I Flew the Alien Warlord Past the Blockade, and He Already Knew My Name novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Impound
Bailiff drones are clamping Inez's ship on Tallow Station when a hooded seven-foot Dar warlord offers her the run of her life, catches her when a drone stuns her, and then a Concord cutter locks on and the Governor asks her to hand him over.
Two bailiff drones were clamping my ship to the dock when the alien warlord asked me to fly him through a war.
I was standing on the cargo ramp in my socks, arguing with a machine about the word "late."
"Ledger and Crane Marine Credit has exercised its lien," the drone said, pleasant as a dentist.
"I paid on the first," I said.
"The payment cleared on the second."
"The station network was down on the first!"
It clamped the port landing strut with a sound.
Loose Change is thirty-eight metres of patched freighter, and she is the only home I have ever owned.
I had two hundred and twelve thousand credits of debt on her and about four hundred in my account.
Dock fourteen at Tallow Station was full of people who had stopped to watch.
Then the crowd went quiet, and I looked up.
Someone had stepped out of the loading lane, and the dockhands were backing away from him.
He was taller than the lift doors.
He wore a long grey coat and a hood, and the hood hid everything except a jaw that was blue.
It was the deep slate blue of a deepwater chart, not the pale blue of a bruise.
"Captain Quintana," he said.
His voice was low, quiet and polite, the voice of a man who had never needed to raise it.
"Depends who's asking," I said. "If you're with the bailiffs, I'll bite you."
Something that might have been a smile moved under the hood.
He put back the hood with one hand, and I saw white braids, gold eyes and a scar through his left eyebrow.
The whole dock drew in one breath.
I had seen that face on every wanted screen from here to the Rim.
"You're Havrik Tolen-Dar," I said. "The Butcher of Kess."
"I am told that is what they call me."
"There's a five million credit bounty on you."
"Six, since Tuesday."
I should have run.
I stayed where I was, because he wasn't looking at me at all.
He was looking at my hull plate.
It was stencilled in white above the airlock, LOOSE CHANGE, and under it, I. QUINTANA, MASTER.
He read it, and he went still.
It lasted about as long as it takes a drone to blink, and then it was gone.
"I need a pilot," he said, "who can pass three Concord checkpoints and a field of wreck mines in nine days."
"There are forty pilots on this station."
"There is one who knows the Ashfall."
That stopped me.
"Nobody knows the Ashfall," I said. "It's a nebula full of dead ships."
"You know it," he said. "I have read your flight logs."
"What does it pay?"
"Four hundred thousand. Two hundred and fifty now, the rest at Anvil Station."
My mouth did something undignified.
"And the debt?" I said, and nodded at the drones.
"The first payment clears it."
The drone beside me chirped.
"Inez Quintana, step away from the vessel."
I ignored it.
"My terms," I said, and held up one finger. "I captain. You don't touch my flight deck."
A second finger.
"You can walk off any airlock at any port you like, and I can put you off at any port I like."
A third.
"You never give me an order."
"Agreed."
He took a slate out of his coat, and the drone fired.
I didn't see it, only felt the dart's cold sting in my sleeve before my whole arm went numb and the dock tilted.
I didn't feel myself fall, only a hand on my back.
It was a very big hand, four long fingers and a thumb, and it covered me from shoulder blade to shoulder blade.
He had caught me before I touched the deck, and I hung there against his chest while the paralysis ran down my left side.
Heat soaked through my jacket.
He ran hot, hotter than a person.
A line of fine gold light woke under the skin of his wrist and pulsed once against my ribs.
"Your arm will return in a minute," he said into my hair.
"Put me down," I said, with a mouth that didn't want to.
"In a moment."
His hand didn't move, and it didn't squeeze.
It simply held me up.
I hated how much I didn't hate it.
Then the slate in his other hand chimed, and every drone on the dock said in one voice, "Account cleared. Lien released."
The clamps clacked open.
I got my feet under me.
He let go of me exactly as I found my balance, and not a second before.
"Welcome aboard," I told him, flexing my numb fingers. "Don't touch anything."
Every screen on the dock flickered to the same face.
A spare man in a grey Concord uniform, silver crew cut, eyes the colour of old ice.
"Pilot Quintana," said Governor Lucan Mordaunt. "You are carrying a wanted man."
Outside the dock windows, a Concord cutter slid across the stars with its guns already open.
"Hand him over," the Governor said gently, "and your record is clean, and your lien is a memory."
I looked at the screen.
I looked at the warlord, who stood quite still and said nothing at all.
He didn't beg, and he didn't order me.
"It's your ship," he said.
I thought of two hundred and twelve thousand credits, and a man who had caught me before I hit the floor.
"Biscuit," I said, "cut the dock lines."
"Thank you for choosing violence," said my ship's calm voice. "I was hoping you would."
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