Anja's Star (Outer Settlement Agency) Read Online Free Page B

around here. Care to join us?”
    “No, she doesn’t.”
    But the thin teenager wouldn’t be dissuaded. “The invitation extended to you both. You’re new here, aren’t you? You have the look of the place, but not the manner. Please sit.”
    Retzi declined again and returned to his seat. “How’s it looking behind me?”
    Anja smiled and laughed into her glass of water, but the tone of her whispered words didn’t match her stress free face. “Not good. His look says he doesn’t get told ‘no’ very often.”
    “Any chance of starting dinner?”
    Anja giggled for their growing audience and drew circles on his arm. “He’s young, drinking and surrounded by peons. Don’t think for one moment that I won’t rip out every single pin in my hair and lay this kid out, if he tries to keep me from my food.”
    They got halfway through before the fool started up again. Retzi smelled the liquor reeking off him long before Anja kicked his shin beneath the table.
    “I was only trying to be polite. Do you know who I am?”
    “A child?”
    “Prio Grantly the Third,” he said, so close to Retzi’s face that the boy’s spittle landed on his cheek. “My father will hear of this.”
    Retzi knuckled a napkin across his face. “Is throwing around your father’s name your usual way of settling things? How does that help you when someone doesn’t know or care who he is?”
    Retzi ducked a rather halfassed left hook and stood to teach the kid how one was properly delivered, sending a appropriately satisfying spray of blood across the table.
    Chairs scraped across the floor and he heard omnitablets shooting and dialing nonstop. His picture would be plastered all over the quadrant before his next swing.
    “Back up.”
    Retzi’s head swiveled left to right at Anja’s scream, to see her gun trained on one of Grantly’s approaching lackeys.
    “We need to get out of here.”
    “We’ll we’re not going alone.” Retzi hoisted the knocked out boy over his shoulder, grabbing Anja with his free hand.
    “Are you insane? Grantly will kill us.”
    “A very real possibility anyway. At least now we’ve got something in our corner.” 
    By now, every omnitab in the room faced him. May as well use them to his benefit. “I imagine at  least half the people here are broadcasting this to you live. Good. If you want your boy back, be at the port in fifteen minutes with enough money to hold my hand.”
    Anja’s tugging on his tunic had him back to shuffling heel over foot, toward the door. She flagged down a hire before most of the restaurant pealed out behind them and he tossed in his comatose load.  “My brother had too much to drink.  Port please. Fast.”
    The driver gave all three of them a look over before easing off the brakes. “Looks like Grantly’s boy to me. You did that?”
    Retzi shrugged. “Is this going to be a problem?”
    “Hell no. He had it coming, whatever he did. That boy never pays for rides. This one’s on me, just keep my name out of it, ‘eh?”
    “Well I don’t mind saying it—”
    “I mind hearing it, but good on ya.”
    The driver got them there at blazing speeds, dodging all sorts of vehicular and pedestrian traffic. He alternated between laughing at the laid out Prio and checking for headlights behind him. True to his word, he hadn’t asked for payment, but Anja refused to let him leave without getting his fare.
    “Oh, Anja, you’re sweeter than you let on.”
    “Said one kidnapper to the other.”
    “Details. Your secret has been revealed.” Then the bundle across his shoulder started to wiggle and moan. Retzi flipped him over and delivered a silencing punch to his temple, before picking up where he left off. “I think you’re far kinder than you want to be. It’s alright to be nice every once in awhile.”
    “You don’t know me well enough to say one way or the other,” she said, checking the charge on her blaster.
    “I think I do, but let’s not argue.”  He paused to