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  She sauntered over to the bunk beds, climbed the metal ladder, and lay down on Vel's hard mattress. He'd tried to make it more palatable with blankets and padding, but it was still hard as a rock. Lyssa had heard once that the Academy provided the most uncomfortable beds to DSE candidates to prepare them for a life of sleeping on the ground on uninhabited planets. After deciding that the ground was softer, she dismissed that notion.

  The door began to jiggle and then swung open. Vel walked into the room, hair combed and neat, his Academy uniform immaculate. She hadn't seen him in a few weeks and couldn't believe how much older he looked. He had filled out from the wide-eyed innocent kid that Pymus had shoved on her last year. Now, she noticed how tired he seemed accentuated by the purple bags under his smart silver-framed glasses.

  "You look like death," Lyssa announced.

  Vel screamed and jumped three feet, his bag falling to the ground.

  "God in Leveman's Vortex, Lyss!" he panted, placing his hand to his heart. "You scared me!"

  "I’m sorry," she said unapologetically, swinging her legs off the side of the bed.

  "What are you doing here?"

  "What do you mean ‘what am I doing here?’ I haven't heard from you in ages!" Lyssa slid off the bed. "Why don't you come hang out with me this weekend?"

  "Man, Lyss, I'd love to but I…I can't." He looked genuinely sorry.

  She tried not to look as hurt as she was. "Why not?"

  "I’ve been pulling all-nighters all week," Vel said. "Lots of homework, reading, lab reports. I wanted to catch up on sleep, too—"

  "You mean you wanna sleep instead of bounty hunt?" she asked, as if the concept was anathema to her.

  "I know you came all the way out here to get me, but…I really…I can't…" He trailed off hopelessly.

  "No, it's fine," she said hollowly. "I mean…I had a planet I was selling anyways…just thought maybe…"

  She trailed off and tried to look as pitiful as she could. It seemed to work; after a moment, Vel sighed loudly.

  "Fine," he acquiesced. "I'm starving. I was going to the cafeteria anyways. Want to join me?"

  "Is that all I'm going to get out of you?" Lyssa scowled. "Dinner?"

  "Take it or leave it."

  ***

  The cafeteria was as crowded as always, but Lyssa didn’t mind it as much as she used to. She was just happy to be back with Vel, laughing and ribbing him. She'd forgotten how much she enjoyed his company, the way they just bounced off each other's quips, how he kept pace with her train of thought. He, too, seemed to relax as he returned to the young kid she'd dropped off a few weeks ago. She could see how the strain of the term weighed on him, especially as he dug into his food even before they sat down.

  "I didn't have time for lunch," he shrugged, inhaling one of two sandwiches in two bites.

  "Is the new term that bad?" Lyssa asked. "They won't even let you eat lunch?"

  "My term?" he said, confused for a second. "Oh yeah. Yeah it is." Without elaborating further, he took a huge bite out of his hard piece of bread.

  "You know, I don’t remember being that busy." Lyssa eyed him curiously. "And I was out with Tauron most of the time."

  "Well, that's it, isn't it?" Vel said, a hint of seriousness in his voice. "You didn't want to be here. I do."

  "Why?"

  "Because my friends are here, my life is here." Vel looked around the cafeteria. "I'm happy here."

  "I thought we had a good time together," Lyssa said, her face falling.

  "We did!" Vel reached over to take her hand. "But…I'm not going to be a pirate, Lyss. It's not something…I mean, I'm in school to become a Deep Space Explorer…"

  She frowned. It wasn't about being a pirate over being a scientist. It was about spending time with her versus not. But before she could tell him that, a highly displeased voice interrupted their conversation.

  "I see you're back, Lyssandra."

  Her second eldest brother Dorst stood above them, glaring at her with the same look of horrid disappointment and disapproval so common to the Peate family when it came to the family pariah.

  "You are such a perceptive supervisor," Lyssa drawled, tossing a smirk to Vel, who did not return it.

  "Please don't make me write you up again for insubordination," Dorst breathed, as if asking the Great Creator for more patience. "That will be twice in the past month. You've only been my employee for three weeks."

  "Then, stop writing me up," Lyssa smiled, finally looking up at him. "What do you want?"

  "Have you received any of my messages?" She snorted and he sighed audibly. "Of course not, because if you had, you would have answered them."

  "Yep." Lyssa began scrolling through her mini-computer, hoping Dorst would take the hint.

  "Lyssa, seriously," Vel said with a reprimanding tone. "Can you please?"

  "Fine," she growled to Vel and turned to Dorst. "What?"

  "You need to renew all of your licenses—your hypermile license and your first aid certification to name but a few, and you are significantly overdue on your booster vaccines," Dorst exclaimed. "I don't know how they're letting you even set foot on this station without putting you into quarantine!"

  Lyssa shrugged. "You should figure that out. I'm obviously a danger to society."

  "Lyssa," Vel warned, which she returned with an annoyed look. What in Leveman's was his problem and why was he taking Dorst's side?

  "I'm scheduling you to get all of these completed this week," Dorst said. "And I want you to schedule an hour with me to go over your career plan. I don't know what Opal was doing with you, but obviously he failed to provide you any guidance or mentorship. You don't even have a professional development plan on record!"

  "Oh, I don't know," Lyssa drawled slyly. "Pymus and I had a really good spiritual chat before he disappeared. Made me feel a lot more at peace with my life choices."

  Vel rolled his eyes at her, but Dorst was unaware of their adventures in Leveman's Vortex the year before.

  "Lyssa, I am serious," Dorst implored her, sitting down at the table. "I'm your supervisor, and I want you to succeed."

  "I am succeeding just fine," Lyssa replied, scooting her chair farther away from him.

  "Succeeding at what then?" Dorst asked. "Obviously, it's not excavating planets, because you rarely do that."

  "I bring in the minimum number of planets required to stay in good standing in the Academy." Lyssa smirked, daring him to ask any more questions. "And what I do with my free time is my business."

  "Vel?" Dorst said, turning to him helplessly.

  "Sorry, Dorst." Vel shrugged. "That I can't budge her on."

  Lyssa looked between the two of them, and her glare settled on Vel. "What in Leveman's is this? Are you two in collusion?"

  "Well, he's the only one, it seems, who can get through to you," Dorst said. "I know we haven't had the best history together—"

  "Hah!"

  "But, I want you to know that I'm trying."

  "To what?" Lyssa smiled. "Annoy me? Because I want you to know that you are succeeding…"

  "Stop being such a brat," Vel snapped at her when Dorst gave him a pleading look.

  Lyssa nearly smacked him. "Why are you on his side?"

  "Ignore her," Vel said to Dorst's astonished face. "She's just acting out because I told her I didn't want to go with her this weekend."

  Lyssa's astonishment melted into an angry scowl.

  "Get sucked," she seethed to Vel, before turning on Dorst. "And I'm not an idiot. This little 'good supervisor' charade is nothing more than you trying to find out where Father has disappeared to."

  "Lyssa, that's not it at all, I—" Dorst said, but Lyssa was already storming away from the table in true dramatic fashion.

  ***

  Even with Lyssa's little angry tirade, Dorst had still been kind enough to put her in the line-up that day and schedule an appointment for her to meet with him immediately following (which she was definitely not going to attend). Sh
e accomplished her presentation without incident. The data was even mostly factual.

  She waited in the buyers' room, a smaller holding area that was off the side of the presentation theater. Although she presented her planet excavation data in the larger theater, this small, musty-smelling room was where the buyers bid on her planet.

  Chairs were haphazardly arranged in front of the small table where she was currently sitting, waiting for the buyers to trickle in and bid for her planet. The door opened and a few people walked into the room. A few she recognized, but one she didn't.

  Because she was sure she would have remembered someone that handsome.

  He wore a sharp suit, but even if he were wearing a potato sack, he was gorgeous. Dark brown hair, smoldering brown eyes, perfect skin. Lyssa found herself wondering if he smelled as good as he looked, and flushed bright red when he caught her staring at him.

  She cleared her throat and did her best to actively ignore the man as she focused on the other, less attractive planet buyers.

  "We'll start it at seventy-five." There were a few surprised looks from the sellers, but she didn't flinch. Once she stopped avoiding the Academy, she realized that a little effort in planet selling would let her sit on a big chunk of untraceable money while she bounty hunted. She watched some of the other, more successful scientists, and realized that the ones who made the most money charged three, sometimes four, times as much money as she did. So a few months ago, she started the biddings higher and was surprised when buyers went along with it.

  "Eighty!"

  "Ninety!"

  "Ninety-five!"

  "Ninety-six!"

  "Ninety-seven!"

  "Oh, come off it and just go with a full hundred grand," Lyssa muttered to herself.

  "Hundred!" Her new handsome friend finally spoke up, not bothering to look up from his computer.

  "Sold!" she said, ignoring the short, balding man who was about to bid more money. The bidders grumbled, their chairs scraping against the floor as they rose to their feet and filed out. Lyssa was left all alone with the handsome buyer. He leisurely stood up and walked up to her, and she wondered if he could hear how fast her heart was beating. She tried to talk herself off the ledge. He was just handsome, and there was no reason to be so stupid about it.

  "Hi," Lyssa said awkwardly.

  "Here." He shoved his C-card in her face. She took it, a small part of her excited that she was going to learn his name, so she could stalk him like a pirate.

  Another voice quickly expressed horror that the first voice even had that thought.

  She completed the planet transaction, doing her best not to stare at his smooth skin or pay attention to his musky cologne.

  His company popped up on her mini-computer as she continued the transaction. She recalled it was the same one that another buyer had worked for—a smartly-dressed woman who had swindled Lyssa out of a huge planet selling deal the year before. And yet, she also offered Lyssa a job after she and Vel tag-teamed her to raise the price on a different planet a few weeks later. The memory made her smile, until she remembered she was angry at Vel.

  "Are you done yet?" The handsome man was obviously impatient. Lyssa noted the shiny gold ring on his finger and quickly handed his card back.

  "So what happened to the other girl?" Lyssa asked, trying to be conversational. She realized that she never bothered to learn the other woman's name.

  "Who?" the man said, uninterested.

  "There used to be a woman who worked for your company," Lyssa said lamely. "She was…she wore heels…and was…mean—"

  "Oh, Antica," he said, watching his mini-computer. "She got promoted to vice president at a new company out on S-6642. Wedekind Planetary or something like that."

  "Oh, good for her," Lyssa said, secretly grateful that she'd never have to go toe-to-toe with her again. "So—"

  The man briskly walked out of the room, leaving Lyssa to berate herself for being so easily persuaded by a pretty face.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Razia growled, turning to the search function for the latest records of pirate transactions.

  "Damn it." She refreshed her bounty profile two or three more times out of frustration. She found herself checking daily to see if maybe, just maybe, something had changed and she'd be surprised with a new bounty on her own head. Bounties did not last forever, and the five hundred dollars Tauron put up for her before he died had expired a few months ago. Pymus' fifteen million would expire in time as well, and if other pirates didn't start adding money soon, she'd be worth exactly zero credits.

  At this point, she'd take just a few thousand.

  Anything to show she wasn't doing all this work for nothing.

  She couldn't help this feeling that she wasn't doing enough, that if she did more, she would see more results. Then again, she'd captured nearly twenty top pirates in the past six months. It was frustrating to watch other bounty hunters, even new ones, get more notoriety while she continued to bust her ass and remain stagnant.

  She leaned forward and searched for the pirate she had just captured.

  "So his bounty is null now," she muttered to herself. "Let's see if his capture has been announced."

  She couldn't hold in a frustrated growl as she stared at the search results, or lack thereof. Guido Tedesco was a high priority, highly visible pirate and there wasn't even an announcement of his capture?

  There wasn't an announcement when she captured Santos Journot, but that was because he was the son of one of the runners and it would be embarrassing.

  There wasn't an announcement when she captured Olvire Gongago, though he was the third most wanted pirate, or when she captured Silas Brendler, who had been giving bounty hunters the slip for weeks. The excuse then was that Gongago wasn't really that important and Brendler was bound to be caught eventually.

  And now there wasn't an announcement for her capture of Guido Tedesco. She wondered what the excuse was going to be this time.

  With a low snarl, she smashed the numbers on the dial pad on her dashboard to call her pirate web runner.

  "What do you want?" Dissident growled. He looked, if anything, even more grotesque than usual with a cigarette hanging from his yellow mouth. Their interactions had been few and far between these past few months, as she no longer had a need to call him to ask for a new bounty to capture, and he was happier pretending she didn't exist.

  "Were you aware that I captured Guido Tedesco?" Razia asked, knowing the answer.

  Dissident grunted.

  "So why's there no announcement in the intraweb?" Razia watched his finger as it drifted closer to the end call button.

  "I guess it got lost in the process." He didn't sound very sorry at all. "These things happen, you know—"

  "Oh, give me a break," Razia growled. "You announce to the Great Creator every time Sage Teon takes a shit, but I don't see a single record for me!"

  "Maybe because Sage Teon taking a shit is more interesting than you are," Dissident snapped back.

  Razia's eyes narrowed at Dissident, and she found herself itching to get her hands around his grubby little neck.

  "Fine, you win," Razia said. "What do you want from me?"

  In response, Dissident ended the call.

  Razia fought the urge to call him back and threaten him again. It wouldn't do any good anyway. Her threat of bodily harm was only enough to allow him to keep her in the web—no more, no less. Besides, he was still getting what he wanted out of her. Top pirates in rival webs were being captured. What did it matter to him if she didn't get the credit? It's not as if any other runner would take her. Even as good as she was, she was still a woman.

  She leaned back into her chair and tried to calm herself down before she did anything stupid. Vel always said that when she ran off on an angry whim, she usually regretted it. He was right, of course, but she'd never tell him that.

  After all, he chose to go back to the stupid Academy instead of spending time with her.

  Wha
t kind of a—

  She took another deep breath. She was getting angry again.

  "Calm down kiddo. With that temper, you're going to have a stroke at twenty."

  She smiled as the memory of Tauron's voice came rushing back to her. She closed her eyes, remembering the way he looked. He was tall with light brown curly hair that he kept short (except for one brief period where he lost a bet and it pooled out like a frizzy ball). He had a smile that could—and did—melt any female heart that crossed his path.

  When he tossed it her way, it felt like home.

  The happiness quickly turned to an aching pain in her chest.

  Before her mind dwelled on the inevitable conclusion to that train of thought, she opened her eyes to return to the issue at hand. Tauron had warned her repeatedly that being a woman in this business wasn't going to be easy. Most pirates were idiots, he'd said, because if they had half a brain, they'd be doing something other than piracy. Their experience with women was limited to the whores and the waitresses in the locations they frequented, not necessarily the best places to learn respect for women.

  Still, she supposed she'd been carrying this optimistic notion that everything would just fall into place, that she'd be celebrated the way Tauron used to be, and afforded every opportunity and support from her runner.

  Here she was, nine months in the top twenty, and she was still seen as nothing more than a chocolate-fetching joke.

  A completely alone chocolate-fetching joke.

  "Screw them," she said to herself. "I'm going to make them respect me whether they like it or not."

  Nodding to herself supportively, she turned back to the pirate web, intent on finding someone to hunt that would be more interesting than Sage Teon's bowel movements.

  As luck would have it, it didn't take Razia very long to find an interesting pirate that wouldn't be too risky to capture. Cree Hardrict, one of Contestant's top pirates, had been a regular member of the five most wanted pirates for over a year now. Between the valuable hijackings and his strategic captures of other pirates, he was on nearly everyone's hit list. But he was a good pirate, and when he was seen on D-882, he was surrounded by a hoard of Dal Jamus-sized bodyguards, an unfortunate habit picked up by most of Contestant's pirates, thanks to Royden Relleck starting the practice last year when he was the most wanted in the universe.