[2.3] The Good Lady Robin Hood

She already had something of a stash going. Mattica got down on her knees beside the futon and felt around beneath it until her fingers brushed against the scuffed leather of the army surplus duffle bag she had pilfered from the cargo bay of an old airship. At present it contained some of the more coherent books from Corvendo's shelves in one of the compound break rooms, a case of phiris picks from the garage that Matt didn't know were still in production, and two keys. She wasn't sure what they unlocked, but she was hoping at least one of them would work on the storage room where Corvendo had locked her stuff. This was just a start, of course. It wasn't like her services were being adequately paid for, and she was looking for a little more compensation.

Corvendo occasionally had her order tools and other equipment for the garage. Most of what came in was a second-rate knock-off of a familiar brand, but some had been useful enough to make her take notice. These she had stored away in drawers and cabinets where their absence wouldn't be immediately picked up on. As if she were all that worried about prosecution in Pellel, where there wasn't so much a police force as there was armed guards.

Mattica slept in a small office off one of the main workshops, in which a small cargo craft currently resided. An equipment cache lay thirty feet across the shop that no one ever remembered to lock (at Matt probably could have picked it if they had), and she slung the duffle bag over her shoulder, easily finding her way across the garage in the dark.

Somewhere in the building another drinking party had commenced, and faint shouts and laughter drifted over the workshop. She hoped Corvendo was with them. In the morning, talking to Conlan would be ten times wore with a hangover. Then again, Conlan was paying the big bucks to get her home. Corvendo might just throw another party - which almost made her want to escape anyway just to spite him.

She opened the door to the cache silently, slipping inside and closing the door and window blinds before switching on the room's single bare bulb. Revealed to her: four heavy tool chests, two ceiling-high cabinets, and a line of drawers embedded under the work counter. Most of the contents would be rusty, or else just the same four wrenches and three screwdrivers, maybe with different colored grips. Things went missing in the garage daily, only to turn up right after a replacement was purchased (another cue to Mattica that sweeping the place would be easy, even though she was relatively green when it came to theft). Matt knew where all the good stuff was kept, though.

She dropped the duffle bag and crouched beside one of the tool chests, prying open the bottom drawer. When she accounted events to Camilla later on, she was definitely going to have to make it clear that she really wasn't "stealing" per se. Just . . . delivering some divine justice, like that mythical goddess that rewarded undue good fortune with a devastating storm.

[2.2] The Facts Were These

Fifteen minutes later the plans were set and Mattica pushed away from the commsphere, watching for a moment as the screen fizzled out to a dusty grey. Its internal cooling unit wheezed and sputtered, then gave a loud cough before retiring until the next time the sphere decided to put a cal through.

"G'night," Mattica whispered under her breath. She pushed her hair back out of her face and let out a restless sigh.

She was leaving.

She was returning to the free world.

She needed to steal some crap first.

Granted, the company she had kept during her "captivity" had been detestable, but not everything in the backwards little valley town of Pellel had been as torturous as was probably intended. In fact, if Mattica was feeling, for some reason, particularly optimistic, she could almost look at it as some sort of character training. Only, if she had her way the bounty was going to be as physical as it was mental.

Mattica had been living on a pseudo-government compound under the custody of one Liaz Corvendo, a disgustingly loyal ward of Pellel's very own corrupt town official/land lord/king pin. Matt didn't really care to distinguish which was the most accurate. She suspected he had his hand in any number of felonies, from political intimidation to drug running, but frankly the details aren't particularly important. Eight months earlier, fleeing certain incarceration in countries not know for their feats of human rights, Mattica had flown a battered maintenance ship toward resort country Costa Rhial, only to have a fuel leak ground her in the paradise's less favorable neighbor. Local officials (Corevendo among them) had been sympathetic and downright cordial to their foreign guest at first, giving her access to the town's deteriorating but serviceable airship garage.

Corvendo, enterprising little lackey that he was, thought to do a quick run-up on her, and discovered that she not only had a number of job licenses for mechanics and bounty hunting to her name, but that she was also wanted in a number of neighboring countries for offenses that were likely to be interpreted as felonies. Never mind that half of them were obviously trumped-up charges designed to ensnare traveling Alliance nationals. Corvendo saw what he had and made a grab for it. He sabotaged her ship, separated her from her belongings, and with his patron's blessing served her up an ultimatum at gunpoint: enter into contract with the town as a  mechanic for Honorable Markel Valleis (the aforementioned corrupt official) or be detained and extradited to whatever country he deemed the least hospitable.

Without weapons, a ship, or any chance of evading Pellel's numerous degenerates all the way to the next town thirty miles away, Mattica had shrugged and submitted to the contract, which stipulated that she see at least fifty projects through to completion (which amounted to about three-five years, depending on th vessels in question).

Mattica had intended to escape at some point. It would have been loud and flashy and worthy of its own story, only that resources were scarce and time passed quickly. Besides, with the exception, again, of the company she kept, conditions were tolerable. She was fed, housed, and provided a small allowance (even though there was little in Pellel worth purchasing). Even the strictest of restrictions Corvendo placed on her were easy to cheat, and Matt suspected he was new to the hostage-taking business. While her curfew was enforced by armed guards stationed around the compound's perimeter, she had hacked the antiquated commsphere network the first week of her capture, and she made herself a private (and invisible  account for sending and receiving calls. Unfortunately, with the contact binding, having access to a phone did little to help and legal attempts at a getaway. All it was good for was keeping in touch withe Camilla, and other friends with any particular interest in her continued well-being.

Like Conlan, infuriatingly leading the rescue charge she had spent countless hours trying to stop. Not that Conlan ever got enthusiastic about it or anything. Just, "Let me come and get you already," or "So what if there's a scandal. Can't fault a guy for shooting a couple of kidnappers, can you?" And she would bristle at the idea that she had been "kidnapped" like some damned damsel in distress. If anything she was a political prisoner! But, anyway. Conlan just didn't know how to take care of himself - he just had to meddle with other people's problems . . . which just ended with her trying to fix things for him.

That's what it felt like, anyway. Or what it used to feel like. It had been a long time since she'd been back.

But there was no use thinking like that now. He was coming to get her legitimately, and she could rest easy about it. He would be there in two days at the most.

"Start packing," he had said. Well, she definitely planned to.

[2.1] Monster Woman Lives

The garage commsphere was many years older than Mattica, and thus thought itself above such banal functions as ringing or polite chiming. When there was a call - which seemed to engender in it some significant level of resentment - it rattled and clanked and seized as though foretelling the end of the world.

Mattica loved the old thing. Kindred spirits, they were. When it came exploding to crotchety life at nearly three in the morning, she hauled herself off her dusty futon and shuffled across the concrete.

The screen came on like a scratch ticket being uncovered: there was a jawline, an ear, a thumb pressed against the display to angle it upward. She knew who it was before face cleared up.

"Gods, does the idea of time zones just totally bounce off your head? What is wrong with you?"

His voice was clipped, distorted, and seemed to force its way out of the speakers. "What? You weren't even sleeping, anyway."

"How would you know?"

"Pfft. You never sleep before morning."

"Sure, when I was a kid I didn't have stuff to do like slave away for the scum of the earth."

"Yeah, about that."

"I'm done with you."

"Start packing."

"You're not using me to besmirch your family's name."

"It's not-"

"If Sterling money comes into this cesspool, should I describe again what will happen if anyone with a journalism degree hears about it? I coulda sworn the last earful I gave you was enough."

". . . Did you say 'besmirch'?"

She slumped her head over the comm's dashboard. "There's nothing to do out here but read really melodramatic intrigue scripts."

When she looked up again Conlan's face was more or less visible. And more or less disgustingly smug.

"Don't look at me like that unless you have a 1,500 word essay describing why it is OK."

"I'm going to buy your contract."

He had said that a thousand times, like a knight in shining armor just revving to go, except that shutting him down had become second nature to her. His family was easily one of the most influential in the free world. Conlan himself was technically in line for the Lotearan throne. And there she was, stuck in one of the most impossibly corrupt nations, with one foot in a jail cell. If it came out that Sterling money had bought an accused convict, the scandal would be astronomical.

She propped herself up on an elbow, hooking the leg of a stool on her foot and dragging it over to sit on. "That was six words. You fail."

"I don't see anything 'besmirching' about a fortress in the market for a new airship mechanic."

". . . No way. Efferis doesn't have the money."

"It does now."