“Permission to speak freely, the Boss, ma’am?” Handy asked, pulling the wagon which now contained the single fuel bar of gold that they had purchased with the profits of their initial venture.
“‘Sir’, if ya please… an’ go ahead an’ speak freely, so long as it don’t become a habit, like,” Regan said. “Proper decorum an’ such bein’ so important to me, an’ all.”
“I’m honestly astounded that this worked,” Handy said.
“Why wouldn’t it have worked?” Regan said. “I mean to say, I said it would, didn’t I?”
“You did say that, the Boss,” Handy said. “I shouldn’t have doubted you, the Boss.”
“Come to mention it, I’ve noticed ya do that quite a bit, don’t ya, now?” Regan asked. “Doubt me, I mean.”
“I’m very sorry about that, the Boss,” Handy said, ducking her head. “A lifetime of performing exacting work under extremely hazardous conditions has given me an almost crippling reliance on the evidence of my senses.”
“Oh, well… I’ve no doubt we’ll overcome that, in the fullness o’ time,” Regan said.
“Of course, the Boss,” Handy said. “So, will we be taking the bar back to the ship now?”
“O’ course not,” Regan said. “Don’t be twitched, girl… that’s just one bar. We’ve got loads more to get before we can return to the ship.”
“I’m sorry, the Boss,” Handy said. “I didn’t mean to be ‘twitched’. I just thought it would be wise to see it safely stowed before we did anything else.”
“Perhaps ya’d be right in thinkin’ that,” Regan said. “Except that bar figures into me plans.”
“In what way, sir?” Handy asked.
“We’re gonna trade it to get the rest o’ the bars,” Regan said.
“We’re going to trade one bar for several bars?” Handy asked.
“Used bars, an’ other slag,” Regan said. “‘Old bars for new’, ya see… we catch the crowd goin’ to the alchy’s for recyclin’ an’ find somebody with a load o’ stuff to trade. Way I conjure, we should be able to get twice as much shite as we started with, easy.”
“But… begging the Boss’s pardon… that still wouldn’t be a tenth of what that one bar is worth,” Handy pointed out.
“That’s why it would be easy,” Regan said. “But if we start the whole thing up again with twice as much, then we should end up with enough money to buy two new bars.”
“Would I be correct in thinking that we would not simply take those bars back to the ship, either, the Boss?” Handy asked with an air of resignation.
“Never do anythin’ simply, young Hand Job,” Regan said. “Not if ya can see a way around it.”
“Duly noted, the Boss, ma’am,” Handy said. “Sir.”
“Now, if I can just think o’ a way to make this more difficult…” Regan said. She stopped suddenly. “Hold on, me ear’s buzzin’. I think the blascap I stuck there’s about to go off.”
“Left or right ear, the Boss?” Handy asked.
“Er, this one,” Regan said, pointing at her right ear.
“That’s your comlink, the Boss,” Handy said. “You keep the spare blascap in your left ear.”
“Oh, right,” Regan said, and she reached up and touched the vibrating stud earring. “Hello, the Gypsy?”
“Hey, Bard,” Lilliana said. “You need to drop what you’re doing and get back to the ship. I need you to look over some fresh gold and be ready to install it…”
“Hold on, now,” Regan said. “I’m only part of the way through a cunning scheme here.” She leaned down, turning her head so that her ear–the left one–was facing Handy.” Tell the Gypsy how cunning it is, Hand Job.”
“It’s extremely cunning, Ms. Corsair,” Handy said, around the back of Regan’s head. “So much so that I can barely fathom it in its intricacy.”
“I’m sure it’s very clever, Bard, but it’s also superfluous,” Lilliana said over the link.
“Ya know, I think it is, a little bit,” Regan said, a dreamy gleam in her eye at the perceived praise. “In fact, it just may be the most superfluous plan I’ve ever come up with…”
“Just… get back to the ship,” Lilliana said. “You can tell me all about it later.”
“Well, alright,” Regan said. “Only don’t ask me about it right away. Ya have to give me time to remember how the big fight scene happened.”
“Don’t take all day, Bard,” Lilliana said. “Lilliana out.”
“Back to the ship, the Boss?” Handy asked hopefully.
“Aye, but we’ll never make it in time with all this gravity slowin’ us down,” Regan said. She pointed to one of the atmosphere-breaking towers of shaped rock. “To the roofs!”
“Could we… not and say that we did, the Boss?” Handy asked.
“Now you’re gettin’ into the spirit!” Regan said.
“Okay,” Leo said through his own earpiece when Lilliana gave him the news. “I’ll head right back… my only idea was to hit the casinos, and that’s been an utter fiasco. I’m down about five, maybe five and a half thousand… yeah, well, I wasn’t going to ask for compensation, it was my own… well, if you insist. Okay. I’ll be there as fast as I can.” As soon as the connection was dead, he looked up and said, “I’m sorry… work, you know? What was the last thing you said?”
“Do you want cash or cred?” the attendant asked from behind her protective force cage.
“Better make it cred,” he said. “Don’t want to go flashing this kind of scratch around, you know?”
“That’s a balance of eighty seven-thousand, three hundred and twenty-three credits transferred to your account,” she said. “Your DNA stamp’s on file, and here’s your receipt. Thank you for visiting the Platinum Star Resort and Casino. Is there anything else I can do for you, Mr. Parda?”
“Not a thing, doll,” he said, accepting the thin film slip with the imprint of his transaction and crumpling it up to throw away. “Not a single thing.”
“Yes, I understand,” Dick said. “I’ll be back straight away. I just need to… wrap up what I was doing.”
“Alright,” Lilliana said. “Just make it quick. okay? You know I hate taking off without my pilot.”
He tapped his temple to switch off the communicator implant, and then turned his attention back to the public pay screen in front of him, running his finger over the single word, “RESUME”, which filled it. The word disappeared and the dark screen resolved itself into the image of a sandy haired man with a facial profile that showed a markedly similarity to Dick’s. They might have been cousins.
“I’m sorry about that,” Dick said.
“It’s fine,” the other man said.
“Look, I’ve got to go,” Dick said. “Something’s come up, and I don’t actually need…”
“Hey, I know it’s not easy asking me for help,” the man said.
“It’s not that,” Dick said. “But, the crisis seems to have ended itself, so… well… thank you, anyway.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am,” Dick said.
“Okay,” the man said. “Well, don’t be a stranger… oh, and, since I’ve got you?”
“Yes?”
“Command got a notice from a couple of upstanding citizens with a missing daughter, last seen headed in your general vicinity,” the man said.
“‘General vicinity’ is a rather broad descriptor in space,” Dick pointed out.
“I know,” the man said. “It’s a bit of a long shot. It’s just, this young woman’s a bit hard to miss… due to an uncorrected genetic coding error, she was born with a class one antisocial personality disorder. She’s… well, the term is ‘hypersexual’. We can’t exactly tell her family this, but odds are dead on that somebody’s already picked her up… but if you do happen to hear about anybody like that…”
“You’ll be the first one to know,” Dick said.
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