FIVE
Cazran and Abigail trapped their prisoner within a suspension field against a wall of the cargo hold. The man's DNA matched that of the mysterious fourth person from the murder scene at Gronwe's manor and, according to T-7, his name was Rasmus Reigns. They probably had their killer, but Cazran wanted a motive before he closed the case and collected his payment from Lachlen.
Rasmus was still unconscious and wearing the muddy catsuit.
"Let me look at those injuries already." Abi leaned on the console beside the field. "You're manly and sexy and all that jizz for playing it cool, but seriously, those are getting infected as you stand there."
"In a little while." Caz sipped from the cup of iced caf liquor in his hand. "The read-outs showed I'm fine for now."
She shrugged and gestured to the sleeping Reigns. "Should we wake him?"
"First, I want to learn what Irene confided to her psychiatrist about that affair."
"Oh, right." She tried suppressing a smirk as she looked off to the side for an emphatic moment, as though she had a naughty secret. She finally looked back to her husband and straightened, sauntering toward him and stopping at his front. Caz swallowed an upcoming burp and raised an eyebrow.
"She asked her doc for advice on hiding the affair from her husband." Abigail placed a small hand on his chest. "And you know the silly thing? She actually helped Irene hide the affair."
The man gulped down the rest of his caf liquor and dropped the cup. He wrapped his arms around her and leaned his head in so their mouths were close. "I wonder where I've heard about a scheme like that before." He kissed her. "Irene must be a real devil, straight outta Hell."
Abi stiffled a giggle and kissed him in return. But after a few minutes Cazran drew back. "Business first, you tramp. Remember, we've gotta guest waiting to be interviewed."
She pouted, spun on her heel, and skipped to the console. "I'll take the honor this time."
In a blink, Cazran's expression hardened and his voice became commanding. "All right. Wake him up." He approached the suspension field to glare at the filthy prisoner. Abi turned a nob. A continuous bolt of static shocked Rasmus Reigns' head. He screamed as pain abruptly pulled him to full alertness. Abi turned the knob again and the static vanished.
Reigns cradled his head in his hands. "Wh-who?"
"Why did you kill Clovis Gronwe?" Caz demanded.
Reigns vomited on himself. And he began to cry, dry-heaving every other sob.
Abi said, "Scans show he has what I think is a blaster wound on his shoulder."
"Take advantage of it," the fierce-eyed warrior ordered.
Static shot into Reigns' injured shoulder. He screamed, a high-pitched sound.
Caz left it to Abi to decide when to stop. When she did, Reigns curled into a fetal position on the circular bottom of his narrow encasement, shivering violently.
"That was a low-intensity dosage," Caz said. "If it were set to high, you'd be going into real shock. Ignore my question much longer and that'll be your fate."
A silent minute passed, the caged man's breathing finally evening out. "I work for someone," he answered at last, body and voice shaking. "He hired me to kill Gronwe."
"For what reason? Who is he?" Caz said.
Reigns swallowed. "My boss gains the trust of wealthy women, seduces them into giving him the contents of their bank accounts, or their husbands' bank accounts, then he disappears. Irene was his latest target. Gronwe suspected Irene was having an affair, had his men track her down. They found out my boss's identity. Gronwe had to be taken down."
Cazran waited for several seconds, and then when nothing more came from Reigns, he felt his patience leaving him. "You ignored my other question."
Reigns sighed and shrugged his good shoulder. "What does it matter anymore if I tell you? He's a Falleen named Gaspare Odilon. He's emptied out his headquarters by now, relocated to some other part of Nar Shaddaa to lie low for a while. He was going to contact me, tell me where to find him for more jobs, but only if I was successful in killing you."
"He'd pay you well to get rid of the detective on his trail, huh?"
Reigns shook his head. "Location of his HQ. That was my only reward. I made a real mess of killing Gronwe. I was supposed to cleanly and quietly bust a bolt in his head."
The detective said, "There are wealthy crooks all over Nar Shaddaa that pay their assassins well. What does this guy have on you that would motivate you to go through the trouble of killing me for free, then tracking him down to his new haunt?"
The prisoner started to speak, but stopped and hid his face between his knees. Caz walked up and punched his artificial fist into the energy field. Static discharge burst forth around his fist, a crackling racket filling the room.
Reigns sat up, but this time he bared his teeth in anger. "He has my wife at his disposal, damn it! He'll add her to his harem now that I failed!"
- - -
Cazran sat on the table in the medbay, his shirt off while Abigail doctored his wounds using a versatile hand-held tool. The woman was dressed in her t-shirt and short shorts, her usual gloves and bandana were bundled in the corner.
She flash-sanitized his cuts, used a tiny metal-detector to find shrapnel which she pulled out with tweezers, then sealed the wounds shut with medical glue. When done, she put the tool in a drawer under the sink and went to T-7 who ejected a precision tech toolkit. She took it and placed it on the table beside her husband. She picked out a flathead and began prying off the metal casing of his artificial arm. The joints of the limb sporadically twitched and the parts within buzzed or creaked, signs that the machinery needed repair.
The couple remained silent during most the process, and when they did speak it was softly. His wife was one of the few people he trusted to operate on him. He even shunned droids in that regard. In the old days he had preferred to do these tasks for himself, out of habit and a sense of self-sufficient masculinity. Abi liked to argue this was a good bonding exercise for them, and often asked how he would fix his eye should it ever malfunction.
Abi opened the hinged cover of the bicep portion to reveal a servomotor, power module, and a batch of sensory impulse cords that trailed upward to connect to his organic tissue. The plasma in the module brightly glowed, giving her light to see fine detail. "How long we been married, babe?"
Caz scoffed. "You keep track of that stuff better than I do."
The woman dropped the flathead in the case and picked up a multi-pronged pincher. "Tell me how you lost your arm and eye."
The man shook his head and silently stared at the wall as she worked. He noticed her movements were a bit more aggressive than usual, and she made sure to keep his arm's nerves active as she ground tools on its components. Damn it, the pain.
"I thought Mandalorians loved telling their war stories," she said.
"I'm a crappy Mandalorian, aren't I?" He growled. "I try to forget the event, Abigail."
"But you remember every day. You trap the trauma inside, letting it burn away at you." She finished, sealing his arm with a click and returning the toolkit to T-7. He opened and closed his metallic fingers, then squeezed his fleshy, muscular thigh to test their strength. He stood.
She reached behind her head, slid off the hair tie, and shook her long, wild locks loose. "What do we do with Reigns?"
"We could turn him over to Lachlen for a hefty reward."
Abi crossed her arms over her stomach and zoned out. "It'd feel wrong, Caz." She blinked, sighed, and looked to him in resignation.
"Yeah." He stepped past her and out of the medbay, making for the cargo hold. "I know."
She followed close behind. "Lizard on the menu?"
"You'll have fancy new boots after this."
- - -
Cazran and Abigail escorted Reigns to the medbay where Abi treated his injured shoulder and Caz stood guard with a blaster at the ready. The prisoner said little, other than "thank you" and "really appreciate this". Reigns then showered and put on a clean shirt and pants, given to him by the captain. He was using a towel to dry his spiky dark hair when he entered the lounge where the couple sat at the round table and ate insta-dinners.
"We're dropping you at a respectable docking bay," Caz said. He stuffed a spoonful of mashed vegetables in his mouth.
"Twenty-five creds should rent you a nice motel room for a night," Abi said.
"You guys are too kind." Reigns draped the towel about his shoulders and went to conservator, opening the food storage. He chose a bottle of water and a frozen dessert pastry.
"Abi will hurt that shoulder all over again if you eat that," Caz said. "Heat you up one of these. They're at the top section."
Reigns settled down at the table and started eating after the couple had already disposed of their trays and popped open bottles of alcohol. The three sat awkwardly for a while until the guest asked, "How do you plan to go after him?"
Abi burped through her nose. "Ever hear of Nukk the Hutt? Well -"
"That's right," Caz interrupted. "Did you ever tap into his security feed?"
She shook her head. "I checked it out for like ten minutes, then your high-speed shenanigans distracted me. I can tell you the system would be hard to crack. Someone would have to translate the code to binary then upscale bit by bit to -"
The ship shuddered, the lights in the lounge flickered. Cazran shot to his feet and ran down the corridor for the cockpit. He threw himself into the captain's chair and checked the computer. Buttons in the alcove flashed and alarms sounded. Abi sat down beside him an instant later. On the screen he saw a fighter close in at aft, firing lasers at their freighter's exhaust ports.
Caz ended their locked orbit of the planet and flared the ion drive, sending them forward at a thousand klicks an hour. He pulled their course upward, out of the laser stream.
Abi modulated the deflector shields. "Rear starboard thruster damaged. Enemy fighter on our tail, targeting RST."
The man glanced to the relative elevation numbers and punched the brakes. The fighter zoomed past them, disappearing into space, but the sensors still pointed out their coordinates.
He targeted with cannons, pressed the trigger and unleashed a torrent of bolts. The fighter did a one-eighty, tilted its nose down three degrees, and sliced space back at them. It slid through the ion barrage, taking a few hits that rocked it and stuttered its shields. It fired back.
Caz entered a chaotic pattern of maneuvers into the console. He evaded the majority of shots even though the damaged thruster limited his options. But some bolts pierced the ever-changing concentration of energy shielding and scorched the hull. Automatic status reports displayed declining capacities of the humble vessel.
"We're screwed unless we get our engines and thrusters back online," Abi said. "I'm headed down there to see what I can do." The woman started to rise, but a different voice came from the cockpit entrance.
"Wait," Reigns said. "Keep co-piloting for your husband and I'll see to the engines."
T-7, in the corridor behind Reigns, beeped reassurances that he would keep careful watch on the man in the engine room and assist repairing the equipment.
"Go," Caz said. He abused the trigger and hounded the enemy fighter, forcing them to evade. The targeting computer overlapped its visual and audio reports of his lock-ons, misses, and hits. His tactic bought them time, but he knew it would mean overheating the ion engine.
"Meltdown in ten seconds." Abi yelled over a chorus of alarms.
But kept aiming and pumping the trigger. To let up too long was to die. He would die before he surrendered. If the other person even took prisoners.
The fighter wove the narrow gaps in laser spray, swooping closer and closer to the damaged ship.
Six. . .
Cazran switched targeting to where he projected the blip to be in half a second.
Five. . .
The fighter ducked under the bolts, did a sharp u-turn, headed for the light freighter's aft.
Four. . .
Reigns yelled about it being hot back there. Tools clattered on the deck. T-7 let out a panicked cry.
Three. . .
The fighter raced a meter above the freighter, opened fire.
Two. . .
The shields failed and impact quaked the hull. Abi screamed as her body slammed into console.
One. . .
Cazran aimed again, shot. . . let go of the trigger.
The fighter exploded.