14. Three Point Four Billion Credits

“Niko,” Elliott whispered.

Niko shifted to bury himself deeper into Elliott. He couldn’t remember ever being so comfortable. Nothing hurt when he was in Elliott’s arms.

“Yeah, babe,” he murmured. The word had come out in the thoughtless way half-conscious language did, and only a moment later did he realize he’d even said it.

“Niko?”

Elliott’s body was stiff around him, each muscle taut with a quiet, tightly strung tension. He gave Niko a small shake. Niko opened his eyes, met by the darkness of night filling the cabin.

“What’s wrong?” Niko murmured, wakefulness quickly returning to him as his skin prickled with unease.

“There’s someone outside. I heard something.”

Niko was wide awake now, adrenaline flooding his body. He swallowed. This shouldn’t be possible. This safehouse was one of the most secure locations anywhere in the galaxy. No one was supposed to know about it. And it was miles upon miles from the closest settlement. There was no reason for someone to come across it by mistake. Any foot traffic would have to be intentional.

Maliciously so.

He hoped it was an animal. That Elliott was just paranoid due to how he’d probably had to live for the past several months. That the sound of something rustling around in the forestial dark was enough to make him wake Niko.

All the same, they couldn’t risk ignoring it. And Niko didn’t want to discredit Elliott, to doubt his judgment.

“Okay,” he murmured slowly, craning his neck upward to look for any movement in the cracks of the old blinds. There was nothing. Only the sounds of insect song filled the silent seconds as he waited.

“I can get to your ship. Your weapons are there, right? Do you have a code to get to them?” Elliott asked.

“It’s a biometric scanner. I’ll have to be there. And I’d feel better with my suit if this is going to be a fight.”

“Let’s go,” Elliott said, sitting up. The distinct loss of his warmth made Niko ache, but he knew this wasn’t the time to dwell on it. Elliott was quick, already up and throwing on clothes, silent as a ghost. He tossed Niko his own, which Niko tried to pull on quickly, though it was always a little awkward for him. Niko looked over at his chair, steeped in heavy shadow, and fought back a groan. The thing was not exactly the epitome of stealthy movement.

Elliott glanced around the room, straining to see in the dark as well. “I had knives—”

“Kitchen counter. Drawer under the coffee machine,” Niko mumbled. The number of hidden weapons and tools he’d found on Elliott when removing his shirt and initially bandaging his wounds was both impressive and not surprising. In the least. Niko had shoved them in the kitchen drawer for the time being. It hadn’t been the most creative spot, but mostly he’d wanted to ensure they weren’t within Elliott’s grasp when he woke. Niko had no idea then how the man would react, waking in a new place, confused.

Elliott slipped off quickly. Niko didn’t even hear the drawer open and close before he came padding back, the pale glint of a silver blade clutched in his hand. Niko unfortunately hadn’t been able to save the sniper rifle; it had been a casualty left back on Neema, dropped by Elliott when he’d collapsed. Niko had only been able to carry so much then, and Elliott had been his priority. By far.

Even so, tactical knives weren’t going to cut it, either. Not if this was going to be a real battle. Niko had seen firsthand what Elliott was capable of carrying out with a knife alone, but that had been under the benefit of stealth and surprise. And Niko was at a distinct disadvantage—no weapon at all, his armor locked away, charging aboard the ship. They needed to get to the So?adora.

Elliott crouched and moved to the window by the bed, slowly parting the blinds to peek through before shrinking away again. He glanced at Niko, holding up four fingers. Niko winced. Any hope he’d had that this was just the clumsy approach of an animal vanished.

How?He couldn’t stop wondering. This safehouse was the best you could find. This shouldn’t be happening. Baouban protected his people. He had old world honor that was rare these days. Increasingly so.

This shouldn’t be happening.

Even Zann didn’t know about this place. Was he being tracked, somehow? Had Zann suspected him enough to—?

“There’s a hidden door in the back of the closet for emergencies. It should lead straight to where the ship’s parked,” Niko said.

They made their way to the small closet and out through an even narrower external door, Niko’s heart rate briefly spiking as his chair was barely too big to fit through. Elliott paused and turned to help him, though, quietly maneuvering it back and forth until it cleared the door frame. Once outside in the night air, Elliott slipped ahead again. Niko’s nerves burned with panic as he tried to follow, both swiftly, but quietly. They reached the ship and Niko was grateful the chair hadn’t been as loud as he’d worried it would be. This was the first time he’d ever had to navigate an active situation in it, rather than his suit. He hoped it would be the last.

As the door to the ship slid open, the leaves of several trees to the front side of the cabin shook as something gargantuan thudded on the ground.

“Idiot!” a feminine voice hissed. “You’ll wake them!”

Niko and Elliott exchanged glances.

Toliai,Elliott mouthed.

Oh fuck, Niko thought. Toliai were by far the largest and hardiest of all known sentient alien species. They stood almost a story high and had a scaled hide that was close enough to bulletproof.

The So?adora lowered its ramp and they both quickly ascended it, Elliott stubbornly waiting for Niko to get in safely first. The door closed behind them. Niko glanced towards the ship’s console, with all its screens and holograms shut off, still and silent. They could try and take the ship, leave now. But he needed to know. He needed to know who’d managed to follow him here. And he needed to check, first, if the So?adora Despierta had a tracker. If he couldn’t take care of that first, it didn’t matter where they went. They would always be followed.

It was going to have to be a fight.

He moved to the back of the ship, where Elliott was already waiting, antsy, and let the locker scan the pads of his fingers. The door yielded to them and Elliott helped himself to a secondary rifle Niko didn’t often favor, inspecting it and checking if it was loaded. It wasn’t.

“Ammunition’s to the right, on the bottom,” Niko said, and wasted no time getting back into the suit. It still wasn’t fully charged, but it would do. It wouldn’t die on him any time soon.

He felt a rush of relief as the sensation of protective armor fastened tightly around his limbs. A moment later and he knew the neural implants had locked in and around the skin of his legs, tiny, sensitive needles sliding unfelt under his skin, all announced with a pale hologram activating at the wrist of his suit that read CONNECTED.

Nothing felt different when he was connected to the suit. He would never be able to fully feel his legs again, but he had a palpable relief at knowing he could stand now for as long as its battery allowed. He did, pulling on the gloves last and locking them into place.

All that was missing was the helmet, still. But he’d never get that back unless he had a new one made, the original crushed somewhere in the great core of Uula.

He walked over to Elliott, who reached in and handed him his usual rifle.

He pays attention,Niko thought. Then again, Elliott had been the very target at the other end of that same rifle many times, Niko realized. He probably had it memorized well.

“Are you ready?” Niko asked, loading the rifle and switching off the safety. “It’s no sniper rifle. Do you know how to use it?”

“I know how to use it,” Elliott said dryly. Niko thought he detected a hint of irritation in the other man’s voice.

“Sure you’re going to be good with your shoulder?”

“Niko.”

“Okay, okay. But I want you to stay behind me,” Niko said.

“I’m not—”

“You don’t have any armor and I do,” Niko cut him off, moving to the exit.

“I was going to say I’m not an idiot.”

Niko couldn’t help but smile. No. No, he wasn’t an idiot. He was the Kestrel, probably the more tactically minded and clever out of either of them. Niko just tended to react in the spur of the moment when it came to combat, all intuition. That instinct had kept him alive so far, for the most part. Maybe not whole, maybe not unscathed. But it had kept him alive, and that was good enough.

As they reached the door, a series of rapid-fire gunshots rang through the air outside of the ship, clearly aimed at the cabin. The sound of wood splintering and glass shattering joined in, filling the air with a cacophony of noise. After a moment, it fell quiet. Even the insects had stopped singing.

“Well, we’re awake now,” Elliott quipped. Niko snorted. He glanced over and realized he’d instinctively put a hand on the other man’s chest the moment the gunfire had started. He retracted it.

They exited the ship, both men readying their guns, Elliott dutifully keeping a few steps behind Niko.

Niko saw the Xermotl first, a lavender colored man with blue patterns, wielding an automatic rifle. He was creeping around the back of the cabin—which was now standing in disarray, windows shattered, blinds hanging askew, entire chunks of wood missing. The whole thing was peppered with holes. His four legs crunched quietly over broken glass shards. Niko got a surprise headshot on him, just as the man looked up in startlement. Niko grimaced, sending a silent apology to the Xermotl as he folded into himself and crumpled to the ground. He didn’t prefer killing, but he would if he had to, and their lives were in real danger.

And they hadn’t been left with much choice. He recognized these guys as other bounty hunters, maybe mercenaries. They had no uniforms, and Galapol wasn’t likely to send a hulking, ground-shaking Toliai in the middle of the night for an orchestrated surprise attack.

The first had been easy to take down, but the other three heard Niko’s shot and responded expertly. He heard their voices, the quiet: “Oh shit. Behind the house.” And: “They’re here.”

Elliott tapped Niko on the shoulder and gestured into the forest, left of the cabin. Niko swept his gun in that direction, but was met with only the still of night. Gunfire erupted from the trees, the bright starburst of someone’s firearm going off, a single shot followed by another. Niko shot back, both hunters missing their marks in the moonlight. The other shooter had likely ducked behind one of the hardy trunks, so Niko took the opportunity to book it for the cabin, crouching down at the corner, just out of sight of whoever was shooting from the trees. Elliott swiftly followed, keeping close.

“I’ve got your back,” Elliott murmured. Niko kept his gaze trained on the forest before him, trees extending back until he lost visual, their silhouettes melting into the dark. He heard something behind them, turning just in time to see the long, pale gold arm of a Quwa-quay tossing a grenade towards them.

Fuck. Oh fuck—

Elliott was there, suddenly. Eyes on it, he caught the thing in mid-air and whipped it back. It detonated near its source, eliciting a shriek from around the cabin’s corner. Niko gaped at him in disbelief, his brain struggling to process what had just happened. He had seen guys try to pick up and throw back grenades that had landed by them before in his line of work. It never ended well—there just wasn’t enough time to complete the action.

But this was the first time he’d seen someone outright deftly intercept it mid-throw and hurl it back in time to avoid certain destruction. Elliott wasted no time getting on with the battle though, raising his rifle and disappearing briefly around the corner, a single gunshot cracking through the air as he finished off the Quwa-quay who’d thrown it.

Another gunshot grazing Niko’s hair reminded him of what he’d actually been doing before getting baffled by Elliott’s insanity—and skill. He pressed against the back of the cabin, making a mental note of where the shot and telltale starburst flash of light that accompanied it had come from, and shot once, twice, three times into the dark of the forest. The third shot hit, a high pitched, feminine cry of pain echoing from the trees. But his assailant wasn’t dead yet. She returned another two more shots, both dangerously close and pinging hard off Niko’s chest armor.

He wished he had his helmet. Niko would feel a lot more confident if he did.

He waited again, one breath, then two. Elliott scurried back beside him, sinking down into a crouch. Niko knew this game of hiding, shooting once, then hiding again. It could go on for hours. He’d wounded his opponent, but didn’t know where. She could have RapiGel. She could keep at this, stalling him for as long as she needed. The trees shook with another few lumbering steps from the Toliai. Niko didn’t have time to wait.

“Stay here,” he mumbled. Before Elliott could respond, Niko leapt up, running as hard as he could straight into the forest, zigzagging as he went to make aiming on him harder. Bullets zinged past him, the bright flash of each shot telling him exactly where to go.

They never expected to get rushed. It was one of the reasons Niko relied on it so much. Nobody expected their opponent to throw sanity to the wind and go charging head first into active ranged combat.

He slammed into the woman—tall and gangly, a Heenva—and knocked her to the ground. Her branch-like antennae glowed and pulsed with her distress. He wrestled her gun out of her hands.

“Fuck you!” she yelled in Sala Heenvan, scrambling to pull a secondary pistol on him. Niko wrenched it from her hand and hit her upside the head with it. She fell unconscious beneath him, her struggle over. A quick glance showed him he’d only gotten her in the arm with his shot. If she treated it when she came to, she’d live. He got off her, confiscating her guns for himself, then moved back quickly to join Elliott. They still had the Toliai to deal with.

They exchanged glances, Niko murmuring for the other man to keep behind him now. Toliai were nothing to fuck with. He’d always dreaded jobs where they were his mark. Guns did little to them. Explosive rounds might start making wounds. He struggled to think of his options, when Elliott held something up, clutched tightly in his hand: another grenade. He must have taken it from the Quwa-quay’s remains.

Of course he did.

Niko couldn’t help but grin. This might just give them a fighting chance after all.

“Hope you have good aim,” he teased.

“Are you kidding me?” Elliott said. Niko peeked around to the front of the cabin, where the lumbering creature was glancing around, clutching an oversized, heavy-looking gatling gun. He’d clearly been the one to go all out on the cabin.

“I’ll distract him,” Niko whispered. “I’ll go around the left and you take the right.”

“That gun is going to do some damage if you’re not careful,” Elliott commented, but slipped off around the back and towards the other side. Niko inhaled, nerves rising. He peeked around the cabin’s side again and started shooting at the Toliai, aiming for his face. The gargantuan alien snarled in rage and opened fire. Niko barely had half a second to duck behind the cabin before it erupted into splinters of wood again, bullets zinging straight through the structure and past him. He felt a few ricochet off his back, and kept his head ducked down.

It was enough time for Elliott to act. Niko heard the explosion as bullets rained down on him—and then stopped. He moved around the corner again, rifle trained on the Toliai, just in time to see the gunner clutching desperately at his smoldering face. He stumbled back into the trees, letting out a deep roar. The tree he fell against cracked under his weight, but ultimately stood.

The Toliai gunner slumped against the tree, unmoving. Where his face had once been was a ghastly sight now—even more ghastly, Niko thought, than what the typical Toliai face looked like.

The elation of victory rushed through Niko’s veins as the forest fell quiet again. He felt triumphant, as he always did when being the last one standing in battle. Working with Elliott was… it was fun. He was used to this kind of high-adrenaline skirmish in his work, but he’d never gotten to work with a partner before. Especially not one as masterful as Elliott. This was something Niko could find himself getting used to.

But Elliott came up behind him again, gluing himself to Niko’s back, gun sweeping the dark trees.

“Don’t get too excited yet,” Elliott murmured. “There’s still one out there.”

Niko froze. “You said there were four.”

“I hadn’t accounted for the Toliai.”

Shit.

Niko raised his gun again, short-lived triumph giving way to tension. The night was quiet, nothing around them but heavy, heavy silence that the insect symphony was still wary to fill.

Where are you?

Niko stepped forward and heard leaves crunching ahead of them in the dark. He and Elliott both trained their guns in the direction of the sound.

“Hey, uh,” a familiar voice called out, nervous and shaky. “So, listen, I’m sorry about all that.”

“Baouban?” Niko gaped.

The hefty, sage-colored Gheroun slithered his way out of the dark before them, from behind the dead Toliai, all his tentacles not currently used for walking held up in surrender. He wore a button-up shirt with strawberries on it. “Please don’t shoot.”

“This was you?” Niko said, incredulous. He was outraged.

“What are you waiting for?” Elliott murmured under his breath.

“Whatever happened to honor?” Niko asked, ignoring Elliott.

“I’m sorry, Niko. I am,” Baouban said, keeping a good distance from them, tentacles still held aloft. They jiggled in fear. Niko could see miserable regret in his three eyes. “But there’s never been a payout this good. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it. This bounty is something generations of your family could thrive off of. A number like that changes everything, Niko. That kind of money is a wild card now.”

“You sold us out for his bounty,” Niko spat, disgusted.

“N-no,” Baouban said nervously. “Not just. Yours, as well.”

“What?” Niko paused. That meant—

He had a bounty now too. Posted by Galapol.

“Since a few days back, there’s been a hefty bounty on your head too. The two of you are now the highest paying job the galaxy has ever seen, by far.”

Niko couldn’t help but ask. Morbid curiosity rubbed through him like sandpaper, grating. “How much?”

“Three point four billion credits.”

Holy shit.

Niko was both aghast and—well, honestly, he was impressed. Was he really worth that much? “For me?”

“Ah, ha ha, no,” Baouban laughed awkwardly. “Most of that’s for him.” He gestured a tentacle towards Elliott before quickly raising it towards the sky again, where it quivered. “One hundred twenty million is you.”

Niko scoffed. He was worth far more than that. He was easily on par with Elliott. He was skilled, and dangerous, and—Niko shook his head. None of this mattered. He didn’t even want a bounty on his head. The implications it carried were horrifying.

“Are you going to shoot him now?” Elliott asked, loud enough for Baouban to hear. “Or should I?”

“Whoa! Wait wait wait wait!” Baouban pleaded. “I have fourteen spawnlings!”

“And you have a fatal case of backstabbing,” Elliott said, taking aim.

“Elliott,” Niko said, sighing, and Elliott reluctantly lowered his gun. He stared out at the quivering mass of tentacles with disdain. “I trusted you, Baouban. People came here knowing they were taken care of. You’ll never get that back.”

“I know,” Baouban said quietly, glancing towards the ground.

“I would have had your back through anything. We took care of each other, in another lifetime.”

Baouban nodded. “I suppose ‘sorry’ doesn’t really cut it.”

“Not this time,” Niko said. He lowered his gun too, and Baouban visibly sagged in relief. Niko stared him down, unimpressed at the miserable alien before him who had once been a champion of those in need. “I thought you were one of the real ones, Baouban.”

Niko turned away, stepping into the splintered remains of the cabin. The place was destroyed. Cabinet doors barely hung on to their hinges, shattered shards of glass darkly glittering all along the floors, the tables, the bed. Stuffing leaked from the mattress, some of it still floating through the air. Niko went over to his bedside bag of supplies and picked it up, giving it a quick look over. It had a few holes but had managed to survive the worst of the damage. He zipped it closed and slung it over his shoulder, heading back out to where Elliott still eyed the Gheroun warily.

“Come on,” Niko said.

“You’re going to let him go?” Elliott asked.

Niko started towards the ship, but paused to cast one last glance back at Baouban, a man he’d once respected, even thought of as a good friend. “Everything he had rested on his reputation. In the end, he made a gamble and lost. Let’s just go.”

He called out, a little louder, “Baouban. There’s a hunter out about ten yards east of the cabin.” Niko pointed. “She’s wounded but alive. Get her some RapiGel. Or make her buy it, if money is all that matters now.”

Once they had the ship cleared of Vorna-12’s atmosphere, the infinite, perfect black of space before them, Niko sank back into the pilot’s seat of the So?adora. He wanted to banter and laugh with Elliott about how the fight had gone down, how he’d taken on a live grenade and lived. How they’d worked together to take down an armed Toliai. But laughter wasn’t something Niko felt capable of right then, and despite the man sitting in his co-pilot’s seat, Niko found he only wanted to retreat inside himself, nothing to say.

Baouban had dealt him a low blow, but he’d also given him an invaluable lesson. If even someone like him were willing to turn on Niko for this bounty, there was nowhere safe for them now. Three point four billion credits was a lot to turn down—maybe even an impossible amount.

Everything was about to change. Or maybe it already had, and Niko was just struggling to admit it.

They’d given a quick look over inside and out of the So?adora before taking off. There were no tracking devices and the ship was clean.

Elliott looked over at him. Despite everything, he wore a faint smile, eyes squinting. “I was right,” he said.

“Yeah?” Niko asked, wanting to humor him despite his own mood.

“We work well together.”

Niko snorted. He couldn’t help the smile he felt taking possession of his lips. They’d endured so much, and had no stable ground beneath them to stand on, flung adrift to the stars. But Elliott Kestrel was here with him, smiling at him. Had watched his back. Had kept Niko alive.

They’d worked as a team and it had been… amazing. Fulfilling.

Before he could reconsider, Niko found himself pulling his glove off and reaching towards Elliott, taking his hand in his own. He ran his thumb along the back of it.

“I like your hands,” he admitted.

“Do you?”

“Yeah, they’re, uh, handsome.”

“Handsome hands? Really?” Elliott was smiling again, though. “I like yours too. I like the tattoos on them. I like the ones everywhere else, too.”

It was nice. Niko hadn’t been complimented on his looks in so long. And it meant especially much coming from Elliott.

They settled into silence for a while before Elliott spoke again. “Are you alright, Niko?”

“I don’t know how to answer that,” Niko admitted. “I’m trying to think of where we could go. I thought I knew a few places, but this is making me question all of them.” He stared out the windshield at the infinite obsidian that lay before them, bejeweled with stars.

“Money makes the galaxy turn,” Elliott mumbled. He hesitated before finally speaking again. “I know a place.”

Niko looked up at him. He was so beautiful, sitting there in Niko’s oversized t-shirt, hair all but a disaster from the combination of fucking, sleeping, and getting caught in an unexpected shootout. On his long neck was a constellation of blushing bruises that Niko had left him mere hours before. He looked tired but relaxed, and it was nice to see him like this instead of wearing the usual cool scowl Niko met him with when he’d been hunting him.

The sight of him like this made Niko ache. He was the one point of gravity Niko could hold steady to when everything else was rapidly falling apart.

“It’s where I’ve been staying,” Elliott said.

Niko couldn’t help but smile again at that. All the countless, tireless efforts Galapol had made trying to track down Elliott, trying to find his nefarious base of operations and coming up empty-handed again and again. It had driven Zann nuts. There was an illicit thrill at being able to see its secret unveiled.

“All this time?” Niko asked.

Elliott smiled wanly. “All this time.”