decision to make.

  Grace stepped from the shadows. She sliced with her sword, cutting Captain Topham’s blaster in half. He moved at the last moment, trying to bring the we
apon to bear as she came into view, but all it meant was her sword cut through his hand as well.

  Captain Topham screamed as the blaster fell to the deck along with his hand. Grace spun, blade ready.

  Ryan held his hands up. “Easy, now. There’s no need for that.”

  She looked at his eyes. Felt his fear/confusion, but no deception. Grace gave a tight nod. “Aye.” She would have said something like let’s go somewhere else but caught the pain/hate/kill from her back. Grace whirled, finding Topham reaching with his other hand for a small blaster in his boot.

  She strode forward, blade hungering. A splash of red, and Captain Topham sagged to the deck. Her hands shook. Steady. Be the ocean. Be easy. Be Grace. She calmed herself, looking to Ryan. “Ryan McCabe?”

  “That’s me.”

  “My name is Grace Gushiken. I’m on the run from the Empire’s justice. I have the data you want to buy. I promise to treat fair with you if you do the same.” She held her breath, waiting. You gave a pirate your real name. It felt risky, but her heart said it was the right move.

  Ryan needed to trust her, and she had no other tricks to play.

  He glanced behind her at the widening pool of blood. “My oldest friend meant to kill me.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you saved me from that. I reckon I owe you a debt.” The freighter captain straightened. “Can I buy you a coffee?”

  Chapter Three

  Ryan McCabe and Grace sat at a table two-thirds of the way up Starfire’s length. The coffee shop he’d selected sold cakes it claimed were ‘space spun,’ whatever that meant. Since Ryan was buying, she ate two. They tasted nutty, like pecans. The coffee was hot and black.

  Grace started to unkink a little as they talked about the little things. They were getting close to speaking of bigger things like coin and stolen data when Grace felt hunt/hunger/anger from behind her. The emotions were like a knife at her back. She froze, then turned in her seat.