‘Surprise!’ I dropped the pistol and the expression on his face made a journey from fear to disbelief then anger and finally relief.

‘What the...what? Aia? Ursana said Colleen killed you.’ I started laughing and collapsed next to him, falling on my back and teeming with relief that this whole thing was finally, mostly over. Ammet stood up and stared at me as I laughed uncontrollably.

Once I regained some semblance of composure, I followed Ammet into his study and filled him in on what had happened.

‘The look on your face.’ I was still chuckling but knocked it off as he handed me a drink.

‘You’re not out of the woods, yet, Aia.’ He sat behind his desk and put his feet up, enjoying the temporary victory. ‘She had a loyal following and someone will come looking for her, or you.’

‘Yeah, I know. Right now, they all think she’s alive and well and making you pay for what you did.’ I held up my glass. ‘Do you mind if I crash here for a few days?’

‘It’s fine, but I’ll have my men dispose of the bodies and remove her transponder and attach it to an outgoing cargo vessel so you can’t be tracked here. If I were you, I would keep an eye on her messages and continue to be Colleen, at least for now. You’re supposed to be dead and anyone with half a brain will come looking for you if they realize Colleen is the one who was relieved of life.’

I nodded my head in agreement, knowing that Ammet had a better grasp of the structures of power than I. He sent me to my usual room and I replicated another jumpsuit, extremely relieved to be out of Colleen’s bad guy attire for now and swearing off caftans permanently. After a good steam and bath, I was feeling triumphant.

I headed back to the study and took a second to peek in on Feros. He was elated to see me and pinned me against the wall, kissing me furiously and tugging at my clothes. I pushed him away.

‘Come find me later. I have to talk to your dad now.’ He reluctantly let me go and I blew him a kiss on the way out. I fixed my clothes and hair, took a couple of deep breaths and made my way back to the study.

Ammet had the brick of Oranium on his desk and offered me a seat across from him.

‘I’m still trying to figure out where they got this from. It’s a shame you killed those Nollers before finding their source.’

‘Well, that was the original job, not smuggling rare metal.’ I wasn’t interested in finding the source, just getting rid of what I had.

‘Who hired you?’ I shrugged, trying to remember where I had gotten the job.

‘I think it was from a message board. The client was anonymous.’ I thought about it for a moment. ‘I was just supposed to contact them when Daden was dead and they would wire the money to my work account. The usual arrangement.’ I tried to remember if there had been anything odd about the posting, but couldn’t come up with anything.

‘I guess it could have been totally unrelated.’

‘So, about that Oranium. Any ideas about what I can do with it now?’

‘Thanks to you, Manuk Kai probably won’t be doing any trading for a while.’ I felt a very light tinge of guilt. ‘I would go into Colleen’s contacts and see if there is anything about who she was planning to sell it to. You could just complete the trade and have the money sent to an anonymous account, there would likely be no questions asked.’

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

It was a good idea, even though I was ready to be done with Colleen last week. Finding someone to deal with me would be tough, but there should be plenty of scumbags who would be willing to talk to someone they thought was Colleen. I chatted with Ammet a while longer and got up to go to my room.

‘Aia. Feros is engaged again. After this visit, he’s off limits- at least until after the nuptials. Understand?’ Ammet gave me a stern look and I knew that I owed him at least this.

‘Am I invited to the wedding?’ I winked at him and headed up to my room.

After Feros fell asleep, I was too wired to relax and began to think about the Oranium. I quietly pulled myself out of bed and went to the desk to start looking through her contacts.

There were names I had only heard about in news feeds. Criminals, politicians and lowlifes who were famous across the galaxy for their wealth and greed. She had profiles and secrets on each and every one of them, obviously blackmailing them for favors. As I made my way through the list, I was amazed at the amount of power she had been able to amass. Her credit account was accessible and I transferred the bulk of her personal wealth to several anonymous accounts- she owed it to me for the hassle of evading her. I made a mental note to forward some to Manuk Kai later as an apology for what he went through.

I spent hours going through the names and details and couldn’t help but look up myself. I saw a picture of Rem and me right after my escape from the camp on Io. A flood of memories came back and I remembered how scared I had been and the realization that my freedom meant infinite possibilities. Would the person in that photo even recognize who I was now?

‘Who’s that?’ I didn’t hear Feros sneak up behind me. He began kissing my neck and I shut the monitor off.

‘An old friend. Did I wake you?’ He pulled my robe around my shoulders and cupped my breasts in his hands.

‘I realized you weren’t next to me, so yeah.’ I turned around and led him back to bed.

After another round, I was finally able to fall asleep. I dreamed about Colleen. She was floating out to sea, wearing the caftan I had dressed her in. A trail of blood streamed behind her and she looked peaceful, but it wasn’t the face that I knew- she was rotten, with her flesh peeling away from her skull. She opened her eyes, stared at me and hissed.

I awoke with a start and got out of bed. I pulled on my robe and wandered down to the kitchen where Ammet was reading his morning newsfeed.

‘Good morning, Aia. Did you sleep?’

‘Yeah, some.’ I replicated some coffee and a bag of Choco-no-nos™ and perched on a stool at the counter.

Ammet shook his head, but didn’t chide me. I luxuriated in the feeling of not being chased and coming in possession of an extraordinarily large sum of credits. At this point I could probably just retire, but the lure of the money from the sale of the Oranium was just too tempting and I wanted to make sure I had enough to take care of myself and Rem.

Feros stumbled in and gave me a sloppy kiss before spotting his dad and immediately retreating back to his room. Ammet rolled his eyes in our direction, obviously looking forward to finally marrying him off.

‘Any luck with Colleen’s contacts?’

‘Not yet, but I did uncover some very interesting information about you.’ He raised an eyebrow at me. ‘Consider that file deleted.’ I finished my coffee and went over to the monitor where I loaded the contents of the information. After all he had done for me, I was more than willing to share.

‘This is very interesting, Aia.’ A few messages had come through earlier in the morning, but nothing urgent and I responded with as much venom as I could muster. Most of her organization was run through smaller districts and she only needed to make high level decisions, which mostly involved deciding whether to kill someone or blackmail them.

‘If you want, we could work together to maintain her network for a while longer. You make a very convincing Colleen and I know who most of these people are. Working together, we could wring more money out of them than you could alone.’ It was actually a good idea.

‘Would they be able to trace the communication signals back to you?’ He shook his head.

‘I could easily reroute them through relay stations so no one could pinpoint the source. That’s how I normally do business anyway.’ He sounded like he knew what he was talking about and the additional income could benefit us both.

‘Deal.’ He took a few steps back and crossed his arms as we carefully inventoried the information on the screen in front of us.