On Freedom
Aang shuffled into the cargo bay to see the Duke tinkering with a remote, right before the bottom of the cargo bay lifted up. "What are you doing?" he asked, and the young mercenary shrugged.
"Crime," he replied. Aang raised an eyebrow.
"Crime," he repeated, and the Duke nodded.
"Yup," he said, like it was nothing, "a train job. They have trains where you come from?" he asked, and then answered his own question. "Prob'ly not. They're sorta like these ships," he explained, indicating to Freedom, "'cept they're stuck to the ground and don't move so fast. Jet and Bee are already on."
"Will this... hurt anyone?" he asked hesitantly. He knew Jet didn't exactly have a clean record, but hearing the Duke's matter-of-fact explanation still threw him off.
"Nah," he replied, waving a hand, "we're just takin' some cargo off."
"Oh," he said, and pursed his lips, "that's... good, then."
"What, you got a problem with us bein' bad guys?" he asked, sounding almost offended, and then shrugged. "Out here, there ain't so many legal jobs left. We do what we gotta do so we can eat. S'okay, Jet don't ever pick up jobs that are supposed to hurt nobody. Sometimes, things get hairy and you can't help it," he added, shrugging again, "but usually we're just stealin' some shiny or transportin' some cargo under the Alliance's noses. Once, we had to transport a whole herd of cows," he said, wincing. "That was fun."
"Why?" he asked, perching on an empty box. "What did they want with the cows?"
The Duke made a face. "I think they were dairy — most of 'em were girls, not, uh... steers? Hey, Pipsqueak," he asked, as the mercenary came in, dressed in a harness and a pair of goggles, "what d'you call boy cows?"
"Bulls," Pipsqueak replied, and the Duke nodded.
"Right," he said. "Bulls're mostly used for meat, but the girl cows ain't, they get milked and bred. The man shipping 'em just didn't want the Alliance knowin' how many he had, so he got us to move 'em from his planet to another one."
"'Girl cows' is redundant," Pipsqueak mumbled, a hat stuffed between his teeth, as he tightened the harness. Aang tilted his head.
"What's your job in the... crime?" he asked, wincing at the word. Pipsqueak glanced at him.
"I get to jump on the moving train," he answered tensely. The Duke grinned.
"He gets the fun job," he explained, and then pressed a few buttons so that the bottom of the ship opened up and Aang could see the ground rushing by underneath them. He closed his eyes and the wind swept in over him, but he couldn't really enjoy it, mind stuck on his friend in the Infirmary, hooked up to a bag of what Haru called "antibiotics" that was supposed to help — but he didn't know if he trusted those little bags to save her.
He'd offered to find some of the herbs he'd learned about at the Air Temple, and make up a poultice that he'd seen cure someone who'd been gored by a komodo-rhino after their skin had started going black, but Haru had refused, dismissing him outright with a roll of his eyes, and Katara had explained that they weren't in any position to get those herbs. She, at least, had thanked him for the offer and suggested that they find some at the next stop, even telling him that she'd like to learn his healing techniques, but he thought she might have been trying to make him feel better.
He hated feeling useless when people he cared about were hurting. Haru didn't get it, probably hadn't felt useless in his whole life, but Katara understood, and she was on his side, helping him think of ways to make Toph feel better when she woke up. Neither of them had come up with any really good ideas yet, but the effort was nice.
The Duke kept talking, shouting over the noise, "Cap'n and Bee are in the train, and they'll open up the top o' the compartment with the cargo in it, Pipsqueak jumps down into the train, then we haul all the cargo, plus the Cap'n and Bee, right back up here. Easy."
"Have you ever done this before?" Aang asked absently as the Duke hooked Pipsqueak up to a metal cable running into the roof of the cargo bay, breathing easier in his element and letting it carry away some of the weight on his shoulders, if only for a few minutes.
"Nope," the Duke replied matter-of-factly, "but it should work."
"Speak for yourself," Pipsqueak said, and then appeared to be praying for a moment. He looked at them. "Wish me luck," he said, and the Duke waved him off.
"Good luck!" Aang yelled as Pipsqueak jumped onto the train.
"Scrolls?" Jet asked, glancing at Bee, who nodded. "What kinda scrolls?"
"I don't know, sir," she replied, looking up and down the train car. "They were old, that's for sure. All stacked up nice an' pretty on the top two shelves."
"Huh," he grunted, thinking hard about that, why Hama might keep a bunch of ancient scrolls in her office. It didn't fit — Hama, the historian? No, they were missing something here. But he didn't have time right now to think about anything but the job. "Well, we'll figure it out later," he said quietly, "Longshot said he'd be pulling over the train at — " he paused as someone passed them, coughing violently, " — at 0750 on the nose, we're running low on time. Let's get started."
"Yes, sir," Bee replied, and stood up, shouldering the bag of smoke bombs, rope, and power tools they had packed into clever hiding places that wouldn't show on the X-ray screener, one of Bee's ideas that had, like most things that came out her bag of tricks, worked beautifully. She followed him to the end of the car (which seemed full of sick folks, all coughing and sniffling) and into the next one — where they both froze, looking a batallion of purple-bellies in the face.
Jet blinked. "Hey," he said jovially, smiling and mentally preparing a speech about this isn't where I parked my ship, when the other side opened and a small family shuffled through, so they took a leaf out of their book and passed straight through the compartment, nodding friendly-like at them as they passed and the oldest stifled a cough. Once on the other side, into the compartment they were supposed to find the cargo in, he looked at Bee. "I like this job better already," he muttered, grinning cheekily, and she gave him one of her looks, the tried-and-true you're not funny glare.
"You're not even a little worried about the car full of Alliance men?" she asked, and he shrugged.
"Are you kidding?" he replied, while they set a smoke bomb to go off if the door opened. "Look, we're robbing a train — you have any idea how long I've wanted to do that? Jesse James was my hero when I was a kid. And! We get to do it while makin' the Alliance look like a buncha bumblin' fools! This is the best job ever," he said, grinning, trying too hard to fake cheerful. If Bee noticed — and he was sure she did — she let it slide. "Hell, I'd do it for free."
"Wonderful," Bee said, checking for the right cargo while he began unscrewing the top of the compartment. "I'll take your share, then. Me and Longshot been wantin' a good beach vacation, your generosity is really gonna help make that happen."
"You're hilarious," he drawled, catching a screw and throwing it at her. "A real bucket o' laughs."
"Hey, you said you'd do it for free. You don't get take-backs on that kinda thing," she muttered absently, pulling aside a tarp that covered a set of boxes. "Here's the cargo."
"Shiny," he replied. "Help me get this — " he grunted as the top of the train car fell into his hands and he almost fell over under the sudden weight. Bee came over to help him move it aside, and not three seconds later, Pipsqueak rolled into the train car, breathing heavily and glaring at them for no readily apparent reason. He unhooked the harness from Pipsqueak's back and hooked it to the netting that Bee was wrapping around the apparently-rather-light cargo.
Only a minute and a half or so later, all three of them were rising back up into the ship again, no one on the train any the wiser.
The shiniest job they'd ever run. He was too proud to really stop and appreciate the irony: the one job he'd almost refused and all-but openly sabotaged at least three times through the planning process was the first one they'd run in over a year to go off without a hitch. Just more proof that karma didn't exist.
Back in the ship, they unhooked the cargo and Bee caught him by the arm. "You think anyone down there might've ID-ed us?" she asked seriously, and he shrugged.
"Dunno," he replied airily. "Not too worried either way. We never run jobs on this system anyhow." Bee didn't seem to share his optimism, but he ignored her and turned to the comm. "Longshot," he said into the comm, "we're on, take us to the meeting point."
"What did we steal?" Aang asked, hopping off a tower of boxes behind him and making Jet jump.
"Where did you come from?" he gasped, but went on without waiting for an answer because Aang was always hanging around in places Jet was sure no one could ever get to. It must have been an airbender thing — he was working on his theory that the little Avatar could fly, and hadn't found any evidence yet that he was wrong. "I didn't ask," he said with a shrug, and caught Aang's hand as he reached out to touch it. "Paws off, xiao hóuzi," he said, using Toph's affectionate nickname (it was just so apt) and pushing him in front of him as he made his way back up to the bridge. "I want you stayin' outta sight, got it? Hama Sila ain't known for being nice, and she'd love to kidnap you and sell you off to them that want you dead."
"I can take care of myself," Aang said, crossing his arms, and Jet rolled his eyes.
"You're still a kid," Jet told him, arms crossed. "And when you're on my ship, you're my responsibility. You don't like it, you can find another ship to fly with."
"Maybe I will," Aang replied, but smiled impishly. Good that he was getting cheerful now that Toph wasn't quite so close to death's door — sadness didn't fit on the little monkey's face. "I'll get my own ship," he continued. "And fly around the 'Verse helping people."
"Yeah, and you'll starve to death," he countered, and received an inexpert glare. Anger didn't really fit on his face either, Jet decided. "Quiet, xiao hóuzi," he said, holding up a hand, "I don't wanna hear it. Longshot, let 'em know we've got the goods and we'll be there posthaste. Aang, go hide out in Katara's shuttle while we're doing this job. Don't want Hama hearin' you're on the ship."
Aang sighed dramatically, but went without any vocal protest.
Once they had landed, he and Longshot went down to the cargo bay, but Bee met them halfway, her face clouded. "Sir, we have a problem," she said seriously.
"What?" he asked. "Don't tell me we got the wrong goods."
"No," she replied, walking him into the cargo bay, where Haru was standing with Pipsqueak and the Duke, one of the boxes open in front of them. "The cargo — it's medicine, sir," she told him quietly, gesturing to the rows and rows of tiny vials nested in styrofoam packing. "Pascaline-D," she explained, "Haru looked it up on the Cortex — the people on this planet all suffer from some nasty coal-mining disease you get in your lungs and don't get rid of, that's why they... all the coughing," she said desperately, pleadingly. He knew where she was going with this, and he pressed his fist against his lip hard. "Hama's gonna sell it on the black market, it goes for a hell of a price. But those people need this medicine."
Jet stared hard at the cargo, but shook his head. "We can't back down on the deal. Bee, we can't," he repeated, as she started to protest. "We're already at the meetin' point — that big tattooed freak'll be walking through the doors any second now. It's too late. We knew we were gettin' in with a bad woman when we started, no sense in growin' a conscience now. 'Sides, you tellin' me you want to be on Hama's bad side?"
"No, but these people — "
"Will live," he cut her off, and snapped the box closed, stomach rolling. He didn't like doing this, but he and his crew hadn't eaten a proper meal in two months, Toph needed the antibiotics Hama was paying for, and the ship was running on the bare bones of its second-to-last fuel cell. If they backed out of the deal now, they'd be drifting, starving, and setting Toph's body out in a space burial, all while waiting helpless for Hama to come knocking on their door to kill the rest of them. It was finish the job, or be finished.
He didn't like leaving the people with no choice but to buy back their meds at Hama's prices, but it was them or his crew.
And Jet always looked out for his own.
"Jet," Bee started, incredulous, but he shook his head and turned as someone knocked at the airlock door and Crow walked in, all threatening, glare set on his face.
"The goods are intact?" he asked, and Jet gave him his best shit-eating grin.
"Perfect condition," he replied cheerfully. "Job went off without a hitch."
"Good," Crow said, handing over a new envelope large enough to keep official documents in and waiting as he checked it over to make sure everything was there: a neat pile of credits three rows high and two rows deep, actually a fair bit more than looked right. Flushed up against the side was a letter-sized slip of paper — Hama worked so low-tech, he didn't think anyone used ink and sheets of paper for anything other than fancy certificates anymore — which he slid out and read, confusion slowly shifting to nausea.
Medicine is expensive, I know, so I've added enough for two full rounds of vancomycin to the amount already agreed upon. My best wishes to your ill crewmember, may he or she have a swift recovery.
"Is everything good?" Crow asked, in the tone of someone who didn't care if the answer was yes or no. Jet slid the paper back into the envelope and tried to smile, but failed.
"Yeah, it's great. Tell the Lady Sila — " that she can burn in hell, that I won't be in her debt, that I don't want anything to do with her so-called charity " — that we said thank you for the extra kindness."
Cut out of the same cloth, indeed.
Sometimes, he even made himself sick.