Dallas looked over at Gareth and then back at the man in front of him. Then, he leaned back further, his eyes on the jock. “Who wants to know?” he said.

“Ah, well, yeah, that’s- Rick Emeka, Captain!” the fellow found something else to do with his hand, waving it in the air briefly then pretending to wipe it on his pantleg. “But my friends call me Rikki- two ‘k’s, or Joker.”

Dallas held Joker’s gaze, then nodded his head. “Good to meet you, Mister Emeka. What can we do for each other?”

“Well, Captain, I think you’re in luck today! See- see that table over there? Pretty redheaded gal, big musclebound galoot and the skinny little number with the black bob of hair? That’s my team, Captain! And we just happen to be available for hire, on the very day you’ve taken command of the , uh…” he looked at his comm. Dallas saw a picture of himself flash briefly on the screen. “The Palefroi- bit of a mouthful, you may wanna think about changing the name now that you own it- where was I?”

“The day I took command.”

“Oh, yeah, that! See, Captain, the last Captain, what was his name-” another quick look at the comm, back to the beaming smile at Dallas, “Orkney, he was up to his neck in debt, apparently. And, ah, it looks like you are, too, not to put too fine a point of it. Well, the quickest way out of debt for a Captain in your situation is a couple of big jobs, the kind that a mech team could get you!”

“And you’re that team, Mister Emeka?” Dallas said. He was getting the hang of this! He knew Gareth was watching him, ready to step in if Dallas erred in some way. But he was in the middle of his first real negotiation and he liked it. Good thing I was with Gareth when he was doing this to get us on board the Palefroi, Dallas thought quickly. The key, he just realized, was to never, ever appear too eager for a deal. Like asking a girl out on a date, he thought. Always let them know they need you more than you need them. It didn’t hurt that this fellow seemed pretty desperate for a job, and was lousy at hiding it.

“Well, yes, Captain Dallas, to put it bluntly, yes! We’re the best team you’re going to find from here to the other side of the core! And we’re willing and able to fight for you, today, right now! Just say the word, and I can have our mechs put in the bay of your- ah,” another look at the comm, another wide smile as he looked at Dallas, “jackal class ship! Why, if you only had a single swordmech, the one you swiped so handily from New Avalon, then, ah, you’d have room for our mechs too!”

Dallas kept his eye on Emeka, ‘Joker,’ and took a sip of his beer. Now, something told him, this was the point where he got help from Gareth, but he had to make it look like he was looking for confirmation of a decision that already had been made. “What do you think, Mister Gareth? Is this gentleman worth our time?”

Gareth didn’t even look at Dallas. Eyes on Emeka, he answered with the blunt force of a hammer. “Why aren’t you employed right now?”

“Well, there was an- ahem, a little misunderstanding with our last captain. And it, ah, was, well, decided, as a mutual thing, that, ah, we should go our sep-”

“Why’d you get fired? And why your whole team instead of just you?”

“Well, it- um-”

“Boss,” Gareth said, looking at Dallas, “this Joker ain’t worth our time.”

“We got a squad of the Corporates mad at us,” Emeka blurted out. “I blew out their hundred-ton leader mech with a lucky shot to the head, and the rest of their clip turned and ran back to their dropship.”

“Really?” Dallas said. “That’s unusual, for a clip of Corporate mechs to cut and run. How many in the clip?”

“About a half-dozen. But most of them were ten-tonners, so they knew they didn’t stand a chance.”

“If word got out about them,” Gareth said, “it’d go real hard for ‘em. And their families back in the Corporate territories.”

“They said I shot their leader from behind, dishonorable, but I didn’t, I swear! And now there’s a bounty on me, and my team, and…”

“And anyone who gives you shelter or employment, huh?”

“That’s it, exactly! He’s not only fired us, but he’s so seriously scared of the Corporates that he’s gonna dump our mechs in the dock an’ write ‘em off.”

“Free mechs in the deal, too?” Gareth said, smiling, “Christmas is a good six months off.”

“I’m serious! You know how these bastards work? That clip of Corporates has to come after us, because we’re the only record of their flup-up!”

“Can’t you just promise them you won’t tell?” Dallas said.

“Yeah, an’ maybe you just fell off the argo truck after all,” Joker said, losing his composure for a moment. “They have to erase every second of that fight from anywhere it coulda been. Our old captain wasn’t bothering to record anything- he wasn’t that kinda guy. Only interested in us doing the job, not in going over later how we could do it better.”

“But almost all mechs built in the last fifty years have encoded recording, for legal and other reasons,” Gareth said, looking over at Dallas. Dallas nodded as if he already knew.

“So,” Dallas said, “I’ve heard you out. You ready to hear my position?”

“Uh- yeah?” Joker said in an unsure voice.

“Fine. I left home a little over a week ago, and stole my ancestral mech in the process. I’ve got a warrant and a bounty on me. Clear?”

“Okay.”

“I accidentally killed a man about an hour ago. I’m probably going to frazz out about it later, but right now I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to pay off the rather large debt I incurred by defending myself, and replacing the crew who’ve jumped ship.”

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Got that.”

“And you,” Dallas said, holding Joker’s gaze while raising up his hand to politely stop Gareth from interjecting, “you’re offering to hire yourself and your team out to me. But you’ve got a clip of about a half-dozen Corporates after you who want to scrap your mechs and blast your brains out. And if I take you on, I’ll probably have a target on my back too.”

Joker paused. “Maybe.”

Dallas took a swig of his drink, sighed, and pretended to think for a second. “When can you start?”

#

“Tell us what happened.”

The reporter, like so many of those from her profession for the last millenia, had perfectly coiffed hair, utterly flawless skin and a full sense of irrelevance for any concept of truth.

Ratings? Now that, she understood. She knew she’d get those now, talking to the pretty young woman and her mother in the studio. Dressed in a blue and white frock, the girl maintained her composure white dabbing her eyes occasionally and daintily with a small handkerchief. Her mother was dressed in a wide-skirted number that covered everything from her neck to her ankles. During their interview, both clearly struggled to maintain their composure as she described the horrible way that Dallas Morgan had burst into their respectable restaurant and terrorized everyone in the early hours of the morning, during what the press had deemed the Dallas Morgan Morning Rampage through the city.

“Are people actually going to believe this about our son?” Liberty Morgan said in horror, as the school photo of smiling Dallas flashed for the twentieth or thirtieth time that day.

“Only the ones who didn’t know him personally,” Austin said, bowing his head for a moment so low, his long black locks almost touched the ground. “If this is the first they’ve seen of him outside of a photo op with all of us, you can’t blame them for being easily swayed.”

“Why the blazes are they doing this, though?” Huston said. “We haven’t made any enemies in the media.”

“No, but we haven’t particularly cultivated any friends, either.” Said Pater from his chairbowing his own head and rubbing his eyes wearily. “Viscount Moreded, on the other hand, must have sent some very generous gifts to the decision-makers at every scream-sheet and substacker in the colony.”

“But why,” Liberty asked, as the interview ended and a new one began, this time with the scrubbed- clean and well-dressed toughs that Dalas had frightened on his last night in town. “What would anyone gain by attacking our son like this?”

Pater watched for another minute as the thugs visibly struggled to hold back tears as they detailed how Dallas had broken into their innocent clubhouse meeting and threatened to dismember them with his father’s photonic blade if they didn’t give him money in paper TD bills.

“That’s it,” Austin said, standing. “I’m talking to a few of my friends. We need to get a counter-narrative going.”

“Good idea,” Said Huston. “You get production rolling. I’ll talk to my people and get you a nice, wide bandwidth to play with. Morded knows the legacy media, but we know the infranet and all the younger gens that use it.”

“Excellent, boys,” Pater said. “Get to it. I have things I’ve got to attend to.”

Texas Morgan didn’t rise as his sons left. Liberty looked for a very long two minutes at the sitting form of her husband of over a quarter-century as he suddenly covered his face with both his hands and sobbed quietly.

“Texas,” she said, rising and going to him, kneeling and trying to hug him in his chair, “Texas, it’ll be alright, meus amor. You’ve faced down worse threats than this!”

“It’s…oh, amica mea, it’s not just Moreded. He’s a bottom-feeding, journo-bribing cretin with delusions of wrestling New Avalon from us. It’s not like he’s got a quiver of swordmechs at our door. No, it’s just-” he broke off and looked out the window at the stars. “My son, mi dilectum filium meum, is out there. He’s- he’s killed a man already, in self defense I’m sure. But he’s out there, and even with Gareth he’s a sheep among a whole quadrant of very, very hungry wolves, and I cannot help him.” he paused to wipe his eyes and look outside the window again. “I’ve fought off attacks on our colony that I never ought to have survived, yet somehow I couldn’t raise our son to fulfill his duties and stay…”

“Safe?”

“Yes, safe. I can manage New Avalon, Liberty, or try to find my son, but it seems…it seems I cannot do both.”

“Then perhaps it’s time you further involved his brothers.”

Texas stopped and looked more closely at his wife. “Send them out?”

“Why not? They’re old enough. Huston spends his days at his workbench, and Austin with his pictures and friends on the infranet. Get them suited up, perhaps send them with a savvy gendarme or two, and they might be able to bring Dallas home.”

Texas sighed, then stood. “Mi uxor, once again you carve a path through my clouded mind to a clear solution. After the boys complete their media sortie, I’ll make it so!”

Liberty Morgan embraced her husband, looking up and into his eyes, a mischievous smile on her face. “Yes, yes you will, mi eques meus. But first, I have a little job you need to complete.”

“Do you, now?” he said, smiling back.

#

“So, we’re hired?”

“Yes, we’re hired, Anja! I told you that a long time ago! Our new captain, Dallas Morgan, he’s over there at the bar! See?”

Joker pointed excitedly to the young man, who looked over to the table of the four mech-jockeys and raised his glass. Not too high, but he did raise it.

“Dallas Morgan,” said the young girl, her eyes blinking. Her artificial white eye had a series of thin, red lines crossing it. “Age twenty Earth Years. Third son of the Earl of the fortress-colony world of New Avalon and head of House Morgan, a smaller house in the territories with a significant number of war-honors awarded to it. Currently has a substantial bounty on his head for stealing his ancestral sword mech. Wanted alive and undamaged. Inherited the Palefroi when he killed its captain, one James Orkney. Also inherited a series of debts to creditors throughout the systems equallying not less than two-hundred-fifty- five- thousand, four-hundred ninety-two standard galactic credits. Rumored to have more than twice that amount in paper Texas Dollars after illegally raiding his trust fund prior to his theft, which involved the alleged and disputed assault of several civilians, including a half-dozen scuttle-gang members and the paramour of his fiancee who gave him a sound beating. Father is a war-hero who led a defensive action against significant odds a peripheral action by Corporate forces during the New Tet Offensive, in which Corporate forces attempted to wrestle half the systems from…”

“Y’know, Yue,” said the big fellow at the table, “I think that’ll do. So, Joker, y’mind telling me why we don’t just turn him in for the reward offered him?”

“Same reason he won’t turn us in to the Corporates. He turns on us, we can turn right back on him! It’s perfect! Our last boss had a sword at our guts the whole time, and he threatened to cut us loose if we pissed him off enough.”

“Vich ve did.”

“I know, Anja, I get that! Point is, we’ve both got a sword pointed at each other here, so there’s no danger to any of us! Or him! We prove our worth, and we’re safe from- oh…”

Joker paused, looking at the door of the bar.

Four men had entered.

Each wore the distinct, shoulder-padded light body armor of mech jockeys of the New Manchurian Corporate Empire.

One of them looked at a datapad, then at their table. Back to the datapad.

His face hardened, looked at the other four, nodded.

“Oh, flup,” Joker whispered under his breath.

#

TO BE CONTINUED...