Wings of Retribution (28 page)

They came for Athenais the next day and she didn’t return.  Tommy found out through prison gossip that she had been shipped off to Erriat the very same afternoon.

His own problems, however, were just beginning.  After an unpleasant stay in the T-9 Corrections Facility, he was transferred into the hands of Utopian I.I. officers.  They interrogated him for three days, demanding to know why he hadn’t sent alerts to Millennium concerning his apprehension of three shifters, why he had stayed an extra week on T-9 instead of returning directly home, why he had allowed a
suzait
to escape and why he let the Governor know about it, why he had invited the pirate captain onto his ship and why he let her go afterwards.

In the end, they stripped him of rank, expelled him from the service, denied him retirement, and left him on T-9 without a penny to his name.  He took a job loading and unloading cargo for the spaceport just to make enough credits to survive, and bitterly waited for the storm to pass so he could snatch up a civilian job as a copilot or even a navigator.  Like he had done in the military, Tommy put his head down and pushed on forward, refusing to let the hopelessness of the situation get him frustrated.

Dallas’s New Ride

Dallas was mopping up spilt coffee from under a booth when a thin, mustached man sat down at the table.

“In case you didn’t notice, sir,” she muttered to the pressed surface of the tabletop, “I’m still cleaning this one.  There’s plenty of other tables out there.  Take your pick.”  Then she winced, realized that if the little man complained, it would be yet another fifty credits from her paycheck.  She needed to buy a new pair of shoes this paycheck.  Her old ones were wearing through and her feet hurt.

To her surprise, the man smiled.  “Aye, there are.  But I’m meanin’ to talk to you.  Sit down, will you?”

Dallas stared at him.  The man looked well off.  He had a well-trimmed beard and his hair was styled.  His clothes bespoke quiet wealth, not flamboyant, but well cut and of solid earthtones.  The suit was cut just right to hide the fact he was actually pretty lean, though not unhealthily so.  He wore a set of shoes that could probably each buy their own small farmsteads, and the sunglasses sticking lazily from his front pocket looked like they were tastefully trimmed in black diamonds.

“You sure you got the right person?”

Without looking at her, he said, “Are you Dallas York, worked for the late Captain Athenais on the
Beetle?”
He picked at a wad of gum someone had thoughtfully mashed to the tabletop that afternoon.

Dallas’s eyes narrowed.  “What do you mean, ‘late’ Captain Athenais?”

“Well,” he said, snagging a toothpick from the little jar on the table, “she isn’t a captain anymore, for one.  Governor Black blew up
Beetle
while it was docked.  Her whole crew got wiped out.”  He cocked his head at her.  “Except you.”

“I wasn’t part of her crew no more,” Dallas muttered, but she found the new information hard to digest.  Goat, Dune, and Squirrel were all dead?  That…hurt.  More than she’d thought it would.

“I need a pilot and I heard that you’re the best to be had.”

Dallas stared at him, wondering if she was hallucinating.  She glanced at the used plates, looking for some sign the last occupants had left behind a cloud of tanga-weed.  When she could find nothing incriminating, she looked back up at him in confusion.  “Funny, I haven’t heard that.”   

He flashed a dashing smile.  “You’re not listening in the right places.”

Okay, so this had to be some sort of joke.  She scowled at him, wadding up her wash-rag and slapping it to the table.  “Didn’t you get the memo?  Don’t it bother you that I almost got the whole crew killed?”

“The whole crew is dead, girl, and you had nothing to do with it.”  He retrieved something from one of his molars, then pulled it out to examine it on the end of his toothpick.

Dallas peered at him.  She was pretty sure Rob would pull a prank like this, just to get her to quit, but Rob couldn’t afford to deck the guy out in a suit that looked like some little Derknian kid had spent three years of his life hunched over in a sweatshop to get the weave tight enough that the cloth shone.  “So what are you?” she asked reluctantly.  “A pirate?”

“Not really.  Never was my thing.”  He flicked the toothpick into her bussing tub and smiled up at her, clasping his fingers together on the tabletop.  “Most of the time, I dabble in real estate.”

“So what?” Dallas asked.  “You need a chauffeur for your own private shuttle or somethin?”

He snorted.  “No, I have those.”  He grinned, and for a moment, Dallas thought the little man seemed somehow familiar.  “No, Miss York, I’m putting together a crew for a spaceship.”

“What kind of spaceship?”

“The unlawful kind.”

“You mean a pirate ship.”

“Not quite.  Sit down, will you?  You’re making people stare.”

Dallas glanced over her shoulder.  Rob was eying her suspiciously.  She could see another hundred credits coming off her paycheck and she sighed.   So much for those shoes.  But she sat.

“What you want me to do?”                          

“Captain my ship, of course.”

She blinked at him.  “Ain’t you gonna captain it?”

He laughed.  “Heavens, no.  I’m a mere layman when it comes to flying.  I can do it, but not with the skill we’re going to require.”

“Skill?”  Dallas leaned forward, interested.  “What you plannin’ on doin?”

“I want to rescue a friend of mine off of Erriat.”

Dallas’s eyebrows raised and she snorted.  “Good luck.”

“Now, dear, don’t make it sound so grim,” he said, patting her hand.  “I’ll have the best pilot in the Quadrants flying my ship.”

Dallas looked him up and down.  Those who violated Erratian skies, and were caught, stayed on Erriat.  “Says who?”

“Says three thousand credits a week, as well as complete command of your own ship.”  The man gave another dashing smile and spread his hands.  “You can even tell
me
what to do, as long as it’s reasonable.”

Dallas had a hard time making her tongue work.  “Twelve thousand a month?  That’s more than I get in a yea—”  Then she frowned.  “You’re
coming
?”  Generally, the rich snobs dropped money, pointed a finger, told others to go do their dirty work for them.  That he was willing to go along was almost alarming.  “You’ve got an awful lot of confidence in someone you never met—”

“Dallas, we aren’t paying you to talk.”  Rob had snuck up behind her and was glaring at her with furious, piggish eyes.  “There’s still coffee on the floor there and there.”  He pointed.

“Wipe it up, then,” Dallas said, tossing him the mop.

“Don’t make me discipline you in front of a customer,” Rob said.

“Don’t worry,” the mustached man said.  “I’m not buying anything.”

  Rob turned purple.  “Then I’m afraid I must ask you to leave.”  He straightened, towering over the smaller man.

“Ask all you want,” the man said, turning back to Dallas, completely unconcerned.  “I’ll leave when I’m ready.”

“Like Hell,” Rob snarled, reaching in to grab him.

With one hand, and without getting out of his booth, the wiry man placidly had Rob kneeling on the floor, wrist twisted around and under him, babbling apologies.  The whole exchange had been too fast to see, and Dallas scooched backwards in her booth, wide-eyed.

“Now,” the man said, leaning forward to cock his head sideways at Rob, “Are you going to be a good host and spare us your genetically underprivileged presence while I chat with my friend, here?”  He smiled and plucked a soapy knife from the tub Dallas had been using to collect dishes.  “Or, say, am I going to have to remove a few of your fingers to get better service?  It’s not like an ape like you plays piano much, I would imagine, so you’ll hardly miss them.”

Rob screamed his apologies, and Dallas cringed under the gaze of every patron in the restaurant.

“There there,” the man said, patting Rob on the head with the hand holding the knife.  “Do go run along and disturb someone else, eh?  My time is actually worth quite a lot of money.”  A moment later, he released Rob’s hand, and Rob went careening backwards, then rolled and scrabbled on his hands and knees to get to the other side of the restaurant.  When he stopped against an opposite booth, staring at his attacker in horror, the man made a shooing gesture with the knife.

Rob gave Dallas a look that boded poorly for her future as a waitress and lurched to his feet.  Sneakers squeaking against the coffee-stained linoleum, he ran off.  Or, at least trundled.  With his copious rolls of fat, he was about as good at running as a walrus was at the high-jump. 

Dallas winced, turning back to the man.  “That was a bad idea.”

“He’s a joke,” the man said.  He set the knife down and reached out for another toothpick.  “So, about the job…”  He pulled the pick from the dispenser and gestured at her with it.  “I’m sure you have questions.”

“I’ll take it.”

The wiry little man raised a brow.  “You don’t want to meet the crew or take a look at the ship first?”

“You picked me,” Dallas said, taking off her apron, “so you must have an eye for quality.”  She wadded it up and hurled it across the restaurant, where it landed in a patron’s bowl of pea soup.

The man grinned, watching the apron soak up the green slime.  “I like you.  I can see why Athenais gave you the boot.”

Dallas blinked.  “You can?”

“Yeah.  You two are a lot alike.”

“You
knew
her?”  Dallas’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“She frequented my establishment once in awhile.”

“Hmph,” Dallas said, eying him.  “As long as you weren’t friends or anything.  I don’t want anything to do with that frigid bitch the rest of my life.”

“I’d heard as much.”  The man sucked on the toothpick, his gray eyes calculating as he watched her.  “I guess now would be a bad time to tell you—”  His eyes caught on Rob and the three big goons he’d dragged in from the back kitchens and her new benefactor paused, sighing.  “Give me a moment.”

“That’s the one,” Rob growled.  “Assaulted me.  Acting like he owns the joint.  Get him out of here.  He’s disrupting my guests.”

Still seated placidly, her prospective employer raised a brow.  “I’m having a quiet conversation, and you interrupted.”  He grinned.  “And what I can do once, I can surely do again.”  He rhythmically tapped the knife with his fingers.

“She ain’t paid to talk,” Rob growled, grabbing Dallas by the arm and roughly pulling her from the booth with a grip that was sure to leave a bruise.  He nodded at the others.  “Out in the alley.  Give ‘im a little extra attention for his time.”