Character
LOCATION: Port Avalon | WEARING: xxx | EQUIPMENT: x | x
There were easier places to start a criminal empire, but easy had never been much of a factor in my decision-making.
Port Avalon suited the occasion anyway. The station had been built from the sort of optimism only criminals could appreciate, the belief that if you put enough distance between yourself and civilized space, eventually civilization would stop asking questions. Smugglers, pirates, mercenaries, slicers, thieves, and every other variety of professional disappointment moved through the Reach beneath flickering signs and artificial light. Deals changed hands in alcoves. Cargo disappeared from manifests. Somewhere nearby, somebody was undoubtedly being cheated and probably deserved it.
It was hard not to feel at home.
The Dha Wherda was berthed deeper inside the station, tucked among enough questionable vessels that she almost looked respectable. Almost. I had left her with fresh fuel in the tanks, weapons locked down, and enough security running through her systems to discourage anyone who thought stealing from a thief sounded clever. There were always people willing to test that particular theory, but I had other things to worry about tonight.
For one thing, I was about to find out whether I had badly misjudged several people at once.
I followed the Reachwalk through the evening traffic with my coat hanging open and my hands where everyone could see them. On a place like Avalon, that was considered polite. The crowd shifted around me without paying much attention, everyone occupied with their own business and pretending not to notice anyone else's. A pair of freighter captains were having a spirited disagreement over docking fees near one junction while a Rodian sold military-grade detonators twenty meters away. Nobody seemed concerned about either situation. The station had its own rhythm, and after enough years moving through ports where the law came with a price tag, I knew better than to interrupt it.
The meeting place was tucked down a narrower passage branching away from the Reach. I had chosen it because there was nothing remarkable about it, which made it exactly the sort of place people forgot five minutes after leaving. The sign above the entrance had lost several letters over the years and gained a pair of blaster marks in their place. Whatever name the establishment had once carried was anybody's guess. Nobody inside seemed troubled by the mystery.
Neither was I.
The air smelled like coolant, cheap liquor, and something frying in oil old enough to have developed political opinions. A handful of spacers occupied the bar, nursing drinks while pretending not to watch one another. Someone had fed credits into a battered music unit near the wall, and an old song crackled through speakers that had survived more abuse than most soldiers I knew.
I took the booth in the back.
There was nothing waiting on the table except a bottle, several glasses, and enough empty seats to make the idea in my head suddenly look more ambitious than it had aboard the ship.
Avela had been the first person I contacted. That decision had come easily enough. We had worked together before, and experience had taught me more about her than any background check ever could. I knew what she could do when everything went according to plan, but that wasn't why I trusted her. Plans were comforting lies people told themselves before the shooting started. What mattered was who someone became afterward.
Avela had already given me that answer.
The others had received messages of their own. Nothing elaborate, just Port Avalon, a set of coordinates, a time, and a request to come alone. I hadn't explained what I wanted. Partly because transmitting plans for a criminal organization across the HoloNet seemed like a poor opening demonstration of competence, but mostly because I wanted to see who actually showed up.
I poured myself a drink and settled into the booth while the station carried on beyond the walls.
I'd spent enough of my life belonging to things that eventually decided what I owed them. There was always a banner somewhere, always somebody eager to explain what blood, history, honor, or tradition demanded. People liked belonging right up until belonging became a cage. By then, they usually discovered the lock was on the outside.
I had no interest in building another cage.
What I wanted was harder to explain, although the galaxy had provided plenty of examples of why it was necessary. There were people scattered across it who had burned their bridges, lost their homes, abandoned their causes, or simply discovered that whatever family they had been born into wasn't interested in keeping them. Some became mercenaries. Others became smugglers, pirates, thieves, bounty hunters, or whatever else kept fuel in the tank and creditors far enough behind to be somebody else's problem.
Most worked alone because trusting people was dangerous.
They weren't wrong.
Working alone was dangerous too.
That was the part nobody liked admitting.
The door opened while I was considering whether the bottle in front of me was going to survive the meeting.
My eyes shifted toward the entrance as someone stepped inside. I didn't move immediately. There was no reason to. Anyone who had made it this far had already decided curiosity was worth the risk, and that told me something useful before a word had been spoken.
I finally lifted my glass in acknowledgment and nodded toward the empty seats around the table.
"Grab a drink."
A faint smile pulled at the corner of my mouth as I settled deeper into the booth.
"We've got business to discuss."
