Chapter 2 #2
I find a place to hide for a bit, in a narrow alley between two shops.
This place has a lot of commerce going on.
It also has a lot of aliens who are doing a lot of things they shouldn’t do.
Back on Earth, in the floating territories, there are places where the corporates have complete control and there are other nooks and crannies, sometimes a few blocks wide, sometimes independent floating islands owned by the mega-rich or the mega-criminal.
They’re not safe, but they are the only places to get away from the ever present surveillance.
This port reminds me of those places. I frequented them often back on Earth. I know what the rules are. Nobody wants trouble, but everybody is looking for it. Everyone is faintly guilty and rebelling against various authorities.
There won’t be any help for me here. I’ll be seen as a commodity to be snatched up sooner or later. If I present myself as weak, they’ll treat me like it. I need to get some money, and I need to align myself with some entities who can help me orient myself to this new reality.
I’m going to have to get a new job. Corporate espionage paid well until I was burned.
My employer hung me out to dry with no warning whatsoever.
My mind flashes back to my fancy apartment where I lived for months with a white rug that actually stayed white.
You need to have a very particular lifestyle to be able to maintain white furnishings.
It was definitely a flex, and I was proud of it.
I lived like a fucking queen on Earth, and I want to keep doing so here.
When a good hour passes, and I am actually satisfied nobody is coming for me, I start to look for opportunities. There’s a bar across the street from me, thronging with all kinds of aliens. I decide to go there and try to keep my ears open and eyes peeled.
I slip into the bar as quietly as possible.
There’s a trick when it comes to espionage.
You want to fit in. You want to be the averagest average person that ever averaged.
I got really good at that on Earth. It was easier there, because I didn’t stand out among other people.
I always made sure my hair was dyed a nondescript dirty blonde so dark it looked brown.
I didn’t wear makeup, an act that on its own made me fade into the wallpaper in a lot of men’s eyes.
When I step into this bar, I make sure to do so in the wake of a much larger alien. I know I might stand out just by being a human female, so I just try to keep out of sight. The lights are a lot lower in the bar, and I make for the shadows immediately.
If anybody has noticed me, I haven’t noticed them noticing me. A lot of the languages being spoken here are completely unintelligible to me. That could be a problem. Humans who live on the floating cities all speak the same language, but it’s not galactic.
Fortunately, during the course of my espionage training I was taught a smattering of galactic language, and there are some aliens who are speaking that here. So I just need to listen in for the ones who are clearly interested in conversing outside their species.
I overhear some very strange conversations. They can’t be real. They have to be fucking with me. Or with each other.
“Unicorn infestations are getting out of hand. They’re going to do another cull.” An ethereal-looking alien man with a crown on his head is talking in a slightly slurred tone.
“What do you mean?” His companion responds with an exclamation of absolute shock that pretty much mimics my own response.
“Unicorns are heavy grazers. They can strip an entire ecosystem in a matter of days sometimes. Their numbers have to be kept down.”
“And then there’s the virgins.”
“Virgins?”
“Oh, yeah. The virgins are spreading like wildfire.”
“Hello, human.” Someone addresses me directly, and I am mentally dragged away from the conversation I am overhearing.
“Excuse me?”
A fuzzy yellow creature with a big smile and big round eyes set in a smooth, almost plastic seeming face fringed by fuzz approaches me in the shadows.
There’s something unsettling about the alien, who I think is male, though with aliens those terms often don’t apply—except when it comes to the ones interested in and drawn to human females.
“You’re human,” he says in slow, clear galactic.
I’m so relieved to have someone speak to me intelligibly I almost don’t think about how dangerous it is to be recognized.
Besides, he doesn’t really look all that dangerous.
He’s not wearing clothes so much as he is completely covered in a soft yellow down that makes him look a little like a children’s toy turned into real life.
“No,” I say. “I just play one.”
I lie reflexively at this point. My job has trained me to always keep something secret.
Being known is dangerous. If I’d had the sense to maintain a secret home base, then I wouldn’t have almost gotten shot in my own lounge, for instance.
My life so far has been a series of events teaching me to keep others at a mental and emotional distance.
I’m not going to forget this because the creature I’m talking to looks like a popular Earth toy.
“Oh,” the alien says. “That’s smart. Really smart. You look so real.”
“Thanks,” I say in my own tongue. “I’m actually a six-foot razor beast stuffed into a human suit.”
The joke ruins it. Damnit. I got cocky. I know the second the creature tips its head to the side just enough to indicate disbelief. Apparently some gestures are pretty much universal. The you’re full of it one certainly seems to be.
“You speak a human dialect without an accent.”
“I’m smart,” I say, directly after doing the most stupid thing possible.
To be fair, I did not expect him to be able to understand human anything.
We’re a small species in the grand scheme of things.
There are only three billion of us total after the events that required the floating cities to be built.
Most aliens will never encounter a human in their lives, or even believe that one exists.
The alien smiles at me. “I think you’re human, and I think you’re going to need help to get off this station without being turned into someone’s slave.”
“Is that right?”
I’m feeling the tingles of discomfort that often come before something very bad happening. This thing has my number and I would bet good money he plans the creature turning me into a slave will be him. Can’t let it happen. Won’t let it happen.
“Can I buy you a drink?”
“No, thank you, I drank earlier,” I say.
He smiles at me and looks me up and down. “You should let me buy you a drink. You never know what could happen to you if you don’t have the protection of a good male.”
Oh, god. I’ve traveled lightyears to another galaxy and the very first thing I’ve done is run into a self-proclaimed nice guy.
“I’m good. Thanks.”
I don’t want to shoot this guy in the bar.
That’s going to draw attention, obviously.
So instead, I turn and I walk away. Or I at least try to.
Before I can get a step in, the creature grabs me with a hand that emerges from his fluffy yellow exterior.
When I look down, I am being held by a bony, gnarled, surprisingly large appendage with six fingers and a thumb on each side.
When I look back up again, the friendly mouth has parted to reveal a maw of razor-sharp teeth that would make any shark or crocodile feel inadequate.
I am instantly terrified with the kind of old fear that comes from the rear of the brain, from a time when humans did not inhabit floating cities, but dwelled in caves and had to contend with unknown predators emerging from the dark.
I freeze.
I couldn’t pull my weapon if I wanted to.
In the face of true malevolence and predatory hunger, I find myself helpless in a way I’ve never been before.
The last higher functioning part of my brain is screaming at me to run, to fight, to do anything, but those old animal regions are exerting full control, telling me that if I stay completely still I might be spared consumption.
“Unhand the lady.”
A shadow falls over the both of us. I can’t see this new alien, because I am still transfixed by the furry bastard.
“She’s mine,” the creature says. “I bought her from the shipment. So you can mind your own business and get back to your friends.”
He’s all fluffy smiles now, and the sounds of the bar are fading back into my consciousness. I didn’t even notice the way they seemed to fade when he held me in his thrall.
“Show me the receipt for her, and I’ll walk away right now,” the newcomer says.
“What are you? Store security? I don’t have to show you shit.”
A blade appears under the creature’s chin. It is held by a scaled hand. A chunk of yellow fur falls away with the mere pressure of its existence there. It’s sharp, probably more than razor sharp.
“Let her go, or I will cut your head off and sell your hide to the tannery to be made into toys for infants of various species,” the newcomer says.
His voice has just a hint of menace in it, but for the most part it is chillingly conversational.
He makes these threats as if they would just be part of his day.
I feel the grip on my arm loosen and fall away.
“Now leave,” the voice says. “Before I decide to do it anyway.”
The creature has a jumpy sort of gait, I discover, a sideways rocking horse gallop that takes him out of the bar with his head bobbling around on his shoulders, still somehow intact.
“You shouldn’t talk to strangers,” the stranger says to me with no trace of irony whatsoever.
“Thank you,” I reply.
I look up at him for the first time, and see a tall, severe-looking alien man with penetrating eyes and dark hair tied back behind his head. He has scales along the lines of his nose and his hair and his features are much closer to human than whatever I just encountered.