***
I met up with Jayde at the G’Farg south port authority, a sort of space travel industrial park, just a few klicks from the public shuttle terminals.
Only trade ships landed here, for the most part, their gigantic eight-engine thrusters glowing a faint blue-orange as their grey, hulking metal frames drifted into docking spaces, one entire side of the building open to them.
It made it a nice and anonymous place for us to anchor the Esmeralda.
The kid was standing on the dock, and had her flight goggles on, pushed up onto the top of her head. She also had her piece in a holster strapped to her right thigh.
As I said earlier, process servers don’t get to carry a piece. But pilots? That was considered a right in all five galaxies.
You didn’t tell a pilot – especially a Short-Space veteran like Jayde – that they couldn’t protect themselves from the vast swath of vermin that trolled outer System space, looking for easy prey.
And she was good with a blaster.
She’d told me how old-school holo games had been played with external controllers, and swore they’d given her the hand-eye co-ordination that made her a brilliant pilot, and a deadly pistol shot.
In one of her few vulnerable moments, she’d told me how she missed being in her own time. How she’d missed all her friends growing old and dying while she slept, never meeting their families, their boyfriends and husband, their kids.
Of course, “vulnerable” wasn’t a typical state of mind for Jayde.
Looking down the row of ships as she directed the refuelers, it occurred to me we hadn’t been to the port authority bar since that bad game of cards a few years earlier, when a dealer had thrown down an ace he’d dealt off the bottom of the deck, and Jayde had obligingly paid up by blowing off his kneecap.
It had taken two months of hiding out while Harrison pulled strings to get us out of that one.
She came over and stood beside me, eyeballing the other ships. “You know boss, a good new ship would only take us six, maybe seven runs to finance, couple of years to pay out…”
“Jayde, you know how I promised I’d stop calling you kid, given that you’re 200 years older than me?”
“Yeah…”
“That deal only stands if you promise not to remind me what most people think of the Jofari.”
She looked at me for a split second, then at the ships … and then at the ground. Did I detect a smidgen of shame?
Instead, she said, “Come on boss, let’s go get a drink while they get us ready.”