by Lea Linnett
“Oh, I bet. Are we the next ones on your list, then? You want to put us in cages?”
“No.”
“Stop lying!”
“Taz, wait,” Cara interrupted them, and Taz faltered when a hand landed on her outstretched arm in warning. “Who are you?” she asked the levekk, voice calm.
“I’m Niro Tan’ii,” he explained, his words making Taz frown. “I work for a levekk from off-planet named Ceren Siikas. Do you know of him?”
Cara and Taz exchanged a glance, and then Cara shook her head. “No.”
“He’s a lender and businessman, but his ventures usually tend towards the illegal. He’s currently running an operation out of a warehouse in Sek Vorek, and the cargo is—”
“Humans. We know.” Taz narrowed her eyes. “We saw you there. Selling a human to some levekk tourist. We saw the cages.”
Niro gave her a long look and closed his eyes, hiding them in the shadow of his plated head. “Please, listen to me. The woman is fine. And I want to help get the other humans to safety.”
“Sure, sure. And I bet you’ll help us nab Siikas while you’re at it. And take down his operation? No, wait, let me guess. You’ll generously offer to take control of it for us, promising to never use his contacts to find more humans. Sound right?”
She raised the gun a little higher, predicting that Niro would take the bait and grow angry, maybe even lunge for them because she had to be right. What else could he want? But Niro only sighed, turning to Cara.
“Please. Hear me out. The human woman is fine, as are many of those that have been sold in the past. But I can’t rescue all of them. I need outside help.” His eyes bored unwaveringly into Cara’s. “Please.”
Taz shook her head, growing sick of this. Her grip tightened on the gun, her finger inching towards the trigger, but Cara stopped her. “Taz, no. We’ll hear what he has to say.”
“We’ll what?”
“Stand by the barrier,” Cara ordered the levekk. “One false move and you’ll take a bullet. There’s nothing but storage at the bottom of this drop. It would take quite a while for anyone to find you.”
Niro pursed his lips, but moved towards the barrier with no further encouragement, leaning his hip against it. Taz and Cara stood a few feet away, well out of his reach, and Taz’s grip on her weapon remained white-knuckled even as she pointed it at the ground.
“Explain,” Cara barked. “How have you been ‘rescuing’ humans? What happened to the woman?”
“I’m often present when the humans are sold on,” he began, crossing his arms. “And I always know in advance when they’ll be taken or shipped away. I have my people intercept them when I can, sometimes here in Sek Vorek, sometimes as they cross the city limits. Occasionally, we’ve even tracked them down after they’ve been taken off-planet. There needs to be variety so that Siikas doesn’t grow suspicious. For that reason, we haven’t been able to save all of them.”
“Where does he send them?” asked Cara.
“The large shipments go to traffickers off-planet. There are countless brothels in the Constellation that would never see humans without people like Siikas supplying them. But even worse are the private buyers. Anyone willing to pay a premium for a personal human rarely has good intentions.”
Taz felt bile rise in the back of her throat, the hairs on her arms standing on end.
“So, you save them,” said Cara. “Sounds very noble. But we have no way of verifying whether you’re telling the truth.”
“I can verify it,” he said, wetting his lips. “May I get my comm?”
He looked to Taz, who nodded.
He fished out a small, flat comm, an older model. He kept one eye on the two humans as he punched in a number. “You said you saw her?” he asked Taz. “Tell me if you recognize her.”
He held up the comm as it opened a video link. After exchanging a wary look with Cara, Taz stepped forward and peered at it, freezing when the comm connected, and a scarred cicarian’s face appeared on the holographic display. The cicarian’s eyes narrowed. “Who the fuck is this?”
“It’s me, Salano. I’m meeting with friends. Could you pass the comm to Rosa?”
The cicarian grunted in irritation, and the view jerked, colors and objects swerving across the screen until it came to rest in the hands of a human woman, pointing up at her curious face. “Hello? Oh, humans!”
“Rosa, it’s Niro,” the levekk said, loud enough for the comm to pick up his voice. “Could you tell them what happened to you? How you ended up at the safehouse with Salano?”
“Ummm, sure.” She raised a dark eyebrow, pushing a mop of frizzy brown hair out of her face. “If you want.”
“Sorry to spring this on you.”
“No, it’s fine,” she said with a shrug. “The quick version is that I was kidnapped from my madame’s place. Woke up in a cage wearing next to nothing, which was decidedly less fun than the one time I role-played something similar for a client,” she added, rolling her eyes. “Especially when the, uh… buyer came to look at me. I thought I was a goner, y’know? Like, I’ve been working in brothels for years, but the things this guy said he wanted me for?”
She shuddered, and Taz’s stomach churned worse than it had on the climb up to the overlook.
“But then Niro came to speak with me. He told me to make sure I sat on the left side of the transport when the guy came to pick me up, so I did. We’d just made it outside the city when the right side, where I wasn’t sitting, goes freakin’ boom. Dude that bought me falls out the hole to who knows where and the driver has to land. Next thing I know a bunch of cicarians are hauling me out of the vehicle and bringing me here.”
“Where are you?” Cara asked.
“Uh. Am I allowed to tell them that?” the woman asked.
“Go ahead,” said Niro.
“Safehouse just outside Sek Vorek. Salano says he’ll take me home to— Wait a sec. What’s that?” She turned to the side, addressing someone off camera, and Taz gasped.
Stretching along her left arm from shoulder to elbow was a large birth mark, all wine-red and deep purple, but too distinct to be a bruise. Taz’s mind flashed back to what she’d seen at the warehouse that night, and her jaw dropped open.
“Shit, I need to go,” said Rosa. “Does that cover everything?”
Cara turned to Taz. “Is that the human you saw?”
Taz blinked, still somewhat speechless. “Uh, yeah. No doubt.”
“Thank you for speaking with us,” Cara said to the woman, who grinned.
“No worries. Bye, Niro!”
The comm connection clicked off, and the trio fell silent, Taz staring at nothing and Cara staring at Niro while he pocketed the device.
“Is that proof enough?” he asked, and there was none of the impatience Taz might have expected in his tone. He was as stone-faced as ever, watching the two of them placidly.
“It’ll do,” Cara said after a moment’s silence, and Taz could do little but frown. She sure as shit didn’t trust him yet, but she had to admit that his evidence was… convincing.
“Can we move this discussion elsewhere, then?” Niro asked.
“I thought here was safe?” said Taz, suspicious.
“It is. But there’s a lot to discuss, and I’d rather not do it while teetering over a precipice.” He gestured mildly to the drop behind him, and Taz gritted her teeth.
“You don’t get to—”
“We’ll move,” said Cara, cutting her off. Taz deflated. “But first, tell me what you want from us.”
Niro’s expression turned grave, his eyes boring into Cara’s in a way that made Taz uncomfortable. “I want to destroy Siikas’ operation, and save the humans he’s trapped there, but I need your help to do it.”
“How?”
“Taz.” Cara sighed with frustration, focusing on Niro. “You have a plan?”
Niro nodded. “I do.”
He said nothing else, not attempting to justify himself further, and Taz wanted to scream as th
e two stared at each other.
The silence stretched to its breaking point before Cara finally spoke. “Lead the way.”
---
The building Niro led them to had low ceilings, low enough that the huge levekk had to duck his head to get through the front door. “My people own this place,” he said quietly, directing them into a small parlor with a table and chairs in the center. “We use it as a safehouse, sometimes.”
Taz sat at the table cautiously, her eyes scanning the corners and windows for any kind of movement that wasn’t supposed to be there.
“I won’t waste your time,” Niro said, sitting across from them. “I have a way for you to get into the warehouse and get the humans out, and I’m willing to help you do it.”
“For what price?” asked Cara, crossing her arms.
“I want help from your organization to get into Siikas’ files and destroy them.”
Taz’s eyes widened, and beside her, Cara sat up a little straighter in her chair. “How?” her sister asked.
“There’s a room in the warehouse, filled with computers and storage drives. Everything to do with his business is stored there, from human collection points to off-planet storage facilities to client information. I want to destroy it.”
Cara frowned. “Why do you need us? We’re not an intelligence group.”
“No, but I asked you to bring a hacker. Someone who can write a virus that will break through the encryption? Your leader seemed to think you had someone like that…”
They did, Taz thought. Deeno. But Cara ignored the question, instead asking, “Wouldn’t he have backups?”
“He would if his private server hadn’t been burned to a crisp about six months ago.” A small smile touched Niro’s lips, the first sliver of real emotion he’d shown so far. “That wasn’t easy to pull off, and it means that those computers are the only copy he has left until he secures another server. Which won’t be too much longer.”
“Why don’t you just go in there with a pipe or something and smash everything up?” Taz asked.
“I can’t. I run Siikas’ security, and I act as extra muscle when someone needs to meet a client off-site, but I don’t have access to the computers. Siikas doesn’t care what I hear in a negotiation, but the volume of data stored in that warehouse? He wouldn’t let me near it, especially now. Better to keep the keys in as few hands as possible.”
“What do you mean, ‘especially now?’” asked Cara, and Niro’s brow plate twitched downwards.
“I had one of my guys trip the locks on the cages a few weeks ago, when a mass shipment was supposed to go out.” He said. “Fifteen humans escaped. He’s questioned my security measures since then.”
“So he’s suspicious of you?”
“Not just me. Shinik is the one who has access to the data servers and handles all client negotiations. Since I usually try to liberate the humans after purchase, I’m sure Siikas is watching him, too.”
Taz raised an eyebrow. Shinik must have been the third levekk she saw at the warehouse that night.
“And I’m guessing he doesn’t see eye to eye with you on the ethics of the operation,” Cara said mildly, drawing a humorless chuckle from the levekk.
“No. But that won’t matter if you guys have a hacker handy.”
Cara gave him a long look. “What if we did?”
“You get them to write a code. A virus that can get through the encryption and delete everything. You give that code to me, and while you distract security and get the humans out, I run the code.”
Taz shook her head. “No way. That sounds like suicide for us.”
“How do we get the humans out and distract security without getting caught?” Cara asked more calmly, her brows furrowed.
“With this,” he said, sliding a datapad across the table.
Cara cautiously took it, booting it up and scrolling through the data. Taz saw maps and directions and lines of text, but couldn’t make out anything in particular. Cara’s eyes widened. “This is…”
“Everything you need to know about the warehouse. Camera locations, maps, door codes. It’s practically a maze in there, but the only cargo we have right now are the humans that you saw the other night,” he explained, glancing at Taz. “Like I said, I run his security. I can ensure that the patrols are reduced for long enough that you can get the humans out. When you’re done, signal me, and I’ll send the guards. While they’re searching for the missing cargo, I’ll handle Shinik.”
“Stop calling them cargo,” Taz growled, but Cara spoke over her.
“So we escape, security investigates, and you destroy his data. Then you can blame it on the insurgents and get away without suspicion.”
“And cripple his business in the process. Taking his humans is a quick fix, but it would take years for him to rebuild his network of clients and suppliers,” Niro said, nodding.
“I still don’t understand,” Cara murmured, her eyes on the datapad. She glanced up. “What do you get out of this?”
“I get the satisfaction of knowing I helped save people from slavery.”
“Really?” Cara’s voice was deadly quiet. “Since when has a lizard, a tourist, given a shit about what happens to humans?”
Niro’s eyes flashed, his jaw clenching in a way that put Taz on high alert, standing and snagging her knife from her belt. It was too close quarters for gunfire. But Niro didn’t move, only ground out through gritted teeth, “Don’t assume that I’m like them.”
“Why shouldn’t we?” Taz snapped. “Who knows how long you’ve worked for Siikas, or others like him? How many humans have you abandoned, rather than saved?”
“You think I enjoy it when I fail to rescue them?” he asked, his voice rising.
“Why wouldn’t you, lizard?”
“Because I’m more sub-species than I am a lizard!”
The room fell silent, Taz leaning back in surprise and Niro bracing his arms against the table while Cara simply stared. Taz broke first, scoffing, “The fuck does that mean?”
Niro sat back, back to his reserved manner, although his chest rose and fell a little faster than before.
She looked to Cara, whose eyes narrowed as she whispered, “Niro Tan’ii…”
Niro glanced between them, sighing. “Yes. My parents were sub-species. Just like yours, I assume.”
Taz gaped. “But—but you’re a levekk.”
“I am. But the female who raised me was human. The male, cicarian. And my brother…”
Cara leaned forward in her chair. “Your brother?”
Niro licked his lips, refusing to meet either of their gazes. “Human. For the short amount of time he spent on this planet. He was taken when I was an adolescent, by someone just like Siikas. I assume he’s dead by now.”
Taz’s gaze dropped, the hand holding her weapon going lax at her side. She didn’t dare look at him as she sank back down into her chair. The anguish that took over the levekk’s face was very real. Too real. She tried to imagine what it would be like to lose Cara, and gulped.
That didn’t mean she trusted him, though. He could still be lying. But when she turned to Cara, she found her staring at the levekk long and hard, the datapad clasped tightly in her hands.
“Cara, you’re not seriously…”
“I have a counter-offer,” said Cara, speaking over her.
Niro squared his shoulders, the deep lines of grief still etched into his face. “Yes?”
“We get your code. We rescue the humans and distract the guards. But the code comes in two parts.” She held up a finger. “The first gets you access.” She held up a second finger. “The second destroys the data. Before you destroy it, download a copy for us.”
The levekk’s brow plate swooped down in confusion. “Why?”
“So we can track down these other storage facilities. His clients. His suppliers. I don’t want Siikas to be able to rebuild. We do this once, and we do it right.”
Taz blinked at her sister. She couldn’t d
eny that this was what she’d wanted from the beginning, but the method was risky. “Cara…”
“Can you have the code ready within a week?” asked Niro. “That’s when the humans are being shipped.”
“I’ll consult my colleague. But it should be fine,” Cara assured him.
“Then I accept your terms,” said Niro, and when he extended his hand, it was with his palm facing sideways, angled in the same way a human would when closing a deal, rather than palm up like a levekk.
Cara clasped it with her own, and Taz stared down at their linked hands, her heart thundering in her chest.
They left soon after that, Niro disappearing into the gap between two buildings while Cara and Taz began their descent down the narrow stairway again.
“How can you trust him?” Taz asked, still looking around for the surprise attack that surely had to be waiting for them.
Cara didn’t answer for a while, her brow furrowed and her gaze settled on the towering branches of Sek Vorek in the distance. “He seemed genuine,” she said after a while.
“You believe his story?”
She nodded. “I’ve seen that look before. It’s hard to fake.”
“But you agree that this is risky, right? What if he turns on us?”
“The information here looks good,” Cara said, waving the datapad still clasped in her hand. “But I’ll have Deeno look over it.”
Taz chewed on the inside of her lip, still not convinced. “He’s willingly involved himself in the selling of humans, Cara.”
“And he proved that he saved at least some of them.”
“Is that good enough?” she asked, unable to keep the edge from her voice. “How can we work with someone who admits to doing something like that?”
“You worked with Kamanek, didn’t you?”
Taz’s mouth snapped shut, her eyes widening. “I—We don’t know that he’s done anything like that—”
“He’s a mercenary,” Cara remarked, raising an eyebrow. “What do you think he does, plant flowers?”
“No.”
“I think Niro is genuine,” Cara said quietly. “And to be honest, I’d rather trust someone who does bad things for a good cause, than one who does them for money.”
