The words came out before I could stop them. Five years of buried rage breaking through the dealer's mask.
“Vonni Reeves. Twenty-three. Brown hair that she wore in braids. Studied xenobiology before she got sick. Loved terrible romance novels and expensive coffee. Died of Rigellan fever five years ago, despite the five hundred thousand credits I paid for treatment that didn't work.”
His gun hand wavered. The targeting laser drifted down to my chest.
“She was nobody special. Just another human whose life got sold to pay impossible debts. The legitimate creditors sold my debt to predators, and they sold it to you. You bought my life for the price of a mid-tier shuttle.”
I laughed, and it was ugly sound, full of broken glass and old pain.
“For three years, I've watched you deteriorate. Watched the enhancers eat your mind one synapse at a time. Counted every tremor, every missed dose, every moment of confusion. You're not an emperor anymore, Qeth. You're just a sick old man who forgot he was already dead.”
“I'LL KILL YOU!”
He pulled the trigger.
Time dilated the way it does when death comes calling. I saw his finger complete the squeeze. Saw the pistol's energy chamber flare. Saw Varrick moving, faster than physics should allow, putting his body between me and obliteration.
The pulse caught him in the shoulder.
The impact spun him back into me, and we both went down. The smell of burned flesh and ozone filled the air. Bronze blood. So much blood. Soaking through my coveralls, hot and metallic.
“No, no, no.”
My hands went to the wound, trying to stop the hemorrhaging. The pulse had torn through muscle, shattered his shoulder blade, scored bone deep enough to see white. His blood was everywhere. On my hands, my clothes, pooling on the floor in patterns that looked almost like his traceries.
“Worth it,” he gritted out through clenched teeth.
Even dying, and he was dying, I could see it in how his color was fading, the green traceries standing out starkly against graying skin, how his eyes were losing focus, he managed to cup my face with his good hand. His thumb traced my cheekbone, leaving a smear of his own blood.
“You're worth everything.”
“Don't you dare die on me. Not now. Not after everything.”
Heavy footsteps in the doorway. Measured. Deliberate.
Krave stood there, all seven feet of scaled Mondian muscle, yellow eyes taking in the scene with professional assessment. His gaze tracked from Qeth with the smoking pistol, to Varrick bleeding out in my arms, to the screens still displaying every crime his employer had ever committed.
“Enough.”
One word, delivered in a bass rumble that vibrated through the floor.
Qeth spun toward him, the pistol swinging wildly.
“Krave! Perfect! Kill them! Kill all the betrayers! Start with... no, wait, secure the algorithms! The patterns are screaming!”
“The only betrayer here is you.”
Krave moved into the room with the measured pace of an executioner who had all the time in the world. His scales rippled with each step, green-black in the emergency lighting.
“You killed my brother.”
Qeth's face went through a series of expressions. Confusion, calculation, dismissal.
“I've killed lots of people. Be more specific.”
“Torren. Six days ago.” Krave's voice had dropped to frequencies that made my bones ache. “He took a stylus from maintenance. A single stylus worth maybe two credits. You had him executed for theft.”
“Torren was stealing! The algorithms said... the patterns showed...”
