“Yes,” said Jane, sighing. “Ivosh, allow me to introduce my friend Sam. Sam, Ivosh.”
“This man is your friend?”
“Yes, he is. We knew each other at Earthfleet Academy.”
Ivosh’s pursed lips quickly turned to a wan smile, and his hair went from red to brown in almost an instant. “Forgive me for the misunderstanding, my good sir. It is truly a pleasure to meet you.”
The David Bowie look must have been an attempt to intimidate me, because Ivosh dropped it almost immediately—or at least fast-forwarded a couple of decades. He offered his hand and probably would have kissed me on the cheek, if I weren’t so careful to keep my distance.
“Sam is something of a mercenary,” Jane explained. “You want someone dead, pay him well enough, and he’ll get the job done. Unless someone else pays him to turn on you.”
“I prefer ‘man of fortune.’ And contrary to what you might think, Jane, I never go back on my word.”
She rolled her eyes, probably because I didn’t deny being a mercenary. At the time, though, I thought it was my honesty she was questioning. That made me a little touchy.
“Name one time that I’ve lied to you, Jane. One time.”
“Are you forgetting that you stood by and let the slavers take me?”
“That’s different. I was working for someone else. He betrayed you, not me.”
“Oh, for the love of—”
Gunslinger to the Stars
Sam Kletchka here, freelance gunslinger and interstellar privateer. This, my friends, is how I went from being stranded in the armpit of the galaxy to becoming the luckiest human being in the universe.
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