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  “What’s this now?” Jack asked.

  Finn shook his head. “Alyssa got this crazy idea that it’d be possible to brew coffee using a fusion reaction directly between the coffee bean and water. It has no basis in science.”

  “With enough energy it’s possible!” she insisted.

  Finn laughed. “Maybe with a micro energy core, if those were real—oh wait. We’re not stealing the MEC prototype for Svetlana to manufacture weapons, are we?”

  Alyssa’s face contorted into a power-hungry grin. “After we have that core, we’re going to start our own empire of Spacecups.”

  CHAPTER 8: Adventures in Food Service

  “I have to say that working as a barista wasn’t one of my career goals,” Finn began.

  “No, don’t you see?” Alyssa continued. “We have the perfect team to get this venture off the ground. Once we have the MEC, there’ll be nothing to stop us.”

  “I told you not to jump too far ahead,” Triss cautioned. “We won’t even know if your brewing method works until we get the MEC.”

  “It’ll work, and it’ll make us richer than any amount of arms dealing ever could.” Alyssa’s tone was one of complete confidence. “I mean, it’s a highly addictive, legal drug. That’s business gold right there.”

  “She does have a good point,” Jack admitted.

  “And this cut we talked about earlier—that’s actually for a share in the business?” asked Finn.

  Alyssa nodded. “Exactly. When the company takes off, we’re all going to be billionaires.”

  Jack got a sinking feeling in his chest. “So when you said my money troubles would be over…”

  “Yep! Five percent shareholder in Spacecups.”

  “What’s the ROI on that? Because… debts,” Jack asked tentatively.

  “We should have positive cash flow and be paying dividends in two years, tops.”

  “Yeah…” Jack looked down. “Any chance I can get an advance on that?”

  “We’ll talk about it later,” Triss said. “Right now, we need to get ready for our meet and greet with the Lords of Doom. They have an urgent soup delivery headed their way.”

  The team ate a quick breakfast and then ran over the details of the plan for the day. Jack was once again not pleased with being cast in a questionable supporting role, but like other recent events, he decided to just go along with it. Admittedly, he rather enjoyed being part of a successful op after years of failure on his own.

  Four hours later, everything was ready. They executed the hyperspace jump to take them to the Winkelson Brothers’ outpost at a station orbiting a red dwarf.

  As they neared the station, Jack stared out the window in the common room at the cylindrical structure. “They’re really out in the middle of nowhere, aren’t they?”

  “Adds to the mystique,” Triss commented from the cockpit. “If anyone bothered to come out here, I don’t think the brothers would be in business for long once they saw what the operation was really like.”

  “I guess we’ll be the ones to officially ruin their image,” Finn observed. “But, we get to become legends in the process.”

  “See? That’ll give us all sorts of street cred for Spacecups,” Alyssa chimed in.

  “Taking out black market dealers and coffee are not the same thing.” Finn sighed.

  Jack considered it. “Well, black market, black coffee… It might—”

  “Don’t encourage her!” Triss pleaded. “Let’s get the MEC before we plan out a whole business for something that may not even be chemically possible to do.”

  Alyssa sighed. “You’ll see. You’ll all see!”

  “Shh, time to call them,” Triss said and waited for everyone to stop muttering responses to Alyssa’s declaration under their breaths. She opened a comm channel to the station. “Chili delivery for the Lords of Doom.”

  “You’re not our normal delivery person,” a man said after ten seconds.

  “Filling in for a friend,” Triss said. She paused, then resumed with a breathy tone, “I really need the money. If there are any extra services I can provide while I’m here, do let me know.”

  A response came almost immediately. “We’ll open the bay door for you.”

  “You know, things are way easier when you just ask to be let in rather than trying to be all sneaky-like,” Jack commented when the comm channel was closed.

  “It’s kind of ridiculous, isn’t it?” Triss replied. “I mean, half the hacking I do these days is just pretending to be an IT person and asking people to verify their password.”

  “That works?” Finn asked with a raised eyebrow.

  “Almost every time. Believe me, I’m still stunned.”

  “Well, we’ll have to put on a good front here,” Alyssa reminded everyone. “The delivery needs to look completely legit until they open the soup containers.”

  “What’s the trigger for the detonation?” Finn asked. “I think I was zoning out when you went over it before.”

  “I have a remote trigger set up,” Alyssa told him. “Duck when I do.”

  “Sounds good.” Finn nodded.

  The ship pulled into the cargo bay on the space station and the engines wound down.

  Jack took a deep breath to center himself in preparation for the upcoming encounter. He slipped on a generic workman’s jumpsuit over his trademark black jacket and gray pants—both to hide his holstered laser pistol and to protect his clothing against the upcoming soupy mess. Around the room, the others were donning similar apparel.

  “This fabric is itchy,” Triss complained as she zipped hers up, leaving the top undone to reveal just enough cleavage to keep things interesting.

  “They were on super deep discount,” Alyssa replied. “I think they may have been used at a fiberglass manufacturing plant.”

  Finn frowned. “This is what we get for trying to operate on a budget.”

  “You can take it off soon. Come on.” Alyssa unsealed the hatch and led the way outside.

  The hangar was a cavernous space of matte steel and pulley systems for maneuvering large cargo. The edges of the room were stacked with various crates and barrels that had questionable styling and were likely overpriced.

  Alyssa allowed Triss to take the lead as the four of them stepped into the center of the hangar where two girthsome men were waiting for them. It didn’t take long for the scent of stale sweat and fermented peppers to waft over, but everyone managed to maintain a neutral expression.

  Triss put on her most charming smile and swayed her hips as she walked. “Hello, there. I’m glad we could work out a docking arrangement.”

  “Oh, I’ll show you docking maneuvers any time you want,” the slightly thinner man on the right, Don, stated as he undressed Triss with his eyes.

  “I’m an excellent pilot,” Bill added.

  Jack resisted a gag reflex as a he watched the scene unfold.

  Triss’ lips curled into an alluring smile. “Well, let me show you the goods.”

  She sauntered toward the cargo hold in the side of the Little Princess—barely large enough to transport the two soup barrels, but sufficient to suit their present purposes.

  Alyssa and Finn opened the compartment on cue and rolled the barrels on their bottom edge until each was lined up on the deck in front the craft. They then stacked several down pillows next to the barrels, which had been stashed at the back of the hold.

  The two men scowled as they approached the cargo.

  “What are those?” Don asked as he eyed the stack of fluffy, white objects.

  “Pillows,” Alyssa replied, standing akimbo in an attempt to emphasize her assets hidden beneath the jumpsuit.

  “We didn’t order any pillows,” Bill stated.

  Triss flipped her red hair. “Well, maybe we can find some use for them.” She leaned over one of the soup barrels and slowly unclasped the lid, making occasional eye contact with the men as she did so. “I imagine you want to give it a taste.” She flipped the lid over onto
the other barrel and stepped back.

  Still watching Triss, the brothers approached the soup barrel, unaware that the members of the Little Princess’ crew were inching away from them. When the brothers were just about to lean over to take a taste of the chili, Alyssa flipped the hidden trigger.

  Soup rocketed into the air and showered the brothers. They yelped with surprise as the chunky, orange liquid coated them from head to foot.

  Bill toppled sideways and landed on the pile of pillows. Due to intentionally weakened seams, the impact caused the pillows to explode into a cloud of down. The feathers settled on top of the soup already coating him, resulting in a horrifying impression of a snow-covered golem.

  Triss gasped with feigned surprise. “Oh no! There must have been some residual carbonation from the packaging process. These eruptions almost never happen.” She looked down at her jumpsuit. “I got all dirty.” She ran her finger through a blob of chili on her bosom.

  The brothers lay on the ground in stunned silence for twenty seconds before Don rose awkwardly to his feet. “It… burns.”

  Triss gave a cutesy shrug. “Well, you did order it extra spicy.”

  Bill rolled side-to-side until he had enough momentum to make it to his stomach. He rose to his feet using the barrel for help. “I have to clean up.”

  “Here, I’ll help you.” Triss walked with them across the hangar, leaving a trail of soupy footprints across the metal deck. As they passed through a door in the wall, she made a quick nod toward the others then disappeared.

  “Okay, let’s move!” Alyssa said, stripping off her outer jumpsuit.

  “You know, it would have been a lot easier if we just stunned them,” Jack muttered, peeling off his own jumpsuit. Fortunately, the subpar fabric appeared to have been effective at keeping his other clothes clean.

  Alyssa nodded. “Yes, but A, this is more fun for Triss to lead them on, and B, rather than immediately knowing there’s a problem, this way it will likely take days for them to notice. Safes aren’t something that most people access every day.”

  “And what if they have security cameras and watch us having this conversation and then cracking the safe?”

  “Fair point,” Alyssa conceded. “But… exploding soup.”

  “That was a pretty good move,” Jack admitted.

  “Clock’s a tickin’!” Finn shouted and ran toward the far side of the hangar.

  Jack followed him, and Alyssa stayed behind to keep watch on the Little Princess and prepare for a quick getaway. As he ran, Jack noticed that while his clothes were clean there was a slight squishing in his shoes.

  CHAPTER 9: Petty Theft… And Felonies

  The safe was behind a rather tasteful nude painting in a cluttered office at the top of a staircase down a corridor through two doors in the general direction of the center of the space station. Due to its less than accessible location, Jack and Finn were fairly confident that the Winkelson Brothers rarely accessed the room—namely due to the staircase and narrow nature of the halls.

  “Time me! I want this to go down on record,” Finn said as he pulled out a hand-held electronic device and a vaguely stethoscope-looking apparatus from under his jacket. He placed the end of the stethoscope-thingy on the door of the safe with the electronic pad below it.

  Finn began running through combinations on the pinpad to the safe while watching the results on the electronic readout.

  Jack was curious about what he was doing but decided that it was an inappropriate time to ask questions.

  Speaking of time, he realized he’d never started a counter and actually had no means of doing so. For lack of anything else, he began counting ‘one-thousands’ in his head. Unfortunately, he got distracted at twenty-seven and needed to guess how long he was daydreaming about eating a warm cup of chili. A similar incident happened at one-hundred-thirteen when he was overcome with a really bad itch on his ankle. He had just reached two-hundred-sixty two when Finn let out a victorious shout.

  “Done!” The safe hissed open. “What’s the count?”

  “Uh…” Jack tried to add up the various chunks of unaccounted time. “Three hundred seconds...?”

  “Wrong! Two-hundred ninety-two. There’s an electronic counter here; I just wanted to keep you distracted.”

  “Honestly, I thought I’d be way further off,” Jack admitted. “There were some… incidents.”

  “Yeah, that itch seemed like it was going to do you in for a few seconds there.”

  “You noticed that?”

  Finn grinned. “I miss nothing. Like, for instance, that there’s a pressure plate under these modules.”

  Jack turned his attention to the interior of the safe. Two dozen nano induction modules—he estimated that to be a street value of well over ten million credits—were resting on a telltale plate that was almost certainly wired into a security system. What that system would do when activated was a complete mystery.

  “How do we counter it?” he asked.

  Finn examined the equipment. After a moment he grinned. “Duck tape.”

  “Duck tape?”

  The thief nodded. “I mean, the pressure plate just needs to be immobilized. The idiots have it completely depressed, so we just need to strap it down snug and throw some books on top of it. Should be fine.”

  “Oh. That’s easy.”

  “Well yeah… look around. The ‘Lords of Doom’ pretty much half-ass everything, aside from their meal schedule. They bought a top-of-the-line safe and called it good.”

  “You cracked it pretty quickly,” Jack pointed out.

  “But I’m Finn McGloven, King of Safecracking, Breaker of Locks, the Unjailed, Father of… hopefully no one I don’t know about.”

  Jack smiled. “Kind of egotistical to read off your own titles, isn’t it?”

  “And this is why everyone should have a squire,” Finn grumbled while pulling some of the adhesive tape from his bag.

  “Wait, you have duct tape with you?”

  Finn stared at him. “Well yeah. You mean you don’t always have a roll on you? And I think you intended to say ‘duck tape’.”

  “No…” Jack replied. “Actually—”

  The other man placed a finger on Jack’s lips. “Shh. This explains so much.” He set about his work. In a matter of two minutes, Finn had slathered on enough tape over the pressure plate that it would be able to withstand the force of a rocket blast. Just for good measure, he grabbed some metal blocks that happened to be in the corner of the cluttered room and placed them behind the rack of nano induction modules, sliding the two trays of electronic chips forward out of the safe as the blocks were put in place. Everything seemed to be fine.

  “Well done, partner!” Finn said as he closed the safe and removed his cracking equipment.

  Jack was just about to reply when sounds of laser pistol fire sounded in the distance.

  “At least it wasn’t us,” Jack said with a shrug.

  “There is that,” Finn agreed.

  They scooped up the two trays and made a run for the door, each drawing a laser pistol in their free hand.

  At a full sprint, they raced down the staircase and through the corridor leading back into the hangar. When the open room came into view, Jack saw that Alyssa had taken cover behind the soup barrels and Triss was behind a crate midway between the Little Princess and the door where she’d left with Don and Bill. They were firing at five men in various positions around the hangar.

  “Time to join in the fight,” Finn said a moment before he skidded across the floor to seek cover behind a stack of crates. He got off two shots at a man crouched in a catwalk near the ceiling of the hangar.

  The man pretended like he’d been hit—clutching his shoulder—then laughed and fired back at Finn.

  Jack took the opportunity to run behind a crate near Finn, then onto another one several meters from Alyssa.

  “What happened?” he called out to her, joining in her fire against two men behind a grouping of barrels ne
ar the door Triss had used.

  “Apparently none of us bothered to ask how many brothers were in the Winkelson family,” she replied, pulling her head behind the cover just as a laser blast whizzed by. “The answer is seven, by the way.”

  “Ah, yeah. Should have thought of that.” Jack reached around the corner to fire at the shooter to the right of the door.

  “Hindsight, right?” Alyssa fired three times and one shot finally connected with the left shooter.

  The man collapsed on the floor, motionless.

  Seeing his fallen brother, the right shooter began firing blindly toward Alyssa and Jack.

  Alyssa sprayed laser fire in his general direction and the man ducked down, giving Jack the opportunity to aim. He took a headshot and the beam connected.

  “Help Triss,” Alyssa said while checking the charge on her pistol. “I’m almost out. I’ll get the ship warmed up.”

  “I’ll cover you.” Jack targeted the men who had Triss pinned down while Alyssa darted alongside the Little Princess toward the main hatch.

  When she was safely inside, Jack dove for a crate closer to Triss. It didn’t offer much cover, but it afforded much better sight lines to the two gunmen.

  “I’ll take the guy on the left,” Jack called to her while gently cradling the rack of modules in the crook of his left arm.

  “Got it,” Triss replied, shifting her attention to the right shooter. She fired four rapid shots and the man went down.

  Jack was lining up a kill shot of his own when his target suddenly dropped dead with a singed hole through his forehead.

  Surprised, Jack looked to his left to see Finn standing in the open with his pistol raised in one hand and the nano induction modules tucked in the other.

  “Way to steal the glory,” Jack groaned and rose from the hiding place.

  Finn grinned. “I’m a showoff, what can I say?”

  CHAPTER 10: The Best Laid Plans

  With their foes vanquished, Triss, Finn, and Jack joined Alyssa in the common room of Little Princess.

  “Where did things go sideways?” Jack questioned once the main hatch was sealed.