Galactic Outlaws (Galaxy's Edge Book 2) Read online

  Keel sashayed across the shop’s junk-strewn floor, his gun belt bathed in alternating lemon and mauve glows. No one came out to greet him in spite of a two-tone chime that sounded when he crossed the threshold. The place seemed entirely empty until Keel heard a faint scurry. The noise came from behind a makeshift counter constructed from the wing of some mid-core spacefighter. The blaster cannon had been removed from the wing’s tip, and black carbon scoring and fried wiring gave a hint at the craft’s final moments of flightworthiness.

  Leaning over the counter to find the source of the noise, Keel found himself looking down at a small, lemur-like creature. Its fur was a crimson-brown, and it had a slender, prehensile tail curled like a question mark just behind its large round ears. The little thing examined Keel for a moment, watching him from beneath bushy eyebrows that shaded large, expressive, brown eyes. Probably some sort of shop mascot or pet.

  Keel rested his elbow on the counter and looked around for Bam Tammo. “Hello? How ’bout a little help?”

  The shop’s pet hopped up a series of stacked crates, scooted along a ramp that read “Special Edition,” and stopped on top of the counter. It stood on its hind legs, looked up at Keel, and spoke. “Don't talk like I’m not in the room, huh, pal? I got ears.”

  “Cute.” Keel frowned.

  "Yeah, that's what they say about me… especially your girl last night.” The little furball began swiveling its tiny hips.

  Keel rolled his eyes. He noticed a pair of sled goggles sitting next to one of the crates the creature had just hopped from. “Those yours?”

  The creature followed Keel’s eyes to the goggles, then turned back at Keel. “Yeah. You buying?”

  “Garret?” Keel ventured.

  A tiny, mocking laugh escaped the alien, causing its fur to ripple around its stomach. “You know, you’re lucky you're so big. Otherwise I might smack you around for even suggesting that. Do I look like some gutless kid from Mentarro, working for pirates?”

  Keel shot out his hand to grab the creature. With a squeaky howl it ducked and attempted to jump clear, but Keel’s reflexes were too quick. He snatched the thing from the air, grabbing it by the smooth fur on the back of its neck.

  “Put me down!”

  Holding the creature up so he could look it in the eyes, Keel furrowed his brow. The wiry little thing swiped at Keel’s face, revealing a predator’s dental structure—in miniature. Keel drew his blaster and brought the barrel up menacingly next to the tiny creature’s chin. “Settle down or I’ll use you for target practice. I take it you’re Bam Tammo?”

  “Yeah,” Tammo answered in a small, high-pitched voice. Its body was limp, all resistance having drained away at the sight of the blaster.

  “Wonderful. Now we’re getting somewhere.” Keel holstered his blaster. “I need information, and reliable sources tell me I’m going to find it here.”

  Tammo raised long bushy eyebrows that seemed to invite Keel to continue.

  “So what we’re going to do is start over. Yeah?”

  Tammo nodded vehemently.

  Keel adjusted his grip, holding Tammo around its torso, fingers wrapped beneath the creature’s armpits. “I’m looking for a coder. Works for Lao Pak and goes by the name Garret. You know him.”

  “Yeah, Garret. I know him. He helps me get some of the more delicate and expensive pieces working.” Tammo pointed to a gleaming portable shield generator locked up in an energy case on the far wall. “In exchange, I let him take whatever he wants—within reason—for his own little projects.”

  Keel didn’t care about whatever working relationship the kid had with the little space rat. “Where can I find him?”

  Tammo pointed a tiny thumb over its shoulder. “Should be in the back still. He was sorting through some spare hoverbot parts. MCR buys reconditioned TT-16 observation bots for way above market price for new… if you can get ’em delivered without questions.”

  “Around back. That’s all I needed to know.” Keel tossed the junk store owner into a pile of assorted springs and power cables.

  Tammo popped its head up from the debris, a newly stripped ion coupler dangling from its ear. “Rude! All you pirates are rude!”

  Keel left the shop and made his way around back. Turning a corner into a small, weed-infested yard, he was greeted by a blinding flash of blue light. As he blinked away the painful aftereffects, he saw a goggle-wearing humanoid sitting at an open-air workbench, welding together two pieces of armored plating on a full-size observation bot. Lao Pak must have misidentified welding glasses as sled driver’s goggles.

  “You Garret?” Keel asked.

  The welder thumbed off his torch and placed it on the workbench. He lifted up his goggles and squinted at Keel. “Yes.” His voice was curious and self-conscious at once. Slick sheets of combed, oily hair dangled around his eyes and ears. Lao Pak was right: Garret was just a kid. Probably too young to even drink on any world except lawless dens of iniquity like this one.

  Keel leaned against the shop wall, crossing his ankles. “Lao Pak said you could help me.”

  Garret opened his mouth wide as if to speak, but no words came out. “Oh, well, the thing is…” he shook his head and smiled meekly, apologetically. “I really have to finish this before my leave is up, or Bam Tammo is going to be pretty unhappy.”

  “Forget about Bam Tammo. I need something that can render my navigator off-ship.”

  Garret gave a nervous laugh and a slow, dismissive shake of his head before looking up at Keel with sudden interest. “Hologram?” The coder leaned forward, his interest clearly piqued. “Like, like a shipboard AI?”

  “Something like that,” Keel said, poking through a pile of discarded charge packs with the toe of his boot. “We used TT-3 bots to render him off-ship, but those were… uh, destroyed. I’m looking for an upgrade.”

  “What kind of upgrade?” Garret was clearly excited.

  “Something that will make him combat effective. I dunno, modify the bots to shoot blaster charges,” Keel suggested, stretching his neck enough to cause his vertebrae to pop. “Use your imagination. Sky’s the limit.”

  Garret stood up from his bench, knocking over a spray can of fiber sealant. He didn’t seem to notice. “What about an optional permanence renderer? It’s theoretical, but Bam Tammo has the stuff that could get it done—in his below-ground cache.”

  “Sure,” Keel said, waving off the details. “Charge it to Lao Pak; we’re old friends. How long will this take?”

  The coder pushed away an oily strand of hair from his right eye. “Oh… maybe a few days?”

  “To get the parts?”

  Garret laughed, a sort of breathy, ungainly sound. “No. I can have those in a half hour. I mean a few days to have it all finished, sir.” Garret inclined his head, strands of hair hanging down loose from his brow. “I don’t know your name.”

  “Aeson Keel. I fly the Indelible VI.” The captain looked around, verifying that he was alone with the coder. “And that’s too long. I’m jumping system tonight, and I don’t know when I can get back.”

  Garret shook his head. “I can forward them to you on a shipping crate, or—”

  “No,” countered Keel. “You can finish them on board. C’mon.” He patted Garret on the back, sending the coder stumbling away from his workbench.

  Righting himself by grabbing hold of Keel’s vest, Garret gave a nervous laugh, shaking his head as though the suggestion were an impossibility. “A lot… a lot of people would be really,” he leaned in to Keel’s ear and whispered, “angry.”

  Keel gave a lopsided grin. “It’ll be fine. You’re with me.”

  “I really don’t think—”

  Garret’s objection died there as Keel grabbed a fistful of his coveralls and pulled him toward Bam Tammo’s shop.

  Keel navigated his way through inventory-filled racking and repulsor pallets to the front of the store. He whistled. “Hey, Tammo!”

  The furry creature appeared from behind a s
tack of holodrives. It smoothed its fur and stood on its hind legs. “How may I help you, sir?” Tammo asked, his voice thick with hostile sarcasm.

  “The kid here is working on something for me.” Keel hitched a thumb toward Garret, who shuffled uneasily, looking down and rubbing the back of his neck. “Give him whatever he asks for.”

  Tammo leveled a cold stare at Garret. The coder, for his part, kicked the ground, looking like he wished to be anywhere but here.

  Keel put his hands on his hips, his stance askew. “Before the tech becomes obsolete, huh?”

  The staring contest broken, Tammo and Garret began rounding up parts.

  ***

  Keel strode next to Garret, who pushed a repulsor pallet loaded with boxes and crates. The coder had been sharing his backstory, while Keel answered with what he hoped were enough “uh-huhs” and “hmms” to provide a passable show of attentive listening. A trio of drunken pirates strolled by singing a space shanty, all of them leaning on one another, too inebriated to stand on their own.

  “So,” Garret concluded, “that’s basically it. I bought my life from Lao Pak when he raided a passenger transport. Been working for him ever since.”

  “Lao Pak killed all the others?” Keel furrowed his brow. “That doesn’t sound like him. Surefire way to grab the Republic’s attention.”

  Garret let loose a breathy laugh. “No. I just thought they were going to kill us, so I begged to be spared.” The coder looked up with melancholy in his eyes. “Everyone else, he let go…”

  Keel rolled his eyes. “You can jump ship as soon as Ravi’s upgrades are complete.”

  At the mention of the upgrades, Garret’s eyes lit up. “I’m really looking forward to that. The project, not jumping ship. Most of what Lao Pak has me do is routine maintenance and decryption. Plus whatever the crew asks for. Usually holostream updates and better climate controls. But this stuff is exciting. I haven’t done anything along these lines in… well, a long time. Before I started working for Lao Pak, I was hired to reprogram an old Savage Wars-era war bot into a personal servant unit by some rich family. That was a challenge! The trick was—”

  Keel gave a dismissive smile and nod. He was busy watching a pair of delphins arguing with each other on the front porch of a game hall. But when he became aware that Garret had stopped talking, he looked over to see that the coder was stopped in his tracks. A burly human with a bushy red beard was standing in front of the repulsor pallet, holding it in place.

  “These for my new racing skiff, string bean?” asked the interloper as he examined the various crates.

  Garret shook his head and gave his wispy, open-mouthed laugh. “N-now Drex… Lao Pak said that I couldn’t—”

  “Is Lao Pak here?” shouted Drex. Keel assumed this was a member of the pirate’s crew. “Skiff races are next week, and I need those repairs finished or I won’t be able to qualify.”

  “But,” Garret protested, looking meekly at the ground, “you still haven’t… haven’t paid me from last time. Skiff parts… a-aren’t cheap, Drex.”

  Drex swatted Keel’s chest with the back of his hand. “Get a load of this guy, huh?” the pirate said, chuckling. He turned his attention back to Garret, even as Keel’s eyes stay fixed on the spot where the pirate had touched him.

  Drex tapped his fingers on Garret’s forehead. “Hello, code-rat. If I spend all my divvy on ship repairs, I won’t have anything left for the cantina.”

  “No, you’re right, Drex,” Garret confessed, sheepishly laughing with the large pirate. “I’ll order the parts and get the skiff race ready by qualifiers.”

  “Upgrade the optical sensor gyro, too. Skiff felt unbalanced when I took the turns at Mos Orba.”

  Garret nodded. “Okay, Drex. Sure thing. I-I just have to do a job for Captain Keel first.”

  Drex looked Keel up and down. “What do I care about some long-haul space pilot?” He poked Keel in the chest. “You’ll have to find a new code-rat. This one’s busy.”

  With a blur of motion, Keel grabbed Drex by his wrist and wrenched it behind the pirate, twisting it until he could hear the meaty bones and joints popping. Falling to a knee, Drex screamed out in pain, then abruptly stopped at the sight of Keel’s blaster pointed at his temple.

  “This one important to Lao Pak?” Keel asked Garret.

  The coder stood stock still, his eyes wide and his face pale.

  “Yeah,” Drex pleaded, seeming to pick up on the reason Keel asked. “I lead his boarding crew. He needs me!”

  “Wasn’t talking to you,” said Keel.

  Garret blinked, and raised his shoulders as he ducked his head. “Oh, I… I don’t know, really. I mean, I think so. I think… I think Lao Pak—I don’t really know.”

  Keel shrugged, then clubbed the pirate on the back of his head with the grip of his blaster. The burly brigand went down in a heap. Keel pushed the repulsor pallet over the unconscious body.

  Looking back, Garret said, “Drex is going to be angry about that.”

  “Why? I didn’t kill him. C’mon. Docking Bay 49 is right up this way.”

  The coder had gone quiet. Probably worried about what he’d gotten himself into. Keel resolved to make him feel at ease. It wasn’t good for him to be jumping from one form of indentured servitude to another—compelled work tended to provide inferior results. “Why do you let guys like that push you around, kid?”

  “Oh,” Garret shook his head. “It’s not so bad. Besides, it’s not exactly like I can do anything about it.”

  Keel patted his re-holstered blaster. “That’s what these are for. Equalizers. You know how to use them?”

  “No.”

  Keel nodded. He hadn’t expected otherwise. “I’ve got some training bots on board. You can practice when you’re not working.”

  “Thanks,” the coder said. He didn’t seem much more comfortable than before.

  Attempting a new angle, Keel said, “Tell me about that job reprogramming a war bot. Didn’t think there were any of those left.”

  “They’re hard to come by!” Garret found his enthusiasm again. “Like I said, the family was rich. I was probably the fourth code-slicer they subcontracted.”

  Keel laughed. “Rich family like that… I take it Lao Pak tried to get you to share their hyper-coordinates? This is us.” Keel pointed to a brown and battered docking bay door and helped Garret maneuver the pallet sled.

  The door whooshed open, and Garret moved to the front end of the sled, facing the captain.

  “He never asked, so I never told him,” Garret said, peeking over his shoulder at the Indelible VI. “Naseen freighter. How modified is it?”

  Keel gave a grin. “Let’s just say that even if you’re in a corvette, you don’t want to underestimate her.”

  “Nice. Yeah, that family brought me to their villa to work on the bot in a luxury ’vette. Prisma’s Future.”

  Keel waved for Ravi to lower Indelible’s ramp. “Sounds like a nice job, if you can keep it.”

  “It was,” Garret confirmed. There was a look of something—nostalgia?—on his young face. “The Maydoons treated me really nice.”

  Keel stopped cold in his tracks. “Maydoon?”

  12

  Keel saw the smile on Ravi’s face after the navigator pressed the button for the three thousandth floor of Republic Towers. How long had it been since the hologram had been able to manipulate anything other than the sliced controls of the Indelible VI? Yes, Keel felt he had more than come through in finding Garret. The coder was a technological miracle worker, making a reality of things that were only posited as theoretical in the various corporate trade holos.

  “Not bad, huh?” Keel said.

  “Yes, I am most pleased,” Ravi confirmed. And then he eyed Keel in a way that made him feel like a prey species being watched by a predator. “I am curious to see how well the technology holds in combat. It has been some time, and of course, I can’t be hit back…”

  Keel furrowed his brow. “Ingrate
.”

  They were on Corsica, a mid-core world close enough to the galactic core that its residents could almost pretend they were in league with the galaxy’s movers and shakers. The 3,500-story Republic Towers building was the crown jewel of the planet’s capital city—a lone obelisk offering a foretaste of what the future held, a future where galaxy’s edge would become the new mid-core, where worlds like Corsica would finally ascend into the proper respectability of the true core.

  The name “Maydoon” had turned out to be quite a sufficient lead, thanks to Garret. Garret didn’t know the current whereabouts of Kael Maydoon, the man who had hired him to reprogram a war bot to serve as some sort of housebroken bodyguard, but he was certain that if they could find the bot, they’d find its owner. And since Republic Towers was where Garret had been hired, Keel was confident that this was the place to start their search.

  Leaning against the back wall of the speedlift, Keel watched the coder and princess both shift in their places. “It’s a good three-minute ride to our floor.”

  “Two minutes, forty-five seconds,” corrected Ravi.

  “I am excited to be off ship, captain.” Leenah seemed genuine. “I wonder if there are any operatives sympathetic to the MCR who might be able to…” She paused as if to gauge Keel’s reaction. “I mean, I should probably head back some time.”

  Keel shrugged. “You’re not a prisoner. I like having you on the ship—when you’re working, I mean. Why not stick around for a while? See a bit of the galaxy?”

  Something made Keel believe she hadn’t really seen all that much of the galaxy—apart from her home planet and a few rotting MCR mobile headquarters. The Mid-Core Rebellion didn’t seem to fit her. They were idiot insurgents, just as likely to kill you as free you in the name of liberty. For all their talk of moving on from their atrocities, Keel was unconvinced.