The Scout, the Vargr, and the Lizard Crime Boss

Gazulin, The Trojan Reach, 304-1102.

Gazulin Downport looked like a bureaucrat's attempt at building a theme park out of bad decisions. A sprawl of concrete intentions and reinforced compromises, half of it tried to do things properly while the other half focused on keeping the first bit upright in a stiff breeze.

The port stretched wide, patched together from sections built during different governments, design trends, and budget panics. The original terminal now hosted offices and arguments. The newer buildings housed the admin zones and a business district full of cafes that charged triple if you looked like you'd arrived via airlock.

At the heart of the downport was the scout compound, a fenced-off, well-patrolled hive of discipline and passive-aggressive signage. Mechanics scuttled about like caffeinated ants, fixing battered ships, cursing fuel intake valves, and pretending the paperwork had already been filed.

The 100-ton Gibson class Scout ship Gráinne Mhaol came down fast, sideways, and with a worrying rattle. Her hull was streaked with carbon scoring, the port stabiliser had clearly lost an argument with a missile, and the triple pulse laser turret looked like it had tried to unscrew itself and run for cover.

By the time the landing struts groaned into place, a few base techs were jogging over from the hangar, tools in hand, trading the universal look that meant we’re going to be fixing this all week, aren’t we?

The ramp creaked open. Caitlin stepped out with a limp. She was bruised, singed, and wore the slightly haunted expression of someone who’d had to pilot through a boarding action with only sarcasm and a spider-bot for company.

Two techs moved to help, but she waved them off and turned back just as a cargo lift rumbled down behind her. It carried a half-melted, scorched bundle of spider limbs, cabling, and plating that had once been a robot. One of the limbs gave a pitiful twitch.

“So,” Caitlin said, rubbing smoke out of her eyes. “Legs tried to hold the starboard bulkhead during the breach. Lasted a full forty seconds longer than I gave him credit for.”

One of the techs opened their mouth. Caitlin cut in flatly, “Don’t ask. I’m not sure if it was pirates or a religious experience. Either way, he exploded nobly.”

A young tech poked the robot chassis with something optimistic and spanner-shaped. “It’s proper dead, miss.”

Caitlin stood there, arms folded, jaw set like granite that had been insulted. “He wasn’t proper anything,” she said. “He was jury-rigged, outdated, made rude noises when the coolant ran low, and once tried to seduce a cargo lift.”

A pause.

“But he was my friend.”

There was a hiss from the coolant vent. Something dripped. Someone coughed and made the sign of the airlock in quiet respect.

“Do you want us to... recycle him?”

Caitlin fixed the poor bastard with a look sharp enough to pierce hull plating. “Touch him with that bin and I’ll staple your kneecaps to your eyebrows.”

The tech nodded. Slowly. Backed away as if retreating from a live grenade with emotional issues.

---

Caitlin emerged from the scout base’s debriefing room with her dignity slightly damp and her temper in a holding pattern. The debriefing had taken twelve minutes. Most of that time involved a junior lieutenant trying very hard to maintain protocol while pretending not to notice the charred edges of Caitlin’s scout jacket, or the fact that she was wearing it over a very short, soot-streaked tank top that didn’t even try to meet regulations.

Caitlin had delivered her report in that calm, detail-light tone that senior Scouts developed when the story was either too stupid or too classified to explain properly. Phrases like unexpected gravity reversal, boarding attempt of questionable theology, and Legs tried heroism, regretted it had featured heavily.

They'd cleared her for two weeks’ downtime while the Gráinne Mhaol underwent repairs. That meant the usual Scout Service generosity: fully covered maintenance, assuming you were happy for it to be done by apprentices, out of surplus parts, sometime between now and the next fiscal quarter.

She’d had worse.

What she hadn’t had, and what the base commander made painfully clear, was a working mechanic. She wasn’t technically allowed to take off again until she found one. Apparently, flying solo with a damaged ship and the carbonised remains of a spider-bot violated at least three regulations, two ethical guidelines, and something that might’ve been a proverb.

So, there she was. Freshly showered, still annoyed, and stalking across the port with the grim determination of someone who had exactly one task and no patience left to do it.

Her boots echoed along the walkway between the Scout compound and the startown fringe. The heavy security gate buzzed her through, then shut behind her with the soft finality of a parent saying fine, go then, see how that works out.

---

Beyond the fences, Gazulin Startown yawned wide and chaotic.

It was early afternoon, the sky a hazy swirl of industrial optimism and whatever the weather system called wind. Caitlin passed colourful noodle stalls, gear traders, and a pair of off-duty port workers deeply invested in an argument about coolant viscosity.

She asked after a good mechanic. The responses were mostly shrugs, winces, or pointed mentions of a Vargr down in startown.

Eventually, a vendor with a steam pot and very few teeth scribbled an address on the back of a sauce packet and said, “Maltz. If he likes you, he’ll fix your ship. If he doesn’t, you’ll know. Loudly.”

Caitlin nodded, tucked the note into her pocket, and followed the scent of grease, ozone, and poor decisions toward the entertainment district.

The air hit her like a slap made of soup. Wind gusted between the old accommodation blocks carrying exhaust, spice, and the subtle funk of ten thousand bad decisions. Overhead, the monorail hummed toward the freight docks, trailing behind it the kind of announcement that no one ever listened to.

The mechanic's shop was a smouldering shell at the edge of the industrial zone. The sign overhead, Maltz Repair & Systems Integration, was mostly intact, though someone had added and pie shop in fluorescent paint. The rest of the shop had not fared as well. The door hung crooked. One wall bore the enthusiastic scorch of either plasma fire or someone with very strong opinions about insulation. Wrenches, cutters, and half a drone littered the floor like the aftermath of a toolbox explosion. Something was still dripping.

Caitlin stepped inside.

It smelled like melted wiring, burnt dignity, and the unmistakable tang of “no deposit returned.” A diagnostic console near the back flickered dimly, scrolling an error message that just read NO.

There was no sign of the Vargr.

But the mess told a story. The kind of story that started with We told him to pay up and ended with And this is what happens when you don’t.

Across the narrow way, a vendor stall sat beneath a patchwork awning that looked like it had once been a tent, a wedding dress, and possibly a parachute, judging by the stitching. Tiny wind chimes made from scrap and rivets clinked softly in the recycled air. The old woman behind the cart didn't stop stirring her noodle pot. “You after Maltz?” she asked, as if this were a perfectly reasonable question to follow arson.

Caitlin nodded. “I was told he was a mechanic.”

The woman snorted. “Same thing. Fixes things. Growls when you surprise him. Wags his tail when the job’s done.” She gave the pot a swirl. “They took him. Local lot. The one with the big four-armed lizard. Said he owed ‘em. Said he was uncooperative.”

“And they burned the place down for emphasis?”

“Didn’t like his sense of humour. Or his prices. Or the fact he told them to rotate gently on something rude.”

“Where’d they take him?”

She squinted at Caitlin, one eye filmed over, the other sharp as broken glass. "You don’t want that kind of trouble, love. You want noodles. Or fish. Or both.”

The woman handed her a plastic bowl filled with something grey and edible-adjacent.

She tapped her nose with a soya-slick finger. "Of course, if you're the kind that don't take advice, they‘re somewhere at the freight docks. Big orange building.”

She returned to her stirring. "Feel free to beat them all up, dear. They deserve it."

---

Maltz had, on balance, had better days.

He was currently tied to a chair that had once served the noble purpose of holding up a government bureaucrat. It had since been repurposed into a Vargr containment system by someone with more enthusiasm than rope-handling skill. His arms were lashed to the rests with cargo strapping, and one of his legs was cuffed to a heating pipe in what could only be described as a statement.

The room smelled of mildew and old circuitry. A single flickering overhead bulb provided mood lighting for a hostage drama nobody wanted to watch.

One of the middle-ranking thugs, species uncertain, stood nearby, holding a wrench with the theatrical menace of someone who’d never used one for its intended purpose.

“You’re supposed to be thinking about your choices,” the thug growled.

Maltz bared his teeth just enough to suggest it was deliberate. “I am. I’m currently choosing between rebuilding your fusion junction or peeing in it.”

The thug blinked.

“Boss says you’re valuable.”

“Your boss says a lot of things. Last I heard, he thought Vargr make good furniture.”

That got him a slap. Not a hard one, more like a confused disciplinary pat.

Maltz spat blood on the floor and examined it critically. “Mild gum trauma. Two out of ten.”

The thug turned and stomped out, mumbling something about “just wait.”

Maltz, alone again, tested the bindings with one wrist and then nodded to himself. He could get out. He was ninety percent sure. But if he did, he’d still be in a building full of armed idiots and one extremely large lizard who thought reparations meant revenge, but poetic.

He leaned his head back, closed his eyes, and started mentally drafting a redesign of the chair.

First change: fewer bolts.

Second change: ejection seat.

---

Sector Eight – Freight Docks, Gazulin Downport

Freight docks weren’t built for subtlety. They were wide, loud, and full of crates that probably weren’t labelled correctly on purpose. Half the port’s business moved through here; cargo in, cash out, and the occasional organ on ice when customs took the day off.

Caitlin stepped through the security gate like someone who’d paid for entrance with sarcasm and bad reputation. The guards didn’t stop her. They just leaned sideways, like buildings in a strong wind.

The enforcer’s building occupied a back corner of the complex, housed in what used to be a freight administration office and now looked like a failed experiment in orange-painted concrete intimidation.

The windows were blacked out. The door was a slab of steel that had clearly seen more punching than opening. Two guards stood out front: one human, one probably human once, both wearing jackets that tried very hard to look official. Neither of them was armed visibly, which meant they were definitely armed invisibly.

Caitlin walked straight up, hands where people could see them and gave the door a solid knock.

The human stepped forward. “What’s your business?”

“I’m here to see your boss,” Caitlin said, voice even. “He’s got something that doesn’t belong to him.”

The other one snorted. “You got an appointment?”

She looked him over, slowly. His boots were too clean, his belt holster was two seconds too tight, and the way he stood said I want to impress someone who isn’t watching.

“Do I look like I have a bloody appointment?” she said. “Now go tell him.”

A pause. Not long. The kind that gives space for someone to make a decision they’ll later regret.

The first one tapped something behind the wall. There was a beep. Then a buzz. The steel slab unlocked with a sound that belonged to a guilty conscience shifting in its seat.

Caitlin stepped through.

The corridor beyond smelled of old ozone, cheap disinfectant, and someone’s failed idea of intimidating lighting. It was bright - not enough to dazzle, just enough to sweat under.

Two more guards waited inside. One was a stocky woman with a scanner wand and the kind of bored professionalism earned through long hours and no hazard pay. The other stood beside a crate marked Handle with Concern, now clearly repurposed as a weapons locker.

“Standard procedure,” said the woman, waving the wand. “You’re going in unarmed.”

Caitlin raised an eyebrow. “I thought this was a civilised outfit. You afraid I’ll redecorate?”

“No weapons past the checkpoint.”

She sighed theatrically, then began handing things over. Slowly. Deliberately.

Out came the Rawling Redbird revolver, bulky and well-used. Then the stealth daggers, pulled from her boot and belt with a slight flourish. Then the handle for her arc-field sword, which she unslung with the kind of reverence usually reserved for good coffee and vintage whiskey.

She held up the handle with two fingers.

“This one bites,” she said, tone mild. “It’s killed at least three people and one very rude vending machine.”

The guard took it gingerly and placed it into the crate beside a tangle of other confiscated items that looked like a scavenger’s wedding registry.

The scanner didn’t even twitch at Caitlin’s many augments, which was either a testament to the subtlety of Vincennes’ surgeons or a damning review of local security standards.

A door hissed open and two suits stepped out, full of quiet threat and not much else. One gestured. “Follow us.”

Caitlin did, boots loud on polished plastcrete.

The hallway beyond stretched pointlessly long, the architectural equivalent of a power move. It smelled of recirculated air, old sweat, and authority with a chip on its shoulder.

They stopped outside a reinforced door humming with concealed energy fields and the faint whine of high-end paranoia. One of the suits knocked an elaborate code signal.

The door slid open.

Light hit her in the face - not soft, not subtle, the kind that made truths twitch and secrets flinch. She blinked once, letting the overlays adjust. Two more thugs waited inside, one all tattoos, the other short on teeth. They waved her through the final checkpoint into the boss’s lair.

The room was cavernous, converted from an old freight depot judging by the cargo cranes still bolted to the girders. Now it looked more like a showroom for creative violence. Too clean. Too bright. Too intentional.

In the centre, perched on a raised dais with brutalist flair, lounged Vovisibor.

The Crenduthaar was enormous. Six limbs arranged with lazy menace, scales catching the red-tinged light like oiled armour, and tendrils twitching around a mouth that had clearly evolved for shredding and public speaking. His forearms rested on the armrests of what used to be a forklift control throne, now wrapped in leather and steel.

Caitlin planted herself a few metres from the base of the dais, arms folded. Not threatening, not submissive. Just very clearly not impressed.

“I heard you’ve got someone locked up who knows how to fix things,” she said. “Name of Maltz. Got a tail, lots of tools, bad attitude. Sound familiar?”

“He violated custom,” Vovisibor said. His voice was low and polished. “Refused the correct rites. Spoke with... insolence. While reeking of Vargr blood.” 

Her vision adjusted with a flicker as the red-spectrum glare spiked. "And your response was to set the place alight?” she asked. “Not subtle.”

The Crenduthaar’s tendrils stilled. All at once. The room got noticeably colder. "He is a Zhagshuvaan. And you ask why I burned the ground he stood on?

The word pinged her HUD. Zhagshuvaan: Dweller-in-Darkness. Mythic soul-eater. Modern usage: Vargr, or anyone too clever to kill cleanly.

“You’ve got the lines down. Shame about the delivery.”

“You mistake this ritual for theatre,” Vovisibor said, voice rising half a note. “But I do not perform. I judge.”

Caitlin tilted her head. “Cute. And what’s the sentence? Public flaying? Disassembly by committee?”

“That depends,” Vovisibor said, his dorsal slasher twitching like a guillotine dreaming of work, “on how many more times you interrupt me.”

One of the thugs twitched. Caitlin didn’t.

“Let him go,” she said. “He’s not yours to claim. And if you’re half as clever as you clearly think you are, you’ll know keeping him just makes more noise.”

Vovisibor’s tendrils froze, then resumed their rhythmic dance.

"You want the Gnagash? Of course you do. Compassion is such a sweet disease. I could be convinced."

The tendrils fluttered again, the smile widened with too many teeth.

“A favour. One that proves you understand service and silence.”

He gestured with a slasher-claw toward a sealed container - faintly humming, wrapped in sigils that didn’t want to be looked at for long.

“You will deliver this. You will not open it. You will not ask. You will not hesitate.”

He leaned forward, lips peeling from rows of glittering teeth. “Do this, and your mechanic leaves upright. Or... play my champion, and amuse me instead.”

“Right. So either I deliver your haunted lunchbox or get stabbed theatrically in front of strangers.”

She eyed the container. “Option B, then. I fight your man, break something painful, and we call it cultural exchange.”

---

The freight hangar had been cleared with the sort of enthusiasm normally reserved for ritual humiliation and workplace fire drills. Crates were pushed back. Lights were redirected. Someone had even produced a bell.

Caitlin stood dead-centre, arms loose, Scout jacket unzipped, eyes scanning the growing crowd of curious thugs, bored dockhands, and a little man selling sausages.

Vovisibor, perched above on his dais like a smug god of warehouse logistics, waved a claw. “Strike my champion once and be acknowledged. Strike him thrice and I shall listen. Strike him five times, and I will consider your request.”

Caitlin sighed. “You’re not even going to pretend this isn’t petty.”

The crowd parted, and in walked something that might’ve started life as a man before being repeatedly upgraded with bad decisions, worse tattoos, and the kind of muscle mass usually associated with industrial accidents. His name, allegedly, was Crix. He flexed. His vest tore. Someone in the back cheered.

---

They circled each other in the ring’s harsh, sterile light. Crix didn’t charge - he advanced. Deliberate steps, guard high, every motion coiled with that special kind of violence that gets taught by professionals and refined by lunatics. His punches came sharp and sudden - clean arcs driven by muscle and ugly intent.

Caitlin danced past them. Each strike met with a pivot, a sidestep, a flicker of motion like smoke refusing to be blamed. Her augments whispered instructions with every breath, reflexes twitching her clear before he’d even made up his mind.

A jab. A retreat. A casual trip that sent him sprawling - not to end it, just to see if he’d get annoyed.

One minute in, he was panting.

Three minutes in, he was bleeding. Nose, brow, pride. Tiny bruises bloomed where she’d touched him.

He landed one good blow. A hook to the ribs that would’ve dropped most folk like a bad habit. Caitlin staggered, breath catching - but stayed upright. The subdermal mesh caught most of it, turning the punch from ‘hospital visit’ into ‘unpleasant memory’. Pain, yes. But nothing she’d write home about.

She grinned through blood and barked something in Irish that might have been a joke, a curse, or the opening lines of a war crime. Then she was gone again - flickering past his reach like an insult he wasn’t clever enough to answer.

Five minutes in, he was throwing haymakers at ghosts. Each swing earned him a jab in the ribs, a heel behind the knee, and a sharp lesson in regret.

Caitlin wasn’t untouched. Her shoulder throbbed. Her jaw ached. But nothing stuck. The armour weave under her skin did what it was made for - took the hits, soaked the anger, and kept her moving

Then, when he stumbled, just once, she was inside his guard. A short, brutal elbow to the sternum. A twist of his wrist. A stomp to his foot. And when he bent forward with a grunt of pain, she pivoted and dropped him.

Crix lay on his back, chest heaving like a rusted bellows, blinking up at the bright lights as if they'd betrayed him. His lip was split, one eye already swelling shut. He wasn’t unconscious, just... out of ideas.

Caitlin crouched beside him, flicked a strand of hair from her face, and tapped two fingers against his forehead.

“Tag,” she said sweetly. “You’re it.”

He groaned in something between pain and rueful agreement.

"That was solid work," she added quietly. "You hit like falling masonry."

She pulled a small handkerchief from her pocket and handed it to him. “Don’t try to stand too fast. World’ll tilt on you.”

Crix took it with a grunt, eyes flicking to hers. Confused. Wary.

“Not your fault, really,” she added, getting back to her feet. “They pointed you at the wrong target.”

Then she turned away, not like a victor, but like someone late for the next problem.

---

Vovisibor was still. Only the slow, deliberate shift of his dorsal frill betrayed anything close to emotion. Not anger. Not surprise. Recognition. The sort a spider gives to another predator crawling into its web.

"You did not fight," he said, claws drumming like a countdown. "You unmade him."

Caitlin wiped blood from her knuckles. "Was that a complaint?"

"A compliment," he said slowly. "Precision is sacred."

He leaned forward. Not much. Just enough to let the red light catch the curve of his slasher blades. The temperature in the room seemed to dip, though the air was still thick with engine heat and sweat.

"There is room here," he said. "For those who bring order to chaos. Who act without hesitation. You could rise. Carry rank. Be known. Be feared. The Crimson Key would open for you."

Caitlin sniffed. "Sorry. I've got a ship, a to-do list, and a moral compass that throws up if I get too close to organised crime."

Vovisibor’s frill shifted again. Something that might have been humour. If you squinted. And had a death wish.

"Organised crime," he echoed, the words soft as silk over bone. "An offworld euphemism for rules with teeth."

He let the silence stretch.

Then he gestured lazily toward the gold-plated locker at the rear of the chamber. Its surface shimmered with encoded seals and heat warnings.

"If you ever wish to matter, ask for the Crimson Key."

He reclined. The throne hissed beneath him. But his gaze remained locked on her. Not invitation. Not threat.

Investment.

---

The two goons flanked her in uneasy silence, one clutching a rifle, the other holding a stun baton like it came with instructions he hadn’t read. They led her down a corridor to a cell door without a word, eyes forward, as if looking at her too long might provoke another duel.

One of them keyed the lock, then stepped back with a chin-jerk toward the door, clearly under orders not to try anything clever.

Maltz had wriggled one arm free and was halfway through picking the lock on his leg cuff with a snapped restraint pin when the door hissed open. He froze, ears twitching like he’d been caught stealing pies.

Caitlin stepped in.

Leather boots, faded cargo pants, and a battered old jacket that looked like it had survived three wars and a regrettable wedding. She looked about twenty. Short red hair damp with sweat, freckled face scraped and streaked, green eyes glowing subtly with cybernetic overlays. Long-limbed, all motion and wiry strength - built to run at things most people ran from.

Maltz didn’t know who she was. Didn’t need to. Her bearing said it all - confidence, recklessness, that aura of chaos certain humans carried like perfume. Then he saw the patch on her jacket: IISS. Imperial Interstellar Scout Service.

He straightened, blinking. "You're... a Scout?"

She raised an eyebrow, stepping over a broken chair with casual grace. "Aye. Just between missions for now."

He stared. "Did they... send you for me?"

"Not exactly," she said, scanning the cell like she was checking the exits at a dodgy pub. "But you looked like you could use a hand."

Maltz's ears twitched, still flattened with fury.

"They burned my shop," he said bitterly. "All of it. Tools, parts... my drive calibrator. Bastards even broke my my drinking-and-diagnostics chair."

Caitlin nodded once, not flinching from the raw edge in his voice.

"Mob’s idea of negotiating, was it?"

He gave a short, sharp laugh that didn’t reach his eyes. "Wasn’t even good mob work. Just thugs with fire and a grudge."

She glanced back toward the henchmen still lurking outside, then extended a hand.

"Well, feck ‘em," she said. "I need a ship’s mechanic. The kind who doesn’t faint at jury-rigging a fuel line mid-jump or complain when the couch fuses to the bloody bulkhead. You interested?"

He eyed her hand. Looked her over again, that battered jacket, the stubborn fire in her stance.

"You got a name?"

"Caitlin O’Neill. Captain. Sort of."

Maltz took her hand with his free one, grip firm despite the bruises.

“Maltz. And sure, Captain Sort-Of. Let’s give it a try. Now, how about getting me out of this bloody chair?”

---

Caitlin glanced out the viewport as the Gráinne Mhaol lifted, the scorched landing pads of Gazulin shrinking beneath them, bathed in the warm orange of late afternoon engine flare.

From the co-pilot’s seat, Maltz reached into the blinding riot of his shirt - a clash of tropical fruit and screaming sunsets - and produced a small, unassuming remote. He thumbed the cover open with all the ceremony of a man unlocking a particularly satisfying dessert.

"What's that?" Caitlin asked, eyebrow raised.

Maltz pressed the button.

Far below, the mob headquarters erupted in a series of precise, elegant explosions, like someone had taught a fireworks display to hold a grudge. The roof folded inward. The eastern wing went up in flame. The freight lifts danced briefly, then disappeared in a rising cloud of orange and smoke.

Maltz grinned, teeth gleaming. "Just tidying up."

Caitlin didn’t take her eyes off the smoke curling upward. "You rigged the whole building?"

"Only the parts I didn’t like."

"So all of it, then."

"Pretty much."

The scout ship banked toward the upper atmosphere, leaving behind a smoking crater and one extremely dead Crenduthaar, plus whatever was left of his cronies.

Caitlin eased the throttle forward. "Congratulations. You're officially my favourite bad decision."