Spectra's Gambit by Vincent Trigili

said.
    “What are you thinking of?” I asked.
    “We could make sure Karl never arrives at that meeting,” he said with no hint of emotion in his voice.
    I knew he could do that, and I knew that there would be no way to track it back to me. That is what they did: they eliminated high-value targets for a price. They were the best in the industry and whoever hired them was never discovered. “Thank you, but no. I knew this day would come and already have plans in place to deal with it. The warning you are giving me will allow me to execute those plans in such a way that I can protect certain people.”
    “I expected that answer,” he said.
    He must have known that this was the end of my career as a special agent and I would no longer have access to the kind of information that was useful to him. I wondered how he expected me to repay him for this information. “If you will excuse me, I have things to set in motion.”
    “Of course. We will talk again,” he said.
    I turned and walked away from his table, knowing that I had nothing to fear from him so long as he found me valuable, but I was concerned about the other occupants of the bar. The last time I had been here one of them had tried to kill me, but Fang stopped him.
    As I left the bar, two men followed me out. I recognized one; I had put him in prison some years ago. I was not aware that he had been released, but it did not surprise me. As I passed out of sight from the bar they moved in, drawing daggers.
    I still had the two swords I had received from Zah’rak, and it felt almost as if they jumped into my hands as I spun toward my attackers. They were both taller than me, but much slower. With one blade I parried the knife from the second attacker while swinging up with my other sword, which neatly separated the first attacker from his arm.
    I had spent quite a bit of time training with these primitive weapons and was learning to love them. Before meeting up with Zah’rak the only weapon I had ever expected to need was a good set of blasters, but hunting the dead with him had opened a whole new world of combat, one to which my thin, light build was ideally suited.
    Before they could recover from my opening moves, I pressed my attack and finished them both off. The superior reach of my swords combined with my speed overcame their height advantage and made it a simple affair. As I spun clear of the fight, checking for additional adversaries, I saw Fang leaning on a nearby wall. He gave me a slight salute and then vanished into the shadows.
    I knew better than to stick around and quickly made for the maintenance tunnels, slipping out into the glorious vacuum of space before anyone else could come after me. I was born in the vacuum of space and needed no mundane spacesuit to live and work in this environment. I was one of the Shadow People. I could make myself look human as needed, but here in the safety of my home environment I stretched out my wings and reverted to my natural form.
    Therein lay my problem. If it were ever discovered what I was, I would be killed on the spot. My race was seen as one of dangerous animals lacking morals or intelligence, and to be fair most of my kind fitted that description. A very select few, like myself, were different; but I had already learned the hard way that prejudice is blind to any good that I might do. That is why I had to make my move before Karl met with our commander.
    My flat and thin body shape allowed me to drift through space like a kite in the wind, coasting on gravity waves. It was the most relaxing thing I knew of, just drifting along through the vacuum of space. It was easy to forget, if only briefly, that I had very real concerns and needed to act quickly.
    I coasted on the gravity wakes of the merchant ships that were traveling through the region until I found a hauler going in the direction I wanted to go, then attached myself to the outer hull of the craft and waited.
    I admired the stars and raw beauty of