I awoke with my abdomen burning, alone on a table in the middle of an empty room. The pain was intense, and the sensation was somehow amplified by the red lights shining down on me. As I moved slightly, and the fire in my gut turned to a more intense stabbing pain, I reached down instinctively to the point it seemed to emanate from. Remembering those final moments from our attempted escape, I expected to feel the seared opening left by the plasma rounds. Instead, there was the slightly hard fabric of a deeply packed gauze, and no sign of blood currently spilling out. I relaxed for a moment, taking a breath slowly to minimize the pain from drawing it in.

My calm lasted only as long as it took for my eyes to adjust to the harsh lighting and notice the details of my surroundings. There was almost nothing in the room, save for the table I was laid out on, but the metal walls were carved throughout with those same deep Okva claw-scratches that had been present on the slavers’ ship. A rush of adrenaline coursed through me and the sense of danger shook me from my exhausted state. I sat up all at once, and then screamed involuntarily as my insides radiated with pain, having foolishly added extra strain to my wound.

I collapsed back on the table, cursing at the pain and at the stupid scream that would no doubt alert whoever it was that had brought me here. I couldn’t think clearly, having so recently awoken from my injury, but I grasped vainly at the explanations that floated through my head, trying to figure out why the slavers would have kept me alive. Where could they have taken me, and how could I have even survived long enough to get there? And what would they be planning to do with me now?

The door slid open, and a figure stepped through. He was a Ploak, with thick leathery gray skin that rolled itself up in many places, giving an appearance of obesity to his already stocky build. His three eyes, arranged in a triangular fashion, were all a deep emerald color, which is how I knew he was male since the females’ eyes are red. Their faces are mostly lacking in features, with small mouths and only small slits for detecting sounds and smells, which meant there were few expressions they were capable of making. This made it difficult to tell what his intentions were as he looked over at me. Worrying, but at least he wasn’t one of the pirates.

“Come on now,” he said, rubbing his head with one of his three-fingered hands and exhaling in a way that resembled a sigh. “Even gut-shot animals don’t scream like that.”

“Who are you?” I managed to ask, discovering how uncomfortable talking was.

“I’m the one who stitched you back up. Neek, if you want a name.”

“Where are we? What happened?”

I lifted myself up slightly on my elbows, unwilling to strain my wound any more.

“We’re on one of those slaver ships,” he replied, then quickly corrected himself once he saw the tension in my face. “A stolen one, don’t worry. You’re safe.”

I relaxed again, letting myself down from my elbows, which were already starting to hurt. I didn’t especially like laying flat on a table in a situation like that, but I didn’t have any other good options.

“As for what happened,” he continued, pausing to decide what to say. “I’ll let the others tell you when they wake up. For now, just rest. You’re lucky to be alive, you know, and if you re-open that wound from jumping around, don’t expect me to close it again.”

It was somewhere between a joke and the practiced chiding of a doctor with irresponsible patients, but there was no point in fighting it. He shuffled back out of the room without adding anything else, and I closed my eyes to rest once the door slid shut behind him.

---

I could hear voices outside when I woke again, though I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I slid off the table, needing a few steps to orient myself, and then exited the room slowly.

The others were all gathered around a table in the next room, my three partners plus Kai and the doctor. Nesti was leaned back in his seat, far enough that he could have tipped backwards at any moment. Vos’go had managed to find a datapad somewhere and was already tinkering idly with it, and Rada had even left the cockpit to sit with the others. Kai and Neek were discussing something I couldn’t hear, but neither seemed tense or uneasy.

Seeing all of them there together and relaxed is what made it finally resonate that we had actually done it, that the job had been a success. I wasn’t willing to fully accept it just yet, of course, a trained response to never believe good news too early, but that sensation of relief washed over me anyway.

“Ah, look who’s finally up, and not screaming anymore even. Come, sit.” Neek said, motioning to the table.

I took a seat alongside them, positioning myself in the chair slowly to avoid bumping my torso against anything that might add to the pain.

“So, who wants to tell me what happened after those bastards got me in the gut?”

Nesti chuckled, and nodded towards Vos’go, who immediately looked down and began fiddling aggressively with his datapad. Nesti shrugged.

“Well, it took me a few seconds to even know you went down. Watching the rear was your job, remember?” He raised an eyebrow at me, less of an accusation than a joke at my expense. “But it was the little guy who saved you. Took two of them down with your rifle and held suppressing fire till I could get over there to carry you.”

I glanced in Vos’go’s direction, but the Sarvallan didn’t look up. I couldn’t process the idea that he had turned back to save me, especially because we had agreed before hand to not let any one of us compromise the others getting out. I never expected them to break from that plan, Vos’go least of all. This was a humbling moment for me, the realization that I had judged them wrong, thought too little of them. They had not been a liability that I was burdened with. I was the weak link, and I’d have been dead several times over without them. And I couldn’t even find the words to be thankful about it.

“What about the doctor?” I inquired after a pause, gesturing towards Neek.

“I was in that cage when you two showed up. Would still be if you hadn’t let us all out. So when I saw them carrying you, I figured I’d return the favor. Needed a ride off world anyway.”

The minimal facial features made it impossible to tell if there was a smile on the old Ploak’s face, but I felt it there anyway, a bit of joy at having repaid a kindness. There was a very disarming quality to the way he spoke that I couldn’t quite pinpoint, but I could tell immediately that his sympathy was genuine.

“So we grabbed the first ship we could get to start up, the doc got you stable, and we got the Hell out of there,” Nesti finished, adding a final bookend to the story. He started to lean back farther, like a seal of emphasis on his recounted tale, but quickly thought better of it when the chair started to wobble.

“I guess that only leaves one question,” I continued, turning my eyes towards Kai, who had remained quiet since I had entered the room. “Who are you really?”

The others looked suddenly tense, but I knew they had figured it out, too. The job always seemed a little too big just to rescue someone’s son-in-law, even for someone with the resources Vel clearly had. My suspicions had been confirmed the moment I saw him in that cage

“Well, you already know that.” Kai replied, smiling slightly. “I really am Vel’s son-in-law, and I really was flying a freighter to Nazvar when those pirates attacked.”

That could have been the end of it, I could have let it go. I knew there was more to it, but I also knew what would happen once he told us, how quickly we’d get pulled in. My ship would be fixed when I got back, and the payout from the job was enough to keep me comfortable for a long time. I could have accepted his answer on its face and everything would have been okay. But that hole in my stomach wanted an answer, wanted to know what this had all been for.

“So then tell me,” I asked at last. “What exactly were you planning to bring back?”

“Yeah?” I replied to Vos’go, pointing at my ear when Nesti looked over confused. He shrugged, not seeming to regret having destroyed his own earpiece.

“Too many guards here. Can’t get near building they took pilot.”

“How many?” I asked, unsure why they chose to maintain guards there despite having left my building entirely unsupervised.

“Two by main door, another walking around. Might be more inside.”

“Where are you? We’ll come to you.” I replied, glancing towards Nesti, who was waiting patiently by the front entrance.

“In shadow of small tower.”

I moved over to the front door, taking up a position on the opposite side from Nesti. I expected him to have questions about our plan, but he offered none, just nodding knowingly at me. We readied our respective weapons, unsure of what might be on the other side, and then pushed the door open all at once.

It was silent and dark out in the center of the pirate base, with the last of the red starlight gone. Now only the pale reflection of the nearby planet through the clouds provided us with anything to see by, but it was enough for a quick survey of our surroundings.

There were no guards stationed outside of the Okva shrine we had just exited, which was more good luck that I feel is worth mentioning. A lot of mercenaries only ever speak of the times that fortune was against them, of the things they had to overcome, but credit their successes purely to their own prowess.

Looking out from our position, we could see the small tower that Vos’go had referenced, a dark shadow in the distance. It was directly across from us, but to head straight there would mean crossing a lot of open ground at the center of the complex. To the right of the tower was the warehouse building that Rada had been taken to, the one Vos’go said was watched by guards, and to the left was the hangar bay, likely to be the most well-defended location.

Since the warehouse was our most likely destination, we moved that direction, sliding into the shadows behind the first building we got to and moving along the rough ground as quickly as we could. We were slightly advantaged against any guard we might come across out there, both because the Okva’s large form made them easier to see in the dark, and because they had no reason yet to expect us. But even though the heat had died down with the setting sun, the low quality of the air still made every stretch of sprinting a struggle, causing my lungs to scream as they tried desperately to keep up.

As we neared our goal, a dark shape was visible standing out behind the building, looking off at the distant rocky landscape. It was within the effective range of our weapons, but there was no reason to be premature, so we closed the gap until we reached a point where it was clear that it was indeed one of the pirates. I worried over how the relatively quiet sound of a plasma rifle might carry in the nearly total silence of that night, but Nesti had no such hesitation; at the first spot he could stop to aim, he put several rounds through the singular Okva, leaving its body to fall on the dusty ground.

“We’re going in to look for her, Vos’go,” I radioed to him as we closed the last bit of ground towards the warehouse. “We’ll rendezvous with you afterwards. Stay out of sight.”

“Will be okay, have things to do.”

The warehouse had the same prefab design as the one I had been temporarily imprisoned in, including the roll-up doors along the side. These were not in any regular use either, nor noticeably locked, but opening it was likely to make enough noise that any of the pirates stationed inside would certainly hear. That was my consideration as we approached it, at least, until I could hear the screaming coming from within.

Now, my instinct as a hunter was always to stop and assess the details in situations like that, because it’s easy to make a rash decision, to let your humanity take over, and make a terrible mistake. I’d have probably stopped to listen closer, tried to figure out how many voices there were, whether I recognized them, how far away they were, and ideally what they were actually saying. Those were the pieces of information that would let me form some kind of basic plan. It wouldn’t be perfect, but it would be enough to give myself pretty good odds.

But Nesti wasn’t having any of that. The moment the screaming could be heard, he was already reaching for the bottom of the door, thrusting it upwards as quickly and forcefully as he could. There was no opportunity for me to talk him out of it or suggest he do so quietly. All I could do was level my rifle and prepare for whatever was waiting on the other side.

The first thing I noticed was that the inside of the building was clearly visible, more so than my own confinement, with large overhead lights turned on to illuminate everything in that unsettling red shade. There were several large, open barred holding areas, the nearest of which was packed tightly with prisoners, most of which were non-humans, and almost all of whom were staring in horror at what was unfolding in front of them.

I traced the line of their vision to the spot in front of the cells where three of the Okva were gathered around a single Kval in a gaudy coat and a young boy. The blue skin of the Kval’s face had several large scars, and he stood with his arms crossed like a trader inspecting a disappointing product. The kid was visibly shaking, too afraid to look up at his scarred and disapproving captor. I raised my rifle, but didn’t fire; they were in front of the holding cell and I could easily have missed, hitting either the child himself or the packed-in captives behind them.

Before I had time to decide anything else, Nesti had charged at them. He unloaded his rifle on one of the red-furred pirates as soon as he had a clean shot, dropping it immediately. He swung the butt of his weapon at the next one, catching it in the face and causing it to stagger back and away from the cage, wailing furiously in that high-pitched tone all the while. Once it stepped clear, I silenced it with a couple of shots of my own.

Nesti tackled the pirate to the ground away from the boy and slammed his knee hard against his chest, with enough force to easily break his relatively brittle Kval rib cage. The blue-skinned overseer cried out for a moment, then fell limp and offered no further resistance. But the remaining unarmed Okva was behind Nesti already, sinking several claws deep into his leg with one hand, while reaching up to his neck with the other. I tried to line up a shot, but the over-penetration of the plasma rounds meant I’d be just as likely to hit Nesti as save him.

A boot came flying from inside the cage, hitting the Okva in the side of the head, but he was too enraged to even notice, wailing and slashing at Nesti who could only try to shield his throat and face from the assault. The prisoners were yelling in many languages, more than I knew, but they could offer no further support. I moved in closer to get a better angle, hoping to find a spot where I could get a clean shot. Or, at least one that would only do non-fatal damage to Nesti.

Then the side of the Okva’s head erupted in flame, a bright white light emerging from the center of the ignition point. Abandoning his assault, the creature pawed vainly at the fire, crying in pain as he only succeeded in spreading the flames to the rest of his body. Nesti rolled away as soon as the Okva released him, and I put an excess of rounds into the creature the moment he was clear. It stumbled back from the impact, then fell lifeless a few feet away, its fur still alight. Nesti tried to bring himself to his feet, but once he saw the corpses laid around the child’s feet, he dropped back to a sitting position and started applying pressure to his bleeding leg.

I dropped to my knees, overwhelmed again by the difficulty of breathing and the intensity of the situation. The whole fight had lasted less than a minute, but it had felt much longer, and I was still trying to process all the things that had happened. I looked back up towards the holding cell, hoping to spot whichever captive had assisted us.

At the front of the cage was Rada, one boot missing, an intense focus on her face. Next to her was the man I had spent two days training myself to recognize, fully unharmed, seeming almost entirely unfazed by the events that had just unfolded.

“You found him,” I said to her, nodding to Kai, loosening my grip on the rifle, and letting out a breath I had been holding for too long. I looked back to the ignited corpse of the slaver, then back at her. “Good thinking there.” Her lip curled upward for just a moment, not quite a smile, but a moment of relief.

“The Hell happened to-” Nesti started to yell towards her, before cutting himself off with a wince as he adjusted his position. “What happened to your comms? We thought you might be dead.”

Rada looked over at Kai, who shook his head.

“It’s a long story,” she replied.

“Well, we’ve got what we came for at least,” I added. “Now we can get out of here.”

“About that,” Vos’go cut in over the comms. “Found control console in tower.”

I put my hand to my ear, partly to block out the noise, and partly as an indication to the others that Vos’go was talking.

“Good, can you open the hangars?”

“No, not from here. Is only the cells.”

“Which cells? All of them?”

“Yes. Are all controlled here, single system.”

“Open them all,” Nesti interjected, having pulled himself back to his feet and limped over to me. He couldn’t have heard what Vos’go was saying, but the meaning must have been clear from my own words, and the look of resolve in his eyes was unmistakable.

Worst of all, he was right. We couldn’t leave them there. Perhaps you think I’m wrong to have even weighed that option, but there was a real risk to releasing all of them. There probably weren’t enough ships to get everyone off the planet, and the confusion that would result from that many scared and desperate civilians scrambling to escape meant a lot of things could go wrong. Some of them would die in the process, as the slavers tried to re-establish control. But considering what would await them if we left them there, it was better to go fighting for a chance at freedom.

“Do it. Lock the doors, if you can, because they’re gonna come for you first.”

“Will be fine,” Vos’go replied with uncharacteristic bravado. “Have tangled with worse. Taking comms out now. Going to be too much noise.”

“Understood, we’re on our way.” I took the communicator out of my own ear and stuffed it in my pocket, not willing to crush it like Nesti had done with his, just in case it was needed again.

I turned to look at Kai. He was leaner than I had realized from the picture, and was not as young as I had thought he would be. But what stuck out most was the stoic calm that he maintained. This was a man who had to have been certain, until just a few hours earlier, that he was going to live the rest of his life as a slave. The realization that they might be free had already spread through the rest of the prisoners, murmurs and movement, a swell of energy. But Kai was quiet and focused, and while I couldn’t be sure what it was about him in that moment, I knew this: he was more than just the young freighter captain we had been told to rescue.

I didn’t have time to dwell on it, because only a few seconds after I removed my earpiece, the holding cell’s doors groaned to life, slowly sliding open. Nesti and I stepped clear of the opening, as the throng of desperate captives surged forward, desperate to taste the first moments of their newly granted freedom. The first few to exit grabbed the weapons left on the bodies of their captors, others trampling over the broken body of the Kval leader who had been clinging onto the last vestiges of his life. But they didn’t turn on each other, and the children among them were even shepherded out by the adults, almost always of a different species. It’s amazing how quickly we can come together once we have a common enemy.

Once they could safely exit, Rada and Kai joined us, and Nesti and I each handed them the spare rifles we had been keeping. I might have been worried about arming Kai in that situation under normal circumstances, since a shell-shocked civilian with a weapon usually couldn’t be counted on to act rationally. But the calm he kept about himself wasn’t the blankness of a sheltered aristocrat in shock, the sort of thing that I was used to. We needed the extra help anyway.

As we exited the building, I was relieved to see that the situation had not become fully chaotic just yet. The prisoners we had just released were already running across the open area, but the ones from the other warehouses must have needed more time to process what was happening. It was hard to see very far then, with the nearby planet’s light mostly covered by clouds, but I could still see the periodic flashes of plasma race across the dark. It was clear that the slavers would be fully aware of the breakout soon, if they weren’t already.

We split up again as soon as we exited, with Rada and Kai going to secure us a ship, since there was no guarantee one would still be around if we waited. Nesti and I took off in the direction of the small tower, fighting against the exhaustion and the strain of his wounded leg. Luckily, it wasn’t much ground to cover, and we managed to make it inside the building before any of the pirates figured out what was going on.

The tower was only three stories tall, but it was enough that it would have been a serious strain on Nesti, so I left the big man to defend the entrance and raced up the staircase that spiraled around the walls of the building. The low oxygen content of the air made me regret my own haste, and I had to stop a few times to catch my breath, but I eventually managed to reach the heavy door at the top of the structure.

“Vos’go, you in there? It’s time to go,” I shouted, banging on the door with the side of my fist. There was a loud grinding as the mechanism moved, then the door opened.

Vos’go stepped out without saying anything, but he seemed to be relieved to see me, as best as I could tell. I let him lead the way down the stairs, since his legs were shorter and I didn’t want to outpace him with my own movements. Halfway down, we could hear the crackle of plasma rounds coming from the ground floor.

“You two wanna hurry up?” Nesti shouted as we were rounding the final curve of the stairs. He nodded at us when we were finally in sight, and then motioned out the door. “They’re really pissed off now.”

We exited through the door, towards the corner where the body of a slaver lay, presumably the one Nesti had just been firing at. I had Nesti lead and Vos’go in the middle between us, while I kept up our rear. It made sense this way because, with his injury, I was the fastest one left, so I could most easily make up the distance.

As we came around the corner and back into sight of the main courtyard, we could see immediately how much the situation had escalated in the brief few minutes of retrieving Vos’go. There were now dozens of pirates firing into the crowd, which had swelled as the other prisoners joined it. The fighting was most intense around the hangar bays, but at least one ship could be seen taking off from the landing pad, so some had to have made it through already.

We swept along the outside of the complex, behind the building on the corner, trying to get into the hangar area from behind while the guards were occupied with the riot we had instigated. The lights from the landing pad were visible even at a distance, I can remember that very clearly, like rays of sunlight projected up into the night, shining off of the hulls of the ships. I felt a swell of excitement at the nearness of our goal, and in the next moment, I was on fire.

I never heard the shot, only felt it, the searing pain as it tore through my abdomen, the horrible smell, and then the hard sensation of the rocky surface as I crashed to the ground. I couldn’t even roll over to try to figure out where it had come from, much less yell that out to my comrades. Within moments of hitting the ground, everything went black.

Night had not quite fallen when we decided it was time to enact our plan. We were unsure what night would entail on that world, since the star it circled was not especially bright, and there was no guarantee that there would be another planet or moon close enough to provide reflective light. It seemed wiser to know our situation better before having to contend with the possibility of an extremely dark night. Plus, I just didn’t think I could hold Nesti back anymore. He wasn’t foolish, of course, just headstrong and impatient. He could handle the plan, he was just happier to be doing something with it. And we had waited long enough.

After describing our respective cells, we had concluded on the right place to apply the pyrotechnic putty for maximum effect in each case. Well, Vos’go and Nesti figured it out. I didn’t really know much about breaking out of enclosures like that, and they clearly spoke from experience. I had proposed that we also try to use it to break our wrist restraints in the process, but they had both strongly rejected that idea. Vos’go insisted I’d only succeed at melting my own hands, and Nesti pointed out that the restraints didn’t restrict my movement that much and could be useful in their own way. I didn’t know what he meant really, but I figured Vos’go was probably right about the likelihood of hurting myself, so I left them in place.

I rubbed the putty along a small piece of the door where the mechanical lock housing supposedly was. There wasn’t much to go around, and I was worried about not layering it thick enough to get through the metal or properly ignite. When I finished, some was still stuck to my hands, and I nearly slapped them against each other to get the remnant off before realizing how much pressure that would apply. I wiped it on my pants instead, trying to spread it out enough that they wouldn’t combust as well, although there wasn’t much I could do about it.

I took a step back and then planted the heel of my boot as hard as I could against the spot where I had rubbed the explosive. The metal rang loudly as it moved against itself, and then fell silent. I pulled my boot back quickly, afraid that the resulting reaction might burn my foot. Nothing happened. I watched for any kind of spark or flame, but the cell was still and quiet. The silence was broken again by the sound of Nesti doing the same on his end, and based on his size and the ringing that followed his kick, I couldn’t help but wonder if he could have just broken it down on his own.

After a few seconds had passed, I began to worry a bit. Perhaps I hadn’t hit it hard enough, or had missed with my initial try. Worse, maybe the damn thing didn’t work at all. I wasn’t ready to voice that concern yet, but the thought had occurred to me before. It was a lot of faith to place in a concoction primarily designed to not be detected. Frustrating, as well, because had we known they were only scanning for electronics, we could have smuggled more powerful and consistent explosives in.

I was lining up to attempt to kick it again when it burst with a bright white spark, whistling loudly as it began to scorch its way through the metal of the door. I looked at it for a moment out of fascination, but it quickly became painful, and I had to turn away. I could hear Nesti having a much less restrained reaction.

“Why is that so goddamn bright?!” he shouted. At no one in particular, I suspected.

“Don’t look at it, you fool! Will warp your lenses, is P-56 grade ignition material!”

“Well, you didn’t tell us that!” Nesti snorted, adding a slew of indeterminate cursing behind it.

“Would you two shut up, you’re going to alert someone.” I added sharply.

I peeked back at it for moments at a time, waiting for the process to finish. The molten metal turned to twisted slag and peeled off, bits of the ignited material flaking off and dying out on the ground below, leaving tiny indentations. After a minute or two, the last of the light had fallen off the door and gone dark on the floor, and it was time to find out whether the plan had worked or not.

I wasn’t willing to stick my ungloved hands anywhere near the newly formed hole, and in the waning red twilight, it was too hard to see through the slagged metal to know if the lock mechanism was broken. Instead, I just pressed hard with my shoulder against the undamaged middle section of the door, trying to force it open. It groaned in resistance, holding onto the last of its material integrity, before finally releasing all at once as the clasp broke. The heavy barrier slid to the side and was still, and I could finally peer out into the corridor.

The length of the hallway was empty, end to end, but I waited for a few moments, listening carefully. Breaking the door hadn’t been a quiet process overall, and if any guards had been alerted, I didn’t want to encounter them in a long, straight corridor where I would be an easy target. Fortunately, none ever came to investigate. While I waited, I could hear that Nesti had likewise managed to get his cell door open, and we agreed to talk only when necessary from that point to avoid distractions.

I left the cell and began moving in the opposite direction from where I had been brought in. This was primarily because walking out the front entrance would be too visible, and likely put me back in the center of the base. But I’ll admit that I also did not want to pass by the cells of the other prisoners, who had no doubt heard the noise and would be looking around desperately for an explanation or hope. People were unpredictable in situations like that, and the less they knew, the better.

I moved as quickly as I felt I could without breaking into a sprint, because I still needed time to assess my surroundings without barreling directly into them. The hope was that the warehouse prison would have a back or possibly a side door, something that would let me out into a less visible side area between my building and the adjacent one. The longer I could spend in enclosed areas, the better, because I didn’t want to be out in the open until I found a weapon.

I reached the end of the hallway and glanced to each side of the perpendicular corridor. It was likewise empty, though dimly lit, but there were no exits to be found. My stomach turned over, but I moved forward anyway, swinging a left in the direction I would need to go to find Nesti. Looking around the corner, behind the back walls of the row of cages I had been in, I spied a side entrance. I raced over to it, and had already lost my breath when I arrived. Sweat poured down my face, and I stopped to take heavy, unrewarding gulps of air. Even at dusk, the heat was oppressive.

The roll-up door was a lucky break, and probably too small to have been used by the Okva with any regularity. They hadn’t even bothered to lock it down in any way, and I was able to push it up and open with minimal effort. It clanged loudly the entire time, and I ducked back into the darkness for a moment afterwards, listening carefully for any approaching footsteps. When none came, I took the time to pass my status along.

“Unguarded side entrance on my building. I’m out.”

Nesti didn’t reply to the update, but I hoped the information would simplify his own escape. Every little bit helped.

I glanced out through the newly opened doorway at the crater-marked landscape where the last lights of day were slowly going out. The area was quiet and empty, and covered in a stillness you can only experience on those worlds where no native life has ever existed. I took a chance to glance up at the sky, where a smaller planet glowed in a spot between the clouds, floating so close that it seemed like it might impact us if we gave it enough time. It was tidal-locked, I could tell immediately, because the white ice around the edges gave way to a dark blue in the center where the star’s heat radiated over it consistently. It seemed like the eye of some enormous being, looking down with more curiosity than disdain. I’d have even called it pleasant, had my circumstances for being there been different.

I quickly crossed the gap between my location and the concrete structure where I was to meet up with Nesti, pressing myself up against the wall as I reached it, and trying to keep the entirety of my body in the shadows. I moved along the wall in that fashion towards the back side of the building, where it would face out over the barren landscape instead of in towards the rest of the encampment. As I did, I looked out towards the landing areas stretched out besides the hangar bays. Empty still, which meant whatever other large ships they had were still absent. I couldn’t see around the buildings well enough to see if the corvette we arrived on was likewise still present.

Despite the issues we had encountered, things seemed to be playing out in a mostly favorable fashion. We were down a man, but we had escaped our cells successfully and the comms system had worked. Considering how things could have gone, I considered the situation pretty good. It was a conclusion I immediately regretted, because as I turned the corner towards the back side of the building, I ran directly into one of them.

I don’t know what the Okva happened to be doing that made him turn that corner at exactly the moment that I did, but I quite literally ran into him, my face hitting his hairy elbow hard enough to make my head ring. As soon as I could process what had happened, I lunged at him, but the restraints on my wrists made any kind of punching highly impractical. He let out a cry, caught the downward motion of my strike, and threw me over his shoulder and back behind the building.

I hit the hard ground and rolled slightly down the embankment, avoiding more serious injury only because of the lack of larger rocks. I managed to glance up just in time to see the guard trying to aim his rifle at me, a black shape against the fur of his body. He started to wail again, and I ducked my head, left with no options but to hope he would miss.

But the sound disappeared suddenly, and the distinct crackling of plasma rounds never impacted the surface around me. I lifted my head again to see the Okva on its knees, clawing furiously at the figure that seemed to have something wrapped around its neck. I pulled myself back to my feet and tried to run, stumbling all the while, towards the fight.

When I got closer, I could see why Nesti had argued in favor of leaving the restraints, the large chain of which was now pulled tight across the Okva’s throat. His desperate thrashing had caused him to drop his weapon which had rolled a few feet away. I grabbed it mid-stride, leveling it as quickly as I could. Nesti understood my intention, and spun himself about, releasing his garrote from the guard’s neck and separating himself from the thrashing creature. The moment he was clear, I put four rounds through it’s head and chest. The Okva fell back to the ground and was still. I dropped to my knees a moment later, overwhelmed by the brush with death, and weighed down by the unrelenting heat.

“Hey, we should-” Nesti started, before cutting his sentence short at the loud echo it induced. He pulled his own earpiece out and crushed it in his over-sized hand, creating a single additional loud noise. He tossed the pieces aside and then offered me a hand up. “We need to move, they probably heard all that.”

Taking no extra time for our composure, we moved along the back wall of the building to where a large door was installed. It was rounded at the top, and there were elaborate marks all around it, of the same style as the scrapings they had made in their ship, but added with paint rather than being scratched into the surface. The door itself was wooden, and didn’t seem to even have a handle, but gave way to a gentle push by Nesti.

We crept inside of the building, which was mostly dark and filled with a sickly sweet smoke. The smell wasn’t entirely unpleasant, but it made breathing even harder. As we turned the first corner, we were greeted by a strange sight.

The building itself was a series of three concentric squares, the first of which was the outer walls and the door we had entered from. The second was the one we now found ourselves inside of, a rectangular corridor that contained numerous crudely constructed statues of things I couldn’t have really described even then. This opened at the corners into the most central section, a small square room with four obelisks, arranged along the cardinal directions of the building. The roof was high, tapering up to a small rectangular opening that the smoke was gradually floating out of.

The source of the smoke was a bowl at the base of each of the obelisks, and on either side sat two Okva for each, totaling eight in that room. The red-furred giants had their eyes closed tightly and seemed to be in a trance, with their heads tilted up towards that opening. They were unarmed, and as we moved around the outer ring, we discovered that their weapons had been placed near the front door. Nesti grabbed one of them before moving to the opposite diagonal as me.

I could just barely make out his large fingers as he silently counted off the time with them. As soon as his fist closed, we opened fire, placing our rounds in their motionless heads in quick succession. As far as I could tell, none of them ever even noticed we were there, and only a few seconds later, all eight lay lifeless on the ground. Perhaps it was in poor taste to gun them down while they were unarmed and in the midst of their religious ceremony, but it was hard to muster any sympathy for slavers.

We took what we could from the room, although there wasn’t much to take. The Okva hadn’t been carrying anything into the chamber itself, and all they had left near the front were more rifles. Nesti and I each grabbed a second one and slung it over our shoulder, since there was a good chance we would need to arm the rest of our party when, or if, we were able to find them. And it never hurts to have an extra weapon, especially when they’re as poorly maintained as these were.

We were getting ready to take our new haul and begin moving again when Vos’go came back on the comms.

“Got a problem here.”

I woke to the sound of the cell door sliding open and light flooding into the dark room. The presence of an Okva guard in the doorway meant we had already arrived. Normally, dropping out of a jump would have been sufficient to wake me, but capital ships have better dampeners and I had been exhausted when I finally laid down, so I mercifully slept through the entire trip.

I stood as quickly as I could, trying to rouse myself and return to full awareness. The slaver wailed something at me, no doubt a warning about what would happen if I didn’t start moving. I was tempted to reply with some choice comments of my own, but there was no point. Wouldn’t have understood a word I was saying anyway.

I stepped out into the narrow hallway between the makeshift cells and found that my companions were likewise being marshaled along towards their next confinement. There were no others; we had apparently been their entire haul. Rada looked especially tense, while Nesti just looked tired and irritated, like a kid being woken up from a nap. And Vos’go… I never could tell with Sarvallans, honestly. Each shove or prod seemed to jar him more than the rest of us, but at least he wasn’t panicking.

We advanced in a line like that until we exited the corvette, with little of note along the way. It was a floating junk pile, and the Okva had scratched up all of the interiors with their claw markings. An art collector on Massia had once told me in detail about how each of those scratch lines was part of a long cultural story, but it all looked like random scrapes to me. And he had tried to stiff me on that contract anyway, so why believe him?

We moved into the small cargo bay, which was mostly empty, save for the containers of fuel cells that had originally been aboard our freighter. That smell of ozone that floated to me as we walked past felt like a blessing, despite my distaste for it, because it momentarily masked the stench of the Okva. More red light seeped in through the cracks as the loading doors stretched open, revealing, at last, the world we would have to contend with.

I remember that scenery clearly to this day because I tried so hard to memorize it in the moment, to capture all the details that might be necessary to survive. The world was rocky, rust-colored, and pockmarked with impacts craters; there was one a few hundred meters from where we had landed that yawned deep enough that I couldn’t see into it. The sky was filled with swirling clouds of varying colors, although they all looked to be some shade of red from the sunlight. It was hot, oppressively hot, like walking through a wall of dense air, and the low oxygen level made it even harder to breathe. It took concentration to not slip into hyperventilation.

The pirates’ base was relatively small, maybe a dozen structures, most of them prefab barracks or warehouses. There were a couple of permanent buildings also, small ones, made from some kind of concrete that I couldn’t make out. They had hangars as well, three of them, none of them large enough to fit anything bigger than a couple of mid-size gunboats, or a half-dozen fighters. There was another large, uncovered landing pad, big enough for a corvette or perhaps a small frigate, but it was empty.

Our procession continued down the ramp towards the base itself. Other Okva cartel members were moving up to meet us, trading shrill notes with our escort group as they passed. Greetings, probably, but it could have been jeers at us as well. There were Kval with them as well, mostly unarmed, but sneering at us nonetheless. They were likely the ones in charge. The Okva, I’m told, never really evolved the intellect for space travel, and it was only their luck in cohabiting with the Kval that they managed to reach the stars at all. It stood to reason that they likewise weren’t much inclined to the actual business of running a slave ring, and relied on their enterprising neighbors to handle that element.

The four of us were separated and led to different buildings. I tried to steal a glance back as they led me forward, hoping to figure out which structure each was being taken to, but could only get a general sense of it. The one I was taken to was basically a warehouse, like Vel had predicted, with nearly a hundred divided cells and a single corridor running between them. None were much larger than a storage closet, and most would turn out to be empty. They each had only a single rectangular opening to see through, but it was enough.

I was surprised by the number of them, at first, because it seemed to outscale the operation. Then it occurred to me that they probably kept their captives for longer than we had estimated, and moved more of them at a time. Given the relative emptiness of the cells, there was a good chance Kai was still at the base, as they gradually captured enough to make a worthwhile trip. But it could also mean they had very recently taken the ones they had to the Cluster, which would mean we were too late.

They pushed me past the cells nearest to the entrance, all of which were already filled. The prisoners were mostly human, but varied greatly besides that. A young girl in one cell, no older than fourteen, looked up at me hopefully as I passed, her eyes growing with despair when she could see that I was also a captive. In another, there was an older man who didn’t bother raising his head at all. It turned my stomach; slavery is a cowardly and dishonorable business. But there was little I could do for them, and I had to focus on the task at hand. Unfortunately for me, Kai was not among them.

The Okva pushed me into the first cage we came upon that was empty, shoved the heavy door closed behind me, and left. My new home was smaller than the one on their ship, and at lot more spartan; there was no bed, nor anything resembling one, just a cold, empty, and very dirty square room. I had been in plenty of rough situations in my life, and this wasn’t even my first time being locked away, but this was worse than all of them. I wasn’t willing to sit on the floor, so I leaned against one of the walls. I closed my eyes for a few moments, but that just made me more aware of the intense smell of human waste.

I spent the next several hours trying to gather whatever information I could from my confined location. There wasn’t anything in the cell itself that would be of any use, but there were always things worth noticing. The door itself had a combination electronic-mechanical lock; all of them could be opened remotely, but if the power went out, the doors wouldn’t open automatically. I could probably get it open using the small explosive Vos’go had given me, but only if I placed it correctly, and the door was too heavy to break down or blast through.

With extremely limited sight through the rectangular opening, I had no option except to listen. After those first few hours had passed, I established two important details. The first was that, while the relative volume was fairly low, the others in that holding area were talking. What they were saying wasn’t useful, half of them were just saying pointless prayers, but it meant that when it came time to communicate with the others, my voice wouldn’t stand out.

The second was that there were no patrols within the holding area itself. This surprised me at first, but made sense as I thought it over. We were unarmed and in cells, and even if we somehow got out, there was nowhere for us to run to. As long as they guarded their hangars closely, escape was a non-factor, so why bother? It was a bit of good news, since less patrols meant less potential problems, but it also meant it would be harder to pick them apart if we needed to go that route.

I waited a long stretch into the day before I decided it was time to activate the comms. I had been concerned at first that trying to use it might give us away, but that was replaced by my need to concentrate while I evaluated the surroundings. I didn’t feel I’d get much done with that if all three of them were talking in my ear. But as much as I preferred solitude, I wasn’t going to get out of there without their help. I took the piece out of my ear, found the very thin, nearly invisible bit of plastic inserted into it, yanked it out, then put the device back in place.

There was intense ambient noise, and it sounded like it was coming from two sources at the same time, which made it immediately irritating to listen to. I reached up instinctively to take it out of my ear, but resisted that urge. Against the background, there was unmistakable aggressive whispering.

“Get yourself killed is all that will happen!” Vos’go spat, more emphatic than I expected he could be.

“Well, I ain’t gonna just sit around here and wait!” Nesti barked loudly, abandoning his whisper entirely.

“Stop shouting! What’s wrong with you?” I interrupted, hoping to stop the bickering.

“Cor, good. Please tell giant not to run off on his own.” Vos’go said to me, like a kid trying to get their parent to pick a side in a fight.

“Would you just tell me what’s going on?”

“Rada’s comms went dead,” Nesti cut in. “There was a lot of noise and some yelling and then it went quiet. We need to figure out where they took her while we still have a chance.”

I leaned my head back against the hard wall and closed my eyes for a moment, trying to shut out the noise.

“He’s right, Vos’go, we need her. And if they figure out that she’s up to something, sooner or later they’ll break her, and then they’ll have the rest of us.” Nesti started to get a dig in at the increasingly indignant Sarvallan, but I cut him off. “But we have to have a plan first. Break out now and you’ll be dead before you can find her. At the least, we’ve got to wait until night.”

“We don’t even know when that’s gonna be. I mean, this planet could be tidal locked, then what?”

“Isn’t.” Vos’go said. “Can see the light moving in this cell. Will have night soon enough.”

I could hear Nesti take a deep breath, re-orienting himself around the new information. It was clear that his time arguing with Vos’go had left him deeply frustrated.

“So then what’s your plan? Since you don’t like mine.”

I didn’t have one, of course, there wasn’t enough to go on. “Well, first off, did either of you find him yet?”

“No. Rada was looking for him when her comms went out. She said they threw her in a bigger holding area, so there were others in there also.”

I couldn’t figure out why they would use a larger holding area while all these cells were empty, but it didn’t seem like there was anything I could do with that info at the time.

We went back and forth on a plan, poring over the details and bits of minutiae that we had collected. It seemed that the four of us had been placed in warehouses that were, more-or-less, on the four geometric corners of the facility. This didn’t make much practical sense, since you’d just want your captives to be easy to load and unload nearest to the landing pads. But the Okva were highly superstitious, and such symbolic arrangement is apparently common for them.

The result for us was that it placed buildings between each of us and our nearest comrade. Between Vos’go and I were the hangar bays, which was bad news. They had too much open space to easily cross undetected, even at night, and they were also the most likely to be heavily guarded. That meant it was best saved for last, after we had armed ourselves, and ideally found Rada and Kai.

Instead, Nesti and I would break out simultaneously and meet up behind the large building between us. Its purpose was unclear, but there was at least a chance of it being an armory or whatever place they had taken Rada. If they had taken her at all, that is. We all had to acknowledge the possibility that she was already dead, and we agreed that if we found Kai and had a safe escape possible, we had to take it. I’d expect them to do the same had it been me. That was just the way things were.

Vos’go would make his own way across towards the holding area Rada had been in originally. I was surprised he volunteered this, as my suggestion was just that he stayed put until we could get to him. But he insisted. The Sarvallan had more guts than I had given him credit for.

We didn’t plan beyond that, the situation was just too volatile to know what would come. We would have to improvise as things came along. Risky as it was, that was our only real chance of success. It was how most jobs went for me, because plans quickly fell apart when you were after a target, especially once they figured out they were a target. We were getting closer to the part of the job that I excelled at.

For the time though, there was just tension, the impatience before everything began in earnest. Once the plan was settled on, we all fell quiet, left to our respective thoughts, waiting in our cages for the coming night.

The ship shook violently, knocking the datapad out of my hand, and causing Nesti to roll out of his cot. He hit the floor already cursing, and I joined him as soon as the shuddering dissipated enough to stand firmly on my feet.

“A little warning would have been nice!” I yelled towards the cockpit, still unsettled by the attack. Rada leaned her head to the side, but didn’t look back to reply.

“This thing doesn’t have long-range scanners, I still can’t even see them!”

I could see her working aggressively at the console, but couldn’t tell what she was doing.

“Cease fire!” she yelled desperately into the open comm channel. “This is a civilian freighter, we are unarmed!”

Nesti had made it back to his feet, and we made eye contact across the small cabin, both unsure of what was going to happen next. I can only assume that, like me, he really didn’t feel comfortable without armor and a weapon, especially on a ship. We waited in silence.

Vos’go came scrambling up the access ladder, eyes wide, but said nothing. He placed himself in a corner and sat motionless, hands and feet flat on the ground, like he was planning to try and hold onto it if more shots were fired.

We all held our positions and remained quiet, while Rada continued to broadcast the message of our non-resistance. It was the only thing we could do, given the fragile state of the freighter and our specific desire to be captured. But I’ve experienced few moments as tense as those, the sense of helplessness, of being totally at the mercy of a slaver cartel. I was overwhelmed with regret, with resentment for myself for taking the job. But no more shots came after that first volley.

“They’re… they’re in range now,” Rada said, shaken, but finally breaking the silence. “No designation. Looks like a Kalj corvette hull. Old model.”

The Kalj corporation was notorious for producing cheap, low-quality, easily maintained warships that somehow always found their way directly into the hands of rebels, pirates, and cartels. It was obvious that the transactions were happening, but the politicians never could figure out a way to stop it. It didn’t level the field, because Kalj ships were still inferior in most respects, but it meant real strength existed outside of the feds.

A Kalj-made corvette meant a relatively large resource pool, because their design was especially large for a ship of its class, and small raiding groups could never afford to sink all their resources into something of that size. So it had to be the ones we were looking for, the ones who had taken Kai. That thought made me remember the photo of him, which I quickly ripped off the wall and shoved into one of the smaller drawers. It wasn’t likely that they would remember his face, but there was no reason to take the risk.

The freighter shook again, but not as wildly. The distinct scraping of metal on metal made the cause immediately clear. They were attaching towing hooks, making sure we wouldn’t try to get away. It wasn’t strictly necessary, we wouldn’t have stood any chance of escaping had we tried. But some attempted to flee the cartels anyway, and scattering their target ship all over the system was a real waste of their time. They still usually did it anyway, just to send the message, but the towing hooks made it easier to avoid that outcome.

Rada joined us in the cabin, since there was no reason left for remaining in the cockpit. She was surprisingly calm, all things considered, perhaps even less nervous than the rest of us. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. I had learned by then that the anxiousness, that little twinge of fear, was a useful tool, a thing to hold onto. There are always stories of truly fearless hunters, but they aren’t admirable for it. Fear makes you reassess your situation, but pure courage makes you arrogant and prone to mistakes.

“Here,” Nesti said, as he tossed me the datapad that had I had been using before it slid across the floor. “Keep it on you. If they find something when they search you, they’ll be less likely to search again.”

“Don’t activate comms on their ship,” Vos’go interjected. He had finally released his grip on the floor, and seemed calmer overall. “Could interfere with systems and reveal us.”

I checked that the clear plastic comm device was securely in my ear, because I couldn’t afford to have it knocked out if one of the slavers decided to be particularly rough about moving us off the ship. That same logic had made me put the pyrotechnic putty Vos’go had given me under my right armpit. It was a spot I could retrieve it from quickly, and I hoped my shoulder would absorb enough of any impact I might take to prevent it from igniting. I really didn’t want to end the job with a melted hole in my rib cage.

The ship shook hard again, but we managed to keep our feet. It felt as though something had impacted the back wall of the cabin, which was confirmed a few moments later by a horrible screeching sound. We all turned to look at the wall it was coming from, where hundreds of small metal hooks had pierced through the hull in a large circle. Inside that ring of teeth, another orange-red ring was forming as the metal melted under the heat of equally as many hull-cutters.

I had heard about these sorts of boarding vessels, but had never seen one with my own eyes. They function much like a lamprey, hooking onto their prey and cutting out a nice clean chunk. The boarding vessels could create a tight enough seal to prevent the atmosphere from escaping, and then deposit their payload of armed soldiers directly into their target ship. They were extremely effective for this sort of piracy, but had never caught on with major militaries because the vessels themselves were defenseless and only really useful if the enemy ship was already disabled.

The circular chunk of hull that had been cut away finally crashed to the floor, and we got the first view of our foe as they moved into the freighter, plasma rifles raised, wailing aggressively at each of us. They were Okva, the hulking, red-furred planetary neighbors of the Kval, six of them in total. Their faces are vaguely feline, but much flatter, and without whiskers surrounding their large mouths.

Naturally I couldn’t understand what they were actually saying. Their voice boxes are developed differently, and everything just sounds like a high-pitched growl, and I couldn’t have articulated a reply either way. But the context made it clear enough what they wanted us to do.

We raised our hands above our heads, an instinctive gesture of surrender that probably didn’t cleanly translate. The cabin was tense as the slavers, each as tall as Nesti, swept around the room, prepared to gun us down at a moment’s notice if we gave them any reason to think that resistance was still an option in our minds. I won’t lie, in those moments with a plasma rifle in my face, the urge to fight back was still there. We never could have won, of course, and it would have ruined our entire plan. But there was something about the indignity of the situation that gave rise to the urge anyway.

Finally they began barking things to each other, pointing at Nesti, and three of them circled around him. I locked eyes with him for a moment, and he seemed almost serenely calm, like he was prepared for whatever fate awaited him. Fortunately they merely pulled his arms down and fastened restraints about his wrists. They pushed him and wailed loudly again, pointing in the direction of the boarding vessel.

As he began to walk, suddenly they were grabbing my hands as well, slapping on similar restraints that rubbed hard against the bones in my arm. I waited patiently for a similar shove before I started moving. It made me angrier, but I didn’t have a choice; if I started moving too early, they might think I was fighting back and that would be the end.

I followed behind Nesti through the makeshift procession of Okva guards, their rifles at the ready. The smell they exuded was nauseating, probably some defense mechanism or an oil that helped maintain their fur. Whatever the purpose, it was extremely unpleasant, and as I advanced into the lamprey-ship behind my companion, it became clear that I was going to be dealing with a lot more of it in this cramped space.

There was more wailing coming from the cabin still, and I listened intently, expecting to hear the loud discharge of a rifle at any moment. Luckily, none came, because things would have gone south in a hurry had we lost any of our team that early on. I took a seat in the back of the cramped compartment across from Nesti, our knees nearly meeting in the middle. Our captors probably couldn’t have understood us, but we still said nothing. There was always the chance they would interpret our conversation as a sufficient threat.

Rada was pushed in behind me, and Vos’go followed shortly after, each taking whatever spot in the back of the vessel they could find. There were only a small handful of seats, each melded into the hull of the ship itself, and designed purely for functionality over comfort. The ship-parasite was outfitted as minimally as I think I’ve ever seen a ship be, possessing only those features which were strictly necessary. Looking around, I couldn’t even really conceive of how they were going to get enough reversed propulsion to get us back to their corvette.

Not all of the Okva joined us on the boarding craft, some staying behind to strip the drive core and check the rest of the ship for valuables. I assume, at any rate, I never attempted to ask them. Eventually the ones who had filed in behind us took their own seats near the front of the ship. This was followed by a loud hiss as the front of the craft created a new seal between us and the freighter, maintaining the atmosphere of both. It wouldn’t hold if the ship began moving again, certainly not through a jump, but it was enough to let the rest of their crew finish the job. Moments later, the boarding craft released its grip on our wounded hauler and slowly accelerated us back towards their capital ship.

From the small porthole on that side of the ship, I watched the freighter as we gradually moved away. For some reason, seeing it floating there helplessly, speared with towing hooks, was what finally made it clear to me just what a mistake I was making by even being there. I felt supremely foolish in that moment, more so than I have ever since or likely will again. That I understood the risk before I took the job meant nothing to me then, provided no comfort or justification. I believed with absolute certainty that I was going to die out there, on the edge of the galaxy, in the service of the stupidest contract I had ever accepted. My greed had overwhelmed my common sense, I felt, and I had fallen right back into the problem of having to rely on others instead of myself. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the little flashes of color on the inside of my eyelids.

They were still shut when the boarding vessel shuddered to a stop inside the hangar bay of the corvette. When I opened them, I was met by a deep red-brown glow that flooded everything as the boarding vessels main door slid apart again. Ravak, the homeworld of the Okva and Kval, orbits a red dwarf, and the Okva in particular are very irritable when not in the presence of a similar glow. Despite the sickening feeling the color gave me when cast over the faces of my companions, I was happy enough with it. I couldn’t be sure we’d survive if the slavers got any more irritated.

There was more high-pitched wailing as they stepped off of the craft and onto the corvette, and one of them yanked aggressively at my arm, his claws almost scraping the explosive putty in the process. I hurried out of the ship, nearly tripping as I exited, not wanting to risk a worse outcome if the escape tool was discovered. The others followed behind, and our captors circled around us to prevent any attempt at escape. It didn’t make sense to me, since there was nowhere we possibly could have escaped to.

The hangar bay was tiny, only barely large enough in both width and height to fit the single boarding vessel. Given the round hatch in the ceiling directly above us, I suspected it wasn’t even originally a hangar bay, but rather a refitted garbage ejection room. There was no maintenance equipment of any kind, not even a diagnostic console, which meant that any repairs to the boarding vessel must be done at their actual base.

This put an upper limit on the resources the slavers likely had available; even a small cruiser would have had a hangar bay and thus have been more useful for this kind of ambush. The corvette we had just boarded was probably their biggest ship. It also meant they would have to have a way to dock the corvette on the planet itself, because the lamprey-ship didn’t have the loadout it would need to survive atmospheric re-entry on the vast majority of worlds. The only alternative would be an orbital station, which is far too expensive. I wasn’t sure if the information would matter, but I held onto it anyway. You can never be sure which details will be useful on a complicated job.

The Okva shoved me once again, this time in the direction of the door out of the hangar bay and deeper into the ship. We advanced in a procession down the empty corridor in silence. Had the slavers been human, perhaps they’d have noticed how odd it was that no one in our group was visibly upset or trying to bargain for their life. But these unspoken subtleties are likely as much a mystery to them as their various wails or rustles of fur are to us.

We were marched into a larger room, and greeted by a single Kval dressed in something that resembled an old uniform. He said something to our escorts in that same sort of high-pitched note, and then turned to us. It was apparent that his purpose there was to be able to translate between the primarily human captives and the Okva. He motioned aggressively at us, waving about his handheld scanner in the process.

“Raise your hands!”

We each lifted our shackled wrists above our heads and held the position. He advanced towards me first, swiping over my head with the beeping device. I held my breath as it passed over my head, hoping it would not detect the comm device in my ear. Luckily it did not, and he began moving it down. Just as I finally exhaled, it started beeping loudly.

One of the Okva reached out and grabbed me, and began aggressively pulling at my right leg. I should tell you, this is not a comfortable thing, given their size and sharp claws. It was exacerbated by the fact that I had no idea what it was they had detected. It seemed likely that the clumsy creature might slash clean through my leg when I finally remembered the datapad I had kept for precisely this reason.

“My pocket, it’s in my pocket!”

The Kval yelled something at the hairy cretin, who then gradually pulled out the datapad from the leg pocket I had put it in. He crushed it effortlessly in his hand and tossed the remnant aside, then shoved me forward, past the teal-skinned overseer. I had made it past the search, at least, although it didn’t provide much comfort. Still, as tough as the rest of the job looked to be, at least it could be done. Had the slavers found the hidden tools, we’d be left with no real chance of escaping. And that was if they didn’t lacerate us on the spot.

A different Okva pushed me again towards the other side of the room, not waiting for the others to be checked. I didn’t look back at them, even knowing that I likely wouldn’t see them again until our plan was already underway. There wasn’t any point, and I’d only earn another shove for my trouble.

It was a short lift ride down to the holding area, basically a converted set of bunks that had old, mismatched locking doors placed over sections to create makeshift cells. The smell was unbearable immediately, and it was all I could do to not vomit as I passed through. I could guess the source; no doubt not all of the captives had survived the process. Finally, the guard pulled open one of the metal doors, scraping against its own gearing as it moved, and shoved me inside of it. I nearly lost my balance and wound up stopping my momentum against the far wall. By the time I turned around, the door had already rolled shut. I could hear the lock engage on the other side.

It was dark inside, but enough light crept in that I could make out a hard, rectangular shape protruding from the wall. It had likely been a soldier’s bunk in the initial design, but was stripped of all comforts now. Still, it was better than the ground, so I sat on it, leaned against the wall, and tried to relax. Despite how bad it was, this was all still part of the plan. Somehow, that just made it worse. I listened for a while to the sounds of the others being taken to their cells, but after that passed, there was only silence in the dark. Finally, I laid down on the hard slab and tried to sleep.

I sat in the hangar bay near the box-shaped hauler that was to be our bait ship. The others hadn’t arrived yet, but they would soon, and I had nowhere else to be. Tempted as I was to go up a few levels and get some drinks, I needed my head clear, even in the early stages of our plan. There was just too much that could go wrong, and I wasn’t confident I could rely on the others to think for me.

I felt naked in the civilian clothing I had changed into to better match my role as a member of the freighter’s crew. It wasn’t often that I took off the armor in a public setting. To do so meant I was less protected in a fight, of course, but it was more than that. Being a hunter sparked a kind of fear in people, an unease, and I was more comfortable keeping that shroud about me. Young as I was then, I hadn’t learned yet that people’s awe is not the same as their respect.

I had stored my armor in the locker aboard my ship, a process that had rattled me more than I expected. The station power was still hooked into it, but somehow it felt entirely lifeless, like I was walking through the husk of some great dead beast. Worse yet, the carcass of the only companion I really had. You can tell who has never really been out there, you know, who has never really moved from planet to planet like we had to, because they scoff at the notion of being connected with your ship. It’s not the OS either, not the voice they put on it. It’s more like your fates become intertwined, like she’s along for the journey. No, like the journey is as much for her as it for you.

I could see her from where I was sitting then, across the hangar bay, suspended motionless from the lifts. I had named her Shrike, because she had that hidden fierceness like those little birds that used to show up around my house when I was a kid. Small and fast, but smart enough to impale its prey on thorns to make up for its lack of strong talons. Her cleverly disguised weaponry had outwitted more than one cocky mark. You fly differently when you can’t tell the enemy has a torpedo bay.

They had removed her fore plating now though, to examine the components underneath. Like me, stripped of her armor, at the end of a long journey, future uncertain. They had finally confirmed to me that it was the drive core, totally fried. Couldn’t even salvage the parts, because when the containment fails, all the structural components melt. It was a total replacement or nothing.

I should have been focused on the mission, but all I could think was that if something happened while I was gone, if they scrapped her, that I’d have to kill every living soul in that hangar bay. They didn’t have the right. You think of the most foolish things when you’re on the edge of something big, it messes up your perspective. So all I could do was sit there, head down, and get more frustrated.

It didn’t help that I was instead going to board the ugliest brown cargo ship I had ever laid eyes on. The damn thing didn’t even have a name, just a designation number. It seems small now, but it infuriated me then. I thought someday I might be the stuff of legends, Cor Szo and his Shrike, the most feared pair in the whole frontier. But Cor Szo and the 166-24? Nobody would tell that story.

The others did arrive eventually, though. No one walked away from the job, which was always a surprise. I’ve seen crews dissolve on the eve of a big contract for no other reason than one is insulted by the color of another’s gear. There have always been plenty of stupid mercenaries, after all.

We didn’t talk much as they gradually filtered in. They were still focused on their own responsibilities. Rada was first, and she disappeared inside the ship, no doubt to make sure she knew it inside and out. I didn’t usually work with pilots, even in the rare circumstances that I worked with a team at all. I wasn’t an ace or anything, but I was competent enough in the cockpit and had my own ship, so there was no need. But the ones I had known were always neurotic about the details. That we would immediately abandon this one when the pirates arrived perhaps should have made it irrelevant, but I didn’t expect she’d see it that way.

Then there was Nesti, whose appearance in a dark blue maintenance uniform was startling. His body armor had seemed like it was melded to him, honestly, like a second skin, and I had to imagine he was uncomfortable without it. He didn’t seem bothered though, and maybe if I was built like a titan, I wouldn’t be worried either. There wasn’t much preparation for him to do, all things considered, so he just took up a spot on a nearby wall and read something on a datapad.

Vos’go was the last to arrive, which was unsurprising given his general demeanor. But Sarvallans were also not known for their punctuality, a cultural trait I’m told there’s a good reason for, although no one has ever been able to tell me what it is. Like the others, he seemed a bit out of place without his normal equipment, or a tool in his hand, but he insisted he had everything we needed and would explain on the way.

So we joined Rada in the freighter, weaving our way through the cramped cargo bay towards the small cabin area behind the cockpit. The whole room had that intense smell of ozone that I’ve come to hate over years of exposure, leaking out constantly from the stacked metal crates of spent fuel cells. Luckily they were inert in their spent forms, because there was no guarantee that our targets would board peacefully, and there were plenty of more volatile shipments we could have been carrying.

We scrambled our way up the thin ladder that provided the only access to the cabin and got our first view of what the next few days’ arrangements would be like. As expected, there really wasn’t sufficient room for the four of us, but some extra cots had been added along the back wall. The designer clearly only expected one person on board at a time; there wasn’t even a separator between the cabin and the cockpit.

There was a single, circular table in the room, molded to the floor itself so smoothly that it seemed more like a protrusion than a piece of furniture. We took seats around it in turn, except for Nesti, who found another wall to lean on. Rada was slow to leave the cockpit when we first entered, but finally came over when Vos’go started insisting that he needed to explain the tech.

From his pockets, he spilled out an array of objects of indiscriminate purpose. This was by design, of course, since anything that looked like real tech would likely be destroyed when they searched us, though it seemed like worthless junk by even the most generous appraisal. But the Sarvallan’s excitement was clear enough, so we waited for his explanation.

“Our communicators,” he started, passing us each a small clear piece of plastic. “Place it on the inside of your ear and press hard to seal it in place. Works on short-range waves that conduct well through walls, but will be worthless between ships. Once in, should allow us to stay in contact. And not visible to most detectors.”

Nesti rolled his around in his hand, observing its various faces, none of which possessed any useful details. “How do we turn it on and off?”

Vos’go shook his head repeatedly, as if surprised by the question. “Are always on.”

“So what happens if we’re all talking at once?”

“Don’t do that,” he added, tapping his temple. “Bad headache.”

I was amused by the exchange, although I could foresee problems with communication if we were all forced to relay info simultaneously. But that was how things went; if you wanted it to be inconspicuous, sacrifices had to be made.

Vos’go pulled out another handful from a different pocket, this time a series of small maroon balls of putty. He handed one to each of us carefully, which made us pick them up more cautiously.

“Pyrotechnic material, pressure activated. Will melt most traditional metals and plastics. Should be enough to break out of a cell.”

“Where on the door should we apply it?” Rada asked.

“Depends on the cell,” Nesti cut in. Vos’go nodded repeatedly. “Some it’s the lock, others the door mechanism. We won’t know ’till we get there.”

“How much pressure are we talking about?” I added.

“Stick on something, then stomp with your boot. Should get it started.”

“That’s not really that much pressure, what if it goes off by accident?”

Vos’go seemed a little worried that I didn’t already know the answer. “Will burn a hole in your side and probably kill you. Keep somewhere you won’t get hit. If set off accidentally, search the rest of us again. All be trapped.”

“What about the other systems? The hangar will probably be closed, so we’ll have to open the doors so I can fly us out of there.”

Vos’go rapidly shook his head at her. “Can’t do it remotely, all of my tools are detectable. Have to get in front of a console. Easy then.”

“Will you also be able to find the target’s location from it?” Nesti chimed in.

Vos’go seemed momentarily serious. This was an element of the plan he wasn’t comfortable with. “No, won’t have names. Can only get location of other holding cells.”

Luckily, I had a partial solution to this problem. I took out a picture that the old man had given me of our target, grabbed some adhesive from a nearby drawer, and pasted it to one of the walls.

“This is Kai. We’ve got several days travel, so spend your time memorizing his face. Hopefully at least one of us gets thrown in the same holding area and we can skip straight to extraction. Otherwise…” It might have seemed like a dramatic pause to the others, but I spent the moment genuinely considering what other options might exist to narrow our search. Coming up with none, I continued. “We’ll have to search them all.”

The others were quiet. I don’t know if they thought it was a good plan or not, or if it was only then beginning to really settle in just what we were doing. After all, in a real sense, our entire plan was to improvise at every crucial juncture. The range of possible outcomes was vast, but an unsettling chunk ended with us dead. Or worse, on the way to the Cluster ourselves. Given those possibilities, maybe it was for the best that no one felt like discussing it anymore.

Rada finally stood, stretching slightly and headed back to the cockpit to make her final checks. I just stared at the picture, hoping he was worth all the trouble.

---

In the first day, few words of note passed between any of us. I was fine with it, not caring much for company and knowing that friction could result from too much idle banter, a thing we could not afford at this stage. Everyone kept to their own spot, in so much as we could, given the space. Rada only left the cockpit for brief periods of sleep, during which she insisted we not interfere. Vos’go disappeared into the cargo bay for a while, I assume because none of us were likely to follow him. Ozone is more common on their home world, so it probably didn’t bother him.

Nesti got bored of standing eventually and started playing cards with Vos’go when he returned from the lower deck. I couldn’t tell what game. It appeared to be one of the high-variance games played in low-end casinos, the kind you find in every broken down waystation on the edge of civilization. I had never learned the rules to any of them; those game dens were built to separate foolish lowlives from their meager earnings, and I was a lowlife that preferred to keep his money. It seemed like a fine enough way to pass the time here, though. It frustrated the Sarvallan, that much was obvious. He seemed to like the idea of the game, but was very unhappy at how often he got unlucky, which elicited periodic deep, genuine laughs from the big man. Eventually he tired of it and returned to his spot in the cargo bay.

I had pulled a seat over to a corner, away from the tiny bathroom, to have my back in as stable of a corner as I could find. That was where I spent most of the trip; there was a cot set up for me, but I dozed off in the chair a few times anyway. I was used to it, since there had been many long jumps where I had fallen asleep in the cockpit of the Shrike, only to be jarred awake by the drop back in.

We were dropping back in quite a bit, the standard hops along the mostly unused route towards Nazvar. With so few of the systems having been charted, it was important to follow the existing route as closely as possible, or risk hitting heavy mass objects on our way. Of course, this meant being at low speeds outside of the jumps, in totally unsettled systems with no defenses. There were plenty of opportunities for attacks, and that was what we were planning on. If we managed to get to Nazvar, we’d have to just turn around and try again.

I found an extra datapad shortly after we embarked, and I took the opportunity to research as much as I could about the groups in the area that could have been responsible. This was more difficult than it sounds, because there wasn’t much coverage of anything that happened out here, much less the inner workings of pirates. But I needed a better understanding of the layout of the frontier regardless; when you take a contract, you need to know what you’re getting into. What seemed like a simple bounty could kick off a war under the right circumstances. Knowing how to read the political environment is a survival skill of its own.

I didn’t manage to discover much at that time, and none of it seemed out of the ordinary. There were palajak cartels operating on the margins of the law, as usual, and bands of petty pirates looting supply vessels and occasionally holding a mining shipment for ransom. But there didn’t seem to be a story behind it, and that’s the thing you’re really looking for. The pattern to the whole thing, the real picture that only becomes apparent when you put all of the smaller images in the right place. I just couldn’t see it, what the undercurrent of the frontier was, what people were really fighting over beyond simple survival. And it’s never that straightforward.

I might have figured it out, too. But that’s when the first shots landed.

There were five of us in the room once I entered, if you included the old man, which meant a four man job. This was strictly bad news, and I was accumulating a lot of it. You could tell a lot about the difficulty and risk of a contract from the number of people working it, and more than two was almost always a mistake. Either the danger was so great that you couldn’t go it alone or the reward was so massive you could afford to split it. But mercenaries were never particularly fond of that, and there was always an airlock nearby for you to get sucked out of. Someone usually got rich, but odds were never great it’d be you.

The four others were scattered about the room, a questionable assortment of degenerates and lowlifes. Against the back corner of the room was the hulking brute I would come to know as Nesti, wearing armor plating as thick as I’ve seen to this day, and with a face so weathered it was hard to be sure at a glance that he was actually human. He didn’t react when I entered, and I figured that was just as well.

On the sofa was Vos’go, a teal-skinned Sarvallan, deeply reclined, paying more attention to his own equipment than anything else. He had a half dozen tools laid out on the table next to him, idly reaching over from time to time to grab a different one and tweak something on his suit, or on the small holdout pistol he kept strapped to his thigh.

The last was sitting at the main table, looking much more invested in the job, which was a bit reassuring. Rada, the only other obviously human member of the crew, lacked the build of a combat veteran, but was as clearly disciplined and regimented as any soldier I’ve met. She was watching the old man patiently, ready to begin, and sat up a bit straighter when I entered, knowing it was time.

Vel rose from his chair by the wall and motioned with his hands like he was trying to get our attention, a pointless gesture since everyone but Vos’go was already listening. I took up a spot by the door, leaning against the wall. I didn’t like to have my back exposed and I always liked to be near the exit, habits I admit I developed long before I became a mercenary, for one reason or another.

“Thank you all for coming,” the old man started, like he was giving a rehearsed lecture. “As some of you already know, this is a rescue. My daughter’s husband, specifically.” He paused for a moment, like he expected a reaction, but there wasn’t any to be found. “He flies shipments for me, from here to the hub on Nazvar mostly. That’s where he was going this time. It was roughly a week ago that he left here, and three days ago they found his ship at a jump point, stripped down, drive core removed.”

There was a noticeable tension in the room now, a subtle shift in mood that you can only experience when everyone realizes at once how bad things are. Most pirates were only interested in the cargo they could pillage, because keeping the routes flowing meant more to steal later on. But the worst of the cartels chopped them down to the hull and took the crew. They were the sort who didn’t bother with ransoms because it was more work than simply selling their captives as slaves in the Cluster.

“Probably already dead.” The statement from Vos’go was casual, but lacked malice. Sarvallans are like that, if you’ve never known one, detached from the emotional weight of words and focused on the literal truth of things. He didn’t even look away from his gear when he said it.

Rada shook her head dismissively. “They’re slavers, he’s worth more to them alive.” The words seemed to soothe Vel some, although they probably shouldn’t have. I’d rather have my throat cut than be taken alive by a frontier cartel, and if you ever find yourself in that situation, you’ll choose the same thing.

“Besides,” she added, “they wouldn’t have disposed of bodies, he’d still be on the ship. They don’t care about leaving them behind.”

Vel was, to his credit, taking this conversation fairly well. I have been in rooms like this on the core worlds, rooms with sheltered aristocrats that were naively optimistic about how things would go, and jaded soldiers of fortune who either lacked the tact or the sensibility to soften the news for them. I suppose his experience as a soldier must have prepared him for these kinds of situations. Still, most got angry when their loved ones’ lives were mentioned so casually.

“Probably on his way to the Cluster already, then.” Vos’go spun the tool he was holding around in his fingers as he talked. It was a habit, I assumed, but it sent the wrong message. It’s fine to not care about the job, but you still have to pretend like you do. I’ll admit, it worried me. This was not likely to be a contract where we could afford any carelessness.

Vel nodded slowly. “Maybe. But I think there’s still time. Think about it: it’s a long trip to the Cluster, they’re going to want a full shipment, cuts down on overhead. Same reason it takes forever for me to get supplies out here. And that means warehousing until then.”

“So put trackers on a shipment and wait for it to get hit. Then you’ll know where their base is and you can call in the armada.” Nesti added from his post in the corner, sounding far more reasonable than I expected.

Vel sighed and shook his head. “We’ve tried that. Kai had one sewn into the suit he was wearing when he was taken, but it went dark almost immediately after we lost contact. Same with the ones we planted in the supplies themselves. Somehow, they’ve prepared for that.”

It made sense. The cartels feared very little, because no local group was strong enough to counter them, and the feds couldn’t afford to put escorts on every route. But, strong as the pirates were, none of them could stand up to even one battleship. If their location were discovered, that would be all it would take to wipe them out. Their continued existence was proof they had planned for that contingency.

“So how are you proposing that we find him?” I had figured out the answer before I asked, but it’s good to make them say it anyway. Shows you how honest they are, for one, but also how naive, in the event they haven’t actually thought it through yet.

The old man paused, rubbing his hands together, knowing it wasn’t going to go over well. A frustrating gesture, and one you should avoid if you ever find yourself in the situation. I get it, bad news can be hard to break. But it wasn’t his life on the line.

“You’re going to have to get captured, too.”

There was no noticeable shock on anyone’s faces, which was the first piece of good news I had gotten. That meant that everyone had already done the math and eliminated the other possibilities. The location stayed hidden because no one talked, and none of the pirates ever spent any time on stations like this, so there was no way to torture one for information. And infiltration through membership might have been possible, but would take too long. Plus, members of illicit groups like that were rigorously tested, and anyone whose loyalty seemed questionable was shot. We’d have a better chance if we were viewed as potential slaves. Nobody wants to destroy their own merchandise.

“So we get there, then what?” Rada joined in. “We have no idea what kind of containment we’ll be in and we won’t have any gear. How are we supposed to get out in the event that we find him?”

Vos’go sat up straighter, and released one of those awkward, wheezing Sarvallan laughs. “Can get out of cell easy. Any cell.”

“And how are you going to do that without your gear?” She motioned to the pile of tools and equipment that was increasingly scattered in front of him.

“Give me a day, will have everything we need.”

“None of this accounts for the fact that we have no information about what we’ll be up against when we get there.” Rada’s irritation was obvious. “Say we find him and get out of containment. So what? We’ll be in the middle of a pirate fortress with no layout of the facility and no weapons.”

Nesti scoffed. “You ain’t done this much, huh? We’ll find weapons. Once they know we’re out, they’ll bring them to us.” It was a cocky statement, but he was right. All it would take is subduing an errant patrol and we would be armed again. “The real problem is, how are we supposed to get out? We ain’t gonna have a getaway ship, no one is going to know where we are.”

“That’s not the issue. Find me a ship and I’ll get us out of there. Doesn’t matter what kind.” A bold statement from Rada, but delivered flat, as though she were replying with the time of day or a weather forecast.

In that moment, I realized I hadn’t given Vel enough credit. Looking around the room then, I could see that he had already considered all of this, because all the pieces were in place. This wasn’t a band of the first four mercs who said yes. This was a hand-picked team. That raised some troubling questions as well, not the least of which was why I was there.

“This is a suicide mission. Let’s talk pay.” I wanted to get straight to it, because none of the other issues would matter if we didn’t settle this up front. “First, separate payments, non-transferable in the event of our deaths. No pools.” I expected at least one objection, but there was only silence. Vel nodded. “Second, we get to sell the location of the base to the feds when we make it back.”

“And if one of us doesn’t?” Nesti asked.

“Burn their share, give it to the poor, I don’t care. I’m not getting shot in the back so you can split a bigger prize.”

Nesti shrugged, unfazed. “Fine by me. I’d prefer we all come back, dead partners are bad for my reputation.” This was true, but mercenaries got by on a lot more than reputation, so it wasn’t especially meaningful. For enough money, the loss of credibility was an exchange almost anyone would make. But I was happy to have the agreement made regardless.

The room was quiet for a few moments after that, as everyone began to mentally process what would be needed. Normally for a job like this, that meant gear and tech, which always forced a confrontation about how much we would get up front to even finance the operation. But there wasn’t much we were going to be able to bring that wouldn’t get removed immediately, so that just left the general strategy.

“What’s the timetable here? It has to be soon.”

Vel nodded his agreement, scratching his arm nervously. “As soon as possible. We have scheduled transports twice a week, you’ll need to be on one of them. Anything out of the ordinary or out of schedule will be suspicious, and they might just blow the ship. It’s happened before.”

“When’s the next one?”

“Two days. It’ll be mostly carrying depleted fuel cells, that’s the usual cargo. There’s occasionally a small crew on those flights, so it won’t be suspicious that there’s more than just a pilot on board.”

These were more details than I expected him to know, which made my job easier. Normally civilian contracts involved me explaining to a mystified aristocrat why I could not, in fact, face off against a cruiser in my single-seat gunboat. Or once, why the assassination of a planetary governor was not quite as simple as ‘pointing a gun at him and pulling the trigger.’

“Is the transport armed?” Rada chimed in.

“Technically, but it’s just two small fore and aft anti-personnel batteries. They’re Duvoss freighters, I think they put them on there for landing on savage worlds mostly. They wouldn’t even leave a blast mark on a real ship.”

“Agreed, so strip them off. They’re not going to help us if things go sour, and I don’t want them thinking we’re trying to put up a fight.” She shrugged, the most casual gesture I had seen out of her to that point. “They’re just going to get chopped up with the rest of the ship anyway, might as well keep them here.”

I expected Vos’go to have some questions about the tech he’d have to contend with, but none were offered up. You might think this is a bad sign, and it definitely can be. Sometimes they don’t know what they don’t know, so they have no idea what they’re supposed to ask. But sometimes the cocky bastards are cocky because they really do know what they’re doing.

I watched him on the couch, where he was back to reclining, but now working on a series of small round objects, alternating between hooking them up to his datapad to make some unclear adjustment and working at them with a small tool that looked a bit like a soldering iron. His movements were precise and practiced, and frankly, that was as good as I could hope for.

I know what you’re thinking. I could have just walked away then, told them to find someone else, and taken smaller jobs for a while. Why risk everything on a team I didn’t even know? But if you’ve never been outside of the core worlds, you just don’t understand things. You can’t. You don’t make it long as a mercenary without being able to stare down bad odds. If the odds were good, you wouldn’t have been hired in the first place.

It was a suicide mission, it’s true, but what all mercs know and never admit is that the profession itself is a suicide mission. It comes with the territory, especially on the frontier. Even then, as a younger man, I had six incidents in my career where my survival had been more a matter of luck than skill. And the others in that room, they all knew that, too. You risk your life, you get paid well, and if you get lucky, you might even live long enough to spend it.

I took the job. It wasn’t because I trusted them, of course, or because of sympathy for the old man. The money was good and he was going to fix my ship, that’s all there was to it. I’m not too proud to admit that I just saw an easy way out of my situation. I should have known better.

Mav watched the inmates starting to gather in the open area below, but he didn’t get up from his seat on the upper level. The circular formation indicated another brawl in the making, and that was hardly noteworthy. He enjoyed a good fight every now and then though, liked to watch from an elevated view if the fighters were talented. But his fellow prisoners went after each other several times daily, and usually it was one-sided. Wasn’t worth watching, unless it was one of his guys delivering it, and then only to make sure they did the job right.

This one seemed likely to be more of the same, just two angry men laying fists into each other for want of a better target. He could see the two now, at the center of the circle, watching each other as the heat from the surrounding crowd grew. The first he recognized, a Kval that everyone just called King on account of his size and authority within the palajak cartel. That blue behemoth’s brain is so torn up by the stuff that he’s basically an animal, Mav thought. Not that he considered that much of a step down from the rest of them. But King was a talented fighter, which made Mav hopeful enough for a good bout that he leaned forward to get a better look at the competition.

He didn’t know the other one, which normally wouldn’t have been much of a surprise. On his block alone, there were several hundred permanent inmates, so he didn’t expect to know them all. But this other fighter, a human, was every bit the Kval’s equal in size and strength, and seemed thoroughly unfazed by the amount of posturing King was doing. Now this, Mav thought, could be a good one. He stood up and moved to the railing.

Finally, King had enough of posturing and moved forward aggressively, winding up a flashy, elongated punch. Well before he could follow through, his human opponent had snapped off two quick right-handed jabs to the center of his forehead, leaving King momentarily stunned. This impressed Mav immediately, because that spot was relatively soft on a Kval, but would likely break your fingers if attempted against another human. That meant experience and knowledge, which were useful qualities in a place like this.

The jabs were followed up by several aggressive shots to the chin and face, substantial blows, but not enough to bring King down. The Kval shook off his daze and replied with a series of less showy, more effective blows, striking at whatever his opponent didn’t cover with a block. A few were dodged, but enough landed to cause him to stagger, which let King follow up with a heavy boot to his midsection, sending him sprawling backwards. The manic blue beast advanced towards his prey, but was cut short by the alarm bells.

A half dozen guards in combat armor swept into the room, moving towards the combatants, and the crowd quickly dispersed. The human was wise enough to stay down, and only earned a few solid kicks for his trouble. King, ever enraged, wasn’t done fighting yet. It took three of the guards to finally bring him down, stun batons beating down around his head and neck. Eventually he was still, presumably unconscious. Mav sighed, disappointed, and returned to his seat.

---

Mav stood in the corner of the yard that afternoon, leaning against the wall in a spot where it provided a bit of shade from the blistering sun. On either side of him stood two men of menacing demeanor, arms crossed tightly to indicate just how unwelcoming they were. Every little bit helped, in Mav’s estimation, because humans were outnumbered pretty severely within this prison camp. He had always assumed this was intentional, an added punishment for his status within the White Star. The feds liked to play games like that while keeping up the appearance of justice.

But he had stayed alive because of muscle like the two standing in front of him now, because it wasn’t worth going through them to get to him. It wasn’t a bad deal for them either; not all of them were locked away forever, and Mav’s blessing could set them up when they got out. But even with the protection he had, there was always room for new members within the prison, for greater control over the current situation. That thought was what made him smile a bit to himself when he saw the muscled fighter from earlier approaching.

The two men stepped out of the shadow of the wall and into the sunlight, sizing him up, implicitly threatening a fight if he kept going. He stopped, and tilted his head slightly to see over one of their shoulders. “You Mav?” Mav didn’t reply, but that was answer enough.

“Just got here. I’m supposed to find you. Message from the outside.”

Mav scoffed. “I’m sure. Let’s hear it.”

The man looked at Mav’s two guards for a moment, and then back at him. “The days are getting awfully long lately, don’tcha think?”

Mav stood up straight. That was one of the highest level code phrases the White Star used, a sure sign that one of his few superiors was finally feeding him some real information. “Let him through.”

The two stepped aside, allowing the oversized man through. He was an even more imposing figure up close, but Mav didn’t let it concern him. In that moment, he was only good news. He ushered him over to the corner.

“Well, what is it? What’s the news?”

The man looked at the two bodyguards, then back at Mav. “Can they hear us?” Neither of them made a motion like they had heard, which he took as enough reassurance. “I’m here to get you out.”

Even as much as he had practiced aloofness, Mav couldn’t help but be a bit giddy at the words. When he was first sent here, he had thought it was a sure thing that his bosses would pull the strings and get him out, as a reward for his loyalty. But after a year without word, he had begun to doubt. There were many things that could have happened, after all, power struggles within the White Star, plus the general difficulty of trying to break someone out. And there were those that hadn’t agreed with the project, with everything that his plan had entailed, the dangerous information he had accumulated. But now his work was rewarded. He’d be back on top.

He laughed a little, despite himself, unable to handle the surprise. “That’s… finally. So, so, so when? When are we doing this? What do I need to do?”

“Two days. Everything is taken care of. Be in the mess hall at lunch, sit at the table in the far corner, nearest to the kitchen. The guard posted there is one of ours, but don’t talk to him, or you’ll mess this whole thing up.”

Mav listened intently, trying to memorize all of the details as quickly as he could, knowing he was unlikely to hear the plan repeated.

“Now, for this to work, I’m gonna have to stab you, it’s gotta be a real wound or they won’t take you to the infirmary. It won’t kill you, but it ain’t gonna tickle either.”

Mav nodded his understanding. It wasn’t something he was looking forward to; he had been stabbed before, back in his younger days, and the memory was still vivid. But it was worth it if it meant getting out of this place.

“One you’re in the infirmary, another one of our guys will meet you. He’ll get you outside the main facility. I’ll meet up with you there, and then we’ll catch our ride out.”

“How… how are you going to make it out?” Mav asked, overwhelmed by the moment.

“Second incident in a week, they’ll take me straight to the hole. Don’t worry about it from there.”

Mav laughed, the noise escaping his throat before he could even process it. His sense of surprise was turning to elation as it dawned on him how carefully planned this operation was. This son of a bitch knew what he was doing the whole time, he thought to himself.

“What… what’s your name, son?”

The big man seemed a bit uncomfortable at the question, as though he had expected to pull off the whole thing without using a name. “Just call me Nesti.”

Mav reached up and patted him firmly on the shoulder. “You’re going to live like a king for this, kid, you hear me? I’m gonna bring you to the top, the very top, understand?”

Nesti broke eye contact with him, but otherwise didn’t react much. Mav understood this moment well; promises like this were made regularly and not followed up on it. But he meant every word, because this bear of a man was someone he needed around. He could think of a lot of uses for a walking tank that could also handle a plan. And if he could pull this whole thing off, Mav would owe him, not on paper, but as a matter of honor. The ignoring of such debts had felled more than one aspiring hierarch, and he didn’t plan to join them.

“Remember, day after tomorrow, in the corner by the kitchen.” Nesti started to leave, then quickly turned back. “Don’t talk to anyone.”

---

Mav sat at the corner table and waited. The sounds of the nearby kitchen mixed with the raucous din of the open mess hall, creating a tense, chaotic symphony that only compounded his anxiety. The previous two days had been agony. With the possibility of freedom so close in front of him, the dangers that surrounded him seemed that much more unsettling, and the possibility of something going catastrophically wrong during their escape had trailed behind him like a shadow. He slept poorly the first night, snatching a few moments here and there. The second, he had barely bothered to close his eyes.

He was trying to avoid looking over at the nearest guard, the one he suspected Nesti had meant. It wouldn’t have been unusual for him to look, but the situation was adding to his paranoia, and he didn’t want to be responsible for accidentally tipping off someone else. Mav had tried to size the guard up anyway when he first entered, stealing glances like an unsubtle teenager, but hadn’t been able to glean any useful information from it. He looked like all the other guards, another stoic face barely visible beneath his polished black helmet.

Down the bench from him, two others sat at the same table. They were young still, and had only just joined with the White Star after being thrown in here, but Mav knew they could follow orders, and that’s what was needed today. He had told them to keep their normal positions, but not to intervene against any human that approached him. They didn’t ask any follow-up questions, which he liked. He glanced over at them a few times, but they kept their eyes on the room, as the job required.

Normally, Mav choked down the disgusting manufactured food they were given. He didn’t have much of a choice; if you didn’t keep up your intake, a particularly hard day of work could kill you on its own. But today he just stared at the dark brown semi-solid nutrient solution and felt every second pass like a long slow cut across his back. He felt old. Decades ago, he was the first to sign up for this type of plan, but with the shield of youth removed, he felt exposed in a way he couldn’t remember, a way that made him question his life.

It was an internal doubt that Mav might have firmly latched onto, were it not for the heavy weight of Nesti’s hand on his shoulder. It felt to him, for an instant, like the titan was offering him some needed comfort. But Nesti just wanted to keep him still so he didn’t hit anything vital.

The blade slipped effortlessly into the left side of Mav’s abdomen, bringing with it the searing memories of his previous encounter with the business end of an assassin’s knife. He yelled without thinking about it, cursing and reaching for his side. It wasn’t part of the plan, but it worked to their advantage, as it drew the immediate attention of the nearby guard, who was already in the process of rushing over by the time Nesti stepped back. Nesti left the blade in, since removing it would increase the risk of Mav bleeding out. He raised up his right leg for a kick, deliberately timed to not reach the wounded man before the guard crashed into him, stun baton already drawn. Nesti went down after the first hit sent shock waves throughout his body.

A guard was standing over Mav now, though he couldn’t tell if it was the right one or not. It worried him a bit, but the pain was too distracting. As a youth, he had turned on the man who stabbed him and thrown him from the nearby balcony, cursing at him the whole time he fell. But now there was no surge of strength, just intense weariness. He could see other guards coming in, pushing inmates aside, sparking new confrontations. Turning his head to the side, he could make out the shape of Nesti on the ground, offering no further resistance.

Suddenly they were lifting him, sending new ripples of pain as the blade nicked new bits of tissue while it moved about. They were clumsy about it, caring little about the comfort of prisoners, but despite the pain, he was safe. The weapon had been carefully placed. Still, the blood loss was making him intensely dizzy, and the light passing overhead as they carried him down the hallway added to his nausea.

A different voice pierced through the indistinct sounds of the guards that were carrying him. All he could make out distinctly was the word “Here”, which didn’t help much, but at once his escort stopped moving. He started to turn his head to see what was happening, but was met by another sharp pain in his shoulder. The prick of the needle was quickly replaced with the cold tingle of injected medicine, and in the next moment, he was unconscious.

---

Mav awoke suddenly, chest pounding, gasping for air as though he had been drowned. The room was bright, but empty save for a small scattering of medical equipment and the one man in a lab coat standing beside his bed. He reached for his side instinctively, feeling for the spot where the knife had been, and finding only packed-in gauze. There was no pain, only a numb tingle that pervaded his body. He breathed heavily, eyes wide, aggressively brushing strands of gray hair from his face.

“Relax, I gave you a stimulant to pull you out. They only left because they think you’re sedated.”

The man in the lab coat was fairly young, but had a solid determined face that seemed unfazed by the agitated, recently stabbed crime boss sitting in front of him. Processing that information calmed Mav down considerably. This had to be the one who was getting him out.

“Is it time?” Mav asked, trying to slow his breathing and potentially bring down his heart rate.

The doctor nodded. Mav swung his legs off the table, and gingerly touched each foot to the floor, testing his weight. Despite the intense awareness brought on by the stimulant, he was still only just recovering from the sedative, and his legs were not as stable as he hoped.

“I disabled the tracker while you were out, so it shouldn’t alert anyone. Here, put this on.”

He tossed Mav a pair of scrubs and a similar coat with an ID badge, which he quickly put on, adjusting it to his frame as best he could. He looked himself over, not entirely satisfied. It didn’t seem like much of a disguise. He might look like another doctor at a glance, but he couldn’t imagine it would hold up on closer inspection.

“What’s the plan?”

The man glanced up at the clock display on the wall, then shook his head. “We’re running out of time, just follow me.”

The doctor turned towards the side door, which led away from the main prisoner quarters and towards the exterior of the structure. Mav followed after him as quickly as he could with the cold numbness still present in his lower legs. He didn’t like not being told what the plan was, but he didn’t have any better options.

The hallway was empty, which helped. The doctor was walking quickly, although not quite sprinting, just in case someone happened to see them. Mav did his best to keep up, but wasn’t nearly as fast, even ignoring his unstable legs. But the stimulant kept him going, enough so that he was practically running without realizing it. Despite it being a necessary part of the plan, he wished they hadn’t given it to him. The pounding in his chest made him wonder if his heart could even handle it.

Ahead, the doctor took one last glance down the hallway and abruptly turned into a small room. Mav sped up more to reach him, ducking inside and quickly closing the door behind him. To his dismay, it appeared to just be a storage closet, a few small shelves holding what looked like cleaning liquids, and leftover bags of the polymer concrete used in the prison’s construction. The doctor stood in the middle of the room, holding a small comm device in his hand, saying nothing. Mav hunched over, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath.

“Do it.”

He lifted his head in response, seeing the doctor turn away from the wall opposite the door, ducking his head slightly as he did. Mav had a fleeting moment to consider why he was doing this, but didn’t reach a conclusion. In the next moment, the wall exploded.

The concussive force hit him immediately, forcing him to grab at a nearby shelf to avoid being knocked off his feet entirely. All he could hear at first was the hollow reverberation, but as the sound returned, it was replaced by the blaring screech of alarms. Searing red sunlight was streaming into the room now, filtered by the gradually settling dust leftover from the destruction of the wall. As he tried to pull himself back to a standing position, an unmistakable imposing shape became visible in the newly opened entrance to the room.

The doctor yelled several things at Nesti, but all Mav could hear was “Grab him!” That was apparently enough, because a few seconds later, the giant was hoisting Mav over his shoulder, despite the older man’s feeble protest. Nesti’s shoulder blade hit firmly in the spot where the knife had, sending sharp daggers throughout Mav’s abdomen. He tried to look around, to reassess the situation, but Nesti was already moving, and the combination of the smoke and the sunlight left him unable to fully see his surroundings.

Mav could tell they were outside though, the blistering heat on his skin attested to that, and the alarms were getting more distant with each stride that his carrier took. He closed his eyes and tried to ignore the mix of unpleasant sensations hitting him from every direction, and instead focused only on what he could hear. There were more voices now, all yelling, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying over that loud… was that a drive core?

The heat was suddenly replaced by a rush of cold air, and all at once Mav found himself landing hard on the metal floor. The sounds of the outside were cut off with a satisfying hush, and he opened his eyes again to see the cargo door of the ship sealing shut behind him. He closed his eyes again and laughed to himself, rolling to his other side. They were out.

Inertia and acceleration jerked him about as the ship lifted off and broke out of the atmosphere, but he didn’t mind. It felt then like the gentle rocking of his mother, and he let himself be rolled side to side on the cold metal grating without trying to fight it. Then it stopped, and all he could feel was the vibrations from boots on the floor nearby. He pulled himself to a sitting position, overjoyed, and took the situation in.

There were five of them besides himself. Nesti and the doctor stood on one side of the group, talking to the other three about something, he couldn’t tell what. And the other three… The blood drained from his face, and the swell of nausea returned. The other three were Kval. This was not a White Star ship.

He might have hoped that they would remain distracted, giving him a few precious moments to come up with a plan. But the possibility never arose, because just as he was having the realization, the others were turning to face him.

“Secure him,” one of them ordered, and the others began advancing on him. Mav couldn’t muster the will to protest, this crushing blow having combined with exhaustion to finally break the last of his strength. Instead, he sat in place, feebly trying to comprehend what had happened.

“But you… How? Why?”

One of the Kval laughed and put a hard boot to his chest, knocking him back against the closed bay door. He slid down to the floor and was still.

“You really thought they were coming back for you? No chance. But hey, don’t worry, we’ve got you now, and you can tell us all about that project you were working on. Maybe where you were storing it.”

Mav said nothing, could muster up no words of defiance, and only felt the rush of despair. The Kval standing over him shrugged.

“That’s fine, we’ve got plenty of time.”

“The info isn’t part of my deal,” Nesti interrupted. He was leaning against the wall, looking away towards the front of the ship. “Have your boss send my money and then drop me off at the nearest station.”

“Fine, but you’ll miss all the fun.” The others joined in the laugh, gathering around Mav’s slumped form. He looked past them at Nesti, who wouldn’t turn around and meet his gaze. Finally, left with no better options, he laid his head back against the cargo door and closed his eyes.