Cyrus seemed to realize after she did what, exactly, they were reading. Quickly he closed the document and tracked back to the original directory as he told her, “We shouldn’t be looking at that.”

Even as he said it though, his expression at her was less reprimanding as it was begging ‘please don’t tell anyone’.

Frankly, Corra was not concerned with anybody finding out. She was more intrigued by what she had seen. What she had read. Corra had never received a love letter in her life nor had she known anyone that had. Or rather, nor had she known anyone that had admitted to it. This was fascinating. How romantic and mysterious. She hadn’t actually believed that people did that kind of thing outside of fiction and yet here was this doctor who had love notes saved on her back-up. Maybe all the glamour of fiction wasn’t made-up after all. Maybe Corra had just been on the wrong planets to see it.

“Relax, Cy-cy,” she reassured her concerned friend with a friendly pat on his head. “She’ll never know. I won’t bring it up, I promise. But I do wonder who Ren is.”

Suspiciously, Cyrus said nothing. Too suspiciously. His response should have been ‘I don’t care’ or ‘yeah whatever’ or even ‘maybe he’s no one and Leta just writes letters to herself like a crazy person’. But Cyrus said nothing. He always was terrible at keeping secrets.

“You know,” she realized, narrowing her eyes at him. Instantly, his eyes widened and his lips sealed shut uncomfortably and she knew she’d caught him. “You know who he is. How do you know? Why would she tell you that? Why didn’t she tell me?” Those were stupid questions, she realized. “No, scratch all that. Just answer me one thing. Who is he?”

“I don’t know,” Cyrus lied, climbing out of his seat to have an easier out and holding his hand up to her as though it might stop her onslaught of interrogation.

“Yes you do. Tell me,” Corra demanded, stern, but good-natured. It didn’t take much threatening to get information from the younger Soliveré. Especially information he didn’t care all that much about. She couldn’t imagine his attachment to Leta’s admirer was that strong.

“No, I don’t know anything,” he insisted again, backing up towards the door.

Corra rolled her eyes and held out her hand as though he might physically drop what she wanted in her palm. “Just tell me, you’re gonna lose this and you know it.”

“That’s not true,” he muttered half-heartedly, stumbling backwards. “I won’t necessarily–”

Suddenly, Cyrus’ words were drowned out by none other than the Dionysian herself. Over their heads, the ship’s warning alarm — loud, booming, intrusive — blared from the speakers.

The Dionysian had exactly one alarm for all incidents.  Yet, the captain had often claimed that each alarm meant something different and he would rattle off what “each” one meant. That its noise had a sort of code that he had cracked and the sound differentiated with each emergency. To Corra and to every sane person aboard, it always sounded exactly the same and truthfully, she had no clue why it would be going off now. They weren’t even in the air. She glanced to Cyrus, who looked just as confused.

It was then that shouts and yells that began drifting up to the bridge from the decks below provided some clarity. This was no false warning. Forgetting about Leta’s mysterious lover, the two of them fled from the bridge and hurried down the stairs.

When they arrived in the cargo bay, it was crowded — not only with crew. From the position Cyrus and Corra took on the upper catwalk, they had a view of the chaos and arguing starting to unfold. A small team of men and women — all of them armed — had stormed up into the bay and seemed to be intent on taking the crates of guns that the captain was currently out peddling.

“Great,” Cyrus muttered sarcastically through his teeth, catching Corra’s worried glance and letting out a sigh. “As if the deal wasn’t already doomed enough as it is….”

Who were they? They couldn’t have been Goddora’s men, Corra was sure of it. Goddora would never dress his people so poorly and, had the deal been sanctioned, they wouldn’t have barged in with their weapons raised. They would have waited to be ushered in by the captain himself. This wasn’t right. The rest of the crew seemed to agree.

Arty, the Dionsyian’s product manager, was arguing with them, a handful of the crew backing him up. Unfortunately, Corra noticed, they were all unarmed and thus Arty blatantly yelling at the intruders was likely not the best idea. Not when they were carrying standard assault rifles that could clear the bay in all of ten seconds.

From where Corra stood beside Cyrus on the upper catwalk, her hands clenched over the railing tensely, she couldn’t quite make out what they were saying, but it didn’t matter. It was hostile. Even if she couldn’t hear the words, the loud bang as poor Arty took a shot straight to the shoulder was all she needed. The gunshot exploded over the cargo bay, and Arty staggered backwards.

And then all hell broke loose.

Furious and frenzied, the rest of the crew shot off, some straight towards the assaulters and some straight to hide. They’d been unarmed, but the one who’d done the deed went down regardless when five of her own peers piled onto him viciously. The others, wisely, fled down the ramp, shouting unintelligibly.

Corra and Cyrus looked at each other for a moment, both in shock. Frantically, her head whipped back to the ramp and the ground below just as a swarm of people, just as armed as their predecessors started flooding into view as they sprinted towards the ship, ready for battle. A battle that they, the Dionysian, was hardly prepared for.

“Shit,” Cyrus summed up in a single word, clapping his hand to his forehead in mounting panic. “Who the hell are these people and why are they attacking us?”

Corra glanced sidelong at him in disbelief. “I don’t think that really matters right now, do you?”

“It could,” Cyrus muttered back. “If we knew who they were maybe we could talk to them and…figure this out … “

Down near the ramp, bullets were flying, ricocheting off metal, shouts were erupting from both parties, people were running and ducking out of the fray Corra drew a deep intake of breath before looking back to him, wide-eyed.

“I don’t think they’re interested in talking, Cy-cy,” she stated firmly.

“Well…” Cyrus began, the panic cracking his voice, as he waved down at the crew below him. “Why aren’t we shooting back then? Shouldn’t we be defending ourselves? What are they doing?”

“What are they doing?!” Corra repeated incredulously. “They’re panicking. Like you’re panicking. They need their captain. Their captain who is currently a few miles away making arrangements to sell weapons that are about to be stolen out of our own cargo bay while we stand here panicking.”

They may have been without their captain, but Dionysian did have a replacement. A replacement who shared the same genes, a fact that, looking at the two of them, was easy to forget. But Corra knew because Corra had seen it before. She also knew that sometimes the second in command just needed a little push.

“They need a leader,” she pressed more seriously, grabbing his arm, hoping to remind him as well. True, Cyrus wasn’t like his brother. In fact, he made an effort not to be. That is, until moments like these. Cyrus stared at her for a moment longer, looked pained, before sharply turning away.

“Listen!” he suddenly shouted at the top of his lungs, his voice bouncing in echoes off the wide metal walls of the bay. No one had ever described the engineer as ‘commanding’, but in that moment, every crew member halted, looked up at him and went deathly quiet.

From her vantage point, Corra could see him swallow uncomfortably before continuing on. “You three!” he pointed to a hardly fight-worthy group. “Go with Corra to the armory and bring weapons and ammo back. We need someone covering the other entrance. You.” He pointed at Nikkolai. “Get a gun from the armory first. In the meantime, someone get those crates open. Use what’s inside. Cover the entrance, don’t let anyone up that ramp.”

Cyrus halted again and looked down at his crew below him, all looking up attentively and ready. He winced uncomfortably and Corra could see him struggling for that final order. The motivation. The inspiration. In the end, he gritted his teeth and settled on, “Let’s kick some ass!”

To his surprise, a sudden yell of approval roared from the crew below, before they all shot off in directions to follow orders of their stand-in captain.

At his side, Corra smiled a little pathetically at her friend and patted him on the back. “Nice one,” she commended, before rushing down the stairs herself, calling, “To the armory, with me!” just as the first wave began.

“Come on, let her do her thing,” he said casually, pushing himself from the wall and weaving his way back to the center of the room. “How’d you like to operate on someone with a gun to ya? Ain’t that enough stress on its own?” He raised his brow at the man and then lowered them both in challenge. “It’s not about her. It’s about us. You want collateral? Fine.” Carefully, but not without a shove of force, he put his hand over Saviano’s gun and moved it to not point at Leta, but to point at himself. “She kills him, you can shoot me. Deal?”

A much-too-agreeable sense of excitement rose in Saviano’s face. “How noble of you,” he remarked grandly, sounding truly glad now to hold his gun to Fiearius’ chest instead. His head tilted toward Leta as he added softly, “Good of you to protect your merchandise.”

Fiearius smirked and replied sarcastically, “Nah, I’m just jealous. Can’t have my employees getting all the attention now, can I?”

Merchandise? With a rather angry jerk, Leta suddenly seized the broken medical cart and drew it closer to herself, though her gaze was halted sternly on the two men against the wall. Breathing was coming easier to her now that she wasn’t the direct target of a bullet — she’d have to thank the captain for those heroics later, she thought, in a moment of hysterical amusement — though the sight of Fiearius with a gun to his chest wasn’t doing much to ease her riddled nerves.

If Fiearius was killed, she realized, she’d have to find her way out the door herself. It was not a possibility she could fully wrap her head around, him falling to the floor at her feet. Though, apparently, it did not seem like a scenario he found very likely. Or maybe he thought it was entirely likely, and he was more insane than she’d even thought. She wondered, then, exactly how many lives were at stake here.

She silenced that thought in her mind as quickly as it arrived. Ignoring the icy sweat that touched the back of her neck, then, she got to work.

Mercifully, the rest of the scene began to fall away. For several long minutes, it was only her and the set of small, rusted knives she found in the med cart, which she held up to the light of the window for a moment before turning down to her patient. She stood over him and set her forearms at an an angle over his abdomen, her fingers working the knives quickly at first, then with painstaking patience. She paused only to brush her arm over her forehead, swiping away matted hair, before continuing the surgery.

“You know,” Saviano said thoughtfully, breaking the silence that had spread over the room as Leta worked, “when we hadn’t heard from you in awhile, Soliveré, I was certain you’d been killed. But I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up.”

“If anyone should be killed,” Leta muttered suddenly, stepping back from the bed, “it should be the surgeons you have onboard. They stitched him up before closing his portal and hepatic veins; he’s been bleeding internally for three days.” Heaving a steadying sigh of exhaustion and relief, Leta replaced the knives back onto the tray. She began to unsnap her crimson-stained gloves from her hands, speaking on measuredly. “His circulation’s plateaued now, vitals are stable.”

Half-turning to face the two men once more, she glimpsed Saviano’s gun still pointed at Fiearius, and she inwardly willed it away. “It’s done,” she clarified decisively. “He needs your strongest painkillers and a week of bedrest and recovery. But it’s done, he’ll make it.”

Both men turned to look at her. Saviano eyed her skeptically. Fiearius looked simply smug. “Absurd, you said?” he repeated to Saviano. “I may be a thief, but I make good on my deals.”

“That you do,” came the sudden voice of Goddorra near the doorway. Leta saw Saviano discreetly lower his gun to his side as his boss entered the room.

Goddorra watched Roman in the bed. His eyes moved past Leta without acknowledgement, and Leta remembered what Saviano had called her: merchandise.

After surveying the bed, Goddorra looked back to Fiearius, as if he’d been the one to do the surgery. “I’m impressed.”

“Fantastic,” Fiearius said heartedly, turning to face him again as if greeting an old friend at a dinner party. Then his expression fell and he said seriously, “10k please.”

“But as you say,” Goddora went on slowly, putting a finger under his chin in thought, “You are a thief.”

There was something taunting his tone, Leta thought, that made her believe this deal was not over. She felt herself tense. Fiearius must have sensed it too as his eyes narrowed.

“And guess who I ran into?” Goddora continued, as if this were all just so amusing. His expression was of supreme satisfaction as he stepped aside, allowing another man to join the room.

The newest arrival, a short, round man with slicked-back hair and a layer of greasy shine on his pink skin, pushed past Goddora eagerly. In his hand was what appeared to be nothing more than a common kitchen knife, but he was brandishing it with a wide impish grin that implied the intentions of it were not quite so common. Leta had no idea who, exactly, this man was. He didn’t look like a physical threat. But that didn’t matter, it was already obvious what was happening.

The deal was going south.

Just as her eyes flashed to Fiearius, Leta felt it at her side: first, she thought it was Saviano’s hand, grazing her hip, and she jerked away with her hand raised and ready to strike him. But it was somehow even worse than that. It wasn’t his hand. The barrel of Saviano’s gun came to rest, gently but decisively, against her back.

She was trapped. Stuck. And forced to watch the scene in the doorway.

Fiearius simply let out a small sigh, the smile back on his face, though perhaps a little tiredly so.

“Torian,” he stated plainly to the newest arrival.  “Well. Shit.”

“What’s wrong, Soliveré?” the little man called Torian asked with a simpering voice that matched his face. “Didn’t think you’d be seeing me again so soon, did you? But did you really believe you could just waltz off with my property and I wouldn’t follow?”

“It’s nothing personal, Fiearius,” Solon assured as Torian slowly moved towards Fiearius with a sharp hunger looming in his eyes. “See, you want me to give you 10k for your product, but Paolos here is going to give me 15 to get it back.” He tilted his head and smiled wider, clearly quite pleased with himself. “And kill you. It’s just business. I’m sure you understand.”

Fiearius just smiled calmly at Solon. “Sure I do,” he said simply before turning his sights onto Torian who was now threateningly making motions with the knife around his neck. Fiearius did not look impressed. “What’s this? You making dinner or something? You know, I can only eat things with low sodium so best make sure you prepare for that,” he deadpanned.

“You know, I’m actually glad that things worked out this way,” Solon remarked thoughtfully, ignoring Fiearius’ comments as he too stepped further into the room at a slow pace, crossing his arms over his chest.

“That so?” Fiearius asked, mildly curious as he kept his eyes locked skeptically on Torian and his weapon.

At her back, Leta felt Saviano shift: he was standing close to her, too close, but his gun moved. Now he pointed it at Fiearius, cornering him.  Three against one, Leta couldn’t help but think.

“It’s fitting, don’t you think?” Goddora continued. “That you should meet your end here, of all places. Here, where you found your beginning years ago. I still recall the first time you barged your way into my office.”

“It’s a memory that I, too, cherish daily,” Fiearius muttered.

Disregarding his comment, Solon continued coldly, “Just another dumb upstart trying to get his foot in the door. I honestly didn’t think you’d last another month with the way you’d been running things.” He paused and glanced down at Torian. “The people you’d been messing with. Promising jobs you couldn’t pull. Making deals you couldn’t afford.” A humorless chuckle trickled from his throat. “Why did you make such a fuss of buying that girl anyway? Just to get on my good side? I’ve always wondered. Was she worth the debt?”

At the very mention of Corra, Fiearius’ careless expression tinged slightly. By the twitch in his arm, for a moment Leta thought he might finally reach for the gun at his hip. But just as quickly as the anger had come, it left and he replied with a shrug, “What can I say? I like short people.” A vaguely crazed smile found its way down to Torian as he added, “They make me feel superior.”

Torian growled viciously and the knife he’d just been playing with lunged forward, the cold metal meeting Fiearius’ throat with just enough force to draw a thin line of blood. The grip on Saviano’s gun tensed. The beginnings of an angry yell formulated in Torian’s mouth and the muscles of his arm readied themselves to finish this until Goddora stepped forward and laid a hand on his shoulder. Paolos Torian looked up at him, enraged, but didn’t argue the unspoken order.

Fiearius leaned back in his chair and swung his arm over the back of it. The joking and mockery disappeared from his face as he spoke briskly, “Six cases, standard artillery. Fine grade stuff, recent models, Riolan made. Virgin heat. Asking 10k.”

Solon too had shed any mask of friendliness as soon as Fiearius had switched his own attitude. He was listening intently. Almost too intently. His eyes trailed downwards to his hands, clasped together before him on the surface of his desk, and he stared at them thoughtfully for some time. Until at last, he looked up. “What’s the catch?”

Fiearius’ head tilted innocently. “Why do you think there’s a catch?”

“Because 10k is about what it’s worth,” Solon pointed out, unweaving his fingers and letting them tap together thoughtfully instead. “You always ask for more.” He smirked gently. “So I ask again. What’s the catch?”

Fiearius returned his smirk with one of his own. “They’re marked,” he admitted, sounding reluctant to do so. “Paulos Torian.”

Solon’s brows raised thoughtfully at the name, his eyes still hanging around his patiently drumming fingertips. Again, he fell silent before finally deciding, “I’ll give you five.”

“That’s not enough,” Fiearius replied promptly.

“Well it’s what they’re worth,” Goddora shot back, equally as unhesitant.

“They’re worth at least six five,” Fiearius told him matter-of-factly, to which Solon shrugged.

“Fine, six five, then,” he said simply. “Saviano, make the arrangements–”

“No, no, you don’t understand,” Fiearius said calmly, raising his hand to interrupt the order. “I need ten.”

“And why would I give you ten for something you just admitted wasn’t worth anywhere near ten?” Solon counter-pointed, narrowing his eyes at his opponent.

“Because you like me,” Fiearius replied with an unmatched calmness. “Or because it’s an investment. Or because I said pretty pretty please? I’m sure we can work something out.” Fiearius gave the man a knowing look that clearly stated that something else was available to be put on the table which was just enough bait to interest Goddora.

He leaned forward on his desk and met Fiearius’ eyes rather intensely. “I thought you didn’t do that type of work anymore,” he remarked, to which Leta sent Fiearius a curious look.

“I don’t,” he said absently, shrugging one shoulder. “Well, not usually anyway. We can talk about that some other time. But for now, I’ve got a better idea. Who’s critical?”

Solon raised his brow again, looking ever more curious as to what the crack captain of the Dionysian was up to. “Sorry?” he asked, confused.

“You said someone was still critical,” Fiearius said bluntly, nodding at Saviano. “Who’s still critical?”

Solon fell silent for a moment, then admitted, “Roman. You’ve met him. My right-hand man. A good man. A family man.” He seemed genuinely sad about the state of affairs he spoke of, his eyes downcast and his tone grave as though the man were already dead. “Shot in the stomach a few days ago. And you know how doctors out here are. No matter how much you pay them, they don’t get any better at their jobs.”

His sight went from the floor to the door Saviano had come from, lines of anger creasing his face before he let it go and glared back at Fiearius. “Why do you ask?”

“Well,” Fiearius began, standing up to his feet and striding toward Leta’s chair. “I happen to have with me a seasoned trauma surgeon with a decade of experience and mighty fine alpha planet medical training.” He dropped his hands on her shoulders. Leta tried not to wince in distaste. Instead, she maintained a half-smirk of her very own. That’s what these people did, didn’t they? If she wanted to make it out of here alive, she supposed she had a part to play too.

“She’s pretty good with gunshot wounds,” Fiearius went on, his voice smooth and confident. “And by all means, about a thousand times more capable than any of the failures you’ve got here.” Abruptly, his tone dropped to seriousness as he said, “Ten if she can fix him.”

Across the desk, Solon also stood to his feet. His eyes narrowed at the sight of the two of them, not liking the way this was turning out. Mistrust glinted in his eyes as he glanced at Fiearius, then down to Leta. “If,” he repeated skeptically.

Fiearius shrugged. “Can’t promise anything,” he admitted. “But it’s worth a shot isn’t it? At least let her take a look.”

Solon watched the smiling egotist across from him for a long moment. The seconds dragged on and Leta was certain they were about to be thrown from the office.

“If I may ask,” he finally stated carefully. “How did you happen across this decade-experienced, alpha-planet trauma surgeon?”

Fiearius pulled his hands away from Leta’s shoulders, stood up straighter and offered casually, “Kidnapped her.” Saviano made a murmur of amusement across the room. At Solon’s subtly astounded expression, Fiearius smiled and added, “A man has his vices.”

Head shaking, Solon rolled his eyes and sat back down at his desk. “Take her to him,” he ordered Saviano, waving his hand as though to get the whole stench of this mess out of his office.