Chapter 1: Muscle for Hire

Drunk and sexually sated, Quant stepped from the whorehouse into the night. Standing in the recessed door of Your Sex Dreams, famous for their off-world prostitutes, Mauk-Quant paused to give her head time to clear. Coming from the music, lights and cheer, and into the quiet, wet night was a small shock. She was in an alley and her first deep breath, sucked in through the two round holes on the end of her muzzle, informed of the nearby trash bins, wet, and reeking of the refuse of nine different alien races.

She looked around. There was enough ambient light from the mouth of the dim alley to see the large trash bins lined against the chain-metal fencing that bordered the back and opposite sides of the alley. Huge, orange, triangular-shaped blossoms studded the green ropes of vines twining through the metal fencing, hiding the vast gardens that sprawled behind it. The candy-sweet fragrance of the flowers was a distasteful counterpoint to the trash bins and breathing through her mouth didn’t help much.

She listened. Her ears were round dimples on either side of her head and surgically enhanced to a level of high acuity, heard nothing but the drips of the recent rain, the pounding of waves from the nearby beach and the chirps of the insect chorus that was part of Viol City. Eager to get away from the nauseating funk of the trash, she stepped from the doorway, turned left and started down the alley to the street.

 Her muscular legs propelled her quickly, and her bare 5-toed, webbed feet with their 2-inch claws gave a good grip on the dirt ground. Her tail, 3 feet long and tapering, wiggled from side-to-side to her bipedal gait. But her long strides were too quick, one foot tangling on the other, tripping her up.

 Her tail swung down in quick counterbalance and her arms flung out wide, saving her from an embarrassing face full of mud.

 Shaken, she stopped and planted her legs wide to regain her balance, grateful there was no one around to see. She was Isaarian; she had a reputation to uphold. She noticed her head felt like it was floating in the air. Her limbs felt relaxed and rubbery, too relaxed and she realized she was still tipsy from the evening’s intoxicants.

 A light rain began to patter down on her. She closed her eyes and turned her face up to the shower. Her amphibian skin, with its nubbly, avocado-like texture, absorbed the moisture like a sponge. Quant inhaled a deep, steadying breath and blew it out, now far enough from the trash bins to make it a pleasant experience, and took stock of herself.

What she wanted now was home and her bed. All she had to do was get to the street and grab a taxiglydder. Very simple stuff. Where was the money for the fare?

 She wore her usual garment, a carryvest that covered her from neckline to the top of her hips. Carryvests were common to any species whose natural appearance needed no clothing to survive normal changes in heat and cold, and gave the practicality of being able to carry possessions and leave their hands free—if they even had hands.

Her carryvest was custom designed to fit her 6 foot 6 inch height and compact musculature. Inner and outer pockets of all sizes opened at a tap; some pockets locked and opened only to a code. Her carryvests were always a dull color; nothing that would attract attention in a crowd. Tonight, she wore a dark green vest. She always traveled light when she came to the pleasurehouse and now she had to pat too many empty pockets before she found the few metal credit chips needed for her ride home. Once reassured, she started to walk, slowly and carefully, towards the street again.

After the dark alley, the white illumination of the solar sidewalk was welcome; the droplets of rain glittering like diamonds on the glowing surface. As she stepped onto to it, the pliable material cushioned her steps and she stopped to survey the line of taxiglydders waiting curbside.

There were two kinds of taxiglydders: robot and live. The robot glydders took only credit cards and needed exact location coordinates. The live taxis-glydders were piloted by sentient beings that took cash or credit and knew enough about a city so that they didn’t need exact coordinates.

 Live taxiglydders were popular at the pleasurehouse because not every client wanted a credit charge from Your Sex Dreams appearing in their accounts. Not all the cultures and planets of the Consolidated Stellar Systems were as open and free about sex—particularly inter-species sex—as were the hedonistic Grenians of the planet Grenya.

 By habits of long standing, Quant never wanted any record of her locations, so she always preferred a live taxiglydder. They were easy to pick out along the line of arrowhead-shaped vehicles; the silhouettes of the pilots were clearly outlined in the dim interiors.

There was no one else around. She walked to the nearest, live taxiglydder, her hand on the glydder roof to keep her balance as her head floated down to peer inside the window. The pilot looked to be asleep in the front seat. She double-thumped her fist on the roof, the abrupt sounds loud in the quiet streets.

“Wake up! You’ve got a passenger,” she said, using Interstell, the common language of the Consolidate, and then pulled on the metal loop that opened the rear door. She had to bend at the waist to look in. It was even smaller inside than it looked from the outside.

Flick me! I wish these Grenians would build bigger skyglydders, she thought with mild irritation.

But it was a pleasant enough space, lit by a pink light with a dark, U-shaped padded seat, very suitable for the small aliens of this planet but less so for her because she stood head and shoulders above the tallest of them. It would be a tight fit, but not impossible and she felt too drunk and tired to find better. She entered headfirst, her spine flexible enough to curl along U-shaped seat, her tail pulled in last, and she half-reclined on one elbow. With a soft sigh, the door automatically closed and she craned her head forward to address the pilot.

 The pilot was a Grenian; vegans who ate no flesh-foods, the entire race identifiable by their green, leafy scent. The second odor of carnation denoted a female in contrast to the males who had a more pungent, spice-like scent. The female stretched and yawned.

            “Where to?” she asked, her throaty voice thick with sleep.

            “148-72-47 coordinates.”

By air, the ride home would be a short one. The taxiglydder’s rear windows shaded to privacy-black and the machine floated noiselessly up in the air to join the glydder flowlanes above. Quant sighed in relief, relaxing against the plush cushions. She turned her head to look out the window and saw her reflection.

 The upper part of her face was dominated by her lash-less, forward set eyes, large and round, the irises a reflective silver that was surprisingly brilliant against the brown of her nubbly-textured skin. The bottom part of her face was a six-inch muzzle filled with double rows of wide, wedge shaped teeth that curved inward at the front and became serrated, shearing edges along the sides. They were teeth designed for catching prey and slicing it apart, as her amphibian ancestors had done before and after they developed legs and crawled out of the pre-historic Isaarian oceans.

Tucked around her jaw line and halfway up her large head hung slender silver filaments, 8-inches long, held back with a strip of cloth into a low ponytail that looked like hair, but were her external gills. She raised her chin up slightly, seeing the red underside of her throat and she smoothed the silver filaments with two fingers of her 4-fingered hand, gloved in tarrellum, the metal mesh covering her thumb and fingers up to thick metal cones that enclosed 3-inch claws, leaving her palms bare.

She focused past her image and looked down to the bright, multi-colored lights of the city, as alive and active as it has been when she had started out yesterday afternoon. Demonstrating a notorious reputation well known Consolidate-wide, time of day had no meaning in V’iol, a city dedicated to gambling, luxury, and sex. It was a good city for her type of work, big risks and big rewards. Though, as an Isaarian, her risks were significantly fewer.

She snorted a chuckle as she thought of what the other races of the C.S.S. called her people; walking weapons, killing machines, hot-headed-berserkers, deadliest un-armed fighters in the Consolidate.

Yes, the Isaarian reputation for berserker-fueled, rage-killings had gone a long way in making her job easier: muscle for hire.

            When she first started her career, she thought she’d have difficulties because she was female and not a male. But she soon realized that other aliens couldn’t tell Isaarian males from females; everyone assumed she was male. Since she was bigger and stronger than the average Isaarian female, she didn’t bother to make corrections. That, along with her people’s infamous reputation and her version of a smile—a pulling back of her thin lips to display the whiteness of her toothy maw—was enough to stop any aliens foolish enough to confront her without being extremely well-armed.

She felt the glydder dip and start its descent and she slowly pulled herself out of her reverie, thoughts of her bed as seductive as sex had been earlier. She looked out the window, blinked her eyes rapidly, opened them wide and looked again. She saw the Industrial District, easily recognizable with its long low buildings, deserted streets, and knew she was far from the glittering center of the tourist playgrounds where her lodgings lay. She groaned softly.

 Don’t tell me I got some rookie pilot who doesn’t know where she’s going…! Quant thought sourly. She craned her head forward at the pilot.

“Hey, you! Wrong coordinates! This isn’t the way to my place,” she said.

The pilot didn’t answer and the taxiglydder sped up its descent.

“Hey! Can you hear me in there?” Quant tapped a metal claw tip on the transparent plexiglass that separated the back of the glydder from the front.

The pilot gave no reaction. Now they skimmed low, barely over the tops of the warehouses. Abruptly, her dulled senses sounded a warning.

“Stop! STOP RIGHT NOW,” she yelled.

She balled up her free hand onto a fist and punched the divider. With a sharp crack, the plexiglass splintered, etching a web of concentric lines against the shadow of the pilot’s head that didn’t even flinch.

Flick me! That should have broken!

She didn’t have the room to swing her arm freely and a sudden, rage-tinged anxiety exploded inside her head like a fireball. She heard a rumble and saw a warehouse roof slide back, the black depths yawning as the glydder plunged inside. The machine had not yet touched ground when she saw the pilot open her door and bail out mere seconds before Quant slammed her fist into the divider again. With a loud crack, it shattered, the shards flying in all directions as the glydder landed with a bone-jarring thump, and all the interior lights of the glydder went dark.

 It was almost pitch-black inside the warehouse. Suddenly sobered and wondering where the pilot had gone to, Quant listened hard as she eased up a leg and prepared to kick the glydder’s back door open.

 A bright, white light flared on.

With every sense on high alert, precious seconds were lost as her flash-burnt eyes adjusted to the sudden illumination. She looked through the craft’s front windshield and found herself looking at a familiar face.

“Salara? Salara Ni’bal?” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

Confused, Quant felt her mouth drop open as she gaped at this face from her past. The golden skin tone common to all the humanoid Grenians, the same cap of straight, glossy black hair, cut to ear level at the sides and nape with eyebrow-level bangs in the front, the small, species-common wings on her back and the pale, cat-yellow eyes that never warmed.

“Hello Mauk-Quant. Getting a little careless about personal security, aren’t you? If I had been an enemy, you’d be dead by now,” the alien woman said in a quiet monotone voice. Quant snapped her mouth closed.

“I’m glad you’re having so much fun,” she said mildly, her pulse rate slowing to normal. Then her light-tenor tone dropped to a basso growl. “Now open this door before I rip it off!”

Obligingly, Salara walked to the side of the craft, opened the back door and stepped away. Quant snarled at the indignity of having to back out ass-first as she pulled herself out of the taxiglydder and stood up, rising up a head taller than Salara’s 5 feet 10 inches.  Quant looked around, listening intently and sniffing the air. She smelled dust and Salara’s oak moss/carnation scent. They were alone inside an empty, echoing warehouse. She swung her gaze down to glare at the Grenian.

“I ought to pound you into the ground for this little stunt,” Quant said in her basso voice, baring her white, wedge-shaped teeth. A performance that had sent many an alien running for the nearest exit.

With unblinking serenity, this alien stood her ground. When she spoke, her voice was calm. “I have neither the time nor inclination to play “stunts”. I have a business proposition for you and I’m willing to pay you 50,000 credits.”

Quant covered her teeth and tugged at her green carryvest to pull it down over her red belly. Even dressed in the drab clothing of a poor taxi pilot, Salara lost none of her dignity, whereas Quant’s dignity was rubble at her feet, the situation made worse because she knew the alien spoke truly. Quanthad gotten a little slack about security, but who was there to threaten her on Grenya?

“A job, huh? Why didn’t you contact me by communicator like normal people do or do you like almost having your head ripped off?” Quant said in her normal tenor tones, annoyance replacing the anger.

“This matter is too confidential for anything other than face-to-face and I’m as fond of my head as the next alien. I took the liberty of testing your response to a potentially dangerous situation.”

She still had the unshakable confidence that Quant remembered. It still irritated her. Quant had never borne perfectionists easily and it showed in the rasp of Interstell she spat out.

“For ten staryears I was good enough for the Zy-Kaar’s little Assassin Squad. You know an assassin doesn’t get to be 27 staryears old without being skilled. Doesn’t the fact that I’m still alive after all these staryears prove something?” Quant said.

“That’s hard to judge. Most assassins don’t work past the age of 25.”

“Most assassins don’t live past the age of 25.”

“It must be luck then. Among the Elite, your lack of discipline is legend.”

Quant’s stiff facial muscle couldn’t shape a smile or frown. Only the sudden lashing of her tail hinted of her anger. Salara noticed.

 “Quant, I didn’t mean to offend you, but you did ask—“

Quant interrupted. “If you have 50,000 credits to pay me, let’s hear about it,” she said, shifting her focus from annoyance to the forbearance she adopted when dealing with clients. She found it was better for business.

Salara nodded. “This way.”

Quant hesitated before she followed the Grenian across the cavernous warehouse to a room lit by the cool white light that had so blinded her before. The room held nothing more than an old metal table and two metal chairs. Salara sat down and waved an invitation to the other seat. Quant stopped inside the door’s threshold and crossed her arms over her chest.

“I’ll stand; this could prove to be a great waste of my time.”

Salara shrugged her acquiescence; the gesture making the small, folded wings on her back jiggle.

“It’s been a long time, Quant. How have you been since you retired from the Elite?”

Memories Quant had spent the last two staryears trying to forget, came surging back, the images floating up to the surface of her mind like bubbles. She, an orphan at 6 and Ra’lell, the Grenian Master Assassin who had come to the Isaarian orphanage to change her life forever.

She had found herself on the planet Grenya, the only alien among the smaller Grenian orphans gathered by the head of the Zy-Kaar Elite Security Section for one purpose: to be transformed into assassins, killing machines.

            Her transformation had started with injections of Isaarian male hormones that made her muscle mass grow heavier and her bones thicker as it increased her natural aggression. Then the manipulation of her genetics that activated certain atavistic changes that made her maintain a juvenile’s external gills on an adult body. More had been done, so much more. Quant suppressed a shudder as she focused back on Salara to answer her question.

            “I’m in business for myself. I get by. Are you still working for the Zy-Kaar Company? Still with the Elite?” Quant asked.

 Salara nodded. “Yes, still there. I’ve had a promotion. I’m second-in-command of company security and I work directly with Aura Zy-Kaar.”

 Impressed, Quant hissed in amazement. The Zy-Kaars were high-level Grenian BloodNobles, the founder/builders of V’iol City. Filthy-rich, they were as decadent and pleasure-bent as their city.

Quant’s curiosity got the better of her annoyance. She walked in and sat down at the table across from Salara, the chair giving a metallic wheeze as it accepted her weight. The alien’s cat-yellow gaze radiated out from almond-shaped eyes. Her long nose added to the solemn appearance and her tightly pressed lips completed the picture of Grenya’s top assassin.

“Rubbing claws with the aristocrats now? How’d you manage that?” Quant asked.

“I’m very good at what I do. I was noticed,” Salara said and gave Quant a smile.

Quant knew it was intended to be a pleasant gesture, but she hated it when aliens smiled.

It makes them look like they’re being threatening by baring their teeth and most of them haven’t got teeth worth showing, she thought and ran her thin purple tongue lightly over her own teeth.

“You’re as modest as ever, Salara. Still the perfect assassin?” Quant said, her words dripping with sarcasm. Apparently unruffled by Quant’s tone, the Grenian chose to ignore the jib.

“Aura Zy-Kaar demands the best.”

At her words, another memory bubble rose to the surface of Quant’s mind, pulling her back in time.

Quant had been very skilled in the Elite Academy. Her natural and modified talents made her a force to be reckoned with. She had been very good, but not the best. The only cadet who had ever bested her and denied her the title of “Top Cadet” now sat across the table from her.

It beggared reason. Each time the two had been matched together in their practice battles, Quant never thought Salara had a chance of beating her until the Grenian did it every time. Salara was perfection personified. The rest of the cadets called her “The Isaarian Killer” but never in Quant’s hearing and they learned, rather painfully, that her enhanced hearing range was extensive.

Quant sat back and crossed her arms over her chest, the chair groaning under her again.

“What’s the job?”

“It’s an easy one. I want you to go off-planet, pickup someone and bring them back to me.”

“Sounds simple. You’re Zy-Kaar’s best; why don’t you go?”

“Commander Zy-Kaar will not allow me to go, and her father wants me to stay beside his daughter and protect her while she is pregnant,” Salara said in her quiet voice. She sat up straight and totally still, her yellow gaze never leaving Quant’s face.

“Is there no other assassin in the Elite who can do this?”

“You are the best-suited. The pickup is in the Isaarian System and I need someone who won’t stand out.”

“Who’s the pickup?”

“A Theelian.”

Quant bolted forwards, both hands coming down flat on the tabletop, the metal links of her gloves echoing a metallic slap.

“A Theelian? One of those nasty little crad-eyes? I hate Theelians! It’s going to cost you more to put up with that.”

Quant’s abrupt forward movement and the anger flashing from her eyes had no effect on Salara.

“I never thought you to be a bigot, Quant,” came the quiet reply.

Quant’s head flinched back as though the words had been a blow.

“Are you kidding me? A mind-prying Theelian? I don’t want someone reading my mind and controllingmy thoughts! I don’t want to be turned into a mindless slave!”

“Simple stories told to frighten children and you believe it?” A slice of emotion crossed Salara’s face quickly. It was gone before Quant could fully discern it, but had it been scorn?

The Grenian continued. “Because Theelians prefer to keep themselves separate from the rest of the Consolidate, silly stories are invented about them. I know this Theelian personally and they are harmless. And Quant; it’s more accurate to say Theelians read emotions, not thought itself.”

Flick you! Quant thought as she strove to control her temper. Salara always had this affect on her. Quant brought up her gloved hands from the tabletop and tapped the wristbands together. The metal cones retracted from the tips of her fingers, leaving 3 inches of curved, scalpel-sharp claws exposed. She leaned forward again, placing her hands flat on the metal tabletop, the claws that could lay flesh open to the bone, pointed at Salara.

“It will still cost you extra,” she repeated, her voice low and sullen.

Salara’s cool gaze flicked down at the amber-colored talons, then back to Quant’s face.

Quant knew Salara was armed with any number and types of weapons–the very finest and deadliest the Zy-Kaar Company could engineer–under the shapeless, fabricate clothing of her current civilian disguise. To any other eyes, the Grenian woman appeared to be sitting very still, but Quant had seen the very slight tensing of her body that she knew preceded the assassin’s offensive attack. However, when Salara spoke, her voice was as quiet as ever.

“I will pay you 50,000 credits. That’s twice as much of what you’ve made these past few starmonths collecting gambling debts and doing little jobs for jealous BloodNobles after petty revenge. You’re earning about 5,000 a job, aren’t you?”

Quant felt her mouth drop open again and closed it with a snap that made saliva fly from the sides of her muzzle.

 “You’ve been spying on me?” she said, her voice dropping to basso as her anger pushed against her control.

 With a harsh scraping sound, Salara pushed her chair away from the table, putting four feet of distance between them, but did not rise.

“Doesn’t Zy-Kaar reach ever end? They don’t own me anymore! Vooking Crad! How long have you been watching me?” she said, her voice a demand rather than a question.

Salara tilted her head very slightly, her golden hands resting in her lap, and when she spoke, her voice was gentle.

 “We never stopped watching you, Quant. You know so many Zy-Kaar secrets. Where the bodies are buried, some you put there yourself. In addition, there’s the way you left the Elite. How rare it was for an assassin to survive long enough to complete their ten-staryear commitment and retire. You refused our offer to stay on as an instructor at the Academy where your every need would have been taken care of for the rest of your life. You left us. You took the retirement, the bonus and left us. So of course, we had to watch you.”

Pity. That was what Quant heard in the alien woman’s tones. Explaining something so obvious and Quant had never thought of it. What she had believed to be freedom had simply been a long leash.

“It took a little time to find you and I had to be certain we were not seen together. I waited starhours for you to come out of that pleasurehouse,” the Grenian said. Quant looked at her. Weren’t they roughly the same age? Didn’t Salara want to be free after ten staryears of killing?  Evidently not. The Elite indoctrination was total and Salara would be loyal to the Zy-Kaar Company until the day she died.

Does she see her life with the Company as so much better than being on her own? Can I believe she didn’t mind when the Company medics ripped out her ability to bear children and didn’t even tell her? As they do with every female assassin? As they did to me?

She felt the familiar pain of her eternal barrenness wash away her anger. She had given up hating the Zy-Kaars but she could never forgive them. She sat back in her groaning chair and tapped her wristbands together. With a soft hiss, the metal sheaths spiraled up around her claws, covering them with tarrellum, the hardest metal alloy in the Consolidate.

Salara pulled her chair back up to the table and sat forward, her hands laying on the tabletop, crossed at the wrists, her expectant gaze on Quant.

Suddenly, Quant felt bone tired, the memories and effects of her day’s frolicking gone as though it had never been.

I’ll just make it business. No emotion. No grudges. I’d rather have the Zy-Kaars watching me than deciding to kill me to keep their secrets, she thought, knowing if the Zy-Kaars ever did decide she was too much a security risk, her would-be killer was sitting across the table from her.

“If I refuse this job, are you supposed to kill me?” Quant asked.

This time there was no need to guess the alien’s emotion. Shock and surprise made her black, straight eyebrows disappear under her bangs as her narrow, yellow eyes widened.

“What? No! Of course not!” Her hands turned palms up and opened wide, showing emptiness. “Why would you think such a thing? And of me?” The Grenian actually looked bewildered.

Quant shifted in her chair, suddenly uncomfortable and slightly ashamed. “Well, they send you and you start talking about secrets and security…”

The slender, golden face relaxed and Salara actually smiled as she sat back against the chair, her manner as slack and relaxed, as it had been rigid and vigilant before.

“We know you remain loyal to us. We aren’t worried about you being a security risk. Quite the opposite. We trust you to keep the security of the Zy-Kaars as you have always done.” The smile grew very slightly wider. “And I was sent because we’ve worked together, not as the “Isaarian Killer.”  Quant, as evidenced by your longevity, you are not easy to kill and I have great respect for your abilities.”

This time, Quant did manage to keep her jaw from dropping open, but just barely. She had known this alien the majority of her life—from 7 to 25 staryears—and this was the most emotion she had ever seen the woman display. And praise? From Salara?

Who are you and what have you done with the real Salara? she wanted to ask. Something had happened in the last two staryears that had made this change in the assassin. Quant hadn’t a clue as to what it could be, but it must have been world-shaking to affect Salara this way. Quant looked at the expectant Grenian. Her manner of relaxed friendliness remained.

“Ok,” Quant said, “you can’t contact me by communicator; you lay in wait for me, in disguise, and kidnap me because we can’t be seen together.” She counted off each reason on the metal tips of her fingers, each tap making a metallic tink. “This job is that secret?”

“Yes. I offer you the standard agreement—half the credits now and half when the job is done. If you do well, Commander Aura Zy-Kaar will give you a bonus.”

“I want 75,000.”

Salara’s brows came together in a slight frown and she looked…disappointed? “Such a large amount for so simple a job? Be fair, Quant. Don’t let your native love of haggling interfere with your better judgment.”

Her quiet voice and that look irritated Quant. She was starting to think she preferred the stone cold, robotic Salara to this new, palsy-walsy version. She frowned back.

 “Leave my “native” quirks out of this. I want 75,000.” She made her voice firm. “I know the Zy-Kaars can afford it. They’re the richest BloodNoble family on the planet. That’s pocket change for them.”

“No. I’m authorized to offer you only 50,000 and the promise of a bonus. You can take it or leave it.” Salara said, her voice just as firm.

Quant returned Salara’s cool gaze. Fifty thousand credits sounded very good to her. In another starmonth, the hot season would be upon Grenya. All the wealthy elite would depart for cooler, more fashionable climes and starsystems, taking her primary source of revenue with them and she would have to leave for Isaar as she did every staryear. She’d be lucky if she made another five or ten thousand.

“A bonus, you said?” she asked the silent Grenian.

Salara nodded solemnly. “I guarantee it.”

Quant looked away to a shadowy, far corner, her hand absently combing the limp silver filaments of her external gills as a girl might play with her hair.

 “IfI live to collect it,” she muttered under her breath. “Yeah, it sounds easy. I’ll do it,” she decided, her gaze coming back to meet Salara’s. The Grenian smiled again.

“Good. You’ll go to Isaar Prime and pick up the Theelian in Inid City. While you’re there, I’d also like you to see if you can find out anything about an R-ly called Bayron.”

“Bayron? Why? What’s he done?”

“Annoyed Aura Zy-Kaar.”

It was Quant’s turn to tilt her head to the side. “Is that all you’re going to tell me?”

Salara’s eyes iced over and her face became that emotionless mask once more.

“That’s all you need to know,” she said in heavy, final tones.

Quant righted her head, sat up straight, and looked down the length of her muzzle at the golden, up-turned face with its inscrutable yellow gaze.

 That’s all I need to know, huh? Somehow, she doubted that, but she knew the Grenian would tell her nothing more. “When do I leave?”

“As soon as you can.”

“Tomorrow soon enough for you?”

Salara nodded, took a small round red chip out of an inner pocket of her baggy, brown jacket and placed it on the table. “There’s half; 25,000 credits. Get what you need for—“

“I know how to get ready for a job, Salara,” Quant said, her voice rumbly from the growl of annoyance she held back as she reached out and claimed the precious metal chip. “You’re talking to me as though I were some untried recruit.”

The cold look softened very slightly and the alien had the grace to look discomfited. “Of course you do. My very sincere pardons, Mauk-Quant,” the Grenian said. “It is especially important that you tell no one you’re working for the Zy-Kaars. You’ve got one starmonth for completion.”

Quant paused the transit of the money chip to one of her locking vest pockets. Her upper and lower eyelids came together in the middle of her eyes leaving a horizontal slit of silver in her narrowed gaze. “One starmonth? This is a two starweek job at the most and much of that is travel time.”

“The extra time is for unexpected delays.”

“’Unexpected delays’” Quant repeated. That was an Elite code phrase for “trouble”.  She looked down at her carryvest pocket, tapped in the lock code, dropped the red chip into it, and then re-sealed the pocket, locking it. “What happens after the starmonth is up?” she asked.

“We’ll have to assume that you’re dead.”

Quant’s head snapped up and back over to the serene Grenian. “Dead? You said this was a simple job!”

Quant was not amused as Salara gave her a half smile and one up-raised black eyebrow. “Be realistic. You are an assassin; you know as well as I that death can come at any time. You may lose your luck and likewise your head.”

“Cheerful little alien, aren’t you?” Quant snorted out forcefully enough to stir Salara’s hair into brief motion. “Where in Inid is this nasty little Theelian, anyway?” she asked, her mood soured.

“The Travel & Transport House and Quant–” Salara pinned her with a chiding gaze— “remember, we are paying you to be polite and respectful to the Theelian.” Salara pushed the chair back from the table and stood up. “I must get back to the Commander. The taxiglydder will take you home. One more thing—don’t attempt to contact me yourself. There will be someone on Isaar Prime who will be able to get messages to me. There’s a room waiting for you at the Travel & Transport House. Good journey, Mauk-Quant. Be lucky again,” she said and turned away to disappear through a quickly opening and closing door to the outside, leaving silence in her wake.

Quant exhaled another snort, stood up and wavered a bit, a reminder she wasn’t as sober as she could’ve had wished. She tried to think about everything Salara had said, but logical thought was impossible. She was tired and tipsy and wanted her bed.

I’ll think about all this tomorrow, she thought, walking carefully out of the little room and back inside the cavernous warehouse, its roof still open to the night sky.

 At the taxiglydder, she flung out the larger shards of shattered divider, got in, started the machine, and headed back to the glittering center of the Viol city.