Vitor sighed. "Were you following me?"

Kaela rolled her eyes. "As if I would be that obvious. I simply asked a few people where to find you."

"Kaela, I don't have time for your games," Vitor said as he moved past her.

She ignored his words and fell into step beside him. "Are you avoiding me or trying to renege on your favor?"

Vitor glanced at the woman out of the corner of his eye, but kept moving down the hallway without answering her question.

She chuckled at his lack of response. "Playing hard to get? I can respect that, but it does make me feel slightly unwanted, Vitor."

"What do you want, Kaela?" he asked without slowing his stride.

"You know what I want," she said.

"My answer there hasn't changed," Vitor said, stopping and turning to the woman. "We tried that; it didn't work. Why would you want to try again?"

"Only because you gave up," Kaela replied, not backing down. "But we can talk about that later. I was actually referring to the favor you owed me, not our relationship."

Vitor glared at the smiling woman. "You misdirected me on purpose."

"I did no such thing. You just assumed what I wanted. I think that says more about what's on your mind than mine."

***

"Absolutely not!" Vitor said a few minutes later, once Kaela told him what she expected in return for the favor he owed her.

"Don't be so quick to say no, lover boy. Since you were avoiding me, I took the time to peruse the laws for Unokane and this Asgardian Union you're a part of. I'll have to thank your boss for making those free to access. Anyway, there is nothing against arming a civilian vessel. In fact, I'm pretty sure I saw a mining barge coming in that had turrets welded to its exterior."

Vitor cursed internally. He knew Alex's choice to arm Mingyu Na's ship, The Moonlit Destiny, would come back to cause problems. Unfortunately, that was Alex's choice to make.

He had spoken with Alex about adding a stipulation against arming civilian vessels, but the man had said he preferred to address the issue on a case-by-case basis. Kaela didn't know that, but maybe he could use that to his advantage.

"It's not up to me," he said to the pouting woman. "Only Mr. Kane can make a decision like that."

"Fine," she said happily. "Then you can take me to meet him and put in a good word for me."

"He's currently on a trip within STO space and isn't scheduled to return for a few months."

Kaela's face turned serious. "Was he affected by the Shican attacks?"

"You heard about those?" Vitor asked in surprise.

"I have contacts. How do you think I catch my targets?"

"Is that why you want to arm the Fox?"

"It's one reason, but not the original reason I wanted a bit more defense for my little ship. You may not know this, being stuck out here on the ass end of humanity, but things are getting dangerous inside the STO. And not in the normal way, where some new criminals come to power. Those sorts of people have dropped off quite a bit lately, but they've been slowly replaced by the corporations, which are far worse, since they have both the political and military power to back up whatever heinous acts they do."

"You don't have to tell me," Vitor muttered darkly. "One of my first jobs for Kane was taking out a pirate station. On the way there, we ran into a corporate transport that was working with the pirates on a large-scale slavery operation."

If Kaela was surprised by the information, she didn't show it. She just nodded in understanding. "So you know that the corporations are getting bolder. They are starting to openly flaunt STO laws. It's only going to get worse once the STO starts throwing money around for the war effort. Those who can't defend themselves are going to get sucked into the black holes that are the corporate mega-factories, or worse."

She wasn't wrong about that. Alex's run-in with Qcomm was a prime example of a corporation completely ignoring the laws because they thought they were powerful enough to get away with it. Considering the STO hadn't addressed the attack yet, they were probably right. If Ramirez hadn't been there to stop the Qcomm fleet, Alex would have been in deep trouble.

He sighed. "Fine, I'll put in a good word for you once he returns, but I make no guarantees."

She bounced on the balls of her feet in happiness before giving him a peck on the cheek, much to his annoyance. "That's all I ask for. I could use a vacation," she added before turning and hurrying off.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"Wait!" Vitor called. "You plan on staying here until he gets back?"

"Why wouldn't I?" she asked, her mischievous smirk returning. "A lovely gentleman by the name of Theo has reached out to me and said he might have an interesting job opportunity. It wouldn't be very nice of me to simply say no without learning more about it."

Before he could even grumble in complaint, the woman laughed lightly and vanished around the next corner.

***

Theo stood and extended his hand. "Miss Voss, I'm glad you chose to accept my invitation to speak."

"Call me Kaela," the woman said before accepting his hand in her smaller one. Despite the delicate look, her grip was firm, and he could feel the rough calluses on her palm.

The woman was no delicate flower, but he already knew that from her bio. She was a hardened bounty hunter wrapped in a pretty shell that made people underestimate her. Theo forced down the frown that was threatening to build on his face as she briefly reminded him of his previous mentor, Beatrice.

That superficial comparison was just that. Beatrice was a conniving, backstabbing woman who would use anyone and everyone to gain just a little bit more of an advantage. That often manifested in the form of using others to do her dirty work instead of getting her own hands bloody. It was smart from the perspective of a spy, but Beatrice took it to the extreme.

From the information Theo had been able to collect on Kaela Voss, she was very different. Sure, she used her looks to make people underestimate her, but that was simply smart tactics. She preferred to handle problems directly when they happened.

"Kaela, then. Please, have a seat."

The woman sat demurely, but her eyes took in every detail of the room, and Theo could see her poised to strike at a moment's notice. He had picked up on tell-tale signs like that after working with the Asgardians. They were always poised to explode into action. If Theo hadn't been smiling already, a smirk would have appeared. This was exactly the type of person BSE could use, even though he knew Admiral Krieger had reservations about her.

"So, what did you wish to discuss, Mr. Pembrooke?" Kaela asked with a raised eyebrow, although her voice was carefully neutral.

He stifled a chuckle at the woman's attempt to hide her interest. While she was good, Theo was trained to see the signs. "If we're going to be on a first-name basis, you can call me Theo," he replied.

She nodded, and he continued. "What do you know of Eden's End and BSE?" he asked, leaning back in his seat.

Kaela paused to think about the question for a bit before shrugging, her cultivated allure slowly slipping away as she realized it wasn't working on Theo. "Not much, honestly."

Theo's smile only grew because it showed the woman was smart enough to notice her attempts to distract him weren't working and that she was quick to change tactics.

He gave the standard sales pitch for BSE, including their access to the technology available.

Like most people, Kaela was understandably dubious of his claims. "Why are you telling me all this?" she asked pointedly.

"BSE would like to offer you a job," he responded bluntly.

"I thought you had a bounty contract. I already have a job," she said in annoyance, preparing to stand before Theo motioned for her to please wait.

"I'm aware of the favor you asked our resident Admiral about. If you sign an NDA and hear my offer out, I'll approve the request."

That got her to pause. "You can do that?"

He nodded. "Mr. Kane has given me full authority to act on his behalf while he is gone." While technically true, Theo would still be running the request by Alex before offering the woman military-class weapons. Alex might balk at giving a civilian ship weapons, but he probably wouldn't reject it outright after Theo explained why he made the offer. If Voss joined BSE, then it was a foregone conclusion that Alex would say yes to her request.

"Let me see this NDA. I want to read it before I agree to anything."

"Certainly," he said, sliding the tablet across his desk.

Theo sat quietly and waited for her to read through the short document. After enough time had passed for her to go over it three or four times, she signed the document and set the tablet down. "Alright, you have my interest; this better not be a waste of my time."

"I can assure you it won't be," he said as he put the tablet back in the drawer. "Please follow me."

"You can't just tell me here?" she asked as she got up and followed Theo out of the room.

"I find that some people need more than words to be convinced."

Kaela didn't respond to that statement, but she kept following him. The pair got on one of the trams that ran around Eden's End, where they arrived outside of Atrium D.

From there, he led her to one of the storage rooms. He could see the woman getting more tense as the halls emptied, and fewer and fewer people were spotted outside of armed guards. Theo remained relaxed, waving to guards as they passed. The guards nodded in return, but gave Kaela pointed looks. Check for the latest updates on My Virtual Library Empire (M-VL-EMP-YR).

"If you're bringing me to some out-of-the-way place to try something funny, I'll make you regret it," Kaela warned once they were out of sight of any guards.

"That would be a very stupid idea on my part," he replied as they reached their destination. "Besides, we're here."

Theo ran his badge across the reader, placed his thumb on the bio scanner, and glanced at the camera placed at eye level. There was a long delay before a series of loud clunks shook the floor as the locking bolts retracted into the wall, and the massive blast door slowly swung open.

"Follow me," he said, stepping inside the storage room without waiting for a response.

The lights in the long room flickered to life, showing a series of covered projects that Alex had either abandoned or set aside for later.

"What is this?" Kaela asked as she glanced at the covered contents.

"This is a storage room. Most of the stuff here is just failed experiments, but not all of it."

At the end of the long room was another doorway that made the hairs on the back of his arms stand on end. He glanced over at Kaela, noticing she could feel it too.

"What is that?" she asked.

"One of the advantages of being an employee for BSE," he said cryptically before going over to the wall and turning off the defensive field that covered the second blast door. Theo thought Alex's implementation of the field was a bit overkill for what the room contained, but it did come in handy as an invisible, yet tangible glimpse into what he had spoken of earlier.

The pair stepped into the last room, and Kaela Voss did an admirable job of hiding her surprise at seeing the augmentation gear on display. Normally, Alex simply recycled his old designs, but Theo had talked him into saving some to show the iterative improvements. None of the suits in the room were functional. They were models specifically built for the room since the entire storage area was there to act as an impressive display and nothing else.

It was wasteful, but it worked wonders, especially on people who were familiar with the combat gear. Once Kaela's visit was over, the suits would be recycled, and he would decide what item best intrigued his next employee acquisition.

"Go ahead and take a look," he gestured to the suits.