Victoria's ship was almost exactly what I'd expected from her, plush, intricate and liable to have a crisis if a competent weapons system sneezed at it. She'd been cruising around the stars in a luxury vessel that would have made my military surplus look like a piece of garbage. Maybe it was better that my ship wasn't the first impression she got of my equipment, I doubted whether she would have appreciated the aesthetic of 'looks awful but it works.'

Instead of a shower Victoria only had a bath and I wasn't about to set all of that up, instead I was using it as a wash basin for my black blood covered jacket. Most of the ichor had come off as soon as it touched a bit of water and peroxide, but damn that hunter had bled a lot. Fotuan blood had to be black didn't it? The one thing that would show up clearly on the deep maroon.

I pulled the soaked jacket out of the water and shook it for a moment, then grabbed the sleeves and wrung them out. Mostly clean. It looked like if I wanted to get anything else done I'd need to bring it to a cleanser. They would remove literally every molecule of blood but I didn't know a good one on Mythellion III.

Plus, I didn't have the time to wait for a cleaning anyway. Black spotted sleeves would have to be good enough for now. I tossed my jacket over into the drying system and it sputtered to life. Once I was sure that it was working, I headed out to the main cabin.

Most of the floorplan of Victoria's ship was taken by an honest to god genuine wooden table and half a dozen chairs. Each chair was perfectly spaced apart from the others aside from the one that Victoria was sitting in. She'd pulled out a data pad as soon as she'd gotten into the ship, letting me find my way around.

Victoria had been quiet since everything had happened on the res deck. I didn't know if it was the first time she'd seen someone shot... it was always worse if it was your own species.

Victoria glanced up from her data pad as the door hissed closed behind me but didn't stop typing. Her fingers tapped away as she scanned me, eyes stopping for a moment at each bloodstain left on my undershirt and pants.

"Don't exactly have a change a clothes here."

She didn't respond immediately, instead turning her attention back toward the screen. "I suppose that's reasonable."

"I'd hope so." She'd gotten herself a drink when I was cleaning up but hadn't touched it. I sat down across from her, pulling out one of the immaculate chairs around the table, there was a plush cushion on it, puffed up like it'd never been touched.

She'd been shaking and cold. Now that we were in the comfort of her ship she was back to the woman that had hired me, but I'd seen her reactions. Part of me wanted to ask if she was okay but it wasn't clear whether that would be better or worse than just letting her process it.

If nothing else I understood that it would be a hit to her pride.

"We should talk business," The wall behind her was consumed by a glossy black backsplash with gold ink stretched across it in rivers and tributaries. The ink seemed to breath as she did.

"We should," I answered, leaning in to show that I was listening. "I think you have some explaining to do."

"Pardon?"

"Why don't we start with what I'm carrying for you?" I clicked my tongue, "but I have a guess what that is."

"Really?" I couldn't tell whether her unimpressed tone was legitimate or a powerplay.

"Wanna hear it?"

"Sure."

"You,"

If I was right, Victoria didn't flinch to show it. "What makes you think that?"

"Two things," I began, "the first is that, when we ran into the Hunter they were trying to stun you and were fine to pick a fight. If you had something that was banned in Meritocracy space, then the best thing for them to do would have been for them to follow you to your ship to find the contraband and then kill you."

"Mhm."

"The second is that this isn't a cargo ship," I pointed out, motioning to the luxury around us, "so unless whatever I'm smuggling can fit in my pocket, it's not here."

"Hm," Victoria pulled the datapad close again but didn't enter anything on it.

"Either that or I'm wrong and part of the job is picking up the cargo somewhere on Mythellion III."

The fan of the oxygen maintenance system hummed to life near the ships main console, filling the vessel with a consistent hum.

"You're right, I am the intended cargo on the contract."

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

I nodded along with that. "In that case the contract is mislabeled, I didn't sign for an escort contract and I could leave."

That caught her, for half a moment the wide eyes I'd seen downstairs were back. In those brief seconds where I caught her off guard there was depth in her eyes, something close to human emotion. She looked young, like she needed help.

Victoria pushed down the feelings and took an extended blink to recenter herself. "The job was marked as smuggling and-"

"It's an escort-"

"I do not need to be escorted," she cut back in, "I need to be smuggled."

"Hm," I answered to that comment, adjusting my collar as she waited for a response from me that wasn't coming.

"I need to get back over the Meritocracy Border."

"Pardon?"

"Don't do that, you heard me."

"Yes. And that was my reaction. I wasn't doing anything." There were a lot of questions. The snippy part of me wondered why anyone would want to go to Meritocracy space intentionally, but it didn't feel like it was time to complain about her species politics. "You know I'm a human, right?"

"Yes. I'm aware."

"Just making sure, because-"

"I understand that humans aren't allowed in Meritocracy space at the moment."

"Then how do you expect me to-" I paused there was a better question, "-then why would you ask for a human on the contract?"

"Admittedly," she opened, pushing away from the table, standing and turning to look at the art behind her. She took a deep breath before looking half toward me and half toward the floor, "until I saw those mercenaries at the Tanner dock I wasn't under the impression that the Meritocracy would be involved at all."

She couldn't really see me, but I frowned at that comment. We could hope that the Fotuan I'd shot had just been a merc hired by a third party, but it would have been mighty convenient. Most Fotuans, likely Victoria included, had connections to the structure of the Meritocracy, they didn't like letting go of their own.

"You're a good cover for other species, if they assumed that we were both human then there was a chance that they believed that I wasn't the lone Fotuan girl they might have been looking for." She paused for a moment, but I couldn't see her face to understand why. "Either that or at least a pair isn't as strange as a solo Fotuan."

I frankly didn't know enough about Fotuans to know how abnormal it was for them to travel alone, but there was something else that stuck out to me in what she said. My translator had caught the term 'girl' as opposed to 'woman.' It only ever did that if they used the term for someone who was young. Admittedly it was one of the stranger words to translate to English, considering Fotuans were monogender and had about 20 different ways to reference age.

"Something on your mind?I understand that the contract might seem like it's changed but I assure you t-"

"How old are you?"

The question caught her off guard. She narrowed her eyes and pulled back for a second before considering the question. After she blinked away any pause she answered. "19." That was in adjusted human years to gauge relative age. Considering Fotuan lifespans she was likely closer to 25 in Earth years.

The point was, she was a kid. God dammit.

"As I was saying," she course corrected, "the contract might seem as if it's changed but I assured you that it is all within the lines of the payment I offered," she crossed the distance back to the table and sat back down "But considering your-"

She was just a kid.

"-exemplary performance and the new status of the danger of the job I would-" she caught on the words, leaving them somewhere in her throat. She closed her eyes to find them again, "I would be willing to terminate the contract the find ano-"

"No need," the dumb part of me cut in. The pay of the contract was good but she was right, if the proper Meritocracy was involved then this was going to be way more dangerous than anything I'd thought I was signing for in a sports bar. Then there was the issue of actually crossing the border into the Meritocracy, but I had a month to figure that out. "You just want to go home?"

Victoria stared at me for a moment, and then that moment turned into a while. She didn't grab the data pad, look away or close her eyes. Eventually she swallowed and nodded, adding a "Yeah," so quiet that she was almost mouthing it.

"I'm in." Somewhere in the back of my head I couldn't believe that I was letting my bleeding heart sign up for something involving a Fotuan, but business needed to come first. "Can we talk planning?"

"We can leave now if that's easier."

"I have a ship and it has everything I need," I said, ignoring her invitation, "all of my equipment is on there, but it's on Tanner Thirteen and which is where your friends saw us." For a second I waited for Victoria to speak up, mostly because I knew that a sarcastic 'friends' would translate poorly.

Victoria didn't cut in, so I continued.

"We can wait here for a while, but we know that there are at least two of them on the station right now."

"Yes."

"So, I don't like the idea of staying on the station and just waiting for them, and I also don't love showing up with just this," I put my Hammerhead on the table for context," if we run into them on the way to my ship."

Victoria processed for a moment and then nodded along with my point as she understood it, "We go down to Mythellion."

"Exactly," I nodded. Victoria reached across the table and grabbed the Hammerhead to examine it. I let her take the gun considering she wouldn't know where the safety was. It couldn't shoot me, but she could certainly accidentally fuck up her ship if she understood how to turn it on. "Do you have a gun?" I asked.

"No," she answered, turning the barrel toward the table and scanning the back.

"You probably should have one if you're on the Rim anyway," I pointed out, "so we can get you one on Mythellion."

"Do they have guns?" she asked. It was a valid question. The Otinnio of Mythellion III had barely been upgraded from TAS to IGS. Meaning they would have just gotten access to proper technology in the past few months. Ottinio probably hadn't gotten the capital to arm themselves yet.

Unless you counted the backdoor sales that happened to every Technologically Advanced Species as soon as smugglers knew the coordinates of the planet. They might have just gotten access to Recurring Energy Drives, but they would have more aftermarket weapons than most warships. "I can find someone," I answered.

"Okay. Down to Mythellion."

"Get guns. Get my ship," I paused, letting time take care of the 'one-two-skip-a-few' "get you back to the Meritocracy.

"That's almost a plan."

I reached out and took the gun back, my jacket would be close to dry at this point and we needed to get moving. There were still questions hanging on the air but I wasn't sitting down for an interview when there was work to do.

At some point I'd figure out why she had hunters coming after her, and why she wanted to go back to Fotul anyway. This was all a mess. A mess that I was throwing myself into.