Into the Black

(Jom Gabbar Tavern, Keen-arra City, kisArra)

There was a LOT of talk in the tavern today. Why? Because a certain ship docked at the spaceport earlier in the day. That in and of itself wouldn’t be a big deal, but this ship was special, at least to the people in the tavern. Last time that ship was in port, there had been a minor shakeup as one of the groups of bandits were taken down, and Brojixl had gotten himself and his buddy killed when he started picking on the wrong crowd when he was drunk. Two of his cousins lost their tails! So when the black on black freighter appeared at the spaceport, calling itself Daughter of Trigon, well, people were wondering what could be happening now. This was the most excitement they’d had in a while, after all.

Of course, adding to the excitement were the rumors about who it was that was that owned that black freighter. The Starlight Raven had been shown several times on the trids, when that Black Star guy who went and threw the whole gorram universe into chaos decided he was going somewhere without a fleet. Black Star’s freighters and Assassins were pretty well known by now, especially with anyone who was stuck dealing with pirates. They were pirate hunters, which made the pirates a little nervous.

Others, it made reckless.

One man in rough-looking but functional desert clothes was trying to convince his friend about his latest plan to get them all out of this sandy hellhole. “Look, I got it all figured out. They only had a few people last time, right? We get the drop on ‘em, and we can take ‘em down, easy!”

The second man snorted at that. “Oh sure, Paul, that worked out real well for ol’ Brojixl and his boys, right? There wasn’t enough of Dakid’s head left for them to even figure out who he was, since that chem spill three years back burned off his fingerprints. Everything from the neck up was just gone!”

“Bah, that wasn’t the people from the ship. That was the Felisan that said she made custom guns.”

“Didn’t matter much to Brojixl, once she shot a hole in him.”

“Well, Brojixl was an idiot, trying to step up on the girl when she already had the big gun on him. Anyways, the catgirl isn’t here anymore, right? She shipped out, and ain’t been seen or heard from here since then. So don’t worry about her and her big gun.”

“Fine, fine. Say we don’t have to worry about the Felisan with the huge gun. That still means that even if they came with the same crowd as last time, there’s six of them to the two of us. Don’t know about you, but them’s bad odds. Especially when you know how fast that guy moved when he cut the Sandscale brothers’ tails off. Didn’t even hear the energy blade humming before their tails were on the ground, with one strike.”

“That’s nothing. He just got the drop on the two of them, while they were all looking at the catgirl. You could have done that if you’d had his blade.”

“Maybe, but we don’t got anything like that, and it is still six of them to the two of us.”

“So we go and grab a few more guys. Nothing says we gotta do this just the two of us. And it is always the one guy with a whole group of women, right? So we sucker in as many as we can. The ones as can’t fit or don’t wanna go when we take the ship, they get to keep the girls. We get a ship like that, and we’ll be living easy once we’re someplace we can run it like a freighter ought to be, or just sell it.”

“Why sell it? Why go through all that if you’re just going to sell the ship to someone offworld?”

“Because that’s a Black Star ship, and they’re stuffed full of all kinds of goodies, which means someone will pay a ton for one if we can get it to them without too many eyes on us. We’ll be set up for life on some little planet where we can act like gods!”

“Set for life, right. Until he comes back and kills us all. He’s one of those ‘Nomad’ types! They don’t stay dead! You’d just have him angry and coming after us. You think he won’t want to find whoever shot him and took his ship?”

Paul frowned, and said, “Fine, we don’t shoot him. We got that collar that was on the whore Billy killed last month, right? Cleaned the former owner’s signature and everything, so just waiting on one of us to slap it on someone and then they belong to us. So we put it no the guy, yeah? Suddenly, everything he has belongs to us. We get him, the girls, the ship, his company, everything!”

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The other man considered that, and said, “Well, that’s the first somewhat smart thing you’ve said all night, Paul. Now, how are we supposed to get a collar on the bastard? He isn’t just going to let us walk up and put it on him. And then we’re still at the 6 to 2 thing.”

“Like I said, we get some guys to help. Maybe not as many as we were thinking when it was just to take the ship, but how many guys you know would be willing to risk their lives to have a cute slavegirl like the ones he brought in last time? And you really think someone like that is going to go and not find anything valuable on this rock? Even if it is just a load of spice, we can make it worth whatever we sell our stuff here for, at least.”

“Fine, that could work. I think the Dusthaven crew is due in tonight, so lets go see if we can’t convince Triswil and his boys to help us out.”

(Smuggler Trading Post, Keen-arra City, kisArra)

“Well, well, it has been a long time since I’ve seen you around these parts.”

I’d just pulled off the mask of my stilsuit to talk to people inside the trading post, and it looks like I was recognized almost immediately. Looking over to the speaker, I grinned when I saw a familiar face.