FOUR
It was officially New Years Day throughout the Federation, but Tarrant's evil-tempered new boss would hardly thank anyone for honouring Federation ties. Not even to the extent of a cheap glass of soma or two.
Blockade-runners couldn't be choosers, and neither could dead men. Tarrant lay back on the bunk, running hands through his conscript-short hair, and tried to ignore how uncomfortable the paperthin mattress was, even worse than the Scorpio's aging, lumpy 'bunks'.
Ignoring the ever-present ache in his leg was harder, but he'd learn to live with it. He'd got away from Avon's fiasco by the skin of one broken tooth - well, and a broken arm and not-as-badly-burned-as-he'd-thought leg, managed to steal the flyer Blake had brought them here in, managed to get away without being shot out of the sky, and managed to get back to the Scorpio.
Tarrant grinned to himself, gazing down at his faulty, barely adequate and badly altered ID. Olag Bram. What a name, but it would do, for now.
Tarrant hadn't known, when he took it, about the fake IDs that Avon's precious Blake had in his flyer. But then Blake hadn't known, when flaunting those jewels, about the cash and credits Avon had hidden in the Scorpio wreckage. With both, buying a berth on a illegal blockade runner - as a general hand with some piloting skills and no morals - was easy.
The others were dead. They had to be - though it hurt, more than he though it would - because there was nothing he could do for them if they weren't.
He'd been a mercenary once, and could be one again. Gazing out to a starscape bleak and sparsely dotted with points of pallid light, and at Gauda Prime's ugly little sphere dwindling into another lesser point, he made a resolution. No more heroics... ever.
~oOo~