Chapter 3: Ink

Ingrid, code name Lady Ink, was the worst woman in space. She was arguably a worse bad guy than Riker. Considering they used to date, they might have been the perfect couple. Unfortunately, they had too many instances of trying to kill one another.

When Lady Ink strolled into the Control deck, I pulled out my blaster to point it at her. She didn't even look my way. Riker stepped in front of me as she came closer.

If Lady Ink and Riker were ever in the same room together, it would always lead to one of two things. Annoyingly loud sex or annoyingly destructive fighting. Sometimes both happened, but I prayed it wouldn't.

"You could have called," Riker remarked sarcastically.

"You changed your communications data," Ingrid said.

Riker continued to play coy, asking, "did I?"

She only responded with her own question, "Where are my rubies?"

Did we pull a heist for Riker's X girlfriend?

"Your rubies, you see the thing about that," Riker started, but he was quickly interrupted.

"You sold them to someone else?" Ink assumed.

"No," Riker answered.

"You lost them?"

"No."

"Then what," Ingrid nearly shouted.

My adopted father seemed to be stalling, but he eventually answered, "We grabbed the wrong rocks. Did you know Orion is color blind?"

Ingrid, with her hands on her wide hips, sighed with annoyed exhaustion.

"Then go back and get the red ones," She said, but while her demand was aimed at my father, her eyes were on me standing beside him.

"You see the thing about that, I might have blown up the planet," Riker confessed with a chuckle.

Ingrid chuckled as well, but I knew better than to take it lightly. She lashed out.

Lady Ink was only Lady Ink because of her weapon of choice, a Monte brand morph suit. It allowed her to shapeshift her body into almost anything. When active, it had the appearance of living ink, hence her code name.

Ingrid changed her arm into an elongated whip and used it to swipe both Riker and me up against a wall.

"You destroyed Vex?!"

Yeah, she was pissed, which meant sex was off the table for Riker, but property damage was imminent.

"It was a dwarf planet. No one will miss it," Riker argued.

I shot at Ingrid, but her bodysuit ate anything harmful to her biology. Bullets, lasers, even toxic gas was absorbed into her suit the moment it posed a threat. There should have been a limit to how much it could withstand, but my blaster wasn't powerful enough to reach those criteria. I was about to aim for her face, but Riker took the blaster from my hand.

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"Enough," he said.

"Your pet is out of line," Ingrid remarked while changing her arms into sharp oversized blades.

Riker reminded her, "You know Orion is my son," but Ink wasn't listening.

While Riker and I moved along the wall, putting distance between us and his X, she crept closer.

"Look, I'll make it up to you for the rubies," Riker started.

Ingrid shot one of her arms at us, and it nearly clipped my head off.

"How much do I owe," Riker asked, but Ingrid yelled, "you can't afford the price tag."

She slashed across the room with both blade-shaped arms and made sparks fly from the metal she hit as Riker and I ducked down.

"I can steal rubies from anywhere. What's so special about Vex rubies," Riker said while grabbing me by the tail and pulling me out of the way of an incoming stab aimed at my chest.

"It's too late now. But it's not me you owe," Ingrid said.

Riker and I stood ready to jump in any which direction. I was a lemur, so I was naturally flexible and agile. Riker, on the other hand, was winded.

"Then who do we owe?" I asked.

Ingrid finally put away her weapons by returning her limbs back to normal.

"I'm sure he'll find you soon," She said before childishly kicking over my father's command chair.

Without another word, Lady Ink flipped her hair and turned around to leave.

"Nice seeing you, as always," Riker said sarcastically, but he might have genuinely enjoyed himself.

As Ingrid got further down the hall from the control deck, father and I took a breath and let our guards down.

"You'll turn back on my ship before you leave, won't you," Riker yelled at Ingrid before she cut down a corner.

When we were alone again, he tossed me back my gun before picking up his seat to sit in it. Ingrid didn't turn back on our ship, but she had left us. She probably put an EMP outside the ship somewhere, but I was more concerned with something else.

"Why are we doing business with Lady Ink," I asked Riker while he sat around.

Had I not said anything, he probably would have fallen to sleep in his chair.

"I thought you vowed never to help her again. She left us stranded on an asteroid. Tried to sell our organs. Blew up my first space cruiser. Why would we work with her?!" I added.

"She said please," Riker answered, but it only confused me more.

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