The Flight of the Tombaugh 5/5

[tsuki_no_bara]

J2 RPS AU
PG-13
Part 5 of 5
Master post
Art

Jared skidded after him and fell into the co-pilot's seat. He buckled himself in. “Don't send us back to Yezhovo.”

“Then find me a backwater sector where we're not wanted.” Jensen punched coordinates into the navigation system. “Adjust for sublight.”

How many times could they jump? How much fuel did they have? What would happen if they popped out in Gadyukino Sector, where they were wanted for frying a couple of fighter jets?

The EMP cannon. Holy fuck, he forgot the cannon.

First they had to move.

“Punch it,” he told Jared, and they jumped.

“Where are we?” Jared asked breathlessly, when they popped out in the apparent middle of nowhere.

“Edge of the Cluster.”

“What?”

“We're in the Cluster,” he clarified. “The Guppies don't have jurisdiction. Go see if Alona and Adrianne are okay.”

Jared unbuckled himself and went off to check on their passengers. Jensen took a deep breath. Alona's stepdad must have tracked the signal from Jared's handheld. Jensen had heard such things were possible, although it was very rare tech and he didn't think it was particularly legal. Stepdad must have used it to alert the Guppies - the galactic police - but had the blues been in the area, or did they have sublight engines too? Jensen and Jared were more used to sector law enforcement. Local blues, not the big boys. Maybe the Guppies had better ships.

But even if the blues did follow them here, the Colony Cluster wasn't part of the GU. It was as its name implied - a cluster of former colonies - and a governmental and economic entity separate from the GU. It had its own laws and its own police force. There was no GU Council oversight, and GU warrants were harder to enforce here.

Harder to enforce, but still valid.

“What the actual fuck is wrong with you?” Adrianne demanded over the comms.

Two patrol ships popped into view off to port. Jensen sucked in a breath. The Galactic Union had definitely equipped its police force with sublight engines. And not only that, they were equipped with good navigation systems and astonishingly accurate galactic tracking.

“We're jumping again,” he called. “Jared, get back here.” He punched coordinates. He had an idea.

“What - shit,” Jared said, sliding into the co-pilot's seat and squinting out the windshield. He flipped switches and spun dials and punched buttons. “Ready.”

They jumped a second time.

“What,” Jared said again, when they appeared over Katahdin. “Are we back in Cluny Sector? We're wanted here!”
“I know. Sit tight.” Jensen opened a broadband line on the external comms. “Hey, Kim,” he called, “remember the Tombaugh? We're back. Come get us.”

“Have you lost your mind?”

“The Guppies are following us, Jared. Galactic law. They're not in Kim's pocket. She comes for us, she gets them.”

“The sector blues want us too!”

“What the fuck are you doing, Jensen?” Adrianne yelled over the comms. “Do you want to scramble all our organs?”

“It'd be a bonus,” he muttered. He leaned forward and tried to see if the Guppies would follow them here too. “Jared,” he said, “how do you feel about suiting up and aiming the EMP cannon?”

“You're not serious,” Jared said.

“Like death.”

“For Kim or the blues?”

“Either/or. Both. I know, if we fire on the blues we can go to jail. We're already wanted here, so what does it matter? If they catch us, we go to jail. If we jump again we'll use up all our fuel. We need another choice.”

“But jail! What if they shoot back?”

“We hope they miss.” Jensen slumped in his chair. The Guppies hadn't followed them yet. That was encouraging. But a galactic warrant for kidnapping meant there was probably nowhere the Tombaugh could hide. It wasn't like a warrant on them for gun-running in Cluny Sector - if they left the sector, the local blues couldn't follow, and a warrant issued for Cluny wasn't valid in, say, Itoh Sector or in La Spina or Port Wombat. Outside the Cluster, every space station and every planet and every moon with even the most half-assed settlement was subject to Galactic Union laws, and while those laws didn't apply to the Colony Cluster, it was a condition of the Cluster's independence that Guppies be allowed in to serve a galactic warrant.

The GU didn't throw the might of their police force against just anyone for just any reason. If Alona's stepdad could call the Guppies on the Tombaugh and authorize them to chase her wherever she might fly, without taking the time to file an official warrant - if he could just point them in the right direction and tell them to go - he must have powerful friends in high places.

And it had to be his doing. The blues found Jensen and Jared too soon after they aroused Stepdad's suspicions for it to be anything else.

“Get your handheld,” Jensen told Jared. “They've gotta be tracking us through the signal.”

“That's not legal, not without a warrant.”

“I don't think they care.”

“I'm not going out there to fire that cannon.”

“You might not have a choice.”

Jared huffed, frustrated, but unbuckled himself and left the cockpit. Jensen tried to think. An idea started to form. A desperate, stupid idea. More desperate and stupid than using the Tombaugh to bait Kim.

“Hey, Alona,” he said into the internal comms, “are you ready to send out any of that stuff you have on your stepdad?”

“Now?” she answered. “Why?”

“We're going to release some of it. Tell him to call off the Guppies or we'll release it all.”

“You fucker,” Adrianne swore.

“Galactic blues are following us, Adrianne. We jumped twice and they're still coming. I don't know why they're not here yet but there's no reason to assume they won't show. If we jump again, we use all our fuel. If they catch us, me and Jared go to jail for kidnapping and you go as an accessory, contract or no.”

“Weren't we just in the Cluster? Why'd you leave?”

“Galactic warrants are still valid there, you know that. What's our other choice?”

“I'll send it to Jared's handheld,” Alona said.

“I told you not to come back here,” a voice crackled over the external comms. Kim. “Make your peace with your various gods, because you're going out.”

“Jared!” Jensen yelled. “Hurry the fuck up!”

“I got it, I got it!” Jared yelled back. Jensen heard running, and then Jared burst into the cockpit half-zipped into an atmo suit. Alona must have interrupted him. He gave Jensen the handheld. “Kim's coming.”

“I know. Get ready.” Jared just stood there. “You want her to shoot us? Move!” Jared moved.

The line to Alona's stepdad was still open on the handheld. Jensen hissed angrily. That was their fault for not closing it themselves. He pinged Stepdad. Nothing. He pinged again.

“I know you can hear us,” he said into the handheld. “We know about Bernon. We know what you did. We've got evidence. Call off the Guppies or we'll release it - all of it - onto the feeds.”

“Guppies?” Stepdad repeated.

“The GUPF. The blues.”

“Extortion is a crime.”

“So is deliberately destroying a moon.” Jensen sent the two pieces of evidence Alona had put on the handheld. “That's just a tiny part of it. We've got a lot more. Trust me when I say we're ready to release it and to hell with jail.”

Jared had hopefully finished suiting up and was climbing the ladder to the Tombaugh's roof and strapping himself into the cannon placement. Kim was on her way. Theoretically the Guppies were too. Jensen tried to stay calm. This was by far the dumbest of all the dumb ideas but if they were going to jail - and he was pretty sure they were, somehow - they were damn well going to deserve it.

“Thanks for the gift, Jensen,” Kim said over the comms. “You're just in sight.” He looked up from the handheld and there she was, Kim's ship, the Sauer. She was armed and she was fast, but the Tombaugh was as well, and if Jensen could hold on one more minute -

Here we go, he thought, as two GUPF patrol ships popped out of sublight off to port.

“Hailing the Tombaugh,” one of the officers called through the comms. “If you try to jump again you will be fired upon.”

“Say hi to my new friends,” Jensen said to Kim. “Galactic blues. Also, if you'll look on the roof of my ship, you'll see an EMP cannon. It's charged and I don't care who I fire it at.”

“You won't shoot the Guppies,” Kim snorted. “You can't afford the fine.”

“You tell yourself that. We can't go to Gadyukino Sector because they'll sling our butts in jail for frying a couple of fighter jets.”

“I know I'm impressed,” Adrianne said dryly from the cockpit entrance. She leaned over Jensen's chair. “Are we dead yet?”

“We should've pinged Chris,” Jared said over the internal comms. His voice sounded a little crackly, so he must have made it up to the cannon.

“He wouldn't take us if we've got Guppies on our tail,” Jensen told him. “That's too much heat even for him. Are you ready?”

“Who am I aiming at?”

“Whoever looks like they're going to shoot us.”

“This is your last warning,” one of the blues said. “Surrender and prepare to be boarded, or run and lose your engines.”

“The Guppies,” Jensen and Jared said together. Jared sounded resigned. Jensen tried to sound firm.

“Do you need a visual?” Jensen asked Alona's stepdad. “Do you need to see what I'm seeing? I have my EMP cannon trained on your pet blues.” He was disappointed the Guppies didn't seem interested in Kim, because that would solve at least one of their problems.

“You seem to think you have some leverage here,” Stepdad said, still calm. “Remember that extortion is a crime. Firing upon a galactic police cruiser is as well.”

“Adrianne Palicki here,” Adrianne said, grabbing the handheld. “These numbnuts don't work for me and I'm trying to get me and your stepdaughter out of it.”

“To be honest, Ms Palicki, I don't care.”

“You will when the Guppies fry her by mistake.”

There was a pause. “They follow the law,” Alona's stepdad said. “But do what you can.”

This was ridiculous. Jensen took the handheld back.

“We can't wait,” he said into it. “Call them off or we release the rest of our evidence, and you go to jail.”

“Time's up,” Kim said. “We're taking you out.”

“She's firing,” Jensen told Jared. “Hit her. Now.”

He thought he could hear swearing, but he saw a flash over the ship and heard a spitting crackle over the external comms. All the lights on the Sauer went dark.

“We've got one more charge,” Jared said. “I don't--”

The Tombaugh rocked as the Guppies fired a warning shot just a little too close to starboard. Another flash from overhead and the lights went out on one of the cruisers.

“I panicked!” Jared said.

“It's okay,” Jensen told him. It wasn't, but what was he going to say? “Get inside. We're jumping.” He turned to Adrianne. “Out of my cockpit.” She just looked at him.

“If I end up in jail,” she said, voice tight, “I am going to give them every fucking thing I have on you. I'll roll so fast I'll shed sparks.”

“Do I look like I give a shit? Get out of my cockpit.” He pointed.

“I'm going to release everything!” Alona called. “Tell him that! Lab reports, messages, recordings, everything - internal memos, I have everything - tell him it's all going out!”

“Your stepdaughter's taking you down,” Jensen said into the handheld.

The remaining police cruiser fired another warning shot to port. The ship rocked.

“Prepare to be boarded and towed,” an officer said.

“Jared!” Jensen called. “Where are you?”

“I'm in, I'm in!” Jared sounded winded. “Go! Go!”

“Strap yoursel--”

The ship rocked again, but not from another warning shot. This time they'd actually been hit. Jensen heard the boom and the whine as the main engine shut down and they were suddenly dead in the sky.

Shit.

“You asshole,” Alona hissed over the comms, her voice hard. Jensen was impressed at the amount of anger pressed into those two words. “It's gone, all of it. It's out. It's free. You're fucked.”

“Your stepdaughter just sent you to jail,” Jensen told Stepdad.

“I was exonerated,” was the reply, “but you're going to prison for resisting arrest, kidnapping, and extortion,” and then the cruiser was approaching, another two popped out of sublight, and they were caught.

Things moved remarkably fast when the galactic police came for your ass. In short order, Jensen, Jared, Alona, and Adrianne were found, cuffed, had charges read to them, and were brought to a transport ship. Alona tried to tell the Guppies who she was and what they were in for and that she hadn't done anything wrong, but the other three kept their mouths shut. It was a lesson you learned early and well, if you lived your life and generally made your credits on the wrong side of the law.

At some point Alona was transferred away, no doubt back to her stepfather. The other three were taken to the GUPF holding center in Cluny Sector, where they were entered into the system and given a court hearing, at which they all pled not guilty. Adrianne was separated from the group, probably sent to a women's facility, and Jensen and Jared ended up on a space station prison, awaiting trial.

“This is like Ayre all over again,” Jared muttered. He was still a little pissed at Jensen, understandably, but Jensen was pissed at himself. He couldn't believe he'd been so stupid. But he knew Chris wouldn't have protected them, not if there was a whisper of a galactic warrant attached to their names. It wasn't just rumor that the Guppies couldn't be bought. Even Chris tried to steer clear.

The charges of extortion, Jensen knew, wouldn't stick, not if Alona really had released all their blackmail material onto the feeds. Attempted extortion, though, that might hold. Jensen was no doubt on record announcing that he'd release incriminating evidence unless Alona's stepdad called off the blues. There were no credits involved, and no actual threats against anyone's life, but there were different classes of extortion and not every court would look at the charges the same way.

And on top of that, he'd lost his ship. The one thing he'd been trying to avoid. If he'd thought ahead he could've just given her to Chris. At least he'd know where she was, and that there was a chance, however slim, that he might one day get her back.

He was an idiot and they were screwed. And Alona's stepdad was going to come for her anyway, and she'd still end up spaced.

Everyone lost.

He'd used his one free call to contact Danneel, because for all her bitching he knew she'd bust her ass to help him and Jared, and she still had contacts in law enforcement, in the Cluster if not the GU. Jared pinged Misha, who was indirectly responsible for them being in this mess but who knew a lot of people in a lot of places, and if Danneel couldn't get them out of this legally, Misha could do it from the other side of the line.

The court-ordered attorney who'd somehow gotten both of their cases didn't seem to think they had much chance at getting the charges dropped, but he could probably get their sentences reduced.

“Your ship's still in impound,” he told them. “A lot of that information on Green Worlds is out there. I can't tell if all of it was released, but there's certainly a lot of very incriminating evidence on the feeds. That could help you. If you don't have the information with which to blackmail, I should be able to get the charge reduced.”

“I never made a deal,” Jensen added. “We didn't get that far.”

“I can't do anything about you firing on the GU cruiser, though.”

“I panicked,” Jared admitted. “It was dumb. We were desperate.”

“That doesn't make a difference. The court won't consider fear for your life as a reasonable defense if you're afraid of the cops because you've broken the law.”

“What about other warrants?” Jensen asked, thinking about Katahdin and the thing with the guns.

“The prosecution hasn't mentioned any. So far they're sticking to the original charges. But it could come up in court, so I need to know where else you might be wanted. I can find out myself but it helps if you're honest with me.”

So they told him about the outstanding warrants they knew of, plus the business in Gadyukino Sector, plus the business on Ayre, even though their warrant and their record had been cleared there.

Jensen had managed to send Danneel a message asking her to look into their attorney, and her response had been that he seemed like an honest guy, if overworked and underpaid like most public defenders. He'd do what he could, she said, although that probably wasn't much. Jensen and Jared knew not to trust law enforcement, but they decided to at least trust the attorney.

Jared wrote to Alona, or tried to, but there was no response. And in the meantime he and Jensen had little to do besides keep their eyes open and their mouths shut and their heads down, and try to figure out how to get out of there.

And then one day, a couple of weeks into their incarceration, they had a visitor. She looked much different than she had the first time they met her, as she was now wearing an expensive-looking, well-tailored suit, not a plain black shift, her hair was blonde, and she told them in the visiting room that she had a plan.

“Did you talk to Adrianne?” Jared asked.

“They dropped the charges and she was released,” Alona told him and Jensen.

“Does your stepdad know you're here?”

She raised an eyebrow. “What do you think? I don't have any leverage against him any more but I still have money, and I still know how to hide. And everyone's looking at him, so he's being really careful. Your friends pinged me.”

“Which friends?” Jensen asked.

“Misha and Chad. I don't trust them but they got me in here. Now you have to trust me.”

“We do.”

Jared nodded.

“Good. You're in here because of me, and it's my responsibility to get you out. Sit tight. Be honest with your lawyer. He's doing the best he can.”

“Did you send him?” Jared asked. “I thought he was a public attorney.”

“He is. The GU threw up a wall I can't get around. That's my stepfather's doing. But I've been in contact with your attorney and I'm trying to help him. But don't tell him you saw me.”

“You said you had a plan,” Jensen reminded her.

“You're going to eat something that disagrees with you.”

“You know there are medical facilities here, right?”

“Of course. I also know what they can and can't treat. You're going out on a medical transport and that's all I can tell you.”

“Was that Chad's idea?” Jared asked. Alona shrugged noncommittally.

“Misha,” Jensen suggested. Another shrug. “Can you get my ship out?”

“I don't know,” Alona admitted. “I'm working on it. You just have to trust me.”

Jensen and Jared trusted her through their trials, their sentencing hearings, and the prospect of doing time. They trusted her for two months and then they both, quite coincidentally, had a violent reaction to something at lunch, and when they were taken to the infirmary, the doc on duty pronounced their illness beyond her ability to treat, and called for a transport ship.

Whatever they'd been infected with knocked Jensen right out, and he woke up not in a hospital under armed guard, as he would have expected, but in an unfamiliar med bay on an unfamiliar ship. Alona was there, dressed as a medtech, and--

“Danneel?” he croaked. She'd dyed the pink out of her hair. “What are you doing here?”

“Someone has to keep an eye on your dumb ass,” she said, grinning.

“Did you call her?” he asked Alona.

“Adrianne did, if you can believe that,” Danneel said. “Misha got in touch with her. She said you owe her a frankly unbelievable number of credits and she needed you out of jail so she could take it out of your ass.” She perched on the edge of the bed. “I couldn't help you from my side of the law. After the trial verdict is entered into the record, you're in a whole different part of the system. My only recourse would be appeals, and why would a judge listen to me? I didn't think busting you out was a great idea but it was better than any of mine.” She smiled ruefully. “You can call me a dumbshit if you want.”

“You could lose your license.”

“Some people think bounty hunters have one foot on the other side of the law anyway. But no one here would turn me in. Not even Adrianne.”

“You trust her now?”

“Oh, hell no.”

“Where is here?” He tried to sit up. “Where's Jared?”

“Eating, where do you think?” Danneel grinned again.

“We're on Misha's ship,” Alona said. “The Asmodeus.”

“Where's the Tombaugh?” Jensen asked.

“She's safe.”

“Where is she?”

Alona hesitated. “In a hangar on La Spina.”

“She's what? Anyone could find her!” He pushed himself off the bed, dislodging Danneel in the process. “Why didn't you just leave her out in a field?”

“Sit!” Alona pointed firmly at the bed. Jensen sat. Danneel stifled a giggle. “She's well hidden and she's safe. Trust me.”

“What about Chris? Can you hide her from him?”

“I took care of that.”

“How?”

“I paid off your debt.” At his no doubt blank look, because how and why would she do such a thing, she added “I thought I owed you at least that. I told you I still have money.”

“You know we can't pay you back.” Just what he and Jared needed - another debt. “We're jailbreaks now. Fuck. We gotta hide.”

“You are hiding,” Alona pointed out.

“Where? Don't tell me we're over La Spina too.”

“You'll laugh,” Danneel said.

“We're not in fucking Cluny Sector, are we?”

“We're not that dumb.”

“Itoh Sector,” Alona said. “Danneel told us you come here when you panic.”

Danneel couldn't stop grinning. “Bitch,” Jensen said, but he meant it affectionately.

“Hey, you're up!” Jared said, walking into the med bay with a bowl of something. He fished some noodles out of the bowl with his fingers and sucked them down.

“Genevieve would be so embarrassed,” Danneel said. “Were you raised in a cargo hold?”

“How're you feeling?” he asked Jensen. “Like you got run over, right?”

“Kind of,” Jensen said. To be honest, he didn't feel all that bad. His throat was dry and his muscles were starting to twitch, but a good run around the Asmodeus would solve the second problem and a cold drink would solve the first. “So what happened?”

“Misha has a new pilot, a girl named Rachel. She knows someone who knows someone who could sneak something into our lunch. Alona mixed up something really awful. We got violently ill - you should remember that - the prison infirmary didn't have the right drugs to treat us and didn't want to wait for them to arrive, we got loaded into a transport, and guess who was driving.”

“Chad,” Jensen guessed. “What happened to the guards? There had to be guards on the transport with us.”

“You'd be surprised what a few well-placed credits can do,” Alona said, and Danneel added “Or a transfer.”

“Huh.” Jensen's stomach growled.

“One of them had to be subdued,” Jared went on. “I heard Adrianne really enjoyed that. She's not here, by the way. Misha dropped her at some station. She, uh, she got paid the rest of her contract.”

“How?” Jared and Danneel both pointed at Alona. “No shit.”

“She wanted to take me back to my stepfather,” Alona said, “knowing he wanted me dead. But it was my fault she got thrown in jail, and if he hadn't pushed me into releasing everything onto the feeds, she'd have gotten something for the blackmail. I felt like I owed her. Besides,” she finished brightly, “now she'll leave you alone.”

“I need to eat something,” Jensen said, “drink something, and then figure out what to do. We're wanted everywhere now, aren't we.”

“Not in the Cluster,” Jared said. He tipped the bowl up and finished whatever was left in it. “I could eat more.”

So they all trooped out of the med bay and into the galley, where the evidence of Jared's attempt to make noodles was scattered everywhere. Misha appeared, told Jensen about his and Chad's part in the escapade in more detail, and reminded Jared that he had to clean up after himself.

“You sound like Genevieve,” Jared said.

“So what do we do now?” Jensen asked him. The parts of settled space where they could never show their faces again covered most of the map, and he didn't want to spend the rest of his life confined to the Colony Cluster. He didn't think Jared did either.

“I know a guy who can wipe your records,” Misha said, “make you legally dead.”

“GU blues don't chase dead men,” Alona added helpfully.

“What about your stepdad?” Jensen asked. “Is he still a threat?”

“No.” She smiled a small, wicked smile. “Everything I had on him is splashed across settled space. Everyone knows. Not everyone believes, but everyone knows. Cluny Sector administration is building two cases against him - one on behalf of the old settlement on Bernon, and one to recoup what they paid for the terraforming. I don't doubt there are other suits brewing aside from those. I don't think he'll take Sahar down with him, but he's not the only one who will have to stand trial. It's a mess. I'm so pleased.”

“I thought maybe we could do something like that,” Jared said. “Like... help people. Take down guys like Alona's stepdad.”

“I think you should go into business with me,” Misha said. “I always said the Tombaugh was the fastest ship in settled space.”

“Yeah, and we still got caught,” Jensen said. “Twice. You don't care we're wanted everywhere except the Cluster?”

“Jim can fix it so you look dead to the GU. New names, new ID, everything. It's not cheap, but it's possible.”

“We're not going to work for you. We're not thieves.”

“Jensen!” Misha slapped a hand over his heart, exaggeratedly offended. “You wound me! We merely redistribute goods and credits more equitably across settled space. Besides, you wouldn't be working for us, but with us.”

“We have to think about it.”

“Think about something else,” Alona said. “Think about working with me.”

“Doing...?”

“What I said,” Jared told him. “Helping people. Taking down guys like Alona's stepdad. Like, rich guys who get away with shit that would land anyone else in jail.”

“Where law enforcement fails,” Alona said, “we step in. Honestly, my first idea was to convince you to help me get some girls out of Purmort. Jared told me the research station helped you because you brought them supplies, so if you made another delivery, maybe you could convince them to help you again.”

“We can't--” Jensen started to say. Did no one remember that it was their attempt to grab Alona from where she'd been hiding with the cult that started all the trouble? If they hadn't agreed to go to Bernon to get her, none of this would have happened.

“Jim can make you look dead to the GU,” Misha repeated.

“It can work,” Alona said.

“I thought it over,” Jared said, “and I'm in.”

“Well, I haven't,” Jensen said, “and I'm not. I'm not faking my death.” He knew how well that had worked when Alona tried it, and he and Jared didn't have the luxury of pretending to be found dead after five years missing. “When can I get my ship back?”

It was almost a week before Misha would consent to going back to La Spina for the Tombaugh. In that time, Jensen and Jared had a lot of conversations about their future and made as comprehensive a list as possible of the places they were wanted and the various warrants on and charges against them. It was a longer list than Jensen was expecting.

“You don't want to go charging into a sector where you're wanted again,” Danneel said pointedly, as if that mattered when there was a galactic warrant with their names on it. “I'll tell Genevieve you're alive and well and hiding out somewhere, as long as she promises to keep it a secret. When you figure out what you're doing, if it's safe, go see her. She'll worry.” She kissed Jensen and Jared on both cheeks and climbed into the Asmodeus's landing pod, so Misha could drop her off at a space station and she could get a shuttle back to wherever she'd parked the Canned Ham.

It was clear they couldn't go back to smuggling. Too many people were looking for them in too many places, even without the lure of whatever reward the galactic warrant offered. Anyone could pick them up - just because bounty hunters needed a license didn't mean the average citizen couldn't also bring someone in. They had to lie low.

But Jensen had his ship back, and he and Jared had gotten out from under Chris, and their skins were still intact, and it was more than he'd expected when the blues chased them to Cluny Sector and caught them. He'd chosen to haul freight, but he'd fallen into smuggling without thinking about it too hard. Maybe it was time to choose again.

Alona's idea wasn't a bad one. After all, hadn't he and Jared agreed to get her in the first place partly because of what her stepfather had done to Bernon? They'd done it for the credits, of course, and to keep Jensen from losing the Tombaugh to Chris, but they'd let themselves be convinced at least a little by the opportunity to right a wrong, to make a seemingly untouchable man actually pay for his crimes.

It was nowhere close to what Jensen had thought he'd do with his life, after he finished up his time with the mining conglomerate. Righting wrongs and helping the helpless carried no more guarantees than smuggling had, even if he and Jared paid Misha's friend to wipe their identities out of every database and off every record in every system, but at least Alona's money might help keep them afloat, and they were used to working outside the law. They'd figure out a way to cloak the Tombaugh from the Guppies' insane trackers, because if they could hide her from the galactic police, she really would be the fastest ship in settled space, and no one would be able to catch them.

Two weeks after his and Jared's jailbreak, and a day or two out from La Spina, Jensen found Alona in the cockpit of the Asmodeus, having what sounded like a thoroughly trivial conversation with Rachel, the ship's pilot, and told her he'd thought about it, and he and Jared had discussed it, and as soon as they got the Tombaugh back, they'd take her up on her offer. Right wrongs, protect the unprotected, touch the untouchable.

He'd been a freighter pilot, he'd been a smuggler, he'd been a jailbird. But he'd never been a professional good guy. He was looking forward to it.

Author's Note!