Archive of Our Own

The brothel was like any other, on any other space station. Gabe swiped his Ident card at the front desk, and apparently the number of gold stars next to his rank was enough to entice the owners themselves out to greet him. They were middle-aged, probably legally partnered; the man had a scraggly goatee and yellow teeth, and his wife had the falsely charming, hard-bitten look of someone who’d grown up working the back rooms before graduating to the front.

“Good evening,” the man said, smarmy with deference. Gabe used that tone himself, upon occasion. “How can we serve?”

“Specialties of the house?” Gabe asked offhandedly, tugging the fingers of his glove off one by one.

The woman’s eyes fell to Gabe’s gold-handled walking stick, held under his arm so that the cobra’s fanged head and spread hood faced forward. Someone who knew his reputation, then, or had at least recognized something off his Ident card. “A few exotic beauties,” the woman crooned. “Boys and girls. Every shade of skin, foreign features.”

“One fully trained in the eastern arts,” her husband added, with a yellow-toothed smile.

Gabe made a bored noise, and the woman switched tacks hastily. “Two who are experienced with the more savage pleasures,” she offered, giving him a look that suggested he was meant to be imagining himself as a hunter on safari chasing gazelles rather than slave whores.

“Either of them good for a few hours?” Gabe asked idly, and offered his most practiced leer. “I don’t mind a few marks on the merchandise.”

“None like that, sir,” the woman said proudly. “All of ours are perfect outside and in.”

A choice of two was better than nothing, but still less than promising. It sounded like the brothel didn’t cater to BDSM in the extreme, which were usually the slaves Gabe tried to save first. No one had it easy here, but the ones who’d been marked up enough to lower their value tended to be offered to none but the most dangerous clients, and therefore had the shortest life expectancy.

His disinterest must have been obvious, because the man spoke up suddenly. “We do have a virgin, fresh in from the outer colonies,” he said quickly.

His wife turned on him, clearly not expecting that, and then caught herself and tried with little success to sweeten her expression. “He’s not trained yet, I’m afraid,” she said, with another brief warning glance at her husband. “I wouldn’t want to offer you an imperfect experience. And the price would be considerably higher, of course.”

Gabe waffled for all of two seconds before making his decision. “I’ll take it,” he said, pulling out his bank card and tapping the edge lightly against the counter. A virgin would probably be treated well for the first few months, relative to the other unhappy residents, but if this one hadn’t even been broken in yet, maybe Gabe could actually get one out before their spirits were completely crushed. Not to mention, virgin usually translated as barely legal, and Gabe couldn’t stand to think of a teenager in this place.

“This is for purchase,” he added casually, which made her eyes go wide and her husband’s practically dance with greed. “I don’t like others playing with my toys once I’ve chosen them. I’ll just want a test run, first.”

“Of course, sir,” the man said, deferential again now that Gabe’s prospective spending limit had gone up considerably. “Anything you prefer.”

The woman ran his card – and she wasn’t kidding about the price – before handing it back. “He’s a little high-spirited,” she warned.

Gabe let his smile turned wolfish. “Just the way I like them,” he promised. Hey, if this added to his reputation, so much the better. Maybe he’d get a few other kids as a result. He knew enough about the standard brothel training process – starvation, caning on the soles of the feet, anything and everything so long as it didn’t leave a mark – to be glad he could spare anyone some of that.

“Room 15,” she said, with only the slightest hesitance in her smile. Maybe she thought Gabe was going to ruin her virgin beyond all repair. Which was fine, because Gabe wasn’t planning on returning him anytime soon. “Fingerprint here.”

Gabe pressed his right index finger against the proffered pad, which would give him access to both the room and the toy cabinet inside. “I’ll call you if I need anything,” he told them, and whistled on his way up the stairs.

The occupant of room 15 was older than Gabe had expected, but not by much. He was too pretty to have been marked for anything but the brothels since enslavement, hair hanging in loose-winding curls around his face and lanky all over. He wasn’t kneeling, which Gabe hadn’t expected, but hovering near the opposite wall at the head of the bed, as far away from the door in the tiny room as he could get. He was wearing the traditional white, flimsy tunic of a virgin bedslave, a garment providing easy access that didn’t conceal a lot, and his chin had a cleft in the center which caught the light when he tilted it defiantly up.

“Well hello,” Gabe said pleasantly. The lock clicked behind him as the door shut completely, giving them the illusion of privacy behind paper-thin walls.

“I’ll bite your fucking dick off,” the kid said in return.

“Wow, you are new,” Gabe said, impressed. “They weren’t kidding.”

There was a gold chain around the slave’s neck, one with the delicate appearance of ornamentation but strong and thick enough that the kid wouldn’t be able to break it off. The beaten-gold pendant on the end said William in elegant calligraphy. A slave collar, prettied up for the higher-end market.

“William, right?” Gabe said soothingly, smiling and walking slowly forward. This was always the hardest part; new slaves were usually skittish and frightened, hard to coax into trusting him. “All I need,” he started gently, which was when William threw a punch and clipped him on the jaw.

Gabe was shocked enough that he didn’t move to defend himself, which meant that by the time he recovered from the surprise, William was going for his throat.

“Fuck,” Gabe managed, barely warding off the long, skinny fingers clearly bent on strangulation. William was stronger than he looked, probably in part because he was desperate and cornered, and Gabe was able to keep him marginally at bay but couldn’t stop them from toppling sideways onto the bed. That apparently sparked a whole new level of panic, because William stopped struggling and started kicking.

“Shit, wait, just,” Gabe tried, breaking off in a grunt when William’s knee connected with one of his kidneys. Gabe grabbed his ankle, only to realize belatedly that William’s ankle was really the least of his concerns, because now he had both hands free.

William lunged for the bedside lamp, only to find that it was bolted to the table, which in turn was bolted to the floor. He struggled with it for half a second, then tried to get through the metal cage housing the light bulb to break the glass – Gabe had to give the kid points for ingenuity – before giving up on that and just trying to hit him again.

The punch missed, because Gabe had been in more bar fights than this kid ever had and knew when to dodge, but he still only had a handful of seconds to roll off the bed and get into a more defensible position. By that time, William had found the only thing in the room that wasn’t locked or bolted down: Gabe’s walking stick.

“Shit,” Gabe said again, right before William realized what he had and took a swing at Gabe’s head. Gabe ducked again, and the stick thudded into the wall with enough force to chip the plaster, and likely also enough to break Gabe’s ribs. William went to swing again, and by some freak twist of luck, his fingers slid over the trick catch just below the handle, triggering the hidden compartment that housed the six-inch knife blade in the base.

Both of them froze. Then William’s expression shifted from shock to determination, and Gabe had just enough time to recognize that his window of opportunity had just passed before William tried to drive the blade into his chest.

“Fuck, would you just…” Gabe attempted, but he knew all too well that in brothels like this one the walls had ears, and he couldn’t risk his entire operation just to explain to one slave why he shouldn’t be trying to kill him. The most he could say was, “I’m not going to hurt…” which William clearly didn’t believe anyway, because the next thrust of the walking stick was aimed for his jugular.

Gabe sidestepped, got hold of the stick, and sent them both slamming into the wall next to the door. William tried to pin him with the walking stick across Gabe’s throat, which was a good move, but Gabe had more experience with this particular weapon and he knew how to apply the right sort of leverage.

Sensing that he was about to lose the fight, William shoved his knee into Gabe’s stomach, which hurt like a bitch and drove the air out of his lungs, and then made a desperate break for the door. Gabe tackled him, the walking stick rolling safely out of the way for the moment under the bed. William grappled with him for long enough to squirm out from underneath him, and then did his very best to single-handedly gouge Gabe’s eyes out.

“Fucking fuck,” Gabe yelled, and was busy enough fending off William’s clawing fingernails that he didn’t immediately recognize that William’s focus was actually on his other hand, and that the eye-gouging was being used as a distraction technique, because what William was really trying to do was get Gabe’s fingerprint on the pad to open the toy closet.

For a moment, Gabe had to stop and be seriously impressed. Then he didn’t have time to do anything but fight, because he knew – and he suspected William did, too – what sort of things were in that closet, and furry handcuffs were the least of it. If William got his hands on anything that could draw blood or electrocute, they were both fucked. Gabe didn’t really doubt at this point that William would kill him if he could, and there was no way William would survive after killing a free man.

He gave up on trying to reason with William, because his half-assed pleading was falling on deaf ears anyway, and instead threw himself completely into subduing William before he got them both killed. Playing nice wasn’t going to do it, so he got in a couple of punches of his own; one glancing blow to William’s sharp cheekbone, and another to his collarbone that was going to bruise spectacularly. He twisted out of the way right as William tried to castrate him, and grabbed for William’s hand a split-second after he dove for the bed and the protruding gold cobra head of Gabe’s walking stick.

He missed, but he got a handful of William’s hair, and yanked that back far enough to keep the stick temporarily out of reach. William kicked out at him again, which was when Gabe heard the timid knocking on the door and the hesitant, “Sir?” of the brothel’s mistress.

“Fuck,” he gasped, which turned into a strangled yell when William twisted like an eel and sank his teeth into Gabe’s wrist hard enough to draw blood.

Gabe let go of William’s hair like it was on fire, but when William jerked away towards the bed again, Gabe’s hand landed on the gold chain around his neck, solid and sturdy. He yanked the pendant sideways, turning the necklace into a choke-chain the way it was designed to be used, and hauled back with all his strength to keep William from reaching the knife blade.

William choked, both hands going to his throat to scrabble at the chain constricting his airway, and Gabe took the opportunity to grab his walking stick and stab his fingers at the catch, sheathing the knife. He rolled up to his knees, sore in more places than he wanted to think about, and dragged William across the floor to the door, jamming his index finger onto the pad controlling the lock.

The brothel owner stared at him, her mouth gaping. Gabe loosened his grip on the chain and William flopped at his feet like a landed fish, gasping. There were bruises forming bright and angry around his neck, and his tunic had been ripped halfway down his chest. At least there wouldn’t be too much question of what Gabe had been doing with him in here, not after the racket they’d just made.

Gabe put one foot on the back of William’s neck as a warning, smiled sweetly at the flabbergasted woman, and said, “I’ll take him.”

It was going to be a long fucking trip to the Decay ring.

William made another break for it when they were nearing the dock, which Gabe had been expecting because it was a fuck of a lot easier to get away even in a crowded space station dock than it was aboard a starship in the middle of a cold, empty vacuum. He’d managed to get William subdued and under control again, but not before William had raked his fingernails across Gabe’s neck hard enough to draw blood, jammed an elbow into the same kidney he’d targeted before, and kicked him in the shin so hard that Gabe was still limping.

The closest scrape, in fact, was getting William on board his ship before local law enforcement decided to take matters into their own hands and discipline William in one of the public slave stocks for disturbing the peace. If he’d injured another free person in his bid to escape, Gabe might not have been able to save him from it, but luckily for everyone but Gabe, William seemed to have a very clear idea of who he wanted to incapacitate. Luckily for everyone including Gabe, his rank held enough sway, along with the argument that he wanted to get his newly-purchased bedslave stashed away in private as soon as possible where he would most definitely not be causing any more trouble, to get them off the dock without William experiencing firsthand how law enforcement chose to punish unruly slaves.

“If you try that again,” Gabe said in an undertone as he marched William up to the docking checkpoint, fingers biting into his arm hard enough to bruise and hopefully discourage further escape attempts, “they will strap you to that bench and tape electrodes all over you, and there won’t be a fucking thing I can do about it, do you understand? So stay still.”

If Victoria ever found out he’d spoken to a slave like this – threatened one, even – she’d have his head, and not just the one on his shoulders. He hoped she never did, or at the very least, that she only found out after she’d met William. Gabe thought he might be granted some leniency for that.

They made it through the checkpoint without another incident, and from there onto the boarding ramp, which was lowered while they were docked and Gabe was off-ship.

“Now look,” Gabe said as soon as they were inside the hatch. “I don’t want to lock you up, but I will if I have to, so if I let you go free, are you going to stop trying to kill me?”

William nodded slowly, eyes wary and darting quickly around the small space.

“Good,” Gabe said, relieved. “Now then…”

He realized his mistake – and the proximity of the dock-hook – a split-second too late. William lunged for the hook, swinging it around in a move that by all rights should have spilled Gabe’s guts all over the metal deck, but Gabe blocked it with his walking stick at the last second and both weapons smashed into the grates lining the hatch, the hook skidding across with a metallic screech and a small shower of sparks.

If William got loose, Gabe wouldn’t be able to protect him, and besides that, it had been a long fucking day. Gabe was running somewhat low on patience. He caught the hook with the stick’s cobra head, twisted them sharply around until William’s arm wrenched in its socket and he fell to his knees trying to keep hold of the hook without dislocating his shoulder, and then Gabe stepped in to yank William’s head back by his gorgeous hair, triggering the trick catch on his stick and pressing the knife blade to William’s throat.

“We’ll work on this,” Gabe said optimistically, driving William forward on his knees and shoving him into the first storage room they came across that had a lock. He slapped the panel to secure the room and then sagged against the wall, suddenly keenly feeling like he’d just been run over by a hoverjet.

His crew was in the lounge awaiting his return, and they all looked up when he hobbled in, pulling off his gloves and smacking them down onto the metal table. Ryland's eyes sharpened almost immediately, clearly taking in the worst of Gabe's battle scars. “Trouble?”

Alex was more direct. “What the fuck happened to you?”

“Our new acquisition is less than cowed by my presence,” Gabe answered grimly, yanking open the freezer door in search of a makeshift icepack.

Nate's eyebrows rose. “A slave did that to you?” he asked, as Gabe slumped back with relief against the counter and clapped a pound of broccoli stalks against the swelling bruise on his jaw.

Victoria snorted in a decidedly unladylike manner. She took the broccoli away to get a good look at Gabe's injuries, then apparently dismissed them as trivial enough not to be a concern and said, “I like this one already.”

“Good, you deal with him,” Gabe replied, knowing he sounded petulant and unable to make himself stop. His shin still hurt like a bitch where William had kicked him, and any sympathy he may have started out with had throbbed away after he’d banged it on the ladder climbing up here.

“Where is he?” Ryland asked cautiously. Gabe understood the reaction; they’d lost a slave once before, when she’d thrown herself off the top of the ship before Gabe could talk her down.

He was quick to reassure, therefore, before anyone got the wrong idea. “Storage room A,” he answered, then realized how odd that sounded, and added sheepishly, “I needed somewhere to lock him in.”

Victoria’s voice was razor-sharp. “What the fuck, Gabe.”

“Hey,” he protested, raising his hands defensively before the bruise started aching again and he had to replace the ice. “I know, okay? It’s not like I wanted to, but I really think this one would kill all of us in our sleep, and I’m sort of fond of you guys.”

Alex looked troubled. “Have you talked to him?” he asked, with the doe-eyed empathy that was the reason most of their soon-to-be-liberated passengers opened up to him first. “Did you explain things?”

“Well…” Gabe hesitated, but there wasn’t really a good way to answer that, or at least not one that wasn’t a lie. “Not yet.”

“Gabe.” Victoria didn’t sound reproving; she sounded like she was going to finish what William had started, preferably bare-handed.

“He’s probably terrified,” Alex said, with a look that was skirting the edge of ‘accusing.’ Ryland had a similar expression, although he was keeping his opinions to himself for the moment. “You know how they’re treated.”

Gabe didn’t know how this had all gotten turned around so that he was the one in the wrong. He was a knight in fucking shining armor, liberator of slaves, rescuer of the oppressed, defender of the weak. He was a fucking hero. His crew were a bunch of disloyal traitors who should be strung up for mutiny.

“No locks on the doors,” Ryland pointed out. “That’s what we always tell them. So they start to believe they’re free.”

Gabe wanted, very badly, to suggest that one of them go deal with the kid. It was on the tip of his tongue, but that was too close to suggesting that Victoria go deal with him – which was what he wanted, anyway, for someone who knew what the kid was going through to explain things, get him to open up to them, share stories and hug and cry and whatever to start the healing process – but he couldn’t do that. They never, ever mentioned the fact that Victoria had been a slave. Ever.

“Fine,” he said, with ill grace. “I’ll go talk to the kid.”

He took his time about putting the broccoli away and exaggerated his limp, but no one volunteered to do it for him. Bastards.

He paused before unlocking the door to the storage room, but everything was quiet inside. In fact, when he opened the door, there was no sign of William at all. Maybe he’d worn himself out trying to escape and was lying on the floor having a breather. Gabe poked his head inside cautiously.

“William?” he called tentatively.

Something heavy and solid slammed down on the back of his neck, and he barely caught himself on the floor as he fell. He twisted enough to see William, face set in determination, raising the burnt-out engine cylinder for another strike.

Damn, I forgot we left that in here, he thought dizzily, and then everything went black.

Consciousness came roaring back with a bright surge of pain at the base of Gabe’s skull, one that increased tenfold when he opened his eyes and nearly blinded himself looking up at the diode lights in the ceiling.

“Fnargh,” he snarled weakly, squeezing his eyes closed again and flailing out until his hand smacked into flesh.

“Easy,” Ryland’s voice said, in close proximity to the length of skin and muscle Gabe had been thumping. “You’ve just had your head cracked open, give it a minute.”

That and the few extra seconds were enough for Gabe to remember why everything above his shoulders hurt so much, and more to the point, who was responsible. “Where is he?” he croaked, struggling upright with a fist strangling Ryland’s jacket.

“In the lounge. It’s under control,” Ryland answered, which let Gabe relax a little bit. At least there wasn’t a psychotic pleasure slave on his command bridge, preparing to jettison them all out into empty space.

“Everyone okay?” he asked, cracking one eye open to a squint and instantly regretting it. The world tipped a little sideways when he tried to focus on it, so he rocked forward and faceplanted into his own knees, cradling his throbbing skull.

“Alex is about where you are and Nate’s going to have a black eye, but we’ll all live,” Ryland reported, placing something blessedly cool on the back of Gabe’s neck. “He didn’t make it past Victoria, so the ship is still sound.”

Gabe squinted blearily up at the blurred, looming silhouette that was Ryland. “He got me, Alex and Nate, and Victoria took him down?” He knew he sounded petulant, but honestly, he’d be hearing about this for months. Years, even. They’d never let him forget it.

“Well, to be fair,” Ryland pointed out in a reasonable tone, “she had a gun, and he didn’t.”

“Blargh,” Gabe replied, and struggled – with further clutching at Ryland’s coat and application of leverage – to his feet. He swayed slightly, and then the world realigned enough for him to snarl, “We need to have a talk with the new recruit.”

William was, as promised, seated in a chair in the lounge under the watchful eyes of the rest of Gabe’s crew. The pistol across Victoria’s lap twitched slightly when they entered, but slid right back to its primary target once she took them in. William watched it warily, held fast with metal o-ring cuffs clasped around his wrists and the chain threaded through the bars of the chair back. Nate’s work, no doubt; Ryland was too much of a gentle giant to use metal cuffs and Victoria wouldn’t have given up the gun trained on William’s narrow chest.

Alex had Gabe’s package of broccoli stalks held to the side of his head, where Gabe could see a trickle of blood smeared across his cheek. Nate was standing guard, arms crossed as he leaned against the counter, but the skin around one of his eyes was swelling, starting to turn dark.

“All right,” Gabe announced, pulling his own chair up to sit across from William, arranging it slightly to one side so that Victoria still had a clear shot. “It’s time we get a few things straight here.”

William looked at him through bedraggled strands of silk-fine hair, glaring absolute mutinous murder. Gabe smiled pleasantly at him just to show teeth. He started to lean forward to shove some of the hair out of William’s eyes so he could see, and William flinched back against the hard metal back of the chair.

“Hey,” Ryland interjected, his voice the practiced soothing tone they had all cultivated at one time or another to deal with situations much like this one. He knelt down in front of William’s chair, close enough that Gabe twitched a little, conscious of William’s kicking range, and held both hands up. “We know you must be frightened, but I promise, we’re only here…”

William didn’t let him finish. He tossed his hair back, eyes flashing fire, and spat in Ryland’s face.

“Okay, that’s enough,” Gabe snapped, standing and crossing the few steps across to them in a matter of seconds. He was conscious of Victoria tilting the pistol in his peripheral vision, pointing the barrel away now that Gabe was in her line of fire, but he didn’t think it would matter all that much. William was a bloodthirsty little piranha, but it was five-to-one odds in this room, and he was cuffed to a fucking metal chair. Gabe didn’t think even he would be stupid enough to try anything.

William’s chin tilted up defiantly, his neck craning back so he could meet Gabe’s eyes. It was a spectacular show he was putting on, but up close Gabe could see the fear he was trying to keep hidden in his eyes, and the way his muscles twitched and tensed once Gabe was within striking range. Not surprising; with anyone else, William would have been beaten black and blue by this point. Lucky for him, Gabe was prepared to be forgiving.

His head chose that moment to swim, the sudden movement of standing up making the world slosh around like he was on his seventh shot of Juggernaut. He winced. Mostly forgiving, anyway.

“You’re in a horrible fucking situation, I get that,” he said, in a considerably less soothing tone than Ryland had used, but at this point, Gabe couldn’t be fucked. “But these are good people, and they already have to take all my shit without you adding to it and they get crap pay to put up with it, so if you’ve got a problem, you take it out on me.” Well. On second thought, “Verbally. We have a talk, settle it like men. You can scream at me if you want to. Only not right now, because my head is fucking killing me. Thanks for that, by the way.”

William was starting to get that cornered look again, the one Gabe recognized now as the last pit-stop before desperation set in and he did something wildly unpredictable and possibly stupid. He shifted incrementally to the side, and heard Victoria’s exasperated huff of breath as he blocked her shot completely.

William’s flimsy white tunic had ridden up when he’d flinched back, exposing enough leg to be indecent by almost anyone’s standards. Gabe held both hands up in the universal gesture of coming in peace, and then reached out slowly to deliberately tug it back down over William’s thighs. William watched him, breathing fast, not relaxing yet but not lashing out, either.

“We don’t do slavery on this ship,” Gabe said plainly. Best to lay it all out now, before William tried anything else and got himself killed in the process. “You’re on board, you’re part of the crew. You don’t have to work for your keep, but if there’s something you’re good at, like cooking or plotting navigational charts, minding the engines, you’re welcome to pitch in. You don’t take anyone’s orders but mine, and that’s because I’m in command of the ship, not because you’ve got a collar around your neck. You got that?”

William nodded very slowly. Gabe held eye contact, searching William’s gaze, trying to figure out what he was thinking. He wasn’t won over yet, Gabe could tell, but that was all right. They had time.

“We’re not just going to drop you anywhere, either, or sell you off along the way. This isn’t temporary. We’ll get you somewhere safe where you can get that chain taken off, and you can decide on your own what you want to do from there. While you’re on board, you get an equal share of the food and proper clothes. Mine ought to fit you, I should think.” He sized William up as well as he could without it looking lecherous, and mentally ran through his wardrobe. They ought to be fine. “You’ll have your own, private room, and a door that locks from the inside. All yours.”

William’s gaze sharpened. Gabe had no fucking idea what he was thinking until he said slowly, “The only door that locks from the inside on a ship this size is to the captain’s cabin.”

“That’s right,” Gabe confirmed, and when William’s expression didn’t so much as flicker, Gabe realized exactly what he was hearing. I’ll dress you up in my clothes and you’ll sleep in my bed.

And fuck, he wasn’t new at this. He knew exactly how to phrase things to keep slaves from hearing his words differently than he’d intended. For some reason Gabe kept getting twisted around with this one.

“I bunk with the crew,” he explained, keeping his tone casual like he’d never caught on that William had suspected anything else. “Keeps them out of trouble. Or lets me in on it when they get into trouble, either way.”

William’s gaze was evaluating. “If that’s what you intend, why not just take the collar off now?”

One corner of Gabe’s mouth quirked upwards. “I’m sure you’ve heard the story about what happens if a slave tries to cut their collar. It’s not a rumor. If any of us tampers with that necklace of yours, law enforcement ships will converge on us in minutes. We need to get you to people with special equipment.” He held up his hands again, nice and slow. “No hoax.”

“Convenient,” William said, still watching him cautiously, “that you don’t have any way of proving what you say.”

Back on the script; Gabe had heard that one before, in a number of varieties. “It’s a better chance than anyone else will give you,” he said easily. “You’ve got nothing to lose by going along with us. Freedom on board and a door that locks. Even if you don’t believe anything we tell you, it’s better than where you were.”

William had recovered enough aplomb to arch an eyebrow at him, although Gabe saw him brace himself as soon as he did it. “Freedom.”

It was loaded with enough irony that even Gabe nearly rolled his eyes. “I cut you loose,” he said, warning plain in his tone, “you behave yourself. You don’t attack my crew, I don’t let Victoria shoot you. Deal?”

William’s eyes flicked to the gun, considered, then darted back to Gabe. “Deal.”

“He’s a liability,” Alex said, a neutral statement without anything behind it that Gabe could hear. “We can still ditch him, we won’t be cleared for takeoff for another hour yet.”

“He won’t last ten seconds out there,” Gabe pointed out, which wasn’t, in itself, a rejection of the idea. “He’ll either get tagged as a runaway or we resell him, and pickings on this station aren’t the best.”

“We’re not selling him,” Victoria said sharply, her fingernails clicking against the barrel of the pistol as she twisted the cylinder open to clean it. Gabe didn’t argue. She had the right to say it, and anyway, she was the one currently holding the firearm. Gabe tried not to talk back to Victoria when she was holding lethal weapons.

“He doesn’t trust us, but they never do this early,” Ryland chimed in, joining them at the table. “It might work in our favor. If he stays suspicious and out of the way, he won’t be any trouble.”

“Oh, he’ll find a way to be trouble,” Gabe promised, pressing gingerly against the bruise on the back of his head and instantly regretting it. For such a skinny fucker, the kid had an arm on him. He squinted an eye open at Ryland. “You think we’ll make it all the way to Decay with him running loose on board?”

Ryland’s fingers steepled meditatively on the tabletop. “I think he easily could have killed you, Alex and probably Nate before Victoria ever got near him,” he answered, arching a wise, pointed eyebrow in Gabe’s direction. “And he didn’t.”

It was something Gabe had been keeping in mind, certainly. After seeing William poised over him to strike that second time, he hadn’t ever expected to wake up. It would have taken one more well-aimed hit and a few extra seconds to make sure he was out of the way permanently, that was all, and it would have been safer for William in the long run. All that meant was that the kid wasn’t a killer. Yet.

“I think there’s still a chance we go to sleep tonight and he murders us in our beds,” Nate commented. “But I’m still okay with having him around. It beats the alternatives.”

“You break it, you buy it,” Ryland agreed, looking over at Alex, who shrugged one shoulder.

“Right,” Gabe said, pushing his chair back and standing up. “Make sure he knows it takes three people minimum to fly this thing, we’ll all sleep better at night. I’m going to radio Pete.”

Pete’s number was classified, his location unknown, his contacts next to impossible to get hold of. Luckily, Gabe had him on speed dial.

“Gabe,” the grinning face on Gabe’s audio/video monitor greeted him. “It’s been a while. Are you bringing me a present?”

“You know me, baby, I can’t stay away,” Gabe crooned, sliding his chair across the deck to lock it into place in front of the monitor screen. “How does next week look for you?”

“Looks like I’ll need a clean guest room,” Pete answered. “It might be more like two weeks, though. I’ve got a present for you too.”

“Sugarpuss, you shouldn’t have,” Gabe replied automatically, already tapping out the keystroke commands to authorize a direct information transfer. “And here I was thinking you never bring me flowers anymore.”

“Don’t say I never did anything for you,” Pete agreed with great solemnity. “Should be coming through now.”

The data itself was shorthand, but enough for Gabe to piece together the overall puzzle. Freeing slaves was actually the least offensive of their illegal operations, when you looked at the big picture. Flashing currency and buying up high-end commodities wasn’t a cheap business, and they had to finance it somehow. Smuggling was something they were essentially doing already, and it paid well enough when the cargo was valuable. Or hot.

“Stolen?” he asked, just to be sure. Pete nodded; just a dip of his head, enough to confirm. Two crates of antiquities and another six of solid gold bars, fresh from the forge, unpressed and untraceable.

Gabe did the math and whistled. It would take them out of their way, but not by much, and the payoff would be worth it three times over. It would be enough to cover William, balance their expenses, and finance the next run.

The only problem he could see was…

“It’s a five-man job,” he said half an hour later, laying out the intelligence Pete had sent over on the lounge table for the others to look over. “Or rather, four men and one woman, sorry Victoria.”

“Lucky for us we have five men,” Nate replied, with an expression that said he was waiting for the catch.

Gabe grimaced. “Yeah, well, that means we’d have to leave our evasive friend on board alone and unattended.” He looked at Alex, knowing already that he’d see the same thoughts in Alex’s eyes that Gabe had already entertained. “I can only think of about a hundred ways that could go badly.”

“He can’t fly it on his own,” Victoria pointed out, leaning back and crossing her legs, cool as ice water. “He wouldn’t even be able to get clearance to take off.”

“No, but he could take us out with the big fucking laser beam up in the gun turret,” Gabe said. “Or he could radio the authorities and have them do the dirty work for him.”

“He doesn’t have to know our business there is illegal,” Victoria said.

“No, there’s not going to be anything suspicious about this at all,” Alex replied before Gabe could. “Come on. He’s not blind, he’ll pick up that something’s off.”

“So we take him with us,” Ryland said. Gabe joined everyone else in staring at him, and Ryland shrugged a lanky shoulder. “What’s he going to do? Run?”

“It would solve our problems if he did,” Nate commented.

Gabe ran a hand through his hair. His scalp itched vaguely; it was about time to touch down on a planet with a water supply. “Are we all agreed, then? We do this, we take him with us?”

“He could fuck it up,” Alex pointed out, again without any obvious bias.

“He could fuck it up if he stays,” Victoria replied, blood-red lips pursed. “I say we bring him.”

“Right, okay,” Gabe acknowledged, pushing back from the table. “Time to teach the newbie about basic smuggling.”

“This is a bad idea already,” Gabe said under his breath, keeping one eye on the doorway through which William ought to be joining them as he struggled into a drab, mass-produced suit.

“It isn’t a horrible idea,” Ryland replied, tugging his bow tie through the final loop and examining it critically in their tiny slice of mirror-glass. “We’ve definitely had worse.”

William walked in before Gabe could say anything else, which was just as well, because Gabe promptly forgot what it was he’d been about to say. He was wearing another one of their generic, non-tailored commercial suits, but he did the cheap fabric much more justice than it really deserved. He was about seven kilometers of leg in the tweed trousers, and his cravat was as neatly knotted as if he’d been doing it his entire life. Which Gabe now suspected he had; ordinarily he would have credited Victoria, but he very much doubted William was willing to let anyone else near his unprotected throat.

He tucked a strand of hair self-consciously behind his ear as Gabe stared, and the other difference in his appearance finally clicked. “You’ve cut your hair.”

William’s eyes darted warily to him and away again, keeping tabs on everyone in the room. “This morning,” he answered. He looked as though he was expecting to be chastised for taking the liberty, but honestly, Gabe couldn’t have cared less about that. What he was wondering was more along the lines of who the fuck let him loose with a sharp blade?

There was time enough to worry about that later, and possibly search William’s room for potentially threatening pointy objects. Gabe had a scheme to attend to. “You’re with me,” he told William, checking his reflection one more time before turning to the hatch with satisfaction. “Let’s go.”

The Myrmidons were a string of dwarf planets well out of the way for most galactic travelers. They were picking up some interest as a tourist destination, but it was expensive enough to make the journey that the primary visitors were those with business of their own to conduct. The local governments, wisely recognizing what sort of people their location attracted, had set up a customs net to rival that of the most affluent planets in the galaxy. That in itself, however, held a certain appeal to those whose business was not strictly licit. If you made it out of the Myrmidons, as far as law enforcement was concerned, you were golden.

They emerged into the dull, watery light of a typical Myrmidon day, boots crunching on the thin layer of ice at their feet. “Keep this with you,” Gabe told William, holding out a crisply-folded piece of plastic writing paper. William’s eyes flicked to the paper and back to Gabe before he took it cautiously, thumb running over the waxy seal. “It says you belong to me, and that I’ve given you dispensation to run errands unattended. I know you’d rather burn it and choke me on the ashes than hold onto it, but if we get separated, it’s the only guarantee I’ll have that you can make it back to the ship without harassment.”

Ryland gave them a wave and split off. William watched him go, and slowly tucked the paper into the inside pocket of his coat. Gabe allowed himself a brief internal sigh of relief. William might still ditch the paper and run, of course, but for the moment Gabe seemed to be winning the battle, which was enough for him.

“You shouldn’t need it,” Gabe continued, keeping William in his peripheral vision while making a show of studying the signs and available travel routes. “If all goes according to plan, you won’t have to do anything but tag along for the ride. We won’t send you off alone.”

William studied him sidelong, which Gabe pretended not to notice. “You don’t trust me.”

Gabe turned enough to grin at him, wide and toothy. “You don’t trust me either.” He nodded toward a side road, and they detoured away from the heaviest foot traffic, leaving Victoria to disappear into the throng. “That’s not why I’m keeping you with me, though.” Well. Not completely. “Everyone else has done this before. I didn’t send Victoria out alone on her first run. Or Ryland and Alex.”

William was quiet for a moment, pondering. “What about Nate?”

Gabe grinned again. “Nate was doing this before I was even in the game. He would have spiked my next drink with something unpleasant if I’d tried to tell him he needed supervision. Here, this is us.”

The cart was on the thirteenth floor of a building that looked as though it wouldn’t support more than two or three. As promised, it was loaded with crates and ready to go. Gabe hit the brake and hauled the cart around, steering it back toward the airlift. “This is what you came for?” William asked, like he didn’t believe it could be quite that easy.

He was right. “This is what we ostensibly came for,” Gabe corrected, “as listed on our landing declaration of purpose. What you and I are really after is something else entirely.”

“The antiquities,” William finished, because he’d apparently paid attention to the briefing Alex had given him. “How will you get them out?”

Gabe hit the button for the door and walked out whistling. “If we play our cards right,” Gabe said, trundling along ahead of William with the cart but not going so far that he lost sight of him, “we walk right through customs.”

It was a busy day on their particular dwarf planet, which was all for the better. They headed for the line of merchants, business people and cargo freighter captains with something to declare, which currently stretched around the block.

“Believe it or not, this is the easy part,” Gabe said, nodding to their stack of crates. “Nate and Alex have the harder job by far. It takes one person each to counterbalance a hover-lift with as much gold as they’ll be carrying, and then they have to melt the bloody stuff down.”

William glanced over, clearly startled. “You’re moving it molten?” he asked.

“Sort of,” Gabe hedged. They joined the end of the customs line, and Gabe stalled in replying for long enough to determine that the ladies ahead of them were both deeply involved in their own conversation on how to convince the customs officials that Aurora fox-mink fur had dropped dramatically in value over the weekend, and also having said discussion in another language. Satisfied, he nodded up to the pipelines criss-crossing the sky above them. “See those? Aqueducts, on the old Roman model. They’re the only thing on this rock that doesn’t have to pass through the security blockade to the ports, and that’s because they have filters to catch anything solid someone might try to dispose of in such a fashion.”

William’s gaze followed the line of one of the pipes, stretching on reinforced pylons high over their heads. “Liquid gold,” he said quietly.

Gabe snapped his fingers. “Exactly. One of them has been temporarily diverted for our cause, and is set to empty out into the carrying case of our very own Victoria Asher.”

“Beyond customs,” William finished, staring ahead of them down the long line of crate-toting business people waiting impatiently for permission to depart.

Gabe’s mouth quirked sideways. “Nate and Alex will meet up with her on the far side, and, lacking complications, we should be out by what passes for nightfall around here.”

It wasn’t a test, exactly, but Gabe was very aware that he was giving William enough information and leeway to be dangerous to them if he chose. He’d timed it carefully; the transfer wouldn’t have started yet, and if William said something to the officials, angling for a reward or just hoping to have Gabe arrested and taken away, law enforcement wouldn’t have enough to go to pin any of his people down. They’d be able to vanish without any proof of wrongdoing. He was hoping, however, that William would choose instead to try using this as evidence that he was trustworthy. Whether Gabe believed that or not, it would be a step in the right direction. He couldn’t expect trust without giving a little in return.

“Here we go,” he said aloud, and plastered on a smile for the two officials waiting with clipboards in hand to go through their crates. The women stalking away toward the port didn’t look too happy; they must have lost their battle over the price of fur.

Served them right, Gabe thought, cracking open the top two crates for inspection. Anyone who dealt in animal pelts didn’t deserve to be cut a break.

“Tigris secret-boxes,” he reported to the men, pulling one out to show them. “Family trade. These were made by my grandfather himself. Over fifty compartments in each one, made from gorgeous softwood to match any room. There are places to keep any treasure of any size.” He passed the box to William, who looked briefly startled but was quick to catch on, holding the box up to display it while Gabe opened up another one. “Might I interest you in a few? They make great gifts for anyone of any age or gender. You can hide things inside them for your loved ones, they’re the gift that keeps on giving. You can also personalize them, with the exterior and compartment designs made to order.”

The officials looked unsurprised to have him deliver a sales pitch; they’d clearly been through the last-ditch attempts of departing artisans many times in the past. They also looked appropriately dismayed, although one of them was hiding it better than the other. “Fifty compartments?” the younger one asked. “How many do you have?”

“Enough for friends, family and loved ones,” Gabe assured him, opening up a few more hidden doors and drawers to show off. “I can also take an order if you’re interested in more than I have here with me, and guarantee production and delivery within a matter of days. Easily by the holidays; I have a large family and we are all expert craftsmen, I assure you.”

The older man sighed, setting aside his clipboard. “Let’s get started.”

It took nearly two hours, which caused the line behind them to build up to a considerable distance. Gabe opened cabinets and demonstrated various types of hinges and hidden spring-catches, running off at the mouth ceaselessly without providing the customs men much actual help. William had somehow settled brilliantly into the role of new and largely clueless assistant, and was ‘accidentally’ closing more drawers than he was opening, fumbling around with the boxes and even dropping one, which provided Gabe with a welcome respite of chastising him for clumsiness for twenty minutes straight.

Finally every compartment was opened, every drawer inspected, and the officials were practically drooping with relief to see them off. The merchants behind them had reached extremely vocal levels of pissed-off at the wait, and Gabe didn’t foresee an easy hour of polite and respectful business people in the officials’ future. He resisted tipping William a wink, but just barely.

“That’s forty-one boxes, no export tax,” the older official announced, signing their customs form with a flourish. “You’re cleared for departure within…”

“Wait, hold up,” Gabe interrupted, tugging at the man’s clipboard. “That’s forty-eight boxes. Four crates, twelve boxes per crate.”

“Forty-one,” the official corrected. “This crate here only has five boxes in it. Now, if you’ll sign this here…”

“What the fuck?” Gabe said, rooting through the crate in question and looking accusingly at William. “Did you pack this one? Was it those moronic cousins of mine? We’re missing seven boxes. Are they…they’re the ones from the display, aren’t they? The engraved boxes with the gold inlay? We have models with gold inlay on the lid,” he told the customs officials in an aside, for what had to be at least the eighth time, before continuing. “Including the one made by my great-great-grandfather Tiberius? Fuck, now we have to go back.”

“Sir,” the older official said, sternly but not without a trace of panic underneath, “if you return to the city, you will have to pass through customs again.”

“We’ll do it,” Gabe replied, hammering down the lid of the half-filled crate. “We’re not leaving without those boxes. Those imbeciles, I wonder if they thought they’d be able to sell them on their own or if they really are just that stupid…”

He kept up a steady stream of aspersions cast on the character and intellect of his invented relatives until they passed by the entire grumbling line of impatient travelers and rounded the corner onto the main thoroughfare. Then he grinned at William, who was shaking his head and staring back at him in bewildered amazement.

“Keep up, we’ve got to move fast,” Gabe warned, steering them left into an alley. “If we don’t get back through before the shift changes, this was all for nothing.”

“You really think they won’t check them again?” William demanded, walking briskly at his side. At least he wasn’t going to slow them down; those legs were more than a match for Gabe’s pace with the cart.

“Oh, they’ll check them again,” Gabe confirmed. “The top few new ones, and the ones on the bottom, which is where a less subtle smuggler would be sure to hide something. But will they check all fifty compartments of each crate of forty-eight Tigris secret boxes, for the second time in four hours?” He shook his head. “Not likely. Heads up, here we go.”

“What…?” William began, but he was cut off by the large crashing collision of their cart into a book-trolley.

“So sorry,” Ryland insisted, practically supplicating himself at their feet as Gabe cursed and kicked at his cart and the crates that had spilled all over the frozen surface of the road. “It’s the ice, I never can seem to brake suddenly, and you just appeared…”

“No harm done,” Gabe allowed, stacking the crates again with disgruntled resignation. “Is that all of yours?”

William helped him to heft the last crate, smaller but considerably heavier than the rest, atop their load. “I believe so, yes,” Ryland answered, adjusting his spectacles and bobbing his head, running long-fingered hands over his own crates as if to reassure himself that the books inside were undamaged. “Thank you. May you live long lives, my friends.”

“A religious nut,” Gabe said as they started off again. “Figures.”

William was eyeing him again, and Gabe couldn’t help enjoying it just a little bit. “Customs?” William guessed.

Gabe shook his head. “Not yet. In here, we have a swap to make.” He pushed the cart into a dead-end alley and from there into the rotted-out shell of an abandoned shack, the wheels squeaking and groaning under the added weight of the fifth crate. “First we have to repack the crates, get rid of the extra one and redistribute its contents into some of our very own secret boxes.” He held up a box to admire briefly. “Handy little fuckers, aren’t they?”

The work went quickly, faster than Gabe had expected, with William pitching in. Gabe kept an eye on him, but he didn’t see anything amiss; no doors left ajar to create suspicion, no hidden messages left in drawers or scratched into wood. If William was planning something, Gabe couldn’t spot it.

“These are the last three,” William told him, holding up a box of bronzed statuettes. “Where do you…?”

The creak of wood stopped him mid-sentence, and the muffled bang of the back door closing. William looked at Gabe with a question in his eyes, but Gabe shook his head quickly. No one was scheduled to meet them, and they all had their own business to take care of. Following them here would only create suspicion. If it was one of Gabe’s crew…

It wasn’t. “In the name of the law, who’s in here?” a booming male voice called. “This is private property, you’re trespassing.”

Gabe froze for a moment, thinking rapidly and not coming up with any viable excuse. They were in an abandoned building, surrounded by crates and with three obviously valuable statuettes still in plain sight. It didn’t look like anything but what it was.

William caught his eyes, clearly thinking the same thing. Then he dropped to his knees.

Gabe’s first instinct was to protest, but he wasn’t a fool, and William’s idea wasn’t actually a bad one. He didn’t know that it would keep them from being arrested, but it would at least give them a shot.

William fumbled with the front of Gabe’s trousers, obviously unused to working the hooks and buttons from that angle. Gabe tried to help him but gave up after a half-second, using the time instead to tug his shirt loose, run a hand through his hair to rumple it and lean back in a wide-legged stance against the wall. He couldn’t tell if William’s hands were shaking or not, but they felt determined enough when one slid inside his trousers to give him a quick, fleeting squeeze.

He knew instantly why, too. Gabe’s brain might have gotten with the program quickly enough, but his dick was another matter, and not entirely clued in to their cover story. William’s groping helped, but not enough. At least not until Gabe looked down and saw William between his legs, looking up at him through mussed hair and long lashes, blinking once slowly as he wetted his lips.

“Fuck,” Gabe breathed, dropping his head back against the wall as William tugged at his undergarments and opened his mouth, which was how the law enforcement officer found them a second later.

“What’s going on here?” the man demanded, as though it weren’t obvious enough from the enthusiastic bulge in Gabe’s undone trousers and William’s position on the packed dirt floor. “What’s all this?”

William reacted before Gabe could. “I have a pass,” he said quickly, holding up his hands in a gesture of unarmed surrender. “I have a paper from my owner, I’m allowed to be out on my own.”

The officer looked to Gabe, who was almost as flummoxed before he caught on to the game they were playing. The only way a pleasure slave would be doing favors in an abandoned building would be if Gabe didn’t have a bed in which to properly tumble him at his leisure. “He’s not mine,” Gabe said belatedly. “I’m just passing through. Leaving town today.”

William shrank back a little, and the officer’s expression turned knowing. “Making a bit on the side, are you?” he asked, tapping his baton against William’s arm as he neared them. “Working freelance?”

William bit his lip, letting silence damn him. Fuck, he was good, Gabe thought. If they could turn him, he would make a decent addition to Gabe’s crew. That was, if they could also convince him to stop trying to kill them. “Look, I don’t want any trouble,” Gabe said, tucking himself back in and ignoring the twinge of protest from his neglected dick. “I didn’t know it was trespassing, I’ll leave right now.”

“Just appreciating the local flavor?” the officer suggested, his gaze roaming freely over what William currently appeared to be offering. “Can’t say I blame you, for a taste like this one.”

The hand currently out of sight on Gabe’s far side curled into a fist. Fuck, he really didn’t want to risk a fight. Knocking out an officer would be noisy, messy, and it would probably come back to bite them in the ass well before they could clear the customs line. But if the bastard tried following up on what Gabe could see in his eyes and decided he wanted to sample William for himself as their price of freedom, Gabe would do it.

“I won’t do it again,” William promised, and thank fuck he’d turned off the coy act, staying skittishly at a safe distance from the wandering tip of the officer’s baton.

The officer himself snorted. “Oh, I’m sure.” He jerked his head toward the door. “Just don’t do it in here. Get out, get yourselves a room. Take it out of whatever you’re paying him for his pretty mouth.”

“Yes sir,” Gabe agreed, already grabbing for his cart. William had either made the statuettes vanish somewhere on his person or abandoned them in the emptied crate, and Gabe didn’t honestly care which. They’d already pushed their luck on this one; he wasn’t taking any more chances. “Go,” he told William under his breath, pushing their cart of smuggled treasure back onto the road, and headed for customs.

“Anyone give you trouble?” Alex asked once they were inside the hatch, and Gabe could tell from the flicker of his eyelid that he didn’t just mean the locals.

“I’ve never seen anyone so happy to watch me leave,” Gabe replied, making sure to waggle his ass on the way past. “And that’s saying something.”

“Usually that has more to do with what you did while you were in the room,” Victoria remarked coolly. Her eyes flicked to William and dropped before returning to Gabe, and he knew she hadn’t missed the dirt scuffs on the knees of William’s trousers.

He wasn’t in any way ready to answer that particular question, though, so he took the easy way out and pretended he hadn’t noticed. “Everything go well on your end?”

“It’s all in the cargo hold, flash-frozen and ready for transport,” Alex reported. “Ryland got back about an hour before you did, so we’re all accounted for.”

“With customs clearance to boot,” Gabe returned. “Let’s blow this hunk of ice.”

Alex headed toward the navigation station, and if Gabe knew Nate, he was already in the engine room, making sure no one had snooped around and touched anything in their absence. Which meant they were ready to go.

Gabe turned to sling his coat over a rail. He got as far as “Do you know…?” before realizing William had disappeared, probably back to his room behind a locked door. It wasn’t that much of a surprise, all things considered. He shrugged at Ryland’s look of enquiry and said, “I’ll go call Pete.”

He stopped to key in the launch codes, which was how by the time he got to the radio, Victoria was already lying in wait for him. “So,” she said neutrally, hair swept up and makeup immaculate, one arched eyebrow awaiting an explanation.

Gabe held up both hands in surrender. “I swear, Victoria, I didn’t touch a hair on his head.”

Victoria regarded him for a moment. Then she said, “Your fly’s undone,” and left through the open hatch.

“Fuck,” Gabe said, fumbling with the skipped button on his trousers. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Victoria had questioned him before, on various points, but she’d never made any accusations. Then again, they’d never had a slave on board who was quite so…well. She might have reason, now, to be watching him.

The bell sounded next to the radio console, signaling their departure and emergence into unrestricted space. Gabe flung himself into the chair and hit the auto-dial.

Within seconds, Pete’s face was grinning back at him. “That was fast.”

“We’re on schedule,” Gabe confirmed. “And on our way.”

“I’m sending you a name,” Pete said. “A nice place to make a pit stop. It shouldn’t take you too far out of the way. How’s my present holding up?”

“Proven to be handy in a pinch,” Gabe replied. “Although he’s gotten hold of a pair of scissors, which makes me nervous.”

Pete’s expression sobered. “Jumper?”

Gabe shook his head. “Not even close. Save me a bottle, I’ll tell you the whole thing.”

“I’ve got one with your name on it,” Pete promised, and they both signed off.

The rest of his crew was waiting at the table in the lounge when Gabe reached them. He dropped into his customary chair at the end of the table and was just about to pass along the latest news when he caught a whisper of movement from the opposite archway and saw William watching them.

Gabe propped his chin up on his hand and grinned. “Hi there. Come for dinner?”

William slipped through the archway into plain view before halting again. “If I may.”

Gabe gestured to the sixth chair sitting empty at the far end of the table. “Pull up a chair. You’ve earned it.”

“More than,” Victoria commented, her attention on the dish of mashed peas as she spooned a serving onto her plate. Gabe felt a muscle in his jaw tic, but he didn’t let his smile drop.

William sat, still moving cautiously but coming far closer to all of them than he had since he’d come on board, so Gabe was counting it as a win. It was the little victories that counted, on this ship. He rarely got to see the slaves they rescued years after their liberation, which was all a part of the deal; he reminded them too much of another time in their lives, associated with everything they most wanted to forget.

There was a slightly awkward silence, which Ryland graciously broke by asking, “What’s the news from Pete?”

“What he means,” Nate translated for William as he helped himself to Victoria’s dish of peas, “is what are we doing with all the shit in our cargo hold?”

“And the answer to that,” Gabe declared grandly, determinedly recovering some of his good humor, “is The Butcher.”

William’s eyes flicked to each of them in turn, searching for reactions. “The Butcher?” he echoed.

“It’s a nickname,” Gabe said. “He’s a fence, and one of the best working for our side. He also dabbles in the acquisition of fine art, if you know what I mean. He’ll be able to get us a fair price for our stolen antiquities.”

“He’s a good man,” Ryland chimed in. “We’ve worked with him before.”

“And how,” William inquired carefully, “did he come to be known by such a colorful nom de guerre?”

Gabe’s ears pricked up instantly, trained to spot the little details that people let slip. William was educated, then, or at least raised among the upper class. He wouldn’t have been willing to bet on anyone at this table besides Ryland knowing that phrase.

“It’s a long story,” he replied with a quick smile. “And not one that involves art theft.”

William’s answering smile was guarded, but it reached his eyes, which Gabe was willing to count as another victory. “How very reassuring.”

Gabe was surprised into a short laugh. “Ryland’s the best one to tell it,” he said, glancing over. “I think we’ve got time.”

“Indeed,” Ryland replied, pushing his borrowed spectacles up his nose. “But first, if you please, pass the peas.”

The drop went off without a hitch, which was why Gabe was caught off guard when they were twenty minutes out from Butcher’s home base of Sila IV and Alex called out grimly, “We’ve been flagged.”

“What?” It took less than five seconds for Gabe to swing up to the console and read the government-issued warning over Alex’s shoulder. “Why?”

“Fuck if I know, but they’re moving fast. There’s a government schooner on an intercept course.”

“Butcher?” Ryland asked, appearing behind them with one hand on the rungs of the ladder leading to the gunnery tower.

“He wouldn’t sell us out,” Gabe argued. “There’s no way.”

“We were clean when we left the Myrmidons, I swear to fuck,” Alex insisted. “If it’s not us, it’s him. They’ve got to have surveillance up.”

“Fuck,” Gabe said with feeling. “Get word out to Butcher that…shit, nix that, they’re probably monitoring communications.”

“He’ll figure it out fast enough if we don’t check in with Pete,” Ryland pointed out. “Which is looking likely at the moment.”

“Not if I can help it,” Gabe replied. “What are our chances?”

“They outweigh us, outgun us, and out-engine us,” Victoria said, taking up position next to Alex to man the second console. “Slim to none.”

“Like fuck they out-engine us,” Nate called up from the bowels of the ship.

Victoria shook her head. “They’re too close, we won’t make it if we try to run.”

“And they’ll probably just shoot us full of holes,” Gabe commented. “Fine, let’s try not to look guilty. What have we got on board?”

“Nothing, we passed it all off to Butcher,” Alex answered. “The gold, but it’s unmarked, it should be clean. And a bottle of Nerrivik ice-wine, but that’s barely a felony.”

“If they’ve tagged us through Butcher, though, there’s a good chance they already know we look guilty,” Ryland put in.

“If they don’t have proof, the most they can do is charge us,” Gabe began, which was when he saw William lurking nervously in the hallway and the words dried up in his mouth. “Fuck.”

Victoria looked around sharply, following his gaze. “They can’t convict you for anything,” she said, but he could hear the uncertainty in her voice. They didn’t know how much the law had on them at this point, and Gabe only liked taking chances when the odds were in his favor.

“Transfer ownership?” Alex inquired, looking up. “If they only go after one of us, it’s most likely to be you.”

Gabe shook his head, eyes still on William. “There’s no time. Not only suspicious as hell, but we can’t get it notarized, which means he’ll still legally be my property at the time of arrest.”

William’s chin lifted a fraction, defiant even though he clearly still didn’t understand all of what they were talking about. “What’s going on?”

“We’re about to be boarded,” Gabe replied, the taste of the words bitter in his mouth. “And if I’m arrested and convicted of anything, my property is forfeit and seized by the government. Which means you go up for public auction.”

William went five shades paler. Gabe unfortunately didn’t have time or means to reassure him.

“Move the gold,” he ordered. “Get it out of the smuggling compartment, put him in instead. Move the gold in front of it, make it look poorly disguised. There’s a chance they won’t dig further.”

“Slim,” Victoria opined, but she didn’t contradict him. “They’re trying to get us on radio.”

“If they find the gold and figure out where it came from, they’ll have more of a case to make against us,” Alex pointed out. “He, on the other hand, won’t get us into any trouble if he’s discovered.”

“If they tagged us through Butcher, they already know we have something of value on board,” Gabe countered. “And they’ll be looking for it. I’m willing to give it to them without a fuss if it means they stop looking. He’s more valuable.”

“We can make it look like we keep him locked down there,” Ryland suggested. “That way if they do find him, it’s no harm, no foul.”

William flinched away slightly, looking like he was about to run, but Gabe still didn’t have time for him. The radio light was flashing, and the schooner was gaining ground, easing up behind them with guns at the ready.

“Do it,” Gabe said, and Ryland went, motioning for William to precede him down the gangway and wisely not trying to touch him.

“They’ve made it official, we’re to halt our course immediately or they fire a warning shot,” Victoria reported, jerking Gabe’s attention away from the vacant gangway.

“Is there any fucking chance of us getting a message out to Pete?” Gabe asked, plopping himself down into the chair in front of the radio.

“Not without it being picked up by a third party,” Victoria replied, her voice steel and calm.

“Fine. If they cut any of you loose, get to Butcher, tell him to get the fuck out,” Gabe ordered. “Even if they’re on us for some other reason, it doesn’t take much to connect the dots back to him.”

He held up his hand for silence, took a deep breath, and punched the radio button.

“This is Captain Saporta of the Cobra,” he said pleasantly. “To whom do I owe this pleasure?”

A dark-haired, round-faced man in uniform appeared on his screen, with a scrolling direct transfer feed at the bottom of Gabe’s screen authenticating his credentials. “This is Commander Way, badge number one-three-zero-zero-two-five,” the officer announced by way of greeting. “Halt your course and prepare to be boarded.”

Gabe had enough time to glance over the haphazard stack of boxes and containers Ryland and Nate had created to disguise their less-than-legal cargo, delete the records of their recent communications, and check his reflection in the sliver of mirror before punching the docking button and preparing to be charming. He could totally be charming. It was practically in his blood.

“Commander Way,” he said with a wide smile (but not too wide; acting genuinely happy to see law enforcement officers would only make them suspicious). “What’s all this about?”

Commander Way took his time looking around the hold before his gaze returned to Gabe. His eyebrows said you don’t know? but Gabe couldn’t very well confess before he knew what they had on him. If it was nothing but suspicion and circumstantial evidence, they might be able to skate.

“Your engine oxidizer is leaking helium,” Way informed him, causing Gabe to blink and very nearly gape at him in disbelief. “Are you aware of this problem?”

Gabe looked at Nate, who was already frowning. “Were we aware of this problem?” he echoed, genuinely at a loss. What he really wanted to say was, that’s what all this is about? but the obvious response to that would be why, what should it be about? and Gabe wasn’t stupid.

“No,” Nate answered. “Helium pressure reads as normal, the engines would have shut down otherwise.”

“Not necessarily,” one of the other officers spoke up – Lieutenant Toro, according to his badge – as he stepped forward beside Way. “There are certain ways to maintain helium pressure even after tampering with the fuel preburner system.”

Nate was starting to bristle already. “Nothing’s been tampered with,” he declared. “I maintain the engines myself. If there’s a leak, it’s a genuine mechanical error.”

“That you somehow missed,” Toro replied, too gently. Nate bristled even further.

“Hey, woah, wait,” Gabe interjected, before Nate could open his mouth and go ballistic, and possibly get them into even more trouble than what Gabe wasn’t already totally sure they were in. “So we have a mechanical problem.”

“A helium leak from the engines obscures your registration code and locator signal,” Way replied. “This particular one has been doing so for at least the past several days.”

“Wait.” Gabe still couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. “So basically what you’re saying is that you boarded us because our taillight is out?”

Way looked blank, which meant that he hadn’t spent enough time on gentrified planets to catch the reference, but Toro snorted. “A helium leak of this type is also a common byproduct of preburner tampering, as I was saying,” Toro informed them. “Which has been known to happen during installation of a jump-start turbopump.”

“Those are illegal,” Gabe said automatically, and then wanted to smack himself in the face. Of course they were illegal, why else would they have officers traipsing around on his ship?

“You know what they are, though,” Toro said. Gabe did, mostly because he’d smuggled one a few months back, but he couldn’t very well say that.

Nate spoke up for him instead. “Yeah. And we know there’s not one aboard,” he replied, folding his arms over his chest.

“You don’t mind if we have a look around,” Way said, and it wasn’t a question.

Gabe swept them a bow, extending his arm toward the hatch leading to the engine room. “Be my guest,” he offered. Nate glared, but he didn’t object, for which Gabe said thankful prayers inside his head. If they could get this over with and send their unwanted visitors off none the wiser, it would be one hell of a lucky break.

Toro spent a lot of time in the engine room, poking at various things, but Gabe knew full well they didn’t have shit down here, so he just kept an eye on Nate, ready to snap the leash if necessary to keep them out of trouble. Luckily, Nate seemed to remember there was more at stake here as well, because he didn’t bite anyone’s head off even when Toro fucked around with the pressure gauges and inspected the controls for the feed line manifold. At least, that’s what Gabe thought it was. As a general rule, he left the engine room alone as Nate’s domain.

“It looks like a genuine mechanical failure,” Toro said at last, and Gabe exhaled, shoulders dropping incrementally as he watched Nate bite his own tongue.

“So that’s it?” Gabe asked, sure there was a catch somewhere he was missing. “It’s just a leak?”

Way puffed up a little bit, his voice hitting an all-new range of high and nasal. “Space pollution is a growing problem,” he said with irritation. “Especially this close to an inhabited space station. It’s not something to be taken lightly.”

“Right, of course not,” Gabe said hastily, trying to sound sincerely concerned and not relieved as fuck. “We’ll get that taken care of right away.”

Way still looked like he had ruffled feathers, but he just nodded shortly. “There should be a mechanic on hand at Sila IV…” he began, when another voice – the third officer, Iero, the one watching the docking hatch – called down, “Gee, you’re going to want to see this.”

Just that fast, Gabe’s stomach dropped into his feet. Way gave him a curious look, and called up, “What is it?” as he started to climb the ladder to the cargo hold.

Gabe was stuck behind Way and Toro, so he couldn’t see what was going on, but he heard it clear enough when Iero said, “Remember that report we got on six crates of stolen gold out of Persephone?”

Gabe exchanged grim looks with Nate, and headed up into the hold. Now it was time to play for real.

“You were snooping around again?” Way asked, with a hint of resignation in his voice.

“You should be glad I was,” Iero replied, and Gabe arrived in the hold just in time to see him pulling William forward out of the hidden compartment. “They also have a stowaway.”

Shit. “Not a stowaway,” Gabe said quickly, stepping forward with his hands up. “Pleasure slave. Legally bought and paid for, registered with the authorities on Jarilo VII.”

Way’s expression darkened, and Gabe watched every chance they had of getting out of this without complication vanish in the space of a second. “I’m bringing you all in for questioning,” he announced, “for suspicion of possession of stolen goods. And that’s better than you deserve,” he added, with a disgusted look at Gabe, “you filthy human trafficker.”

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Gabe said.

“Afraid not,” Toro replied, seemingly apologetic even as he twisted Gabe’s hands behind his back to shackle them. “Captain Saporta, you and your crew are under arrest.”

It wasn’t that Gabe couldn’t see the irony in the situation, that he was being held and ruthlessly investigated because the law enforcement officer with whom they’d crossed paths was a liberation sympathizer, because he could. He just really didn’t appreciate it at the moment.

“Where did you get the gold?” Way asked, for at least the fourth time. Gabe hadn’t bothered counting. They’d been circling the same topic for an hour now, in a stale, warm interrogation room on the schooner. Gabe didn’t know if his people were being interrogated as well or just held, but the longer they kept him in here, the more antsy he became. He also didn’t know what the fuck they’d done with William, which was the reason for more than half his twitchiness.

“Found it,” Gabe said, like he had the last three times. “Finders keepers, right?”

“You just happened upon it,” Way said, with a level of sarcasm that would read from planet-side. “That’s your story.” When Gabe shrugged, slouching indolently in his uncomfortable – and small – metal chair, Way said, “That’s bullshit. Were you aware that it was stolen?”

“Not by me,” Gabe said honestly. It wasn’t much of a defense, but Gabe hadn’t been anywhere near Persephone in more than two years, and his ship’s navigation system would back that claim.

“If it wasn’t you, it was your crew,” Way stated. “I can take them down as easily as I can take you.”

Gabe’s eyes narrowed, sharp in a deliberately and deceptively lazy expression. “Do you have any proof to back that up?” he inquired mildly. “Because I don’t think you do.”

“Temperature readings say that gold was flash-frozen within the week,” Way said, attacking from another angle. “Did you melt it down?”

“If I had, and if it had been legal currency or tagged relics, you and I both know there would have been electronic markers mixed in with the metal,” Gabe replied, steepling his fingers on the table at the extent of his chains. “Did you find any?”

“I’m not accusing you of melting down government currency,” Way said. “I’m accusing you of possessing stolen property, specifically six crates of gold bars stolen from the mining facility on Persephone.”

Gabe gave him a tight, sharp smile. “And I’m saying, prove it.”

Way paused for a moment, looking out through the veil-glass lining one side of the interrogation room. “I’ve seen your records,” he said, the tone an attempt at casual that was ruined by the tension beneath it. Now, Gabe thought, they were finally getting to it. “I’ve pulled your ship’s manifest. I know you’ve bought twenty-six slaves within the past two years, and yet you’re only traveling with one.” Way turned around and folded his arms tightly, the gesture more emotional and defensive than confrontational. “Where did the others go?”

This was a topic Gabe had to work very carefully to avoid. He shrugged one shoulder, nice and slow. “They outlived their usefulness.”

“Did they?” Way asked. “Did they outlive anything, or did you kill them once you got bored with them?”

Gabe met his expression head-on and didn’t give him so much as an eyelid flicker. “I’m sure it wouldn’t matter what I did with them,” he said, affecting as bored a tone as possible. “They were my property.”

He knew Way would pick up on the past tense, and sure enough, his jaw snapped shut with an audible click. “You’re right,” Way said tightly. “I might not be able to prove you stole those crates from Persephone, but I can get a chemical match and nail you for possession of stolen property, as well as space pollution and operating a ship’s engine under hazardous conditions. That’s enough to meet the minimum requirements for legal forfeiture of all of your property, including your ship and your latest toy.” Way’s eyes burned with satisfaction. “The body count stops at twenty-five.”

Gabe’s body jerked forward reflexively, his heart rate jumping wildly. “No,” he said out loud. “You can’t.”

“Watch me.” Way tugged on his uniform jacket sharply, knuckles white. “I might not be able to keep you on a prison station, but I can put you there for long enough to save a life.”

“Fuck,” Gabe said. He tried to rise, forgetting for the moment that he was shackled until the chains brought him up short and jerked him back down into his chair. “I don’t give a shit about the gold,” he said honestly. “But if you convict me, he goes up for auction. You know where he’s going to end up from there? It’s not going to be with a bleeding heart like you.”

“I wouldn’t buy another human being,” Way sneered. “And it’s still better off than disappearing after a few months with you.”

Way had him cornered. Gabe had no doubt Way would be able to put together enough of a case to put him behind bars, and if that happened, talking big and getting Pete to post bail wouldn’t save William. William, with his unfettered fucking defiance and his criminally pretty face. He’d bring in a fortune on the right market. And Gabe would never be able to find him a second time.

He had two choices, and one of them wasn’t even an option at all. For the first time since he’d started in this trade, he was going to blow his cover, and he was going to do it on the long shot that it could save one slave.

Gabe blew out a breath. “You want to know why they disappear?” he demanded, pulling forward against his restraints. He sat back, telling himself to calm the fuck down, and took a few breaths. “Shut off the surveillance and I’ll tell you.”

Way looked suspicious now, as well he might, but also intrigued. Intrigued was good. Gabe could work with intrigued.

Way flipped three switches on the wall by the door, and touched a panel that had the surface of the veil-glass shimmering and turning a cloudy opaque. He came back to the table and stood for a moment at the end of it, regarding Gabe. “I’m listening,” he said finally.

Moment of truth. If Way wasn’t actually a liberation sympathizer, if he was onto them and fishing for evidence, Gabe could be risking Pete’s entire operation. If Gabe didn’t tell him, though…if he played dumb, he’d be handing William directly over to the slavers.

Gabe laced his fingers. “They disappear because I don’t keep slaves,” he said; the plainest terms he could manage, without completely trusting that this conversation remained unrecorded. “I buy them, but I don’t keep them. Do you understand me?”

Way was silent for a moment. “You peddle,” he interpreted.

Gabe shook his head slowly. “There are no records of sale,” he said evenly. “You already know that.”

Way twitched like he wanted to be moving, too much emotion bottled up for such inactivity. “Why should I believe you?” he asked. His voice was still laced thoroughly with suspicion, but with something else in there too, Gabe thought. Hope. He wanted to believe it.

Gabe smirked. “I’m traveling with a pleasure slave who’s been in my possession for days, and he’s still registered as a virgin,” Gabe said. Shaking his head, he added, “You’ve seen him. You really think I’d wait so long for that?”

Way’s expression was difficult to read, but he’d started chewing on the inside of his lip, so at least Gabe knew he was turning that over. “He’s worth more in resale value,” Way said. “Do you think I don’t know that?”

Gabe raised his eyebrows. “You already know I don’t sell them,” he pointed out.

Way’s eyes narrowed. “Then you were breaking him in. You were keeping him locked in a cramped compartment under the floor, without access to water or proper facilities.”

“Right,” Gabe said, because he couldn’t very well say, no, we were just hiding him from you. What he could say was, “He was surprisingly clean and well-dressed for someone who’d spent days locked in a small compartment, wouldn’t you say?”

Way suddenly went very, very still. “Assuming I believe you,” he said slowly, “I’m a government officer. If I follow up on what you’ve just told me and find even one of those missing people, you could go to jail for the rest of your life.”

“If you convict me for anything at all, someone else goes missing, back to the slave auctions,” Gabe answered. “It’s a chance I’m willing to take.”

Way chewed on his lip for a moment more. “And your crew?”

Gabe shook his head. “I’m sticking my neck out for me. I’m not giving anyone else up. And they won’t tell you anything.”

Way stood silent for a moment longer before he paced to the door, reached out and flipped the switches on the wall. “The helium leak thing is still a problem,” he said, turning back to face Gabe and holding up the key to the shackles. “I can set you up with a mechanic.”

Gabe tried hard not to just slump across the table in relief, but his hands still shook from the adrenaline when he replied, “That would be much appreciated.”

Commander Way didn’t actually escort them back to Sila IV. He towed them all the way around to Sila III, which was nice because it saved them fuel on the journey, and got them bumped up to the first working slot. Gabe had to admit, arriving on the heels of law enforcement did have something going for it.

The dock was run by a no-nonsense, knows-her-shit mechanic named Alicia, and Gabe had to take a second to reclassify the Commander in his head once they touched down inside the enclosed station bay, because Alicia was hitched to none other than Mikey Way.

It had been a few years since the Atlacoya job, but Mikey recognized Gabe as fast as Gabe had recognized him. “Hi,” he said, wiping his hand off on his trousers as he tucked a data pad into one of his coat pockets. “Friends of my brother?”

So that was the connection. Gabe knew enough to be able to translate that sentence into because if you aren’t, then you and I don’t know each other, and he grinned acknowledgement. “New friends,” he answered. “We got flagged for an engine violation coming out of Sila IV, and he was kind enough to give us a lift.”

Mikey bobbed his head. “Cool,” he said, and jerked a thumb back over his shoulder. “I’m just gonna…” he said, silently trailing off into call Pete, if Gabe knew Mikey. And good, there was one of their problems taken care of. Gabe didn’t dare risk checking in with the Commander’s ship practically blacking out their satellite range, but they were overdue and he didn’t like to make Pete nervous.

Alicia and Nate were pissing on their respective turf over by the exhaust pipe when Gabe checked, so he took up residence by the boarding ramp to keep a general eye on things. Their escort hadn’t cleared off when Alicia had started working, so Gabe hazarded a guess that they weren’t out of the hot water yet.

There was another mechanic taking readings, her sleeves rolled up almost to the point of being scandalous, exposing blooms of color tattooed all across her skin. Commander Way – Gerard, if Mikey was his brother, and had Gabe ever heard a lot about him back in the day – was watching her with a goofy little dopey smile on his face, hands in his pockets and suddenly far more sheepish and awkward than a Commander really ought to be.

Iero caught Gabe’s grin and answered it with one of his own, drifting over to lean against one of the support rails, chewing on an anise stick. “It’s cute, isn’t it?” Iero commented, as Alicia’s mechanic passed Commander Way a wrocket tool and he held it like it was a precious treasure, with the jittery nerves of someone about to drop it and bruise his toe in another half-second. Gabe snorted. Iero grinned at him sideways. “I’m not saying we go out of our way to stop ships with mechanical trouble,” Iero confided, the anise stick bobbing out of the side of his mouth as he spoke, “but Gee does tend to perk up when we find them.”

“Lucky for us,” Gabe replied, and Iero smirked.

“Lynz, I’m going down to check the pressure gauges, can you stay here and monitor the leak?” Alicia called, doing a good job of ignoring Nate standing practically on her heels, arms crossed and glowering. Probably, Gabe guessed, at the use of the singular pronoun. As if Nate would ever let another mechanic run amok in his engine room without supervision.

Lynz nodded, pushes up her sleeves another inch, and started fiddling with a device of some sort that involved a dial and a lot of knobs. Gabe saw William lurking around the far curve of the external bulk that was the ship’s engine, taking everything in while staying just out of the way. Lynz spotted him in the next instant, and Gabe saw her mouth quirk up sideways, wry and amused. “You want to come help me with this?” she asked, waving the device around lightly. “I could use a hand.”

William slipped out from his hiding place to meet her, and Gabe barely had a chance to marvel before someone said right next to his ear, “Your guys thirsty?”

Gabe jumped, and held a hand to his heart. “Fuck, M—man,” he said, catching himself just in time with Iero so close and so curious. “You scared the shit out of me. Warn a guy.”

“Sorry,” Mikey said, in a tone that was nothing if not unapologetic. “We have some limonale, I think, if you want.” He scratched his nose. “There’s a lot of us, though, you might have to help me carry it.”

And that, Gabe thought as his skin prickled, was an invitation to speak privately, which meant Mikey probably had news from Pete. “Sure thing,” he agreed, casually pushing off from his slouch against the side of the boarding ramp. “Lead the way.”

He followed Mikey down a zig-zag corridor filled with spare engine parts and knots of cable, through a furnished room that was obviously part of someone’s living quarters into a small refrigeration unit. Mikey shut the door behind them, a soundproof barrier to the outside world, and said, “Pete says hi.”

“Mikey fuckin’ Way,” Gabe said in answer, clasping Mikey in a proper welcoming hug. “The fuck have you been? It’s been ages. And why the fuck didn’t you mention your brother worked the Sila IV beat?”

Mikey shrugged, accepting the hug the way he did everything else, with gracious tolerance. “He moves around a lot. He’s only been here for a few months, since me and Alicia moved. I don’t think he’s ready to settle yet.” His eyes looked softer than Gabe remembered them, clearer without the spectacles he used to wear. “He didn’t arrest you?”

“Nah, I gave him a bleeding heart story and suckered my way out. The bleeding heart story,” he added with a grimace, because he and Mikey had never worked together doing what Gabe did now, but Mikey knew full well what it was Gabe currently did for Pete. “No way around it, so tell Pete to tiptoe lightly around here for a while.”

“He won’t say anything,” Mikey said, with no trace of uncertainty in his voice, like he was stating a fact he’d read in the Encyclopedia Galactica. “He cares too much.”

“Yeah, I figured.” Gabe gave Mikey a searching once-over, remembering stories swapped in the lounge of another ship, a long time ago. “He the reason you got into it, or the other way around?”

Mikey shrugged. “He doesn’t know. I mean, he knows some things, I think, but he doesn’t ask. He says he can’t know. He might not believe in everything the government says, but he’s serious about his job.”

“Then we got really fuckin’ lucky,” Gabe said. “We’ve got a shit-ton of unmarked gold on board, and its disappearance has not gone unnoticed, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, Pete said.” Mikey shifted his weight, pulled out the data pad he’d been carrying earlier and started typing. “I can find you a place to ditch it, I think. Gee probably had to report it, even if he didn’t arrest you, and word gets out.”

“Fuck,” Gabe muttered, although it could have been worse, and he should have known that was coming anyway. Gerard could afford to be lenient to a point, but letting them go wasn’t the same as falsifying reports. The last thing they really needed, though, was trouble from pirates once they hit the edge of the Decay ring. “Anywhere we can get full price on short notice, without taking us too far out of the way? I’d rather not take many more detours if we can help it.”

Mikey rubbed his nose again, a gesture Gabe recognized as having evolved from years of pushing his glasses up and having them slide back down again. “Yeah, but you’re not going to like it,” he said. “There’s already a buzz, and most of it’s coming out of Shiva.”

Mikey was right, Gabe didn’t like it, although he really should have seen that coming as well. “I fucking hate going to Shiva,” he said, as conversationally as he could around the sinking pit of lead in his stomach.

Mikey shrugged one shoulder. “There are other places,” he said, still tapping away at his pad, “but they’re all in the wrong direction, if you’re heading back to Pete.”

Which Gabe knew, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. “We are,” he confirmed, looking at the door to the refrigeration unit as if he could see through it to William on the other side. “We’ve got a delivery to make.”

“Yeah,” Mikey agreed neutrally. Then, “Don’t forget the limonale.”

Back in the bay, Nate and Alicia appeared to have hammered out their differences with spanners, or at least drawn lines both of them could live with, since Gabe didn’t see any blood on the deck. The rest of his crew was lounging around talking to Iero and Toro, managing to look casual while Gabe knew for a fact, by the way they all simultaneously glanced at the doorway when he entered, that they were keeping a sharp eye on everything and everyone in the vicinity.

He looked around for William and was surprised to find him not only still helping Lynz the mechanic, but honestly interested, nodding along as she explained something and holding up her dial device whenever she motioned for it. He looked more animated than Gabe had ever seen him when he wasn’t trying to fuck Gabe’s shit up.

Mikey’s brother appeared by his side, still with that dopey look on his face. “She’s good at that,” he said, watching Lynz show William how to do something to the ship’s hull by placing his hands where she needed them. “Drawing people out.”

“So I see,” Gabe answered, amused. Gerard was chewing on his lip again, lost in thought or simply hopeless adoration.

“I think she used to be a slave,” Gerard said finally, quiet enough to be for Gabe’s ears alone. Gabe half-turned toward him, eyebrows raised, but Gerard didn’t meet his gaze. “I can’t ask her, obviously, but, I mean…she says things, sometimes, and she acts…” Gerard gave a little sigh, rubbing at the sleeve of his uniform coat like it was an itch getting under his skin. His voice dropped even lower, forcing Gabe to listen hard to hear him. “And she has scars, on her arms. You can’t see most of them, because of her tattoos, but they’re there.”

“Lots of people have scars,” Gabe replied neutrally. He wondered if this was the reason Gerard was still looking but not touching; if he feared more than rejection.

Gerard sighed again. “Yeah,” he said, so like and unlike Mikey in that moment that Gabe blinked.

He put aside their respective positions – and careers – for a moment and turned to face Gerard fully, resting a hip on the bay wall. “Look, dude,” he said honestly. “I get why you don’t want to crowd her, because you’ve got obligations and shit, but if you respect her, you’ve got to let her make her own choices. It’s part of the whole free person thing, and by taking it out of her hands, you’re not exactly treating her like you think she is one. You get what I’m saying?”

Gerard looked startled, and then thoughtful. “Yeah, I get it,” he answered, his gaze flitting away from Gabe to settle again on Lynz. He glanced back again within a few seconds and added, “You’re pretty good at the pep talking.”

“Yeah, well.” Gabe cracked his neck and let himself look at William. He was nodding again, listening intently, pushing his newly-clipped hair back behind his ear as it seemed determined to fall forward into his eyes.

Gabe cast a critical eye over Lynz and wondered if Gerard might be right. He hadn’t spent enough time with her to know, but she had a certain way of moving that might speak to a past, and the colorful tattoos were as clear a statement of defiance and taking control of her own body as he’d ever seen. Maybe that was why William had warmed to her as quickly as he had, when he hadn’t opened up to anyone else. Maybe he’d sensed the same thing Gerard suspected. It was good for him, anyway, to talk to someone. Maybe she’d get him to relax a little bit, share stories and start to heal whatever wounds he had that he hadn’t let Gabe see.

Hard on the heels of that thought came another. He looked sideways at Gerard sharply as soon as it occurred to him, playing the hunch. “This is a test, isn’t it?” he asked. “You asked her to check him out. See if I was telling the truth.”

Gerard’s twitch of reaction gave him away even before the faint color staining his cheekbones. “It never hurts to be careful,” he hedged. “I could still arrest you if I had to.”

Gabe grinned. “How’m I doing?”

Gerard looked like he was struggling with himself for a minute, but then he shrugged, giving in. “Alicia says he’s not afraid of you. Any of you.”

Gabe snorted. “He’s given half of us black eyes, no fucking kidding he’s not afraid of us.” He ignored Gerard’s curious look in favor of watching William, whose gaze flicked over a moment later, like he’d sensed that they were talking about him. Gabe smiled at him, lazy and harmless, and William got that evaluating expression Gabe knew to avoid up close before looking away again, distracted by Lynz and some piece of electronic machinery.

Gerard’s voice was a study in cautiousness when he offered, “He’s pretty. If you like that sort of thing.”

Gabe did like that sort of thing, as it happened – and he had noticed – but he wasn’t stupid. “He’s off-limits,” he told Gerard, straightening up and casually stretching out, getting ready to go check on the progress report. If they were hitting Shiva, he wanted to do it before too many more people became aware of who was purportedly carrying around six crates of stolen gold.

Gerard didn’t make the comparison, but he didn’t have to; his eyes were obviously on Lynz as he commented, “That’s a bit hypocritical, isn’t it?”

This time, Gabe’s smile had teeth. “It’s a little different. He still has a bill of sale, and that bill has my name on it.”

He could have been imagining it, but he thought Gerard relaxed slightly. “I suppose.”

Gabe rolled his shoulders out. “Ask her out,” he advised. Then he thought for a second and added, “Or have your brother do it, he’s a fuckin’ charmer.”

He saw Gerard’s eyes widen, suspected a few more pieces had just fallen into place, and watched that one casual statement, open to interpretation, seal their freedom.

“Travel safe,” Gerard said. “You might want to stop off along the way, get rid of some of your excess cargo. Added weight just slows a ship down.”

“Already on it,” Gabe assured him, sketching a half-assed salute. He caught Mikey’s eye as he turned – watch your back, expect questions – and laughed short and sharp at Mikey’s answering eyeroll and look of annoyance.

William straightened up when he saw Gabe approaching, but he didn’t move away from Lynz, no guilt or fear in his posture. Gabe just grinned wider.

“Nate,” he called up the boarding ramp. “How’s my ship?”

“Ready to go in five minutes,” Nate called back from somewhere within, accompanied by the heavy clank of metal-on-metal. “You should probably start settling the bill.”

“Right,” Gabe answered, turning around and jerking his chin at the rest of his lazy-ass layabouts. “Cobra crew, let’s roll.”

“Shiva,” Alex echoed, in the same tone Gabe could see on all of their faces, unhappy but resigned.

“It’s not far from here, it’s practically on our way, and it’s where the rumor mill got all fired up about unmarked gold coming out of Persephone,” Gabe said. “Until we get rid of that shit, we’ve got a big fucking target on our backs.”

“We know,” Ryland told him, apparently speaking for Alex the way he did sometimes, and vice versa. “We just have strong feelings of dislike for that particular hellhole.”

“Believe me, I’m with you,” Gabe said. “Especially right now.” He was trying not to think too much about that yet, but it couldn’t be avoided forever. At some point he needed to figure out what the fuck they were going to do with William.

“You have a contact?” Victoria asked, crossing her legs. Of all of them, she showed the least sign of being bothered by their current destination. Then again, Victoria knew how to keep things to herself.

“Travis is working on it. He’s heading there as well, should touch down an hour or so before we arrive.” It was the one reassurance he had, and he was grateful for it. Travis and his crew ran in a different direction than most of Pete’s network, but they were solid guys, no question about it. Gabe would rather have them at his back than a lot of the punks he’d worked with in the past.

“Is there a plan?” Ryland inquired, fingers steepled, focused like he always was before a drop like this one.

“Nate and Alex take the cargo to a safe place, somewhere with bruisers in close proximity. If Travis’ crew is there, you meet up with them. Victoria and Ryland are with me, I want the firepower if anything goes wrong. Once a deal is made, they go together to escort you to our buyers. No one travels alone.”

“Except for you,” Victoria remarked, “once we leave.”

Gabe smiled, a little sharp though his heart wasn’t in it. “I won’t be alone,” he told her. “We’re currently a crew of six.”

She searched his eyes, but didn’t comment. He wished he knew what the fuck she was thinking, but it probably wouldn’t be all that helpful anyway.

“Anything else?” he asked, tapping his finger on the table. “We should have three hours, give or take, so it’s time to get our heads in the game.”

That was apparently good enough for Alex. “I’ll plot a course,” Alex said, standing up. Victoria was already on her way out the door, no doubt to start on her makeup. They had a couple of hours yet, but Victoria took her roles very seriously. Nate pushed back a second later, thoughts turned inward from what Gabe could read of his expression. He headed toward the gunnery turret rather than the engine room, and not for the first time, Gabe thanked fuck for Nate. Their security would be double-checked from top to bottom by the time they made contact, which was really all they could do.

Ryland was watching him steadily. Gabe sat back and let him come around to it, which he did soon enough. “You have a backup plan?” Ryland asked, mildly enough.

“Cross my fingers, hope we get lucky, and give everyone guns just in case we don’t,” Gabe answered, tone more flippant than he felt. He knew Ryland wouldn’t buy the act, but it was part of his persona. This close to show time, he needed to start pulling it together. “I’ll come up with something.”

Ryland nodded, and Gabe stood up from the table to head back to their shared crew cabin. He had his own preparations to make.

It was times like this that reputation counted, and his was one of the best – or worst, depending on how you looked at it. He donned a silver tailored suit with the faint hint of scales patterned into the fabric, a burgundy cravat, and enough flashy rings to fit every finger. His walking stick fit itself neatly into his hand when he reached for it, to check both the hidden catch and the sharpness of the blade concealed within. He started to walk out, satisfied with his appearance, and then paused, reconsidering as he remembered the last time he’d handled this particular cane. He opted to leave it just inside the door, where he could grab it again easily before departure.

Then he went to see William.

It took a moment before William cracked open the door to his cabin at Gabe’s light knock, looking surprised and wary, which was fair enough. They hadn’t disturbed his sanctuary since he’d come aboard, leaving him to come to meals or not as he chose. Normally Gabe would respect that throughout the voyage, but these circumstances were slightly out of the ordinary.

His eyes swept Gabe up and down, and Gabe had to repress the urge to strike a pose for William’s visual appreciation. William’s gaze caught for a moment on Gabe’s gloves, the ones he never bothered to wear onboard in their relaxed social setting, and he jumped to the correct conclusion. “You’re going somewhere.”

“We,” Gabe corrected, firm and unapologetic. “We are going somewhere. Shiva. Have you heard of it?”

It was another roundabout inquiry into William’s past, and one that Gabe saw him debating before William finally opened the door another crack and said, “The Underworld.”

“One of them,” Gabe agreed. “This one’s more unpleasant than most. Unfortunately, we need to get rid of some things in a hurry, and Shiva’s the place to do it. I’m here because I need you to come along for the ride.”

“You don’t trust me,” William interpreted, and Gabe couldn’t help flashing him a quick, wry smile. He didn’t, of course, but that wasn’t the real issue.

“Shiva is full of pirates, thieves, and other outer space scumbags,” he informed William. “If anyone steals my fucking ship while we’re down there, they’re not getting you along with it. Not while I’m still breathing. That’s what I don’t trust.”

William considered him for another moment, and then opened the door the rest of the way. “What do I need to do?”

Gabe didn’t push past him into the small cabin; he gestured instead for William to go first, and waited until there was enough room before following behind. “Dress the part,” he answered belatedly, lounging against the wall next to the narrow wardrobe locker. “We can’t disguise that collar around your neck, not down there, so you’ll have to play the role. Ordinarily I’d stop off somewhere and pick up a more traditional pleasure slave costume, but we don’t have the time, and there’s nothing like that on board.”

William’s eyes flicked to the wardrobe, where Gabe suspected the virgin’s brothel tunic had been discarded to the very back of the locker. Then they flicked back to him, and Gabe was thankful he had a different plan, because he suspected he would have had to beat William near to unconscious before being able to wrestle him back into that shift.

“Not that,” he said, smiling slightly. “I’d rather not tempt fate. Or the locals. And you’re a bit too much of a temptation in that.”

William’s guard didn’t go down in the slightest. “What, then?”

Gabe opened the wardrobe locker, after a brief eyebrow-quirk at William for permission, and sorted through until he found what he was looking for. “If we can’t make you look like a traditional slave,” he explained, holding up the silk shirt, “we can at least make you look like you’re mine.”

It was arguably the best in his wardrobe; certainly one of the most expensive. The charcoal trousers he pulled out next were just as fine, and cut to hide very little.

“See Ryland if anything needs to be tailored on short notice,” Gabe offered, hunting through the locker in search of a suitable waistcoat. “He’s good at that.”

When he looked around again, vest in hand, William was holding the clothes up in front of his chest, and Gabe could read what he was thinking all too easily.

“I’ll be outside,” he said, hoping to reassure. “Just knock if you have any problems.”

There was a part of him, although he refused to acknowledge it, that wanted very badly to stay, to watch William undress and drape Gabe’s silk shirt over his shoulders like a second skin. There was a part of him even further down that wanted to place his hands over William’s waist and feel the silk warm as it absorbed his body heat.

“Outside,” he told himself firmly, pacing a few steps down the corridor. He distracted himself by going through the plan again, step-by-step; who would be where and when and what might go wrong.

Then William opened the door again and Gabe forgot all of it.

It was ridiculous to be aroused by the sight of another man wearing his clothes, but there was something primal about it, knowing that William was surrounded by his scent and how the cloth felt against his skin. He told himself firmly to stop staring, and then again when it didn’t work the first time.

The shirt was just the right color for William’s skin, and the vest fit around his waist like a dream. Gabe clasped his hands behind his back to keep from touching and asked, as casually as he could manage, “How do they fit?”

William plucked delicately at his shoulder. “The shirt’s a little…billowy.”

“It does that,” Gabe affirmed, giving in and using the excuse of wardrobe critique to run his eyes over William full-length one more time. “The waistcoat will pin it down, it looks fine.”

More than fine. More like Gabe wanted to start taking it all off again, preferably with his teeth.

“And the trousers…” William began, but with a certain note of resignation that meant he already suspected what Gabe was going to say next. Gabe chuckled.

“Yes, they are meant to fit like that. You look good.” Really, though, there was only so much free rein he could give himself as an excuse for staring at William’s crotch. He pulled his eyes up, and saw William watching him steadily. Busted.

He cleared his throat and said, “There is just one more thing.”

William froze in the act of closing the cabin door behind him, suddenly alert again. Gabe was reminded of a skittish, fleet-footed herbivore abruptly spotting a predator, and hated himself immediately for the comparison.

He drew the thin, shimmering length of chain out of his inside pocket and held it up for William to see. “The planetary law on Shiva states that no slaves are permitted to roam free outside of private residences.”

William stared at him. Gabe didn’t back down or move a muscle, holding his ground until William said slowly, “You want to put me on a leash.”

“Think of it as an accessory,” Gabe offered, but his attempt at levity fell flat in the face of William’s unchanging expression. He offered the clasp-end of the chain up for William’s inspection. “It won’t be locked, you’ll be able to get it off in a hurry if you need to. I’ll show you how to release it.”

William kept staring at him. Gabe supposed the idea of being paraded around on the end of a jewelry chain as private property wasn’t one that made itself particularly appealing. Especially when similar things had undoubtedly happened before, in less playacted circumstances.

He sensed a fight coming on, one that they didn’t have time for, and spoke firmly enough to hopefully head it off at the pass. “I can’t leave you here and I can’t bring you along without this. It’s either the chain or I knock you over the head with something and carry you over my shoulder, but this way seems a lot easier for everyone.”

William held his gaze for another full minute, long enough that Gabe was starting to tense up and think he might actually have to resort to plan B. Then William tilted his chin up deliberately and held it there, granting Gabe access to the collar around his throat.

Gabe stepped in, nearly chest-to-chest in order to manipulate the clasp and ensure that any unexpected pressure wouldn’t pull the collar sideways into its secondary function as a choke-chain. He clipped the leash to William’s collar and drew the gleaming chain through his fingers, barely brushing William’s skin with the backs of his knuckles.

“You can hold onto this for now,” he said, and wanted to smack himself in the face for how his voice sounded, low and gravelly in his chest. William hadn’t broken eye contact, and was currently regarding him far more knowingly than Gabe would have preferred. He didn’t make any move to take the leash, so Gabe coiled it and tucked the slithering length of metal into the side pocket of William’s borrowed waistcoat.

“We have about two and a half hours,” he said, clearing his throat and stepping back, out of William’s personal space. “I’ll see you then.”

He didn’t look back as he walked away, but he could feel William’s eyes on him all the same, all the way to the command bridge.

Everyone – with the sole, notable exception of William – was ready when Gabe joined them in the lounge, grim-faced and waiting. “Everyone knows the drill,” Gabe told them, appropriating his white leather holster from the tangle of gear on the table and fitting it beneath his coat. “Strap on.”

Victoria was dressed to kill, as always, a vision in silk as dangerous as she was beautiful. “Six guns?” she asked, arching an eyebrow in Gabe’s direction.

“You have to be fucking kidding,” he responded, pausing in the act of tightening a buckle. “The goal is to get out of this alive, not get taken out by one of our own before we leave the boarding ramp. And no knives, either,” he added before she could ask. “I’m going to have him on a leash; the first thing he’ll do is slit my fucking throat with it.”

Victoria had the cool look that he knew from experience meant she didn’t approve of his decisions, but he was the fucking captain, after all, so she just slid the sixth pistol back into the weapons rack. She left his on the far edge of the table, further evidence that she was put out with him, but Gabe wasn’t going to start a debate over this now. In his opinion, it wasn’t negotiable.

William appeared before anyone could say anything anyway, with the kind of convenient timing that made Gabe wonder how much of the previous conversation he’d overheard. Ryland whistled, somehow appreciative without sounding lecherous, and said, “Looking good. I like the shoes.”

“He likes the shoes because he bought the shoes,” Gabe said, sliding his pistol into its holster and double-checking the safety. “Are we all set? Let’s do this.”

Ryland coughed discreetly, as if Gabe had forgotten. As if he could forget. He cursed Ryland’s sense of the theatrical and held out a hand to William, palm up.

“If you please,” he requested. William’s eyes darted around the group before settling on Gabe with an all-new level of simmering resentment, but he provided the looped end of the leash regardless, which Gabe curled loosely in his hand. “Now,” he resumed, clearing his throat. “As I was saying. Shall we?”

They didn’t make it ten feet from the ship before being intercepted by a runner, which Gabe had half-expected. Enough people would know by now what they were rumored to be dealing that the usual suspects would have been watching the docks. He knew this particular runner, as well, or at least the colors she wore, which made her message less than surprising.

“The Painted One seeks an audience,” she informed him, hands clasped behind her back in formal stance.

“I’m charmed,” Gabe responded, although he was really nothing of the sort and didn’t bother trying to pretend otherwise. “Tell her I’ll join her shortly.”

“Just the person we want to deal with,” Alex put in as the runner took off again, stepping up next to Gabe’s elbow.

“Could be worse,” Gabe replied, watching the runner weave through the crowds milling around the edge of the dock. “She has the funds and she’s not likely to piss us about.”

“She’s a slave dealer,” Victoria spoke up, and Gabe tried to reconcile the lack of censure in her voice with her words until he realized she was speaking for William’s benefit. “We try to avoid dealings with her whenever we can.”

“Unless by ‘dealings’ you mean cutting the ground out from under her ring of operations, in which case we try to do that as often as possible,” Gabe added. “She doesn’t know that part, though.”

“We hope,” Ryland remarked mildly.

“If she did, I have a feeling we’d already be dead by now,” Gabe said honestly. “All right, let’s split up. We’ll send for you guys as soon as the deal’s made.”

Nate nodded acknowledgement and steered his hover-lift toward the other side of the dock, peeling off in the direction of Travis’ ship. Alex followed behind him, and Victoria and Ryland closed ranks around Gabe like an honor-guard, his very own armed escort to The Painted One’s favorite place to hold court; the gambling den known as The Domino.

The games were in full swing when they arrived, faux-ivory tiles clicking together and scraping over the surface of tables as players cast wagers and dealt new hands. Gabe gave the tables a cursory glance as he passed; tiles weren’t his game of choice, but it never hurt to see who was playing and how well. Obtaining knowledge was rarely a waste of effort.

Madame Cali, better known to many as The Painted One, was awaiting them on a crimson divan when her bruisers waved them through the beaded curtain into the back room. She had two more men flanking her, bodyguards whose faces had changed over the years but whose clothing did not. One in black from head-to-toe, and one in white, with a splash of opposing color at their breast pockets in the form of a handkerchief square. Yin and Yang.

Madame Cali herself was not nearly so monochrome. The crimson of her divan was echoed in her rouge, and her eye shadow was streaked in vivid shades of blue, green and purple. Her dress was made of layered silks, bright as the plumage of a tropical bird and overlapping in layers that made her look like a living watercolor. According to rumor, all of the dye made it harder to see the occasional blood spatter.

“Captain Saporta,” Yin the bodyguard said after Gabe had entered and stopped a few prudent feet away from Madame Cali’s divan. “What a pleasure. The Painted One has heard you may have business to conduct.”

“The pleasure is all mine,” Gabe lied through his smiling teeth, sketching a brief bow for the sake of courtesy and addressing the woman lounging on the divan. “And I believe that is the case, yes. Six standard crates of unmarked gold from Persephone, full weight and pure.”

“You’ll want close to market value, surely,” Yin said, as Madame Cali shifted, reclining on one elbow. “With an understandable deduction taken for fence charges and the little matter of it appearing in an officer’s government report.”

“I’ll want full market value,” Gabe corrected, still smiling, “as you don’t need to fence gold unless you don’t have the facilities to melt it down, which I believe you do, and that report has no bearing now that I’m here. No one in the official ranks will know where it went, and it hasn’t been tagged or interfered with in any way.”

Madame Cali considered him, and her finger lifted slightly from its nest of cushions. “Ninety percent,” Yin offered, “since The Painted One suspects you want to get rid of it in a hurry.”

“Ninety-eight,” he countered. “It’s a big planet, and I’m not in that much of a hurry.”

Madame Cali’s hand lifted again, two fingers this time. “Ninety-four,” Yin bargained.

“Done.” It was better than he’d been willing to settle for, and still more than enough to cover the expense of this trip. He held up a hand and she mirrored it, the traditional exchange of a deal agreed upon and secured. “My people will have the crates delivered to you right away.”

“The Painted One’s people will have to inspect it first, of course,” Yin reminded him. Madame Cali’s brightly-painted eyelids flashed as they dipped in a slow blink. “You understand the necessity.”

“Of course,” he agreed. “At your leisure; we’re in no rush.”

She nodded, and he turned his head just enough to jerk his chin slightly toward the door. Victoria and Ryland melted back into the other room, the faint tinkling of the beaded curtain his only confirmation of their departure.

William didn’t move, but Gabe was keenly aware of him holding himself tense at Gabe’s side, the length of chain dipping slack between them. With their business concluded and Yin handling the transfer of funds, Madame Cali’s attention unfortunately turned there as well, her eyes roaming over William with obvious appreciation.

She beckoned her bodyguard, and Yang stepped in and bent to let her whisper in his ear. When he straightened again, there was a small smile playing over Madame Cali’s face.

“The Painted One would like to commend you on your latest acquisition,” Yang said. The chain twitched slightly as William tensed; Gabe willed him to stay calm even as he pasted on another false smile.

“He is something, isn’t he? I confess I haven’t had much of a chance to show him off yet, so I’m glad he hasn’t gone unnoticed.” Gabe wrapped another loop of chain around his fist, taking up the slack and drawing William’s leash taut. William belatedly took the hint, edging a step closer to his side where Gabe spent a moment pretending to look him over fondly. “The compliment is doubled coming from you, of course. You have a professional’s eye.”

“Perhaps,” Yang said, “this could be an opportunity to conduct further business.”

Gabe kept his smile in place with effort, to hide the flash of uncertainty. “I’m not sure what other business we might have,” he replied honestly. If she was looking to sell, he might have enough money with him to buy, but he’d never tried to take on two or more slaves at once. It was too risky by far, and they didn’t have the space for it. Not to mention, for security reasons they tended to keep liberated slaves from making each other’s acquaintance. There was too much of a threat to Pete’s network otherwise.

“The Painted One has developed an interest in your toy,” Yang said, in a matter-of-fact tone that made Gabe’s blood turn to ice water. “She offers you one and a half times fair market value for him, with the understanding that you may have formed a sentimental attachment and a material bonus in kind.”

William jerked; Gabe tightened his hold on the leash automatically, tugging slightly to keep William from trying to bolt. If he did, neither of them would make it out of here in one piece.

“With apologies,” he said smoothly, keeping his eyes on Madame Cali, “he’s not for sale.”

Madame Cali glanced sideways at Yang, her eyes slits surrounded by the bright paint of her makeup. “The Painted One says that everyone has a price,” Yang told him. “She wishes to know yours for the slave.”

“Sorry,” Gabe said, looping the chain around his fist again. William was forced to follow it, although the stiff way he was holding himself meant he clearly didn’t want to do anything of the sort. Gabe bared his teeth in a smile for Madame Cali. “I’m afraid I have a…sentimental attachment.”

“You misunderstand,” Yang said. “The Painted One is asking for your price. If you do not offer one, she will accept him as a gift.”

Gabe’s grip tightened further, and he felt William fighting it, straining against his hold. He could say something wildly outrageous, of course, name a number so high it would be folly to accept, but Madame Cali had resources well beyond his knowledge, and the means to entertain a whim. She might very well accept whatever he offered, and then he’d be bound to it. He couldn’t take the chance.

On top of that, and he knew it was stubborn and foolish of him; he couldn’t bring himself to put a price on William’s life. Not even one stratospherically high.

“The Painted One will have to accept my sincere apologies,” Gabe said, stalling now for all he was worth. They were outnumbered at the present time, but once Ryland and Victoria returned with Nate and Alex, it would even out the score. He was starting to regret not going along with Victoria’s preference and giving William a gun. “He really is not for sale. And not to be given away, either.”

Yang’s expression didn’t change, nor the tone of his voice, but he suddenly seemed a great deal more threatening. “The Painted One offers you one last chance to change your mind.”

Gabe had a bad, bad feeling about where this was going. He looked Madame Cali in the eye and said clearly, “No deal.”

Her eyes flashed, almost as bright as her silks, and that was really all the warning he had before the bodyguards were moving. Yang caught William by the arms and tried to pull him away, and Yin was right behind him on the other side, raising a fist to convince Gabe of the error of his ways.

Gabe tossed William the other end of his leash just in time to dodge Yin’s punch, ducking under his arm to swing his walking stick around and smack Yin solidly in the ribs. William yelled something, kicking out as Yang dragged him back, his arms twisted up behind him. Gabe reversed his hold on the walking stick and brought it around to clock Yang solidly with the gold cobra head.

Yin caught him around the chest, pinning his arm and elbowing him in the side of the head hard enough to make his ears ring. Gabe headbutted him and broke free, spinning around for another shot at punching Yin in the face. He heard Yang yelp, and had to grin at the memory of just how unforgiving William could be in a fight. He hit Yin twice, got a punch to the stomach in return that made him gag, and held on to his walking stick with a death-grip when Yin tried to break his hold and his wrist all at the same time.

Gabe kicked his leg out from under him, swung the stick and took out Yin’s kneecaps with one clean blow. Yang tried to intervene, pulling an arm back to punch him in the face again, and Gabe dodged that one as well, sidestepping clear of Yin on the floor. Yang followed him around, which unfortunately brought him back in range of William.

William wrapped several feet of chain around Yang’s neck and hauled back on it, planting a knee in Yang’s back to force him down to his knees. Yang choked, scrabbling at his constricted airway, and William wrapped the chain around his fists on both sides and grimly yanked it back even harder.

As inclined as he currently was to let William just kill the bastard, their lives would be a lot harder running from a murder charge. Gabe hit the catch on his walking stick and held the blade to Yin’s throat. “We can still walk away from this,” he said, stepping on the back of Yin’s neck to keep him from going anywhere. “Let’s not be stupid.”

Madame Cali’s scarlet lips thinned, and she pulled a demi-pistol from beneath the cushions of her divan. It looked like she was going for stupid, then. And Gabe didn’t have enough time to go for his own gun.

“Hold up,” a new voice said behind them, and Gabe nearly cut Yin’s throat by accident when he jerked in surprise. Yin gurgled, a red line appearing on the side of his neck, and Gabe shifted his weight to put more pressure on Yin’s spine. The newcomer appeared in his peripheral vision a second later, gun-first with the barrel pointed at Madame Cali, and Gabe nearly sagged with relief.

“Travie,” he said, voice shaking slightly in the aftermath of adrenaline, “fancy meeting you here.”

“The inspection business was getting boring,” Travis told him, gun still trained on a fiercely scowling Madame Cali. “I thought I’d poke my head in and see if you could use a hand.”

“Glad you did,” Gabe said honestly. “Everyone else is outside?”

“Ready and waiting,” Travis confirmed. “You got the money in the bag?”

A glance at his data pad, stolen carefully once he was certain Yin wasn’t moving, confirmed the transaction had gone through. “I think it’s safe to say our business here is concluded.”

“In that case,” Travis said, “I think it’s best if we leave now.”

Madame Cali glared at them for a few more seconds before slowly lowering her demi-pistol. Gabe lifted his foot off of Yin’s neck, stepping back slowly. William seemed reluctant to release his own captive, but finally uncoiled the chain and kicked Yang forward onto the floor in a gasping heap.

“Sounds like a plan,” Gabe agreed, very gently untangling the looped end of the chain from William’s grasp. William fought him for a moment, but gave in when Gabe squeezed his hand, surrendering control of his leash. Gabe saluted Travis with the chain and said, “I think I could use a drink.”

“I hope there wasn’t any trouble on your end,” Gabe said as soon as they were up the boarding ramp and onto the ship, “because I created enough for all of us.”

“Not a bit,” Ryland replied. “Smooth as silk. Largely, I believe, thanks to our armed escort.”

“I take it we’re leaving in a hurry?” Alex inquired, already heading to the navigation station.

“Get us the fuck outta here,” Gabe confirmed. “We may have company if we hang around too long; I pissed off Her Paintedness in a big way.”

“Let us take point,” Travis said, looming over Victoria’s shoulder at the radio. “We’ve got more guns.”

“Speaking of which,” Victoria commented, arch, “shouldn’t you be on your ship giving orders?”

“I thought I’d hang around with you kids for a while,” Travis answered. “Kick back, enjoy the many toasts in my honor, being the hero of the day and all. We can rendezvous later.”

“You have my sincere gratitude for saving our asses,” Gabe told him. “Your timing is perfect as always.”

“Anytime,” Travis replied. “Although I don’t mean that literally. I would actually like to keep a few business contacts who aren’t after my head.”

“We have clearance to depart,” Alex called down.

Nate’s voice echoed up from the engine room. “She’s good to go.”

“Ready, set, blast the fuck off,” Gabe ordered. The engines roared underneath his feet, and then there was the familiar half-second of vertigo as his stomach dropped while the rest of him floated upwards, only to meet with a jarring thump as the artificial gravity kicked in.

“No sign of pursuit,” Alex reported after a few minutes. “For whatever that’s worth. They don’t really need to track us to be able to find us again later.”

“Let’s hope they’re not looking,” Gabe said. “And if that’s settled, then I’m fucking serious about that drink.”

Travis joined them in the lounge, claiming their sixth chair at the end of the table, which left William hovering watchfully in the doorway. Travis looked him over through mellow, half-opened eyes. “New guy. I like your style. Choke ‘em with their own fucking chains.”

“Actually, that was my chain,” Gabe said, pulling out their most expensive bottle of swill from the cabinet. “And his style’s not nearly as much fun when you’re on the receiving end.” He grinned at William, uncorking the bottle and setting it with a solid thunk in the middle of the table. “Nice to finally fight on the same side with you.”

Travis gave William an impressed look. “McCoy,” Travis introduced himself, holding out a fist. “Anybody who gives Gabe a black eye is a friend of mine.”

William eyed him cautiously, then stepped forward and raised his own fist to give Travis’ a tentative bump. “Beckett.”

That was certainly unexpected information, but not unwelcome. Gabe made a mental note to do some homework later on, and caught Ryland doing the same thing. He took a long swig from the bottle, skipping over the pleasantry of a glass, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Here,” he said, circling the table to approach William. “Let me take care of that for you.”

William went very still when Gabe stepped into his space, but he didn’t flinch back, holding steady and letting Gabe unclasp the chain fastened to his collar, his breath soft and distracting on Gabe’s neck.

“Got it,” he announced, more flustered than he could account for after one brief drink, holding up the clasp as evidence. William just watched him levelly, unmoving, the heat of his body practically radiating through his silk shirt. Gabe stayed where he was, for just long enough to imagine that he could count William’s eyelashes from here, fanning out to frame his eyes, warm hazel with flecks of green and gold.

William stared him down, and Gabe blinked first. He took a step back, reaching for the fraying threads of his composure, and turned back to the table. Travis was watching him, lazily curious, and so was Victoria. Gabe ignored them and stole the bottle out of Nate’s hand.

“To surviving another fucking run on that hellhole Shiva,” he toasted, coming up with a glass and splashing a liberal amount into the bowl. “And to Travis motherfucking McCoy.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Travis seconded. “And then we’ll break out the first aid kit, because my momma taught me it’s not polite to go bleeding at the dinner table.”

Gabe dabbed at the side of his face, surprised. That bastard Yin must have been wearing a ring. He glanced automatically at William, looking him over for injuries, and saw a glimpse of reddened skin peeking out from beneath his shirt cuff. “You too,” he said, pointing at William. “Shirt off.”

Travis’ eyebrows jumped, but he merely looked amused when he said, “Or you could just roll your sleeves up. C’mere, take a seat. You get the hero treatment too; these other lazy bastards just pushed a few crates around.”

Victoria set the first aid kit on the table, and Gabe dug out a few antiseptic swabs. “How bad is it?” he asked, looking up at William with a roll of bandages in his hand.

Travis waved him off. “You take care of your own pretty face, I’ve got this. Sleeves,” he told William, who seemed off-balance enough by the attention to comply without a fuss. He rolled up his sleeves, letting Travis take hold of his wrists and turn them over to inspect the damage done by chain digging into softer flesh. Travis made a few humming noises, thumb rubbing over a thin pink line on William’s forearm, and William – still looking undecided, but not raising any objection – sat meekly and submitted to his ministrations.

Gabe wasn’t aware he was staring until Ryland elbowed him discreetly in his bruised side and cleared his throat. “Do you want help with that?” he asked, and Gabe couldn’t remember what the fuck he’d been doing a minute ago.

He looked down at his hands, at the bandages and antiseptic swabs, and said, “No, I got this.” Then he left for the toilet before he did anything stupid like fight Travis for the privilege of holding William’s slender, delicate wrists and touching all of that soft bare skin.

He really was losing it. There was only one thing for it, he decided, and that was to get totally shitfaced on piss-sour wine until he stopped thinking about the way William had looked at him when Gabe had threaded a finger through his collar to unclasp the leash.

His crew was happy enough to go along with that plan. In grand style, too, because having Travis aboard made it a party, and they had enough to celebrate today just being alive. It didn’t seem to soften Gabe’s awareness of William, his sleeves still rolled up to expose the chafed red rings around his wrists, and his shirt left unbuttoned at the top to expose the fine gold chain encircling his neck. Even when Gabe was so drunk the room was spinning, William’s face didn’t so much as blur at the edges.

Travis stayed up with him long past the time the others had passed out or gone to sleep, with Nate’s gentle snoring a lullaby in the background. William had fallen asleep on the deck, curled up in the corner with his head pillowed on one of his arms, face obscured by strands of tousled hair.

Gabe looked away and saw Travis watching him, lips quirked up into a knowing smile. "You want to fuck him," Travis said wisely.

"Fucking hell," Gabe replied tiredly, although not in disagreement. Their number one rule was don't fuck the sex slaves. It was too much past trauma, too many fucked-up head-games, and all-around bad karma.

They’d all been tempted at some point, doing what they did. Pretty boys and girls in tight clothing who looked up to them as heroes, who were willing to do anything for them and often made that quite clear. It was hard to turn down that sort of offer, unless you constantly reminded yourself that it was really fucking wrong to take advantage of these kids, that they’d already been through hell and deserved someone who gave a damn and showed them an ounce of respect for once in their miserable lives. Gabe and his crew watched themselves, they watched each other, and they didn’t fuck it up.

William was different, though. His spirit wasn’t broken; he didn’t look at Gabe with hero-worship in his eyes or keep his gaze downcast. He didn’t ever help to remind Gabe that he’d been a slave, and that some part of him might look at Gabe as his master. He’d never had sex twisted into an obligation, or a form of currency that he could use as a bargaining tool.

That had to be why Gabe was so fucking tempted now. That had to be the difference.

"He's a virgin," Gabe said. "That makes it different, right?"

Travis just shook his head at Gabe’s creepy-ass perversion and lack of moral fiber. “Totally, bro,” he replied. “I’m sure that means no one’s ever touched him without his consent or fucked with his head. Besides that chain around his neck, he’s practically a free man.”

Fucking Travis. “I fucking hate you sometimes,” Gabe said. He dropped his wine-addled head onto the table and mumbled, "Fuck my life."

They saw Travis off sometime around mid-afternoon, when their collective hangover had waned enough to be able to work the docking controls. “Send my love to Pete,” Travis said by way of farewell, and Gabe reached out to bump fists with him before he ducked through the hatch.

“You look remarkably happy for someone who claimed earlier to be dying of an alien insect invasion through his eyeballs,” Ryland commented as Gabe helped himself to the greasiest late lunch he could manage on a ship filled with food that was almost entirely frozen, freeze-dried or powdered.

“What’s not to be happy about, really?” Gabe answered, dumping vegetable cheese onto the mess he’d concocted. “The sun is shining on some planet somewhere, we’re a few days out from Pete’s base, and no one’s shooting at us.”

“And Travis just left,” Ryland pointed out, crossing his infernally long legs – and Gabe should know, all right – as he leaned back against the counter.

“We’ll see him again soon,” Gabe said magnanimously. “I mean, I’m a little bummed, but…wait.” He turned around to face Ryland, squinting suspiciously. “What?”

Ryland’s puppy-dog innocent face was no match for Gabe’s powers of intellect, which was why when he said, “I’m just saying, our dear friend William seemed rather taken with him,” Gabe knew exactly where this was headed.

“Don’t say it,” he warned, and Ryland did the wide-eyed, pursed-mouth thing that Gabe hadn’t fallen for in over a year now.

The bitch of it was that Ryland was right, and as much as Gabe loved Travis like a brother, it was slightly frustrating to watch William open up to him like a flower turning its petals toward the goddamn sun. Travis had a way of treating slaves like they were exactly the same as everyone else, and while it confused a lot of them at first, it also tended to put them at ease. Gabe wasn’t jealous, exactly, because he knew Travis’ type, and he didn’t think the vibe William was giving off where Travis was concerned was in any way romantic, it was just…all right, maybe he was jealous.

He stuck his thumb into his mouth and sucked off the veggie cheese stuck to it in a decidedly cross fashion. Ryland reached out and patted his arm sympathetically.

“There, there,” he said. “Just because he likes Travis more than he likes you…”

“And Lynz,” Gabe reminded him, wagging his wet thumb. “The mechanic back at the station. He liked her, too. Am I doing something wrong?”

“Maybe it’s not what you’re doing,” Ryland said with exaggerated kindness. “Maybe it’s that he genuinely dislikes you.”

“Fuck off,” Gabe told him, but without any real venom in it. He was too sulky to be vengeful. Ryland had clouded that theoretical sunshine right out of some unknown planet’s sky.

“You did buy him from a brothel,” Ryland pointed out. “That has to create some trust issues.”

“If I can get over him trying to gouge my eyes out with his fingernails,” Gabe retorted, “he can fucking get over me saving his ass from slavery.”

Ryland hummed his annoying wise, thoughtful hum. “It could have something to do with what you’re trying to get into,” he suggested, “his head or his pants.”

Gabe straightened, suspicions returning. “Did Victoria put you up to this?” he demanded. “Did she say something?”

Ryland laughed his annoying wiseass laugh and pushed off from the counter. “I’m going back to bed,” he said. “Call me if anything interesting happens. Anything I would deem interesting,” he clarified. “Otherwise I will mutiny, eject you from the waste chute and appoint myself captain.”

Gabe grumbled something uncomplimentary about Ryland, Ryland’s parentage, and Ryland’s mom, and then settled in to eat his sandwich.

The sandwich did a lot to restore his mood, as well as beating back the last vestiges of his hangover. He was almost back to being positively cheerful by the time he headed down to the crew cabin, whistling along the way, which was when the door to the captain’s cabin opened and William appeared.

Gabe never knew whether to chase these opportunities or give their passengers more space, but he felt as though he’d been giving William plenty of space lately, so he settled for, “Hey.”

“Hey,” William replied, with a quick, shy smile that Gabe had never seen before, and which instantly caused his stomach to do something flippy and roiling that he couldn’t blame on the greasy sandwich. William ducked his head a little, looking almost self-conscious, and caught Gabe’s eyes looking up through his lashes. “Would you come in?”

Danger, danger, the smart part of Gabe’s brain warned. The part that controlled his mouth said, “Yeah, of course.”

William smiled again and stepped back, fingers trailing down the side of the doorframe before dropping away. Gabe followed him in, still making a cursory attempt to be vigilant, especially when William stepped around him and leaned back against the door until it clicked shut.

“What’s going on?” Gabe asked, trying to sound sympathetic and attentive and all that other bullshit Alex was so good at.

William took a deep, slow breath. For the first time, Gabe registered that he was half-dressed. Enough for strictest propriety, perhaps, but his shirt was untucked and loose over his hips, and he wasn’t wearing a vest or jacket. Or an undershirt, Gabe noted, as part of his brain made a faint popping, fizzling noise. Gabe could see his skin through the white fabric; the dark circle of a nipple.

“I want you to do something for me,” William said, bracing himself with his arms behind him against the door. The position pulled his shirt taut across his chest, straining the first fastened button. Gabe’s eyes located the other nipple, and then he yanked them back up again, to William’s face.

This was almost certainly a trick, or a request for something completely outlandish, like asking Gabe to blow up a space station because the bastards who’d forced William into slavery were on it. Gabe couldn’t do that. Well, he could, conceivably, but he wouldn’t. Probably. It might depend on who else was on the station.

“How can I help?” he asked, to forestall the part of his logical thought process that was currently plotting out ways to make such a thing happen. Hopefully it wouldn’t be that drastic.

William somehow melted back against the door, his head rolling lightly on his shoulders so that he was looking at Gabe through heavy-lidded eyes. His hips cocked forward, just enough for Gabe’s eyes to go straight to them, like a pin to a magnet.

“I want you,” William said, “to go to bed with me.”

This was clearly a dream. Or, more likely, Gabe was still drunk. That had to be it. “What?” he said anyway, like a dope. Possibly it would make more sense the second time around.

William pushed away from the door, hips-first, and his center of gravity was low, low and seductive as he walked forward. “I want you to go to bed with me,” he repeated, and reached out to touch Gabe’s waist.

Gabe might have been half-addled by lust, but he wasn’t stupid. He caught William’s wrists and twisted them away from him to each side, which brought William stumbling a half-step closer, pressed against Gabe’s chest.

“I’m charmed,” he said. “Really, you have no idea. But I’m not going to let you play that game on me, no matter how well you play it, so you can drop the knife.”

William twitched; trying to spread his hands. “No knife,” he said, quiet and serious. “You can check. You can strip-search me, if you want.”

Oh, fuck. Gabe did want, as a matter of fact, and certain portions of his anatomy agreed heartily with that plan of action, but he told them to shut up and keep quiet. “Is it hidden in the bed?” he murmured, twisting William’s wrists back a little farther so that he could brush William’s sides with the backs of his hands, check his waistband and side seams for a thin blade. “Is that why you’re so willing? Did you hide it under the pillow?”

William turned his head slightly, closed his eyes. “We can go wherever you want,” he said. “You pick the place.”

There was tension in his face, the origin of which Gabe couldn’t determine until he shifted again and William gave a little hiss, pain drawing his features taut and making his breath catch, and Gabe belatedly remembered the gashes around his wrists from the wrapped length of chain.

“Sorry,” he murmured, releasing his hold. His hands skimmed over William’s silhouette, tracing his edges with the lightest touch until he was satisfied William was telling the truth, and there was no weapon hidden on him that Gabe could find. William stood still and let him do it, waiting patiently until Gabe let his hands fall away and asked, “Why?”

William took a step forward, and with no room between them Gabe was forced to take one back or end up falling on his ass. William’s hands smoothed up over Gabe’s shirt, sliding in a barely-there caress over the muscles of his chest. “That woman,” he said, and Gabe had to wrack his brain to remember who the fuck that woman might be, “she wanted me as a bedslave, didn’t she?”

Pieces fell belatedly into place. “The Painted Bitch?” Gabe reached up to stop William’s wandering, distracting hands from sliding over his chest, but avoiding his wrists meant settling his hands over William’s, their fingers tangling together. “She won’t come after us. She might be pissed, but there’s no way she’ll go charging across space after you just because I ticked her off.”

“And if you’d been arrested and I’d been auctioned,” William said, “the same thing would have happened.”

William was so close Gabe could smell him, the fresh, clean scent of his skin and the hint of fading soap in his hair. He was having some trouble remembering what they were talking about. Pleasure slaves, shit. Focus. “We wouldn’t have let it happen,” Gabe assured him, trying not to notice the way William’s hips were nudging up against his. He took another step backward, but William moved with him, staying pressed up close.

“And if we get stopped again,” William continued. “If something happens, and you lose me.”

Gabe caught William’s hands, curled them gently but firmly in his. “We won’t,” he promised. “Nothing will happen. We’re only a few days out.”

“I’m valuable because I haven’t done this yet, aren’t I?” William pressed, swaying forward and forcing Gabe another step back. “That’s why you picked me up. If I’m not registered as a virgin anymore, I’ll lose my value. They won’t want me as much.”

“Woah, woah,” Gabe interrupted. He’d meant it to sound much more firm, but the scent of William’s hair was going to his head and it came out soft, soothing. “At least you’re protected by that right now. The only thing that would change if we fucked is that instead of being held for someone with money, you’d be thrown straight into the workforce to take fifteen or more clients a day.”

He hadn’t intended to scare William, necessarily, but he was at least going to be upfront about it. William’s eyes were wide and liquid, and Gabe was hanging onto his convictions by the skin of his teeth.

“If you want me to change your registry, I can,” Gabe murmured. His thumbs had somehow begun rubbing gently over William’s knuckles in slow, erratic figure eights. “What the fuck determines virginity, anyway? Handjobs, blowjobs? You fucking someone? Someone fucking you? It’s not like there’s a test you’ll have to pass.”

William had taken advantage of his distraction – soft skin, hazel eyes, parted lips – to move him one more step backward, and Gabe realized his mistake a second before his calves hit the edge of the bed. He locked his knees, staying upright through sheer force of will, and cradled William’s hands between their chests with one hand while the other encircled William’s waist to help him keep his balance. Well, mostly to help him keep his balance.

“Gabe,” William said softly. “I don’t want my first time to be in a brothel.”

Fuck. Fuck. “I’m not going to let that happen,” Gabe said, or at least that was what he was going to say, before William took advantage of his mouth opening to surge forward and kiss him.

He knew what kissing was, at least, Gabe noted with a very distant part of his brain, one that was still taking notes and drawing conclusions while the rest of him gave in and focused on kissing. William wasn’t all that experienced, perhaps, but he was a quick learner, his tongue following Gabe’s and mimicking his motions.

Gabe finally made himself pull away, stopped rubbing the soft material covering the small of William’s back and forced his eyes open. “William,” he murmured, with longing so thick he could practically taste it, but William didn’t let him get any further, pushing forward just enough to knock Gabe off-balance and bring them both down on top of the pallet.

“You can check the bed first, if you want,” William breathed against his mouth. “Search it for weapons. I’ll wait.”

“William,” Gabe groaned, both arms circling William’s waist and accidentally pulling him closer instead of pushing him away.

William’s mouth opened over his again, warm and insistent. “Please,” he whispered before sliding into another kiss, suckling Gabe’s tongue and cradling Gabe’s face in both hands.

If this was a test, he was failing it. “Stop,” Gabe meant to say, but it was lost in William’s mouth as he bore them both down, landing softly on his back with Gabe half-on top of him. And then there was more, there was the cradle of William’s hips and his chest arching up against Gabe’s, there was his hair fanned out over the pillow and his eyelashes fluttering as they kissed, there was the soft catch of his breath when Gabe gave into temptation and bit down on his lip so, so gently.

“Fuck,” Gabe whispered, his mouth drifting down the side of William’s face, nuzzling in against his throat. The gold slave collar was cold against his chin when he stopped, took a deep breath and tried futilely to memorize the scent, the feel, the taste of this moment.

He sat up, and William’s eyes opened wide.

“I can’t do this,” he said with sincere regret. “Although I fucking wish I could. But I’m not going to be the reason you can’t look at me anymore, after you’re free.”

William was frozen still, staring up at him. Gabe damned himself a little more; reached out and brushed a stray lock of hair from where it had fallen over one eye, caressed William’s cheek with his knuckles.

“Sorry,” he said quietly. “But if you really want to do this, you’re going to have to find someone else.”

It took every ounce of willpower he had to pull away from the heat and promise of William’s body, to tug his shirt back down and tear his eyes off of the bare skin showing at William’s hip above his waistband. William still hadn’t moved, although his eyes followed Gabe as he moved to the door, wide and shocked.

“Sorry,” Gabe repeated, and closed the door behind him.

Breakfast the next day wasn’t nearly as awkward as Gabe had feared. He’d half-expected William to avoid him, or start skipping meals, or call him out with false accusations in front of his entire crew. Instead, William joined them at the table, conversed quietly when addressed by someone, and only caught Gabe’s eyes once with a lingering look that Gabe wasn’t sure how to interpret.

He saw Victoria making up her mind to corner him, but Gabe wasn’t in the fucking mood to defend himself, so he headed up to the radio room. There was a computer in there with a search function and access to more databases than Gabe could even count. It was more than likely he’d come up with several dozen possibilities, but he had enough information to narrow it down. High-class, probably upper-tier society if he’d been saving himself for marriage, late teens or possibly early twenties, no children, missing within the past month. It probably wouldn’t be a long list.

He got as far as Beckett, Wi before he stopped and dropped his head down onto the console. Fucking fuck. He couldn’t do it. He could, but he wasn’t going to. Damn him for being such a moral bastard, anyway.

He deleted the letters from the search box and called Pete instead.

“Gabey,” Pete said when he answered, grinning. “How’s my favorite slave master today?”

“It’s been a whole day since the last crisis and nothing’s gone wrong yet, so I can’t complain,” Gabe responded.

“Looking forward to getting back?” Pete asked.

“You have no fucking idea,” Gabe told him seriously.

Pete’s head cocked, and his smile slid into something poorly approximating a leer. “Miss me that much?”

Gabe snorted. “I miss showers with real water,” he said. “And beaches. I’m turning into a fucking albino up here.”

“We’ll try to save you some sand,” Pete said. “What about our guest? Holding up well?”

Gabe didn’t know how to answer that. Yes, if you don’t count the fact that he tried to seduce me last night? Nearly killed a bodyguard on Shiva and quite possibly wants to do the same to the rest of us? Adapting well, good in tight situations, you might not want to let this one get away? He wasn’t even sure if that last one was a fair assessment, or just wishful thinking because it would mean William might not just disappear after he got his papers. Not many slaves stuck around after they were freed.

He was still pondering the answer when Ryland’s voice echoed down from the navigation station. “Gabe, we’ve got trouble.”

“I’ll call you back,” Gabe told Pete, cutting the connection before Pete could do more than open his mouth to demand information. He crossed to the navigation station in a handful of steps, leaning over Alex’s shoulder. “What is it?”

“We’re being called by a ship claiming to be local law enforcement patrol, asking us to halt and prepare to be boarded,” Alex reported, busy watching several screens full of blips and scrolling code. “But we haven’t been flagged on the scanner, and they haven’t sent us their credentials for authentication.”

“Have they stated a reason for wanting to board?” Gabe asked, reading through as much of the code on the screen as he could absorb in a few seconds.

“They’ve hinted at suspicion of smuggling, but they haven’t said anything outright,” Alex answered.

“We don’t have anything on board,” Gabe said. “What are the chances they’re really a patrol ship?”

“They’re flying an old-fashioned model skiff and it looks like they’re running heavy for a ship that size,” Alex told him. “I’d say not good.”

“Fuck,” Gabe said succinctly. “I can’t fucking fire on a possible law enforcement ship, and we’re not the best equipped for a fight.”

“Especially not against a hauled-over skiff,” Ryland put in. “I count four guns and a fighter dock.”

“Get them on radio,” Gabe ordered, and put his game face on. “This is Captain Saporta of the Cobra,” he announced. “What can I do for you?”

“This is Commander Smith,” a dour-faced – and very young – man replied on the monitor. “Halt your course and prepare to be boarded.”

Gabe leaned against the console and gave Smith his best public affairs smile. “As strange as this sounds, I have been boarded by a patrol ship before. This very week, in fact. So I know the drill, and I’m going to need a badge number and a direct transfer feed with your ship’s credentials before I let you come aboard.”

Smith’s eyelid twitched. “I won’t tell you again,” he said. “Halt your course immediately and prepare to be boarded.”

“Sorry,” Gabe said with false cheer, “not going to happen.” He cut the transmission and snapped his fingers. “Ryl, gun turret, you know the drill. Alex, stay here. Victoria, do a sweep of the area, see if there’s any chance we can pull in backup. Nate,” he bellowed down toward the engine room, “it’s going to get a little bumpy.”

He himself swung into the chair he’d just evacuated in the radio room, typing in the command codes to lock down every asset they had and delete the codes and transmission logs from the computer files. If the ship was taken, they weren’t going to get Gabe’s funds, and they weren’t going to get Pete.

The ship rocked with an impact to the starboard side, and Alex called down unnecessarily, “They’re firing.”

“Shit,” Gabe said. He finished wiping the ship’s logs and yelled back, “Ryl, try to take out their engines, let’s see if we can outrun the bastards.”

He spun around from the console and found William in the doorway clutching one side of the frame, face pale. Gabe stepped forward without even thinking about it and cradled William’s cheek in the palm of his hand.

“I said I was setting you free,” he told William. “I’m not breaking that promise.”

William didn’t say anything, and Gabe didn’t have time to linger.

“Nate, how are we doing?” he called down.

“They’re trying the same thing we are,” Nate answered after a moment, and the rattle-and-shake of another impact. “One more hit and they’ll cripple us.”

“Fuck,” Gabe said again. “Can we…?”

“They’re aiming for the gun turret,” Alex said sharply, and something over their heads snapped into a shower of sparks, half the lights flickering out.

“The turret’s been hit, the casing’s cracking,” Ryland called down.

“Ryland, get the fuck out of there,” Gabe yelled, just as another volley of gunfire sent them staggering sideways and plunged the ship into darkness.

“Engines are gone,” Nate called up as the emergency lights came on, casting eerie blue highlights over all of their faces. “I need at least twenty minutes to get them back up.”

“We don’t have it,” Gabe answered, lunging forward to help Ryland seal off the gun turret as the low groan of metal increased dangerously in volume. There was another collision, but this one was almost gentle in comparison; the impact of another ship lining up to manually dock. “Everyone prepare to be boarded.”

“What do we do?” Alex asked, and Gabe was about to snap at him for asking such a stupid question when he saw Alex standing meaningfully next to William.

Hiding him wouldn’t do any good, not if they took the ship. Nor would trying to claim him as a refugee or a captive. Gabe joined Victoria at the weapons rack, checking one of the heavy-caliber pistols for ammunition before tossing it into William’s hand.

“This time,” he said, “you get a gun.”

“Gabe,” Nate warned sharply, and Gabe could hear it now too, the low, grating screech of metal being forced on the other side of the docking hatch. He grabbed another pistol from the rack and mirrored Nate on the far side of the hatch, gun aimed and ready. Out of the corner of his eye he saw William taking up position a few feet away, hands shaking but weapon held level and aimed squarely at the sealed hatch.

The noise level increased, banging and loud metallic clangs echoing from the other side of the hatch, but Gabe’s didn’t see any sparks yet from someone cutting their way through, and the seal hadn’t been broken. “What…?” he began to ask, and then he heard something else, much fainter; the whisper-hiss of the gunnery turret hatch opening.

He swung around, pistol raised, but two men had already dropped from the hatch into the corridor, and each of them had a gun pointed at Alex and Ryland. A third dropped through as Gabe watched, swinging his gun up to aim at Victoria even as she locked her sight on him. The fourth man through was Captain Smith, and he didn’t even bother raising his gun.

“Let’s do this without bloodshed,” he suggested, addressing Gabe calmly and directly. “You lower your weapons, we put you in the emergency pod and leave you for the nearest patrol ship to pick up.”

Gabe highly doubted there was a patrol ship anywhere close to here, if they’d chosen this moment to attack. They could be stuck for quite a while before someone came along. More than that, though, these assholes wanted his ship.

No one else had come through the hatch, which made it four against six. “Not fucking likely,” he returned evenly. “We’ve got you outnumbered and outgunned. How about you just back it off and we all forget this ever happened.”

“Not gonna happen,” one of Smith’s men said, in a tone so flat it practically lacked inflection. “You might be able to take us, but we’ll have killed half your crew first, and you can’t fly this ship without at least three.”

“Neither can you,” Gabe pointed out. “You want to make this a numbers game? How many do we have to shoot before you’re marooned here as well?”

The bearded man who was covering Alex suddenly straightened up, and his attention, Gabe noted with a sinking feeling, was on William. “Ross,” he said insistently.

He’d gotten the attention of the man who’d spoken up before, and who looked to now be focused very intently on William. “We thought you might have a slave on board,” he said, lips curled in disgust. “You seem to have selective taste in traveling companions.”

Gabe edged slightly to the right, trying to block William from the line of fire. Ross’ gun fixed on him almost at once, but Gabe kept moving slowly, putting himself between them. “Is that what this is about?” he asked. “You’re working a slave ring? Taking ships and valuable human cargo?”

“Hardly,” Ross said, half-sneering. “We’re here to liberate a fellow human being.”

Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me, Gabe thought, and tried belatedly not to let too much of that show on his face. “I hate to disappoint you,” he said as lightly as possible, “but I’m not willing to give this one up. What’s your idea of liberation, treating him as an equal as long as he’s legally yours on paper?”

“We’re not going to keep him,” the fourth man spoke up suddenly, dark eyes filled with a fire and passion that Gabe fervently wished wasn’t currently aimed at him from the opposite side of a loaded firearm. “No one should be kept in chains.”

Gabe paused a moment, stunned into disbelief. “You’re planning to cut his collar?” he asked incredulously. “The alarm trigger isn’t a myth. You’ll have ships chasing him within minutes, hunting him down as a runaway.”

“At least he’ll have a head start,” Ross said, voice filled with disdain. “And a chance.”

“No fucking way,” Gabe stated flatly. He’d seen, several times, what happened to those caught as runaways. He knew what the punishments could be, what sort of rehabilitation they’d put William through if they didn’t kill him outright. “You want him, you have to go through me.”

“We will,” the bearded man said, with an edge to his tone that Gabe didn’t like at all. He twitched the pistol in his hand currently aimed at Alex’s chest and said, “We’ll just go through them first.”

Fuck. Victoria would be able to take the zealot, if she got a clean shot, and Ryland was good enough to drop Ross. That left Alex with half a chance at the one with the beard, and Gabe and Nate to try for Smith before he got the drop on one of them. The odds weren’t good that they’d all make it out alive, but even if they turned William over and surrendered, there was a chance they’d all end up floating corpses anyway. Gabe couldn’t trust these people any farther than he could throw them.

He didn’t factor William into his equations; highborn and sheltered, there was every chance he’d never even fired a gun. That made it five against four. Gabe had played worse odds.

“I can see you planning something,” Smith said, frowning. “Don’t be stupid.”

“Sorry,” Gabe replied. “I’m not letting you take him.”

Smith raised his gun and aimed at Gabe’s chest. “If that’s what you want,” he said. Gabe’s shoulders tensed, and he tightened his grip on the trigger.

“Drop it,” William said, and when Gabe glanced reflexively toward the sound, he saw William’s pistol pointed straight at his head.

Shock left him wordless for a critical second. “Don’t do this,” he said. “It might look like an easy way out, but I swear to you, it’s not.”

“Put the gun down,” William said, and his hands were still shaking and he might not have ever fired a gun before, but he knew where the trigger was. He swallowed and added, “Please.”

Gabe’s eyes jumped back to Smith and his people, but the situation hadn’t improved since his last evaluation of their chances. It had gotten worse, in fact. He could tell by the way her grip had changed, though, that Victoria wasn’t planning on going down without a fight, and that she was a second away from firing and quite probably getting herself killed.

Gabe held William’s eyes for another long moment, and then flipped his pistol up above his head, finger clear of the trigger. “Everybody lower your weapons,” he ordered.

Nate followed him at once, and Ryland and Alex a reluctant second after that. Victoria was the last one with her gun still raised, and now her hands were shaking too, but it wasn’t from fear.

“Victoria,” Gabe said, willing any trace of worry from his voice and setting it with steel. “Put the gun down.”

A nerve-wracking heartbeat later, she did, and gave him a glare that could have killed when she did it. She was still alive, though, so Gabe could take it. Now, if only they stayed that way.

“This way,” Smith said, jerking his gun to the side. “Everyone into the emergency pod.”

It was a tight fit for five, although they didn’t have any gear, any supplies, any food or water, so it wasn’t as tight as it could have been. “Are you at least launching a beacon to tell someone we’re here?” Gabe asked as he wedged himself in between Ryland and Victoria.

“Someone will come along,” Smith said, unconcerned. “You have enough air to last a few days. We’re not giving you the chance to catch up with us that easily.”

Nate was the last in, and as he got settled, Gabe caught William’s eyes through the open door. “William,” he said, low and serious. “Don’t do this.”

William held his gaze, but his expression didn’t change. “I’m sorry,” he said, and closed the hatch.

“He stole my ship,” Gabe said. “He stole my fucking ship.”

Ryland tilted his head lazily to one side. “To be fair,” he remarked, “I think we can lay some of the blame for that on the crew of space pirates who attacked and hijacked us.”

“He did worse than hijack,” Gabe said. “He took our gun and stabbed us in the fucking back with it. Traitorous fucking bastard.”

“Don’t mix literal and metaphorical,” Victoria advised, without bothering to give him much more of her attention.

“At least we don’t have to worry about getting revenge,” Gabe continued lightly, “because when local law enforcement gets hold of him…”

“We know,” Victoria said, fixing him with the full weight of her stare. “Gabe, we know.”

He tipped his head back against the curved wall of the emergency pod and swallowed. Closing his eyes brought too many unsettling images with it, memories of other people at other times, so he looked up at the domed ceiling of the pod instead. “I didn’t fuck him,” he said aloud. “For the record.”

“We know that too,” Ryland replied, starting to stretch out and aborting the movement when there was no room for it. “You’re always insufferably smug after you get laid.”

“Maybe if you had, we wouldn’t be in this pod,” Nate piped up. “You couldn’t have taken one for the team?”

Gabe’s mouth curled up in spite of the fact that he’d just been hijacked, betrayed, and ejected into space to float in a reinforced tin can for the past two hours. Maybe three, it was hard to be sure. “Fuck you,” he said, smiling at the ceiling before dropping his eyes and pulling himself the fuck together. “Okay, who has a plan?”

“We’ve somewhat limited resources,” Ryland pointed out. “There’s the five of us, and the pod, and…no, that’s it.”

“Clothes,” Nate suggested. “We’re all wearing clothes.”

“I can’t think of what we might be able to do with those,” Alex said.

“I can think of a lot we could do without them,” Gabe said, waggling his eyebrows, and was promptly elbowed in the ribs by Victoria. “Ow.”

“Better not,” Alex said. “We’d have to put up with your smugness.”

“Insufferable,” Ryland agreed. “Clothes remain on.”

“Okay, we’ve established that none of us has a plan,” Gabe allowed, biting his tongue against further innuendo with prudent wariness of Victoria’s sharp elbows. “How about a deck of cards?”

Nate sat up suddenly. Gabe was hoping he’d just remembered he had a full portable game system in his pocket when he said suddenly, “Do you hear that?”

Gabe listened. He didn’t hear a fucking thing. “No,” he answered. “What…?”

“Shhh,” Nate insisted, and a second later they all heard something, because the pod started doing the rattling, ricochet dance of being drawn on board into a loading dock.

“Rescue,” Gabe said quietly, grimly. “Hopefully.”

He wasn’t actually all that hopeful. He’d known even before he’d sent Victoria to do the sweep that the pirates wouldn’t have been stupid enough to attack them with a real patrol ship in the area, and it hadn’t been all that long since they’d been dumped.

The squeal of the metal escape hatch being unsealed was painfully loud in the enclosed space. “No,” Nate was saying when Gabe could hear again, “I know those engines.”

The hatch swung open, and William stood waiting on the other side. “Captain Saporta,” he said with a tiny smile. “Welcome aboard.”

Gabe blinked at him, and then at the familiar deck behind him. “This is my ship,” he said, dumbfounded. “We’re back on my ship.”

“Or we will be shortly,” Ryland put in, trying in vain to stretch out his unnaturally long legs. “Provided you actually get out of the pod and let the rest of us move.”

It took Gabe another second to collect himself, and then he was climbing over Nate through the hatch, pulling himself out onto the deck of his ship. “The pirates?” he asked, looking around.

William’s smile twitched into life again, like a flickering candle. “Indisposed. They’re enjoying the hospitality of a certain storage room.”

Gabe took a step forward, directly in front of William. “You came back,” he said, and then rewound. Realization dawned a second later. “You never had any intention of leaving with them in the first place.”

William gave him a tiny, apologetic shrug. “They were going to shoot you, and you weren’t going to surrender as long as you had to protect me.” He tilted his chin up to keep holding Gabe’s eyes when he took another step closer. “It seemed like the best plan.”

Gabe couldn’t seem to stop the slow, shit-eating grin that crept over his face. “Does this mean you trust me now?” he asked.

William looked back at him seriously, the smile guttered for now but still lurking somewhere deep in his eyes. “No,” he said. “I just trusted them less.”

Gabe wanted to touch him so badly that he had to physically ball his hands into fists to keep himself from curling his fingers around William’s strong, stubborn jaw. He was so fucking relieved his legs were weak – or maybe that was the several hours spent cramped inside the emergency pod, but he was permitting himself to be emotional about it – and then the difference in William’s appearance, the bared skin at his throat above his open shirt, finally clicked.

He grabbed William’s shoulders without thinking, putting him at arm’s length to confirm what he’d already seen. “Fuck,” he swore, gripping William’s shoulders tighter. “They did it. The bastards cut your collar.”

William took a step back and Gabe took the hint; eased his hold and let him go, even though he was loath to do it. “No,” William said, snapping Gabe’s attention to his face in a heartbeat. “I did that.”

Gabe’s breath caught for a second, strangling him. “Why?” he demanded.

“You said it would send a signal to the nearest patrol ship,” William replied evenly. His lips quirked up again, almost rueful. “I figured we could use the help.”

“You…” Gabe stopped for lack of suitable words, flummoxed. His chest felt tight and hot. William was barely two steps away, and that was by far two steps too many.

“Gabe,” Alex called back from the navigation station, where he’d taken up residence at the console. “We’ve got company.”

“Fuck,” Gabe said with feeling, breaking away and crossing to Alex’s side in a few long strides. “Who is it?”

“Patrol ship,” Alex answered. “A cutter. Their credentials have come through authenticated.”

“Radio,” Gabe ordered.

“This is Commander Bryar, badge number one-one-zero-four-two-three,” a scowling blond man in full uniform announced on Gabe’s monitor. “We have reason to believe you have a slave on board with a severed collar. Halt your course and prepared to be boarded. If you resist, we are authorized to fire on your vessel.”

Gabe grinned at him. “Come on over,” he invited. “And man, are we fucking glad to see you.”

“You’re sure he’s not a runaway,” Commander Bryar said, eyeing William suspiciously. William, for his part, was eyeing Commander Bryar right back, having no self-preservation instincts and being in general utter shit at feigning cowed deference.

“Quite sure. You can check the collar against his paperwork and my Ident card,” Gabe offered, indicating the legal document confirming his ownership, which was already in Bryar’s hand. “It was a distress signal, after we were attacked by pirates. He brought my ship back and everything.”

“Very clever,” Bryar said, returning Gabe’s records.

“I bought him for his brains,” Gabe said, ingenuous.

Bryar made a noise somewhere between clearing his throat and polite disbelief. “I’m sure.” He consulted a data pad and turned intimidatingly blue eyes on Gabe. “Ordinarily we would escort you to the nearest slavery authority, but as your engines are still damaged, we’re willing to tow you to a station.”

Gabe nodded. “That would be great.” It couldn’t be as easy as letting them go on faith, it seemed. That was probably for the best anyway; to move forward safely in freeing William and setting him up with a false Ident card, they needed to ensure that he was never suspected to have escaped.

They weren’t towed far out of their way at all, but it was a longer distance than Gabe had expected. There had to be slavery authorities on at least two moons along their route, but Bryar passed them by and made for a station Gabe knew well.

“He’s taking us to Manaka?” Gabe asked, leaning over Ryland’s shoulder to confirm the readings.

“Looks like it. Yeah, he’s just sent out the landing warning. We’re initiating docking sequences now.” With their ship largely powered down, there wasn’t a lot to do; Ryland flipped on the appropriate landing lights and let the patrol cutter handle the flying.

“What are the odds?” Gabe mused out loud, and turned his head to catch William lurking in the doorway. “Surprise,” he said, flashing a quick grin. “You’re about to meet Patrick.”

Patrick was, according to various sources: a childhood friend of Pete’s, one of the original four members of the organized liberation movement, a former slave raised in captivity and now determined to rescue as many others as he could, a computer genius working against the government in secret, an anarchist who didn’t care a fig what anyone thought and freed slaves for the hell of it, and Pete’s soulmate. That last description had come from Pete himself, and was Gabe’s personal favorite.

He was also – and this part was fact rather than rumor – the slavery authority Pete always without fail went to when he had someone to set free.

Manaka was a water treatment plant, located several thousand miles above the surface of the desert rock it served, as it was too massive to fit anywhere on the dwarf planet’s crowded surface. It wasn’t Pete’s base, but it wasn’t far away. They went back and forth on who went where, when it was necessary to rendezvous. Pete wasn’t here now, Gabe was fairly certain of that. But Patrick was, and he knew Gabe, and why Gabe might have a registered pleasure slave trailing along behind him down the boarding ramp into Patrick’s workshop.

If Patrick was surprised to see them – and he had to be, considering their escort – he didn’t let on. “Re-collaring, standard fee,” he said when Bryar had explained the reason for their visit. “Pay in advance. I can fit you in now, if you want. It’ll take about half an hour.”

While Patrick readied his tools and equipment, Gabe went over to stand next to Bryar. “Thanks for the lift,” he said casually. “And for sorting everything out.”

Bryar grunted, mostly ignoring him. Then he seemed to think better of it and said, “You had a friend of mine speaking for you. Once I filed the report, he saw your name and called me on radio.” Bryar looked sideways at him, and Gabe could have sworn he almost let slip a smile. “Commander Way says he thought he told you to stay out of trouble.”

Gabe blinked, then broke into a grin. “Tell him I’m doing my best,” he replied honestly. “You can’t blame a guy for space pirates.”

“You can if he has a flashy ship and a flashy reputation,” Bryar answered in a warning tone, but it was mild enough. “And if he doesn’t press criminal theft charges against those same pirates.”

Knowing Bryar was a friend of Gerard’s – and possibly Mikey’s as well – made Gabe comfortable enough to say, “They’re stupid kids. Hopefully they’ll think twice before they do it again. And I think,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “their hearts were in the right place.”

Bryar didn’t comment, which was proof enough that he’d understood. In the adjoining room, Patrick called, “We’re ready in here.”

Gabe walked in with William at his side. It was a small room; there was a chair in the center, adjustable in both size and position, and a tray of instruments to one side. There were restraints attached to the chair at the ankles, legs, wrists and arms, with another wide strap for the waist. At the head of the chair was a metal half-moon bracket with a chinrest, also adjustable, and Gabe could too easily imagine it around someone’s neck, keeping their head forced up while the slavery authority attached or customized a collar for a new owner.

“I don’t think any of that will be necessary,” Gabe said casually, when Patrick reached for the first strap.

Patrick shrugged and dropped it, going back to his business with the equipment on the metal tray. “Just don’t blame me if he panics and causes a fuss,” he said, tugging his hat down firmly. “You pay for anything he breaks.”

William had slowed considerably once they’d passed through the door, and was now leaning back slightly against Gabe’s hand on his spine, resisting the gentle pressure Gabe was applying to keep him moving forward as if he couldn’t quite bring himself to willingly go.

“Come on,” Gabe murmured, leaning in close to his ear and pitching his voice to be reassuring. “I’m not going to let anyone strap you down.”

“Shirt off,” Patrick said, ignoring them.

William glanced at Gabe, but his fingers rose to the buttons of his shirt, slowly parting them from the buttonholes. Gabe took it when he shrugged off, and William wrapped his arms over his chest before seeming to consciously change his mind and drop them to his sides, chin up and spine straight.

Patrick was shifting his weight impatiently by the time William settled, on the very edge of the chair as if he couldn’t stand touching any more of it than was strictly necessary. Gabe pulled up a chair and sat beside him. This couldn’t be easy, he thought, as Patrick tested a portable welder and William flinched from the flame. William had already been through this once, and now he was almost voluntarily giving up his freedom again, placing blind trust in Gabe to get him out of this if he let them put him in chains.

Patrick measured around William’s neck with a length of chain and sheared through the extra. “Lay back,” he ordered. William went stiffly, his entire spine arched away from the back of the chair as he rested unwillingly against it, reclining so Patrick could focus the worklight on his neck and begin connecting the tiny, intricate electronic cables.

Patrick was careful and neat, but a spark still jumped from the wires to William’s skin when he attached the first connector relay, and William flinched back so hard that it jerked the chain around his neck taut. Patrick looked up at him through his spectacles and said, “Hold still or I’ll have to use the bracket.” William shuddered once but didn’t move otherwise, muscles rigid.

Bryar wasn’t paying them any attention and Gabe didn’t give a fuck what he thought anyway, so he reached out and took William’s hand, hoping to distract from the whole process if he could. “Is this what it was like the first time?” he asked quietly, squeezing William’s hand and feeling William squeeze back automatically.

William started to shake his head, caught himself even before Patrick had the chance to properly glare at him, and took a deep breath. “No. I mean, I don’t remember. I wasn’t conscious when they did it. I wasn’t being particularly cooperative at the time. They dosed me with something when they couldn’t control me, and when I woke up, it was there.”

“You? Put up a fight?” Gabe teased, tone deliberately light. “Surely not.”

He earned a fleeting smile for that, but then Patrick finished with the connector relays and fired up the welder, and William’s grip tightened so hard he nearly broke Gabe’s hand.

“Easy,” Gabe murmured, watching the flame next to William’s neck like a hawk. “It’s nearly over.”

“Don’t move, or this will burn right through your skin,” Patrick warned unnecessarily. William swallowed, his throat working, and Patrick looked over his spectacles at Gabe. “This part might be easier if he were restrained.”

“No,” Gabe said automatically, without even thinking about it. He covered their joined hands with his free one, gently rubbing William’s skin. “Just do it.”

The nameplate was last, less decorative than the one William had been wearing before and more functional, a solid steel weight in the shape of a rounded triangle. William closed his eyes when the cold metal touched his skin, and made a soft, desperate noise in the back of his throat.

“Shh,” Gabe soothed, still watching Patrick at work, his attention on the sharp instruments and the welder passing within a hair’s-breadth of William’s pale skin. “Almost there.”

“Finished,” Patrick corrected, straightening up and setting down his tools. “You’re all set.”

“Thank you,” Gabe said politely. “I’m much obliged.”

William didn’t say anything, but when he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the chair, he didn’t let go of Gabe’s hand.

“I’ll leave you to go on your way,” Bryar said, nodding at Gabe and Patrick in turn. “Gentlemen.”

“Commander,” Gabe returned, nodding in kind. He waited until Bryar was gone and the door shut tight behind him before turning to Patrick and raising his eyebrows. “Funny,” he said, low-voiced, “usually we do this the other way ’round.”

Patrick shook his head, shutting everything away in a drawer and turning off the worklight angled over the chair. “You’ve actually made it easier for me, in the long run,” he commented. “We should have slaves pretend to run away more often. It’s a fuck of a lot simpler to do something wrong in the first place than to undo it when it’s right.” He wiped off his hands and looked William over critically. “You all right? I know that couldn’t have been easy.”

William stared at Patrick like he’d grown a second head, but he recovered quickly. “Yes, thank you,” he said, and off-guard and strained as he was, he probably didn’t hear the trace of an accent creeping into his speech, but Gabe did. Gabe practically bit off his tongue.

Later, he told himself. He handed William his shirt, and averted his eyes belatedly as William did up the buttons. “It won’t be on for long,” he promised quietly. “We’re only a few hours out from our destination, and we’ll be on our way as soon as Nate has the engines running again.”

“I’ll call ahead and let them know you’re on the way,” Patrick said. “Tell Pete the collar’s a dud; he’ll know what that means and how to get it off safely.”

There was a branch of Pete’s organization, Gabe knew, that concentrated on infiltration, inserting agents into slaver rings and taking down the kingpins firsthand, usually by less-than-legal means. He wondered how many times Patrick had put one of these collars on someone, and whether free men and women flinched as well when they felt him welding the chain securely closed.

“Thanks,” he said, standing up and letting go of William’s hand when he felt him pulling away. “We owe you one.” He glanced at the door through which Bryar had left, marveling. “Man. We got fucking lucky with this one, him bringing us here.” Other slavery authorities, he suspected, might not have been so kind in their ministrations, or so willing to honor Gabe’s wishes about not having William restrained. On another station, they might have strapped him down, forced his head back and not worried about a few minor burns here and there. Gabe uncurled his fists and stopped thinking about it.

Patrick half-smiled. “Not entirely lucky,” he said. When Gabe looked back at him, he elaborated, “Bob knows what I do. Some of it, at least. He’s been my records inspector for years, and I know he’s put together that some of my figures and flight plans don’t always match up.”

First Gerard, and now Bob. Gabe wondered how Pete would feel about expanding to establish a branch of his organization in law enforcement.

“Then thank fuck for that,” Gabe said honestly. He shook Patrick’s hand, and gestured for William to accompany him out the door. “Now, let’s get out of here and get that thing off you for good.”

They had a few hours in space before they reached Pete’s private landing bay, and while Gabe might have had a few definite ideas about how he wanted to spend those hours, he knew already that it wasn’t going to happen.

William was subdued, withdrawn, constantly fingering the chain around his neck and looking off at nothing, eyes distant. Gabe could have offered to distract him, the kind of distraction that worked best on a bed in a locked room, and he wouldn’t say he wasn’t tempted. William would have gone along with him, he was sure of it, would have followed along and let Gabe do whatever he wanted. Gabe could have done it. But he didn’t.

He took a long look at William, hunched over on himself and gazing through the docking port, fingers curled around his collar, and allowed himself to heave one disappointed mental sigh. Then he told himself to get the fuck over it and went over to provide a different form of distraction.

“Hey,” he offered, nudging William’s side. “Want me to teach you how to fly the ship?”

Victoria made a muted but patently disbelieving sound somewhere behind them. Gabe rolled his eyes.

“Fine,” he amended. “Want Ryland to teach you how to fly the ship?”

William’s smile said he knew full well Gabe was indulging him, but that he was willing to indulge Gabe in turn. “If you think I can learn,” he replied, to which Gabe made derisive noises about William being unable to do anything and towed him over to Ryland for flight lessons.

William had accomplished technical mastery of docking procedures by the time they reached orbit, but Ryland declared him not yet ready for the practical exam until he’d observed at least once, and so down they went.

Gabe leaned over to the radio and called the unlisted number for the bay. “This is the Cobra, requesting permission to land,” he announced as soon as they were connected.

The bay didn’t have a video feed, but Pete’s voice came through loud and clear. “Are you kidding me? Get your asses down here.”

Gabe grinned, and helped Ryland land by virtue of getting in the way a lot and asking obnoxious and inane questions. William’s pensive expression gave way slowly to a faint smile, so Gabe considered it worth the bruise when Victoria smacked him for pushing buttons that his crew had decreed he wasn’t supposed to touch.

Pete took to William even faster than Gabe had predicted. “I’ve heard stories about you,” he said, dark eyes bright and alert as he rocked up onto his tiptoes. “I’m not sure I believe them all, but I’d like to hear them firsthand anyway.”

“Did Patrick call you?” Gabe asked, stepping forward for his own round of hugs and backslapping.

“As soon as you left Manaka,” Pete confirmed. His eyes fell on the chain around William’s neck, prominently displayed in the open collar of his shirt. “Don’t worry,” he assured William, his expression hardening just a fraction before turning forcibly cheerful again, “we’ll have that off of you just as soon as we’ve finished forging your Ident card. If you’ll go with Joe and Andy, they’ll take your picture, get your fingerprints, retinal scan, all that sort of thing.”

William cast a questioning glance at Gabe, who nodded. Pete didn’t miss it; he was looking shrewdly at Gabe when William consented to follow Joe out of the bay. Gabe wanted badly to stay with him, as reassurance if nothing else, but he flashed a smile at Pete instead and jerked his head toward the main bay doors. “Shall we?”

“Yeah,” Pete agreed, stuffing his hands into his pockets. He was eccentrically dressed as always; a long leather bomber jacket over a vest with nothing beneath it but an undershirt, and trousers rolled up at the cuffs which had to be three times too long for him. “We’ve got a lot to catch up on,” he said, and Gabe prepared himself for a Pete-style inquisition as they passed through the doors and turned the corner into Pete’s modified drawing room.

He knew the shrewd, cunningly insightful questions were coming, but that didn’t stop him from attempting to put them off for a while longer. “Man, I could use a vacation,” he announced, sprawling out on an overstuffed sofa and stretching his limbs out in appreciation.

“Don’t get used to the idea,” Pete warned, taking a seat nearby on his favorite worn armchair. “I have another errand I need you to run out near Freyja.”

Gabe frowned. “Already? We just got here.”

They never stayed long, admittedly, but usually it was long enough to refuel, catch up, swim in the ocean, and enjoy all the comforts planet life had to offer before they headed for the stars again. And Gabe wasn’t about to admit it, but he’d been looking forward to showing William around, spending some time with him on more even ground.

Then he realized the real reason behind Pete’s decision, and sat up straight. “Wait a minute. Is this about William? Someone told you to get me away from him, didn’t they?”

Pete’s expression was uncommonly serious when he answered; he wasn’t just Gabe’s friend now, he was the mastermind of one of the largest underground criminal operations in existence. “Tell me the truth,” he said. “Do I need to?”

Gabe’s instinct was to deflect and make a joke; he smothered it and held Pete’s eyes, just as serious. “I don’t fuck around with the slaves,” he answered. “Nothing happened.”

“But you wanted something to happen,” Pete interpreted.

It was a tricky boundary, the dance he’d been doing with William, but even on reflection, Gabe was certain he’d come down on the right side of it. “Off-limits is off-limits,” he said. “I’m not saying the temptation wasn’t there, but I know how to keep it in my pants.”

Pete relaxed fractionally. “You know how it is here, how we work. We don’t keep the new arrivals in contact with any reminders of their pasts, not until they’re ready to go out and face the universe again. You knew this was coming.”

Gabe had. He just hadn’t expected it to happen so soon. “When do you need us to take off?”

“This evening. You’ll have to get there by tomorrow to make the rendezvous.” Pete held his hands up when Gabe exhaled hard, leaning back on the sofa. “I’m not making shit up. I really do need you. And you never know; it might be good for you. Both of you.”

Gabe narrowed his eyes. “Victoria. Was it Victoria? That meddling bitch.”

“Victoria,” Pete confirmed, followed by, “Ryland. Alex. Patrick. Travis. Who says hello, by the way; he called this morning.”

“Fuck,” Gabe said with feeling. He rubbed his forehead, then opened his eyes and looked back at Pete. “You going to let me tell him before we disappear?”

“Thanks for making me sound like a monster,” Pete replied. “Dude, you know the drill. He’ll have my numbers, he can get in contact with you.”

Yeah, but he won’t, Gabe answered silently. They all got Pete’s number, and some of them even got Gabe’s. Gabe could count on one thumb the number of ex-slaves who had ever been heard from again once they got their Ident cards and passage off the planet.

“Do you know who he is?” Pete asked, in the serious tone of voice that meant he did. “Who he was?”

Gabe knew enough. He knew William’s social rank, and his habits, and his manner of speech. He knew his native accent. He could figure it out easily enough, if he really put his mind to it. Usually he looked his passengers up as soon as he had a name, more to educate himself than out of prurient curiosity. If he knew where they came from, he could tell how they ended up where they were, and what subjects and unpleasant reminders to avoid.

William had been different, though. He still was.

“To tell you the truth,” Gabe admitted, “I’m waiting for him to tell me himself.”

Pete whistled, shaking his head. “Man. You really are gone, aren’t you? I have to say, I didn’t see this coming.”

“Save it,” Gabe said. “You can mock me later. Do we need to talk through the Freyja job?”

Pete looked as though he didn’t necessarily want to let the subject go just yet, but Gabe held his eyes and eventually he backed down. “It’s just a courier job,” he answered. “I’ll send you info on what’s in the data pad, but it shouldn’t matter. I’ll see if I can come up with enough money for you to hit another brothel on your way back.”

“Peachy,” Gabe replied.

Pete got that look he got sometimes, pinched and reluctant but good-hearted. Gabe was more than familiar with it; it usually resulted in him flying to some godforsaken hellhole on a mission of mercy that had one chance in a hundred of succeeding without a hitch.

Right on cue, Pete said, “Usually I’d be against it, but you have a few hours left, if you want to spend them doing stupid lovesick shit like showing William the sunset over a real white sand beach.”

Gabe did want to do that stupid shit, more than Pete even knew, but he just shook his head. “Nah. I’ll see him at dinner.” It was better if he made himself scarce now, he reasoned. Let William have his space. This was what they were about, freeing people to make their own choices. This was what they believed in. “Right now,” he told Pete with utter sincerity, “I have a date with your pressure-shower.”

The shower helped get his mind off William, at least for the first few minutes, which he spent luxuriating in the feel of actual, honest-to-fuck hot water and creamy liquid soap. Then, of course, he started thinking about William enjoying a similar experience, and once he’d washed himself twice and his hair three times, he felt relaxed enough to let himself jerk off under the spray. Not thinking about William. Not specifically, at least. William was just sort of…there, in an abstract sense, while Gabe let his mind drift and his hand slide.

Dinner was as loud an affair as always, with Pete and Pete’s people and Pete’s fosterlings on top of Gabe’s crew and a fosterling of his own. William wasn’t comfortable yet, Gabe could tell, but he wasn’t withdrawn. He was observing, evaluating this place and these people, and when he snapped a retort back at Pete over the dinner rolls so fast that it made Pete’s jaw drop, Gabe relaxed and stopped worrying. He’d be all right.

He was still telling himself that when they finished running the pre-launch checks, when he turned around at the bottom of the boarding ramp to find William standing there waiting for him.

“I heard you were leaving,” William said, as simply as that.

Gabe forced himself to smile, and not to reach out and draw William into his arms the way he mainly wanted to. “Did you come to see us off?” he asked, lounging against one of the ramp supports and grinning, practiced casual.

William didn’t let him get away with it. “Were you going to leave without saying goodbye?” he returned.

“I was about to swing by,” Gabe lied. He hadn’t been. He’d thought it would be easiest, best for all involved, if he just left and let William get on with the business of remembering how to be free.

Looking at him now, of course, he didn’t know why he’d thought William had ever forgotten.

He held up a fist the way Travis always did, and bumped it against William’s because if they did anything else, Gabe didn’t think he’d be able to let go. “Take care of yourself,” he said, stepping back onto the ramp. “I’ll see you around, William.”

He was nearly on board when William said behind him, “Bill.”

When Gabe turned around again to look at him, he was wearing a tiny smile. Gabe let the ache hit him, breathed through it, and tried to memorize everything about this moment before he lost it. “What?”

William’s smile grew slowly. “Bill,” he said again. “My friends call me Bill.”

“Bill,” Gabe echoed, and grinned back. “I’ll see you around, Bill.”

The slave’s name was Z, or at least that was what she told Gabe. She’d twisted her collar around so that the nameplate was hidden under her tangled hair, and Gabe wasn’t about to push her for the truth. If she wanted to be called Z, that’s what they would do.

He got her installed in the captain’s cabin, explaining everything in detail about who they were and what they planned to do for her, and made sure she knew how to lock the door before he left her alone to be by herself for a few hours.

Commander Bryar was in their lounge. He looked ill at ease, but not as much as Gabe might have guessed for his first time as a law enforcement officer committing a major crime. “I found her locked in a wardrobe in the captain’s cabin,” he said when Gabe joined him with two cups of coffee. “The ship had been confiscated as property after a drug bust, and I’d already sent the report with the inventory from the cargo bay. I’d have had to file an addendum to report her, and then she would have gone to auction. This way it’s like she never existed.”

“No harm, no foul,” Gabe agreed, stirring his coffee. It had been a surprise, hearing from Bryar out of the blue, but a welcome one, as it turned out. “We’ll take care of her.”

“Thanks,” Bob said, and it sounded gruff but sincere. He drank down a few gulps of coffee that had to still be hot enough to scald, judging by the amount of steam rising from the top, and said, “I would have called Patrick, but that waterlogged station of his is too far away. I can’t have a slave on my ship; I trust my crew, but I can’t put any of them in that position.”

“I know how it goes,” Gabe told him. “I’m glad you called us.”

Bob’s blue eyes did that creepy, soul-piercing thing when he looked straight at Gabe. “If you attempt to blackmail me, report this, or use it in any way as leverage, I’ll make sure you and your people never have a fucking second of peace in this galaxy.”

Gabe blinked and held up both hands. “Seriously, man. We don’t want anyone looking into our affairs, either. This is between you and me. And if it happens again,” he added carefully, “I hope you make the same decision.”

Bob nodded acknowledgement; terms agreed upon and met. He drank his coffee in brooding silence for the next few minutes, and Gabe had been dealing with slaves for long enough to know when to shut up and stay still.

Sure enough, it was less than five minutes before Bob spoke up again, low-voiced. “She offered me…” He grimaced. “Things. Herself. If I’d let her go free.”

“It’s not uncommon,” Gabe told him. “They don’t have much more to bargain with besides that.”

Bob shook his head. “She’s not even a bedslave,” he said, and there was a sick disgust in his eyes that Gabe was all too familiar with.

He barked out a short, mirthless laugh. “They’re all bedslaves,” he corrected, “if their owner wants to fuck them.”

Bob brooded again, but not for long this time. “Have you ever been tempted?” he asked, meeting Gabe’s eyes squarely across the table.

Gabe didn’t think – because he didn’t need to – about William in a stained brothel wearing a pathetically flimsy tunic; William with his eyes flashing fire and his chin tilted up; William in the captain’s cabin, leaning back against the door with his shirt untucked and his feet bare.

“More than you know,” he answered. “But the only way to do this shit is to face up to that and be a bigger fucking man afterward for turning it down.”

Bob nodded and stood up. “Captain,” he said, holding out his hand. Gabe shook it, and Bryar looked him over one more time before nodding again and taking his leave.

Gabe spent a few minutes of his own brooding over his coffee, and then left it half-finished on the table and went to make a call.

“Pete,” he said. “I’ve got a present for you. Gift-wrapped, since it’s a surprise and all. You’ll want to unwrap it once we drop it off. Six days, maybe, we’re still out past Triglav.”

Pete raised his eyebrows, but keyed something into his data pad before commenting; probably passing on the news and making necessary arrangements. “Is this something you found lying around, or something you just happened to see on sale and think I would like?”

“Neither,” Gabe replied lightly. “Remember that conversation we had about having friends in well-connected places?”

Pete’s eyebrows practically disappeared beneath his bangs, but Gabe could see that he’d interpreted that message correctly. “Paying off faster than we thought it might,” he commented.

“I’m as surprised as you are,” Gabe assured him. “But I think it’s legit. We’re taking a more circuitous route than usual, just to be safe. You might want to have your soulmate meet us somewhere neutral before we show up on your doorstep, just in case.”

Translation: If Bryar was using them to get to Pete – which Gabe didn’t think he was, but it never hurt to play things safe – and if he was using Z’s collar to track her, they shouldn’t come anywhere near Pete or Manaka until it was safely disposed of.

“I’ll pass it on,” Pete promised, looking up at him again from his data pad. There was a brief pause in the conversation where they both waited for Gabe to ask about William, and he didn’t. He knew better, after this long. William was gone, or leaving soon, and Gabe wasn’t going to dwell on it. They had rules for a reason, and Gabe had known what he was doing when he’d walked away.

“I’ll check in with you in a few days, find out where we’re meeting up,” Gabe said. “Keep in touch.”

He ended the call and headed back toward the lounge with half-formed plans of reheating his coffee. Victoria caught him before he got there, wearing no-nonsense boots and an expression to match.

“This is the first time we’ve taken on a passenger in a while,” she remarked obliquely. “You all right?”

“Victoria, I’m touched,” he told her, hand over his heart. “Is that genuine concern? Are you offering to take me against your magnificent bosom and ease my sorrows?”

“In your dreams,” she told him coolly. Then she arched an eyebrow and said, “We do still have a bottle of ice-wine, though.”

Gabe slung an arm across her shoulders and steered them in the direction of the lounge, where he could hear Ryland and Alex having a spirited debate with Nate over the effectiveness versus criminal waste of liquor in an alcohol-based fuel pump.

“We’ve got a new passenger on board, that’s reason enough to celebrate,” Gabe said. “Let’s pop the fucking cork.”

Epilogue

“A shipment heist?” Gabe repeated, considering Pete on his monitor. “That’s risky even for you.”

“You and Mikeyway used to pull shit like this all the time,” Pete reminded him.

“Not on this scale. It was just him and me, pinching one or two captives on their way to be collared.” Gabe raised his eyebrows pointedly. “You’re talking about hijacking an entire slave ship.”

“Not hijacking, exactly. You’ll be posing as a guard escort for hire, so once you take care of the few wardens on the slave ship itself, all of you can just quietly disappear.” Pete made it sound like it would be just that easy, too. Gabe favored him with a skeptical look, which Pete blithely ignored. “You’ll have help, anyway. I’ve got newbies, I need someone to teach them. You’re the expert.”

“Yeah, about that,” Gabe said.

“Gabe, we’ve just reached rendezvous,” Ryland called back. “There’s another ship trying to get us on radio.”

“Right on time,” Pete said cheerfully.

Gabe stabbed a finger at Pete’s face on the monitor. “You stay there. If anything seems hinky, or if they’re as green as you say and forget all the secret codes you taught them in spy school, I’m going to want verification that they are who they say they are.”

Pete raised his hands in what Gabe interpreted as surrender. Pete had been doing a lot of surrendering lately, and a lot of sending Gabe and the Cobra out on far-reaching, wildly unusual missions. Gabe suspected it was largely due to Pete noticing how restless he’d gotten, over the past nine months. He’d brought back a few more slaves, but it hadn’t been as satisfying, somehow. They’d all been good people, ill-used but hanging onto their sanity and dignity. Not one of them had ever tried to punch him in the face, even once.

A few months in, Pete had started giving him assignments like this one. Underhanded deals with criminals looking to unload human merchandise; smuggling a cargo hold full of slaves all taken at once from some rich bastard’s summer house; and their current assignment: divert a ship crammed with people who were marked for slavery but hadn’t been collared yet.

This was the first time they’d been sent a second ship to assist on a heist, though. And it wasn’t any ship Gabe knew, which suggested that when Pete said newbies, he really meant it.

Gabe switched radio channels, answering the call of the flashing light above his console.

“This is Captain Beckett of the Academy,” a very familiar voice said by way of greeting. It was accompanied by a very familiar face on his screen. For a moment, Gabe just stared. Nine months, no word, and now this.

He punched the channel button and switched back to Pete. “You’re fucking kidding me.”

Pete grinned at him, the cunning, secret-keeping bastard. “In the time he was with you, he ambushed you and half your crew, faced down one of the most dangerous slave mistresses in the galaxy, tricked and captured a four-person pirate crew, and stole your ship right out from under you. What did you think I was going to do with him?”

“You smug asshole,” Gabe told him, grinning now too. “You couldn’t have just told me? You had to be evasive?”

“I was letting him make up his mind before I got your hopes up,” Pete answered. He leered at Gabe as much as someone could through a video monitor and added, “This is his first time. Be gentle with him.”

“Fuck you,” Gabe said cheerfully, and ended the call. “Ryland!” he yelled as he left the radio room. “Initiate docking procedures.” He was grinning like a maniac and he knew it; couldn’t help it and didn’t really want to. “Let’s meet Pete’s new batch of miscreants.”

“It’s not those pirates who attacked us, is it?” Alex asked. “Pete seems creepily fond of them.”

“He’s obsessed,” Gabe agreed. “And no, it’s not. I think he’s got them doing something closer to home base where he can keep an eye on them. This,” he said, clapping Ryland on the shoulder as he passed, “is an old friend.”

Nate met him at the docking hatch. “Trouble?” he asked.

Gabe grinned at him. “Very likely.”

He hit the release for the hatch as soon as the green docking light came on, and stepped back as it opened with a hiss.

William had cut his hair again; it curled in soft strands around his face, making him look even younger than he had nine months ago when Gabe had said goodbye to him at the end of a boarding ramp. He was dressed well but simply, like he was giving a nod to the person he had been while embracing his new life as an upscale rogue. His shirt was open at the collar, no cravat in sight; nothing but pale, smooth, unfettered skin.

“Captain Saporta,” William said, with one of those teasing half-smiles that Gabe remembered so well.

Gabe grinned right back at him. “Captain Beckett,” he said. “Welcome aboard.”