Thief (4 page)

What I wouldn’t give for a decent meal.

“You gonna answer me, Jace, or are you gonna keep making nasty faces at your supper?”

Lifting his gaze to Garrett, Jace said, “Just because you have big eyes for Payton doesn’t mean everyone else is looking to hitch up.”

“That may be so,” Garrett drawled, “my big eyes for Payton, but you didn’t answer my question.”

“Just make sure we’re ready to dock today, okay? Get the part you need to fix the engine when we do.”

“Gonna cost at least a grand,” Garrett said apologetically.

Jace had at least 5K of goods from the Basic salvage.
Mutiny
needed fuel, water, recyc, parts, food and crew—pretty much in that order. And Jace hadn’t paid his current crew in months. How could he take on new crew when he couldn’t pay the one he had?

“See if you can find what we need for less.” Jace gave the order with a faint hope that Garrett could finagle the part for half. If Garrett could keep
Mutiny
running for just a bit longer with spit and bailing wire, Jace might be able to get them out of the red and into the black.

“I could have taken the part off that Basic,” Garrett reminded. “Along with a bunch of other useful electronics.”

“You think I’m going to salvage an IWOG credit ship? Are you nuts?” Jace shook his head. “I’m one swift side-step from the edge of the law as it is by salvaging the hold.”

“They’d never know,” Garrett said.

“The IWOG would slap an Ollie on a part worth a grand.” Jace knew the InnerWorld Government routinely slapped trackers all over their credit ships. The only thing the IWOG credit department couldn’t track was cargo.

“Ollie-Ollie-Oxen-free.” Garrett sighed. “You’re right. Not worth the hassle.”

“Nothing is worth tangling with those freaks.” Because of insatiable IWOG greed, Jace lost his wife, his children, his entire world—and he couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

“Never met a woman like Captain Kraft,” Garrett said, tipping his battered straw hat off his brow as he lifted his incisive gaze. “Never in the whole of the Void met a woman so much of so many things.”

Considering his rejected food, Jace picked up his fork and toyed with the bright strands once again as hunger rumbled his gut. He’d rather think about anything other than Captain Kraft, or hunger. Forcing Senna to his mind’s eye, Jace pushed his thoughts down a well-worn, sepia-toned path.

“Beautiful. Powerful. Strong.” Garrett kept his voice low and private as he considered aloud, all the while settling his battered hat to his head.

“Senna was such.” Jace dropped his gaze back to his plate of garish goo. Senna once stood beautiful, powerful and strong. A tiny sprite with cinnamon hair who loved him through failed crops, three children and a thousand foibles. “And it sounds like
you’ve
got a crush.”

“Not on Kraft,” Garrett said. “Payton is all of those things.”

Payton. His doctor. “Difference is?”

“Deadly. Kraft is deadly. Payton isn’t. Senna wasn’t. No matter how finely you slice it.” Garrett plunked his hat to the table. “Kraft let us go because she took a shine to you. Here I am thinking you took a shine to her too.”

“We’re almost a month behind schedule.” Resolute, Jace shoved his garish meal away. “I don’t have time to consider such nonsense.”

“‘Specially since you’re all crotchety we’re late getting to Byzantine, and you’re afraid you’re gonna miss your opportunity to meet up with Kraft again.”

Garrett had been with him way too long. Jace thought he’d been more subtle about why he wanted to hurry to Byzantine.

“That woman would captivate just about anything male.” Garrett primped his thinning brown hair. “Thing is, that lady had eyes only for you.” Garrett waggled his brows. “Did pretty Captain Jace Lawless take a shine to deadly Captain Kraft?”

“Don’t call me pretty.” Jace shoved away from the dented metal table, stood and stomped off to the bridge.

Laughing, Garrett shouted after him, “Your pissytude answers my question better than words ever could!”

After docking on planet Byzantine, Jace led Heller and Garrett into the heart of Kali.

Advertisements blared from plasboards. Hucksters hollered out the wares they had for sale. IWOG consumers, WAG citizens, and Fringe players rushed about in a deafening cacophony. Jace hated being on-world. Sounds and sights and smells made him feel pummeled. Every Fringe planet gave him a headache that didn’t go away for days.

Wall-to-wall foot traffic, bodies so dense Jace gagged on the mélange of sweet perfume and fetid unwashed flesh, made the way to Trickster’s lair horrific. The stench inside the rubble of his office wasn’t much better, just a shade more tolerable than the cluttered streets of Kali.

Trickster welcomed Jace and his crew with an offer of dusty seats and cold IWOG refreshments. Jace declined both with polite suspicion. Trickster repeated his offer with jolly insistence.

“You’re all warm and fuzzy today,” Jace said. “This puckering because you won the lottery, or I did?” With a subtle flick of his hands, Jace flipped his coat from his guns.

Trickster had never been accommodating before. In fact, he’d been downright belligerent.

Heller snorted and spit on the floor. “If the fetch puckers any harder, his whole head will go right up your ass.” Heller settled his gigantic, weapon-riddled frame into a wide fighter stance. At a moment’s notice, he could level the building and everyone in it.

“His attitude is unique.” Garrett tipped his hat to Trickster and then lowered his hand to his gun. “I’m pondering the weirdness wonder of it myself.”

Trickster’s private guard, armed with Swain Shredders, tensed.

The whole room of men hit a sphincter factor of seven in less than three seconds.

“Gentleman, please.” Trickster lifted one hand to his men, the other to Jace. “There is no call for this. I find I am in a whimsical good mood, that is all. We can conduct our business standing, if you prefer, Captain Lawless.”

Bad to worse. Trickster never called him by his rank. Mostly, Trickster hissed Lawless like Jace should live up to the name. While calling him Captain Lawless, the nasty weasel dealt fairly, far too fairly, for the salvaged goods.

Jace chalked Trickster’s unnerving attitude up to the fact that Kraft probably made her deal for her part of the cache. Jace figured Trickster acted strange because he knew he didn’t have the advantage this time. Still, Trickster’s jolly yet sinister mood kept Jace on guard.

They made arrangements for Trickster’s men to unload the goods, at which time Jace would receive his script. Before he and crew could leave, two guards trooped in a bunch of women.

“Stooped to the flesh trade?” Jace knew about the trade in beautiful and skilled women, yet found it personally abhorrent. But most didn’t know that. Payton, the doctor on his crew, and her daughter, Charissa were said to be his bought-and-paid for whores. Nothing could be further from the truth, but the tale did lend to his disreputable aura.

“Women are valuable commodities.” Trickster ordered them to line the far wall of his ramshackle office. They ranged in height, weight, race and, most notably, awareness.

Captivated, Jace riveted on a beautiful slave dressed in fluffpink. The revealing harem outfit didn’t showcase her impossible beauty the way her black clothes and gleaming silver blade had. Tarted up, Captain Kraft looked garish, false, forced to wear a mask that ill-suited her. She stood rigid as a parade-ground soldier, towering over everyone but himself and Heller. Her eyes were so glazed, Jace thought it likely Kraft had no idea where she was.

“Fancy a look at the merchandise?” Trickster sleeked back his greasy hair like a rat grooming his whiskers.

“Already got two whores on my ship. Don’t reckon I need another.” How had Kraft fallen to this? Jace forced himself to shrug and turn away. He had to grit his teeth not to look back.

“Ah, but these are double-skilled whores you can afford.” Trickster lured him back. Jace pretended to consider the offer.

Trickster pointed to each woman as he listed her skills. When he got to Kraft, he said, “This one can cook.”

What I wouldn’t give for a decent meal.

When Jace hesitated, Trickster licked his thin, chapped lips and trilled, “Let you have her for a fair price.”

“A cook for a fair price?” Jace shook his head. “I can’t afford a cook. Besides, I’m out two fighters and you know it, since you’re the one who stole Moore and Fellows from my employ.”

Jace glanced at the two men who now stood as part of Trickster’s personal guard. The turncoats met his gaze with cool aplomb. No doubt they told Trickster he’d not made Payton or her daughter his whore, and that he took a strong exception to them trying to do so. Too, they must have told Trickster that he longed to find a good cook.

Coldly, Jace said, “You offer me a boatload of women worth nothing in a fight.”

“Men to fight are a dime a dozen. But women, ah, they can warm the bed,” Trickster said. “And this one can cook as well.”

“Bit tall, don’t you think?” Jace looked Kraft over with the discerning eye of a bidder at auction.

“In proportion. Worthy of a man of your stature.”

The diminutive scrimshanker buttered him up better than breakfast toast.

“I don’t much like the idea of having to subdue my bed warmer every night,” Jace said. “Even if she can cook.”

“Look. See how docile she is?” Trickster pulled Kraft forward, and she came willingly. She stood straight, towered over Trickster, and tilted her head up slightly toward Jace. He didn’t see even a flicker of recognition in her glazed eyes.

“She’s docile because she’s drugged.”

“A bit,” Trickster admitted. “And it doesn’t take much. You can well afford her.”

“Can you cook?” Jace asked Kraft.

She swore up a furious streak in German before Trickster could stifle her with a pinch to her arm.

“Feisty.” Jace shook his head and turned away. “Don’t need one like that.” He stalked off. If he were too eager, Trickster would smell it. Mercifully, Garrett and Heller remained silent.

Jace heard Trickster slap Kraft. Hard. He cocked his head over his shoulder, anticipating the pleasure in watching her rip the weasel apart. But she didn’t. Kraft shook her head and stood even more ramrod straight. She must be drugged out of her mind. Barehanded, Kraft could yank Trickster’s head right off his scrawny neck and make him do the unspeakable to his own ass.

“She’s upset you even ask,” Trickster said. “She is the finest cook on the Fringe.”

“Really?” Jace didn’t believe Kraft could boil water, let alone claim fame as a cook, but he turned back to Trickster with bored indifference.

“You ever heard of Fairing’s cook?” Trickster asked.

“Since Fairing is the most epic thief who ever worked the Fringe, I’ve heard of him,” Jace said. “Fairing’s cook is almost as epic as Fairing himself.”

“This cook-whore is Fairing’s cook.”

Jace felt his eyebrows rise almost to his hairline. “Not only do you want me to believe she can cook, but you want me to believe she’s Fairing’s cook?” Trickster wouldn’t know the truth if he saw it crap in his hat. “If you’re going to lie to me, Trickster, at least make it passable.” Turning on his heel, Jace stalked off. “Especially since there’s no way to confirm your tale since Fairing died a year ago.”

“Fairing speaks from beyond the grave,” Trickster said.

“And his ghost speaks only to you?” Jace asked.

“To any who have this.”

Trickster waved a paper at him, coyly, like a hanky. He smiled with dark malevolence when Jace reached for it.

Jace read over the holodigitext quickly. The document could be forged, but he didn’t think so. Compelling enough as she was, Captain Kraft was more so when he discovered she was, without a doubt, Fairing’s cook.

“How do I know she’s not riddled with disease?” Jace forced himself to dicker over her finer points as a commodity. He didn’t want Trickster, or any other man in the room, to have any notion that he cared about her.

“By this.” Trickster handed him a clean bill of health from an IWOG hospital.

“How’d you get this on a cook-whore?” Jace asked.

“There’s a doctor at the Kali hospital who has a predilection for the exotic, shall we say.” Trickster flashed him an oily grin. “My doctor provides this service for me in exchange for that which satisfies his rather strange appetite.”

“Please, don’t unpack that.” Jace had no interest in some IWOG doctor’s perversion. “How much do you want for her?”

“A pittance, really. I have too much stock as it is.”

“Fifty.” Jace appraised Kraft with a cold eye.

“For a cook?” Trickster asked archly. “Try five thousand.”

Jace turned on his heel and strode away. Trickster’s smarmy, conciliatory attitude became clear—the fetch wanted as much for Kraft as he’d just paid for the salvaged goods.

“Three thousand!” Trickster shouted.

Jace stopped but didn’t turn around. A two thousand drop in a breath meant Trickster wanted more out of this than money.

“One hundred,” Jace countered.

“Two thousand.”

“No way.” Jace walked to the door of Trickster’s lair and turned back like an afterthought. “Two hundred.”

“Fifteen hundred.”

“Five hundred.”

“Fifteen hundred,” Trickster said definitively. “I won’t go any lower. That’s a bargain for a cook. Especially this cook.”

Jace looked Kraft over again. Like an oddly dressed tin soldier, Kraft stood boldly proud despite the garish makeup and skimpy clothes. Oblivious because of the drugs, she seemed impossibly vulnerable. He shuddered at the thought of what Trickster would do to her if he didn’t buy her. A surge of protectiveness mixed with a feeling of obligation swept him. By her honor, he stood here now. By his honor, he vowed to repay her even if he couldn’t afford her outrageous price.

“Deal.”

Chapter Six

When Kraft woke up, she saw a gun metal gray ceiling crossed with exposed plumbing, duct work, stabilizer struts. A ship? The air tasted sharp and antiseptic. She touched her body. She didn’t have any blades and barely had any clothes. Below her, she found a cold metal table.