“So, is chatta still your drink of choice?”

“When I can afford it,” Kamak said. Apall chuckled to himself and poured Kamak a generous glass of the dark liqueur.

“Well, this bottle’s on me, so drink up,” Apall assured him. “Mind your pace, though. Can’t have you drunk just yet.”

“Why not?” Kamak asked. He hadn’t been planning on it anyway, but he wanted to know.

“Because you have company.”

Kamak didn’t turn to look at the source of the voice, and focused on his drink. Their new guest made themselves known soon enough, just like he’d expected.

She was old, at least by her species standards, old enough that even expensive surgeries and prosthetics could not hide her age any longer. Probably still younger than Kamak, though. Certainly wealthier than him, given the quality of the suit she wore. She took a seat across from Apall, helped herself to a glass of chatta, and gave Kamak a long, piercing scan with her golden eyes.

“Pleasure to meet you, Kamak,” she said. “I’m Kiz Timeka. You killed my dad.”

Kamak took a sip of his drink.

“Yep.”

Kiz’s golden eyes lingered on Kamak for a second. Then she started to laugh.

“You were right, Apall,” she said. “Didn’t even blink.”

“Kamak’s a man who knows what he’s about,” Apall said with a bemused smile.

“No hard feelings, of course,” Kiz assured Kamak. “I know the story. He got what was coming to him.”

Kamak gave a brief hum of acknowledgment. He wasn’t one to rehash the past. Dezan Timeka had tried to sell family secrets to a rival company, and in response, Kamak and many other members of the Timeka security team had “retired” and been given a “retirement present” of a ship and all the materials needed to begin a bounty hunting career. Their first target being, entirely coincidentally, Dezan Timeka, before any major media outlet had a chance to catch on to his defection.

“So, Kamak, as you’ve guessed by now, this isn’t entirely about our one retired pirate,” Apall said.

“Though we still expect you to carry out the job,” Kiz clarified.

“Naturally,” Kamak said. “Let me guess. The Tigan graverobber?”

Apall pursed his lips and said nothing. Somebody had been stealing the corpses of dead Timeka employees, by means and for reasons unknown. They’d been trying to keep a lid on the situation, but it had apparently gotten out enough for Kamak to know.

“That is a…separate situation,” Apall said. “Timeka has found itself short on trust in recent times. It’s high time we kept our friends closer than our enemies.”

“What Apall is trying to say, Kamak, is that we hope this bounty will be the first step in re-establishing a long term business relationship,” Kiz said.

“I’m a bounty hunter,” Kamak said. “As long as you’re paying, I’m working.”

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

There had been a very different kind of job offer hidden in the words of Kiz’s sentence, but Kamak wasn’t on board. Not yet, at least. Though he didn’t want to completely shut the door on returning to Timeka, bounty hunting had a unique set of perks that kept him on board for now. That, and Kamak was smart enough to know when he wasn’t being told the whole story.

“Good to hear,” Kiz said. “We’ll be in touch. On the note of friends, have you been in touch with Catay?”

“No,” Kamak said. “And you know she’s not fit to work.”

The Hard Luck Hermit’s original pilot had been critically injured after only a few jobs, beginning Kamak’s long string of bad luck with pilots.

“There are roles that could suit a woman in her condition,” Kiz said.

“Last I heard from her she was calling me a lot of unpleasant things. I doubt she’d be open to a re-hire. By either of us.”

“Mm. No point trying to cross burned bridges,” Apall said. “And how would you appraise your current crew?”

“You’ve met Doprel enough times to know he’s about the best you can hope for. As long as he gets to keep his hands mostly clean,” Kamak said. Doprel wasn’t afraid to fight and kill when he felt it was justified, but his standards of “justified” were a lot higher than Timeka’s. “And Farsus, he’s got all the skills you could want, and a whole bunch of other bullshit skills you’d never even think of, but he’s flighty. Got the wanderlust in him. Good if you keep him moving, but he’ll ditch you eventually if you don’t.”

Both of the Timeka executives in the room seemed to be taking different sets of mental notes on this conversation. Kamak wasn’t sure how he felt about delivering secondhand resumes.

“That Corey kid, he knows his way around a fight, but nothing else,” Kamak said. “Uncontacted, doesn’t know fuck about shit. I think if he survives a few years he’ll be half decent, but he’s got to survive the years first. Which I don’t think’ll happen.”

“Noted. And the pilot?”

“You got any pilots to spare, because I’ve been looking to ditch her since the day we hired her,” Kamak said. “We can trade if you want. No take backs.”

“I take it that’s a negative assessment,” Kiz said. “If not a detailed one.”

“You haven’t got the swaps to hear a detailed assessment of everything wrong with Tooley Keebur Obeltas,” Kamak scoffed.

“Then why keep her on your crew?”

“Because she hates me and she hasn’t quit yet,” Kamak said. “Most people quit when they start to hate me. You go through sixteen pilots, you learn to stop being picky.”

She was also the best pilot that Kamak had ever seen, but he deliberately left that part out. If Timeka knew that Tooley had skills, they might get interested. That interest would inevitably end badly for everyone involved, especially Tooley.

All three people in the room decided to take a drink at the same time, giving rise to a brief pause in the conversation. The disruption provided an excellent opportunity for Kiz to empty her glass and set it on Apall’s desk. Apall took the empty glass and placed it on a coaster as Kiz grabbed the arms of her chair and stood.

“Wonderful finally meeting you, Kamak, but I should get going,” she said. “Work to be done, always.”

“Understood. You take care of yourself, Kiz.”

“You take care of yourself,” Kiz countered. “You’re the one dodging the actual bullets.”

Kamak shrugged, and Kiz excused herself. Apall refilled both their glasses once she was gone.

“So, was that meeting your idea or hers?”

“Hers. We meant what we said about needing trustworthy help,” Apall said. “Why? You think she might be connected to your pursuit?”

“It’s been decades and she’s got Timeka money,” Kamak said. “If she held a grudge over me mercing her daddy, I’d be long dead by now. Just curious, is all.”

Kamak emptied his refilled glass of chatta in a single swig, and set it down on a coaster on Apall’s desk.

“So what the fuck is this really about?” Kamak asked. “All the shit Timeka’s endured the past few decades, scandals, planetary wars, pirate campaigns, I never get more than some menial manhunts, what’s going on now that you need ‘trustworthy friends’?”

The bottle of chatta trembled ever so slightly as Apall refilled his own glass.

“I’m not at liberty to say,” Apall said. “For many reasons.”

After topping off his glass, Apall pushed the bottle across the desk, into Kamak’s hands.

“Keep it,” Apall said. “Raise a glass to a changing universe.”

The synthetic glass bottle strained as Kamak’s grip tightened, but did not break. With a quick, grateful nod to Apall, Kamak stood up and left the office, hurrying back to his ship. He didn’t know what the hell was going on, but he knew he wanted to get off this station. Now.