It sure didn’t. The morning started with one of the agents on the docking platform.

He was alone, as far as Gaylen could tell, and even seemingly unarmed. He stood near the tower door, making no attempt to conceal himself. It was the kicker; the one Gaylen had spent most of that fight by the car contending with. He was well-built under those unremarkable clothes, fair-skinned, and handsome in a way, if one ignored the cold stare and the air of arrogance.

All of this Gaylen saw via the ship’s exterior cameras. After gathering the crew, he then activated the cargo bay ramp, and raised his gun as it lowered. Everyone else did as well. The man did not react to the firing squad. Perhaps he’d expected it. When nothing happened after the first few seconds, Gaylen walked a few steps down towards the platform, toward the agents. He kept the gun aimed, though he knew perfectly well that the corp had cameras on him. They probably wouldn’t pay it any heed unless a shot was actually fired.

Gaylen reached the bottom of the ramp, and stayed there. Still the agent remained calm, in that arrogant sort of way, and simply stared back, past the barrel of Gaylen’s pistol. He probably had an energy shield active, but it wouldn’t hold up against the entire crew unloading on him.

“Talk,” Gaylen told him.

The agent finally took his eyes off him, to give the others a slow look. Gaylen heard a couple of them come down to join him, but kept focusing on his target. The man ended his sweep back on Gaylen.

“That was well done, I must admit,” he finally said, though his face didn’t lose any of that edge. “More than I expected.”

Gaylen wanted to sneer at him, to tell him to fuck off, to refuse a civil conversation with an enemy, as he usually did. But the agents had made a mistake in coming here at all, and maybe, just maybe, he might let something slip.

“I’ve been flying for a while,” Gaylen said instead. “Not my first fight. And you?”

“I am proven.”

“A proven failure, as of yesterday,” Ayna said teasingly.

The Heg agents looked back at her.

“Shut up creature. Humans are talking.”

Ayna inhaled.

“You didn’t say I was wrong…” she said, under her breath but very much meant to be heard.

“So you’re a full-blooded Heg man, then?” Gaylen said, and long experience helped him swallow his reflexive disgust.

The man’s eyebrows did a little upward bounce, as if he’d been mildly insulted.

“The Hegemony of Man,” he corrected. “The bastion of order and strength in a broken galaxy.”

“The Authority echoes that sentiment,” Gaylen reminded him. “And it has been making quite a mess of things on its short ride into oblivion.”

“Ashes can be built on,” the agent countered. “But yes, this is what happens when jumped-up pirates get ambitious. They rush things.”

“Is that what you believe in? Building?”

“I believe in order.”

“Is that why you types make friends with starport gangs and literal pirates?”

“Garbage can be recycled and shaped into something useful. One just needs to get rid of the truly unsalvageable. As I said: Discipline. The State.”

“You believe that?” Gaylen asked. “You think this place can be disciplined?”

“I know what you’re trying to do,” the agent told him. “And I am on guard against it. I am here to make you an offer.”

“I am listening.”

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“Leave,” the Heg man told him firmly. “Just leave. I will not pursue, nor put out feelers for you once my task here is done. You and your team are more than I expected, but I will account for that next time. You are tough for spacer trash, but that is still all you ultimately are. We are professionals, and you are getting involved in a game that is far above you. But you are an additional task, and sweeping you aside would take time and effort better spent elsewhere. So that is my offer: Just leave. Today.”

“And if we don’t?” Gaylen asked.

He hated idiot questions like that, but the more the man’s mouth ran, the better the odds of something spilling out by accident.

“I told you, I know what you’re doing. If your ship is still planetside come nightfall, I’ll assume you mean to see this through. And I will remove you all from the game table.”

The man turned and the door opened to give him passage. Then it closed, and everyone lowered their guns. Gaylen still kept his drawn, though.

He finally looked to his side. Kiris had joined him, only half a step further back. The Heg agent hadn’t done as much blurting as he’d hoped for, but he’d still made a mistake in exposing himself to a Chanei’s observation for an extended period like that. She had that look of hers; the one that meant she was digesting her findings.

“Nobody say anything just yet,” Gaylen said, as he turned to face the rest of the crew. “Jaquan, make sure he didn’t leave any little secrets behind.”

“Right.”

His friend hurried to the engine room and came back with his biggest, bulkiest set of goggles, and cycled through different vision modes in search of any tiny flecks of heat, electricity, or waves that might hint at a listening device or some sort of trap.

“Nothing,” he concluded, and Gaylen didn’t insult him by asking if he was sure.

“Inside,” he said instead, and as the cargo ramp closed everyone focused on Kiris.

“Interesting…” Kiris said to herself.

“What?” Jaquan asked. “What did you pick up?”

“Hatred for myself and Ayna, as expected,” Kiris told him. “Arrogance and anger, to cover up deeply buried insecurity. As I said: Expected. But…”

She narrowed her eyes as she looked to the side, doing just a bit more thinking before she spoke again. Gaylen found himself intrigued.

“He was afraid,” she then said. “Quite afraid, in fact.”

“Because… you guys got away from his team?” Ayna asked, with disbelief Gaylen found justified.

“No, that doesn’t really add up, does it?” Kiris said. “But that’s what I saw in him. He is afraid of us, and that’s why he wants us gone without more fighting. Not convenience. Personal fear.”

No one spoke for a few seconds.

“Weird,” Herdis then said.

“Yes,” Gaylen agreed.

In his own estimation, yesterday’s fight was a rather embarrassing blotch on his record. Yes, they’d given the agents enough trouble to escape intact, but that was all. A Heg black ops demon shouldn’t have been that shaken by being fought to a draw.

“Well, we’ll keep it in mind,” he then told everyone. “Maybe we’ll come across an explanation. We have fifteen hours of daylight to go. I don’t see his deadline as some sort of promise, but if he really is that spooked, and if we’re careful about not drawing attention to ourselves… maybe the green jackets will be our only concern until nightfall.”

“One can hope,” Ayna said.

“Yeah,” Gaylen said. “Hope is… an okay thing.”

They got ready for a busy day filled with a variety of possible challenges. Herdis had prepared booster patches for everyone, custom calibrated for each person, and now doled them out. Gaylen took his and put it on his neck. The thin little thing adjusted to the colour of his skin to become nearly invisible. If his heart rate dropped below a certain level, it would inject him. Herdis reminded everyone to take it off before going to bed.

There was a change of clothes, to be less immediately recognisable to their enemies. Kiris covered up as she usually did, and Ayna copied her. They all geared up, armed up, and brought nutrition bars.

Getting weapons past scanners was always a bit of a gamble, unless one was dealing with obviously crappy and outdated tech. And that wasn’t counting the possibility of a random manual search. But a dangerous life taught one to seek out the very best case lining possible, and nothing happened as they brought their guns into the tower, and down to the ground.

The core had a couple of companies that rented out ground vehicles, and the car they’d ordered was waiting in a lot as they exited. There was an entirely real possibility that the agent, knowing which tower they were in, had hidden a camera somewhere, but that was yet another gamble they just had to make.

It was an eight-seater, mostly intended, from what Gaylen could tell, for tourist-style forays into the forests. There were lightweight repulsors for clearing obstructions, but it was very much a ground-car. The windows were tinted, which gave them some blessed cover, and once inside Jaquan opened one of his bags and got started.

An engineer’s job was as much prevention as anything else, and with a bit of help as needed he now glued sheets of armour fibres on the inside of the chassis. He started with the walls, but there was no reason to leave the roof and floor out, and so he didn’t. Windows were always a weak spot, but they were made slightly less so by ultra-thin sheets, which had the added bonus of one-way visibility. All of it was held in place by the stuff Jaquan used for quick, makeshift repairs. If everything went smoothly from here on out they might have the time to clean the vehicle up before returning it. More likely they would simply forfeit the deposit, and add it to Fredrak’s bill. The man had access to government pockets, after all.

“And now we set off,” Jaquan said, and took the wheel.