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  She softened her expression a notch.

  It was all Pak needed as assent. He walked over to the group of Void mercs taking up the tables by the bulkhead. Sun followed.

  As the group noticed their arrival, and a few faces turned her way with interest, Sun knew the plan had gone wrong. Blue was supposed to be here already.

  There was no sign of her.

  3.

  Sun

  The Slayvocation Exchange

  “What do you mean you don’t have a challenge coin?” Sun cried three minutes later.

  When Pak looked too ashamed to answer, a young merc called Gjalp slapped him on the shoulder and answered for him. “We are a proper Guild-registered company, but we haven’t fully formed. Even the name is a joke. I mean, we’re alien registered, but none of us knows what the name is in a human language, so we call ourselves the Void. Mister Venix over there–” the man indicated the Zuparti corporate liaison who was talking with the Tortantula occupying a space on the sticky floor, from which tables had been cleared – “he told us that we’re a new offshoot of a large company, but our bit of it is struggling to get properly started.” The young man shrugged. “Sometimes I think the owner keeps us around as some kind of toy.”

  “Can’t be,” said a woman who’d introduced herself as First Sergeant Landers. “Look what the boss did to the last captain. That wasn’t playful.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Gjalp, “that… that wasn’t pretty either.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Blue, sweeping in from out of nowhere, and snatching the tumbler of bourbon from Pak.

  True to form, she downed it in one, and licked her lips that had probably turned numb. “Thanks,” she said, a little unsteadily. “I’ll have another.”

  “Who the hell do you think you are?” growled Landers as she rose menacingly to her feet and faced off against Blue. The first sergeant had seemed distant, uninterested when Pak had introduced Sun.

  She wasn’t distant now.

  Landers blinked in surprise when the shorter woman’s already pale face turned translucent. The astonished mercs watched Blue’s arteries pulsing red through her skin. Beneath them, the shadowed bunches of muscle fibers clenched in anger.

  So much for lying low. It had been a disastrous experiment with recreational nanos that had turned her sister from an attractive kid into a hairless demon. That’s what would get them noticed – maybe word about them would be passed on to the Endless Night – but it was the changes the nanos had wrought in Blue’s mind that had made them run as far as the Spine Nebula.

  “Who the hell do you think you are?” Blue spat back at Landers. “You’re the one who needs to answer that question. Call yourself a merc? Why do you put up with serving in a company without a proper name?”

  Although she kept swallowing hard, and had gone almost as pale as Blue, Landers stood her ground. Sun was a CASPer driver, not special ops superbabe. If it came to a fight, she was seriously out of her depth, but she was ready to intervene anyway to help her sister, when Landers blinked and slumped down into her seat with shame burning in her face.

  Sun understood. It wasn’t that the woman had no backbone, but her company had no honor to fight for.

  “You ask why,” said Landers.” She shrugged. “Because it pays better than any other company in the sector.”

  “To do nothing?” pressed Blue.

  “Seems that way,” Pak answered when Landers looked away, disgusted with the whole affair. “But the company that never sees action loses its edge. It goes brittle, and if we ever did get ourselves together, then we would fall apart the first time we encountered decent opposition. If we don’t get this sorted soon, I’m jumping ship and signing with a proper company. Money or no money.”

  “We all will,” said the first sergeant. “I can’t be Top for a unit ain’t got no pride. Don’t even have CASPer officers anymore.”

  “I’m willing to give it a chance,” said Sun.

  “Yeah, why the hell not?” Blue agreed. “Where do I sign?”

  “Hey, come on,” Sun urged Pak, giving him a friendly punch in the shoulder. “Fight for it. We can turn this outfit around if we believe in ourselves.”

  Pak looked up at her with that grin back in place across his face, but there was a hunger in his eyes that hadn’t been there earlier. Hot damn! She could do without that kind of interest. “We hire space in the combat training center on Ring Two, Segment 3. Be there at 07:00. Both of you.”

  “Roger that.” Sun rushed down her fine bourbon and caught Blue’s attention. “Hey, baldy. I’m going to book a cabin. You wanna share a place for tonight?”

  “Sure.” Blue raised a ridge of flesh where once an eyebrow had grown. “But not with you.” She cast a predatory gaze over Pak, Landers, and Gjalp.

  “There will be plenty of time for that later,” Sun commented, as if she didn’t much care either way, “but only if you pass the evaluation. Maybe get some rest tonight, eh?”

  The demon inside her vanished abruptly, and Blue was almost once again the scared kid who had gone too far, and needed her big sister to haul her out of the latest mess she’d gotten herself into.

  Head meekly bowed, Blue followed Sun out of the Slayvocation Exchange, eyes both human and alien watching the two strange women leave.

  Perfect, thought Sun. We may as well be broadcasting on all frequencies: ‘Wanted by the Endless Night. Please inform on us.’ The Void had better give us positions or we’re dead.

  4.

  Blue

  Boxed Life Hub Tubes. Shell 3, Station-Five

  “We should at least discuss this,” said Blue. “I mean, everything checks out. These Void losers really are the only game in town, but I want more options. We could work passage someplace else and try again.”

  Big sis simply rolled over and presented her back.

  Blue grunted with frustration and flung herself down onto their shared pillow, hands behind her head, which unfortunately rammed an elbow into Sun’s neck.

  The mid-level family sleeping unit, which was their home for the night, was essentially a padded drawer just big enough for the two sisters to lie side by side with their feet up on their kit bags. And the girls were what Mama called petite, but Blue liked to think of as sublime examples of cute efficiency.

  She bit her lip and waited. Sun wasn’t ignoring her, she was just thinking through her answer, which was fine because that was how she liked to play but, oh, couldn’t she just loosen the purse strings a little? Once in a while?

  Seething with impatience, Blue rolled onto her side and stared at her sister, her breast fluttering with the twin burning impulses to both wring her neck for being her entropy-damned protector, and to stroke her hair while whispering her thanks for… well, for pretty much the same reason.

  Blue reached out – hesitated – and then stroked the back of Sun’s head, marveling in the unfamiliar plush feel of her sister’s fresh crew cut.

  She stopped to allow the waves of nausea to pass. Those nanos had screwed with her emotional responses in ways even Sun didn’t know. Nausea meant guilt.

  Despite Blue’s best efforts to persuade her when they were still kids, Sun had no idea how beautiful she could be if only she put a little effort into her appearance. Her sister’s idea of dressing to impress was to wear clothing that had been clean at some point in the past 48 hours. But even Sun had known her glossy black hair, which had tumbled to her shoulders when unbound, was a thing of wonder. With Blue’s own hair falling out as a result of that stupid night doing illegal nanos at the spaceport, Sun had even allowed her to brush and tend it.

  But an hour ago, Sun had shaved it off so that aliens would not recognize her.

  Blue had picked out her own disguise at the grooming and shearing kiosk: a midnight blue topknot, which attached to her bald head convincingly enough to look like the hair was her own.

  Exciting possibilities poked into her melancholy. She sat up and looked at the headpiece resting between her feet on
her kitbag. The coils of fake hair were thick. She could conceal weapons in there, maybe a small drone.

  Sun sat up too. “It’s who we are now,” she said, nodding at the topknot. “We’ll stick with the Void for a while. It’s easy money. Give it a year, and if we’re still alive, we can decide then if we want to move on.”

  “Ungh!” Blue wrinkled her nose. “Sis, did you have to wear our new perfume in bed?”

  “Sure. I rubbed a handful into my chest. Many aliens have a very sharp sense of smell. Our new hairstyles will fool a lot of alien eyes, don’t forget to fool their noses too.”

  “You go ahead. But for me, I’m so naturally irresistible I’m gonna play safe and wait till morning to rub in some more of that alien axle grease. The stall holder swore this stuff was guaranteed to bring any Besquith female into heat within minutes. Now, I pride myself on having tried a whole lot of playtime combinations, but even I draw the line at sex-crazed Besquith babes.”

  Sun almost smiled at the ridiculous idea of a Besquith being anything other than a monster stuffed with fangs, talons, and an armored hide. Then her face fell into the cold expressionless robot look that was the way she normally presented herself to the galaxy. It wasn’t that her sister was dead inside. It was more that she coated her feelings in impenetrable armor thicker than a CASPer’s.

  And it was all Blue’s fault.

  Blue gave her sister a sympathetic grimace. “You liked him, didn’t you?”

  “Who?” Sun looked away. “You mean Pak,” she admitted.

  Blue touched her sister’s cheek. “Hey,” she insisted, “we’re a pair, remember? I know you better than you know yourself.” She planted her other hand on Sun’s breast, resting it over her heart. “And I’m telling you that if you keep this in solitary confinement then you’ll snap.”

  Sun moved Blue’s hands away. “Pak is just some random guy at a bar. Galaxy’s full of ’em. Now is not the time, that’s all.”

  When will be the right time? Blue didn’t need to ask the question because the answer was clear. They had talked of finding a cure, of fixing the itch in Blue’s head that drove her to take the most insane risks on the table, regardless of her own safety and that of those she loved. Just to feel the thrill that ran through her body like a plasma storm.

  Maybe a fix was possible. Who could tell in such a big galaxy? But a cure wouldn’t come fast enough. Sun would snap long before then.

  “You’re right,” Blue lied. “Galaxy’s stuffed full of sexy people. And with that stink on you, you could always have your own Besquith harem just as soon as you find a big enough place to put them. Which is why I don’t want to mess this up. We need this berth with the Void. Chain me up. Please.”

  Sun stared at her out of hollow eyes.

  It was enough to make Blue’s mind up. Sure, Pak was a random guy, but they were in space and both of them deserved to be living the dream. Blue had clashed swords with space pirates, smuggled illegal cargoes, worked her way up to be a bridge officer, and enjoyed the company of many random people… and some not so random. She was an adventurer and proud of it. But Sun? She was her sister’s jailer, and that was all she could ever be while Blue stuck around.

  “I love you,” Blue told her.

  Sun nodded and started digging through her bag for the restraints that were the only way either of them could guarantee Blue wouldn’t sneak away and seek out mischief. Blue decided this was not the time to mention secretly borrowing the restraints for more recreational pursuits during her time aboard Unlikely Regret.

  “I know you detest tying me up,” she said, “but it’s just for tonight. I promise you.”

  And as Sun snapped the plastic cuffs over her wrists, Blue knew that this time she really did mean her promise.

  5.

  Sun

  Combat Training Center

  Sun wriggled her limbs out of the mecha suit’s leg hole, and jumped down from the open clamshell cockpit to land gracefully on the deck of the training center. The model was a Mark 8 CASPer, and she’d never driven anything so modern before, which meant everything about it was unfamiliar. She forced herself to look only at her feet and the deck, figuring that dismounting from her suit without smacking her face into the matte rubbery floor material was part of the evaluation.

  Then she looked up.

  And even though she willed herself not to, she gaped as her mind floundered in its attempt to make sense of what it was seeing.

  The CASPer had been wired up in simulation mode. The Tri-V heads-up display was so extensive, that it was almost as if the suit wasn’t there and she was coasting through the zero-g black when she had led that boarding action. And when she’d assaulted that fort on the heavy-gravity desert world, every movement had needed her to push harder, and her mind had convinced her she had sandy grit blown into her eyes by the hot desert wind.

  She knew without looking that the suit standing behind her was unarmed, but she had borne the weight of the imaginary ammo drums on her back that fed the autocannon mounted over her left shoulder. The weight had lessened when she had poured flanking fire into the Zuul unit assaulting her squad, and her own shoulder was going to show purple with bruises as the autocannon’s ferocious fire rate had rattled her inside the suit that hadn’t been fully adjusted to her small frame. When she had gutted the Besquith mercenary captain, she had felt the resistance of its tough hide before her arm-blade penetrated and rammed through into the creature’s spine.

  Sun’s mind finally made sense of the universe. The confusion had claimed her for less than a second, but her evaluator would have spotted it, and she did not want that creep seeing any weakness in her.

  The training center was a large and mostly empty box of a space, its deck, bulkheads and overhead covered in the same black coating that dulled both sounds and impacts. The cool air chilled the sweat running down her chest after the last simulation on the desert planet.

  Four other empty CASPers were lined up with cockpits open; a tech was kneeling up inside one of them with a slate wired up to its internal systems.

  She heard live weapons fire from another part of the center, but it was another mercenary company’s business, and it was being conducted behind an unfolded partition.

  It didn’t seem possible that the eight wildly different combat operations Sun had just fought had all been conducted in this black room. It didn’t seem big enough. But she knew it had. And she was damned proud of her performance.

  But it wasn’t pride that she was feeling right now.

  “You were amazing,” Sergeant Pak told her, the admiration in his voice wholly inappropriate for the person who was supposed to be conducting her evaluation. “Perfect. Sun, you are exactly who I’ve been looking for.”

  She planted her feet in front of the man and angled her neck to glare up into his grinning face.

  “What was that all about, mister?”

  His smile vanished. Then Pak’s eyes narrowed and there was a twitch of muscle at his temple. “You will address me as sergeant.”

  Sun crossed her arms. “What the hell was that all about, Sergeant?”

  To say Pak wasn’t familiar with being spoken to in that manner didn’t quite capture the reaction Sun was experiencing full force. If she ever experienced problems with equipment freezing up on an ice world, then all she’d have to do was rile up Sergeant Pak and the anger that was fair boiling out of his ears would free up anything that had seized.

  And that didn’t make sense. Pak didn’t seem the sort to bottle things up when he had something to say, but he was biting his lip. Holding back.

  “I came for a position as a CASPer driver,” Sun told him angrily. “And by the second simulation I was playing squad leader. That’s fine. In my first company, we trained for every role, because if you’re facing a Tortantula horde, you know that specialist and leadership vacancies are going to come up real quick like. And, besides, I think it’s important for everyone in the team to get a feel for how all the specialists
need to operate. But that does not explain why you kept giving me more tests as a company commander. I was commanding a battalion in that last one! Pak, your failing outfit doesn’t have a battalion.”

  “No, but I hope to see the day when we do. What’s your beef? You aced that test.”

  “Of course I did, because I need this job. Let me make myself clear, Sergeant. I saw the way you looked at me yesterday with hunger in your eyes. And the next day, here I am given an extended test that’s given you plenty of opportunity to flatter me not only with praise, but also let me excel in command-role scenarios that you must have set on easy mode because I am just a CASPer driver. Nothing more.”

  “Those tests don’t have an easy mode.”

  “And what a surprise? You warmed the cockpit interior for the desert scenario so here I am sweating into my tee. Are you enjoying the sight, Sergeant?”

  Sun needed the job. So she gave him the space to mumble some kind of apology, but instead he seemed to be so angry that the power of speech was temporarily offline.

  “Look, Sergeant. You might think I am exactly who you’ve been looking for, but I am not interested in you in any way other than as a professional NCO. If you were the last living being in the galaxy, I still wouldn’t be interest in you. Understood?”

  She spotted her kit bag over by the bulkhead and thought of the Besquith perfumed grease in the jar she’d bought yesterday. She’d woken up stinking so much that she’d wiped it off before her evaluation. Now smearing on the revolting concoction didn’t seem so bad; at least it should make Pak run a mile.

  “The CASPer driver doesn’t welcome the attentions of a squad leader,” growled Pak. “Believe me, I have absolutely no troubles on that score. You are so wide of the mark, you’re in another galactic arm altogether.”

  “I bet the other woman testing this morning finished hours ago,” Sun said as she walked across to her bag. “She won’t have spent her day running tests that she didn’t need to take.”