Gaylen was flung back into a wall. The back of his head impacted hard, he slumped down, and for a few seconds or minutes all he saw was bright spots, sparks and smoke, and everything was swirling around. His hand wanted to clench around a gun, but the rifle had flown off somewhere and he couldn’t quite get his arm to move.

“I knew it!” said a familiar voice, close but made distant by his ringing ears. “I just knew it!”

Out of the smoke of the blast strode Evesa Karn, wearing her ginger coat, with the pirate tattoos on display and a grenade launcher in her hand. Several more figures followed on her heels.

“If you were going to hide that damned thing on Uktena in the first place, of course it was going to be here.” The pirate came to a stop in front of Gaylen. She slung the launcher over her shoulder and drew a pistol with a happy grin. “I just never thought you’d actually let something like that out of your grip. Boy, have you led me on a merry chase for nothing.”

Gaylen looked to his left. Fredrak was slumped face-down, blood pumping out of his neck at a pace that killed a man in very short order. Kiris had taken some shrapnel, but looked more disoriented than anything else.

The pirate leader leaned down in his face and reached under his coat, looking very pleased with herself. Gaylen pictured how he could grab the woman, twist that gun out of her grip and use her as a shield against the other pirates. But his body wouldn’t move just yet.

“Here we are,” Karn said as she took out his pistol and stuck it in her belt. “And let me guess... another one?”

She found the pistol from Nokior and flung it aside. Then she moved over to Kiris. Gaylen’s vision stabilised a bit and he felt more control over his limbs, but the pirates were all watching him gun in hand. He felt blood seep down from his scalp.

“My, you ARE pretty,” Karn as she turned Kiris around to face her. “And alive.”

The pirate turned her attention back to Gaylen.

“So here’s the deal, spacer boy: You lead me to the safe you used and open it, or I blow one of her limbs off and ask again.”

She took one of his arms and a pock-faced pirate took the other, and they hauled him to his feet. Gaylen’s balance was still on vacation, but he managed to stagger on, playing it up a bit for the sake of appearing weak. A tall, bony woman in ill-fitting armour took one of Kiris’s legs and a dark-looking man took the other and they dragged her along. The last two, a man in a red jumpsuit and another with an obviously cybernetic arm, attached breaching charges to Uktena Safety’s sturdy main door.

Gaylen kept quiet, taking in weapons and armour, size and weight, age and steadiness of nerves, every little detail that might make a difference. His ears still rang, though less loudly than before, and blood seeped out from various spots on his body. He subtly tested the state of his limbs as the charges burned through the armoured door.

“You know, I didn’t hear you agree,” Karn said and poked her pistol barrel against Gaylen’s temple. “Are you going to give me my prize?”

“Fine,” he replied curtly. He caught a glimpse of Kiris. She didn’t seem to have come away from the blast any worse than he had.

“Fine,” Karn repeated. “Man, you’re boring.”

The door opened as the locks were burned through. The lights within activated automatically, and the pirates didn’t delay.

“You two, stand guard,” Karn said to the jumpsuit and the cyborg, and indicated either side of the door. Then she and the pocked one pushed Gaylen in, while the others continued dragging Kiris. Inside were rows of booths, privacy curtains pulled aside on most of them, one sturdy safe after another gleaming dully in the minimal lighting.

“Which one?” the pirate leader asked with another poke.

“Eleven,” Gaylen replied.

Karn looked about until she spotted the hanging sign.

“Right. Now you’re going to open it, and no funny business.”

She gestured, and the bony woman and the dark man set Kiris up against one of the booths.

“None at all,” the pirate emphasised.

“It’s rigged,” Gaylen said.

“What?”

“The safe,” he said. “I left a little surprise inside, in case of thieves.”

“Well, then you’re accessing it by yourself,” she said. “But if there’s a gun in there, you better be the fastest man in the galaxy. Cause I’ll be aiming right at the back of your head.”

They prodded him into moving again. Gaylen dragged his feet as much as he felt he could get away with, savouring every extra second of recovering from the blast. Because the simple fact was that once the pirates had that damned keeper, both he and Kiris were dead.

They arrived at Booth Eleven and Gaylen steadied himself against the inner wall. The moment was nearing, the seconds ticking away, and his body still felt weak and wobbly.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“Get to it,” Karn said brusquely and shoved him forward with the pistol muzzle.

“Getting to it,” Gaylen muttered and stepped up to the safe. The booth was only meant for one person, so the two pirates stayed behind him, an arm’s length away. Gaylen made a show of steadying himself again for a moment, then pressed his finger against the DNA scanner.

The light above the safe switched to green and there was a faint click.

Here we go.

He touched the lid and pulled it open, keeping himself between the pirates and the view. The record keeper was right where he’d left it, still carrying the fate of uncounted thousands in its humble casing. And Gaylen hadn’t actually left any kind of booby trap in place, just a few items he’d meant to look into selling at a later date.

His hand closed around the collapsible helmet that Saketa had handed over as part of her payment for that first flight. Then he whipped around.

Evesa Karn reacted to the fast movement with a squeeze of the trigger, but the blast hit the helmet as Gaylen held it up. He grabbed the outstretched wrist and twisted, as he smashed the helmet into her face. Her pistol clattered to the ground and Gaylen swung the helmet again, intercepting the shot from her pock-faced underling. The blow also knocked the gun aside, and Gaylen swung the helmet up, straight into his chin.

Karn recovered in quick order and kicked at his knee, very nearly dislocating it. Then a long blade extended from her other sleeve with an audible snap, and she slashed his hand. He jerked away from the blade and out of the booth, giving up his grip on her, and she attacked with skill and ferocity.

The two guarding Kiris shouted, but didn’t fire while he was going hand-to-hand with their leader. Karn nicked him a second time and he narrowly stopped a third one with the helmet. Pock-Face knelt down for his gun. Gaylen threw the helmet, striking him in the head.

Karn thrust the blade at him, going for his groin. But the problem with fixed blades was the lack of flexibility, and he caught the arm again. He drove his free elbow into her face. Then, before she could potentially recover, he reached for the grenade launcher and got his hand around the grip.

The gangly female pirate was coming their way, carbine in hand, and raised the weapon with a look of shock as she stared into the launcher’s muzzle. Gaylen fired, hitting her square in the torso. The blast rocked the room, shaking, shattering and cracking, and the pirate exploded into a cloud of gore. He and Karn were thrown up against one of the booths, only barely staying on their feet.

Kiris recovered before the dark pirate watching her did, and sprang to action, gripping his leg and bowling him over.

Gaylen slammed Karn into a booth corner, but Pock-Face then punched him low in the back. It wasn’t a perfect kidney-hit, but quite close, and on top of everything else it was enough to stagger him. The man tried to get a grip on him from behind and almost succeeded. He only needed to buy Karn a breath or two to sink that knife home properly. But trained instinct went off, and Gaylen kicked the pirate leader in the knee to buy a moment of his own, then wriggled free of the pirate behind him and flung the man over his shoulder.

Karn limped towards him with yet another thrust, preventing Gaylen from finishing the man off with a good stomp. Kiris was struggling with her pirate over his gun. She had a better position on top of him, but he had strength.

The pirate leader seemed to go for her grenade launcher, forcing Gaylen to lunge in to stop her, which allowed her to very nearly get him again. It was all the time the pocked pirate needed to get up, and they attacked him jointly as Kiris viciously sank her teeth into her opponent’s wrist.

The two pirates were good; hardened to violence and pain and danger, striking with focus rather than panicky brutality, as Gaylen’s whole body sang with pain. But they hadn’t survived the Deep Streets of Quentiso. Gaylen took the hits and cuts he needed to save his vital spots, while his own blows did more damage, heedless of the injuries to his hands. At the same time, he stayed aware of his surroundings.

A quick shift caused one of the booths to get in their way, stopping the pocked pirate from aiding his leader for a couple of seconds. He caught Karn’s arm again, and now had the half-second he needed to break it. She grit her teeth and struck at his throat with her free hand, but he shifted his angle just enough for it to not be a true hit. Then he swung her about by the broken arm, into her man as a pistol sounded in the room. The pirate was thrown up against one of the booths, wobbly enough to land hard and face-first. Gaylen forced the fixed blade into his back, and heard the gasp of a punctured lung.

Finally he flung Evesa Karn to the floor. It took the woman a moment to realise that he’d snatched the grenade launcher as he did so, and that she was facing the business end of it.

Gaylen looked towards the entrance. Kiris knelt over her pirate. She’d put a shot into his face. They both aimed towards the entrance as a figure appeared, only to find that it was Fredrak, holding his stolen Authority rifle.

“They’re dead,” the agent said groggily.

Gaylen backed a few steps away from Karn and aimed the weapon at her again. She gazed back, bleary-eyed and bleeding. She didn’t move, and seemed to know better than to say anything, for once. And what would she say anyway, this sociopathic piece of trash? And what would Gaylen do? His finger was on the trigger and the pirate was an unmissable target. She was also defeated and unarmed. Pain and rage and buzzing, howling adrenaline coursing through his veins like molten metal demanded he pull the trigger. Yet somehow a different, equally primal part objected.

It was Kiris who shot the woman in the head.

It took Gaylen a moment to realise that it was over. He lowered the weapon, and his eyes travelled up to Chanei, who was supporting herself against one of the booths. Her face was unreadable.

He did a quick examination of his own condition. He decided that no arteries had been nicked, and that was good enough for now. Fredrak’s leg seemed to be injured, but he was doing quite well, given the gruesome amount of blood caking everything below his chin.

“Ah,” the agent said somewhat breathlessly and pointed to his shirt collar. “Tubes, with fake blood. Set to go off if I lose consciousness. To make an enemy write me off as dead.”

“Clever,” Gaylen said and filed the idea away in his head.

“Do you have it?” Fredrak asked intently.

Gaylen limped over to the safe and finally wrapped his fingers around that damned keeper.

“I do now,” he said, and waved it in the air a bit before sticking it inside his coat. Then he took out his comm.

“Herdis, is everything alright?”

“No-one’s noticed the Addax, at least,” the woman told him. “What happened?”

“Ambush, fighting, slashing, shooting. Look, we have the package and we’re coming back. Expect a similar return time.”

“Understood.”

“Also, you have some patients.”

“I kind of figured.”

He ended the call. Fredrak gestured with his rifle, and Gaylen and Kiris walked his way.

“I don’t think I can make that leap again,” the Chanei commented.

“We’ll see about finding a better route,” Gaylen said. “Let me just see if Bers is in any condition to respond.”

“Do you think he’s alive?” Kiris asked.

“Logically, no. Factually... probably.”

He and Fredrak each swept their guns over one half of the space around them as they exited the safety storage. There was no one around, save for the two dead pirates the agent had dealt with.

“Let’s go.”