I was coaxed out of slumber by the faint light of the morning sun, and the deliciously pungent smell of good coffee.

And let me tell you, being coaxed out of sleep is the best way to wake up. Normally I'm dragged or pushed out, by alarms or alarm clocks or the need to get a bad decision out of bed. I honestly couldn't remember the last time I woke up ready and willing to get out of the sheets. Of course, someone else making coffee definitely helps that. One of my great ambitions in life was to own a ship with a decent automated brewing apparatus.

I sat up and glanced around, and was surprised by several things. I was still clothed, which was a moderate disappointment. Luca wasn't in the bed; a more significant disappointment. He also wasn't the one making coffee, and the fact that someone else was had to be the most profound disappointment of the morning.

I pulled the sheets off and got out of bed, to see a woman at a table, pouring herself a cup of coffee as she watched the sunrise. She was dressed oddly, it was clearly an expensive suit, but it didn't quite look right on her. Like seeing a linebacker in a suit, or a fashion model in overalls, something just looked slightly off.

Her head turned, and she looked at me as soon as my feet hit the floor. I finally recognized the woman, as she looked at me with that unnaturally calm expression that made me think of Luca's father, Lito. I felt as if I had already been sized-up, and that she had already decided how she was going to kill me if she needed to.

I rubbed my hair and walked over to her, trying my best to smile as I talked with Luca's personal secretary, Viviana. "So, uh, hi. Make enough to go around?"

Viviana sat a hand on the coffee pot and looked at me as if she was daring me to take it from her. "We'll see," she said.

I stretched my shoulders and decided to try a more tactful approach than I normally would. "I didn't sleep with him, if that helps at all."

The woman's expression might as well have been on a painting for all it changed. "That actually makes me more nervous."

Thought train successfully derailed. I blinked, opened my mouth like a fish in the middle of a fart, started to say something, then closed it when I realized I had no idea what was about to come out of my mouth.

"Honestly, do you know how many women Luca has slept with? The list actually includes the entire cast of two different ballet troupes. There's an ongoing betting pool on Luna guessing the day he knocks up some oil baron's mistress, and it's at 22 billion dollars," Viviana explained.

"Twenty-two billion? Wonder if he'd go halfsies with me on it," I mused aloud.

Viviana laughed. "Now there's a pirate's mind at work. But I'd like you to take my next question seriously. Don't answer it right away, but treat it as if I was going to put you out an airlock if you screw with me."

I didn't see it happen. I didn't even see her move. The gun in her hand might as well have fallen out of a portal into her hand. "Okay," I said. "What would you like to know?"

"Who hired you to go to Mars?" Viviana asked.

"I wasn't hired," I said quietly. "I was tipped off about a mysterious account that had been accessed by a distant tight-beam radio connection originating from Mars. It was hinted that the score could be extremely lucrative."

"Hinted by whom?"

I thought for a moment, remembering until it finally dawned on me. "It was BIRD. It made the connections for me."

"BIRD?" Viviana turned her head to the side and frowned. "Your automated personal assistant drone?"

"Yeah. Turns out it's actually a super-intelligent AI that's been working with the Brotherhood of Billionaires," I explained. "Fabulo referred to it as 'boss'."

"That's good," Viviana said with a smile, but the gun was still pointed at me. "I verified all of that already, but it's good to hear it from you."

That got me a little angry, but indignation only gets you so far when someone's pointing a gun at you. I was getting the distinct impression that Viviana had done this sort of thing before. "Now let's try a question I don't know the answer to. What do you expect from Luca Cardego?"

"I.." My thoughts trailed off, and my tongue stopped along with it. I glanced around, and saw Luca asleep on a chair, realizing he had given up the entire bed. I wasn't sure what about it made me smile, but there was something adorable about it. Especially since the bed was the size of most living rooms.

"I expect him to honour the bargain we struck when I crash-landed on his planet," I said firmly. I also gave up holding my hands up, and reached for a coffee cup. "He needs to fix my ship, though he has the option to replace it with a better one. He said something about a military corvette."

I held out the coffee cup and gave her the best smile I've ever given someone that I wasn't trying to sleep with.

Viviana nodded, picked up the coffee pot, and poured me a cup. "I can live with that," she said as the gun somehow disappeared into her clothing.

"So we're not going to pull each other's hair in the pool and tell each other that 'he's mine'?" I asked as I poured in just enough cream to turn the coffee to Luca's skin colour. "Honesty, it's where I thought you were going with this."

"You think I can get a platinum bikini commissioned just for being some floozy he calls his personal secretary? What do you think my job is around here?" Viviana asked, though the anger in her voice was dimmed somewhat.

"I kinda assumed you were a fixer of some kind. Like you shoot people out of sight so that Luca doesn't get his hands dirtier than he has to," I guessed.

"That's pretty close, actually," Viviana conceded. "Though I'm automatically fired the moment I kill someone. Luca has some odd indulgences."

"It's called valuing life, Vi," Luca said, and he stood up with the enviable ease of being a very fit man in low gravity, practically throwing himself into the air. "And being rich insulates us from the consequences of our actions. I tried to teach that to Fabulo, but I don't think he could see past the public humiliation and the gold digger scrum."

Luca stepped up next to Viviana and held out a cup. She started pouring for him reflexively, not even looking at the cup as she filled it. "It just feels like I'm handcuffed sometimes," Viviana said to me. "Especially when conspiracies happen, I could end it with the push of a button if he'd just let me portal Fabulo's stupid ship into an asteroid."

"Now now," Luca said with a smile. "We both know it doesn't feel like being handcuffed. We've done that."

I think Viviana and I both spat our coffee out at the same time.

"Jackass," Viviana said, but her rebuttal didn't have a lot of bite to it. The smile she was giving Luca looked about as vapid as a beauty pageant contestant talking about world peace.

"So, how far from Mars is Fabulo's ship?" Luca asked.

"Their ship hasn't been using a Transponder in months. Which is illegal. And it's also why we didn't notice the ship earlier. But, since that moron paid us to portal him onto it, Fabulo had to reveal its location. The Oar Gee is eighteen hours from Mars' orbit."

"How much did we charge him for the portal?" Luca asked.

"Three billion, with a matching contribution to the Cardego LPS charity," Viviana reported.

"LPS charity?" I asked.

"Lorenzo Products Suck," Luca said. "It's a charity meant to replace defective crap from Fabulo's company with products that are actually worth your money. I have it funded exclusively from charitable donations from Lorenzo Corp, that I may or may not extort from him with my monopoly on portals and hosting all the cool parties."

"You are such a child," I said.

"Well, I guess we should pick up Alcuard and portal over to Mars," Luca said.

"You're still barred. Any portal directly to Mars' surface will be viewed as a breach of the injunction. You could be arrested and have your assets seized," Viviana warned.

"I can't portal there. But if we arrive at Alcuard's buried city, it would be viewed as visiting his place, and the injunction wouldn't apply," Luca said.

"Uh," Viviana stopped and thought for a moment. "Yes, our lawyers said the same thing. Dang boss, that was hot. But that still leaves us with the problem of getting on the planet, since the entire world is a no-go for portals."

"We land the old-fashioned way. I take it Isabella's ship is still being repaired?" Luca asked.

"Uh, no," Viviana said, and the way she said it had me feeling very, very suspicious. "It's been sold for scrap. We're looking around for another ship of the same make, but no one makes the Firefly-class junk ship anymore. Cancelled after one season. We did save the AI core, though."

"Okay. Have the AI core portalled here, I'll go buy Isabella a new ship. I'm thinking of getting her a corvette," Luca said.

"Boss, how's an antique car going to help us?" Viviana asked.

"You know a corvette is a type of military vessel, right?" Luca asked. "Smallest kind of warship, usually built with oversized engines, so it goes absurdly fast. We sell those to the UN."

"Oh. Suddenly the balance sheets for the dockyards make a lot more sense," Viviana said. She pulled her phone out of a pocket and started reading something as she turned away. "I'll go get the AI core. I'll be on standby until you pick out a ship."

"You know the only reason I can stand seeing you walk away is because you look good doing it," Luca called out to Viviana as she departed. She didn't respond, but I noticed the hip sway became a bit more pronounced.

Luca turned around and pulled his portal device from his pocket. One click and a black sphere appeared just in front of him. A moment later, Alcuard stepped through.

Alcuard looked reinvigorated. It was hard to really describe since he's undead and doesn't get tired. But there was a certain ease in his stance and his movements that hadn't been there before. Like seeing an athlete in peak physical form rather than spending six months eating chips on a couch in space.

By the way, don't ever do that. You will turn your bones into mush by binging tv and eating tubs of ice cream while crying over a boy that dumped you...

Okay, pretend I didn't go there. Anyway, Alcuard looked really good.

And to my surprise, he looked at me up and down and said, "I suspect you'd taste quite a bit better than when we first met."

"Try it, and I'll do a crash diet of milkshakes and romantic comedies," I warned him.

He shuddered and turned away.

"So, Alcuard, have you been filled in about recent events?"

Alcuard nodded solemnly. "I have. In particular, about what this Brotherhood of Billionaires is, and what they're after."

"Yeah, they're after the antigravity device that makes your ship fly," I said.

"It's worse than you know," Alcuard said to me. The next words out of his mouth hit me like a meteorite. "They don't know it, but they're after the Unobtanium Stones."

"The what now?" I asked, worried that Alcuard had drunk himself into some sort of vampire crazy.