“Tessa Ringclaw, the governing council of Revaulo Space Port hereby revokes your business license for assault and association with necromancy.” The Revaulo woman recorded the message on her tablet and, with a single button, broadcast it across the public communications network on the station.

Bradley had made his way towards the back of the establishment and was inching closer to the door to the kitchen. He was being smart. I reminded myself that I wasn’t the hero, and this wasn’t a fight I could win.

Hell, you just being here will make it worse.

Tessa didn’t bat one gorgeous eyelash at the proclamation. She just stood there as still as that dead planet we crashed the comet into. Then, out of all the possible reactions she could have had, the woman cracked up laughing. “You think…” another laughing fit cut into what she tried to say, and Tessa had to gasp for air. “You idiots think my name is Tessa Ringclaw? You all think that I’d seriously put my real information anywhere near your lizard databases? By the stars you are thick-headed. I’ll just disappear for a week and pop back up and running a completely new bar in a new part of the station with a new name. The best part is that you can’t actually do anything to stop me.” Tessa broke down into giggles again. “You’re own bureaucracy—which you cling to like a safety blanket, by the way—completely cuts your balls off trying to catch me. Look, you’re looking at me right now. You can see my face? I want you to remember this face because I’m not going to change a thing. You’ll walk into a bar for a drink in a week and see me, but damned if you can do anything about it because by then I’ll be someone else and there won’t be a single record chasing me.”

The Valraith Pirates behind the Revaulo guards growled in irritation because they all knew Tessa was right. The Revaulo woman simply glowered. “Why are you telling us this?” she asked.

“I’m distracting you all, you big dumb idiots,” then spinning around to face Bradley and I, who were now just on the edge of the kitchen door, she added, “You owe me a drink. Now run!”

I beamed at her for the briefest of seconds before Bradley grabbed me by the wrist and yanked me through the door. The kitchen didn’t appear to have an exit, but after a second I heard a soft digital beep, and a door opened into the floor. “Do we trust it?” Bradley asked, eying the dark opening leading to who knew where.

“After everything else she’s done, I’m sure as hell trusting it,” I answered and jumped straight into the blackness. At first I couldn’t see anything other than the light streaming in from the opening high above us, but as soon as Bradley joined me in the dark, the door sealed and we were truly in the utter dark. I pushed a small amount of power into my crystal. The indicator light gave us paltry illumination, but it looked like the brightness of a star in comparison. Analogies aside, it gave us enough light to find our way without pulling out our tablets and risk the Revaulo’s tracking us. Facial recognition security and auto-sleep mode were a required feature combination when a person ended up on the bad side of the law as often as not.

We were in an access shaft that allowed maintenance workers to fix things that broke without having to travel far in the tunnels. That meant there would be an exit coming up soon, but apparently Tessa had planned this to be her escape route, and had sealed the first opening we came to. There was an arrow painted on the underside of a metal locking bar, keeping the opening shut from above and pointing the way in the dark for us to follow.

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There’s more to Tessa than I gave her credit for.

I heard a loud clanging from behind us, guessing the authorities had found Tessa’s locking bar. It would buy us some time, but they would eventually pull out a plasma torch and cut right through it. Lucky for us, Tessa had a rocket sled sitting in the tunnel where the access point finally widened. The key was in the ignition, and I turned it, firing up the twin-jets. Bradley hopped on behind me and grabbed me around the waist, holding on for dear life as I let all the power of the thing flood the tunnel with heat. It zoomed off down the tunnel at a breakneck pace, but the fuel tank didn’t last long. It sputtered out, and we slowed to a stop next to a side tunnel heading perpendicular to us.

This tunnel was lit, and we made much better time running down it, only half crouching as we went. I heard echoing voices behind us and figured the Revaulos had made it down to our level. We had enough of a lead that I wasn’t too concerned with our direct pursuit. That was never the problem with escape plans. In space, you couldn’t just run out of town. There were specific access points and our ship was docked in one of them. We would have to make it back to the port and then through security. Once we did all that, we’d need to undock the ship and then make a run for it.

Another red painted arrow appeared in front of us, this time pointing up a metal latter. I climbed up it without hesitation. Tessa hadn’t led us wrong yet, and she didn’t disappoint this time either. We came to a metal grate, and quickly unlocking it from the inside, popped out into an alleyway right next to the port authority building.

Bradley came up right behind me, breathless from the run. “Where did you find that absolute goddess, huh?” he asked.

I smiled and shrugged. “Sometimes I just get lucky, I guess.”

“You think they’ve gotten a notice about us yet?” Bradley asked, peeking around the corner.

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. It’s only been a few minutes. We might just be able to make it through security and undock before they catch on. You paid up, right?”

Bradley smiled. “Yeah, and then some. I left them a little surprise when they try to access the money. Damn Revaulo’s trying to rob us blind with these fees.”

“What’d you do?”

His grin widened. “I put a slider in the code. They’ll get their fee alright, but it’s coming from the personal account of whoever opens the file.”

“You weren’t planning on coming back here, were you?” I asked, feeling a little left out. I would have been more irritated if we hadn’t already needed to make ourselves scarce.

“Whether or not I was, we’re jumping the gap now.” With that last statement, he casually walked around the corner and up the steps to the port authority. I followed him and we went into the lion’s den. I silently thanked the stars our pursuers hadn’t plastered pictures of our faces all over every monitor in the station yet. In fact, we must have had a larger lead than I thought, because we got all the way through security and back to the airlock without so much as a sidelong glance.

Bradley got us into the ship, and I undocked us from their adapter while he fired up the engines. Then, turning to leave, we saw the blockade. “I knew it was too easy,” I muttered under my breath, but Bradley heard me and silently nodded.

The lead ship was a Revaulo cruiser, but clearly they held no qualms working with privateers like the Valraithi. There were no less than three of their ships, all armed to the teeth, behind the lead Revaulo. They didn’t try to call us on our comms. They simply floated towards us, weapons trained on our hull. The Revaulo ship had a power towing system engaged on its front, and I saw the heavy mechanical arm moving forward into position. “Alright. Now’s time for a super awesome getaway plan, trash man.”

“Well, there is one thing we could do,” he answered.

“Which is?”

He spun the ship to the left, our side fin batting the tow arm away, and then he kicked the engines into full gear, blasting up and over the Valraithi blockade. We left the dock and for a whole second we thought we were free until a squadron of Revaulo and Valraith ships swarmed around from the far side of the spaceport. They didn’t try to pull their punches this time. The entire squadron fired on our little bitty junk trawler.

We did the only thing we could. We jumped towards the gap, and they followed us.