Blue Star Enterprises

It was Yulia’s worried expression that finally snapped him out of this fugue state.

"Alex, are you alright?"

He gave the mental equivalent of a blink and turned the projection of his face to the girl. "I was just thinking. I’m fine now though."

"Oh… It’s just… you looked really scary just now."

The statement shocked him for a couple of reasons. The first was that there was no physical change that should have shown his condition. And the second was that this little girl had somehow still picked up on it.

"How is your puzzle coming along?" he asked instead, trying to draw her attention away from his lapse.

"…OK, I guess."

"Oh, have you run into an issue?"

She nodded slowly. "The math you gave me is really hard. I followed the instructions to enter it into the controller, but I can’t get it to work right."

He made his face nod in understanding. "Why don’t you show me and we can go over it together."

"Don’t you have work to complete?" she asked, looking at the parts strewn about his counter.

"A little break won’t hurt. Now, let’s see what you have." The little robotic humanoid was his latest puzzle for her. It contained a bunch of small parts and even gears along with a motor and controller.

Alexander had designed and built the toy completely from scratch. He even created a simple robotic program for it to run on. The only thing Yulia had to do was solve certain math problems to get the robot to perform an action. The problems started off simple enough, and then steadily got harder. He had even added some algebra problems towards the end. He was curious to see how far she had gotten.

The girl pushed the button on the controller and the figure started to move around, and even walk. It contained some simple sensors, so when it got to the edge of the counter, it knew to turn around instead of falling off.

Soon it started to do more complex tasks, like bending over and sticking its arm up in the air to approximate a wave. Yulia laughed and waved back. There was a pause, and the robot started to do the ’robot’.

"See! It gets there and starts doing weird stuff."

Alexander chuckled. "No, it’s dancing. It’s a dance called the robot."

The young girl scrunched up her face, "That’s a dumb name for a dance. I’ve never seen a robot dance before."

"Never?" he asked, quirking his holographic eyebrow, then he threw down some killer moves.

The girl burst out in laughter as he made his much more limber body mimic the stiff and jerky movements of the little robot until they were in sync. Eventually, she tried to join in. The two laughed and danced and it was exactly what he needed to get his thoughts past what Omni and the station had done.

Yulia was quickly becoming one of his favorite people, he was glad he hadn’t chased her off so many months ago.

***

The Devil’s Bargain jumped back into Gliese 667. After the STO strike group had entered the system, they had quickly made themselves scarce. Captain Harn had no love for the government. Similarly, the STO had no love for the many mercenary companies that plied their trade. A necessary evil he had overheard one STO officer comment back when he was still in the fleet.

"System’s clear, Captain," the sensor officer spoke. "Looks like the STO finally packed up and left."

"Bout damn time," he muttered. Harn turned to the two crew who were waiting off to the side of the bridge. It was because of them he was back in this system so soon. "Tell me again what you saw." The pair had approached him with an opportunity after they completed their last job.

"Gino and I spotted this man on the second ring. I swear on my mother’s grave that it was the spitting image of Harlow himself." The notorious pirate had gone missing years ago. But there was still a bounty out on him.

"Uh, huh… And you say you saw this man in a small repair shop on the second ring?" he let his skepticism sink into every word.

"Well… Not exactly him, Captain. I can show ya. I got an implant." The man sent the file to his screen.

A slightly grainy video showed the man walking into a repair shop, where a girl sat on a stool, and a large robot was moving around inside a storage closet. The view quickly zoomed into the holographic face represented on the robot. It did look a lot like the infamous pirate.

"The robot is Harlow? And why is the video so grainy?"

"I asked my contact in security about that. Apparently, all the cameras in that area are experiencing issues. And no. According to some people we talked with, that’s just what he uses to interact with people. His real body is in a med pod. Probably how he’s avoided getting caught for so long."

Harn grunted. It wasn’t the most outlandish thing he had heard. Assaulting a station resident wasn’t exactly legal. But if they were right, the risk would be worth it. And if they were wrong, he would simply pay the fine.

"What about the girl?"

Svadi shrugged. "Station ward. I figure we hit the place late in the evening, and she shouldn’t be around." They better hope she isn’t there. "And the med pod?"

"Got the location from a guard we paid off."

It seems they had done their homework. Harlow masquerading as some rich bastard who suffered from a disease that kept him locked away in a medical chamber certainly fit. His men had even paid off one of the guards to get the location of that chamber and found it was just another storage room with no communication terminal anywhere nearby.

The plan was simple. Shoot the robot to disable it, which going by how cobbled together it looked, probably wouldn’t be hard, then grab the med pod and hightail it back to the ship before station security caught on to the capture.

Normally he wouldn’t consider an operation like this, but he was close to retirement, bringing in Harlow would earn him enough to live a comfortable life somewhere in the core systems and far away from this backwater filled with Coalition filth. "What about the weapon discharge sensors?"

"My man in security says he can scrub them from the sensors for a minute. That should be more than enough time."

It wouldn’t be the first time his people had to perform a job on a station. The last time they were here, his people had stumbled upon another bounty. It had only taken a stunner to subdue that target, and they had gotten him aboard the ship without anyone being the wiser. Harn knew that there were other bounties on the station, but with the sensors, the two gunships, and the STO showing up, it had been too hot to risk taking anymore.

He would like to claim a few more of these bounties along with Harlow. But if it was him, he was worth far more than some low-level criminal. It wasn’t worth putting one op at risk by running multiple other ops.

"Fine. I’m giving this op the green light. Get suited up, and make sure to cover your faces." He didn’t mention that if things went sideways he was cutting these two free. They may be good mercenaries, but it wasn’t worth taking a trip out an airlock for them.

The ship floated into the dock and touched down. Unfortunately, asking for a specific dock close to their target would be giving too much away, so they were forced to go with whatever the station assigned them. That didn’t mean he couldn’t swing certain factors in his favor.

After telling the station attendant that he may need to do repairs, the woman on the other end assigned the Devil’s Bargain a dock on the third ring. It was more than he had hoped for. Harn was a man who believed in luck, and it seemed lady luck was on their side for this mission.

He had his crew disembark for some R&R while his mechanic took some panels off to make it look like they were investigating some issues. It was early morning at the station, so the two would need to wait until later on when activity slowed to hit their target. By then, the ship would be topped off on reaction mass, the ’repairs’ would be complete, and the crew would be back aboard. All he had to do was sit back and wait to collect his prize.

***

"You think the Captain bought it?" Gino asked as they prepped their gear.

"Quiet, you idiot," Svadi hissed. "Of course the Captain bought it. It took me forever to doctor those images to make that holographic face look sort of like Harlow."

"But he’s bound to find out when we bring the pod in."

"We’re not bringing the pod in, stupid. We take out the robot, then snatch the guns and hide them. We rush back to the ship and tell him the op went sideways. Then we can come back at our leisure after the old man retires and collect our prize. Simple as that."

Gino smiled. "Simple as that!" The two slammed their armored forearms together.