The Complete Razia Series, page 97
He kicked his feet onto the table and leaned back in his chair, looking around the empty bridge and thinking about the group of guys that now worked for him. In under two years, he'd assembled quite possibly a perfect crew, just the right mixture of ego, brains, brawn, and talent. It had taken Tauron upwards of six or seven years to put together the right people—the last three he had only hired six months before his death.
He allowed himself a moment to wonder what Tauron would have thought of him if he was still alive. Lifting a hand to his temple, he felt for the small scar. A parting gift from his pirate brother.
He would have dwelled on this thought for longer, but an icon in the corner of his dashboard lit up green, showing that a certain bounty hunter had just logged into the pirate web.
A happy smile grew on his face as he dialed her number.
SAGE TEON AND THE "L" WORD
Sage yawned and cupped his coffee, sleepily scrolling through the latest pirate intraweb news in his stupor. It had been quite the shocking night, seeing Lyssa run down that handsome bartender. Sage could barely believe that curly-headed idiot was really Santos Journot, the second most wanted pirate in the universe and a faceless bounty hunter who had been terrorizing the top pirates for months now. Journot had turned out to be the son of one of the pirate web runners, Insurgent, and together, they were using a combination of hot women, free-flowing alcohol, and exclusivity to draw the most wanted pirates to the club before taking their alias information to hunt them down later.
Only Lyssa was able to see through it all, figuring out that the handsome bartender was really the brains behind the operations.
She'd said it was a date.
Sage snorted at the idea. As if Lyssa would go on a date with anyone.
He smirked to himself, irrationally pleased that her beau was short-lived, and that she'd seemed more interested in turning him in than taking him out.
He scrolled down, looking for the record of Razia (Lyssa's alias as a bounty hunter), but sighed when he realized it wasn't there. The capture of the second most wanted pirate in the universe should have been the very top story in the pirate intraweb, a list of photos and latest pirate activity.
Only one person would have prevented that from happening. And he happened to be calling Sage right at that moment.
"What do you want, Dissident?" Sage grumbled, not even looking at the grizzled old man. Dissident was the leader of the pirate web that both he and Lyssa belonged to, and often called Sage to remind him to be a better pirate. If Sage didn't automatically answer the call on the first ring, the other man would hound him, so it was better to get it over with.
"Sage, my boy, bad news," he said heavily. "Did you hear about this mess with Insurgent?"
"Seems like it's been taken care of," Sage replied, swirling his coffee. "Razia turned him in, didn't she?"
Dissident didn't know that Razia "No Name Listed" was really Lyssandra Peate, doctor of Deep Space Exploration, and sister of the pirate-catching policeman Jukin. Sage was pretty sure the only people who did know were himself, Lyssa, and Lyssa's little brother Vel, who had somehow been mistaken for Razia's hostage a few weeks ago. Oh, and apparently Lyssa's scientist boss, for some weird reason.
"My boy, my boy," Dissident cried, as if he were in pain. "Now everyone knows I have a female in my web."
"Who gives a shit as long as she delivers results?" Sage replied coolly. "Because I would think that everyone might be a little more focused on Insurgent, seeing as he was blatantly breaking the pirate web code."
"All they want to talk about is this Razia girl," Dissident said. "You know, I got no other choice but to kick her out—"
"Wait, what?" Sage gasped, sitting up so fast he nearly spilled his coffee. "That's a little rash, Dissident."
"Can't be helped, my boy," Dissident said, although Sage knew it absolutely could be. "It was fine when she was barely a fleck on the radar, but now that everyone knows she's there...it's just too embarrassing."
Sage nearly flew out of his chair. "You are unbelievable. You call me every freaking day about Santos Journot. 'Sage, he captured another one of my men. Sage, why don't you go find him? Sage, nobody knows what's going on.' But now that Razia's the one who turned him in, you want to punish her by kicking her out?"
"Well, I..."
"Fine, if that's how you want to play it." Sage shrugged. "If you kick her out, I'm leaving your web."
Dissident sputtered at him, aghast."Y-you aren't serious...?"
"As serious as a heart attack."
"Sage, I mean...Tauron...doesn't that mean anything to you?" Dissident cried.
"Yeah, it does, I'm just wondering why it doesn't mean anything to you," Sage snapped. "You promised him."
"I mean, I..." Dissident said. "I've let her in the web, but you can't expect me to...she's a woman, for Leveman's sake—"
"She's a damned good bounty hunter who found and captured the second most wanted pirate in the universe while every single one of your favorite pirates—present company included—were too busy watching a bunch of tits flying around to even notice we were being taken advantage of."
"But—"
"No buts," Sage replied. "Either she stays, or I go." For relish, he added, "I'm sure Contestant would be more than happy to take me."
"No!" Dissident bellowed. "No, that's... She stays. But you listen here. The moment she's captured, the moment she does anything else to embarrass this web, she's out. Do you hear me?"
"Like she's gonna get captured." Sage rolled his eyes. "She's smarter than that."
As the screen went dark, Sage heard Ganon whistle behind him.
"Bold threat, man," Ganon said, coming to sit in his pilot's chair. He swirled around to face Sage with his hands behind his head. "She worth it?"
"It's not about whether she's worth it or not, it's a matter of fairness," Sage snapped, but his cheeks heated nonetheless.
"Yeah, okay, fairness," Ganon muttered. "So, about her being captured..."
Sage looked up at him, "What about it?"
"Damn it, Sage, did you forget how she basically walked into that trap with Relleck a few weeks ago?" Ganon rolled his eyes.
"She made a mistake," Sage replied unconvincingly. "Besides, I'm keeping tabs on her. If she gets in too deep again, I'll know."
"And I ask again," Ganon said, leaning forward, "is she worth it?"
Sage returned his gaze with a cool intensity. "I promised Tauron I would take care of her. No matter how pigheaded she gets, I'm gonna honor my agreement."
Ganon looked as if he wanted to say something, but decided against it.
***
Sage's call with Dissident had raised a few eyebrows on his crew, but they said nothing of it, except for a few well-placed jibes from Ganon.
"Keal, you'd better fix the hole in the ship, or else Sage is leaving the pirate web!"
Sage wasn't really concerned if other pirates found out about the ultimatum—most of them wouldn't care—but he worried about Lyssa finding out. She was stubborn with an ego the size of a star system, and she would've rather eaten her foot than accept help. He remembered when he'd stepped in before Relleck captured her—really, before Relleck beat her to a bloody pulp—and she thanked him by screaming her head off at him and some vague threat about fighting.
The funny thing about Lyssa was the longer he knew her, the more he could see right through her bullshit. She'd always had a reckless nature to her, a hard-headed independent streak that had convinced Tauron to let her stay on his ship. But ever since Tauron died and she found herself in the bottom rungs of the pirate web, she was different. Sure, she blustered a lot and acted tough, but every once in a while, her mask slipped and showed the fragile person underneath. That same little girl who'd watched her entire family leave her to die, and the shaken teenager who had shown up at Harms' apartment after Tauron's death.
Still, he knew she was feeling pretty confident lately. Her bounty had gone up another five million since her capture of Santos Journot. As a bounty hunter, her own bounty price was determined by how much other pirates wanted her captured (stopping her temporarily from capturing their pirates). Dissident had never added the record to the intranet, so he assumed that it had gotten out through word of mouth. So if someone put that big of an amount on her head, she had impressed somebody.
He'd messaged her the day before to tell her the good news—along with tell a white lie about Dissident's opinion of her—and was shocked to learn she'd gone back to her mother's house. Her brother Vel must've worked some crazy magic (or knocked her on the head) to get her to go back there, but Sage personally thought it was healthy for her. He wasn't sure why they hated her so much; there was some garbage with her father and his work, but Sage had never gotten the whole story from Lyssa. Still, hopefully, making peace with the family could help her put some of her demons to rest, so she could move on and be happy.
With Lyssa seemingly on her way to glory and prestige in the pirate web, Sage thought it was about time he returned to his own work. He hadn't stolen anything in a couple of weeks, and had some open job requests that he needed to sort through. There was an interesting one to hijack some government transport ships—not normally his cup of tea, but he'd consider it for the fifty million credits they were promising, and a couple others that promised him and his crew a nice fat payday. He was about three jobs in when he received a direct call.
From Lyssa's brother, Vel.
To be honest, the kid was growing on him. Even though he bore a striking resemblance to his pirate-catching eldest brother, Jukin, he genuinely seemed to care for Lyssa, and wanted to protect her almost as much as Sage did. They'd been in contact over the past few weeks, ever since Sage had found him on a transport station asking, "Where are all the pirates?"
Sage very well could've dropped Vel off at his school, but realized having another set of eyes on Lyssa at all times would be beneficial. It turned out to be a boon when Vel told Sage about Lyssa's boneheaded idea to capture Relleck, resulting in the aforementioned screaming session. And with Dissident's threat to kick her out if she were ever captured, he was even more grateful for the reports.
"Hey kid," Sage said, answering the phone. "How's home?"
"Sage, I...I have a problem."
"Oh Leveman's, what'd she do this time?" And just when things were starting to calm down.
"No, it's not her. The problem is me," Vel replied. "I did something bad, and I didn't mean to and..."
"Slow down," Sage said. "What happened?"
"Can we talk about the 'L' word?" Vel asked, his eyes wide.
"Go ahead." Sage nodded, his crew nowhere to be found.
"So, remember how I said Lyssa's boss wanted me to find information about her?" Vel started and Sage nodded. "That he knew her secret, and unless I gave him something, he was going to tell Jukin?"
"Yes?" Sage said, not liking where this was going.
"Well, I tried to find out anything I could," Vel said. "And nothing I was giving him was working...so I told him...a really big secret."
"What secret?"
"I can't tell you," Vel said nervously. "It's something...Lyssa entrusted it to me, and it's about our father."
Sage frowned; Lyssa had never said anything about her father other than that he'd disappeared shortly before she joined their crew. Whatever she'd confided to Vel, she'd obviously kept it very close to the vest.
"Why'd you do that, you idiot?" Sage barked at him.
"I was just trying to get him to leave her alone, and I thought…" Vel whimpered. "This has all blown up… I don't know what in Leveman's to do."
"Tell her," Sage said, after a moment.
"I can't tell her!" Vel cried. "She won't ever speak to me again!"
Sage opened then closed his mouth. Vel was right; Lyssa would only see the betrayal, not the reasoning behind it. But Sage knew it was better to tell her upfront than let her find out about it.
"She'll be steamed about it for a week." Sage shrugged, the object of her ire all too often. "Then she'll get over it."
"Look, I...I feel like I finally got through to her, until my stupid mother got involved."
"Yeah, I've heard she's a real peach," Sage said. And Lyssa wondered where she got it from. "What'd she say to her?"
"She was drunk, and she started laying into Lyssa." Vel swallowed. "And Lyssa told everyone about Tauron kidnapping her. And Lyssa asked what she ever did to deserve to be...left like that, and…well…Mother said she wished she'd never been born."
Sage's mouth fell open. "Why in Leveman's Great Vortex did she say that?"
"Oh, who knows," Vel huffed with a roll of his eyes. "She was drunk, and Dorst said something about how she was jealous of Father's attention to Lyssa, and there was apparently a big fight between them when he took Lyssa as his assistant, and whatever. It doesn't matter now because she said it, and Lyssa freaked out and left."
"Where is she now?"
"I don't know," Vel said and Sage heard the concern. "She ran out of the Manor and I didn't see her again. And I was hoping you'd be able to find her. I'm worried about her."
"Let me see," Sage said, flipping on his computer and searching the Universal Bank. As he'd expected, Lyssa Peate had been out and about on D-882. A quick look at her Razia account showed she'd turned in two bounties in the past two days—one just under an hour ago.
"She's on '882," Sage said. "Throwing herself into bounty hunting, it appears."
"Great," Vel said. "I need to go talk to her and make this right."
"Look, I'll keep tabs on her, all right?" Sage said. "You tail that boss of hers and make sure he doesn't do anything with that information. Okay?"
Vel nodded.
"Look, it'll be fine," Sage said with a wave of his hand. "Believe it or not, beneath all her bluster, she knows she doesn't have a lot of people to count on, and once you get under her skin, she's not likely to cut you out any time soon."
Vel gave him a weak smile before the line went dark.
***
Sage heard from Vel a few hours later, saying he was trailing Lyssa's boss and trying to work something out. For Sage's part, he kept Lyssa Peate's and Razia's transaction history open to monitor her activities, but she hadn't done anything more rash than turn in a bunch of pirates. Still, when he'd spotted her wandering around the city the other day, he'd been struck by how ragged and defeated she looked.
Ragged or not, he knew better than to try to approach her right now. She was a volcano on her good days, but if he approached her when she was like this, he might end up losing a testicle.
As the week wore on, Sage began to relax a little bit. He hadn't heard anything from Vel in two days, and Sage wondered if the kid had gotten himself riled up for nothing. After all, Lyssa's boss had known about her secret for weeks now, and hadn't done anything with the information, as far as Sage knew.
With that in mind, it was now time to get back to work. Since he was already on D-882 anyway, he decided to pay a visit to Harms to talk about some of the different jobs he was considering.
Harms was Sage's pirate informant, although he was more like an uncle who dispensed wise advice. He knew everything about everything in the pirate universe, having a myriad of pirate customers from across the four webs. Each of them paid a king's ransom for his knowledge, and Sage was no exception. He knew he'd be paying for the visit, but luckily for him, he had some money stashed in one of his aliases.
"Hey," Sage said, sliding into the booth in Harms' bar. Something about Harms was familiar and comforting, like coming home. But Harms' face was decidedly not pleasant today.
"Sage, we have a problem."
"What?" Sage said before rolling his eyes. "I swear to Great Leveman's Vortex, if this is about—"
"Somebody wants Razia captured, and I think it's Dissident."
Sage sighed and slid lower in the booth. Just once—just once—he'd like to focus on himself instead of Lyssa. It had been so much easier when she was in the low six hundreds…
"Well, of course Dissident wants her captured," Sage said with a small shrug.
"Yeah, but this time he's ponying up a fifteen million credit bonus to anyone who captures her," Harms said. "He says someone put him up to it, but I don't think so."
"So, she'll have to be a bit more careful."
"There's more." Harms winced. "Somebody took the job."
"Relleck." Sage groaned.
"And guess who just stopped by my booth to get information about her," Harms continued.
"What'd you tell him?" Sage asked curiously.
"The truth." Harms said, and Sage's eyes widened. "I don't know jack shit about her!"
"What, really?" Sage said.
"All I know is she started showing up at my bar asking about Tauron. I have no idea what her real name is, or any of her aliases. I just know she disappears for weeks at a time, and Leveman's only knows where she goes."
Sage smirked; Lyssa was notorious for never trusting anyone, and in this case, it was to her advantage. "Well, that's good."
"But," Harms hedged, "I had to tell him something."
"So?"
"So I told him if I find out who she's hunting, I'll tell him," Harms finished, looking like he had a bad taste in his mouth.
"Oh shit, Harms." Sage groaned. "Can't you lie about it or something?"
"If I lie about it, he's gonna know, and I'll lose a client," Harms snapped "You know I love her, but I'm not going to lose business over her. Relleck would make everyone in Contestant's web drop me!"
"If she gets captured, Dissident will kick her out!"
"I know that. "Why do you think I'm telling you? I'm going to try to convince her to lie low for a week—"
"She'll never go for that." Sage shook his head.
"Exactly, so I need you to be there to keep her ass out of trouble," Harms said. "Try to keep her from wherever I tell Relleck to go find her. Hit her over the head if you have to."
"What, so you want me to save your ass as well as hers?" Sage cried, throwing his hands in the air. "I'm getting real tired of this crap. You know, I have my own stuff to be doing—I can't be running around after her all the damned time."
