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If the VIP section of Marcus' club was heaven, the backstage was most certainly god's personal retreat where he kept the finest of his kingdom to himself. Granted, there was little flair to the whole place, generally bearing a whole Spartan aesthetic. It was a bit of a sobering change of pace from the bright lights and bouncing bass of the club proper, but for what it lacked in design, it more than made up for in company.

Kovic, the alligator that had been on the stage when we'd first entered, was leaning back across a loveseat while Corey straddled him, bobbing up and down on that massive reptilian cock like his life depended on it. The bleating had stopped some time ago, with exhaustion having sapped the voice from the ram, and now there was little evidence of sentience to his lust-fuelled motions.

Two other dancers occupied themselves in a similar manner on a couch opposite them, a stallion pounding his length into a lithe otter with all the ferocity of the blitz. The low bass of the horse's grunts playing off the higher-pitched moaning of the otter creating some perverted music that delighted the senses.

I sat at the bar in a corner, nursing a neat whiskey as I enjoyed the company of the crimson-furred fox that I'd seen before. The fox was currently slobbering over my knotted cock, working my rod masterfully in his narrow muzzle.

I had gotten the impression that such situations were unusual for the dancers. Hell, showing off was their job, so it was bound to grow old eventually. Conversely, none of them seemed too upset at the chance to embrace the lewdity of their industry. Hell, the horse had practically tackled the otter when he'd seen what Corey and I had started back here.

The fox redoubled his efforts, dragging his tongue slowly back and forth along my dick, massaging the sensitive flesh with the whole of his mouth. His fluffy tail flicked back and forth behind him playfully, and the sight of him bent over me lap built upon the feeling on my groin, and I moaned, spilling what seemed like my fifth load into his mouth.

Not a single drop of cum slipped from his mouth, and by the time he finally drew his mouth away from my crotch, my cock was pristinely clean.

He stood, taking a seat next to me as he began to fix a drink for himself, giving me a sly smile as he licked his chops.

"Can't say I got your name before," the fox said, undoing the cap on a bottle of vodka, "I'm Castor."

"Grey," I answered, shaking paws with the fox, the formality of the gesture undermined somewhat by the act that had just occurred, "the ram about four orgasms past cognition is Corey."

From his perch atop mount gator, Corey raised a middle finger back at me, never breaking stride as he went to work on the muscular figure below him.

"You're friends of Marcus, I take it?" the fox asked, adding ginger ale to the mix, "Not many people get the full VIP treatment."

"An old business partner," I said, finishing off what was in my glass before making myself a new drink, "In town to discuss some work."

"Ah," the fox said, that slim smile never departing his face, "you're the assassin that helped him get established here. The old man said you were coming. Thought you'd be older."

"And here I thought I was more subtle than that," I said, judging his expression. There was nothing in the way of fear or moral judgment, so either he was a better liar than most or he really didn't give a shit. Most likely the latter.

"Subtlety doesn't really play into it, I think," Castor said, turning to inspect me, "you're more... I don't know... grizzled, than someone would expect for your age."

"If you're talking about the ear," I said, gingerly touching the tender flesh along the edge of the tear, "that only happened yesterday, I'm not normally so haggard."

"No," he laughed, "It's a nice touch though, adds to the roguish charm. It's more in the way you move, the way you talk to people. Like you know you can take care of yourself."

"That's usually because I can," I said, taking a sip of my new drink, "unless I've been drinking tequila, then I'm basically useless."

"I'll keep that in mind if you ever come after me, then," the fox said. His manner was joking, but I couldn't help but cringe at the thought.

"Just to be clear," I said, "I was never exactly an assassin, and I haven't done 'contract' contracts in years."

"Oh?" the fox said, leaning on the bar to look at me sideways, "then what were you?"

"Would you believe me if I said I used to be a government super-spy?"

"No, probably not," the fox said with a shrug, "I can pretend to believe you if you want."

"I did sabotage, undercover work," I said, "ya know, black-ops shit. Then when I got discharged, that was all I really knew how to do, so I kept doing it."

"I know it's kinda my job and all, to listen to clients talk," Castor said, his smile widening a bit more, "but should you be telling me this stuff?"

"What? That I was a spy?" I asked, "Probably not, but as long as I don't give specifics the admirals don't care. It's not like they can double-arrest me."

"So now you do, what, party professionally?"

"No," I shrugged, "just another perk of the job; I steal shit. Like, really expensive shit."

"Ah, a much higher moral standing," Castor said, rolling his eyes sarcastically, "lucky I'm not wearing pants, I don't have to keep checking my pockets."

"Glass houses, mate," I said, giving the fox a sidelong glance, my train of thought broken as Kovic began panting heavily before bursting into a roar, filling the lithe ram atop him with seed.

Corey sank down onto the gator's lap, too exhausted to continue, but too enamoured to actually dismount the enormous dancer. He rested his head against the reptile's impressive pectorals, his horns making the position a bit awkward.

The ram extended an upraised thumb in my direction, "I want one."

"If you're extra special good," I said, "maybe you'll get one for your birthday."

As if on cue, the head of security stepped through the curtain divider to the back room, his eyes sweeping over the writhing masculine bodies in seeming indifference.

"Mr. Keys has finished his preparations," the tiger said, "he asked to see you as soon as you've showered and gotten dressed."

"Aw," I whined, "is this revenge for us ruining your fun earlier?"

Fuckin' hell, if looks could kill...

"I am just doing my job, Mr. Grey," the tiger said, spitting the honorific like it tasted foul, "and my job, unfortunately, now involves dealing with you two."

I leaned over to Corey, whispering as loudly as I possibly could, "I'm starting to get the impression that stripes here doesn't like us."

---

The process of showering and getting dressed ran into a few hurdles, the first being the rather open floor plan of said showers, leading to a certain canine individual getting distracted by a certain ram's ass. The second being the end of the next round of dances, and the stream of sexy people filtering in after us.

That, along with a brief foray back to the backstage bar led to our arrival at Marcus' office being about two hours late.

"Took yer bloody time, did ya?" Marcus said as we took our seats across from him.

"We were as fast as we could be," I said, "given the number of distractions you provided us..."

"Can't say I didn't expect it," the elk said, shaking his head, "ya never were big on schedules."

"So," Corey interjected, wary of starting the old man on any talk about 'the good old days,' "you said you had something for us."

"Oh yes indeed," the elk said, tapping his fingers on the top of his table, "I should mention, jobs that carry a price tag this high aren't the kind of thing ya come across often, and ya sure as hell don't just do it without a damn good plan."

"How high are we talking?" Corey asked, leaning forward expectantly.

"One hundred and fifty million."

"Fuck off."

I looked over at Corey, his expression matching the surge of confusion and disbelief in my own mind. His mouth still hung open, his lips moving like he was searching for something to say, beyond 'fuck off.'

"An understandable reaction," Marcus said, grabbing an unlit cigar from a drawer in his desk, "and you won't get the full one fifty, it'd be one thirty-five after my cut."

"Let me clarify," I said, leaning closer, "this job does not involve assassination or the destabilization of a planetary government?"

"Nope," the elk said, using a tool to cut off the end of the cigar before lighting it, smoke pouring out of his nostrils.

"So what am I stealing? For that price it's gotta be something like the Mona Lisa, and I don't really want that kind of heat on me."

"Hold on a moment, lad," he said, "I said you're not sabotaging a government, I never said nothing about a mega-corp."

I couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at that. Hit and run jobs were pretty common, usually paid for by rival corps, but as a business tactic it had fallen out of favour in recent years. If anyone was an actual threat to you economically, they sure as hell had the money to buy firepower of their own in retaliation. And they sure as shit didn't throw around this kind of money for them.

"Ever heard of Atlas Dynamics?" the elk asked.

"My ship is sitting in one of their hangars right now," I answered, trying to think back on everything I knew about the economic giant, "they started out in electronic security, then branched off into wetware, physical security, and starship tech."

"It's all garbage quality too," Corey said, "One of my first implants was Atlas; went out in a dogfight and almost fried my brain. I've heard their security teams are laughably incompetent too."

"Well yes," Marcus said, nodding, "their contract teams are notoriously flimsy and corrupt, but their in-house staff are top-shelf. But where they've drawn the greatest ire is their cyber-warfare division."

The old man tapped at a few keys behind his desk, revealing a holographic projector, the kind that was typically used for architectural planning and design. It revealed a building, typical of your standard Lunar architecture; that is to say, boxy and grey.

"This is their headquarters, nestled on the far side of this very moon in the business district," the elk said. The hologram then zoomed in, the colour and outer walls fading to provide a rough diagram of the building's interior. One thing stood out as obvious, and Corey was quick to point it out.

"What's that big fuck-off black spot in the middle then?"

"That's what you lot are going to break into," Marcus said, zooming in until the oddity took up the entire space of the hologram, "No actual name on file, but the people hiring ya call it Atlas' datavault."

The vault was big. Basically a building in its own right, suspended some twenty floors off the surface and ten stories high itself, capped off by the remaining twenty stories of the Atlas HQ. It had entrances sparingly, only on the top and bottom levels of the complex, and from what the design showed, there was a significant security presence around all of them.

"Hell of a lot bigger than any vault I've ever seen," I said, standing up to get a better look at the projection, "something that size will have all the ventilation handled internally, possibly generators too, so my usual points of entry are out of the question."

"Spot on," the elk said, "it's practically a small city, completely self-sufficient"

"It's all very impressive," Corey said, "but you still haven't said exactly what the job is."

"Plain and simple," Marcus said, "the data stored in that vault would bankrupt Atlas if it got out: lists of people they've bribed, assassinated, their agents, their spies in other corps, secrets they've stolen, and that's besides their own proprietary material on file."

"Who exactly is paying for this job?" I asked, looking up from the bottom of the projection to test that angle.

"A conglomeration of seven rival mega-corps who've decided Atlas is too much of a hassle to put up with anymore."

"How'd they manage that?" I chuckled, "you'd have to be a monumental asshole for those pricks to work together."

"You know that from experience, do you?" Corey asked jokingly.

"My record is three," I said, "seven means you've stepped way, way over the already loose bounds of decency these people play by."

"Their entire business is based on undercutting and underperforming the competition," Marcus said, "bribing and blackmailing their way to security and manufacturing contracts. They've definitely earned this mark."

"If it's a vault, there's got to be something worth stealing in it," I said, "so what exactly am I grabbing?"

"If the data in that vault goes public," the elk explained, "Atlas can count on being bankrupt within the hour, and all its executives hauled before a parliamentary committee within the week. Granted, the corps funding this would rather that data goes to them first, so they can wash their names and information from it, and then the pick everything left of value apart from the market."

"So they don't want a hit and run," I pondered, sitting back in my chair, "they want Atlas gone for good."

The elk nodded, "they're salting the earth with this one. That vault has everything they need to get it done, and they aren't picky how they get it."

I looked at the hologram closer, thinking tactically about the logistics of getting in and out of that monstrosity.

"Is cyber-warfare out of the question?" I asked, "Surely they've got internal networks we can tap for far less risk."

"You'd need executive-level clearance to pull something like that off," the elk said, shaking his head, "The vault has two networks: one only accessible by the people in the vault, and one to transmit data to and from the vault, monitored by a full-fuckin'-fledged AI."

I raised an eyebrow at that, "isn't that a bit overkill?"

"Oh, it does more than just monitor the vault's security," Marcus said, "but you're not going to get past that thing without hardware that's on-site and bigger than anything you can carry."

"Listen Grey," Corey said," there's no harm in letting this one go; this sounds like something for an entire army, not two guys."

"You're right," I said, taking control of the hologram to look at the base of the building, "but we don't need an army, just a damn good team."

I turned to face them, "I can get into the vault, no question; it's just a matter of knowing what I'm going to be dealing with. But getting there is going to be an issue unless I have people covering my back."

"If I had people with those skills," Marcus said, "I'd have done this myself. You're on your own here."

"Just to start we'd need gunmen to hold off security and keep civilians under control," I continued, "not the hardest skill-set to find, but they'd need specialists with them to get past any obstacles we come across, and someone to coordinate them."

"Got anyone in mind?" Corey asked.

"You're not going to like it."

He was silent for a long time, looking at me with a searching expression before revelation clicked behind his eyes, "no fucking way."

"She's good, Corey," I said, trying to stem the tide of his protests, "she was a marine, she's almost as good a shot as me, and she knows people who can help."

"She tried to shoot us!" the ram said, "She'll kick our asses and throw us in prison before she'll help us, especially with this sort of thing."

"I've known Lilith for a long time, Corey," I said, "She hates the corps as much as anyone, and I doubt she's in high standing at her job right now."

"Yeah, because of us," the ram said, running a hand through his hair in frustration, "I know this is a lot of money, but I really doubt she'll just turn away from years of being a cop, especially after what happened."

"O.K. Corey," I said sarcastically, "let's get together with a bunch of mercenaries and bounty hunters to find someone who will help us clear the six million off our heads, I'm sure they'll be way more reliable and less prone to stabbing us in the back."

The ram clenched his jaw, groaning as he fought to find another point to his argument.

"Fine," he spat, "but if she tries to arrest me, I'll shoot her myself."

---

Finding Lilith was proving to be harder than expected. I had hardly imagined our little stunt on Horizon would look good to her superiors, but I hadn't anticipated it getting her fired, along with a number of other officers on the force.

From there, Marcus' intel was limited. It looked like she had booked a shuttle to Destiny, one of the few commercial hubs in that region of space, and from there she could get just about anywhere with minimal trace. We went for about a week with no new intel, and so decided to lay up and wait for her to come back up on the grid.

Rather than let us stay at his club and 'distract' his dancers, Marcus put Corey and I up in one of his safe houses in the shipyard district.

The place was a mess, but I'd definitely lived in worse. It was a singular room, with one level raised into a loft. It was tucked between two dry-dock hangars, meant to service ships much larger than the Sleipnir. The sound of grinding and welding occasionally got through the massive steel containment walls on either side, and the only windows in the safe house afforded a rather dim view of the empty cavern between the two shipyards. The entire room was lit with a low red light, designed for maximum efficiency in the parts of the colony no one was meant to see.

There was a kitchen stocked with military rations and a cheap microwave, several centuries out of date by the look of it. The bathroom was in the main room on the lower level, though someone in the safe house's construction had been courteous enough to supply a paper room-divider. The bed was hard as a brick and lay on the bare ground, designed for necessity rather than comfort.

Corey had gone out, and I paced back and forth through the safe house, trying not to smash my face in out of sheer boredom. I'd gone through about five movies over the course of a day, and had thoroughly exhausted my reserves of patience. I was just about to head out and hit up a bar just to keep from going insane when the door echoed with a sharp knock.

I placed my hand over the handle, and before I could turn the knob the door flew back off the hinge, heavy metal sheet falling back on me with a cacophony or dings and bangs. I fell flat on my back, the force and shock driving all air from my lungs, and I felt blood well up from a cut above my left eye where the door had slammed into my face.

I pressed my palms against the door lying atop me, and was stopped by the weight of a foot pressed against it, pressing me harder against the cold metal floor.

With gleeful slowness, a red-furred wolf kneeled besides me, gun cradled gently in one hand with a shock baton in the other.

"This is going to be fun," Lilith said, teeth showing in her smile as she kicked the door off me as if it were a sheet of paper.

"Honestly," she said, stepping one foot over my chest so she was looming over my torso, "I thought you were better than this."

"I am," I replied, blinking a couple times to get blood out of my eye, "must be an off day."

She dropped down to one knee, slamming the butt of her gun into my muzzle as she did, and my hand's progress towards the gun at my belt stopped, and I raised them to above my head. I could tell she pulled a good deal of the blow's force, but damn that hurt.

She drew the weapon from my holster, disarming the core before tossing it aside, useless.

"Alright," I said, pressing a few fingers gently to my nose to see if anything had been broken, "that was fair."

"Fuck fair," She said, pressing the barrel of her gun into my shoulder, "you shot me, electrocuted me, and got me fired. I'm being way, way nicer than fair."

"To be perfectly blunt," I said, my need to be a smartarse trumping common sense, "if you couldn't stop me when I was half-drunk, maybe policing isn't the job for you."

Let me tell you, if you've never been hit full-force by several thousand volts of electricity, you're probably a much more stable person than me, and it fucking hurts. A lot.

"There," I coughed, a small voice in the back of my mind begging me just to shut the hell up, "we've got electrocution out of the way, only two more to go."

"Any other person would have killed you by now Grey," She snarled, "don't rely on my charity too much, and shut the fuck up."

"I got to say," I sputtered, a surprising amount of blood flowing down my throat from my nose, "I didn't think you could pull off the bounty hunter thing. It's a good look on you. It'd be better if I weren't on the receiving end, but..."

She moved her gun from my shoulder to my forehead, and I suddenly lost my joking attitude.

"For the last goddamned time, Grey," She snarled, "Shut. The. Fuck. Up."

The moment her gun moved to my head, a small red dot appeared on her chest, moving mere micrometres as the ram on the other side of the rifle adjusted his aim.

Lilith followed my gaze, her eyes widening as she spotted the laser sight. She sighed, dropping her gun and baton to the floor as she ground her palms into her forehead.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," she hissed as I got up, knocking both weapons out of her reach before retrieving mine.

"Hi Lilith," Corey's voice came through several speakers hidden throughout the place, each of them also transmitting sound on our end to him, across the underground chasm on the far end of the shipyard.

"I said the safe-word about five minutes ago," I shouted, raising a middle finger in his direction, only to have the laser dot leave Lilith and line up with me, "if only your listening skills were as good as your aim."

"It was a good show," the ram said, his face no doubt sporting a shit-eating grin on the other end of the transmitter.

"What tipped you off?" the wolf asked, her rage subsiding behind a look of disappointment.

"Tipped us off?" I repeated, "This was our plan from the beginning. You really are kinda predictable."

"You're one to talk," she snorted, "I had the shuttle booked for Luna before you had even gotten here."

"The illusion of predictability," I corrected, "much more dangerous than being unpredictable. You really think this shithole is the best safe-house I've got? It practically screams: come here and shoot me."

"It took me a week to find it!"

"Well, it can't be too easy," I shrugged, looking around for a napkin to clean up some of the blood, "then you'd have known it was a trap."

"Yeah, about that," she said derisively, "this about the least intimidating 'trap' I've ever seen."

"Yeah, sorry if I'm not the best host at the moment," I glared, "some twat punched my face in."

"You know what..." she started.

"And some other twat sat back and let it happen!" I shouted again, looking pointedly in the direction of the window.

"You know Grey," Corey said, menacingly, "I still haven't had the opportunity to test out this new rifle..."

"Now if we're all done blustering and punching each other," I cut in, "How about we have this discussion over coffee like a group of semi-civilized people?"

---

The coffee shop we settled on was a chain, not quite galaxy-wide but ubiquitous enough for all of us to know exactly what we were in for with our orders. Corey ordered a complex sort of latte that I'd never heard of before, I kept my tradition of a simple dark roast, while Lilith ordered the most expensive thing on the menu just to spite me.

The mid-morning crowd had dispersed, and the three of us sat at a booth in the back, Corey and I across from Lilith. Neither I nor the ram had weapons drawn, but I knew the wolf was smart enough not to test my quick-draw skills. She sipped her triple low-cal macha-mocha-whattsit and glared at me. Corey, in the meantime, had drunken nearly half his coffee in a single gulp, and was presently tapping away at the surface of the table with far too much energy to sit still comfortably.

"Seriously Grey," the wolf said, her tone annoyed and frustrated, "what the fuck is this? A shitty attempt at a double-date?"

"Funny," I replied dryly, "try a job interview."

"Funny," she said, mimicking my tone, "I can give you a sticker in the shape of a badge if you want - oh wait, no I can't because a pair of dipshits got me fired."

"Exactly," I said, "you need a job. I have one, so I suggest dropping the attitude if you don't want this coming up at your quarterly evaluation."

"Go fuck yourself."

"See, it's that kind of talk that's going to keep you from getting to upper management."

"Look Grey," She said, leaning forward across the table, "I know you fancy yourself the 'dashing rogue,' but there is no way in hell I would ever work for you, it doesn't matter how much it pays."

"One hundred and thirty-five million," I said, spinning my coffee cup around on the table with two fingers.

"Fuck you," She said, though this time it wasn't so much an insult as a statement of incredulity.

"With no civilian casualties, and no action against the Federation," I added, "completely legal, if only because it's technically in an anarchist state..."

"Why do I get the feeling you're not telling me the entire story?"

"Give me a bleedin' minute," I sighed, "fuckin' hell."

I took a sip of my coffee, then continued, "As I was saying, it sure as hell won't be easy, and we'll need to earn every penny of it, but it's doable."

Her expression was conflicted, but she ultimately crumbled under her curiosity, "Fine. What's the job?"

I went over the details we'd discussed in Marcus' office, my own copy of the building's hologram coming in handy as I presented it from implants in my forearm. She was quiet for the most part, looking over the admittedly sparse plans we had of the vault, asking questions in a brief, appraising manner.

Only once I had finished did she take the time to finish off her coffee, then speak.

"This is a stupid fucking idea, you know that right?"

"You say that about most of my ideas," I pointed out, "and now look whose held prisoner."

"First of all," She said, "do you really expect me to go from cop to criminal in less than a month? How desperate do you think I am?"

"You can drop the moral crusader bit, Lilith," I responded, "you know as well as me that Atlas Deserves it more than most, and if we do this right, there'll be no collateral damage. Hell, the Federation will all but publicly thank us for taking them down. Besides, you went all of a week before turning into a vigilante, so don't get up in arms about the law being on your side."

"You're a criminal Grey," She responded with a sneer, "Wanted throughout the Federation."

"Luna isn't federation territory," I pointed out, "So Federation law can't touch me here, and if you had managed to kidnap me, it'd be in violation of extradition treaties."

"Wouldn't stop them from prosecuting you."

"Great, then we'd both be in a prison colony," I retorted, "so how about we cut the shit and get to work on taking down Atlas?"

"Atlas products might be a load of shit," she said, "but their security teams are going to be as tough as any military, and if the stuff in that vault is as valuable as you say it is, they are going to have all their bases covered."

"Tell me right now Grey," she said, eyes boring through me like a schoolteacher, "can you get into the vault?"

"There's not a vault in existence I can't break," I said, offended at the very thought, "but I'll need an idea of what I'm going to be dealing with ahead of time, and that means tracking down the vault's designer."

"And you don't even know who that is!" the wolf exclaimed, sitting back in her seat.

"On the contrary," I said, my tone admittedly smug, "I know there are only three or four companies that manufacture vaults this large, and only two of them could handle something with the type of electronic sophistication required to house an A.I."

"Congrats," she said snidely, "you narrowed it down to two multi-million dollar corporations with millions of employees and thousands of designers. We'll have them in no time."

"No," I said, "I have it narrowed down to one, because the other is Atlas's direct competitor, Orion, and they sure as hell wouldn't give the contract to them."

"Believe me Lilith," Corey cut in, "he's done more with less. He can find our designer."

"Alright, fine. Say we get the plans," she said, "you'd still have to sneak or fight your way up twenty-some floors, take the time to break in, secure the data, and then get out again."

"We've got an exit strategy already," I said, gesturing to the ram besides me, "he uses the Sleipnir to keep any Atlas fighters away, maybe provide some sniper fire if we need it, then picks us up from the roof."

"So now we're fighting through fifty floors of security in an unknown environment," the wolf muttered under her breath before speaking up, "I'm just one person. I can't get you in, cover exits, and provide cover on my own."

"You've kept in touch with all your ex-marine buddies, right?" I asked with a shrug, "I'm sure some of them wouldn't mind a payday like this."

She looked like she was about to dismiss the idea when her expression froze, and the general look of anger and disgust that occupied most of our interactions shifted to a sly, vicious grin.

"Alright," she said, "I'm in... on the condition that you hire on everyone else you got fired from the Horizon police."

"No!" I shouted, my voice getting carried away by the absurdity of such a suggestion, "The entire point of bringing you on was to get talented professionals, and the HPD sure as shit doesn't cover those bases."

"Bullshit," She said, folding her arms across her chest, "you got some good people thrown out on their asses. Good cops that under any other circumstances would've had spotless careers."

I looked to Corey for backup, but his expression simply read 'this was your idea' and I turned back to Lilith, thumping my forehead against the table in exasperation.

"Who all got fired aside from you?" I asked finally, trying to surmise if I could make this work, despite such a handicap.

"Corporal Fayrn, Captain Fetterman, and Private Sharpe," She said, the words meeting with a blank expression on my end.

"You do realize I've never met these people before, so telling me their names is literally useless."

"Corporal Tobias Fayn," she sighed, "is the giant horse whose leg you broke."

"Right..." I nodded, remembering the previous week of pain from where the officer had head-butt me.

"He was a mixed martial arts fighter and boxer before he joined the force," She said, "I don't recall any military training, but he's good in a fight."

"Roger, whom I believe you know as 'Chief,' was the station's SWAT captain," She said, "He's been on the force for almost twenty years, and was in the Navy before that."

"Fucker hit me with a parking metre..." Corey muttered.

"Yeah," Lilith nodded, "he's probably going to punch you the next time he sees you."

"Bastard can well and fuckin' try," the ram spat back, his attempt to appear intimidating undermined a bit by the line of foam that had gathered along his upper lip.

"Finally," Lilith said, "We've got Ian. He's a good enough kid, from what I've seen. Kind of a dork, but I've never had trouble with him."

"Which one would that be?"

"The one you were hitting on as you gave him a concussion," Lilith said curtly, "He had just gotten out of the academy. I think he was in school for nursing too, or something like that."

"Mmm..." I said, thinking of the rabbit again, "He can come along. The others still haven't quite made the cut."

"Let me put it this way, Grey," the wolf said, leaning across the table, "You either hire them, or I walk out right now, and you're back to square one."

I rolled the options around in my head. I didn't like working with amateurs, but time was a factor here what with bounty hunters crawling across the core systems for Corey and I, and I didn't have many friends left with the connections Lilith did. Besides, she had a point in that they weren't all incompetent. And of course, there was the bunny...

"Fine," I said, "if you get them together for a meeting, I will make an offer."

"I can do that," she nodded, the barest hint of a self-satisfied smirk lighting her face.

"But," I cut in, "I make only one offer, and if they don't take it, it's on them."

"Deal."

I sighed, finishing off my coffee as the bruise on my nose began throbbing again with renewed vigour, "I'm really going to regret this, aren't I?"

---

The hangar was absolutely frigid when we returned to it. A week and a half or storage below the lunar surface leaving the frigate with a thin layer of ice across its surface.

Lilith had gone back to her hotel, retrieving her suitcase along with a disconcerting number of weapons she deemed necessary to hunting me down. I stopped in my tracks a few metres from the Sleipnir's entry ramp, spinning about on one heel as I signalled for them to stop alongside me.

"Alright!" I said, trying to sound more chipper than I really was, "Rules of the ship."

"Is he fucking joking?" Lilith asked, the question directed towards Corey, who simply shrugged and rolled his eyes.

"Number one," I started, ignoring them, "this is my ship. Corey may fly it, but it is mine. If you do anything to damage my ship, I will take it out of your ass, and for once I do not mean that in the sexual manner."

"To that end," I continued, "there is to be no unauthorized modification or alteration to any ship systems. You may ask me for permission, and it will always be denied, because this is my fucking ship, and I said so."

"We get it," Corey said, exhaling into his hands in an effort to warm them up, "can we get in the damn ship yet?"

"Rule number two," I said, turning an accusatory glare towards the ram, "is that there will be no pornography on the main computer, because if some twat gets it locked down with some dick-themed virus, we can't use the slip drive."

"It was not a porn site, you ass!"

"I can see the search history, Corey. If you want to look at weird tentacle porn, you use the secondary computer in the crew quarters, so long as you save the good stuff so I can look at it too."

"You two are savages," Lilith snorted, tapping impatiently with her toe.

"Rule three!" I said, having to shout before they came up with some other snarky comment, "If there is a conflict between crew, it is either arbitrated by myself, or taken to a 1v1 match of Titan Wars."

"He cheats," Corey whispered towards Lilith, "he looks at your screen and he's got aim-hack implants."

"So do you."

"Yeah, but yours are like top-secret level stuff. Completely unfair."

"If you two are done bickering," Lilith cut in, "I'd like to get on the ship before my tits freeze off."

"Fine," I said, pressing against the control panel for the ship's ramp, "better use the computer to set up a meeting location before we leave Luna. I don't want to pay for a comm buoy."

Corey headed to the bridge right away, and no more than a second after he reached it the ship began switching on, engines cycling to life. Lilith went to work hailing her former co-workers, and I was left with the responsibility of arranging the process of bringing the Sleipnir to the surface.

From an unexperienced spacefarer's perspective, the prospect of raising an elevator to the surface and getting permission to fly would seem a simple task. In the hands of a competent spaceport, that might be the case, but this was no competent spaceport. This one was managed by Atlas, and as such, it took an hour and a half before they'd managed to get the Sleipnir to the Lunar surface.

I sat behind Corey, one hand tapping at the communications console and the other held in a perpetual middle-finger directed at the control tower in the distance.

Lilith appeared behind me, having shed her jacket for a tank-top, though she kept the holster and gun.

"Ship looks a lot different since the last time I was on it," she observed, "why haven't we left yet?"

"Apparently Atlas can't manage something we've been doing for over two centuries and get a ship off the moon," I hissed, looking back at her as she took a seat in what was technically the co-pilot's chair, "but yeah, the old girl's come a long way since I was discharged."

"You know you'd probably be making money instead of needing it if you actually used this thing to haul freight instead of dick about through the outer systems."

"Don't you have a meeting to set up?" I shot back.

"Already done," she responded, "we're headed to Piro IV, in the system over from Horizon."

Corey quickly went about punching in the route, thankful for being given anything to do as we waited on the surface of the satellite.

"Never heard of it," he said, "but given it's out there, I can guess it's a mining station."

"Yup," Lilith said, kicking up her feet against the central console to get comfortable for what was shaping up to be a long wait, "Mostly automated, but they've got a bar, so that's where we're meeting them."

"You tell them why they're coming?" I asked.

"I told them it's to have a drink and talk," she replied, "I'm sure some of them are suspicious I have something else in mind though. They're not stupid."

The computed chirped, and an automated voice from the tower came through, "You have been given clearance to take off through the lane transmitted to your vessel, please follow vectors and obey clearance protocols until you are one hundred kilometres from surface. Slip drive use is prohibited within two-hundred kilometres of the surface."

"Holy fuckin' hell," Corey cursed, his hands moving like a whirlwind as he set the engines to work, the ship beginning to move before the message had even ended, "took them long enough."

The bright lights and grey metal disappeared as the Sleipnir flashed forward, cutting through the path assigned to it well beyond the limit of Atlas' recommended clearance protocols. No sooner had he broken the minimal distance, the slip drive kicked in, and we were off on the first leg of our plan.