Lucky is a Lady – Chapter Three

Fourteen and a half minutes latter, smelling of faintly of jasmine and wearing soft, black slacks and a silky long sleeved white blouse, Lucky exited her bedroom. With a hold out blaster holstered in the small of her back and a retractable synthetic baton in the left low topped black boot, she felt dressed for the occasion. She intended Martyn no harm, frankly expecting some fancy dead man’s switch on his bracelet would send her to the same place she sent him. That was if she could even get the drop on him. No, it was just that without a weapon of some sort on her person she just didn’t feel right.

The smell of a vegetable curry, redolent with exotic spices from three different planets filled her living space. A covered dish sat at one place on her table and a goblet of red wine waited just above her silverware. “Ah, civilization.”

“I’m sorry? You did not find my civilization satisfactory?” Martyn stood at the small book case across from her couch, perusing her compact selection of literature.

“No offense intended Martyn, but a jail’s a jail and I hardly think it was representative of you people or how they live.” She made a bee line for the table and sat down, uncovering the dish and inhaling deeply.

Martyn walked to the table. “I must work on my inflection for sarcasm, Lucky. I don’t appear to have it quite down yet.”

She took a bite of the vegetable medley along with a healthy amount of rice. There were some synthetic elements, but there were also a few legitimately dirt grown vegetable in here. It was lovely. She swallowed and took a sip of wine, nodding. “Yes, yes you do.” She looked up at her guest and captor. “So, you going to see the consul?”

He nodded. “I wished to wait until you were done bathing and changing before I left. I will return later this evening and more than likely shall simply retire to my room. We shall convene to the restaurant tomorrow morning and … compare notes?” He tilted his head.

Lucky chuckled. His look reminded her of a quizzical dog. “I like that idea. If you don’t see me down there by eight hundred hours have them buzz my room. I’ll be here, but I intend to catch up on some natural sleep. The drugs your people gave me,” she felt a twinge of annoyance at the memory, “are still doing a number on me.”

“My apologies.” This time there was a note in his voice that was familiar.

“By George I think you’ve got it.” She looked up at him and winked.”

Martyn nodded curtly. “Excellent. Well until tomorrow then.” He turned without another word and walked to the door.

Watching him go was almost amusing. He had a waddling gait that she had missed by being in front of him since their arrival. If she didn’t know how quickly he moved or that he carried a small arsenal of lethal and non-lethal arms on him, she would have seriously underestimated him. Whether that was simply the way most of his species walked or if it was just him, she couldn’t say. What she did know was that he was more polite than any of the other Vregonians she had met and was positive that that was a front.

His agenda would be served and if he wanted to kill her she would most assuredly be dead and there would be no apologies or second thoughts. She needed to keep that and the fact that he was an alien, well versed in the ways of humans and a representative of an organization not well known for its friendliness to humans. Maybe that was earned by human actions, maybe not, but that hardly mattered. The results would be the same if he decided to take her out and if that time came she needed to be ready. To anyone not in her line of work that may have seemed paranoid. No doubt she was a functional paranoiac, but in a world where there were people out to kill you it was better to err on the side of caution.

Once he was gone, she tucked back into the plate, determined to enjoy Scott Breakall’s fine cooking and the fruits of his sine cupboard. She willed herself to slow down and enjoy the repast, but before she knew if every scrap of food and drop of wine was gone. She was left with a full, warm belly, a tingle on her lips and tongue, and a brief wisp of disappointment that it was all over already.

There was no lingering on that that, because as soon as she finished the buzzer on her door chimed. She checked that the blaster was ready and called, “Who is it?”

The speaker recessed into one wall cut on. “Satan, herself.” Mae’s voice called.

Lucky stood and walked towards the door. “Come in!” At her words the door clicked and slid open revealing Mae. At two meters even and built like a cross between a Reubens painting and an Olympian, she was an imposing figure. If it stopped there it would have been one thing, but she was a more than able business woman and possessed a joy of life that wouldn’t be impaired by any situation. In all the years Lucky had known her, there was no situation she hadn’t been able to handle, except when it came to matters of diplomacy.

Mae swooped into the room, dressed much as she had been in the painting only in red. Arms wide open, she practically scooped Lucky up. The two women embraced for minutes, the two friends enjoying the missed togetherness. Satisfied, Mae pecked her on her forehead and placed her back on the ground. “I hear interesting things Lucky.” Her full lips made a moue. “Why did I have to hear about them second hand?”

Lucky crossed her arms. “Mae, I’ve been on the station for all of what, a half hour? Give me a break already.”

With a mock scowl that creased her smooth forehead, Mae pressed. “You couldn’t call me or send a message.”

Lucky laughed. “It’s amazing that Scott will stay with you if you badger him like this.”

Mae’s face broke into a beaming smile. “Scott stays with me because I’m so damn good in bed. And I’ve made us both rich.”

“Sit, sit. I have a lot to tell you.” Lucky gestured towards the couch. She watched the woman cross over and marveled again at how striking her friend was. It was a shame that there wasn’t a violent bone in her body. A soldier like that would be welcome any time in her group. She was glad that their cover story was simple and so close to the truth. Lying to Mae was going to be hard, but it had to be done.

Mae sat and curled her legs up underneath her. She crossed her arms and waited, not so patiently.

“Can I get you a drink?” Lucky crossed to the little bar.

Mae swiveled and watched her. “Not if that means it’s going to take you a half hour to get to the point.” Her voice raised on the last three words. The mock annoyance was increasingly real.

“Okay, okay.” She poured two sherry’s and walked back to the couch, handing one to Mae. “The Vregonian you’ve already heard about is Martyn. I owe him my life…”

“I like him already.” Mae took a sip of the sweet wine.

“Quit interrupting or I won’t finish the story.” She sipped her own sherry. “The last shipment I road shotgun on got into some trouble. We were stopped by Vregonian Security Forces. Apparently, there was some illicit cargo on board.”

Mae punched a couch cushion. “Jackson. That idiot. I’ll wring his neck for getting you in troub…”

“Mae darling, relax. I don’t think that Jackson even knew about the cargo.” That wasn’t entirely true. He probably did know, but she needed Mae to turn her ire somewhere useful. If it could be harnessed then it was like having a hurricane at your beck and call. “But that’s not important. We were stopped, the Vregonians found it, a shipment of their eggs.”

Mae’s face went dark. Not a look that the faint of heart would want directed at them. “Taking that through Vregonian space is a damned stupid idea.”

“I know that and Jackson knows that, which is why I don’t think he knew. Anyway, we were captured and thanks to Martyn I was able to escape. We boosted a fast ship and here we are. So. I need to find out who was behind that shipment. Aces didn’t tell me, said that the client wanted to keep it hush, hush.” That wasn’t all that unusual. If she pressed him now and he still didn’t tell her that would be strange and she expected it, franky.

“So you need to find Minkus?”

Lucky nodded. “I do and the sooner the better. I want them to know what’s going on with their cargo and I’d like to find out why they’re shipping a cargo like that. More important that that is seeing if they’ve got another shipment that they want guarded and if they want me to go after the original shipment.” That thought had just occurred to her. There might be money in an extraction. It wouldn’t be the first job like that she’d done, but it would be the most challenging. “After all they still have the crew and I doubt the Marshall’s or anyone else will go in after them.

“True. If they haven’t killed them already. Well, all I can tell you for sure about Minkus is that he owes on his last tab and I heard from Taylor”, there was a warmth in the way she said the dock master’s name, “that he was sniffing around yesterday asking some questions. He hasn’t been by here in two days.”

That wasn’t good. Aces hung out here nearly as much as Lucky did and he didn’t live here. Though there was one woman in Mae’s organization that he stayed with as much as he could afford to. Checking with her might not be a bad idea. She would chat up Taylor too. “Are you still crushing on the dock master Mae?” She loved to give her friend a ribbing about her love of older men, particularly the crotchety hangar hound.

Mae nodded vigorously. Her whole body got involved. “If I wasn’t a one man woman.” She left the thought unfinished and drank the rest of the port, her skin flushing all over.

Lucky laughed again, while shuddering at the thought of leathery hands on her own skin. It was an odd sensation, the simultaneous horror and humor. “I don’t see it. Well thanks Mae, for the info. I’ve been properly fed by your lovely husband, and I have a bit of liquid courage in me. Now I need to go find my fixer.”

Mae sat the glass down on the nearby coffee table and stood. She walked over to Lucky and took her in her arms again. “You be careful, sister. I know you walk some dangerous lines. I just think that what you’re dealing with is worse than the mess you’re usually in.”

Lucky rested her head on her beloved friend’s ample breasts. She felt like a child, safe and loved by this amazing person. After a moment she looked up, a few tears tracing her cheeks. “Thanks Mae. I appreciate that. I’ll be careful.”

“Good.” She nodded firmly. “Cause if you get hurt I am so gonna kick your butt.”.” She let Lucky go and stepped back, scrubbing her face and sniffling. “Good luck.” And with that, much as she came, she rushed out without looking back.

A few minutes later, her own face scrubbed free of tear tracks and with a black cape thrown over her shoulder, Lucky headed out into the station’s pseudo night.

Her first goal was to head back to the hanger bay. Kent didn’t exactly live there, though she knew he slept there on occasion, so there was a chance she would miss him if she didn’t go right away. There was activity on the docks at all hours, shipments arriving and departing and being repaired. He felt like he had to oversee it all. His staff was certainly competent, but the old man was like a giant balding mother hen.

She had time for her thoughts as she walked. There were layers to this problem the longer she thought about it. It was possible that there was no brains behind the operation on Bifrost itself. Aces liked to handle all of his business in person. Some thought it was because he was some sort of Luddite. To the contrary he loved technology. He just didn’t trust people. In his line of work it wasn’t advised. Still if the money was right, and in a deal like this it almost had to be, he might be convinced to relax his rules.

Aces had been talking for the last year about quitting the business and just retiring. He had eyes on that young lady and was convinced that she was ‘the one’. He and Lucky spent a few nights with him begging her to explain women to him and crying into his beer when she told him it just wasn’t that simple. Knowing how Mae liked to run things, Lucky knew that Kim, the girl in question, was cagey and was being taught to start her own business. Maybe not quite the same business she was in and in fact probably not that at all, but a real career. Leaving the ‘school’ that she was in early for some middle man even as nice a guy as Aces wouldn’t be the smart choice. Lucky tried to tell him the way of things but he wouldn’t listen and no doubt Kim was taking him for everything she could.

She stopped and thought about how cynical that view was. She shook her head. Even if she was wrong and the girl did want to leave everything behind, that didn’t change the fact that Aces was pulling out all the stops to build his nest egg. That could lead to some really bone headed, amateur hour stunts even from a pro.

She stopped again, getting tired of these revelations. Of course this was the first time she had really possessed the freedom to noodle over the finer points. She was no longer in survival mode. There was some hypocrisy inherent in her accusing her long time friend and co-worker of rushing off half cocked. She had done a fair amount of that over the last few years herself. The tightness of her current schedule precluded her from too much introspection, though. She really needed to find him and deal with the here and now and not the personality failings.

The rest of the walk was spent neither contemplating nor planning. She picked a tune and whistled as she walked. The lift was empty and her whistling bounced off the metal walls ringing back hollow. Once in the hanger proper she walked towards the air control tower. It was a true tower at the center of the hangar. Spiral stairs wound around the column and she took them two at a time, suddenly in a rush to get this thing over with.

The door at the top stopped her cold. There was no glass to see what was inside. Armor glass on three side let them see out, but even that was one way. She pressed the buzzer to let the men inside know that she was waiting. They probably already knew and may have even actively scanned her for weapons. It wasn’t so much paranoia really. Occasionally they had to impound a vessel or its cargo and many an angry spacer got drunk and came up here to pick a bone with the dock hands. No one who was sober even considered it.

“Who is it?” A voice, not Kent’s but one of his lackeys, asked. The sound was tinny and hollow.

“Lucky Goldenstein to see Taylor Kent.” She crossed her arms and waited. They would have picked up her plaster, though probably not the baton in her boot. That didn’t’ get picked up on most scans, the reason that she carried it. She had actually killed more people with it than with her guns.

“Half a minute, Ms. Goldenstein.” The speaker clicked and a few seconds later the door cycled open.

The large, portly chief waited just inside. He was more a grandfatherly figure than any sort of truly imposing man. That may have been because he was smiling though. She had seen him angry and heard him let loose with a tirade that would peel bulkheads.

“Lucky, come on in.” He gestured her towards him.

She came through the door and it cycled shut behind him, hissing as it sealed against any exterior gases or hard vacuum. To her knowledge the shields had never failed and even if they did blast doors would come down in pico-seconds, but extra layers of safety were more than just something to give you warm fuzzies on an orbital.

The circular room had six men, manning various readouts and scanners. Most of them were probably playing cards not thirty seconds ago. Lucky knew that if everything ran smoothly there was really no need for more than one or two people here. The artificial intelligences, though they weren’t truly self aware, that ran most station operations could handle this part as well, but the chief was more than a little distrustful of that level of tech. It was a healthy amount in her opinion.

Kent ushered her to his little office at the back It took up a part of the tower that had no glass. The side nearest the hub of Bifrost where few ships parked and which served as more storage than anything else, was a partial blind spot. Cameras overlooked it, but she knew that there were holes even in those precautions.

He took a seat behind his desk and flicked his fingers at a chair opposite. His gaze fixed on her, nearly boring through. That was partly an optical illusion. The man had no pupils or irises. His eyes were solid gray. You could get vat grown eyes in just about any color or configuration. Most people opted for their birth color, though a few changed iris color and even pupil color. The chief was the first man she had seen with anything quite this odd. It was unsettling and that was probably why, though when pressed he just said it was cheaper.

“So what brings you to my little corner of Bifrost?” His voice held an unaccustomed smile, though it was tinged with wariness.

“So I can’t just visit one of my favorite people on the station? I have to have a reason?”

That earned a laugh. “Sweetheart, don’t try and pull anything like that on me. I know better. You’re too much like your dad and he and I…”

“I know, I know. You and dad pulled more stunts that I’ve even thought about.” Kent and her Dad had gone to Engineering school together. He had been called Lucky too. “So yes, I need something.” If Kent insisted on continuing to think of her as the teenaged daughter of his best friend, rather than the capable adult she had become that was his choice. She had tried time and again to prove to him that that time was behind her, to no avail.

“Let’s hear it. What can I do for you?” He was serious now.

“I need to find Minkus. Mae says that you might know where he is? Says he’s been nosing around her quite a bit lately.” Her voice held a note of hope.

Kent nodded. “Yeah, that layabout has come through here nearly every day. He’s looking for the next big score. He’s also been looking for you.” He paused significantly. “By the way, what was that that you landed on my deck and where have you been?”

That the chief didn’t know what sort of ship they were in was interesting to say the least. Taylor Kent would tell anyone that listened that not only had he forgotten more about ships than most people knew, he relearned everything he had forgotten. “You don’t know what kind of ship that is?” She avoided the second half of his question. Lying to Mae had been hard emotionally, but easy otherwise. Lying to this man would be a near impossibility.

The way his eyes narrowed, he hadn’t missed the dodge. “I’ve consulted some things and done every scan I have and nothing about that space frame or what’s going on inside it is in any of my records or experience.” He sounded both angry and disappointed, with just a hint of intrigue. “So I know what it’s not. It’s not human and it’s not anything alien that we have any record of.”

She smirked at the way he used the word alien. It was a word trained out of most young people’s vocabulary. She herself was just at the age where she knew that using it in certain company was frowned upon and she could usually catch herself. “It’s Vregonian, or at least that’s what I’ve been told.”

Kent made a deep nasal sound, not quite a snort. “Not likely. Not unless the,” he paused, probably about to use an unkind word for the species in question, “not unless they’ve changed their ship design dramatically in the last year or so.”

“Fine. Let’s just say that I don’t know then. My companion says it is and we took it from a Vregonian port.”

“Took it? Is it stolen?” His voice was edged with mock horror.

She nodded. “But it was my only option. Otherwise I’d still be sitting in a swamp somewhere. Don’t worry, it’s not like Asplund is gonna know and even if he did there’s nothing he could do about it.” The head of Bifrost’s security was a stickler, but she knew that even he was a little scared of Kent. “We took the ship and made it here is fast as we could. The job I was on was compromised and so here I sit.”

Kent stroked his face. “So you need to find Minkus and let him know. He’s not going to be thrilled.”

Lucky rolled her eyes. “You don’t have to tell me, but he’s partly to blame. He needs to check his sources and what they really have him shipping and me protecting. If he didn’t ask the right questions or if he looked the other way, I’d snap his neck before I’d let him accuse me of falling down on the job.” She didn’t really sound angry, but she meant every word. Her professional reputation was her currency. So far everything she had told Kent was the truth. “So you don’t know where he is?”

“Nope. I tell you what though, I’m sure he’ll hear through the net that you’re back. When he does he knows where to find you.”

That was true, but then she didn’t know if the man’s head was screwed on tight enough ot be looking. “Did he seem… okay to you?”

Bushy eyebrows crawled together. “A little manic, more manic than usual I mean. If he’s got a big job then maybe that’s a good thing. He’ll want you on it even if you did screw up the last one.” He winked at her.

“Haw haw. You’re funny old man.” That made her feel both better and worse. If he was manic it meant that he was on to something. If he was too manic, that meant something else, though she didn’t know what. She stood. “Okay, well I’ve got one more lead to chase down and then I guess I’ll just wait for him to get me.”

“Why can’t you just message him? I mean he’d respond to your hail wouldn’t he?”

She nodded. “Oh sure, but I want the element of surprise on my side.” She waggled her eyebrows. “So if you do see him, don’t let him know that I’m looking for him. Please?”

“Okay Lucky, I won’t. If I do see him though I’ll let you know.”

Satisfied, she stood. “Thanks for this. Come on over to Mae’s tomorrow and I’ll buy you dinner. We’ll catch up.”

“Sure, sure. You say that about once a quarter. We never do it.” There was a little softness in his words. They weren’t quite sad, but there was regret tingeing them.

“No, I mean it. I know I’ll be on station for a few days at least.”

“Okay ‘Nica.” He was the only one still living even allowed to come that close.

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