Ever since I stole my ship, I’ve been moving from place to place. Never settling down anywhere solid and living in my ship’s bunk, which is just a little too short for me to stretch out. The life of a freelancer is not an easy life, and it’s the life I chose - but even the most independent, defiant people have to know when to tuck their tail between their legs and admit they need help. That’s why I was all the way out here on Cordoma Station. I was here to meet someone.

It had been a hard couple of weeks. The Outer Systems are a great place to not get recognized while going about your business. There’s not much out here aside from a few habitable planets, that are scattered with farming and mining colonies. People living the simple life on the frontier. But I wasn’t staring at some grand vista framed by mountains and the setting sun, I was sitting in another seedy dive bar on another seedy mining station high in orbit around a gas giant. While jobs weren’t hard to come by in my line of work, you generally had to be crazy or desperate to be a freelancer in these times, the war may have ended twenty or so years ago but the lines in the sand that were drawn are still there dividing our part of the galaxy. Luckily I am crazily desperate at times with a sprinkling of insanity at others, but I needed something more than this. Escort and bodyguard jobs are quick pay, but it’s just enough to live on with not much extra. Having gotten involved with some shady types lately, I needed the extra. A lot of the extra.

I was sitting at the end of the bar, profiling other patrons for outstanding warrants or bounties, another way to make quick cash in my line of work. The display on my visor scanned the faces of everyone to walk in or out. Nothing so far. I glanced at my Compad, a computer built into my left gauntlet; still another seventeen minutes in the refuelling queue, probably another ten or so to fill her up. I didn’t want to be here much longer than that, ever since I stepped onto the station the hairs on the back of my neck had stood on end. I’d been watching several large men in the corner I’d been watching since I sat down. They looked like they’d just finished a shift in maintenance, judging by their greasy, oil-stained overalls. One of them stood up and walked to the bar. I looked away and tried to act uninterested. The last thing I wanted was to get into a fight with an inebriated local.

In my peripheral vision I noticed him walk straight past the bar towards me, the smell of engines and whatever he’d been drinking preceding him. His giant hand clapped me on the shoulder. I spun around ready for a fight.

“Jonas Slate. About time you got here.”

"Toby!" I sighed, "I thought some space miner had come to shake me down for taking his seat or something.” I removed my helmet and placed it on the bar, without the filters in my helmet I got hit with the full force of the mildew and engine grease tainted atmosphere. Toby was a large man with a ragged beard, his hands and forearms permanently dyed a blackish colour from years of tinkering with engines. “Now that you mention it, you are sitting in Jonno’s spot...but he’s out on maintenance shift so you should be right.” He fixed me a goofy smile, “So my boy, how have you been? Last time I saw you was when...hmmm,” he scratched his beard, “Was over in Tarcoma a few years back.”

“Ah yeah. A few years? Was it that long ago?” Toby nodded. “So what kind of trouble have yourself gotten into, for you to contact me after all these years?” he asked with a concerned look on his face as he plopped himself onto the stool next to me.

“Well a bit over a month ago, a job went south. Supposed to be simple. Our contact had a target that he needed to get off planet. We grabbed him and put him on the transport, got paid and that’s when shit went south.”

“Hang on hang on. We? You working as part of a group or something?” Toby asked, making a gesture at the bartender for two drinks. “Not usually, this time was a little more involved. As soon as we got paid, someone must have tipped off the police cause we were swarmed immediately.”

“And then?” Toby was resting his head on his hands listening, “And then my partner went full on beserker and started murdering everyone in sight. I made it back to Wanda but not before he shot at the her with a tank.”

“So you left him there?”

“Of course I did, he had nearly gotten me killed five times in the space of an hour cause he couldn’t keep his head on straight. Left him to the authorities.”

“Jonas!” Toby exclaimed, slapping the counter. The bartender shot Toby a dirty look as he finished up with our drinks. “That’s some seriously bad karma you’re inviting your way,”  Toby straightened himself on his stool and shot a dirty look at the bartender for taking so long with the drinks.

“Don’t worry, karma has already caught up to me, that pot shot that he sent at me loosed a few servos in the FTL drive, we barely made it out of the system before I had to cannibalize the artificial gravity to patch it.”

Toby grabbed the bubbling blue drinks that were placed in front of us and slid one my way. “Toby, what’s in this?” I asked peering at the metallic blue liquid that was pushed in front of me.
    “The boys out here call it Blue Mercury, but back in my day we used to call it Engine Coolant cause of it’s colour.” It smelt sour.

He raised his glass, “To old times.”

I grabbed mine and raised it at well, “To never having to do it again.”

Toby smiled in response and we drank. The Blue Mercury drink was actually a lot better than I expected, not too sour but tasted vaguely of some sort of tropical fruit. Quite pleasant. “Ok, what happened next?” Toby asked after draining his glass, he waved his hand for a refill.

“I got the ship moving again and Alice got us to one of the nearby junkyard planets. It was run by some alien name’s and they wanted a lot more than I had so I took out a small loan at the local cantina, hoping to get out of the system and put several more between us by the time he realized what I bought with his money.”

Toby had gone from concerned to angry, “How could you be so stupid boy! Do you not remember anything that Jack taught you? I thought you would have grown some brains since I saw you last but you are still the same stupid kid that snuck aboard my ship all those years ago.”

“I’m sorry Tobes but I needed to get as far away from Radlor as possible. That guy scares me”

Toby sighed again, pulled out his compad and tapped it several times before grabbing both our drinks, “I might have something for you,” he said stroking his beard. He stood up, “Come on,” he said pointing to a row of booth with a shake of his head. I followed Toby to a row of booths that had a view of

the screens on the wall playing some news program. Toby put the drinks on the table and flopped down into the booth, the chairs were extremely comfy, soft and cushiony. “So, apart from your recent run in with disaster how is your old rustbucket holding together?”

“She’s holding together still. There is a weird leak from the under the console when I dock sometimes, most of my time between jobs is taken up with repairs but she has heart,” I took a sip of my drink, “I’ve modified it quite a bit since as well, it could probably fly rings around that tin can you call a freighter.” To be fair, Toby’s ship, while an oversized freighter has been also modified to an almost unrecognizable degree by the semi-retired engineer

“Tin can?” Toby exclaimed, “That tin can flew Jack and I to the Arren Nebula and back not a single problem.”

“Arren Nebula? What were you guys doing all the way out in the Unexplored Sectors?” The Unexplored Sectors or ‘No man’s land’ was a large chunk of the galaxy that went from the other side of the Outer Systems, all the way to the edge of the of the galactic rim.

Toby had a look on his face like he had said too much,  “Just business,” he scratched his beard and shrugged. His brow furrowed and looked at me sternly, folding his hands under his chin, “So have you heard from Jack lately?”

“No, come to think of it. Been preoccupied with jobs and trade running.”

“I haven’t either, it worries me a little,” he sat up as a grin creeped across his face, “No matter, if anyone can survive in this galaxy it’s Jack.”

 Toby looked at my helmet sitting comfortably on the bar and rapped his oversized fingers across the top of it leaving an odd brown smudge. I’ll have to polish that off later.

“What about you Alice, I know you’re in there. You still hanging out with this loser?” An echoed beeping sound that resembled laughter came out of my helmet. Toby reeled back in a hearty chuckle. “I’ve told you a hundred times, you really should be more careful with her,”

“She’s fine. It would be more dangerous for me to keep her locked up in the ship.”

Toby nodded in agreement, he knew how much of a hassle Alice could be if she got in one of her moods but was all of a sudden too engrossed in the news program to form a verbal response, I turned to see what he was watching. “Scenes from Rallegh in the United Colonies where tensions between protesters and police over the appointment of Governor Sallin to the Joint Chair of Rallegh, one of the most influential seats in Colony Government, has begun to escalate out of control,” the presenter said as the image changed from the newsroom to a city street, several fires separated the two sides, “Several Peace Keeper vessels have been seen in orbit but their intentions are unknown.”

“I ran into a Peace Keeper patrol in Siris Gamma just near the Republic border on my way out here. I wonder if it is the same one.”

Toby finished off his drink slammed his empty glass down rather hard, “I hate Peace Keepers. Disgusting terrorist warmongers. I can’t believe after all we fought for to keep the galaxy civil, we still end up with these gutless privateers. No offence.”

“Ha, none taken. I’m not really into the ‘destroying government buildings’ business anyway.”

“See to it that you don’t or I’ll come after you myself,” Toby growled harshly, taking another sip.

“Of course not, I may be struggling but smuggling and escorting other smugglers about is much more appealing to me than terrorism,” I chuckled, my wrist vibrated as a message from Alice appeared,

You might want to see who just walked in.

I turned slowly to see who and my heart skipped several beats. “Oh shit.” I hunched my shoulders in an attempt to look smaller and tried to hide my face behind my glass.

“What are you doing?” Toby inquired.

“That guy at the bar with the blonde hair, red armour? That’s Radlor, the guy I left on Corvanos, how did he get off planet so fast? How did he find me?” I began to freak out which Toby thought was hilarious. He chuckled rather loudly, garnering the attention of Radlor. I spun back around quickly hoping he wouldn’t notice me, just the giggling old man in the corner. I was wrong.

The stamping of boots was unmistakably heading in my direction, I turned to face him at the last second. “Radlor, how’s it going? Long time no see. I hear Corvanos is really nice this time of year.”

Radlor stood silently with an unimpressed look upon his face. I noticed a scar running down his left cheek that wasn’t there last time we met. I hope it hurt. His left hand was resting on the hilt of a rather large knife and I saw one - no wait two pistols on his belt.

“Well, well, well Mr Slate, fancy seeing you here of all places,” his voice was gravelly and breath smelt like he’d just woken up. “I was just telling the guys here,” he waved his two thuggish lads over, they stood behind him like attentive gargoyles, “About how some little upstart left me stranded on a mission so he didn’t have to split the earnings.”

“And here I was telling my associate-”

His fist slammed the table and raised his fore and middle finger interrupting me, his voice gravelly and low as he brought his face directly in front of mine. “Two months. Two whole months I was stuck on that planet before anyone thought to come looking for me. You know what I had to do to survive?”

“Did you have to drink your own pee?” I asked, forgetting that Radlor had no sense of humor. Radlor began to jerk the knife from its sheath, I stood up and placed my hand on his wrist defensively denying his arm any movement, “You do know that if you start this, the security will be here in minutes and you’ll be carted off. And as much as I would like to see that, I have a ship to check on. Let’s get outta here Toby, we got work to do,”. I began to push past Radlor, “Excuse me.”

Radlor relaxed a little, standing up straight. Arrogant and smug as ever. I was somewhat confident I’d diffused the situation. Radlor turned to look at the door and nodded. Following his gaze I noticed someone fiddling with the door controls.

Oh shit - they were locking us in.

I shoved Radlor into one of his goons and jumped on the table and over behind the booth, grabbing my helmet as I went. I landed in a crouch and slipped the helmet over my head just as the door closed with a thud. Radlor must have regained his balance and composure as he screamed “GET HIM!”

Here we go.

Next Chapter: Chapter 2