Chapter Text
“Absolutely not.”
On the other side of the cramped booth, Logan’s first potential clients in well over a month share a nervous, twitchy look. He’d noticed the second he’d laid eyes on them that they aren’t from around this sector of space—too skittish, soft and well fed; he’s used to undernourished migrants and world-weary, disgruntled interspacers. Logan had his doubts, and every single one points to them being Terrestrians, of all fucking things.
The one with the glasses stops picking at the crumbling edge of the tabletop long enough to hesitantly meet Logan’s eyes. “You mean—”
“I mean,” Logan hisses, dropping the words low beneath his breath. He side-eyes the bar on the far end of the room—they’re tucked as far as possible from the other goers, not to mention the fact that this joint is one of the seedier places in the Boonies. But certain talk draws unwanted attention. “There’s a war going on out there. And you want—fuck, tell me I didn’t hear that right.”
Glasses chooses that moment to cast his nervous gaze toward the bar, but he isn’t nearly as subtle about it. Hell, the kid looks like he’s about to go up against a firing squad.
At the kid’s side, his friend, the one Logan has a harder time getting a read off, for all the guy seems to be little more than a teenager swaddled up in an overlarge poncho—as if this sector isn’t in the thick of the sweltering solstice months—gets this resigned look on his face.
“Mr. Howlett,” Poncho says, and Logan’s gotta hand it the kid, those baby blues can turn to steel double-quick. “We require safe passage to Landfall’s moon, Wreath. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. Preferably, we need be there before the week is out.”
Logan immediately reaches for his beer, finds it empty, and settles for rubbing a meaty hand down his grizzled face. Damn, he needs a hot shower.
“All right. Thing is? I don’t ask questions. Sure as hell ain’t gonna ask why Terrestrians straight off the boat from the Empire homeworld are so eager to get to the heart of a war zone.” The twin looks of horror on both the kids’ faces bring Logan a sort of perverse joy, but he moves on, “What I can’t just ignore is the indefinite war part of the equation. It’s not that simple. I’ve done some risky bullshit in my time, but Landfallians have got that particular moon on house arrest. And I’d rather not die spectacularly tryin’ to hop the fence.”
“Mr. Howlett, please, you have to understand. We’re—”
“Separatists?” Logan snorts and waves his empty tankard at a passing waitress. “Sided with the moonies, have you? I’ll admit, not something you hear from Terrestrians every day. I’m guessing Empire propaganda isn’t what it used to be.”
The first kid, Glasses, inhales a sharp breath. There’s awe in his voice when he states, “You’re one, too.”
He turns to Poncho for guidance, but the other kid is too busy watching Logan with unnerving, knowing eyes.
“Of course Mr. Howlett is one of us,” Poncho eventually says. Then more direct: “And that’s exactly why you must help us.”
“Look, kid,” Logan says, “You wouldn’t know it livin’ planetside your entire life, but out here? Just about every sorry sack worth their own shit hates the bluebloods and their pet project. Wings have committed enough genocide goin’ after Horns that the rest of us are just a cute side dish of collateral to them. Ain’t a lick of difference you could make to change the tides of war other than getting yourself killed. Hard to swallow, yeah, but it’s something we all gotta accept.”
When the three of them first sat down, Logan had offered to pay for a round of the bar’s shitty tasteless ‘shine, which happens to be the only good thing this shithole can scrounge up under the strict trade laws the Empire’s been enacting in the upper sectors. Glasses had politely declined, while Poncho instead endeavored their purple-skinned Rylian waitress for some ghastly, lemon-flavored sugar concoction she brought out in an actual fuckin’ wineglass.
Now, his fine-boned fingers peek out from beneath the poncho’s enormous folds and curl around the stem as he lifts it for a long, graceful sip.
If Logan was twenty years younger and the kid wasn’t fresh jailbait, he’d allow himself to admit just how annoyingly red those lips are. Instead, he has to contain the urge to roll his eyes.
Terrestrians, he recalls, have always been the privileged type.
“You are wrong in that respect,” Poncho states at length, calm as you please. His blue eyes flick Logan’s way again, haunting against the kid’s pale skin. “My friend and I have in our possession classified documents that, once in the right hands, will save the lives of the thousands still living on Wreath. As you may be able to guess, they are much too sensitive to discuss in this...,” he gives the rest of the bar a slow glanceover, though any assessment of it is shadowed by the nervousness that creeps back into his voice, ”eatery.”
At his side, Glasses raises his hands as if he’s five seconds from motherhening the shit out of the other kid—funny, given both are equally a mess.
“Should I show him, Charles?” Glasses whispers.
Poncho—Charles, apparently—nods sharply.
Then Glasses is reaching beneath the table and setting a briefcase up top. He thumbs the clasps for a moment, hesitating, before opening it just a crack. It’s barely space to see squat, but somehow just enough. Logan's eyes linger on the contents of the briefcase for an overlong moment, his expression hardening.
He cuts the crap.
All right. So they do mean business.
“I’ll help you,” Logan says finally. Frankly, none of this even feels real, if that says anything about the shit they’re about to be in. “But not here. I can get you off this outpost within an hour, that good by you?”
Of course, not a few seconds after he asks it, an entire patrol of Imperial troops walk through the door.
Well, fuck.