Because she was a stranger. He’d never seen this woman before in his life, and that made him uncomfortable. “Hi,” said Nate.

  “Hi,” said the woman, a flash of that smile again peeking out from around her hair. “Been looking for you. For hours.”

  “Captain,” said Evans, “who is this—”

  “Grace Gushiken,” said the woman, “and I’m the Tyche’s Assessor.”

  “You are?” said Nate. “I mean, yes, you are.”

  This wasn’t when she lied to him. She was lying to them, and Nate could get behind lying to the Republic Navy. It was just more pulling of the tiger’s tail, and that lent a certain air of charm to her right away.

  “And,” said Grace, “the captain shouldn’t have been talking to you without me.”

  “He shouldn’t?” said Evans.

  “I shouldn’t?” said Nate, but he wasn’t sure if he was asking a question or not.

  “Because the captain,” said Grace, “is not an Assessor. He knows ships, and he knows people, and he knows bars,” and here, a chuckle, too natural to not be rehearsed, “just fine. What he doesn’t know is the value of good salvage. You’re sending him out to a place where there’s a downed transmitter.”

  “How did you know—” said Evans.

  “The thing about downed transmitters,” said Grace, “is that sometimes they’re downed, and sometimes they’re up and everyone’s dead. In the second instance, there’s salvage, and we want it. It’ll make the trip worthwhile even if you try and stiff us on the other eighty percent.” Grace looked at Nate. “You went for the standard eighty-twenty we talked about?”

  “I … did,” said Nate, thinking well fuck me, but roll with it. He turned back to Evans, turning on his own smile. “I did.”

  “How did you know—” said Evans, again.

  “Everyone knows,” said Grace. “This bar is full of people who know. They know your precious Bridge is down, and that you don’t have any Endless ships to spare, and that there’s a colony out there ripe for piracy at the other end of that Bridge. We,” and she jerked a thumb at her chest, “have an Endless ship. We have an Endless ship with a cargo bay large enough to hold a new transmitter. Also got an Engineer who can bolt that right on the side of your gate, fire it up, and get things working again, even if everyone’s dead.”

  “Why would everyone be dead?” said Evans, blinking.

  “Pirates,” said Grace. “We were just talking about that.”

  “And we need,” said Nate, slipping into the silence like it was made for him, “those ship-to-ship nukes. For the pirates. Who may have killed everyone. Not our first rodeo, Lieutenant. Not our first salvage run either. Grace here will take what’s lawful salvage and leave the rest. You know our records. You know how we work.”

  “Yes,” said Evans, looking like he was downing cheap tequila, salt, and lime, except without the salt or lime. “We know your records, which is why there will be no Avenger-class weapons given over. Not only is it illegal to provide these to civilian ships, it would cause me to lose sleep at night.”

  Fair enough. Nate frowned, but had to admit he wouldn’t put nukes in the hands of the Tyche’s crew either. Not after that incident back on Century Gamma. Unlucky for everyone, kind of a lose-lose, but less lose for the people with the nukes, which had been the Tyche. “So, Lieutenant,” said Nate. “We know what we’re hauling now — transmitter. We can live without the nukes. But we can’t live without the twenty percent.”

  “I could,” said the Marine, speaking for the first time, and astonishing everyone, and not least of which because his voice was gentle in a way not common with the Marines, “rough him up a little.”

  “You could,” said October Kohl, coming up behind the Marine, leaning close enough to kiss, and nuzzling a blaster next to the man’s neck, “not live past the next five minutes.” He looked up at Nate. “Captain. I could rough him up a little.” Kohl looked and smelled drunk, which was a standard state of affairs, but his eyes were bright. Like the Marine, he was a solid mound of muscle. Unlike the Marine, he had scars, a bad set of locks in dire need of washing or trimming or just burning, and what Nate was sure was an unhealthy desire to kill people. Which was why he was useful. The Marine’s eyes had gone wide, his posture stiff in a way that suggested he knew the kind of man who had a gun to the side of his head.

  “I think we’ve about established how this will work,” said Nate to Evans. “Would you agree?”

  “I would agree,” said Evans. “I’ll be in touch with the Tyche to arrange the details.”

  “Great,” said Nate. “You want to be talking to El. She’s our Helm.” He gave a glance to Kohl. “You could…” He waved his hand, the one still made of flesh and blood.

  “Kill this asshole?”

  “No,” said Nate. “Let him go.”

  Kohl looked like he was thinking about it, really thinking about it, about whether this was the time he would push the limits of his contract. He relaxed, letting the Marine go, and slapped a hand on the other man’s shoulder. “Sorry about that. No hard feelings.”

  The Marine rubbed the side of his neck where the blaster had been. “Sure,” he said, because there wasn’t much else to say when there was a man right behind you with a blaster in his hand and murder in his heart.

  The Marine and the lieutenant slipped out of the booth, leaving the bar, the Marine glancing over his shoulder, Kohl giving the man a friendly wave before slipping into the booth across from Nate and Grace. He looked at Nate. “Who’s this?”

  “I’m Grace,” said Grace, flashing that smile.

  “Was I,” said Kohl, “fucking talking to you?” He was slurring a little. He seemed to see the sword on the table for the first time. “Nice sword.”

  “Thank you,” said Grace. “I’m—”

  “Still not,” said Kohl, “talking to you.” He blinked, coughed, and looked at Nate. “Captain?”

  “Kohl raises a good question,” said Nate. “Who the fuck are you?”

  “Grace Gushiken,” said Grace, “your new Assessor.”

  “Hell of a way to interview for a job,” said Nate, “but we’re full. And we don’t need an Assessor.”

  “Yes you do,” said Grace. “Be honest, Nate—”

  “Captain Chevell,” said Nate. “Let’s start with that.”

  “Captain Chevell,” said Grace, still a hint of a smile about her, “those men wouldn’t tell you anything. Not about the cargo. Not about the transmitter. And sure as stars, not about what’s going on at Absalom Delta.” She looked at his metal hand. “You look like you might know what the Republic lying to you feels like.”

  Nate’s eyes moved to the door of the bar, a couple walking in. They were laughing, her hand on his. He bent to whisper in her ear, and they moved to the bar. The bartender with the glowing green braids put a couple of drinks in front of them, sweeping Republic coins away like they’d never existed, like it was a magic trick to make things disappear before your eyes. Nate watched Grace Gushiken watch those two enter, watched her watch them move to the bar, and then he watched as she pretended she wasn’t watching them. “So, Grace,” he said. “You seem to know the Republic pretty well yourself.”

  “Better than you know,” she said, relaxing into her seat, which — not coincidentally, Nate thought — lowered her from view.

  “And why should I take you on my crew?” he said.

  “Because you need me,” she said.

  “And because you need me,” said Nate, looking at the couple at the bar. They were still laughing, and talking, but their eyes were scanning the crowd. “Why?”

  “I need to get off this rock,” she said. “An Assessor doesn’t make coin sitting in a spacer bar.”

  That, right there, was the first time she lied to him. Not about her name, as near as Nate could tell, but about what she was. Not that she wasn’t a great Assessor; she may well have been. It was impossible to tell from the vantage of this fine spacer bar. Didn’t matter: it’s that she was so much more. Nate could feel it, feel it like he could sometimes feel the old pain where his left arm and leg had been burned away in cleansing fire. Feel it like warm sun on his face when they were on a beautiful planet like this Enia Alpha, a gentle 0.9Gs tugging at him, a yellow sun in the sky above. But he could also feel that there was something about her. She had tugged that tiger by the tail like she owned the damn tail, and Nate felt an instant like for anyone who could stick it to the Republic.

  Nate looked at October. “Kohl,” he said, “do you want to fight?”

  Kohl thought about it. “I don’t know, Captain. You and me? It’ll be hard for you to give orders without your teeth.”

  “Not me,” said Nate. “Those two at the bar.”

  Kohl turned around, the faux leather booth seat creaking under his weight. He turned back. “How much you want ’em hurt?”

  “I want ’em hurt enough to let us get to our ship without being followed.”

  “Great,” said Kohl, rising.

  “Could you,” said Nate, “wait for us to go? You know how I love watching you work, but—”

  “But you want ’em distracted as you go, so I can get ’em from behind,” said Kohl. “It doesn’t seem fair. I like it.”

  Grace was already slipping from the booth seat, a dancer’s flow in her movements. She gathered the sword from the table like it weighed nothing, slung the scabbard’s belt over her shoulder, and gave Nate a glance. Something fearful behind the play. “You ready?”

  “I’m ready,” said Nate, but this time he was lying to himself. Not that he knew it. None of them knew what was coming.

  Why not treat yourself to Tyche’s Flight today?

  [https://www.books2read.com/TychesFlight]

 

 

  Richard Parry, Chromed- Restore

 

 

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