Marie

Part 1

“I’m not gonna ask you again. Where’s the money?”

Marie sat, smiling as she looked at the pistol pointed at her face. She’d been in scrapes like this before. Come to think of it, getting into debt may be a bit of an unhealthy habit. Oh well, nothing to do about it now but weasel her way out. “Now Jack, you and I both know I’m a lot more useful alive that dead.” She said, twirling around her drink in her hand. “I owe you, I know that. But hey, as long as you keep me alive, you’ll get it back. If you kill me, not so much.” She looked up at the ceiling of the bar, hoping for some kind of way out in case this didn’t go as planned.

“That’s not good enough this time Marie. You owe the boss way too much for him to just let it slide. But, I’ll tell you what. You pay me more than your bounty, and I’ll pretend I didn’t find you here. If you don’t, I’m gonna have to take you in.”

Damn, why did this have to be the day she left her blaster in the ship outside. Wasn’t doing her much good now, was it? “Fine, but we’ll have to go back to my ship to get the money.”

He glared at her said nothing, and jerked the barrel of his weapon toward the door. Alright, step one done. This wasn’t too bad, right? Now, there was some cash in a case under the front seat. Her pistol was in the glove compartment. But, it’s not like he’d just let her open it. No, he’d want to grab the cash himself… Alright, just relax, and think.

“You better not be pulling a fast one on me here. That bounty wasn’t too picky about your condition, you know?” Yeah, yeah. Dead, alive, damaged. You spend your time owing that much money to people, and it came with the territory. Didn’t mean it was always great, but it kept it exciting.

“The money’s in the trunk. It’s more than the bounty.” She said casually. It almost sounding like an everyday thing for her, and that was closer to the truth than she’d like. It was probably time to move on. “I have to scan myself to open it though.”

“Alright, fine. Just no quick moves, you hear? Take it slow and everything’ll be fine.”

Marie stepped up into the driver’s seat of the ship as Jack stood on the ladder, looking into the cockpit, gun still pointed at her. Perfect, step two done.

“Alright, I’m pushing the scan button now.” She slowly reached her right hand out to the center console, for the button with the image of a body on it. And with her left, she even more slowly reached toward the button to close the cockpit. She pushed both of them at once, and Jack’s hand shot up, a shot flying high as the plexiglass window quickly rose, to seal at the top. Her identity now confirmed, she punched it, her ship shooting into the sky as she saw Jack fall off the stepladder. Well, a bit closer than normal, but still clean.

Step three done.

Part 2

Marie waited until she was well out of sight of the station before turning the ship to go in a different direction. Hopefully make it a bit harder to follow her. She was getting into the upper atmosphere now, and she could see the stars beginning to surround her. Man, she was going to have to get that bounty figured out. Maybe she should just talk to Trax herself, see if she could smooth things over.

She took a good look around before taking her ship back down through the atmosphere, now making her way over to the big city. Yeah, this was probably the right move. Otherwise it was only a matter of time before someone decided they'd be fine just taking her in dead instead of trying for a bonus.

In front of her, the city skyline came into view. Massive buildings, thousands of feet high, poked through the clouds, dwarfing the surrounding slum-scrapers. She flew her ship to the near side of the city, going towards a group of shorter buildings with a empty area in the middle for landing. As she approached, she heard her comm go live.

"Marie! Glad to see you came to your senses. I trust you're here to pay your debt?"

"Yeah, I think we can work something out." She didn't have the money, not all of it anyway, but maybe working some jobs would help out a bit. Trax was a pretty fair dude, all things considered. He only put the bounty out after she'd stopped returning his calls. Kind of a miracle he managed to keep the whole syndicate together with an attitude like that, but he did.

"So, you don't have the money? Should I just have the guards shoot you when you land and we can all get a nice payday out of it?"

"We both know it wouldn't be that simple." she said with a smile. "Tell Trax I have some of the money and I'd like to talk. Smooth things over, you know?"

There was a pause on the other end for a few seconds before he responded again. "Alright, you know the drill. Land, no weapons, just come out nice and slow, and then I'll ask Trax if he actually wants to talk or not."

She smiled. He'd talk. He always did.