Bryce

“Are you sure?” Samira asked.

“No, I’m not, but it’s sabotage or information, and sabotage is the only one we can do anything about right now,” I explained.

Samira thought for a moment before nodding in agreement. We were gathered in the engineer’s workspace deep inside of the maintenance corridors. Thea and I had gone straight there while Sora distracted Dezra in the bar area. Sora was still listening in on the conversation, but could only communicate through Samira’s feed.

Which was just another reason Thea and I needed working implants.

“We’ve only been aboard for four days and most of that time I spent working with the engines. It’s possible that some other critical system was sabotaged, but it would have to be hidden in a way that Sora wouldn’t notice. There isn’t much that’s possible to get past a navigator.”

“Try not to overthink it. Assuming there’s no built-in failsafe, Teolix wouldn’t have had long to do it. There was less than a day between when we agreed to the delivery and when we took control of the ship.”

“Sora doesn’t think Teolix would have risked having a failsafe that can be triggered remotely aboard his own ship,” Samira said. “Which means that if there is sabotage, then it has to have been done by Al after the fact.”

“Do you think you can find it?” I asked.

“If Al did it in a day, then it’ll take me half that time to fix it,” Samira shrugged.

The way Samira spoke could have easily been mistaken as boasting, but I hadn’t known her long, and so far, she had beaten all of her own estimates. She either did things faster or better than she claimed, and it was usually both. The girl was a bit of a pessimist, so if she thought that she could get it done in half a day, then I believed her.

“Let me know if you find something, but try to keep Lysc’s people from knowing you’re looking.” I said.

“Sure, captain, I’ll let you know.”

We left to help Sora entertain our guest while Samira started her investigation. We found Dezra next to a mostly empty bottle of brandy.

“Ah, captain! Congratulations are in order for your swift victory! We were worried that you and your girlfriend had snuck off to a bedroom to celebrate,” Dezra greeted us.

“Thank you, and no, we were discussing some modifications with our engineer,” I replied.

“Not for a lack of trying,” Thea complained. “I’m going to make us a snack before dinner. I hope you like nachos, Dezra.”

Thea jumped over the bar and walked into the kitchen before anybody could comment on her food choice.

I took a seat next to Dezra and Sora poured me a glass of wine, which I took happily. I found myself drinking a lot more than usual this week.

“You shouldn’t let that one go, captain. She’ll make an excellent wife,” Dezra commented.

I nearly choked on my wine. Marriage was the furthest thing from my mind at that moment.

We’d had so many other issues to deal with, that just surviving had been my primary concern, and even before that, I had been on New Eden for the last thirty years. It was an almost exclusively human colony, and I didn’t date humans.

I had completely given up on dating before I met Thea, and marriage wasn’t even on my radar. Admittedly, my romantic life was a little stunted, but I was barely sixty-four years old. Under normal circumstances, I would have at least another three decades until I had to start seriously considering marriage proposals.

Besides, Thea was a devil. I didn’t even know if devils got married or if they did, how that would even work. Hells, I didn’t even know how old she actually was. The more I thought about it, the more I realized just how much there was that I didn’t know about her.

I was feeling like we were really rushing things, or maybe I was just a really shitty girlfriend.

“Hello? Captain? I see what you mean, Sora, I may have accidentally broken her.” Dezra was poking me in the shoulder, and I just glared at her over my wine glass as I held it with both hands.

She’s the one who made me feel like I was a shitty girlfriend.

“Sora, you aren’t bullying Bryce again, are you?”

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Thea came to my rescue from the kitchen, holding a large plate of chips covered in meats, cheeses, and an assortment of other toppings. They looked delicious, if a bit heavy, for a before-dinner snack.

“Oh no, I’m completely innocent, this time it was all Dezra,” Sora pleaded.

“There was no bullying. I had simply told the captain that you would make an excellent wife,” Dezra explained. “You're very powerful and Sora was just telling me you liked to cook and clean.”

Thea was completely speechless, and Dezra seemed to be oblivious to it all. She just reached over and took a chip off of the plate Thea was still holding as she continued to talk.

“Of course, the captain would also make a good wife for you, Thea. She’s very powerful with her magic, has her own starship, and you should have seen how she spoke with the boss. She was respectful but didn’t give ground, even when threatened. Marriage would strengthen your pack, I’m sure of it.”

Thea and I were just stuck, staring at each other. Neither of us knew what to say and based on the red that was threatening to overtake Thea’s face and ears, she was almost as embarrassed by all of this as I was.

Sora came to our rescue. “Dezra, sweetie, I believe you wanted to talk to the captain about the thugs that paid us a visit.”

Their comment interrupted Dezra for just long enough for Thea to set the plate of nachos down and grab a few of the empty glasses from the bar before sprinting into the kitchen. I had never seen Thea this worked up before, and it took every bit of my willpower not to vault over the bar to chase after her.

I had a feeling that we would both need to cool down before we could have that discussion.

“Right, the Syndicate, I wanted to offer our services in disposing of the bodies,” Dezra said.

“What’s that going to cost us?” I asked.

“Nothing, well, mostly nothing. We’ll want to keep their equipment.”

“That seems generous, although I think Thea already grabbed the bat,” Sora said.

“Hah! Well, she can keep the bat, and it’s not as generous as it sounds. These docks are owned by the pack. We keep up with the payments to the Syndicate, which means their trespass broke our agreement.”

“So, you want to send a message?” I asked.

“Yeah, it should discourage them from trying something like this again.”

“Do they try this often?” Sora asked.

“No, there’s been a lot of tension between us recently, but this is the first full incursion into our territory. I mean, no offense, captain, but I’ve never heard of you and this ship’s pretty nice. I expect this was just a few pups trying to cut their teeth on an easy target,” Dezra explained.

“You’re probably right. A lack of reputation might turn out to be a real problem,” I sighed.

“Next time you kill over a dozen people, maybe leave a few alive to talk about it, eh?”

“We left you alive, didn’t we?” Sora asked.

“You are a century too young to threaten me, little pup.” Dezra laughed.

I wasn’t so sure about that, but it probably wasn’t worth arguing. Besides, we needed allies where we could find them, and the Drassun pack seemed like a much better option than the local branch of the Syndicate. At least the pack wasn’t actively hunting Sora and Samira.

“What Sora meant to say is that if somebody is going to spread our reputation, then we’d rather it not be a few over-ambitious Syndicate goons,” I explained.

“Well, if you pull off the boss’s job, I don’t think you’ll need to rely on others to spread your reputation.”

“What do you know about the job?” I asked.

“Nothing I can tell you without pissing off the boss.” Dezra smiled. “Besides, Nikko is here. I’ve got to go down and help or I’ll never hear the end of it.”

Dezra finished her drink before standing up and lazily stretching. I wanted to talk to Sora alone and Thea hadn’t returned from the kitchen, which worried me. I shot Sora a look, and they nodded a confirmation.

“Go ahead without us. If we left the bar like this, then we would have to answer to Thea.” I explained.

It was a weak excuse, but Dezra just smiled and waved it off as she left.

“Go and deal with your girlfriend, captain. We can handle the crates without you.”

I turned towards Sora as Dezra left. They were busy collecting the glasses off the bar and putting away the nearly empty bottle of brandy.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“About which part? The Syndicate members we killed, the drunk werewolf, the mystery job, the probably sabotaged ship, or your devil girlfriend freaking out about marriage?”

I was pretty sure that at least two of those were Sora’s fault. Even so, they had a point, there was a lot going on right now.

“We can leave the sabotage to Samira for now. Let’s focus on the Syndicate and the job, which probably involves them.” I replied.

“I was thinking the same thing. Dezra mentioned the pack was having issues with the Syndicate in the past and she let slip that they wouldn’t be a problem for much longer.”

“How do you feel about a job fighting the Syndicate?” I asked. “My plan was to avoid them for as long as we could and if the job is as big as Dezra made it sound, word will probably get out about it.”

“We’re pretty far from Mother’s quadrant and I doubt she spread word about our escape, it would make her seem weak.” Sora shrugged. “It’s risky, but I think any job we take will be, and the Syndicate is prolific enough that we won’t be able to avoid them entirely.”

“We don’t need to take any job, not right now anyway. I have a little over two million credits stored away, we have plenty of food, and it’s not like we need fuel,” I explained.

“We’ll need work eventually and I’d rather we kept as much of a buffer as we can. I’ve had more than a few hungry nights this last year because I couldn’t get work, which is an experience I’d rather not repeat.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Would you mind asking Dezra or Nikko if they know a good provisioner?” I asked. “Also, let them know that I’ll be taking Thea to the dinner tomorrow night.”

“I’ll ask about a gift to bring, too.” Sora added.

“Thanks, now head down to supervise. We wouldn’t want our guests to think that we forgot about them.”

I took the empty glasses from Sora and carried them into the kitchen. I figured Thea would forgive my trespass this one time.