watching the waves, the sun warming her face, for hours.
The heavy doors opened to admit a woman with a mane of curly black hair, wearing a loose beige tunic over dark leggings that looked like they were made of interwoven strips of dark cloth. One of her wrists was adorned with several thin gold and platinum bracelets, and only her engagement and ring fingers were bare, the rest had one or more rings each with modest stones. Her dark eyes took them all in with a glance, and she regarded them with an easy approving smile. Half way to the table she stopped and silently looked over her shoulder.
A gentleman in a loose fitting long shirt and shorts was at her side with his ear tilted to lips in seconds. She whispered to him in a quickly spoken language that seemed to allow no hesitation.
Ayan started to look at her wrist but her question was answered before she had time to find out for herself. “She’s speaking old Earth Italian,” Victor informed her in a whisper. “She’s saying-“
The man Patrizia spoke to nodded and returned to the house. “I was telling him that you should have drinks in front of you,” she finished for Victor as she sauntered, her boot heels clicking against the bricks, over to the fifth seat at the table and took her place. “I am Patrizia Salustri, welcome to my home.” She regarded everyone in a smooth sweep of her eyes from left to right, her gaze came to rest on Ayan.
“This is Laura Everin, Victor Davis, and Jenny Machad.”
“And you are Ayan,” she added. “Who are these people to you?” Her accent was smooth, strange, matching the language they heard a hint of the moment before. Her diction was careful, intentional and clear.
Ayan almost stammered as she went through the list; “Laura is my closest friend and our best energy field technician, Victor and Jenny are my personal guards and crew members.” The woman had a way about her and a direct intensity that she was sure was made only more penetrating by the fact that she hadn’t looked away from her eyes since she sat down. Always, Patrizia’s mysterious gaze was peering directly at Ayan.
“They are important enough to know everything we say?” Patrizia asked, her voice just above a whisper.
“I trust them,” she answered simply.
Patrizia said more with a raised eyebrow than most people could manage in half an hour. “You are close to your people. It surprises me, I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?”
“My assumptions come from the holograms, where they speak of you as though the people around you are nothing, replaceable. Again they have everything wrong, but I couldn’t find anything about you.”
The clinking of ice in tall glasses heralded the delivery of a decanter and five iced teas. The fellow in the long shirt and shorts made no eye contact as he transferred everything from his tray to the table with practiced efficiency.
“Thank you,” Laura said quietly.
The fellow tucked the tray under his arm, nodded shoulders deep at Laura and departed with long strides.
“Now we speak about important things,” Patrizia invited. “Where is Jacob Valance?”
The question caught Ayan completely off guard and she hesitated.
“Why did he give you everything? His ship, his people, why?” Her questions had a solemn weight.
“I can’t say,” Ayan said in as reassuring a tone as she could manage.
“You speak for him, you are his messenger.”
It took a conscious effort for Ayan to answer indirectly. “I make decisions for the entire crew.”
Patrizia nodded slowly, her eyes searching Ayan’s face as though trying to glean extra meaning from her expression. “He trusts you,” she said in a hushed tone. She let the silence grow thick before she sighed and nodded. “He trusts you.” She took Ayan’s hand and looked at it a moment. “You were the one who gave him his scarf.”
Ayan’s breath caught, and time seemed to suspend. Who was Patrizia to him? Her first supposition was that she was a past lover, and no matter how much she wanted her thoughts to jump to another possibility, it wouldn’t change tracks.
Patrizia looked back up at her and her eyes momentarily widened. “I have not seen him in years,” she explained. “He was always very good, we only met one time. I asked him about the scarf, and he wouldn’t explain it. You must understand, when I ask someone something, they answer, it has always been this way. He was gone before I knew him.”
“Sounds like him,” Laura said with a little smile. “Well, sometimes.”
Patrizia leaned back in her seat and picked up her iced tea. “You have important things to discuss.” Laura, Victor and Jenny all relaxed when their host sat back and sipped. It was an unconscious reaction, but a welcome one.
Ayan’s head was still spinning, but she cleared her throat and pressed on. “Yes, and I’m hoping you can help. We need somewhere stable to land for repairs and rest. We’re going to have to put up temporary shelters while we work as well. I may be able to afford to rent the slips we need until we can start privateering. Then I’m sure we’ll be able to earn enough to stay there if the location works out.”
“You don’t have to pay. You trade.”
“I’d really rather pay our way, I don’t want to owe anyone anything.”
Patrizia, in what seemed to be a common gesture to her, but one Ayan found unsettling, took her hand again. “No, you’ve come here, to my place and we are speaking. You will stay on my land where everyone will see and you will pay by helping me with your fighters. You’ll do this for me when your ships are out of the wastes and you’re ready to fly again.”
The woman’s tone conveyed her words as belief, as though this was the way the future would be and it couldn’t unfold differently. Instead of bargaining, Ayan found herself asking; “Where would you put us?”
The woman opened her other hand, palm up and a hologram of the landing fields. Several slips in the older side were highlighted. The image focused in, showing a small depiction of the space that included a serviceable hangar large enough for several of their larger ships. Three shipping containers were already being lowered into place at the opposite end of the lot. It was just barely large enough, and there was a small township of older buildings nearby as well. Ayan could also see what the woman meant by; ‘where everyone will see.’ It was a fairly central location.
“Why?” Ayan asked. “This almost feels like charity.”
Patrizia’s expression darkened a little, and she deactivated the hologram. “You are Ayan, and you have the best fighters here,” she made an all encompassing gesture with her free hand. “People think that Jacob is with you, and look, look at your armoured people,” she nodded towards Jenny and Victor. “You have your own army, and people already speak about you cutting the weaker ones away. They come into the cities looking for a way to leave, and weeping over how their old lives are gone while you and the people you keep move on. You find a way to live without stopping to blame the world. You are beautiful, strong, and I know that you can pay me quickly if you have time to repair, and while you fix your ships we can get to know each other. See if we can work together.”
Ayan was moved by the woman, she would admit later, but there were some missing details that made her nervous. She squeezed the woman’s hand slightly, a gesture that earned a little smile, and spoke with near desperation; “I need a price Patrizia. Whether I pay you with the coins I have right now or with the product of a raid in the future, I need to know what all this is worth so we can both agree when our debts are paid later.”
There was a little disappointment in the other woman’s expression for a moment but then she nodded. “I understand. You are very good at this.” She touched one of her bracelets and Ayan’s command and control unit blinked with a new message.
Ayan glanced at it and nearly turned white at the price as it was initially listed in United Core World Credits: 3,600,000 every 30 days. Beneath it was the price in Molecularly Stamped Platinum Bullion, or Galactic Currency: 120,000 GC, which was sobering to say the least, but possible. She looked into Patrizia’s expectant eyes and smiled. She was so nervous she could feel her palms sweating, but she did her best to cover it. “I’m going to pay you eighty thousand GC every thirty days.”
Victor nearly choked on his iced tea, but his antics didn’t distract Patrizia, whose eyes widened. To Ayan’s relief, the woman presented a counter offer through a smile. “One hundred ten.”
“Ninety thousand,” Ayan countered.
“One hundred five.”
“Ninety two.”
Patrizia’s smile didn’t fade, but her eyes narrowed to slits. “Ninety five, and I can tell everyone you are on my
