“DESTROYED!”

Jakino banged his fist on the desk.

“COMPLETELY DESTROYED!”

“Yes. Boss.”

It wasn’t a good response. But there were no good responses. Jakino fell silent for a moment, bent over his desk and visibly fuming.

In an unusual move, all four of them had been called to this meeting. In another new development, the guards were present in the penthouse in larger numbers. Four of them stood within the office itself, equipped with rifles.

“By the man whom YOU antagonised, who went on to burn my backup operation, bring a hammer to the pillow fight you greeted him with, completely evade you, then destroy my main operation, while you were on board.”

“So was the entire regular crew,” Freel attempted. “They didn’t stop him either.”

“They weren’t dedicated enforcers,” Jakino reminded him. “They weren’t on the case of dealing with this guy. They were there to manage the barge, and cook. What are you supposed to do, again? What were you doing, while my shri burned up?”

“More ‘n you…” Yules mumbled under his breath.

“What?” Jakino said. “What was that? I am the BOSS, Yules! It’s not my job to personally step on bugs. I hire bug-crushers!”

“We didn’t show him to the Big Nest, boss,” Freel said.

Jakino’s eyes cut into him like lasers for a couple of very uncomfortable seconds.

“Is that so?”

“Yes,” Freel said, but only after a moment’s hesitation. He sensed something behind that question.

Jakino looked over all three of them, searing Kreb, Yules and Dunton with that intense gaze. Then he pushed a button on his desk.

“Disaster teaches us lessons,” he said, but Freel wasn’t sure if he was actually addressing anyone. “Remember that trip you took to the Big Nest, after your spanking at the Black Rail?”

“That was… Yules and Dunton, boss,” Freel said.

“Yes. Yes it was. There were no scanners on the Big Nest, because no unlicensed person was ever supposed to set foot there. But I do have scanners in this penthouse.”

He hit another button, and a large hologram came to life. It was a low-detail image of Dunton. A red light pulsed out from his left sole.

“Whu?” the real man said, and looked down.

“Whu indeed, pillhead,” Jakino said.

Dunton reached down and snatched off his shoe. He poked at it with his fingernail, and something occurred to Freel. He thought of the fight in the Black Rail. He thought of how Dunton’s shoe had come off his foot and flown out through the smashed window. After the stranger left, with his 82 credits, he had been all alone and unobserved with the shoe.

Dunton finally found the tiny, camouflaged tracker, and took it off.

“Um…”

“No, go on, finish that sentence,” Jakino said.

All eyes were on Dunton. The words stalled in his throat.

“Sorry?” he said after a while.

“Sorry…” Jakino repeated softly. “Sorry for costing me my entire shri operation, I assume?”

There was another long silence.

“Yes?” Dunton dared.

“Get over here,” Jakino said, and beckoned him forward.

Dunton put his shoe back on, then slowly approached the desk.

“How do you feel about exotic pets, Dunton?”

“What?”

Jakino held up a small remote, aimed it at Dunton, and pressed a button. The flux floor split open beneath Dunton’s feet, and the man fell straight through with a startled yelp. Another button turned the floor transparent, giving everyone a view of a room just as large as the office, but with no furniture.

Dunton had fallen about three times his height, and seemed to be groaning and trying to get his bearings. Then, on the far side of the room, a sturdy gate opened. A large, bluish-black snout poked in, followed by a long neck, then a powerful body on four clawed feet, and finally a tail.

It was a Kapadian dragon.

People actually do this??

The floor had closed back up, but a speaker still fed them audio from the room below. So they all heard the dragon’s snort, and Dunton’s reaction as it bore down on him. It was an adolescent, not fully grown, but still surely around three tons.

Freel could only watch in numb fascination as Dunton got up and ran for the nearest door. It was of course locked, and the man spent a few of his last seconds clawing at the jamb, trying to force it open with sheer power of desperation.

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

It got him nowhere, and he broke away and ran just before huge jaws snapped at the air where he’d stood. Freel thought he might be trying to reach the gate the dragon had come out of, but the great beast had twice as many legs, and the chase was short.

Freel remembered a wildlife documentary that had touched on the galaxy’s most fearsome predators. According to the very genial presenter, Kapadian dragons had a near-unique metabolism, able to convert calories to fat virtually on the fly. When enough prey was on offer, the beasts could therefore eat nearly their own weight in one quick rampage, followed by a period of hibernation.

Watching how it went at Dunton, Freel fully believed it. It was astonishing that a grown man could vanish that fast. In mere seconds, the last sight of Dunton was his leg disappearing down the monster’s gullet. It then licked up the blood that had spilled on the floor, before turning its attention to the transparent ceiling. It reared up on its hind legs and tried to swipe. Freel couldn’t help but flinch, but the claws couldn’t quite reach.

Jakino made the floor opaque again. Freel looked at him.

“I will buy shri from the south,” the boss said darkly. “To keep my dealers in business, and prevent anyone from rising to fill the gap, while I set up another factory. It will be at a loss, but I can’t have it get out that my operation isn’t reliable. I can’t have it get out that my factory went up in flames.”

“No, boss.”

Jakino held up an accusing finger.

“My big meeting will go off without a hitch. No one will notice any difference. And once all that is done with, once MY future is set in stone, I will pour resources into an act of pest control THAT YOU HAVE FAILED TO DELIVER ON!”

“Yes, boss.”

Jakino glared at them for a few more seconds.

“And then… THEN… I will think about the three of you. Because as it stands, I don’t know what the hell I’m paying you for.”

Freel had nothing to add. He could think of nothing to say that wouldn’t open the floor beneath his own feet.

“Now get out, all of you. Go do whatever it is that you do.”

# # #

They drank.

It was another dive. Freel couldn’t be bothered to remember the name. He hadn’t even focused on what the bartender had been handing him. He just wanted it in his gut as fast as possible.

What a pair of days this had been.

Yules was the most animated of the three of them, though that wasn’t saying much. He was trying to put on a facsimile of his usual overly gleeful demeanour, but there was an awkwardness to it, like a performer with stage fright. He took periodic strolls around the cramped confines of the dive, looking for chat, asking news, arguing for a change in the music, and hitting on women with zero results. Then he would return to his seat for a short while before repeating some version of the process.

Kreb just glowered and drank, annoying Freel significantly less.

How had things gone completely to shit in such a short period? And what the hell was he going to do about it?

“Think we’re on the chopping block?” Kreb asked after a couple more drinks.

“I think… it might depend on how easily setting up the new operation goes,” Freel replied. “I think it will affect his mood.”

“Hmm.”

Kreb finished a near-full mug in one go, and went to get another one. Freel finished his a bit more slowly. After the mug after that one he felt like talking again.

“You know… I didn’t hear an explosion,” he pointed out. “After me and that one loser hopped down after the… the guy. You know, when everyone dove for cover.”

“Oh…”

Kreb shook his head.

“That wasn’t a grenade, turns out. It just… he just threw an object, and with everything else… well, you just react, you know?”

“And what was it, exactly?” Freel asked.

“Um. A nutrition bar.”

Freel stared down into his beer.

“I see.”

He took three big, big gulps.

“It was a big nutrition bar…”

Freel kept on drinking, bringing himself to that point where the imagination got wild, and so did the will to see it become reality. He slowed down a bit at that point, and let his ideas boil away for a bit. Then, finally, it was time to speak again.

“Yules, sit down. No one gives a shit about you.”

The man turned; insulted, but trying not to show it.

“Well, echs… excuse me for trying to… to built… build a mood here.”

“Sit down, Yules,” Freel insisted, and pointed at a chair. “I have something to say.”

The man sullenly took his seat, and Kreb turned his half-glazed eyes Freel’s way.

“You know what’s a bad idea?” Freel said to them. “Telling people ahead of time that you’re going to get rid of them, when they know your secrets.”

“You’re…” Kreb hiccuped. “You’re turning… informant, or something?”

“For immunity and absolutely nothing else?” Freel said, aghast. “No. No. I deserve the damn good life. So we’re going to take it.”

“How?” Kreb asked.

“The boss has it stuffed away in his office,” Freel told them. “In case of disaster.”

“This whole thing is a disaster…”

“The kind of disaster where he has to go on the run. He has a treasure of melaurum in a few bags, locked away and just waiting to be snatched up for a getaway. And WE are going to do the snatching.“

Yules held his tongue for once. Kreb scratched his head.

“That’s the kind of thing that earns a deathmark,” the big man pointed out.

“Yes. But thankfully, we have a perfect scapegoat. Word will have been spreading about the mystery man who’s been making trouble for Boss Jakino. The unstoppable badass. Why shouldn’t the blame fall on him?”

“Because… security,” Yules said, trying and failing to sound like he wasn’t as drunk as he was. “Therss… there is security in… in the penthouse. Oh, and people.”

“And that’s why you’re going to mess with the records,” Freel said. “While me and Kreb go for the grand prize. Because… did you notice that Jakino didn’t revoke our access? We’ll just stroll in, while that big meeting is going on. The boss himself will be utterly focused on it, and the guards will be watching out for all the VIP’s.”

“We’ll still be noticed,” Kreb said.

Freel smiled evilly.

“Doesn’t matter. Because I know someone who can rig up a scorcher bomb. It’ll be expensive, especially on short notice. But it will wipe away any evidence of us having been there. DNA and witness accounts alike. And no big blast that will alert the authorities. We’ll trigger it once we’re on the roof, and then just leave in the Dragon. We split the melaurum three ways, then we go off and live the damn good life.”

He looked at one, then the other, for a few breaths, letting them see a determined look.

“Come on, boys. This is our chance. Things have aligned to allow us to turn shit into jewels. Now, are you going to seize the opportunity or not?”

“Yeah,” Kreb said. “Let’s do it.”

“How much melaurum?” Yules asked.

“At least ninety plates.”

The man tried to whistle, but the drunkenness messed it up. He managed on the second try.

“Yeah. Yeah, less… let’s do it.”

“Let’s do it,” Freel said.