PRINT: Freelancers of Neptune (SIGNED Hardback)

Vessani S’Kaari entered the docking bay with all the swagger of a woman ready to cast aside the past year and strike out on her own. She was eager for a fresh start free of scummy pirate gangs—sorry, independent contractors—and the idiots who led them.

But first things first, she thought with a twinkle in her golden eyes. She crossed the bay to the gang’s ship, the Dirge of Darkness. It was an ugly, bulky, somewhat batlike vessel with thick, high-mounted wings tipped with stubby thruster pods on each end. The vessel was painted all black with no other markings of any kind, because of course Hugo Dirge would accept nothing less.

Vessani’s hips swayed with each long-legged stride. She was dressed in all black because that’s what Hugo Dirge expected of his crew. He must have thought it made them look tough. She wore a many-pocketed vest above durable, formfitting pants, leaving the alabaster skin of her shoulders and arms exposed, though her hands were clad in leather, fingerless gloves. Her customized pistol hung from the holster belt slung across her hips.

Her short, somewhat wild hair was a black that matched her clothes, and her triangular, catlike ears stood up from the top of her head. She stepped up the boarding ramp to the ship’s modest cargo hold, and the vertical pupils of her golden eyes adjusted to the gloom almost instantly. Her long, furry tail swayed gently with each step.

Three other members of Dirge’s crew sat at a table to one side playing a game involving triangular cards. Maybe it was a local Neptunian game? She didn’t know and didn’t care. A modest pile of c’troni coins sat in the middle of the table.

The largest and most muscular of the three pirates twisted around in his seat. His name was Broog, and he was a towering divergent brute with green skin and maroon eyes. He was also Hugo Dirge’s right-hand man.

“Hey, Vess,” he grunted at her.

“Hey.”

“You’re back early,” Broog said, but in a tone that also asked the question of why.

“I felt like having a chat with Felix.” She held up a pair of beer bottles as her explanation. Condensation frosted their sides. She’d been dropping hints she was sweet on Felix for almost a month now.

Broog eyed the two beers, then gave her a toothy smirk.

“Have fun,” he muttered, and returned to the card game.

“Oh, we will.”

“Hey, Vess!” One of the other pirates stood up and spread his arms. He was a tech-savvy asshole named Zuloph. “What about me? Don’t I get a beer?”

Vessani rolled her eyes, gave him a little shake of her head, then continued past their table.

“Come on! Don’t you have anything to say to me? Cat got your tongue or something?”

She held up a hand and extended her middle finger.

“Ah, you’re no fun!” Zuloph snapped.

“Man, that cat can have my tongue any day,” said the third pirate.

“Shut it, Narsh,” Broog growled.

“What? All I’m saying is—yeiah!” Narsh recoiled his leg from the stomp Broog gave his toes. “Damn it! What the hell you do that for?”

“Because. Now ante up before I decide you’ve earned more.”

“All right! All right!”

Vessani passed through the open pressure door at the far side of the cargo hold. She didn’t hold any of the Dirge Company in high regard, but she did have to hand one thing to Broog: he was good at keeping the human-shaped trash on the ship from stepping out of line.

She paused past the threshold and glanced back over the hold, checking the few pieces of cargo stacked and secured along the walls. That last part would be important very soon. She turned away and followed the corridor to a steep staircase that led up to a cockpit with three chairs: two for tandem-seated pilots and a third behind them for Hugo Dirge to complain from.

Felix sat in the one of the pilot chairs, boots propped up on the console and a magazine in his hands. He was holding it vertically with the centerfold spread open. She didn’t catch the title before he slapped the magazine shut, creasing the centerfold in the process, though the buxom, bikini-clad girl on the cover told her enough.

Maybe he reads it for the articles, she thought wryly.

“Vessani!” Felix stuffed the magazine into a compartment under the console. “Hey! When did you get back?”

“Just now.” She set one of the beer bottles on top of the console, then crashed into the captain’s chair, her tail tucked to the side. She slung her long legs over the armrest and smiled at Felix, her own beer bottle dangling from her fingers.

“You know Hugo doesn’t like it when people sit in his chair,” he warned.

“I won’t tell if you don’t.” She winked at him and took a swig from her bottle, which tasted cool and refreshing.

Like water.

In fact, exactly like water, because that’s what she’d filled her bottle with.

“Ahh,” she sighed, leaning back luxuriously.

“So. Umm.” Felix licked his lips. “What brings you here?”

“Oh, this and that.” She swung her legs, and the end of her tail gave him a happy swish. “You?”

“I thought you were hitting the town.”

“Yeah.”

“And?”

“Got bored. Came back.”

Which was a lie. She’d been meeting with Joshua Cotton again. It was strange to think her upbringing on an uncharted, low-tech habitat in the middle of nowhere had somehow granted her the knowledge to locate a lost pentatech relic. Or, more accurately, to locate the device that could then locate the relic, but there it was. Little Miss Nobody Catgirl knew how to find the biggest pentatech bonanza in…perhaps ever.

She’d done her best to keep her dealings with Joshua as discreet as possible, but there was always the chance one of these thugs would fire up a few brain cells and realize she was up to something. She really didn’t like being employed by Hugo Dirge, and she had some…interesting ideas about severance pay.

So far so good, though, she thought, appraising Felix’s dumb grin.

Vessani had detected a few hints that Hugo Dirge knew she knew something and had grown mildly curious, but he clearly didn’t have a firm grasp of what she knew. She had a pretty good idea what a man of Dirge’s character—or lack thereof—might do to her if he learned she knew the way to a pentatech relic, and it would involve a lot of sharp implements, blood, and screaming.

Best to cut our ties before that happens.

“Is it hot in here?” she asked Felix. “Or is it just me?”

She unzipped her vest halfway.

Felix gulped, his eyes drawn to her cleavage like iron to a magnet.

“It’s you. It’s definitely you.” He sat up and reached out with the intent of grasping her assets.

“Hold it right there, buster!”

“What?” His hands flinched back. “What’s wrong?”

“Look at you! I go out of my way to bring you a nice, cold beer!” She pointed an unsteady hand at the bottle on the console. “And you don’t even touch it!” She sat back and pouted. “I even bought a label I thought you’d like.”

Felix turned the bottle to face him, revealing the logo of a smiling woman sitting astride a guided munition in what could only be described as a suggestive manner. The text underneath read: TORPEDO GIRL PALE LAGER.

Felix’s eyes flicked from the bottle to Vessani’s breasts and back. He seemed to come to a decision, grabbed the bottle, and proceeded to chug the entire contents.

Oh dear, Vessani thought, mildly concerned. I hope I didn’t overdo the dosage.

“Now?” he asked, wiping his mouth with a sleeve.

“Patience.” She held up her bottle and her eyes laughed with mischief. “I need to finish mine.”

She nursed her water-filled “beer” while Felix grew increasingly restless and uncoordinated.

“Wow!” he exclaimed a few minutes later. “This stuff has some kick!”

“I know, right? Great, isn’t it?”

Felix made one last-ditch effort to initiate the proceedings but only succeeded in planting himself on the floor with his pants around his ankles. He fell asleep soon after.

||scenebreak||

Broog spread his Triad Trial cards on the table.

“Sorry, boys. Prime flush.”

“Ah, shit!” Zuloph threw his cards onto the table while Narsh shook his head and slouched deeper into his chair.

Broog shoveled his winnings over to his side and began organizing the coins into neat columns. He heard someone whistling from the far side of the cargo hold followed by a meaty thunk, and he glanced over to see what the commotion was about.

“Vess?” he asked, not sure what to make of the spectacle.

Vessani whistled a jaunty tune while she rolled a snoring Felix across the floor and out into the cargo hold, her efforts made somewhat more awkward by the pants dangling around his ankles. She stood up, dusted off her hands, and waved at him.

“Hey, Broog!”

“Something you want to share with us?”

“Yes, actually. You can consider this my resignation.”

She smacked the door controls, and the pressure door slammed shut.

“Resignation? Wait, what?”

He rose from the table and hurried over to the door, stepping over Felix in the process. He hit the release, but the door bleeped angrily at him and didn’t open. She’d locked them out of the ship!

“Open up!” He pounded the door, then peered through the porthole but only saw an empty corridor. “You hear me! Open up in there or else!”

“Or else, what?” The voice came from door’s control vlass.

“Or, I swear to the Gods, I will flay you alive and use your skin as a jump rope!”

“Eww. Those are some serious anger issues you’ve got there. Have you considered therapy?”

“Don’t you dare mock me! I will rip that tongue right out of your pretty little mouth and beat you to death with it!”

“Now you’re just being weird.”

The ship’s reactor hummed to life.

“Don’t you dare!” he roared. “This is your last warning!”

“No. This is yours.”

The thruster apertures at the front and back of each wingtip opened and angled down.

“You might want to get out while we’re still close to the ground,” Vessani added. “You know. Just saying.”

Broog screamed at the door’s vlass, the veins in his face pulsating with rage. But if Vessani heard him, she gave no indication. He pounded his fist against the door, then kicked it with a heavy boot, but only succeeded in denting the barrier.

Zuloph and Narsh were behind him now, backing him up more out of instinct than any knowledge or insight into what was wrong, but he was barely aware of their presence. He drew his pistol and aimed it at the door when the floor began to shift, angling upward. The roar from the thrusters grew louder, and the floor pitched higher.

He dropped to one knee and placed a hand on the floor to steady himself.

The gambling table, chairs, cards, and his recent winnings tumbled out of the cargo hold, followed by Zuloph and Narsh, who both slid back across the tilting floor to land on their feet outside. The unconscious Felix followed them, rolling across the deck until his pants caught on an eyebolt. He dangled there for a moment before the weight of his body stripped the pants off his legs, and he fell away, landing on top of Zuloph.

Broog scrambled for purchase against the floor, but the angle grew too steep, and he slid, then fell, landing with a heavy thud next to the others.

The Dirge of Darkness lifted away from the dock with its nose pointed skyward, and Broog snarled at it, raising his pistol. He opened fire, his shots zinging off random parts of the ship.

Zuloph and Narsh followed his lead and pulled out their own weapons. The three of them peppered the escaping ship, but their shots failed to achieve anything before the thruster exhaust washed over them.

The Dirge of Darkness, like most deifactured vessels, featured thrusters that adapted to the local environment. In air or liquids, reactor output drove retractable turbines in each thruster that drew in and expelled the local medium. In space, the thruster inlets would close, and the full fury of the reactor would blare out their nozzles. That was why Broog and his fellow pirates, despite being underneath the ship as it shot off into the Neptunian sky, were merely knocked over rather than vaporized.

Broog rose to his feet, and the other two did the same.

“Shit,” Zuloph hissed. “What now?”

Broog locked him in a withering glare, then pulled the commect off his belt and keyed up his boss. The deifactured communication-connector interfaced with other nearby commects to form an improvised network and routed his call.

It took Hugo Dirge almost a full minute to respond.

“This had better be good,” he groaned.

“It’s…” Broog hesitated and frowned up at the now distant running lights of his boss’s prized possession. “It’s not.”