Free Time Siege by Wesley Chu

words didn’t inspire any confidence.
    â€œJames Griffin-Mars.” Hubbs smacked his lips as if rolling the name in his mouth. “I have killed men for wasting less time than you did just now.” He put up a finger. “Well, this explains why you have that massive bounty on your head. I haven’t seen anyone debut on the bounty list that high since someone offed the CEO of Burning Storm. I didn’t think the rumors were true, about you breaking the first Time Law, but it seems I was wrong to believe that you couldn’t be that stupid.”
    James opened his mouth to respond when Hubbs silenced him with a hand and picked up the exo-chain. “I’m talking and you’re not going to interrupt. In fact, you’re done talking. The smart thing to do right now is to hand you over to ChronoCom and collect that fat reward, except for the fact that the one on my head is still larger than yours, so collecting the bounty could get awkward.
    â€œYou’re toxic, James Griffin-Mars, and your being here puts the colony at risk. But because we have history—I still remember what you did covering for me on Venus—I’m not going to turn you in or kick you out of the colony. Not yet. You’ve got thirty days to finish your business at Bulk’s Head. That should be plenty of time for every other salvager here to turn you down, and that’s what’s going to happen once you pitch your moronic cause. After those thirty days, you’re gone, understand?”
    James nodded.
    â€œNow get the fuck out of here. Forget you ever saw me. One more thing,” he called after James as the two burly men led him out the door. “Don’t cause any problems in my backyard. You get only one strike here in Bulk’s Head.”
    James was unceremoniously hustled out of the Puck Pirate section of the colony with a warning to never return. That meeting pretty much went exactly as he’d expected. The illegal salvagers, especially, had long abandoned the moral directives ChronoCom professed in saving humanity. It was a lost cause, but one he had to embrace.
    He returned to their quarters and found Grace Priestly busy with her own project. She looked up from her work as he walked in, downtrodden. She nodded when he told her how the meeting went. “Shot down by the Puck Pirates’ main salvager? Might as well flame out starting at the top. Maybe one of the smaller operators will see the nobility of our quest.”
    James snorted. “I doubt it. The whole meeting was pretty humiliating.”
    She shrugged. “The Puck Pirates’ salvager was never going to say yes to you anyway. He just wanted to know what you were doing here on Bulk’s Head, probably wanted to make sure you weren’t trying to muscle in on his business. Now that he knows you’re on a quixotic quest that’s doomed to fail, he’ll probably just leave you alone.”
    â€œNow that you put it that way, I somehow feel even worse,” he grumbled. “What’s a quixotic quest?”
    She smirked. “You are, James.”
    He walked over to her table and looked at the fast-scrolling vid. “How is your new criminal empire doing?”
    â€œFantastic.” She beamed, rubbing her hands together. She was clearly having too much fun at the moment. “I have a large deal in the works between three parties for a chron database access hack. Playing them off against each other at the moment.”
    As one of the brightest minds in history, she had quickly become the scourge of the information market on Bulk’s Head. Since Grace started with only few contacts and assets to barter with, she began by brokering small deals. A tech needed a V1 apropros extender, a collector wanted a twenty-second-century organic portrait, a mercenary needed repairs on his flak armor, and a smuggler needed a way to sneak into Europa Orbital Port, and Grace would somehow tie all of these