Okay, Gabriel apparently drank the Overground Kool-Aid, he looks out of it already.
“Excuse me, where are my manners, how about we talk for a minute first,” I say. I turn to the side on my stool and brush against his arm. From the DNA sample off his arm, I synthesis a tailored pheromone, and a slow but strong depressant, both of which I breathe out in his direction before I’m turned completely away from him. “Aren’t they all so funny, all those people dancing over there, when before they got here, they all were probably glum and sick of their lives here in this wet, miserable city?” I ask, hoping to get a response out of him, as he hasn’t uttered anything more than a grunt thus far.
“I, um, yeah, I guess so. I’m just passing through here. I’m glad I’m don’t live here. I uh…” he says, slurring some words. His eyes are so dilated, and he looks like he’s about to fall off his stool. My depressant wasn’t this strong, even when paired with the alcohol and the enzyme I give Sean to distribute. I reach over to his glass and stick my finger down into the remnants of his drink, I do a quick scan of what particulates are present in the drink and yes, Sean is getting overzealous isn’t he. This is not my enzyme. He must have gone to someone already and is testing out different drugs. His poor patrons, I guess he thinks as long as they have a good time, come back, and keep buying drinks, everything will be fine. Well, that’s not the case for me tonight, since it seems that what he added to Gabriel’s drink has accelerated the effects of my depressant by a large margin.
“Hey, you don’t look so good Gabriel. Hey! Look! listen to me, you need to call the rest of your team here now, you need help,” I snap my fingers to get his attention, he’s really not looking good now. He sends out a comm to someone named Liam.
‘Liam, something is wrong with me I need help ASAP, I’m at the bar at Overground,’ Okay looks like they’ll be coming in hot, hopefully I can handle the situation gracefully.
“Okay, on the way,” he says, and that’s when he blacks out. I catch him and keep him from falling. I turn him around and lay his head down on the counter.
‘Really Sean, I just checked one of the drinks you’re selling down here, what the fuck are you doing.’
‘Not your club, not your rules Evelyn. Don’t worry about it; and what do you mean, you fucking checked a drink?’ Sean comms back. I cannot deal with Sean right now; Gabriel’s team is on the way here right now and I need to leave with them.
It doesn’t take them long, five minutes tops, and they do know how to make an entrance. A huge hole in the wall, one second the wall is there and the next there is a huge circular hole in the wall, they apparently have a highlight lock on him because the second they look inside they’re looking straight at him. There was no sound, no nothing when the hole appeared, so it takes everyone a few moments to realize what’s happening, but when they do it is complete chaos, people start screaming, security starts to come out, people are running every which way and it’s a mess. The three of them run over to Gabriel. I try to keep my cool and take control of the situation.
“I think he’s been drugged. We were talking, I was going to pay for passage to your next destination on Star Fury, and he just collapsed. He had just agreed to have me along, but we hadn’t agreed on an exact price.” As I’m talking, they are justifiably only half paying attention, the woman is making eye contact, but the other two men are distracted by the chaos ensuing around them.
“Okay, we are leaving now. Cicero, go retrieve Gabriel’s sidearm,” the woman says. Cicero runs to the front to get the sidearm, no questions asked. The other man, who I assume is Liam from Gabriel’s comm earlier, is just looking around and then at me.
“Why on earth would he agree to take you?” Liam asks me.
“I’m willing to pay. A lot.” I say, and this seems to satisfy him to a degree. I glance over to see Cicero’s method of retrieving Gabriel’s sidearm, and well, he definitely gets his point across. The polycarbon separator at the front desk is nowhere to be seen and the receptionist is frantically trying to open the safe where Gabriel’s gun lies. The woman starts to assess Gabriel’s vitals and confirms that he does in fact have a pulse; though, I already knew that. He’s in no danger of dying, he’s just going to be out for a while. As I’m thinking this, a slim and sleek transport craft descends in front of the hole they created in the wall. The woman and Liam start to lift him up and carry Gabriel towards the craft, Cicero also seems to have gotten what he wanted as he is walking towards the craft as well.
“You!” The woman says as she looks over her shoulder at me. “If you’re coming, lets go!”
Stolen novel; please report.
Alright, I guess I got my wish, although I wish it had gone much smoother than this. We all jog outside, the hole in the wall disappears, leaving what looks like a normal untouched wall. They all start to file into the craft, laying Gabriel down in one of the seats. I reach out to the craft’s systems. Turns out that this is Star Fury’s auxiliary transport unit. All three of them are in full work mode; whatever they do together they must do it well. Though I can tell that they are not used to dealing with team members being incapacitated, especially Gabriel. I doubt that they would have brought me along at all if they were used to coming in, completing asset retrieval, and then clearing the environment. They’re lucky they didn’t try to clear this bit of environment because I would have given them a run for their money, whatever the fuck they do together.
“What’s your name?” the woman asks me. “And why did you approach Gabriel about leaving with us? We generally would never consider having anyone else along.” The woman seems to be coming to grips with the fact that she just picked up a random entity from a hostile environment. Cicero has been watching me like a hawk the whole time, and Liam is watching Gabriel.
“I need fast slip space travel off planet. It’s urgent,” I say, though I’m sure that they’re going to want a better explanation than that.
“That’s fine, but we’re not slotted to slip to a planet on our next stop. So, when Gabriel wakes up, and we determine whether what you’re saying is even true or not, you’ll have to wait for at least two stops. My name is Juno by the way. These two are Cicero and Liam.”
“Yeah okay, that’s fine with me. I’m sure he’s going to be okay. I’ve been to that club a few times and I’ve never heard of this happening, at least not to this degree. My name is Evelyn, nice to make your acquaintance.” Juno seems nice to me, but Cicero is staring me down, so I just sit still and try to keep out of the way. Liam takes out a kit and draws a bit of blood from Gabriel’s arm. He gets a reading that he doesn’t seem overly concerned about, and he sends a signal out to Star Fury. It’s a med request for something specifically to counteract my depressant mixed with the drug that was in his drink. I’m impressed that they even have a synthesizer onboard Star Fury.
It doesn’t take long to arrive at Star Fury, which has been loaded onto a launch bay and looks prepped for departure. The auxiliary transport docks on-top of Star Fury and the floor of the transport starts to lower into the main body of the craft. When the cabin of the transport is flush with the hallway of Star Fury, Juno walks down the hall and comes back with an injector. With no hesitation she walks straight over to Gabriel and injects him with the counteracting agent. It doesn’t take long to see the effects. A few seconds after she injects him, he gasps, and his eyes shoot open.
“What is going on, Juno? What happened, and why is this lady on my damn ship?” Gabriel says. He looks and sounds like he’s on a major stimulant high so what they gave him must really have been overkill.
“That lady you mentioned said that you were going to let her travel with us to our next destination. What I’m wondering is how much she was willing to pay you for you to agree to it,” Juno says. She seems relieved and turns around and walks to the front of the ship to sit down in the navigation chair, beginning to prep for launch.
“Okay, whatever the deal was, it’s off. You are not traveling with us anywhere, especially after what just happened. I’m sorry but no it’s-” I cut Gabriel off before he can finish.
“I will start my offer out at five billion standard.”
The whole crew’s eyes widen. Standard fare on a slip space craft is anywhere from 50,000 ranging all the way to 300,000 standard on some of the nicer ships. I will admit that I overshot by a significant margin to get my point across.
“Alright then, in that case, you will be coming with us. I need half that now, and the other half upon arrival. Let me see the credit now, and then we will talk further about this matter. I just sent you a personal account, it is empty at the moment, but it better have 2.5 billion credit in it in a few moments if you’re going anywhere with us.”
Gabriel seems to be in disbelief that I even have a quarter of that credit in all my savings. I’m sure that he fully expects to be able to kick me out as soon as the money doesn’t show up. However, I really need this slip. The Sequel Corp ship obtained a copy of the forensic signature of the weapon used on the wall, and when they looked at the report, they detected my particular signature as well. They aren’t far from annihilating the whole damn planet I’d bet, as they are growing quite tired of this rat race. Luckily for me, market analysis is my thing, and it helps that I’ve had a few hundred years of jumping around in linear space travel. I’ve amassed quite a fortune over the years. Nonetheless, I shouldn’t have overshot by so much, five billion credit hurts, fortune or not. I transfer the credit. Gabriel, at this point, coming down from his high, is looking back to normal. He nods his head.
“Okay then, you have won yourself passage on Star Fury, you will be in the guest quarters and you will not be leaving those quarters for the entirety of your stay here with us. We will let you know on comms when you’re good to go, so send over that information to Juno.” Gabriel looks visibly shaken from his little excursion on Huyto, and I can understand why. I don’t think that these people are used to getting surprised; it’s looking more and more to me from the specs on Star Fury and some of the weapons onboard that they are very used to being the ones doing the surprising.
“Prep for launch and slip, we are getting out of here” Gabriel says to Juno.
No words, she just nods and starts to flick some switches. Cicero escorts me to the mentioned guest quarters. He shows me in, then he closes and locks the door. I’m not particularly worried about the lock, the ship is a nice one, but not so nice that I can’t bend it to my will if the need arises.