Kris DeLake - Spy to Die For

For reasons she never understood, Skylight Jones loved the Starcatcher Restaurant. The restaurant had the best bacon double cheeseburgers that Skye had ever tasted. The fact that the restaurant was on Krell, possibly the grimiest space station she’d ever been to, and the fact that the cleanliness in the Starcatcher matched the station’s really didn’t bother her. If anyone had asked her (and no one ever had), she would have said that the dirt encrusted on the hamburger made it all taste better.

She had arrived on Krell about three hours ago. She’d taken a transport because she didn’t want anyone to notice her, and one of the best ways to get noticed in a place like Krell was to bring your own spaceship. Particularly the kind of spaceship that she could afford on her Assassins Guild expense account.

The Guild thought her a valuable asset, so she had one of the largest expense accounts they’d ever devised. A normal person could live off Skye’s monthly expense allotment for two years.

And the other nice thing about the Guild was that they paid the expense account money in advance. Because Skye’s missions were always secret, even from other Guild members, she couldn’t very well charge everything to some Guild account.

She kept one month’s expenses at the touch of her finger and banked the rest. The Guild usually wanted an accounting of what she spent, and damn, if that accounting didn’t show that she spent every last bit of that money. Yes, she lied.

It was the least she could do, since she was still working off what she called her indentured servitude. If the Guild wouldn’t let her go until she had finished seven-plus years of practically free work for them to pay off all her childhood debts, then she would keep the extra from the expense accounts and never tell a soul.

Besides, she didn’t need a lot, even when she was on a job. She liked grungy, cheap places like this. They felt luxurious to her. The Guild was so clean and bright and regimented.

The Starcatcher had probably been here since Krell was built. It had started as a little hole in the wall, literally, and had become a medium-size hole in the wall, with an “open-air” section to the restaurant.

Skye hated the “open-air” part.

First, there was no real air, because they were on a space station. So the air wasn’t fresh or windblown or anything. It was recycled, like everything else on the place. And second, it wasn’t open, because no part of Krell (outside of the docking ring) had a view of space.

So what “open-air” actually meant was that the patrons got to eat in the wide concourse that everyone walked through on the way to somewhere else.

Not Skye’s idea of relaxation.

So instead, she sat at a table in the very center of the restaurant, her back to the grimy faux-wood wall. She had a clear view of the door and of the kitchen. The other thing she liked about the Starcatcher was that it had actual human chefs. They fried the burgers (or whatever the hell this stuff was) themselves. No machine flipped the patties, no grill shut off when the meat was cooked. Just juicy frying fat, that actually sizzled so loud that she could hear it in the front part of the restaurant, over the conversation.

If there was conversation.

Because at the moment, there was only the waitstaff and her. The waiter kept glancing at her like she was a bit of garbage that needed cleaning. (Not that anyone here ever really thought of cleaning anything.)

They wanted to force her out, and she wasn’t going.

She had arrived half an hour before closing, and apparently it was a slow day, because the open-air part of this silly place had already shut down, chairs up and locked to their tables, the gate sealed shut.

The fact that there was an actual waitstaff meant that the place needed to lock its doors as well. Usually the Starcatcher got by with talking serving trays or little mobile robots. Those things couldn’t work the last half hour due to Krell regulations. Apparently thieves came through a while back and stole all the robotic servers just before shutdown, and no one noticed for the eight hours the restaurants were closed. Whoever that was had made a hell of a haul.

Skye didn’t mind. She liked annoying people, especially in service of a great burger. Hers was nearly done. When it finished sizzling, she would eat it slowly, savoring it, since she hadn’t had a good meal for the last five days. She didn’t care how hard the waitstaff tried to get her out of this place.

She glared at the water glass in front of her, so smudged that she actually had to peer over the lip of the glass to see if the liquid was the water she had ordered or not. If the burger didn’t get here soon, she might break down and drink that stuff.

Then the door opened, and a man leaned in. Skye couldn’t quite see him; he was so hunched over that his face was obscured.

“Can I get some service out here?” His voice was marvelously deep and musical. It sent little shivers through her.

“We’re closed,” the dried-up tired-looking woman on the waitstaff said without looking at the door.

“She’s lying,” Skye said. “They got another ten minutes before they’re allowed to turn away customers.”

The woman glared at Skye, and Skye smiled sweetly. Usually she tipped well whenever she encountered human waitstaff. But this woman was pushing her luck.

“Great!” the man said without moving. “So, can I get some service out here?”

“Nope,” the dried-up waitress said. “That part of the restaurant is closed.”

The man said, “You gotta be kidding me.”

“Not kidding,” the waitress said.

“I’ll pay extra for service out here.”

“Nope,” the woman said.

Skye frowned. What was the big deal about coming into the restaurant? Yeah, it smelled a bit gamy, but so did most places on Krell. In fact, with a frying burger on the griddle, the Starcatcher was probably the best-smelling place on Krell at the moment.

“How about something to go?” the man said in that delicious voice. “I could wait out here—”

“No.” The waitress crossed her arms. “In here or nothing.”

The man remained in that hunched position for a moment. He actually seemed to be having trouble making a decision.

Skye was curious now.

“You can sit with me,” she said. “I wiped this table off my own self.”

Another glare from the waitress. Skye couldn’t tell if it was because the waitress didn’t want the man in the restaurant or if it was because of the dig about the filthy table. Or both.

“Well, I can’t refuse that offer.” The man’s voice had amusement in it. He came in the door and still didn’t stand up straight. Skye finally understood what was going on.

He was huge.

She had never seen a man that large before—at least, not out in space. Space stations, spaceships, space resorts, anything space-related was built for the compact body. Like hers. She barely topped five feet on a good day, and she was average height for a woman who spent most of her time in cramped ships or cramped bunks in tiny space resort hotels.

She was thin too, which took some work, considering what she liked to eat and the fact she didn’t like using enhancements to keep the weight off. She actually exercised. She wasn’t good with weapons—at least not conventional ones (which was one of the many reasons she wasn’t an actual assassin)—but she was strong enough to fight anyone off in hand-to-hand combat.

Provided that she caught him by surprise, of course.