Vimos Station, in all its rusted glory. How I don’t miss this place. But that helpful slaver pointed straight here, after some minor coercion with a side of torture. It doesn’t surprise me that this dump runs on the cheapest kind of labour. I just hope that the security systems are as broken down as half the plumbing seems to be. At least there aren’t many enforcers patrolling the station. I think they’ve cut back on hunting me down since I technically helped liberate Calitrexia.

Yet I’m still being followed.

Not by enforcers. That lot are a lot easier to notice. I only picked these two up on my last stopover. Who knows how long they’ve been tailing me? They’re tenacious, I’ll give them that. I thought that I’d shaken them in a series of random lightspeed jumps, but it seems they already knew where I was heading. I’d say they were slavers if they weren’t so badly dressed. Other mercenaries tend to leave me alone which leaves one option. Bounty Hunters.

I should be honoured to have annoyed someone enough to earn a bounty. If it was high enough I’d turn myself in. But these bounty hunters don’t look like the nice kind; yes, there are some nice ones out there, if you look really, really hard. These two look more like the ‘bring her in dead or alive’ kind. And it looks like they’re struggling to stick with option B. I somehow doubt that having a chat with them will help my case. And I’m hardly going to get that paycheque from the Calitrexian government if I draw too much attention to myself before starting the job.

I’m sure that when hundreds of slaves are sprinting through every corridor towards the extraction zones that somebody’s going to notice what I’m up to. Sadly it’s vital to the job that I stay on the down low until then. It doesn’t even matter how long it’ll take until that point. I could be here for months and still be keeping my head down. Because apparently I’ve got to be ‘thorough’ and make sure that ‘every single slave is free from the wretched place’. They’re lucky I’m being paid so well. And that I’m very aware that this will most definitely be a onetime thing if I mess it up.

Oh and Calitrexia will know the exact moment if I do. They went ahead and hired a different mercenary to tail me. I noticed him before the bounty hunters. But I don’t think that either party have noticed each other. I’m pretty sure that the merc is being paid to fix any of my mistakes. Me? Make mistakes? It’s ridiculous that the Calitrexians don’t trust me. Normally they shouldn’t, but when it comes to completing my jobs I’m the most trustworthy person in the galaxy. If I’m not thought to be at least that then what’s been the point of fixing my reputation for the past year?

In any case, I’m not going to get anything done with those two, no five now, bounty hunters following me. The job will be a bust before I’ve properly stared it. The merc’s bound to give a bad report if he sees me engage with them, so first I’ve got to lose his trail. It’s an easy enough task. I am overly familiar with his patterns by now. It only takes me seven minutes of wandering aimlessly through Vimos Station before I completely lose him.

Next I’ve got to take care of those new bounty hunters. They were clearly waiting for me here and aren’t nearly good enough to stick close as I hop in my ship, take it for a spin out of the system, past a particularly dense nearby star then loop back to the station. I think they got caught up in its gravitational pull. Too bad for them.

These final two though, they’re something else entirely. One of them was tailing me from afar in a fighter while the other remained on the station, having completely changed disguises. The way they seem to work in perfect tandem kind of reminds me of my exploits with Yana. Except we developed our style over nine years and these two have clearly joined forces just for this bounty. They’re not as flawless as they seem to believe.

Because while they’ve been cycling through elaborate ways of following me, I’ve been leading them deeper and deeper into the station. Bounty hunters or not, there’s no way they’ll survive long in the Assassin’s Nest at Vimos Station’s core. I know my way around this place by heart from back when I considered the bleak career of a hired killer. Technically I still am one, but at least I get to do other fun stuff too. Like leave two well-trained bounty hunters in a cluster of the galaxy’s best assassins.

See, I can do it. I got rid of every bounty hunter tailing me all while not causing a scene, attracting the attention of any slavers or other bounty hunters, or staying off the merc’s trail for too long because that would just scream that I’ve done something ‘impulsive’. He’s ‘found’ me again and seems to be keeping a closer eye on where I go and who exactly I talk to. This is just like being babysat as a kid all over again.

With less explosions.