Fool Me Once (Privateer Tales) by Jamie McFarlane

have one more person hurt because of me. They would take her and make her a slave.
    I actually heard her snort derisively over the comm. “That’ll be the day. Do what I’m telling you. Shoot the car and if anyone comes in the room where you are, light ‘em up.”
    I hated that she was coming, but there wasn’t much I could do at this point. I looked out the window again and they were already out of the car looking up at the building. I opened fire with two blasters. They immediately started firing back. I could see only two figures below firing up at me. I ducked back in to take cover. I moved to a different window and started firing again.
    I felt a sharp pain in my hip, just below my waist. A round had been fired through my cloak. Whatever they had fired was a heavier round or my cloak was not able to absorb it. I'd been facing the window but the hit spun me around and I fell in a heap on the ground.
    “Wow. The bitch never learns. You are such a pain in the ass, I should kill you right here and now. The only reason I’m not going to is because I want you to pay for what you’ve done to me. I’m gonna use you in the worst way.” I could see Alexander’s outline in the doorway.
    Frak. How had they found me so easily and why didn’t I just shoot him. Twice I had let him live and twice he’d hunted me down. If I ever had the chance …
    “You make that up all by yourself?” Tali’s voice asked from a dark corner of the room.
    Alexander didn’t hesitate but turned and fired in the direction of the voice. I also didn’t hesitate. I had two blasters in my hands and fired them both repeatedly in his direction. He slumped to the ground.
    “Hey. Maybe you stop that a minute?” Tali’s voice came through my earwig.
    It took me a moment to connect with the world around me and I finally stopped firing.
    “Don’t shoot, okay?” Tali’s voice sounded like she was finding humor in the situation.
    “Okay, I’m done,” I replied.
    I caught movement from the other side of the room, opposite where Tali’s voice had come from and the direction Alexander had fired.
    “How did you get over there?” The world darkened around me and I slipped from consciousness.

     
     
     
RECOVERY
     
     
    I woke up with a start, head throbbing, and a terrible ache in my side. Not my worst start to a day, but it had to be in the top ten. At first I believed I was back on the Red Houzi base, as that was where I had most often felt this way. I opened my eyes warily, ready to take action.
    “Whoa there girl, you’re safe.” I couldn’t make out the speaker's voice initially, then it hit me. Natalia.
    “Tali? Where are we?”
    “Safe, kiddo. You’re in my home.”
    “We gotta get out of here, they’re tracking me somehow. You’re in danger.”
    “If I’m in so much danger, then why are you the one who is on my couch, bleeding all over everything?”
    “You don’t get it. They have me bugged.” I tried to sit up. Tali was sitting on a low table in front of the couch. She pushed me gently back down.
    “Call me the exterminator, and you’re right, you had two bugs on you. Sub-dermal, pretty cheap, the kind they use in the slave trade. Right now they are making their way through the sewers. I wrapped them in peanut butter. Rats carried them off. And you, my friend, have been shot up and beaten.”
    “What about Alexander?”
    “Who? The diatribe guy?”
    It took me a moment to catch what she was implying. “Yes.”
    “Yeah, not sure, we had to get outta there pretty quickly. I got a medic friend of mine coming over. You took a pretty good beating tonight. What in the world were you doing in The Skeg?”
    “Trying to lay low. I’ve been staying at a new place every night.”
    “I see where you’re coming from, but that’s not going to be the right answer. Lay back, Jordy will be here shortly. I patched you up, but you’re still bleeding internally and I’d bet you have a concussion. Was it diatribe guy who