Interlude Ten - The Silly Killer

She often had to remind herself that she was a cold-blooded killer. The people around her? These normies minding their normal business onboard Driftwood? They could probably name fewer people than she had killed.

It was something that kept her up at night. She'd wake up in a cold sweat, reminded of all the lives she'd taken.

It was not something that stopped her from pulling the trigger when her ship's lock-on buzzed.

That's what she meant when she imagined herself as cold-blooded. Sure, she felt guilty about what she'd done, and sure she sometimes wished that she could offload all of that, but neither fact prevented her from launching Fox One at some hopped-up pirate in a junker-turned-corsair.

Pixie took a breath, shook her head, then looked around herself. That was right, she was a cold-blooded killer. No reason to be afraid. She could look any one of the people around her in the eye and tell them that she killed motherfuckers for a living.

Sure, she'd have to look up into their eyes, and sure she'd never killed someone in person, but those were just details.

There was no reason for her to be afraid because being afraid after being such a successful mercenary for so long was just kind of silly.

That was the rationale that she was running through pretty much nonstop as she stayed low (something that came naturally to her) and out of sight.

Around her were the loud bangs of gunshots, cries of victory and dismay, the rhythmic thumping of some old bass-boosted electronic music.

The arcade was a surprisingly busy place.

She paused next to a fighter-sim game and scoffed as a pair of kids in a very simplified cockpit tried to chase down generic pirates. Amateurs.

But she wasn't here to be unimpressed by some old arcade machines and games meant to entertain children and rob them of their cash. She was here on the lookout for her quarry.

She slowly edged her head around a corner and spied the two she was following.

Twenty-Six was standing next to Evelyn, a plastic mallet in hand. Evelyn had one as well, but she was barely holding onto the toy in a limp wrist while her focus was on the board ahead of both of them.

The tops of some Earth Alliance solider's head popped out of a hole, and Evelyn's attention turned towards it. In that split second, the head was rammed back down into the machine with enough force to shake the whole thing.

Then another came out, and another, and they were each knocked back into place with the kind of force that Pixie expected from the recoil on her assault cannon.

One head remained sticking out of the board. It was from one of the holes nearest Twenty-Six. She saw it, gasped, then swung down in a big two-handed swing that had her plastic mallet thumping against the head with a squeak.

Pixie caught the praise Evelyn gave the smaller mechanic girl over the sound of a few more heads being crushed.

After another minute, the machine reluctantly spat out a wad of tickets and the girls moved on to try something else.

Pinball? They each grabbed a machine, though the term 'grab' was a slight misnomer since Evelyn didn't seem willing to touch the one she chose. She was winning anyway, but that was besides the point.

Pixie had been a mercenary and bounty hunter for just over a decade now, and while she was aware that part of that line of work often involved sleuthing and spying on people, it had never been her area. She was more of a hired gun than a private eye, even if she did rub shoulders with that sort on rare occasions.

This was a whole other thing, though.

She wasn't just... she wasn't spying on either girl for selfish reasons. She was tailing them because there was something deeply wrong about Evelyn Ville.

Pixie had pulled up the woman's records, and they were faultless. Oh, a few bits of misbehaviour here and there, some scuffles, a few social media posts that had opinions that were more popular ten years ago than now, but there was nothing in her records that suggested that Evelyn Ville was anything more than a perfectly competent astro archaeologist.

It had still felt off. The way she moved and talked suggested a military background, and more than just the normal mandatory service every Martian participated in. She wasn't even trying to hide her cores, her powers.

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

And then, when Pixie started to dig into her ship's older records, she noticed a discrepancy.

Evelyn Ville had technically been around for a while, as far as records went, but those records were basically blank slates until a few weeks ago.

Her ship had a few dozen terabytes of data stored on it. Records pulled out of various government databases that were of questionable legality to own, but which could come in handy when chasing a pirate down.

She didn't always have the luxury of being able to hire an information broker, so she had those records on hand. She didn't update them very often, however, which was where the discrepancy came in.

Evelyn Ville was not Evelyn Ville.

Pixie was pretty sure that no one was Evelyn Ville, in fact. The name was made up from the get-go, and it was done well enough that only someone very professional and very well connected could have pulled it off. Which suggested MINT was involved.

The woman named Evelyn and Twenty-Six (whose records did all match up and whom Pixie suspected far less) finished playing pinball. Twenty-Six seemed to be gesturing quite a bit, and Evelyn nodded along, then she pulled a small metal sphere from somewhere and had it float up and down.

Twenty-Six listened attentively, then nodded, and when she was handed the ball she frowned at it in her palm for a while before shrugging.

The taller of the two seemed to instruct Twenty-Six on how to do something as they walked on deeper into the arcade.

Pixie followed.

She was pretty sure that this was... not nefarious. In fact, it looked like a pretty bog-standard date. Sure, one of the two was obviously a core-user, but that wasn't... impossibly strange. Just because they weren't doing anything strange didn't mean that she'd give up on following them, though!

Pixie had a deep and burning kernel of anger in her chest. Anger and... a lot of other emotions that she wasn't quite sure about.

It was all Missy's fault.

That woman had done things to Pixie's heart that she was only now fully healed from, and just when Pixie was starting to open up to the idea of moving on, Missy returned. She was... nice about it, made the fact that she wasn't interested in anything pretty clear from the onset, and then pushed Pixie towards Evelyn with hints so loud they might as well be self-guided missiles.

It didn't help any that Evelyn was Pixie's type.

Tall, dark and mysterious? Yes please.

That meeting Evelyn had led her to meeting Twenty-Six was also nice. The Saturnian was a true fan... of Pixie's ship. But she was cute, enthusiastic, and made Pixie smile and laugh.

If Pixie had interpreted Twenty-Six's prattling about fleets correctly, then there was also a level of openness there that would mean plenty of space for even a wayward bounty hunter. The last woman in the little fleet, Aurora Sterlingworth, was a little cold, but she was also hot, so Pixie was willing to forgive the aloofness.

She was tempted. Very tempted.

But there were too many stories of good bounty hunters being led astray by a pair of long legs and a pretty smile for her to just jump in feet first.

Did she want in on whatever they had going on?

She poked her head around a corner and found Evelyn smiling while holding onto a large plush of what looked like the Empress of Mars while Twenty-Six was laughing, her giggles carrying even over the constant flood of jingles in the room.

Cute dates with cute girls? Pixie wanted that more than almost anything else in the world.

She looked around the corner again and... no Evelyn?

Twenty-Six was there, smiling as she looked at a small box of a... model kit? No Evelyn though. Had the woman gone to the washroom? Maybe this was Pixie's chance to coincidentally run into Twenty-Six? She could always pretend to be here for those silly fighter-sims.

A shadow fell over her, which wasn't too unusual, but this one felt particularly cold and unwelcoming.

Pixie swallowed and glanced up. Evelyn was smiling.

"Would you like to join us?" she asked. "We were just about to go find a bite to eat. A little something to snack on."

Why did that sound like a lion inviting a mouse onto its plate? Pixie stood taller and worked hard to remind herself that she was a cold-blooded killer. A very silly killer.

***