20

The next two bars turned out to have espresso machines, at least, which allowed Kira to follow Konrad’s example of burying bad coffee under sugar and milk. She’d once been able to drink any coffee black, but Redward truly had spoiled her.

The complex flavored lattes also kept them waiting in the bars for long enough to eavesdrop around. They hadn’t heard anything suggesting there were tramp owner-operators on Guadaloop Actual at all—which suggested that either they’d misjudged which bars the tramp crews would hang out in...

Or that Guadaloop Actual itself was too expensive for tramp freighters. There were other orbitals for cargo transfer, after all. Guadaloop Actual was just the one attached to the orbital elevator, which made it the most efficient…and hence the most expensive to dock at.

Still, her worst-case scenario was that the exchange office’s staff would be able to tell her where to look to find captains looking for a quick charter. Most likely, the office would be able to help them set up exactly the type of booking they needed.

It was just almost certainly going to take longer than Kira liked.

“Another bar up ahead,” Bertoli said. “We’re still a good ten minutes’ walk from the exchange office, unless we want to find the transit system?”

“Walking is good for us,” Kira replied. “I don’t even want to think about how many calories are in those damn lattes.”

She wasn’t one to count calories or watch her diet or weight—she spent enough time exercising one way or another to not have to worry about it—but multiple flavored lattes sounded worrisome even to her.

“Let’s check out that ba—”

A freight truck hit her in the middle of her back, smashing her forward and sending her sprawling onto the ground. The entire dispersal net buried underneath the leather of her jacket flashed to hot, the heat almost scalding even through her shipsuit.

“Down, down!” Bertoli snapped.

Kira was still blinking blearily when O’Mooney grabbed her and started pulling her across the metal floor. A second blaster bolt hammered into the floor where she’d been lying—and she heard the distinct sharp buzzing of a military-grade stunner as Bertoli returned fire.

“I’m fine,” she finally managed to gasp to O’Mooney. “Help me up.”

The grip shifted, helping lever Kira to her feet—and into the doorway of the bar they’d been headed toward. O’Mooney had her own stunner out. It was an ugly-looking heavy pistol shape, with a two-part folding stock that locked onto the wielder’s forearm to control recoil.

“I’m fine,” Kira repeated. “Go.”

More blaster fire echoed in the hallway, and Kira hoped that at least some of it was from Guadaloop security forces. Her people were a long way from Redward, and she hadn’t spent the time and money to pick up new weapons licenses for Guadaloop Actual.

Their stunners were pushing the limit of what was authorized for civilian use aboard the station, but they weren’t carrying blasters at all. From the growing bruise and likely heat rash on Kira’s back, someone else was.

“Em?” a nervous looking young woman hailed her. It took her a moment to realize the local was the bartender slash barista serving the bar. “You okay?”

“I’ve been shot,” Kira said drily. More blaster fire echoed outside. “But I’m fine.”

“I called station security, but the response time is six minutes,” the bartender said grimly. “I’m…guessing none of those blasters are yours?”

A scream outside cut off with distinct finality, and Kira drew her own stunner.

“None of them,” she said calmly, locking the weapon onto her wrist. “Keep your head down, Em. Sorry to have brought this to your bar.”

“Ahem,” someone coughed, and Kira looked over to see a scrawny-looking man with a ragged white beard watching her. Like her, he wore a jacket over a shipsuit. Unlike hers, the jacket was a relatively standard plastic faux-denim material—and had clearly seen a lot of heavy wear over the years.

“I like this bar,” the bearded man noted, producing the blaster version of her arm-locking stunner and snapping it into place. “Ramirez, Martinez, on me.”

Two more people emerged from the booth behind the stranger: a man and woman, both clearly in their late thirties. All three of the strangers were dark-skinned, with similar angular features that suggested some familial relationship.

And all three were clearly armed with personal blasters.

“My name is Tomas Zamorano,” the ragged beard told her. “Would you like some help, Em?”

“My people have stunners,” Kira said. “I’d love any help you can give.”

“Thought so,” Zamorano replied. “Baile Fantasma—let’s go!”

With a hopeful smile, Kira followed the three spacers out the bar door.

* * *

The thoroughfare had emptied in the moments Kira had been in the bar. There were blast marks scattered across the walls, and a mobile repair pod had ground to a halt in the middle of the corridor. The pod’s driver was on the ground, very clearly dead, and both Konrad and Bertoli were hiding behind the vehicle.

O’Mooney was tucked into the doorway of a convenience store a few meters from the bar. She was slumped to the floor, curled around a wound of some kind but still holding her stunner level and firing the occasional blast along the corridor.

The hiss-crack of multiple blasters told Kira their attackers hadn’t gone anywhere—and drew her attention to them. There was no way in hell the black-cloaked figures with the blaster carbines had gone unnoticed prior to opening fire—but she recognized them.

The outfits were a hologram, an unidentifiable but standard image created to conceal the identity of the Kaiser’s assassins. What the hell were Brisingr Shadows doing in Guadaloop?!

She opened fire, her stunner jerking back against her hand with recoil as she shot at the lead figure. Her emergence took them just enough by surprise that she managed to land the charge. The Shadow stumbled backward, whatever defensive equipment they had insufficient to negate the full impact.

The other two Shadows were readjusting their fire already—but Zamorano and his crew had also been identifying the threat. Blaster fire cut through the Shadows like a sword of deadly plasma. One of them went down instantly—and more stunner fire from Kira’s companions caught the same Shadow she’d shot.

She could hear running footsteps in the distance—hopefully station security—as she slid in behind the wrecked pod with her boyfriend and bodyguard.

There was another crackle of blaster fire from Zamorano’s people, and then silence fell in the corridor.

“Clear,” a voice declared.

“Clear,” Zamorano replied. “Check on the wounded woman, Martinez.”

“On it,” the young woman agreed.

Kira gestured for Konrad and Bertoli to follow her as she headed for O’Mooney. The redheaded mercenary looked up at the four people converging on her with a pained smile.

“I’m not fine,” she whispered. “I think I’ll live, but…”

“We’ll get you a doctor,” Kira promised. “Let me see.”

“I have a medkit,” Martinez told them, the spacer woman producing the case from inside her coat. “Should be able to patch you up until medical gets here.”

O’Mooney nodded, winced and lifted her arm from where she was covering the blast wound. It looked bad—a direct hit had burned through her concealed dispersal vest and shipsuit alike. Her skin was just gone across a six-centimeter chunk of her stomach.

“This will hurt,” Martinez warned—and had a plasti-skin spray going before O’Mooney could say a word. “Just covering muscle,” she continued after the mercenary had finished swearing. “Guts weren’t burned through; your armor did its job. Not as well as we’d like, of course, but it did its job.

“Station security will get you to a doc. You’ll be fine.”

“Thank you,” Kira told the woman. “And your…boss?”

“Boss,” Martinez confirmed. “Third cousin twice removed, something like that? Really just my boss.”

“Thank you, Ercilia,” Zamorano said, materializing out of nowhere. “Josue is talking to the security; I wanted to let you deal with your woman. She okay?”

“She needs a doctor,” Kira replied. “Which means I need to talk to security anyway.”

“That’s how it goes,” he agreed calmly. “Lieutenant Sanna is decent folk; she’ll take statements while you rush the Em to medical. I’m going to be the one in real trouble, anyway.”

“They came after me,” Kira argued.

“Yes, but I killed two people and you didn’t,” Tomas Zamorano said calmly. “You’re going to make that up to me, aren’t you, Em…”

“Riker,” Kira told him, carefully using the fake name she’d used in the past. “Kira Riker. And yes, I owe you, Em Zamorano.”

“It’s Captain Zamorano,” he told her with a chuckle. “And good. I like people who recognize their debts.”

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