Free Beacon 23: The Complete Novel by Hugh Howey Page A

a damn good pilot.
    I key open the airlock. A bewildering sight awaits. There’s a man in a tuxedo on the other side of the door.
    “Vladimir Morrow Bostokov,” the man says, extending his hand to me.
    I accept his hand with my inverted left. Before I can introduce myself, Vlad shoots his colleague a nasty look. “Mitchell,” he says, in his thick accent.
    O’Shea says nothing in return.
    Vlad reaches inside his jacket pocket and pulls out a printed sheet of paper. He unfolds it, and I can see it’s the same bounty O’Shea showed me.
    “What do to your arm?” Vlad says, leaving out a non-vital word in there somewhere.
    “Grav panel issues,” I say. He looks me up and down in my boxers and bandages, seems to be waiting for more than this. “Fluctuations,” I tell him. “Polarity issues. Went for a bounce or two.”
    Vlad shrugs. I gesture toward the printed flyer. “And no, I’ve never seen her.”
    “Here,” Vlad says, handing me the flyer anyway. “Keep for you.”
    Perhaps too eagerly, I accept the flyer and fold it back up, sticking it in the waistband of my boxers.
    “ Ding-Dong ,” I hear myself say.
    “What now?” I ask.
    The two bounty hunters stare at one another.
    “You mind?” I point into Vlad’s ship. He shrugs, and I step past him and enter what looks more like a swanky hotel than a star cruiser. Everything is large clean slabs in that pre-post-second-modern style. Some black and white photos hang on the walls, mostly alien portraits either staring right at the camera or off to the side. They almost look like mug shots, but artfully done. A wet bar in one corner gleams with shiny bottles of all shapes, most of them half-full of a myriad shades of amber.
    Vlad waves me forward, leading us past transparent doors that look in on small posh rooms. In one of these rooms, a young man looks up from a bunk, his hands shackled in iron fists. I realize these rooms are cells. I’d kill to live in one. They look amazing.
    Behind us, I hear O’Shea jangling and following along. He grumbles enviously about something or other. Vlad tells him to not touch that.
    I duck my head and enter a meticulously kept cockpit. You can smell the leather. The place is so nice that even my nose is perking up. O’Shea and Vlad crowd in beside me, and all three of us peer out the canopy.
    “I don’t like this,” O’Shea says.
    “Me either,” says Vlad.
    In the distance, my voice whispers, “ Ding-Dong .”
    “Look, it’s not my favorite day this week,” I tell the two bounty hunters. “And yesterday, I cleaned the shitter.”
    It takes me a moment to find the new arrival, to see what the bounty hunters are seeing. This third ship is matte black. It can be picked out only by the background stars it gobbles and shits out as it moves across the constellations. A dim red and green light glows at each wingtip, but probably below legal illumination levels. A white light flashes from the nose of the ship, directed toward my beacon. Pulses of long and short.
    I locate the HF on Vlad’s dash and pick up the mic without asking. Legally, with the ships docked to my beacon, they’re under my command. Warrant or no.
    “Won’t need that,” O’Shea says, squinting up at the ship.
    I ignore him and squeeze the mic. “Vessel inbound at beacon 23, state your intentions.”
    “Won’t work,” Vlad says. “She no talk.”
    “Who is that?” I ask the two bounty hunters, who both seem to know something about this ship. “Another friend of yours?”
    “I’ve crossed paths with her once or twice,” O’Shea says. And I note the lack of ire in his voice. Maybe even something like respect. “Don’t know her name, but she makes the quiet type sound like an afterbooster in atmo.”
    “Well, surely she listens,” I say. I watch the flashes. My Morse is rusty, but the context helps; I get the marshal business bit of her spiel.
    “Well, looks like she wants to board. Seeing as I’ve only got the three lock collars,