Soul of a Gambler

Part II - "The Last Job"

There aren't a lot of people out there who would consider coming into a bar, in the slummiest slums of a city, and taking a job offered by some off world mafia, or private military interest, or maybe undercover intelligence agency--Jax was never one to rule out possibilities before letting time reveal the truth, especially when he was directly benefitting from whatever unknown quantity--a high point in their life, but to Jax, this was the apex of his week. He tried his best to keep to an Earth calendar, so what would have been Monday would have been his weapon heist from the Block Thirteen Gang, so Tuesday through roughly Thursday would have been spent recovering on the Bannerless transport, and things were shaping up to look like he'd be rich by Sunday.

They fed him too, Keres and the bar staff cleared out shop at the end of the night and he and Kuria stayed to brief him while they waited for Keres' unknown strongmen to arrive. The food was strange to him, though familiar in composition: seared flank of some meaty animal and gravy with mashed starchy vegetable and steamed not-starchy vegetable. It was good too, damn good, not that Jax was going to turn a meal down just because it was alien cuisine. That's what you get out in the outer arc, a sort of inter-cultural creole of whatever came subsidized through Blackwatch assistance programs and whatever passed-down family recepies could be made with the government handouts.

Hell, it might have been the best thing Jax had eaten all week. He had a bad habit of forgetting to take anything into his body that wasn't nicotine or alcohol these days.

"So, Kal-Davis--Mister... Davis, as it were. The target is a transport barge to dock at the upper ring early next rotation." Keres sat across from him, with one of the establishments famous cold beers in his hand. Jax listened intently, mouth too full of savory flavor to reply.

"You will not catch it. Instead, you and the team of specialists yet to arrive will board the outside of the ship before it attempts to breach the atmosphere after leaving the station."

Jax nodded, washing down the jaw-straining mouthful of food with a drink from his own cold beer.

Keres took a breath, but before he could continue, the rough sound of knuckles against the door cut him off.

"Ah! Kala-Kuria, will you get the door?" She nodded and left her head angled down for the slightest moment before moving to do as she was asked. She strained just a little as she moved the rusted lever that controlled the heavy locks, and slowly opened the door. Jax shuddered as a lick of icy nighttime air hit his ankles, and he turned to look over his shoulder, the shoot of a seasoned vegetable hung out of the corner of his mouth.

Keres didn't lie when he implied his team was well equipped. The three looked a lot less like robbers and more like knights, the kind that wore brilliant plate armor and championed kingdoms in the myths of Old Earth. The burly men in dark ballistic-plate  had to duck slightly under the door so their helmeted heads wouldn't bounce off of the doorway. Kuria slammed the door behind them with a labored push, throwing more frigid air at Jax, some of it catching in his golden hair and whipping it upward like a cockatiel.

They knew where to go without being told, taking down stacked seats from the tabletops and surrounding the only occupied table. Watching them stirred something uneasy in Jax' gut. These guys were big, not street-rats-you-hire-in-an-alley big, these men were far bigger, at least a head above Jax and probably one and a half of him abreast. Their helmets, continuing the knight motif covered the whole of their face and stared at him with a single line of a visor that ran horizontally across their sight line in a tight, tapering elipse. Jax never got too familiar with his crewmates, they always had a habit of turning up dead, but the fact that he couldn't even make out their faces, that they weren't even giving him a chance to know them struck a pang in his gut.