If Yana knew I was doing this... Well, she’d be pretty damn upset. Like, backhand slap me upset. But more than that, she’d be disappointed. Because she always thought that deep down I had some sort of moral compass keeping me in check. But I never did. It was always her, her being there, her telling me when something was plain wrong. She kept me in check. And without her I’ve been okay. I’ve been keeping what she’d think or say or do in retaliation as a way of orientating myself. But this, this is something I have to do.

It kills me that she had her life ripped from her over this and I’m about to go ahead and finish the job she never could. What could be so bad that pacifist paediatrician Yana Sae turned badass mercenary Yana Mayes would outright refuse no matter the price? Well, she’d never kill innocent children. Who am I kidding? Yana never killed unless it was completely necessary. And when it came to kids, she just wouldn’t, even if they’d just blown up a planet, she’d claim that they weren’t old enough to understand the magnitude of what they did or something like that.

It was that faith in people that made Yana, well, Yana.

Brett helped me get back into contact with the slavers that killed Yana. He even gave me his disruptor to use against her murderer, Xalon, but he doesn’t know that I’m going to finish the job. I’ve still got its details cemented in my mind. There’s this division of The Interplanetary Enforcers, or TIE, that are dedicated to eradicating child slavery in the galaxy. The people hiring me have been targeting this division for years, so their numbers have seriously dwindled from about a hundred down to fifteen or so.

I’ve got to intercept one of the containers TIE stole from the slavers and destroy it. Me and Yana were originally told that the container was full of contraband (we didn’t know that they were slavers back then). But like that shipment on Calitrexia, it was full of child slaves. When Yana found out that we were killing innocent children, children that were just freed from slavery, well, she left the job unfinished. But if I do this then Xalon will risk seeing me in person, because he’ll think that I’m heartless. And he’d be right.

I am killing ten innocent children just for a shot at him after all.

*

The enforcer cruiser isn’t that hard to find. I was given rough coordinates to work with, but even then, I was expecting this to be at least a little bit difficult. Apparently enforcers don’t think to change their routines up a bit. I modify my ship’s scanners to only detect juvenile life signs and watch as a cluster of dots appears in the cruiser’s cargo bay. Sadly, that area of the ship looks heavily shielded, not to mention the armour making it look more like a heavy destroyer rather than some light cruiser. Well at least they haven’t detected me yet.

And the cruiser is turning towards me. Great.

I lock weapons on the cargo bay and open fire. I’ve got five minutes until their back-up arrives and I’m hunted through this sector. Good thing I’m well adept at masking my ship’s UES (Unique Engine Signature) so getting away will be easy. Got to hand it to Brett, dodging weapon fire, while dealing it out is not as easy as it looks. I’m so going to upgrade the autopilot on this thing once I’m done with the whole slavers mess.

“STAND DOWN!” An enforcer glares at me through her holo-message, a TIE insignia (whole lot of overlapping circles) on her white armour.

I scramble to encrypt my response. “Move the kids out of the cargo bay. Let me blow it up in exactly two minutes. The people hiring me will think I did the job. Pretend to chase me away and they won’t think twice. Please, we don’t have much time.”

Hopefully their open communication will cover my private one and anyone listening in won’t suspect anything. If they don’t follow my instructions ... well, I warned them, didn’t I? That was certainly more than I would’ve done pre-Yana. She’d never take the risk. I don’t particularly want to kill innocent kids, but I’ve got limited options here. The two minutes ends way too quickly and I launch into my final attack vector. I really hope them battering my shields with heavy fire is just a show and that exploding cargo bay is empty. But I’ve got no way of knowing for sure as I jump to lightspeed.

*

“Tina Mayes was it?” the slaver asks, processing my payment.

“Yeah, you might recognise me from around a year ago. I was here with a cute Torl woman, copper hair, silver eyes, and silver blood. A whole lot of silver blood.”

A deep laughter echoes behind me. “Yes, that doctor who tried to go back on our arrangement.” Xalon smiles as he passes me. “She was quite the screamer, wasn’t she?”

Brett’s disruptor is firing in my hand before I even think to grab it. Everything around me erupts into chaos as Xalon collapses into a heap and everyone scrambles to draw their weapons. In the confusion, I sprint to my ship. Weapons fire past my head, the burn of a plasma rifle scathing my leg, but I continue running. I’ll get off this ship alive. I know that. But once I’ve pulled away, once I make that jump to lightspeed, I won’t ever stop running. Because I know exactly why nobody has been idiotic enough to attempt what I just did.

I just shot the most well-connected criminal in the galaxy in the face. But at least now Yana has been avenged. And that definitely makes it worth the price.