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I wonder if he understands that? Seems to me, saurians follow the law of the wild. The strongest wins. The most terrifying, cruelest, most unrelenting, dominant force is the one that prevails. And the rest of them seem to respect that. Even the outlaws.
I think back to when that poor young saurian got his ass whipped by Avel. I was so intimidated then. And turned on, if I’m to be honest with myself. But I don’t know if that trick is going to work twice. He wants to humiliate me publicly, but I served under Sullivan, and that meant being publicly humiliated more times than I can count.
A year or so ago…
Captain Sullivan is standing in front of me with a carbonated soft drink so large she has to hold it in both hands. Combined with her stature and wild, curling blonde hair, it makes her look like a child — which frankly, she mentally may be. I have been doubting her decision-making skills for some time now, but never more than in this moment.
We are surrounded by thousands of happy alien shoppers of all species. They rush and saunter by with various degrees of urgency, not a single one of them suspecting the infamy in their midst. We are technically on the run from the military and law enforcement forces of three separate planets. We shouldn’t be showing our faces anywhere in public. There’s every chance that the security cameras on these stores feed back into a bigger data center somewhere and that we are putting ourselves on the radar of one or maybe all of the people who currently want us.
But, as Sullivan has pointed out dozens of times now, the crew wanted ice cream.
There’s a fountain in the middle of the mall, a big, round behemoth with water pouring out of the mouths of what looks to humans like a bunch of monkeys with fish bodies. It’s one of a dozen fountains in the mall, which holds a thousand shops and has capacity for tens of thousands of standard-shaped alien lives. It also has its own private security forces who strut about in blue and silver uniforms, mostly harassing teenage locals who are trying to thieve from rich alien tourists.
The bulk of our crew is ranged around the verge of the fountain, sitting on the edge and eating ice cream. I’m looking at nearly twenty of the most wanted women in the system right now, each and every one of them apparently unconcerned by the fact we’re exposing ourselves for dessert.
“We should get out of here.”
“The crew needs some downtime,” she says. “They need somewhere to spend their spoils, and where better than this?”
“Where better than a massive public place with extensive surveillance? Practically anywhere,” I say.
“You should get some ice cream, Raine. Relax. Have a good time.”
I am not having ice cream, or a good time. I am on edge, scanning the crowds for any signs of trouble. We are on the lowest floor, but there are a good half dozen stories above us, all with balconies corresponding to the fountain. When I look up, there’s nothing but railing after railing packed with sentient creatures, any one of whom could be reporting us to the authorities or be affiliated with the authorities themselves.
“We should leave,” I repeat.
“We can’t. We’re scouting.”
“For what? This is a fucking mall, Sullivan.”
“Right,” she says. “And a mall is a place where people spend money. A lot of money.”
“We are pirates. We are not going to rip off a mall like a pack of out-of-control teens. This is ridiculous.”
“This is one of the biggest malls in the galaxy. Billions of dollars of trade every year.”
“There are kids here. A lot of them. Have you thought about crossfire?”
She gives me that smirking look she likes to give when she’s correcting some minor detail that doesn't make an insane plan the slightest bit less insane. “We won’t do it now, obviously. We’ll come back in the evening. After the place closes.”
“After they’ve already moved all the cash offsite, you mean?”
“We’re not here for the cash. It’s all credits these days anyway, digital transactions. Can’t steal them. You know what you can steal, though?”
“What?”
She holds up a hanger with bright, silken, padded underwear on it and gives me a manic grin.
“Booty.”
I roll my eyes, assuming she’s joking. Sullivan loves to make inappropriate jokes. She also loves to make insane plans too, though, so I have to be careful.
Later that night, we prepare to rob a mall.
“Three minutes,” I say. “No more than that. Everybody has their transporter discs on hand, right?”
Sullivan is the captain, but on briefings like this she defers to me. That’s a good thing, because if they were left to her there wouldn’t be any plan or safety checks. The crew would do as they pleased, when they pleased. We wouldn’t effectively have a crew at all. We’d have two dozen loose cannons.
