START OF 'BEST ENEMIES' ARC

Chapter 33: Cash Prize

“Tumba was built on commerce. Death is simply commerce of another kind.”

-Governor Orelius Chaesim, 181 U.E.

“What was your wife like?” Yin asked, twirling down the landing ramp of the Tits Up.

Stephan reddened. He rubbed his chin to hide it.

“A bitch, then,” Yin concluded. She played with the necklace he had given her, rubbing the metal disc between her hands.

“She was…” Stephan sighed. “We just weren’t compatible. There was a time when I thought we could be happy together.”

“Turns out you were meant for the open skies,” Quintilla said. “More than one devoted husband has been lured off in the same way.” She carried the satchel of map pieces over one shoulder.

They walked onto the docks and headed for Vormor’s house under the afternoon sun. Only three more pieces, then the treasure would be within their reach. The captain said there was a strong possibility that Barandi had all three.

“I’ve gotta figure out what I’ll do with all this money I stand to make,” Yin chirped. She leapt onto a rooftop in a single bound and did a little dance.

“How about you start by figuring out what you want for dinner tonight?” Stephan said. He squinted up at her. “Seeing as you’ve got all that energy, I might make you help out.”

“Ugh, no!” Yin went limp and rolled down the side of the slanted roof, landing face-down in the dirt road. Quintilla hauled her back to her feet, and she kept walking only reluctantly.

Stephan brushed the dust off her shirt. He picked up the necklace, which had fallen off, and threaded it around her neck. “Don’t be dramatic. It doesn’t suit a refined young lady such as yourself.”

Yin snorted.

They were swallowed into the bowels of the city. Tight, winding alleys and packed walkways. Yin got a fatty bugshark skewer from a streetside stall to gnaw on, and Quintilla picked up a ‘Get well soon!’ card for Kurko with a walrus on it.

Stephan got to thinking about his previous life and realized it had barely been on his mind lately. Not long ago, it had been the only thing he knew. Now, it felt like a different person had been living that life, just like Torch had said. Going through the motions. Doing what was expected of him.

Stephan touched the sharktooth scars running up his arm.

If only Maya could see me now, a hardened criminal.

Yin tugged on Quintilla’s shirt. “We’re being watched. Gunman. Behind us.”

Stephan started with a stifled yelp. He made to turn, but Quintilla snapped her fingers and brought him to attention.

“Keep walking,” she hissed. “Act natural. Yin, can you tell what crew the gunman belongs to?”

Yin glanced back and clicked her tongue. “Um, I dunno. He’s a human wearing plain clothes, no mark or anything.”

They walked down a short strip of road, a fork ahead of them. Stephan pretended to laugh at something Quintilla said. He felt a target on the back of his neck as keenly as though he had the barrel pressed against his skull.

“Get ready to run,” Quintilla said. “Scatter. We take the left turn. He’ll aim to fire before we round the corner.”

Stephan swallowed hard. His palms were clammy with sweat. It took all the discipline he could muster to maintain a carefree stroll.

They were perhaps fifteen meters from the fork, pushing past a group of slovenly drunks.

“Wait…” Quintilla said.

They cleared the drunks, leaving the rest of the street clear.

“Now! Run!”

Yin became a green-black blur. The captain set off into a sprint, long legs pumping. Stephan tripped over his own feet, nearly falling to the ground.

A sharp crack made him flinch. One of the drunks dropped, wailing. Blood squirted from his shoulder while his friends watched.

Stephan straightened himself out and ran for his life. Ten meters to the bend. Five. One.

Another shot sent a spray of mortar flying out of the wall just a few decimeters left of his head. Quintilla reached out from behind the corner, grabbed Stephan by his suit, and pulled him towards her.

He stumbled to safety and sighed with relief, resting one hand on a nearby wall. His heart pounded in his ears.

“What in all hells was that?” Stephan asked.

“Don’t know yet,” Quintilla said, eyeing the Tumbani citizens that streamed by, having realized this wasn’t their fight. “Could be a rival crew trying to nab our map.”

He sighed. “That means there’s more of them, doesn’t it?”

“Most fucking likely.”

Groups of fighters pushed past the civilians on each end of the street, armed with pistols and rifles. Quintilla got one with a shot to the head. She kept a hand on Yin’s shoulder to prevent her from going after them.

“Here!” the captain called, nodding to a two-story wooden tenement building on their side of the street. “We need to find some cover before we fulfill Mr. Lordling’s longtime dream of becoming a fancy cheese full of holes.”

Stephan ducked low as bullets whizzed over his head. Yin kicked the door open, nearly taking it off the hinges, and they hurried inside. He helped Quintilla pull a table and upend it to block the doorway, then drew his Rivello.

A pair of disheveled fellows sat in a couch, peeking into the hallway from the adjoining living room, mouths agape. Quintilla got them to leave with a warning shot and a few well-placed words.

“How many did you see?” Stephan asked Yin, who was peeking through one of the greasy windows facing the street.

“Thirteen,” Yin said. “Fourteen, counting the gunman.”

“Damn it. Captain, what do we do?”

“We stay put,” Quintilla said. She looked through the back door, which led into a smaller back street, before slamming it shut.

“That’s it? No daring plan? No risky gambit? They’ll break in here eventually. No way we can keep them all out.”

“Speak for yourself,” Yin muttered.

“He’s right,” Quintilla said. “But I do have a plan. We make an opening, then have Yin run back to the ship for reinforcements. With the full crew here, we’ll make quick work of these jokers. Amateurs, from the looks of them.”

“And how do we create this opening?”

Stephan spotted one of the fighters creeping behind a stall for cover on the other side of the street. He switched on his glasses, seeing the outline of the man’s aura through the flimsy wood. He aimed carefully and fired twice. The man fell with a cry, clutching his breast.

“Exactly like that, Mr. Lordling,” Quintilla said. “We take a couple out, get them flustered. We force them to push hard, opening a path for Yin.”

Stephan nodded. “I can do that. Probably.”

They took up positions near the windows. Stephan and Quintilla in the front and Yin in the back watching for flankers.

It was quiet for a while. Deathly so. Stephan began to think that the fighters had left when one of them spoke.

“We all know you’re not getting out of that house alive if you put up a fight!” he called. “For the cook and the child, if you come out now, we’ll let you live. It’s the captain we want!”

“Fuck yourself!” Yin called back.

“I second that!” Stephan said.

The attackers conferred in hushed voices.

“Fine,” the leader said. “Have it your way.” He whistled sharply.

Stephan’s window shattered with a spray of gunfire, and he ducked low to avoid the glass shards. Countless shots rang out, splintering the walls and floors. Stephan couldn’t fire back without leaning out of the window and giving himself away. He curled up and put his hopes in the possibility that the attackers ran out of bullets before one found its mark.

He caught something in the corner of his eye. The flicker of auras, two or three. Up above, on the second floor of the building.

Damn it! he thought. Must’ve gotten in from the roof.

There was no time to call out as two fighters came down the stairs, pistols raised. No time to aim, either. Stephan jerked his gun in their general direction and unloaded, squeezing the trigger until it clicked empty.

The two fighters fell down. One gurgling on blood, shot through the neck, the other gripping at her leg with an anguished scream.

Stephan charged before the woman could recover, tackling her into the staircase. He grabbed her long hair and wound it around his hand, jerked her head up, and slammed it into the hardwood step.

Whack.

She whimpered, eyes going unfocused as she mumbled something that sounded like begging. He pulled her head up again.

Whack.

This time, the step was stained red.

Whack.

Whack.

Whack.

He let go of the woman’s hair, panting, and stood up. She wasn’t moving. Her companion fumbled weakly, but the strength had gone out of him. He’d die in a minute, too.

Looking back, he saw three fighters kicking down the table that blocked the door and leaping across it. Quintilla was still pinned down by the table.

Stephan scrambled to pick up the dead woman’s pistol, uncurling her cramped fingers from the weapon.

He was too late, and he knew it. He could feel the fighters pointing their weapons at his back. He’d be dead before he got off a single shot.

He needed a miracle.

The gunfire outside quieted for a moment. It was replaced by screaming. The attackers at the door halted in confusion.

Stephan spun, firing the weighty pistol. The recoil was harder than he was used to, but he kept shooting as a cry escaped his throat.

One of the fighters fell, two holes punched through his chest. Quintilla rose, placing her revolver against the head of a second and pulling the trigger. She rolled as he fell away, avoiding the flailing shots of the third man, and put a bullet under his chin.

Stephan came down the stairs, gun trained on the windows, and found Yin standing by two corpses near the back. Their bellies were cut open, guts spilling over the floor.

An eery quiet settled over the street. A smattering of gunshots, then nothing.

Quintilla peeked her head through the doorway.

“All clear on this end, Captain Wenezian!” came a booming voice from the other side. “I’m glad our paths crossed—this could have gotten hairy otherwise.”

Quintilla ducked back inside the house. She swore to herself, rubbed the bridge of her nose with thumb and forefinger, and tapped the revolver against her thigh.

“Who is it?” Stephan asked. “A friend of yours?”

Quintilla looked up, a dark look in her eye. “Rather the opposite.”

She shoved the table aside and went through the door. Stephan waited for Yin to catch up, then followed. He didn’t stow his weapon, as the captain still had hers drawn. Perhaps she expected more fighting.

A man in a mismatched outfit of clashing colors waited beyond, gold teeth glinting in his smile. He stood on a biomech leg that spat steam, face framed by a shock of wiry, black hair and a bushy beard. He was surrounded by a handful of pirates, all dressed in equally tasteless attire.

Stephan recalled the man.

Captain Rand.

One of his deckhands, a blond-haired boy hardly older than Yin, was already rooting through the corpses scattered across the street. He tossed the meager prizes onto a rag.

“Just happened to be in the area, did you?” Quintilla asked, hand on hip.

“Indeed,” Rand said. “A fortuitous twist of fate. I would have hated to see one of Tumba’s most promising captains taken out by a handful of bloody bounty hunters.”

“Bounty hunters?” Quintilla asked, frowning at the corpses.

Rand stroked his beard. “That’s what I said. Seems the Concord is none too pleased with you. Got bounties on your heads, the whole crew.” He watched the young deckhand pull a wad of crumpled papers from the coat of a bounty hunter and motioned the boy over. He took the papers, flipped through them, and handed them to Quintilla. “There. See for yourself.”

Stephan leaned in close as the captain looked at the papers. Concord-issue wanted posters printed with bafflingly inaccurate sketches depicting each member of the Wenezian Crew. The bounties were 100 000 glints for the captain herself, 50 000 for Kurko, 20 000 for Torch, Yin, and Kazzul, and 10 000 for Stephan.

He didn’t know whether to feel annoyed or relieved that his was the lowest.

Quintilla stuck the posters in her pocket. “I see. And what do you expect in return for your heroic rescue?”

“What the captain means to say is ‘Thank you’,” Stephan said.

She threw him a stony glare.

Rand shook his head with an amicable smile. “Nothin’ at all, my dears. Just happy to be of service. Although, truth be told, I had hoped it would go towards smoothing over some of our previous misunderstandings.”

Quintilla laughed bitterly. “I’ll never forget what you did, Rand. Know that. I ever find you alone…” Stephan placed a hand on her shoulder, and she cut herself short.

“They outnumber us,” Stephan whispered. “Let’s play it safe for now.”

Quintilla said nothing, staring daggers at the rival captain, but didn’t object, either. She allowed him to thank Rand’s crew again, after which they went their separate ways, Stephan and the others continuing to Vormor’s place. Only after they were several blocks away did the captain put away her gun.

“Something happened between you and Rand, I gather,” Stephan said while they walked.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Quintilla said.

“I just figure that, as your crew, it might be beneficial to know why you hold such a grudge against the man.”

“Shut up and walk. I’m in no mood to reminisce.”

Stephan did as he was ordered.