Jennifer Wells - Beyond the Stars - At Galaxy's Edge

We headed for the main warehouse, since that would offer us a lot of chances to stay hidden. It was also where I’d set up shop as a kid after nobody else was left, since it was so big that I would occasionally come across a crate of supplies that hadn’t been found by anyone else and extend my miserable life another week or two. Ah, good times.

The past couple of decades hadn’t been kind to the abandoned settlement. It was a ghost town, with most of its ghosts having been created by yours truly. It was in such bad shape that it looked like nobody had been there for hundreds of years. Structures were crumbling, wood was rotting, and a heavy layer of dust covered everything.

The warehouse was just a smaller version of the settlement itself, full of stacks and shelves of crates that were either empty or filled with things that were no longer needed after the mining company had abandoned it.

It didn’t take long for Two through Five to find me, since they had tracking equipment just like I did. But I knew the radiation from some of the rocks they used to mine there would foul up their scanners enough that they wouldn’t be able to pinpoint us exactly.

Their first mistake was splitting up. They probably figured they’d find us faster that way, and that it would’ve been easier for me to kill them quickly if they were in a group.

But individually, they’d lost their only advantage over me. Now that it was one on one, they didn’t stand a chance.

Once Xiomara was relatively safe and had her blaster at the ready, I climbed up to one of my favorite spots, on top of the highest rack of shelves in the warehouse. From there I got a bead on the locations of Three and Four, with Three being just below me. Three was from the planet Morivar, which meant he was taller than a human, and much thinner. Morivarians were good at a lot of things, especially tracking, but hand-to-hand combat was not one of them.

Since I didn’t want to give away my position, I jumped down on him from above, knocking him to the permacrete floor in the process. After that, I shut him up with a few punches before he was able to yell for the others. Then it was just a matter of hitting his head hard enough against the floor to make sure he wouldn’t wake up again.

I went back to check on Xiomara and told her where Four was, and she informed me that she had spotted Five. I tried to convince her to stay where she was, but she insisted on going after Five herself. The truth was, she could take care of herself better than almost anyone I’d ever met. I had no right to tell her to stay put, any more than she had a right to tell me.

We went in opposite directions, and I found Four right away. His species had four arms, and he was a two-gun man. At the moment, both were drawn and at the ready. I climbed on top of a crate to get the advantage, but the top had started rotting away, and it splintered as I stood on it. As I lost my balance, Four spotted me and took aim.

Then, the sound of blaster fire echoed through the warehouse. He turned for just a split second when he heard it, and that was a split second too long. I fired and put a smoking hole through his forehead before he had finished turning his head back in my direction.

I ran toward the sound of blaster fire, but I couldn’t find Xiomara right away. I started to worry, but then Xiomara came back around and told me she had taken out Five. I was relieved to find out that the sound I’d heard was her blaster killing him, and not the other way around.

One left: Number Two. I told her to wait there while I circled around. That way she could get him if he came to her, and I could get him if he was still out there. I knew which direction he’d probably be approaching from, and I also knew how to get back behind where he’d be coming from.

While Four had been the best shot of the bunch in a ship, Two approached my own skill in hand-drawn blasters. He was from a colony with heavy gravity, so he was quick, and his reflexes were faster than any non-enhanced human I’d ever seen. I had to be extra careful, since it would probably be a matter of who drew on whom first. I spotted him creeping up on Xiomara’s location, so I started creeping up on him . I couldn’t fit in the same small spaces as I used to back in the day, but I hadn’t lost my touch, either. I probably should have just pulled out my gun and finished it fast, but something came over me.

I pulled my blade instead.

I don’t know what was going on in my head‌—‌whether I wanted to see if I could still do it, or if I thought it might give me some kind of thrill I hadn’t felt in decades‌—‌but I made the spectacularly stupid move of trying to slice his throat. Within seconds, I was behind him, and I saw him tense for a split second as he realized I was there.

But it was too late. I grabbed him by the hair, pulled his head back, and sliced.

As I let him fall to the ground, I saw that Xiomara was at the end of the aisle I was standing in. I smiled at her and thought about how great things were going to be now that those scumbags were taken care of. Nobody else would even be able to come close to taking us out.

I found it curious that she didn’t smile back, but I immediately found out why.

I heard the quick whine of a blaster, and the next thing I knew, I had an extra orifice of my own. Before I felt the pain, I noticed my legs were no longer working, and I dropped to the floor like a sack of plantains. I held my hand over the hole through my middle to stem the extensive bleeding, and twisted around as best I could to see who’d shot me. The handsome face that smiled at me was not one I was expecting to see again.

Number Five was still alive. Xiomara was a good shot‌—‌almost as good as me from what I’d seen the past few weeks‌—‌so I don’t know how she could have thought she’d gotten him when he obviously looked perfectly fine.

That meant there was a problem. But before I could fully figure it out, I blacked out.

Luckily, I wasn’t out for long, and Five hadn’t bothered to shoot me in the head in the interim. I guess the crimson pond beneath my body was enough for him to assume I’d died when I passed out.

It didn’t take a whole lot of calculating to figure out what was going on here.

Sure enough, when I popped my head up to check out the situation, Five and Xiomara were making googly eyes at each other. And not the love at first sight kind, either. More of the “Soon we’ll be together forever, my love” kind.

I might not be the brightest star in the sector, but I know when I’ve been had. That’s right: I had an honest-to-goodness femme fatale on my hands. Apparently, she’d made a deal with Five‌—‌or maybe they were genuinely together from the start, I don’t know‌—‌and now they were getting rid of all the competition, including me.

But they’d made the colossal error of thinking I was dead. Not that I was far off. The shot had gone through my lower abdomen, and not only did it hurt like hell, I wasn’t able to walk. Depending on which organs were hit, I may or may not have survived long enough to get patched up. But I was determined to take them both down either way.

I snuck another peek and saw Five grab Xiomara in his arms and plant a kiss on her lips. Those luscious lips. It made my stomach turn and my chest clench up. Of course she’d want to be with that jackhammer with his holo-flick good looks. Why would I ever think she’d really wanted to be with me?

While he was macking on her, I slowly crawled back around to find my weapon, which had flown out of my hand when I was shot. As far as I knew, they didn’t notice me moving, but I stopped cold when I saw what happened next.

Still locked in Five’s arms, Xiomara pointed her weapon at the back of his head and blew it clean off. Interesting twist there. That would have left her home free.