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He’d thought about his name very carefully when he’d applied for this job. It wasn’t as if he didn’t always put a great deal of thought into the name he used, but he had spent far longer than usual, a great deal longer than usual.
When a friend of an acquaintance had told him that Buddy Aurinko was building a team, he’d nearly lost his composure. He thought she’d retired years ago – gotten caught and then disappeared. Though he should have known that disappearing was not as hard as it seemed (his phone with twenty-three encrypted comms chips should have let anyone know that), he hadn’t in his wildest dreams expected to be sitting across from a hologram bearing her semblance. This was the kind of thing he had dreamed about after he left Brahma, but knew he could never afford to have — a crew, one of his heroes in the captain’s chair, and plenty of money to be made. It was a dream come true, twenty years too late.
“Pete, darling, are you there?”
Peter sat up straight, snapping himself back into the present.
“Yes. Sorry Ms. Aurinko.”
“Call me Buddy. Ms. Aurinko was my mother.”
“Ok, m--” Peter cuts himself off. “Buddy.”
It felt weird to be calling her by her first name. He had followed this woman’s career for years. The whole crew she had assembled this far had been legendary: Vespa Ilkay — back from the dead — as their medic and resident assassin, the legendary Jet Siquliak as their engineer, and Buddy herself, of course. Part of him was honored to even be considered, but he knew he was the best. He’d earned this.
“As I was saying, you’re on our list because you have the Ruby 7.” Oh. “However, if that’s all you’re going to add to our crew, I can just buy it from you. Jet is insistent that we retrieve it. But, Peter, darling, what do you bring to the table?” Buddy turned her head, squinting, as she sized him up. He felt like she could see right through him already. She always knew more than she let on, and she wanted you to know it.
“I believe my resume speaks for itself.” Peter knew it did. He also knew it usually paid to be confident, but not arrogant, with potential clients. He hoped this was true for Buddy as well.
“And yet you only have one reference, a Martian PI? So for all the stories you tell, I don’t know if any of them are true, darling. We are in the business of deceit, after all, and decent thieves are a dime a dozen.”
Peter paused. Being reduced to decent stung. He’d considered this happening, though, and was prepared. He did not want to retort too quickly. He wanted Buddy to know he was careful thinking on his feet. But before he could talk about the merit of his anonymity, Buddy chimed in once again.
“Let me rephrase, dear. What is a talent you haven’t written on this paper?” Buddy held his immaculately-designed resume up between her thumb and forefinger, worrying the corner slowly. “I need to know what makes you stand out.”
Peter opened his mouth and closed it slowly, reconsidering momentarily before moving ahead. “I’m a tailor. I don’t tend to mention it because it’s rarely pertinent. It allows me to reuse garments from job to job without being recognized, but most employers don’t care about that.”
Buddy’s face remained steely, clearly waiting for more. “I can also make imitation couture dresses, if need be. I’ve done it on a few occasions.” Peter swept his hand deftly across his coms as he spoke, looking for the one picture he kept of a dress he wore to a gala a few years prior, an azure satin and black lace jumpsuit with and ten million creds of smuggled sapphires sewn into the high neck and puffed sleeves twinkling like stars. Out of the corner of his eye, he swept up, sending the picture of the dress on the mannequin — the picture he had used to show it to the buyer — to Buddy. “And, as you can likely tell from my jacket, I can also a make bespoke suits. All my garments come complete with hidden pockets larger than most purses without compromising the silhouettes. It’s simply a part of my job that I don’t talk about often.”
Buddy’s lip twitched, hinting at a smile, as she received the picture. Peter was particularly proud of that one. He was glad she liked what she saw. It had served him well, and his mark, who had taken him back to their hotel room that night, had woken up covered in hickies and two million creds and a priceless Titanian statue poorer. Peter had passed off the sapphires and the statue to his client with ease, erased César Satou from the Cygnus government databases within the hour while sipping espresso in the first-class dining room of a trans-galactic flight.
He could feel Buddy’s eyes on him again, even from a hundred light-years away. He looked back at her hologram.
“Well.This changes things, Pete. I’ll get back to you within the week.”
“Thank you for your time, Buddy. It’s been an honor.” Buddy had already shut off her coms by the time he’d finished speaking.
Peter hoped he had been able to impress her. He hoped that he would get this job. Try though he might, he couldn’t help feel his chest swell at the prospect of getting to work with legends. He had followed their careers meticulously as his began, alone, with a few thousand creds in his pocket and an ability to forge passable documents. He was scared, alone, unsure, and the stories of the heists of his heroes were the only thing that could get him through the restless days, drifting from one job to another. He’d promised himself that he would leave the Outer Rim one day on his own merit as a thief, but he had no idea how. Buddy Aurinko, Jet Siquliak, and other greats of the time, caught in glimpses on his comms on dark web message boards and, if they weren’t careful, the news gave him the ability to plan his way in toward the centers of human civilization.
Those days were far from him now. He was well-established enough to find clients with relative ease. The rich and powerful recommended his aliases often, and for that he was glad. It paid the bills, as it were. No matter that those bills were far more extravagant than he ever could have imagined at the beginning or afford now. In terms of money, this job would actually mean taking a considerable hit. But if that was the price it paid to get to work with his heroes, so be it. The loan sharks wouldn’t be able to find him until the job was over either way. He rapped his fingers on the glass of the hotel room desk. A week, and then his pipe dream twenty years gone might become a reality, would become a reality. Peter didn’t want to admit it, but he was excited, shaking, metaphorically speaking, in his boots before the great possibility of the future. He rarely let himself do that and, before he could overwhelm himself, he filed it away to be considered later.