Cort Valez had known the bartender of Kwan’s since her arrival on Drift World eight years before. Sneet was a Doubian and they were a notoriously greedy species—their entire culture revolved around business and making money. Sneet’s brother owned Kwan’s. Nobody knew where the name of the place had come from. It had passed through several pairs of hands over the decades, to the point where the tale of its origins had been lost. But Sneet’s brother cared little about putting his own stamp on the place. All he cared about was making profit. He installed Sneet to operate the place and told him that under no circumstances was he to change a thing about the place. A bar like that relied on repeat custom. The only thing that would change would be the face of the person pouring drinks behind the counter.
It was Sneet who helped Cort Valez find her footing in Space Port 66. Told her who to approach for work and who to avoid at all costs. It was also Sneet who introduced Valez to Zel Nekra, a criminal facilitator. Nekra provided security and protection to some of the biggest criminals on Drift World. But he rarely presented himself to clients in person. Fearing attempts on his life, Nekra operated exclusively through representatives working on his behalf.
Once Cort Valez had earned his trust, she found herself installed in Space Port 66 as one of Zel Nekra’s representatives. For allowing her to sit in Kwan’s all day, and for throwing clients her way, Sneet received ten percent of whatever Valez made, which was ten percent his brother didn’t have to know about. He’d cut a similar deal with Captain Hugh Legard, too.
Secretly, Sneet had been saving to buy his own place and crawl out from under his brother’s shadow, though by the time Aurora March walked through the door, he was still aways off from his goal.
When March exited Kwan’s, Valez had left her table and wandered up to the bar.
“Is it true?” Sneet asked her.
“About the bounty?”
The Doubian nodded.
“Oh yeah.”
“We should cash in on it ourselves,” Sneet said bitterly. “Before someone else does.”
Valez pulled a face. “You don’t know her by reputation, do you?”
“No, should I?”
Valez whistled through her teeth. “Trust me, that woman is a real piece of work.”
“Didn’t look so special to me.”
“That’s because you don’t know what you’re looking at,” Valez told him. She patted the bar top. “I’m going to get out of here. Things are in motion now. I should tell Nekra that March is in town.”
“How big is the bounty on her head?” Sneet asked.
“Big,” Valez said and left.
She took a slow walk in the sun and used her comm pad to contact Zel Nekra. She never had any way of knowing if he was on Drift World or not. Sometimes he was, sometimes he wasn’t. But she knew never to be lulled into a false sense of security. Always expect him to be nearby. Because of his paranoia about getting taken out, Nekra would only communicate via encrypted message, bounced through several different services in order to hide their origin. The comm pads of his employees were the only devices encoded to read what was sent—to anyone else intercepting the messages, they would appear as gibberish.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Nekra took his own security as seriously as he treated anyone else’s.
AURORA MARCH IS HERE IN SPACE PORT 66. SHE IS LOOKING FOR JED TEAGUE.
His reply was instant.
YOU KNOW THE PLAN.
Valez stopped walking to compose her next message. Her thumbs flew across the on-screen keyboard as she typed it out.
TEAGUE IS A PROBLEM. THIS GOES BEYOND WHAT YOU EMPLOYED ME TO DO.
She waited for the response. It took longer than she thought it would.
IF YOU ARE INCAPABLE OF DOING WHAT YOU ARE PAID TO DO I WILL FIND SOMEBODY WHO CAN.
This was what she had feared all along.
I WILL GET IT DONE.
Valez put the comm pad away.
She didn’t like this.
Setting a trap and then luring March into it . . . it was a risky move. One that could get her killed. And while Valez had the trap in place, she hadn’t yet had time to figure out how she would actually lure March to it. She knew her best bet was to somehow convince March of Teague’s whereabouts whilst keeping herself out of things.
It was easy for Nekra to give his orders and expect her to carry them out to the letter without a grunt of dissent. But it wasn’t him on the ground risking his life to satiate Jed Teague’s thirst for vengeance. It would have been so much easier to hide Teague away until his new ID could be forged. Then she could have arranged to have him shipped off Drift World to start a new life, with a new identification, someplace else.
But that wasn’t enough for Teague. He wanted revenge. He wanted to take Aurora March prisoner and do whatever it was he planned on doing to her.
It didn’t sit right with Valez.
There was an abandoned store on the next corner, with an old awning stretched over its entrance. She passed it, as she had a hundred times before, and failed to notice the figure in black pressed against the wall—until she felt the blunt end of a blaster against her temple.
“Not another move,” March told her.
Valez swallowed. She hadn’t expected this.
“Where’s your security detail?”
“I don’t have one.”
That gave March pause. “Who’s got eyes on me, then?”
“No one. I hadn’t put that in place yet. I figured you’d be kicking about town for a while longer. I would have had it up and running in the next hour or so.”
“If you were doing your job properly, you’d have known I was here the minute I arrived on Drift World,” March told her.
“I would have, if you were required to give your identification when you land . . .”
“Get over here,” March ordered, pulling Valez to one side. Now she had the blaster jammed hard against her ribs. “Let me see your ID chip.”
Valez offered her wrist to her willingly and watched as Aurora March scanned it with a handheld device. “Are you going to kill me?”
“Quiet.” A second later, the bounty hunter’s eyes read what was on the screen. “You are who you say you are.”
“I never claimed to be anything else,” she said as March patted her down for weapons. “I’m unarmed.”
“You said you had a blaster back at the bar.”
“Haven’t you ever heard of a bluff?”
March assessed her. “Who do you work for?”
“That’s not important,” Valez told her.
The bounty hunter smirked. “You think you’re in control here? You think you’ve got the upper hand in this situation? I ask the questions and you provide the answers. That’s how this work. Now tell me who you work for.”
“Zel Nekra. He runs all the security contracts on Drift World. There are several of us working for him, planetwide. I take on all the contracts here in Space Port sixty-six.”
“You’re hiding Jed Teague, aren’t you?”
“I can’t answer th—”
March jabbed the blaster even harder against her side. “Tell me,” she demanded.
“Yes,” Valez said, wincing.
“Where?”
“I can take you to him.”
“How far?”
“We’re close.”
March stepped away. She waved her on with her blaster. “Lead on.”
Looks like it’s time to spring the trap already, Valez thought. I just hope this works.