Rogers leaned forward and sent a call to his contact in the Garliali Mercenaries.

“What’s taking you so long?” he cried.

As if on cue, a thin blue line emerged in the backdrop of black space, out of which spewed a handful of Garliali ships. Unlike the Purveyors, they took a bit more pride in the way their ships looked; their shimmering chrome surfaces shone brilliantly in the reflections of the Meridan solar star. The Purveyors, on the other hand, looked like they had assembled their ships from space refuse dump points. Rogers knew better than to judge either of them by their looks. Once those plasma cannons started firing, nobody was really concerned what they looked like.

“Sorry we’re late,” a thin, feminine voice came over the comms. “A little trouble with the authorities,” she said. “But asses to ashes, and all that.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s ‘ashes to ashes,’ ” Rogers replied.

“Go back to the place we jumped from,” the Garliali woman said—Rogers didn’t recognize her voice—“and you tell me if you can find any asses left.”

“You see? You see?” Dorsey said, shaking his head. “They’re going to take our asses! We’re not going to have asses!”

“Shut up, Dorsey. If you can’t keep your cool, I’m going to eject you. I need you to trust me, alright? We’ll get through this.”

“I don’t—”

“Like pirates, I know. I don’t like them either. But sometimes you have to work with people you don’t like so that you can make a ridiculous amount of money.”

Rogers swallowed. Would they really make it through this alright? Maybe he should have stuck to running gambling rings and moving contraband between new recruits.

Looking out his cockpit window and through the many video cameras mounted on the hull of his ship, Rogers could see the two opposing squadrons moving into battle positions. At least, they certainly looked like battle positions; he was pretty sure pirates didn’t have a wide variety of formations. But they weren’t going to fight each other—not if Rogers could help it, anyway—but that didn’t mean that a lot of shiny silver cannon barrels weren’t pointed at a lot of other shiny silver cannon barrels. He’d hate to be in the middle of them.

Unfortunately, he was directly in the middle of them.

“If they try anything,” the Purveyor said over the radio, “we’re gonna see us some fried Garliali.”

“Fried calamari?” someone else on the Purveyor channel said.

“No, I said fried Garliali.”

“They won’t try anything,” Rogers said.

“They won’t try anything with what?” the Garliali woman asked. “Who’s trying anything?”

Rogers swore and switched the comm system back to the Purveyors’ channel.

“They won’t try anything,” Rogers said again.

“Why not? Fried calamari is good. You won’t know if you like it until you try it.”

“We ain’t fryin’ no calamari!” the Purveyor leader roared. “Get the wax out of your ears and get off the radio or I’m gonna come down from the bridge and rip—” The comms cut off.