He wasn’t sure it was the right place. The military had trained him in navigation a bit, of course, but he was an engineer, not a pilot.

The Fortuna Stultus galaxy had been humanity’s home for a thousand years or so—since they’d accidentally collapsed the Milky Way—but that didn’t mean he knew it like the back of his hand. If he was reading the charts correctly on his holosphere, this should have been a desolate little location on the edge of Meridan territory, just outside of an Un-Space drop point that nobody ever used because it led to absolutely nowhere. And if there was one place that Rogers preferred to do hard work—like brokering a deal between two of the system’s most devious pirate groups—it was absolutely nowhere.

“Just give them time,” Rogers said, though he wasn’t sure if he was reassuring the Purveyors or reassuring himself. “They need these supplies. The Garliali will be here.”

A terse grunt was the only reply, which didn’t surprise him at all. The Purveyors of Vitriol weren’t known for their eloquence; they were a pirate organization, after all. They were decent chaps once you got to know them, and Rogers knew them well enough. He’d been pretending to be a spy for them for months.

The Garliali Mercenaries for whom they had been waiting, on the other hand, were not fine chaps. Some of them had been trained by the military, but most of them were just common thugs and cutthroats looking for a quick buck, and were pretty indiscriminate when it came to picking targets. Rogers would know; he’d been pretending to be a spy for them for months too.

“The Garliali?” Dorsey asked, his lilting voice cracking with nervousness. “You invited the Garliali Mercenaries here?” His face might have been flat, but his body looked like it wanted to jump out of his seat.

“Were you not even listening when I briefed you on this mission?”

“The Garliali are the biggest pirates in the system! They’ve knocked over armed Meridan patrol units.”

“Yes,” Rogers said, “and they’re dangerously low on medical supplies precisely because they keep knocking over Meridan patrol units.”

“How do you know they’re low on supplies?”

“Because I stole them. Then I gave them to the Purveyors to sell back to the Garliali so that we can get a kickback.”

Dorsey moaned like a cat that couldn’t find its litter box. Rogers wanted to throttle him. Of all the pilots in the Meridan system, he had to hire Dorsey. Rogers wished more than one person had responded to the Help Wanted ad.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Dorsey asked.

“I spent ten years in the Meridan Patrol Fleet,” Rogers said. “If you can’t learn how to con someone in ten years in the MPF, you can’t learn anything.”

Dorsey looked askance at him again, then sighed and went back to the controls.

“I don’t like pirates,” he said.

The space around them remained empty for another long few moments, and Rogers had the uncomfortable feeling that he might have made a miscalculation somewhere in his plan. He leaned back in his chair and swallowed the discomfort. He just needed to relax, wait, and resist the urge to lean forward and send a call to his contact in the Garliali Mercenaries.