business

The nature of this business (and this age) is to press on as quickly as possible, and Oberon hummed pleasantly as I jumped through to Collette, avoiding Fed scan ships. The deal was set for coords at one of the many game preserves that span the southern continents. Terraformed for beasts, though only a portion is set aside for preservation. Nothing is wild anymore, though creatures long extinct on Earth reside in relative solitude on Collette. No way for a ship even the size of Roller to land undetected, though human can sneak in with relative ease, as Ice and I proved on our nocturnal scope-out mission.
We rented one of the preserve’s “family packs” which includes breakfast, ice treats, and paper hats (of which only Em and the Doctor took full advantage) along with the clunky family-sized shuttlepod. Once aboard, Em promptly scrambled the preprogrammed systems so we’d be able to take it off the track, and Kon brought the crates aboard as the tour guides were busy explaining a large red bird to a crowd of exuberant, paper-hatted children and travel-weary parents.
We got to the spot only slightly early, having had to stop to watch several fleet-footed brown antelope browsing in the scrub, and enjoyed the sounds of birdsong as we waited for our contacts. As soon as the men stepped out of their own shuttle (not a Preserve model), my stomach sank. Out of the six, I recognized four, knew two, and one of those knew me.

These were bad men.

Last time I was in contact with Stretch, he killed a bystander who happened to walk by.
Last time I was in contact with Milano, he punched Ulysses in the face and stole our money, and we didn’t get it back until Tambor tackled him stabbed him in the side.

I won’t list every crime of every man I’ve ever met, but the looks on the faces of our contacts made my skin crawl. Ice’s hand twitch on her gun as one of them leered at her, and I avoided eye contact with Milano. I had hoped he might have gotten himself killed by now, like so many others I’ve worked with.
Caban made the deal swiftly and as easily as he does everything else, but when it came time to part ways, the contacts hesitated. Caban asked them to move along with their goods, and when Stretch only smiled my ears began to buzz. Then Caban took a step backward and said “Well. We’ll be moving along then, good business done.”

That’s when Stretch pulled out his gun, leveled it at Caban, and pulled the trigger.