There’s a fully stocked bar on one end and a dining room off to the side of that. On the other end is a kitchen sporting a massive autocook that makes me wonder if room service really is included.
Directly in front of us, on the other side of two massive double doors, is the bedroom. The biggest bed I’ve ever seen. The four posts are easily five meters tall and have long, cascading panels of the most luxurious light-blue silk flowing down from the canopy. The bed cover is pale yellow silk.
Delphi and I both enter at the same time, looking around.
I spy a huge wall screen, she exclaims delight at the spa-like bathroom, and then we both breathe a sigh of relief.
“This is nice,” she says.
“Yeah,” I say, walking back out to the bar and helping myself to a bottle of top-shelf whiskey. “I don’t really care how much it costs right now. I’m gonna make the most of this shit.”
The best part of the whole thing?
I can’t hear one damn screaming kid.
I take my stupid Mighty Boss hat off and fling it across the room. It lands in the middle of the floor and a servo bot bursts out of a hidden wall panel to scoop it up with grabby appendages and places it on a table.
Delphi laughs. “Holy shit. We get a private maidbot!”
But you know what? Seeing that servo bot makes me kinda sad. If I was Old Jimmy—the Jimmy I was before Corla and Lyra came to Harem Station—I’d be liberating that bot. Xyla and I would be scrambling its processor and sneaking it back onto the Dicker. Whisking it away to a better life.
Why did I stop liberating bots again?
I don’t recall the state of mind that preceded that decision and I suddenly miss my partner, my ship, and my station.
I miss the old Jimmy.
Everything has changed since Serpint stole Corla and Lyra came to Harem. ALCOR is gone—and that baby AI will never make up for that loss. Valor and Luck aren’t even partners anymore. Crux is so preoccupied by his sleeping soulmate, he hasn’t talked to me in months. Draden is dead, Tray is antisocial, and Serpint isn’t interested in being a bounty hunter anymore.
Add in Angel Station warning me at that meeting I had with them about some fucked-up war I want no part of, but which seems to center around me and my brothers, and you’ve got yourself a proper shit show.
How did all this shit happen?
How did my life become so unrecognizable so fast?
CHAPTER EIGHT – DELPHI
This place is actually tasteful. And unlike everything built for the masses down below, there’s no sign of Mighty Boss anywhere. Not one thing in black and red. Not one logo, not one reminder that I’m here on Mighty Minions Resort.
Except… Jimmy.
He’s gone along with this so far. Letting me, a stranger, stay the night with him in a room, even though I’m supposed to live here on the station and be working as a ship engineer.
Why?
I don’t know. I feel like maybe he’s on to me and this is a setup.
There’s a mirror behind the bar and I catch sight of my reflection in it. My black and red horn with everlasting holo flames shooting out the top. My Mighty Hime princess hologram running through my bodysuit.
“Ugggh,” I say, hating what I see.
“What’s up?” Jimmy asks.
“This little get-up I’m wearing.”
“Yeah, what’s the deal with that? They make you dress this way in engineering?”
“Yeah.” I sigh, then reconsider because tomorrow we’re going to be back in the docking bays and he will surely notice that no one is sporting shooting flames and horns. “No. I was… I have… a side thing. You know, to get extra cash. Entertaining the kids in this stupid Mighty Minion battle.”
He raises a single eyebrow at me, downs his drink, sets his glass on the bar, and then says, “You know what?”
“What?” I ask.
“I don’t really give a fuck, Delphi. I don’t give a single sun-fucked fuck what you’re doing here. As long you help me get the hell off this station tomorrow, we’re cool.”
I nod at him. “Cool.”
Because I will be helping him leave this station. Just not the way he thinks.
“So… you wanna take a spin on the autoshopper?” He cocks his head to the side where holy suns, there is the biggest, most modern version of the autoshopper I’ve ever seen.
I look back at Jimmy and say, “Why?”
“Because that little outfit was cute down there for like… ten minutes. But up here, you just look ridiculous. And uncomfortable. If you really do have a room here, and you really do owe your roommates money and can’t go back there, then surely you will need something else to wear tonight. So go for it. My treat.”
“Why?”
“I think I just answered that.”