The job wasn't exactly going well.

As Kat jumped over a huge set of crates in a ship that was about to be blown to pieces in open space, she thought of that as a very solid tactical analysis.

Keeping her head down while checking to see if her gun was still intact and working, Kat grouched behind her makeshift cover and wondered whether the whole damn thing was worth her time.

Cormo, her target, wasn't even that bad of a guy.

Just my luck. Couldn’t have been a child-eating murderer. That way the whole possibility of blowing up into a million pieces would at least seem like a passable sacrifice to make.

In fact, the half-Terran leader of some unnamed – by the Galactic Union, anyway - insignificant species found on the outer rim of the Galactic Union was nothing but a scoundrel. Trouble-maker. Smuggler. A bit of a megalomaniac, really, but nothing to usually warrant her services.

But beggars couldn’t be choosers and Kat had a ship to fuel and a bounty hunter crew to keep fed, liquored up and trained. That all came with costs that had to be covered by someone.

This time, it would be via Como’s head, if he so demanded.

The people who paid Kat hadn't shared that opinion, so here she was, dodging shots and trying her damndest to make it back to the Dauntless in one piece. Unfortunately, Cormo's crew and friends – or whatever passed for them – were being a bit touchy about her visit.

A particularly well-aimed shot almost took Kat's head off when the crates tumbled around her, but by then she was ready. Almost a full minute had passed since they’d last gotten a look at her, she'd given herself plenty of time to be anywhere else than still there, in plain sight.

I hope Evan and Kiley are out of the way, she thought to herself, eyes scanning the cargo hold for the rest of her team.

Shots were being exchanged further down, providing Kat with a solid distraction.

With a flick of her wrist, Kat turned her Palian-made cloak on, thankful that there were some species in the galaxy who channeled their inner drive into something creative instead of destructive. It had been a gift, from her aunt, nearly seven years ago. She’d said that it would keep Kat safe.

Back then, Kat hadn’t realized how right Aunt Emma had been about that.

I really should go visit her one of these days, Kat mused with a private grin, enjoying the baffled looks she was met with.

The result of turning the cloak on was that the five huge ugly-as-fuck friends of Cormo who just rounded the corner to where she had been standing were left staring at... nothing.

She’d already gotten Cormo tied up in his room, unconscious. Her initial plan had been to just take Cormo and get the hell out, but his crew had decided to make a nuisance of themselves. Well, lucky for Kat, there were bounties up on those rag-tag miscreants as well.

All the more coin for her pockets, right?

“Where the fuck is she?” one of them whispered. “I’m sure I heard movement here,” he added, scanning around with a frown, his rifle held high and aimed pretty much directly at Kat’s head.

Kat, for her part, was standing very still, looking her enemies in the eye. They didn't know that, of course, which was what kept her alive and hopefully would keep doing so until she reached her fighter.

She was infinitely glad that Cormo's crew didn't realize they needed to cut her escape path, and that they were so easily distracted by her crew, exchanging fire with other members all across the bay. Regarding their large greenish snouts and beady little eyes, Kat put them firmly down as not the thinking kind.

Not that it would have mattered. Her job demanded that she be able to fly anything with an engine and a few things that didn't have even that. Her own ship, the Dauntless, wasn't too far off from the latter classification.

“Just wait and listen,” one of them said, seeming to frown, or as much as his perfectly smooth forehead would allow it.

But when Cormo's crew didn't move away, it occurred to Kat they might not be as stupid as they looked.

It honestly made her a little glad. She was still certain she could handle them, but at least they were proving to be more of a challenge than she'd thought. Ultimately, it didn't make much of a difference to her. Only required more patience and a little courage.

She had plenty of both.

As they started sniffing around, turning the crates around and even checking inside them for her, Kat stood as still as a statue. She closed her eyes for a moment, breathing in deeply but very quietly, a technique she'd learned a long time ago. Ever since she'd gotten the suit that now served as the only shield between her and getting murdered, she’d been learning to control it and use it to the best of its possibilities.

It wasn’t perfect, though. For one, it definitely couldn't withstand a straight hit from the plasma guns that the men wielded.

"She must still be here!" the leader exclaimed. "There is no way out of here, it’s a dead end!"

"Unless we've all gone blind, Grac, she's gone," another snarled, his whiny voice edged with the need for revenge and not a small bit of annoyance.

Kat smiled a little, starting to move away. She remembered that particular mug, and the backhanded blow she had given him earlier that had nearly broken his nose. No doubt it still hurt.

Showtime.

The Palian suit was a marvel, Kat thought as she went, one foot in front of the other like a ballerina learning her first routine. It covered her from head to toe, including a hood and the soles of her boots, and it was capable of morphing perfectly. In off-mode it was black as night and made her look like a ninja, but when turned on, it camouflaged better than anything Kat might have devised herself.

The smart, flexible fabric was incredibly soft and made – she'd been told, but Palians never said too much – of nanofabric, which made it smarter than the environment it was in.

Making sure that she held the gun under the cloak, Kat edged away, towards the entrance between the high-stacked crates the men had entered through. She wanted them all in one place without a way out when things went down.

"Grac, to your right, fifteen feet ahead!"

Crap.

Kat turned, snarling. The cloaking suit was amazing and all that, but it didn't hide her from motion and heat detectors, which one of them must have had the foresight to switch on. She'd heard that the Palians had suits that could do that too, but a bounty hunter's job didn't pay for such luxuries.

“Kat?” she heard Evan’s voice, frantic over the commotion. “Where are you?” he demanded.

She wasn’t going to answer. She was a bit… preoccupied at the moment, after all.

Dodging down and to the left, Kat threw the cloak back over her shoulder, revealing part of her body and the hand that was holding her plasma gun. Taking swift aim, she caught the first man running for her – the one with the detection device - in the kneecap and the other in the shoulder and then in the ribcage, careful to hit him in the lungs instead of the heart. Dead bounty paid less.

Their screams were more like squeals, like pigs stuck in a fence, grating at her ears. Kat sprung back, her heart beating twice as fast as it should, adrenaline coursing through her veins like a drug. She never felt quite as alive as when she was on a job, even if it was a ‘cheap’ one like this.

“Come on, boys,” she called, covering herself up again as she flipped back out of the path of one of the confused men, before scaling the side of two crates to lord over them. “I thought we were going to have fun!”

“You little bitch,” the one named Grac hissed, twin fangs biting into his lower lip.

He swung his rifle around and shot blindly, one of the plasma rounds licking at Kat’s boots. It would leave a mark. Gritting her teeth, Kat climbed on, making sure she was high enough for the men to not immediately know where her voice was coming from when she spoke to them again.

“Sian, where the fuck is that bitch?” Grac growled, but Sian was too busy clutching his knee and screaming to whatever god he worshipped about the pain.

Getting a kneecap blown out hurt like hell. Kat’s heart would have gone out to him, were it not for the fact that her medic was going to have to deal with him when she got him back to the Dauntless.

“I’m right here,” Kat said with a sing-songy voice, revealing her arm for another moment and taking out one of Grac’s men with a shot to the abdomen.

She jumped and flew over their heads, landing on opposing crates when they opened fire on her previous position. Kat got another solid hit during the flight, catching Grac’s remaining buddy in the back, making him topple over and hit his head. He was out cold, leaving Grac standing alone.

“Come on, man. Your boss doesn’t care about you and you’re not getting out of here,” Kat said, scrambling between the crates as Grac shot at her with all the rage in the universe. “Just give up and we can both call it a day. I’m sure jail isn’t as bad as you think it is.”

“Bitch!” he hissed, apparently not in the mood for dignified conversation.

Suit yourself, Kat thought with a roll of her eyes.

She snuck around Grac, who was still spinning around in the dead-end, perhaps thinking that his fallen comrades would offer him some kind of safety. When she came up behind him, she pondered for a moment what to do with him. She lowered the gun and quietly, with only inches between them, got up on her tiptoes and then grabbed Grac’s head, yanking it back and catching him in a choke hold.

He was three times her size, but what she lacked in mass, she more than made up for in training. Grac flung her around like a ragdoll, Kat holding on as if she were at the rodeo for about ten seconds, before the man’s knees buckled beneath him and he toppled over. She threw herself off of him before he could take her down with him.

Sian was the one making the most noise when Kat stood up straight and dusted herself off. She turned off the cloak, wiping a bead of sweat from her forehead. Footsteps sounded behind her and Kat glanced over her shoulder to see Evan and Kiley appear from between the boxes, panting and exhausted.

“Did you get the other three?” she asked, inspecting her gun as she did so.

“Serran is tying them up now,” Kiley said, beaming a smile.

The mechanic of the crew took far too much joy from these missions. Not that Kat could blame her. There hadn’t been enough lately and it was becoming painfully evident in their fuel and money reserves.

“Good,” Kat said with a nod. “Guess we’re done here, then.”

“Who… the hell are you?” Sian wheezed, tears of pain in his eye as he clutched his bleeding knees.

“I’m Kat Edwards,” Kat said with a grin. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Even a bounty hunter couldn’t be rude, right?

Kat almost felt bad. In the days when she was just starting off, she'd dreamed that Katherine "Kat" Edwards would be a force of good in the world. Hunt the wicked, deliver the goods to people, help the innocent.

Now she was taking part in territorial squabbles over rocks she couldn't safely land her ship on.

"We can do better," she told her reflection. "There's gotta be a job out there that actually matters."

Luckily, her misery didn't last long. It never did. Kat was certain she would have lost her mind a long time ago if she didn't have the ability to just let bad days go.