Wings of Retribution (29 page)

As the three kitchen goons started to reach for him, the wiry little man actually laughed.  “I’m sorry.  If the four of you don’t mind, could you read to me the little patch you’ve got embroidered on your shirt, just above the nametag?”

The three thugs hesitated, looking to Rob uncertainly.  Rob glanced at them, then at his shirt.  Stupidly, he said, “Says ‘Trevvitt.’”

“Oh, right,” the man said.  “Sorry, I didn’t bring my glasses with me.  Maybe you can tell me what this one says, too?”  He reached into his pocket.

“Don’t let the joker pull a gun!” Rob growled.

“Boys,” the man said calmly, “if I’d wanted you dead, I could do it from here, without even getting up.”  He calmly pulled out a slim metal box and flipped it open.  Pulling out a business card from where they were neatly stacked inside, he dropped it on the table in front of them and slid it to the edge of the table so they could see it.  “Refresh my memory a second.  What’s that last name, there?  The one that begins with ‘T’?”  He tapped the card with his index finger.

“Oh shit,” the head cook blurted.  He stumbled backwards, babbling.  The other two—dishwashers that liked to grab Dallas’s ass when she walked by to dump off her tub—backed up with him.

Rob snorted.  “Let me see tha—”  He reached for the card.

Lightning-fast, the man snatched up the knife and drove it through Rob’s hand, pinning her manager’s palm firmly to the table.  Leaning forward into the man’s startled face, he said, “And I heard about your sticky fingers, there, Robert.  I’ll have
my
guys pay you a visit later, if that’s all right with you.”  He slapped the man on his fleshy black and stood.

As Rob started screaming, Mr. Trevvitt yawned and gestured to Dallas.  “Shall we?  I’d like to show you your new home.”

Dallas swallowed, eyes on the knife.  “Sure thing, boss,” she said.

He led her out to Hub G and, with a brief nod at the attendant, entered the first-class docking section without ID.  That, in itself, should have given Dallas pause, but she was too busy staring through the windows at the beauties on the other side.  Multi-million credit megayachts lounged on the other side, waiting for their captain’s pleasure. 

And one of them was
hers
.  Dallas knew her mouth was open because a drop of drool hit her wrist.  It was all she could do not to leave greasy finger-prints along the windows as she ran to each one, gaping.

“There she is,” the man said, stopping and nodding through the portholes at a marvel of engineering that, beside the yachts, looked like a horny little lizard crouched amongst birds of paradise.

Dallas’s breath caught.  “That’s a
warplane,”
she breathed.  “
Custom
warplane.”

Her patron nodded.  “Sleek, fast, comfortable accommodations for eight.  Enough guns to blow a hole through T-9.”

Dallas tore her eyes away from the porthole, her elation fading.  “This is a joke.”

The mustached man laughed and pressed a thumb into the scanner beside him.  The door opened.  Above it, Dallas read the Hub’s little LED display,
Retribution.
  She glanced back out the porthole, tracing the path down the tube from the open door to the ship’s airlock with her eyes, still in disbelief.

“You coming?”  The mustached man stood in the entrance.

Dallas followed him in a daze.

In the next two hours, she determined that, yes, it was a warship.  Yes, it had guns.  Yes, it was completely real.

Dallas felt like smacking her forehead against the solid titanium walls to see if she was somehow daydreaming.

The next few days passed and three more crewmembers appeared, one an ominous, black-bearded giant with a big scar down one cheek, another a scruffy, wide-shouldered man who smelled of alcohol.  The last came in a day later, and Dallas could tell he was a man of a different cut.  He looked almost stately as he took up position at the navigator’s console, though he did seem to be a bit perturbed that he wasn’t at the pilot’s seat.  They set off just as soon as the third man was aboard.

Dallas still did not know anything about her employer or his mission, but as soon as she was behind the controls of the sleek, beautiful ship, she frankly didn’t care. 
Retribution
was everything she could have hoped for.  When she pressed on the throttle, the ship leapt forward as easily as a lightwave.  When she tested out the guns on a stray bit of spacerock, the dust that resulted was finer than sand.  She would have given her soul to pilot a ship like
Retribution
, back when she was bussing tables and trying to pocket any stray credits before Rob could take his cut.  Now, not only was she flying a warplane, but she was getting
paid
to do it.  Dallas was in paradise.

And to sweeten the deal,
Retribution
wasn’t even haunted.

The crew had gathered in the mess hall for dinner and Stuart had been watching their captain pick at her food for almost twenty minutes before Dallas finally said, “So, Mr. Trevvitt, when are ya gonna tell me who we’re rescuing?” 

Every head came up.  Stuart glanced at Rabbit to gauge his reaction, but the little man looked as calm as ever.  He was leaning back in his chair, stockinged feet on the dining table, flipping through a nudie file on his handheld.  ‘Talent scouting,’ he called it. 

“I mean,” Dallas continued, “You treat it like it’s some sort of secret or something.  What’d he do to land on Millennium, anyway?  You all act like you’re afraid I won’t help you if I find out who he is.”

Rabbit grunted.  “She’s pretty.”  He twisted the handheld so Stuart could see it.

“She has average lines,” Stuart agreed.

Directly across the table from them, as far from Rabbit as he could get, Tommy Howlen muttered something under his breath.  More than once, Tommy had bluntly asked Rabbit to do his ‘scouting’ somewhere else. 

More than once, Rabbit had very politely declined.

Making a face at Stuart’s comment, Rabbit retrieved his handheld.  “How would
you
know a good woman, anyway?  Average.”  He scoffed, looking at the picture.

Stuart shrugged.  “Science says that averages are the key to beauty.”

“Science can screw itself on a lightpole,” Rabbit said.  He held up the girl to Darley and pointed.  “She look average to you?”

Darley whistled.

On the other side of the table, Tommy jammed his fork into his potatoes a little too hard.  Stuart nervously glanced at the former colonel, who had taken to ironing his shirts and bathing before every dinner. 

Their captain watched their exchange with a pleading expression.  “Come on, guys.  You can
tell
me.  What, is he a baby-killer or something?  A rapist?  Believe me, there’s nothing he could have done to make me give up this ship.”

Rabbit shifted forward and brought the chair back level with a thud.  “She’s never killed babies, as far as I know.  Though she has an unreasonable intolerance for them.”  He held up another woman for Stuart to see.  “There’s a nice one,” he said.  “Gotta love freckles.”  He lowered the handheld again and continued flipping through the images.  To Dallas, he said, “Though I’m pretty sure she’s raped a few people.  Quite a few, actually.  She had a few…rough…years, there for awhile.”  He held up the handheld to Stuart again.  “Fake,” he said.

Dallas’s brow furrowed.  “They don’t send girls to Erriat.”

“They sent this one.”

The way Dallas’s face dropped was almost comical.  “It’s Athenais, isn’t it?”

“Oh, wow, those are
real
,” Rabbit said.  He reached for his tablet and the list of names he had begun accumulating since they’d sat down.  Picking up a pen, he added another to the list.

Tommy cleared his throat a little too loudly.

“
That’s
where I know you from,” Dallas cried.  “You’re
Rabbit
.  You gave me that coin in the hub.  You grew a beard.”

“Technically, it’s a mustache, dear.”  He turned to Stuart.  “You know, with a different haircut, she could make a killing,” Rabbit said, holding up another girl.  “She could start at a couple thousand a night, if she went low.”

Stuart nodded absently, watching the captain.  For a moment, she looked like she might scream.  She even went so far as to suck in a huge breath and tilt her head toward the ceiling, but she only let it out slowly through her teeth.  When she lowered her head, she looked utterly defeated.  “So as soon as we rescue her, you’re handing her over command of the ship, is that it?  So she can dump me on the first planet we come to?”

“The ship’s yours,” Rabbit said distractedly.  He was writing down another name, this one with a star behind it.

Dallas narrowed her eyes.  “Mine?  Really?  So I can tell her to clean the privy if she pisses me off?”

“Whatever you feel is suitable.”  Rabbit had picked up his personal communicator—which contained a state-of-the-art, high-powered transmitter that made the lights flicker when he switched it on—and was placing a call.

Malicious glee danced in Dallas’s eyes in between the flicker of the overheads.  “I’ll let her cook, maybe wait tables for a few months.”

“Whatever you deem appropriate,” he said distractedly.  “Yeah, Huan?  Okay, found another one…”

As Rabbit held a brief conversation with whoever was on the other line, Dallas continued, “Think I’ll let her go a few rounds in the air-lock and have her clean up her own vomit when she’s done.  With her
tongue
.”

Rabbit flipped his phone shut and dropped it back into his front pocket.  “As you wish.”

“She can starve on baked beans and leftovers.”

“Absolutely.”

“She can wear skimpy shorts that show her buttcheeks and have all the guys grabbing her ass while she’s trying to work.”

Reaching for his handheld again, Rabbit said, “I don’t believe Athenais has very becoming buttcheeks, but you are certainly welcome to try.”  He switched his handheld off and tucked it back into its case.

Dallas laughed.  “This is going to be so much fun.”

Neatly setting his handheld atop his tablet, Rabbit cleared his throat.  “Since we’ve reached the discovery portion of tonight’s entertainment, let me introduce myself and the crew.  I am Rabbit.  I believe you’ve heard of me.”

“You own that place with Giggles, right?”

“The Shop, yes.  This here is Darley, my most loyal customer.”

“Don’t forget a damn good mechanic,” Darley muttered.

“He found out Athenais was headed to Erriat and I had to bring him along or he would have gone by himself.”

“Spent two centuries workin’ the mines there.  Ain’t no place for a woman.”

Dallas snorted.