“We need…a Chrysum condenser, a few cond-”
“Sorry. Can’t help you,” Deegan cut in. Lilia tilted her head on a crooked axis. Her smirk retreated an inch behind a mask of suspicion.
“Well, I know you have a few condensers at least. We never used to have a cart big enough to take all the ones we found,” said Lilia.
“We’ve got plenty. Not what he said. He said we can’t help you,” growled Sylvia. Lilia mimicked her crossed-arm stance.
“Since when do you turn down credits?” she asked, closely checking her tone. Lilia sounded more concerned than angry. She stepped in front of Howard to shield him from the eye-daggers of her old crew.
&nb
sp; “Since they come from WCC squealers,” said Sylvia, plainer and simpler than Lilia figured she’d get from them. That they might do this was hardly the slightest of her apprehensions. The fealty they used to have to each other still wouldn’t allow her to fully accept the rejection.
“You can’t mean that. Like either of you would have turned down a position like this to stay in the Rings,” Lilia huffed.
“That’s right. But neither of us have the skills you have. We never would have received an offer like the one you got in the first place. We don’t have anything. And we hate you for it,” Deegan spelled out for her, too clearly to refute.
“You…” Lilia started, so ready to fight them, before the real gravity of his words could settle on her. We hate you. “Let me make this clear. I’m offering you higher than retail. You’d be lucky to get market value on most of this, and I’m offering well above.” Deegan shook his head while Sylvia rolled her eyes.
“You’re not half as smart as I thought you were, if you actually believed you’d come back waving your credits around and get whatever you wanted. Screw off, Lilia,” Sylvia growled. Lilia leaned back, away from the cold wind of her words. A hundred bullets slipped into the chambers of her brain. There were so many, in fact, that her mouth jammed and only trembled. Don’t you know who we’re fighting for? Without the Dogs of War, the Dragons win! The money I could give you would buy food for months! You already did the leg work for the gear - I’m saving you the trouble of finding a buyer! Lilia never did get the chance to fire a single one off.
“Hands on the wall, all of you!” a baritone authoritarian voice boomed through the Chrysum cave.
“You brought the damn guards with you?” Deegan hissed, even as he flattened his palms against the radiant heat of the stony cavern walls. Four bodies in plated Fusion armor flooded in around them. They must have followed us from the beginning. Howard turned along with Sylvia to do as they were bid. Lilia stopped him while she fished for her ID in her pocket.
“We’re here on assignment. I’m Commander Lilia Delphi, with the Special Forces unit, the Dogs of War,” she told the guards.
“How, exactly, does that excuse you from purchasing stolen goods?” one of the guards countered. He grasped Lilia’s wrist to spin her toward the wall. The Commander, however, had other ideas.
She managed to throw her accoster’s hand away and dig a heel into the backside of his calf. The man went down just before a Fusion rifle butt struck her ribs. Lilia countered with a bash from the hardest part of her forehead to the softest part of the guard’s. She managed to sweep a third officer from his feet before the fourth scorched the wall beside her head with a Chrysum bolt.
“Enough!” the guard shouted.
“What’s enough is you four, coming in here guns blazing when I told you: I’m here on assignment!” Lilia screamed. She stared down the shimmering barrel of a Fusion rifle without fear. She felt the eyes of her former crew heavy on her back, but she dared not glance back at them. She needed them to see. WCC paycheck or not, she was still Lilia Delphi, grittiest Captain the Rings of Saturn had ever spit out. She locked eyes with the trigger-happy guard until the rest of them had wobbled and groaned to their feet. “What’s happening here is official task force business. Not yours.”
“Everything in these Rings is our jurisdiction. Our business,” the first guard assured her, “Now put your damn hands on the wall before I blast them off.” Lilia stood upright, defiant, even when the barrel of a Fusion rifle jabbed at her chest. Even when her heart fluttered off-beat with the touch of a trigger.
“You Ring guards sure are dedicated,” a woman mused from behind them. All the guards but one wheeled to face her. “I could try to put in a good word with my uncle on that, but I’m not sure it’ll outweigh burning a hole in one of his personally picked Dogs of War,” said Sophia. She, Kalus and Demi stepped into the cave from the main hallway. By the time it had taken for Lilia to at least send word, her brother knew something hadn’t gone as planned. Two Fusion rifles and a Chrysum rod pointed at Sophia instantly. The leader of the guards, however, kept his crosshairs fixed on Lilia.
“Who in the hell are you?” he asked, without turning.
“Sophia Brass. Artillery Specialist of the Dogs of War,” she told him. Sophia fought to keep from smirking as the rifles and rod started to lower at the sound of her last name. “If you still feel the need to detain the Commander, feel free. I can call my uncle Marcus for you to clear things up.” In the matter of two heavy, pensive moments, only the leader of the guards held his weapon up.
“You expect me to facilitate scrappers’ business? To let them make credits off of untaxed, stolen ship materials?” he barked back.
“Stolen from where? A dumpster behind a mechanic’s shop? You can’t prove a thing about goods that aren’t even here,” Lilia challenged the man. She took a bold step forward, so the tip of his rifle prodded her hard collarbone, right between her breasts.
“Like the Commander said. We’re on assignment,” said Sophia. The guard bit down on his lip, hard enough to draw blood. He swallowed an irony gulp before he finally forced his weapon down.
“Won’t be long before you make another sale,” he said to Sylvia and Deegan. The guard turned to stomp out of the cave. One by one, his fellows followed in his footsteps. Lilia, Sophia and the rest of the Dogs waited until the last of their footsteps had echoed out to speak. Sylvia and Deegan waited equally long to peel their sweaty hands from the wall.
“It could be, if you’d take a good deal when it looked you in the face,” Lilia said to them. Her new crew gathered in close to multiply her influence by the size of the crowd.
“Look… We appreciate that you still kick ass and that you got those crooks off our backs…but you brought them here in the first place,” Sylvia made one last attempt to resist. Lilia could tell, though, they’d been shaken.
“Besides, how do we know you won’t just turn us over to save face on your way out of here with your new parts?” Deegan asked, which meant just one thing to Lilia. He’s considering it. “I mean, isn’t that your job? Fly the skies in search of wrongdoers?” Lilia and Sophia opened their mouths to answer at once, but it was their Captain who drew the fastest.
“Captain Demitri Alexander of the Dogs of War,” he introduced himself to Deegan with a firm hand outstretched.