Page 11 of Shielded in the Shadows

Years ago, after a job had gone dramatically sideways at the delivery location on Pelles, I’d had to pull a J’noran dagger out of my own thigh and then use the only thing available—my enemy’s plasma-edged blade—to cauterize the wound so I didn’t bleed to death. I hadn’t gotten my nanobots at that point, so my options were far more limited.

The decision hadn’t been whether to pull the dagger out, but whether to do it quickly or slowly. I’d ended up pulling the dagger out slowly and then slapping the plasma-edged blade to the injury so fast I’d barely registered that I’d moved. The searing heat had already done its job before the pain hit.

The lesson wasn’t that one hurt more or less than the other, but that sometimes it was better to just get it over with.

I typed in my confirmation code and watched the blinking red light on the datapad turn solid as the funds transferred. The sudden emptiness of my credit account was echoed by a hollowness in my gut.

Without hesitation, N’vera rattled off a set of coordinates. My fingers danced across my wristcomm display, securing the information in an encoded sequence only I could access. I also transferred the data to my ship just in case.

“I bless your journey, Asta Irclion.” N’vera’s eyestalks tilted up, swiveled, and leaned forward to focus on something going on behind me. “However short it might be.”

I dove under the table just before a flurry of blaster shots punched smoking holes through the bench where I’d been sitting a heartbeat earlier.

For a being who weighed close to a tonne and ambulated on four long legs with flipper-like feet, N’vera could move surprisingly fast and with astonishing dexterity considering their bulk. By the time I’d rolled under their bench and taken cover in the empty booth behind it, my Kurutan contact was out of sight, lost in the sudden chaos of patrons scrambling to get out of the line of fire or using the chaos as an opportunity to start fights of their own.

As if this sort of thing happened with regularity, employees of Final Chance had already lowered protective shielding over their inventory and retreated through a door in the back, content for the time being to let the chaos sort itself out.

Beings who frequented station bars like this one tended to love a good fight. I’d been known to partake myself from time to time. If nothing else, a brawl was a good way to let out some pent-up restlessness or aggression. The rush was pretty great too. More than once, I’d ended up sharing a bunk later with a fellow fighter who wanted to blow off steam in other more pleasurable ways. The memories sent a little tingle through me. Good times.

Judging by the pair of armor-clad Atolani mercs headed straight for me, weapons raised, though, this was not going to be one of those good times.

I had no time to wonder how I’d been identified. There was another merc headed my way—this one an enhanced Halutan, complete with a pulse rifle mod on his right arm and trimetal exoskeleton on his legs. All three of his eyes were locked on me. And he was grinning.

I grinned back and cracked my neck.

Without missing a beat, one of the Atolani whipped around and shot the Halutan in the forehead. Sparks and blood burst out the back of his skull. He went down instantly and didn’t move again.

The shouts, screams, and frantic scrambling of other patrons doubled in both volume and violence.

My plasma gun had already dropped from my sleeve into my hand. I fired two shots at the second Atolani. Both hit a personal disruptor shield. The energy displacement knocked him back a step and sent several bystanders sprawling.

He returned fire almost immediately, but my earlier shots had bought me the precious seconds it took for me to roll under several tables and then find cover behind a low wall that divided the booths from an area of the bar used for gambling. The Atolani’s weapons fire hit the wall, burning metal and sending plumes of noxious smoke into the air that burned my eyes.

With a rumble, the doors at the main entrance that led to the promenade and the smaller one at the side entrance began to close, threatening to trap me inside Final Chance with the Atolanis and any other bounty hunters who might have tracked me down.

I dove for an overturned table, intending to use it as a shield to reach the side door, but a flurry of plasma bolts drove me back behind the wall.

The doors closed with a heavy thunk and locked.

Gases in multiple colors streamed into the bar through ceiling vents. Either station security or the bar owners—or both—apparently weren’t willing to let things spiral out of control and opted just to gas the lot of us.

I pulled a membrane hidden in the collar of my jumpsuit up and over my nose and mouth. The inside of my nose burned, making my eyes water, as some of my nanobots swarmed to act as a second layer of filtration against the knockout gases.

One by one and then seemingly all at once, the bar patrons cursed, screamed, and collapsed to the deck with thuds, clanks, and in the case of the gelatinous Ivarians who’d almost made it to the main doors before they’d shut and locked, a nauseating kind of wet plop-plop.

As I dashed for the employee door, the Atolani males stumbled and fell, firing wildly in my direction as they went down. One lucky shot by the one who’d killed the Halutan burned through my cloak, leaving a streak of fire across my side that made me curse and stagger.

His companion fired a different weapon. A dart hit my thigh and embedded itself deep into the muscle. It burned like acid.

I clenched my jaw and yanked it out. I felt the dart snap inside my leg as I did and the gods-damned thing came out minus its tip. A tracker.

My head swam and I careened into the wall, stumbling to one knee behind a table. Fuck. Not just a tracker—the tip was also loaded with some kind of drug.

I let out a garbled sound. My tongue was going numb. The Atolani smirked, showing his fangs, before his eyes rolled up in his head and he hit the floor.

My nanobots had already swarmed the wound in my leg. Apparently they’d detected the drug or poison loaded into the dart because my right wrist tingled as my bracer injected the antidote through my skin into my bloodstream. Two buzzes in my wristcomm told me the tracker had been deactivated by my nanobots. I still wanted to dig it out, but that would have to wait until I got back to my ship.

My bracer automatically injected painkillers and a stimulant once the drug was neutralized. I was in motion before my head had even cleared. My tongue was still numb, which was annoying but not particularly debilitating.