CHAPTER 1

Clayton Jiggins was so very out of place in Rigel. His home in the slums of Miessa was privileged living compared to the rotting hovels and polluted streets he was about to enter. As difficult as the trip had been, he was starting to feel grateful for the abrasive captain who brought him to this place. They arrived in the early morning while the city slept in to recover from the rambunctious and wild festivities that were the nightly norm on this edge of the Hunter Galaxy. Whoever was still awake in the town would leave him alone so long as the Captain, one of their own, was by his side.

“Welcome to Hell, Mister Jiggins.” Clayton turned to the owner of the booming voice that was from the lowest class he could think of. Captain Marshall Brownsea was a seasoned man who had fed all of his vices well in his lifetime. You would think such a man would be relatively happy, but the Captain was as hardened as everyone else that Clayton had met since he left Miessa. His curly, salt-and-pepper hair crawled down the side of his face and grew long on his jawline. His round cheeks and nose were red from years of daily consumption, which had started when he was even younger than Clayton.

“Oh, it doesn’t...” Clayton turned back to look at the town. “... Look that bad.” Captain Brownsea barked a hearty but cynical laugh. “Word of advice; drop whatever manners and politeness you were taught. Out here, they mean nothing. Mincing words won’t get you on anyone’s good side. You must’ve figured that out in Alnilam.”

A shiver went down Clayton’s spine at the mention of the city. The city itself had actually been quite pleasant considering that it was currently beyond the reach of any form of law-enforcement. It was the man who had current control of the city that made Clayton nervous. Clayton may have gone to that man for help, and did in fact get some – that was why he even managed to get to Rigel – but Clayton had heard enough stories to know that the man was dangerous, and that he needed to tread with caution as long as he was working with Captain Brownsea or anyone else who worked for or with Alnilam’s self-appointed mayor. Manners wouldn’t necessarily help him in that endeavor, as Captain Brownsea had pointed out.

The crew of the Hellish Plague pulled the ship into the harbor and tended to the ship and her cargo while Captain Brownsea de-boarded with Clayton and started leading him through the town. Clayton did his best to stick as close to the Captain’s side

without making it awkward as the town slowly started to wake up and start the day. The men and few women who had spent the night at the numerous brothels were waking up early and trying to sneak out of the buildings as quietly as they possibly could, either to avoid paying for the services that were provided to them the evening before or to get home before their spouses woke up. The most unfortunate of the citizens were fighting each other for the busiest side streets that would yield the greatest income from their begging and groveling habits. Everyone in between was still sleeping.

“So... where do we start?” Clayton looked around the city that seemed to be coming apart in the seams. It was so big, clustered, and poorly laid out that their reason for coming to Rigel could be anywhere.

“Taverns and inns.”

Clayton was confused. “Why? It sounds like she would more likely be in... well...”

“A whore house?” Captain Brownsea laughed as Clayton’s cheeks went red at the crude term. “What makes you think that a dangerous man like the Blue Lion would allow his bit of crumpet to work in a place where any old bastard can put his hands on her?” Clayton had to admit there was some logic to what the Captain was saying.

“Do you think he’s here? In the city?” “If he’s not, his bird will tell us where he’s gotten to.” Despite the fact that Captain Brownsea’s boss refused to give Clayton the help he had originally sought out for – for reasons that Clayton still didn’t completely understand – he did give him a way to find someone who would be just as helpful in his endeavor. The Blue Lion; an assassin who had started taking lives about a year before. He had gained the name for the cloak that seemed to be his trademark. The cloak was said to be made of cobalt velvet with the constellation of Leo the Lion stitched into the back with white thread. A few witnesses has seen a figure in this cloak fleeing the scenes of the crimes just before the victims were found. While the man who owned Alnilam didn’t know the precise location of the Blue Lion, he was fairly positive that there was a woman in Rigel who was, to put it delicately, someone that the Blue Lion was deeply invested in. That was who Clayton and Captain Brownsea were looking for; a young woman with reddish-gold hair, grey eyes, and a scar down her left cheek. If they found her, there was a chance that she could lead them to the Blue Lion and Clayton could finally get the help that he was so desperate for.

It became clear very quickly that Captain Brownsea had spent plenty of time in Rigel; he called the owner of every single tavern and inn they entered by name, and they all welcomed him with a grin and a full tankard of ale on the house. Even if the owner had never seen a woman who fit the description the Captain gave them, he would drink each tankard dry before leaving to look somewhere else. Clayton had absolutely no idea how the Captain was still standing by the time they actually got the answer they were looking for.

The Wandering Royal Inn was identified by the rotting, wooden sign that depicted a crowned prince with a travel pack slung over his shoulder as he strutted down a road away from a large castle. The inside looked like it had, once, been a very fine, comfortable establishment before it was overrun with vermin, along with the rats and the cockroaches. Now the place looked it had been the setting of a million drunken fights and acts of indecent exposure. The owner looked like she had been there when the inn was first built, and she had watched it’s fall from grace. She looked twenty years older than she actually was and hadn’t had a good night sleep in those added twenty- years. As much as Clayton thought she was rude, he guessed that she had a pretty good reason for being that way.

Unlike all the other tavern owners, she didn’t offer Captain Brownsea a free tankard. She just got straight to the point and asked, “What the hell do you want, Brownsea?”

“Down, Millie–” “Mildred ta you.” “... Sorry, Mildred–” “So you should be. Now what do you want?” “We’re looking for a bird–” “You know damn well that the brothel is across the street. Quit day drinking, you looney.”

Captain Brownsea laughed, but Clayton could tell that he was getting annoyed. “Not what I meant, Mildred. We’re looking for a specific bird who might have some valuable information. Fiery hair, grey eyes, scar down her cheek? Have you seen her?”

Mildred scoffed. “Every damn evening.” After having such horrible luck all morning, Clayton and the Captain took wide- eyed double takes at Mildred when they heard her answer. They demanded in perfect unison, “Where?!”

“Oi! No need to shout! You’ll wake the place!” She gestured to the patrons of the tavern who had paid for rooms but never got around to using them. The number of drinks that each and every one of them would consume on a nightly basis made it impossible to navigate up the stairs to where the rooms were. “She has a room.”

Taking the lead for the first time since they arrived, Clayton asked, “Which one?” Mildred spat into a tankard to clean it before jerking her head towards the stairs. “Last door at the end of the right hall.”

Captain Brownsea started lumbering towards the stairs when Clayton stepped into his path and stopped him. “Hold on.”

“What? What’s wrong?” “Maybe I should go up alone. Just for now. Just to talk to her.” “... Why?” “Considering how hard it was to find her, I have to think that she doesn’t want to be found. She’s probably going be scared enough as it is. Having two of us there will spook her even more.” Captain Brownsea didn’t seem to have any immediate argument to Clayton’s logic. “Let me go up and talk to her by myself to show her that we mean her no harm.”

“What makes you think she’s just gonna be a little lamb about this and come quietly?”

“Well, why wouldn’t she? We’re not threatening her, and once she sees that I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

“You don’t know much about the world do you kid?” “...In what way do you mean?” “Out here, people are not interested in helping one another just outta the goodness of their hearts. You either have to bribe ‘em or threaten ‘em. That’s where you’re gonna need me.”

Captain Brownsea tried to belly-chuck Clayton out of his way, but Clayton managed to stand firm, despite the fact that the Captain was a little taller and a little more burly than him. “Well, let me try the bribery first. If I get desperate, I’ll come back down and you can go up try the threatening. Fair enough?” Captain Brownsea never said anything. He simply eyed Clayton skeptically and sighed. He pulled up a bar stool, sat down, and waved Clayton off while he tried and failed to start a civilized conversation with Mildred.

Clayton did his best to gingerly step around the scattered patrons without waking them, though he was sure that the Big Bang couldn’t even wake them from their drunken stupors. Once he got up the stairs, the pathway cleared up since no one had made it that far before passing out the evening before. By the time he got to the end of the hall, there was no sign that anybody had been that far in years. He hoped that the woman hadn’t ducked out without letting Mildred know. If she did, Clayton had no idea what he would do.

Clayton tapped his knuckles against the warped, rotting door, trying to avoid any splinters that remained in the uncleaned wood. He tried to be gentle enough to only wake the tenant that he hoped was still inside and not as hungover as her neighbors. When no answer came, he knocked a little harder, but nothing changed. Holding his breath, Clayton wrapped his huge hand around the rusted doorknob, twisted, and pushed. He was very lucky that none of the rooms in the tavern came with door locks that still worked.

Despite the late morning light, the room was very dim due to a think bolt of fabric that had been thrown over the only window in the room. The result was that only a dim glow went throughout the room. It was just enough to allow Clayton to make out how humble the room was; a rickety, wooden table-and-chair set, and a half stuffed old mattress that was on the floor were the only things that were in the room. Clayton could tell that someone was lying on the bed with their back to him, but he couldn’t quite tell the gender of the person.

Clayton timidly stepped into the room and quietly closed the door behind him. He cleared his throat to see if he could get the attention of the tenant. There was no sound or movement to indicate that he even stirred the person. “Excuse me?” The only sound was the floor creaking beneath his weight as he tiptoed across the room to the mattress. Clayton took chance, and asked, “Miss?” Clayton was starting to worry that whoever was in this room wasn’t even with him in the realm of the living anymore; he couldn’t hear any breathing aside from his own, and the body was steady as a meteorite. He reached out to touch what he thought was the person’s shoulder to see if the body felt cold.

Clayton felt the warmth of life before his world got flipped around. By the time he got his head straight again, he realized that he was on his back on the mattress, and there was a weight on his hips and shoulders. Through the dim light he could see that whoever had been lying in the bed was now on top of him, pinning him down by his

shoulders. He still couldn’t tell the gender of the person, but he could tell that their body was a little small for the strength they were already displaying.

“Who the hell are you?” The voice was tense and raw, but definitely female. She sounded just as cynical as the people around her, but she also sounded too young to be that cynical.

Clayton’s boundless patience had reached an abrupt end when this woman threw him down and questioned him like he was a criminal when she was the one who had immersed herself with people void of morality. Forgetting where he was, he started to push against her to get her off of him, all the while ordering her to do so. He was cut off when he felt cold steel pressing into his neck. Clayton had never known someone who was so paranoid that they slept with a knife under their pillow, so he was just as fascinated as he was nervous.

“Kid, I had a late night, you are waking me up way to damn early, and honestly, I don’t trust you as far as I could throw you. Unless you fancy a one way trip through the Black Hole, I suggest that you do not piss me off any more than you already have.” The woman paused in the middle of her threat to give Clayton the opportunity to choose death over life, which he didn’t take. “Now, I’ll ask again; Who. The hell. Are you?”

“Clayton. Clayton Jiggins.” Clayton hated how tremulous his voice sounded, and took a deep breath to try to compose himself again. He may have been at the woman’s mercy and he may have come to seek her help, but he still wanted to sound strong for no reason other than he felt confidence would work in his favor.

“Never heard of you.” This was the first time that Clayton realized that he couldn’t tell where this woman had come from; her English wasn’t broken, suggesting it was her first language, but she didn’t sound like anyone he had heard all of the Hunter Galaxy. She didn’t have the posh dialect of Nobles – not that he expected her to – but she also didn’t sound like the low-class people who surrounded her on all sides. Her speech-patterns were very neutral, not giving away any secrets about her origins.

“I... never expected you to.” “What’s your business?” “I, uh... I’m looking for... the Blue Lion?” There was a strained silence in the room before the woman growled out an extremely irritated sigh. Keeping the knife to Clayton’s throat, the woman reached up to rip the make-shift curtain off the window with her free hand. The morning light came booming into the room, illuminating

absolutely everything. Clayton simply had to blink for his eyes to adjust to the visibility change while the woman on top of him snapped her eyes closed and groaned in pain. While she rubbed her eyes with her free hand, her wild, loose hair fell over face. Despite the fact that it was in desperate need of a wash and a brush, Clayton could see that her hair was blond with just a slight undertone of red in the right light. When she finally pulled her hand away from her face and cracked her eyes open to glare down at him, he saw her steely eyes raged like a thunderstorm that could destroy the entire town. The ferocity in those eyes was heightened by the thin, pale scar that followed the curve of her left cheek from the hinge of her jaw until it stopped about half an inch away from the corner of her mouth.

Clayton didn’t have any time to take in the fact that he had found the person he had been looking for when the woman got right up in his face, snarling as her hair tickled his nose. “For the last goddamn time, I don’t know who or where the Blue Lion is. Now, get the hell out and tell your people are to leave. Me. Alone.” With that, she rolled off of Clayton, gripping him by his coat collar and using the momentum of her roll to throw him off of the bed and onto the floor. While Clayton was trying to gather his bearings again, the woman collapsed onto the bed and pull the single blanket with moth holes over her head.

“Miss, please. I am in desperate need of help and someone like the Blue Lion is my only hope. I’m not here on anyone’s behalf other than my own. If you can tell me–” Clayton was cut off when something flashed by his face and went into the wall behind him. When he looked, Clayton realized that the woman had thrown her knife right at him. He got the sense that she wasn’t a person who had bad aim unless she was trying to miss her target. As much as the act made Clayton want to back out of the room as quickly as possible, it also made him even more positive that she had the information he was looking for.

“I’m willing to pay for what you know.” Clayton started scrambling to get his beaten-up pouch that held the only three Starz he had to his name alone. He swore that he would do anything to get what he needed, but he drew the line at stealing from his own family.

Growling in irritation, the woman shot up and threw more daggers at Clayton, but this time from her eyes. “I can’t give you what I don’t have! Now get–”

“It’s the Prince!” Silence rang throughout the room as the woman looked at Clayton, waiting for him to explain what he had said in a sudden, desperate outburst.

“... I need the Blue Lion to kill the Prince... Please... If you know anything that can help me, I will do... anything.” Clayton knew that the words he was saying were dangerous, but nothing could be as dangerous as the Prince of the Hunter Galaxy.

For a long time, the woman just kept staring at Clayton. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking, which made him slightly uncomfortable. Then, she threw the blanket off, mumbling, “Goddamit,’ under her breathe. She strode to a lonely bucket that sat in the moldiest corner of the room. This was the first Clayton realized that the woman was only wearing a black leather corset, a chemise, and cut off bloomers. He averted his eyes as he asked, “So, you do know the Blue Lion?”

Clayton heard splashing water, followed by a high-pitched exhale. It made Clayton look at the woman to see what she had done, but he looked away again when he saw she still hadn’t put on any clothes and had just throw cold water over her head. With another sigh the woman said, “Normally, I’d be kicking your ass right out of here, but you happen to have just said the right thing to save yourself from an ass whooping.” Clayton heard the shuffling of various fabrics.

“So you’ll help me?” Clayton couldn’t control the hopefulness that was in his voice. He reached for his pouch again and dumped the three Starz into his hand, clenching them in his palm.

“You’re not the only one who has the Prince on his shit list.” Clayton heard more shuffling, and some clopping like wood was being knocking against wood.

“Thank you!” He looked to the women just in time to see her shimmy into her garter pants. Clayton was impressed with how quickly she got dressed, especially considering how complicated and fierce her clothes looked. He started to rush towards her, offering the Starz in his hand.

She jerked the zipper up on her fur-lined, leather vest. “Save your money kid.” “But–” “Sh!” Out of nowhere the, the woman threw herself against the inside wall right behind the door, pressing herself as flat against it as she could. She glared at the door as if she was silently daring it to open.

“What is –” “Sh!” She glared at Clayton like he was a complete idiot. She turned her gaze back to the door and Clayton decided to indulge the woman and kept quiet. They both listened as carefully as they possibly could, but Clayton couldn’t understand what the woman was worried about; he couldn’t hear anything aside from some heavy footfalls

that he was sure was a tenant who had finally woken up and was returning to their room.

Out of nowhere, the door to the room was kicked in, making Clayton jump. Captain Brownsea pushed his way into the room, his saber drawn and at the ready. He looked like a giant, feral dog searching frantically for pray that he had been hunting. It became obvious that he hadn’t seen the woman when he turned his wild eyes to Clayton and bellowed, “Where is she?!”

“Captain–” The woman jumped from behind her hiding place, brandishing the knife she had slept with and used to threaten Clayton. She gripped it backwards in her hand and leapt onto the Captain, slamming the hilt of the dagger right into his temple. The impact clearly dazed the Captain, but not enough for him to be completely out of the fight. When the woman tried to attack the Captain a second time, he swung his saber out wildly, striking a small but lucky blow against her bare arm. It was nothing more than a scratch, but it did draw blood.

“Captain, please!” Both the Captain and the woman ignored Clayton’s pleas as he backed into a corner, trying to get out of the range of the Captain’s saber. He had no idea what was going on, and therefore had no idea what to do to stop any of this.

The Captain managed to block the woman’s next two attacks with ease before throwing her to the ground. He also managed to cut her thigh when she chose to run to her table rather than fighting back immediately. Clayton realized that she wanted to switch out her knife with a better weapon to even out the fight.

“Stop it! Stop this now! Both of you!” Clayton, unsure as he was about everything that was happening around him, was starting to get angry. The result was that he was yelling loud enough to wake up the whole tavern in a useless attempt to stop everything.

Rather than listening to Clayton, the woman grabbed a saber of her own. She whipped back around to get the Captain back with her own two attacks. They weren’t serious wounds, but it did make the Captain angry enough to yell, “You little bitch!” He attacked in a fit of complete and utter rage. He was completely out of control, which allowed him to get a more serious hit on the woman’s side, making a small slice into her leather vest. The blood began to spill out of the wound, slowly staining the fur and leather. It made the woman stop fighting and look at the wound. After she slipped her free hand over it to slow the bleeding, she glared up at the Captain.

Clayton slid along the wall as the fight resumed until he had reached the door to the room. He stepped outside and shouted, “Help! Help! Someone help! We need a doctor!” The only response he got was all the remaining drunks who were downstairs yelling in unison, “Shut the hell up!”

The Captain and the woman proceeded to trade blows and no one came up to the room to stop them. Finally, Clayton became frustrated that no one was listening to him or trying to help him. He chanced a dash through the room, just barely missing the weapons from both parties. He went to the woman’s pile of remaining weapons, among which were two lead pipes, each about two feet long. Clayton grabbed one and whipped around. The Captain was the closest to him and had his back to him. Without even thinking, Clayton swung the pipe at the Captain. The Captain proved to be more agile and perceptive than Clayton had originally given him credit for when he manage to dodge both of Clayton’s attacks with surprising ease. However, while the Captain was focused on Clayton’s attacks, the woman took the opportunity to attack him as well. The Captain didn’t manage to dodge that attack.

This sent the Captain’s rage soaring. He now considered both the woman and Clayton as his enemies. He attacked both of them and managed to find purchase against the woman. His attack against Clayton, on the other hand, was so wild and undisciplined that not only did he miss, but Clayton managed to hit him instead; a strike right into the Captain’s cheek that left the Captain very dazed, and even knocked a tooth out.

Clayton was so effected by his own actions and the result of them that he was left in a state of shock himself. With both men shocked, the woman took the opportunity to hit the Captain in the temple to further daze him. The attack didn’t take the Captain down completely, but it left his attempts to fight back practically useless. The woman’s final kick to his head sent the Captain into complete unconsciousness.

Clayton was still stunned from his own actions when the woman stomped up to him, grabbed him by his shirt collar, and slammed him against the wall. “And to think I actually believed you.”

“What?” “Fool me once, asshole.” Keeping one hand at his neck, the woman raised her saber up until the tip was pointed right at his gut. “You won’t live to fool me twice.”

“No, please! I swear I had no idea the Captain was going to attack! I have no idea what’s going on! Please!”

Before either one of them could make another move, musket shots were heard from outside, followed by an authoritative, male voice shouting, “This is Navy! Everybody out!”

Clayton and the woman looked at one another just before the woman spoke the one word that came into both of their minds. “... Shit.”

Next Chapter: Chapter 2