This Is Not A Shakedown

I towed the damaged transport ship near the station and left him for the repair crew to take over. They would then bring him to the maintenance area where his ship could receive repairs.

The captain sent me a final thanks through the comms channel before we went our separate ways.

As soon as Amber and I docked our ships, we went back to the same place that we first found the guy who gave us this job.

The man was seated at the edge of the sidewalk, twiddling his fingers with obvious nervousness.

When he spotted us, he immediately leapt to his feet and ran over to us.

"Did you find it? What happened to it?"

Amber crossed her arms, "Oh we found it alright. But first, we want our Credits."

He scowled at her, "Are you joking?! The agreement was that you bring back the item to me! If you don't have it, there's no payment!"

Amber jerked her thumb in the direction of where we came from, "It's with your little delivery boy that almost died because of you. His ship is being repaired in the docking bay right now, so he can count his lucky stars we reached him on time. Now, Credits please."

He seemed surprised to hear that, "Wait… He's still alive?"

"Yeah, no thanks to you by the way. He was being attacked by pirates and we had to jump in to save him before he got blown to pieces. Maybe you should consider hiring some Mercs or something to guard your supposedly important items next time."

His jaw visibly clenched, "I will keep that in mind…"

"Now… Payment?"

He pulled out his personal terminal and tapped on it a few times.

I received a notification ping on my Codex and I brought it up to see that a million Credits had been sent to me.

Hold on… Only a million? I thought the agreed amount was two million each?

The guy turned to walk away but Amber stopped him by grabbing his arm, "Hey! We aren't done here! We agreed two million per person!"

He yanked his arm free and scowled, "No we didn't. I agreed to pay you if you were to bring the item back to me, but now you're letting someone else deliver it for you so it's already quite generous that I'm paying you half!"

I raised a hand, "Actually… You tasked us to find out what happened to the ship and we did. So that means we get full payment right?"

He narrowed his eyes at me, "How do you even prove that this was what I said? I could say that you simply made all that up!"

I was about to start checking my Codex to see if it recorded anything related to our interaction but Amber moved forward before I could do that.

She grabbed him by the collar and lifted him off the ground, right before she unholstered her blaster and shoved the barrel right under his chin.

"Now… You either pay us and we all walk away or you don't pay us and we take it off your dead body. Your choice."

Woah, woah, woah!! Calm down Amber! I'm sure we could still solve this peacefully! No need to resort to violence right? If we were to go somewhere and complain about him, we would also get the money won't we?!

Besides, we could just threaten to go to his bosses and tell them what happened again right? I'd think that threat should be enough to get him to be more cooperative.

The guy paled, "Wait, wait! What do you think you're doing?! Aren't you afraid that you'd be labelled as criminals for this?! Are you really going to become murderers just for this?"

Amber smirked, "You're asking if I'm willing to murder you for two million Credits? Bitch, I've killed people for less money."

"You… You will be caught! People will realise I'm absent!"

"Hahaha! And guess what? We now have a very grateful delivery boy who also hates your guts on our side. Wouldn't be too hard for us to match our stories where you met an unfortunate incident because you chose to accompany us on this trip out there… Right?"

"You… You wouldn't dare…"

Amber shook him before slamming him against the wall, "You're talking to someone who literally gets paid to kill people. What do you think will happen if we don't get paid? Do you think Mercs are just people you can walk over just because you wear a shiny suit?"

Seriously, did Amber wake up today and choose violence?

…

Not gonna lie… Damn that's hot.

The guy paled even more, "Al… Alright, alright! I'll… I'll pay you the two million! Just wait!"

"Price has gone up now, boy. Add another one million each for the collection fee~"

"You… You can't do that!"

"Do what? Change the terms midway? Geez I wonder who just did that just now? So are you going to add that or not? Or should I just go and get the money from your bosses and let them know how much money you've been embezzling from them?"

"Fuck, fuck! Ok, ok!!! Damn it!"

He fiddled with his personal terminal for a moment before I got another notification ping from my Codex, showing another two million that had been added into my wallet.

I nodded at Amber and she let him go.

"Pleasure doing business with you. Next time try not to be a prick, ok?" She told him with a smile.

"Fuck you!"

He roared before running away from us as fast as he could.

I waited until he disappeared around the corner before turning to Amber, "Was that wise? You know, like threatening our clients like that?"

"Hmph, that guy hardly qualifies as a client. Remember this, Tera, if these people refuses to pay after you delivered your side of the bargain, these people aren't worth keeping around as clients. If they tried to get out of paying you once, they will do it again and again. It's not even worth associating yourself with them anymore."

"But… I dunno… Won't they… You know? Come back and take revenge or something? Like hire some thugs to come and rough us up?"

"Oh goody! That means we can get more money out of him again!"

… She's not even worried because she believes we can beat any thugs he sends after us huh?

Well, I'm not that confident if I get jumped but I've seen how Amber fights and I believe she's able to handle herself no problem.

On another note…

Holy fucking shit we just made three million Credits each just from this… Mara literally threw money our way by telling us about this job.

And I suppose without Amber, we wouldn't even have gotten this much money from him either,

Earning money as a Merc is so easy!

Kidding, kidding.

"What should we do with all this money though?" I asked, looking at the money I have on the Codex right now that showed seven figures.

Amber grinned at me, "If you ask me… I'd use it to take you to a nice place tonight, maybe even one of those places that serve real, organic food and then bring you to a nice hotel where I can ride you the whole night~"

Ok, I know she's being horny again but…

"That… Actually sounds like a nice idea…" I admitted.

Her eyes widened, "Oh! Really?! Do you want to go out tonight, Tera? I heard about a really nice hotel that we could fuck at!"

I cleared my throat, "I mean the organic food thing… I feel like I may even be able to cook better food if I could taste some organic dishes instead of the synthfood we've been stuck with."

"Oh my! Even better! I get to wine and dine with you, have sex, and then get even better food from you? Tera, you're spoiling me so much! I love youuuuu!"

She came forward and hugged me before giving me a deep kiss on the lips, fully pushing her tongue inside my mouth for a minute before pulling away with a grin.

I scratched my cheek, "Ahem… Also… What do you think about inviting Mara along?"

"Oh wow! You want another threesome again? I'm in!"

I rolled my eyes, "I don't mean that. We managed to get this money because of her right? Shouldn't we like… At least treat her to something with this money we received? She even gave us this info for free."

"Ahahaha~ I suppose we should. She would usually charge quite a lot for information like this. If I were to guess, someone would have needed to pay a million just to know about this potential hustle. No, scratch that, they might have needed to pay five million at least, depending on who's asking."

"That much?"

Amber shrugged, "Hey, we're upstanding and moral Mercs. All we did was help him and get paid. Someone less upstanding might use this information and blackmail the shit out of him and ruin his life."

Oh yeah… I guess that's true. This information could have completely ruined his life if it was told to some other people…

Bah! Who cares? Let's just call Mara out and have a night's out at a nice place!