by Lyn Gala
Aliens wandered in and out of circular benches that were interrupted by four aisles. Max’s camera was lined up with one of those breaks, and he saw straight across to the opposite end of the room where an actual alcove sat empty.
The whole room was fifty feet by fifty feet, and there were far too many aliens in it for Max’s comfort. He understood why some of the aliens were there. He spotted Carrington in an even more ridiculous hat than before, and Xena at her side. Bundy was on the far side of the room and he kept glancing toward Max before ignoring him. No doubt his bad mood had returned double. There were three pith-helmet Pajekh and many of the tall, nostrilly Chosen. The former were clustered in a group and the latter walked the room in a way that made Max think of guards or politicians.
A goose poop-green Smarties alien sat on the bench closest to Max’s camera. Max wondered if that was the same one that had come to Bundy’s meet-and-greet. And then there were a scattering of aliens Max didn’t know. A green jellyfish with an enormous trunk and a set of tentacles growing out of the center of its head shifted to the right, and Max spotted two Hunter aliens, their orange pyramid bodies standing out in a room that had more greens and blues and purples.
Max’s stomach heaved at the sight of them, and his hands itched with the memory of warm guts sliding over his skin. He shivered. And here he thought the day couldn’t get worse. Whatever Max had done wrong in a previous life, it must have been bad. Really bad.
The aliens fell silent and turned toward Max’s left. Instinct had Max moving closer to the wall to try to see around the corner, but of course that was an idiotic thing to do because he couldn’t see around corners on a television screen. No wonder the aliens kept calling him an idiot.
Max’s moment of levity as he silently made fun of himself vanished when Rick slid into the room. His tentacles were curled so tight that he was having trouble even walking , and Kohei walked next to him.
“What the fuck are you doing here? Oh hell no.”
Rick and Kohei kept moving toward the center.
“Kohei, you promised you would give him my message. Rick! Rick!” Max screamed, but Rick didn’t even rotate an eye in his direction. Someone had Max on mute.
“You turn the sound on right now so I can tell Rick exactly what I think of him coming here. I have a right to tell that moron to get back to his god damn ship. Do you hear me? I demand the right to talk to him. I must have some rights, and I fucking well demand them.” Max screamed. Unsurprising, nothing happened.
A Chosen alien followed, and when Rick and Kohei sat on an inner bench, the Chosen one moved to the center and hauled his bulk up onto the table. Aliens sat on the closest bench and the table in the center turned ever so slowly. It gave Max a nice profile of that huge upper lip. So this was the judge.
It would have been awesome if someone had explained the proceedings to him, but the universe didn’t have lawyers. The judge started wailing, and the volume on the microphone made Max flinch away from the screech. Luckily he only got a half second of that before the translated voice replaced it.
“The Tribes Carrington charges the Ugly Rick of manipulation of a moron species to circumnavigate the sanctions against Ugly planet.” The judge gave that one sentence summary, then Carrington stood.
“The Human Porter cannot work any math the Human Max claims to have created and hopes to sell,” she said. It took Max a half second to connect Human Porter to Dee, even when he knew that Dee’s attempts to do technical translating had led to this mess. “The Human Max lives with the Ugly Rick. The Ugly planet is under sanctions.”
She sat. The whole time, the table holding the judge rotated.
Bundy stood. “Human Max and Ugly Rick came together once with the weapon. Human Max had knowledge of weapon. Human Max came alone after that. The navigation program was registered to the Human Max.” He sat.
If this was a trial, either humans or aliens had a truly fucked-up idea of what it meant to argue a position. They were focusing on facts, but facts meant nothing. They could mean anything. If a recruit had an AFOQT score of fifty, that could be good because it met the minimum standard for being selected for pilot training. It could be bad if only twenty slots were open and twenty other candidates had higher scores. It could be humiliating if the person had scored fifty-seven on a practice or exciting if it was the highest score a person had ever gotten. The test score was just a number. The context of that number was more important than the bare fact.
No one was trying to explain these facts.
The Smarties alien stood. “Human Max has separate account from Ugly Rick.” It hunkered back down more than sitting.
Max saw the pattern. When the last person sat, someone in the judge’s line of sight would stand and testify. So how long would she keep rotating, and would Max have a chance to speak? The speakers signaled that they wanted the floor by standing. Okay. Max could play this game.
He sat on the end of his narrow bench/bunk and prayed the judge allowed him to speak before Rick. Max adored Rick—loved him beyond all reason. However, Rick had the self-preservation instincts of a stoned lemming. No, a tweaking lemming. At least a stoned one would have the good sense to lie on the couch and do nothing. This idiot had left the safety of the ship to sit in a room full of aliens who were calling him ugly to his face.
Before getting kidnapped, Max had thought of himself as being pretty non-confrontational, or as non-confrontational as a fighter pilot could get. But now... he had fantasies about cutting off tentacles and oversized lips.
A Pajekh was speaking. “Human Max used credits from his account to install new sensors on the ship of Ugly Rick.”
“Hey, that’s our ship, thank you very much,” Max muttered. The judge was turned in his direction, and Max stood.
“Can anyone hear me?”
Everyone turned toward him, so that was a yes. Max's face heated, and he didn’t know why. It was a reasonable question. Max couldn’t claim the navigation program was his, but maybe he could mitigate the damage. “I created the weapon because Hunters invaded my ship and I didn’t like having to defend the ship and my family with a maintenance hook. I wanted a defense that would have less likelihood of me ending up dead. Can I ask a question of someone who is in the room?”
The judge’s table stopped, and he had to shift around so he faced Max. Max got the feeling that this was not how it was supposed to work in this part of the universe. Tough shit. “On my planet, a trial like this often includes people asking each other questions. Can I do that?”
“Who would you ask a question of?” the judge asked.
“Tribes Xena.”
“What question would you ask?” The judge seemed to push his lips out even farther, which elongated all the nostrils along the side of his nose and made him look sillier.
“I want her to describe her impressions of me when we worked together.”
“That is not a question.”
Damn logical aliens. “Did I seem to know what I was doing with weapons? Better?” Max stomped down on his temper before he said something that would earn him a contempt charge in a human court.
The judge’s table began to rotate slowly again, and Max took his seat. Every court show he’d ever watched said that a lawyer should never ask a question he didn’t know the answer to, but these assholes would never believe a word out of his mouth. They had already dismissed him as an idiot. He needed a character witness, one that the rest of the universe thought was pretty. When the judge swiveled toward Xena, she stood.
For a time, she was silent, and bile pressed at the base of Max’s stomach. He couldn’t defend Rick from a prison cell. What would happen to him if the authorities took their ship? Rick and the kids would be stranded here, surrounded by people who hated them. If Xena didn’t tell the truth, Max didn’t know how to convince these guys that he was competent to take the blame for his own actions.
“Human Max adequately explained the function of two different modifications to energy weapons, both of which wil
l increase lethality. He also adequately explained the function of defensive garments he offered to sell and he identified weaknesses in the security of our ship and helped to design remediation plans.” She sat so quickly that her hat flopped even though it was much smaller than Carrington’s. Hopefully her testimony didn’t create a problem with her boss, but Max couldn’t care about that right now. Before the judge could swing back around to face him, Kohei stood.
Max held his breath. Better Kohei than Rick, but this was still the stuff of nightmares.
“I saw Human Max Father testing many weapons. He worked often with Ugly Xander Sibling. He brought human theories of weapon design to designs in the archives of the ship of Ugly Rick Father.” He sat.
As much as Max knew that Kohei was playing it smart, Max hated hearing Kohei refer to family like that. They weren’t ugly. Not even a little. They were graceful and beautiful and annoying, but never ugly. Max clenched his teeth and wished the judge were facing him. Instead the table stopped. No one stood. No one spoke. But the judge faced the far side of the room and the table did not budge.
Was the judge ready to make a decision? This felt arbitrary. Max hadn’t gotten to say half the things he wanted to. But Rick and Kohei stayed seated. Max had to follow their lead because he had no idea what was going on.
He was going to research every fucking judicial process on every fucking planet when this was over. He hoped he wouldn’t be locked in a cell while he did it, but according to television, researching legal cases was standard fare for the unjustly condemned. And television never lied.
Aliens shifted on their benches, some scooting sideways to get out of the judge’s view. Ah. He was looking at the Hunters.
The larger one stood. “One ship of law-breakers reported that humans are irrational and dangerous when offspring are in danger.” It sat. The judge remained motionless. Alien spectators inched away. The Hunters sat. It was the world’s strangest standoff with silence being the major weapon. Max didn’t understand why the judge assumed these Hunters would know about a pirate ship of Hunters, but then again, the universe focused on certain assumptions, like people didn’t go to war against their own species. So maybe other species stuck together more than humans.
If so, the universe was in for a shock when humanity got this far, and they would. Max knew his people. As soon as they got their heads around the idea of aliens, they were going to build clunky, cramped spaceships so they could come up here and yell at them.
The Hunter stood, slower this time. “The human killed several Hunters and threatened death to Hunter Leader. He released Hunter Leader so Hunter Leader would take message back to all Hunters to avoid the ship with Ugly Offspring.”
“Damn right,” Max muttered even though no one could hear him. Several aliens did glance at him. The Hunter sat and the judge’s platform started to rotate again.
An enormous alien stood. “Human Max hit my tentacle,” he said before sitting. Damn. That was the guy who had tried to push past them on the boardwalk. Max had stepped on one of his tentacles. Okay, maybe it had been a stomp, but still. It seemed strange to come to court to tattle about something like that. Aliens were odd.
One of Bundy’s customers stood and testified about Max’s accuracy with weapons. Every time someone fell silent, the judge was facing away from Max, and he suspected that was intentional. People didn’t want to hear what he had to say, but Max had a right to speak his mind. Or he didn’t because this was an alien legal system and they had never heard of Miranda or the Constitution, but damn it, Max wanted to speak his mind.
He leaned forward, ready to leap from his seat, given the opportunity, but it never came. Instead alien after alien testified about Max’s threats to cut off limbs and his habit of stepping on tentacles and his proficiency with weapons. This was going sideways. Rick had a right to two lifetimes of I-told-you-so.
Squirming in his seat, Max watched another alien sit, and then Kohei shot up even though he wasn’t directly in front of the judge. However, no one said anything. Kohei waited until the judge had rotated the last degree or two before he told the story of Xander’s birth and how Rick and Max had to keep him moving. He described such weird details, like how Max would stand in the water until the oils had washed away from his skin and the water soaked into his cells so his skin wrinkled. Personally, Max considered wrinkled skin pretty damn normal. He liked baths.
However, more and more, aliens turned to study Max. He was starting to feel like a bug pinned on a board.
Kohei rotated his largest eye toward Max and waited until the judge was turned in Max’s direction before he sat.
Blessing Kohei’s insight and strategy, Max leapt up. If he was going to be condemned as a psychopath instead of a moron, he had a few things to say to these aliens. And they were damn well going to listen. Hopefully.
Chapter Twenty
Max took a deep breath. If this was his only chance to speak, he needed to make it count, so he had to suppress the urge to run in a circle and scream in frustration. That wouldn’t exactly disprove the theory that he was a moron.
“I came up with the concept for that weapon, and I had every right to sell it.” Max remained as calm as possible. These people liked facts, so that was what he had to focus on. And he would apologize to James later for not giving him co-credit. “Dee would be able to do that math, only she has been isolated and afraid for so long that she probably can’t think straight. And that would be the fault of the so-called smart individuals on that police ship. We were both on that ship, but instead of letting us see each other, the assholes on that ship kept up separated and confused.”
Max took another calming breath. He was not doing well at remaining factual. It didn’t help that he recognized the stress in Dee’s eyes. In SERE training they said that nothing was more damaging than being alone. A person could handle broken bones better than systematic isolation. But these aliens wouldn’t understand profanity, and if the translator was being too literal, Max’s point would get lost under the verbal garbage.
“My people dislike most bodily fluids, and we have a special hatred for excrement. So when we find an individual as dislikable as excrement, we call them an asshole. The association of the body part with that particular bodily discharge makes our feelings known.” Max had grown disturbingly good at that sort of explanation. Being a father had contributed to his new skills as much as the alien kidnapping. The kids did ask the strangest questions.
Back to his argument. “The people on the ship were assholes because they isolated us and didn’t give us a chance to mentally recover from the shock.” Max considered the closest Chosen alien. “Like some other species, many on my planet believed we were alone in the universe, that we were chosen by a deity to be unique. Others believed there was life in the universe, but could not prove it because our part of the galaxy was so quiet. So seeing alien ships was a shock.” That was an understatement. “And those assholes saw shock and took it as proof that humans are morons. That sort of assumption makes the rest of you look like morons.”
Max debated sitting. He had made his argument. However, he hadn’t addressed the one part of his con that had outed him—that navigation program. Maybe he could convince these aliens that they had judged humans too quickly, but they’d had plenty of time to decide they didn’t like the Hidden ones. So this part wouldn’t end well. That ingrained hatred was going to make these guys assume that anyone who loved a Hidden one had to be a moron.
Looking at Rick sitting near the judge, his tentacles all curled, Max couldn’t deny him. Not even by avoiding any mention of him.
“And I have a right to sell the navigation program. I didn’t write it. I don’t even understand it, and Rick’s attempts to explain do not help. But Rick is my husband. What is mine is his and what is his is mine. That makes it mine to sell.” That caused such a stir among the gathered aliens that Max was distracted. Tentacles undulated, feet shifted, mutters filled the room. On his bench up front, Rick uncur
led a couple of his larger tentacles. Max had hit a nerve.
Max had more points to make; however, by the time he thought about making them, the judge’s platform had revolved, and he was no longer facing Max. With a sigh, Max sat back down. Damn it.
No one else stood to speak, and the judge rotated nearly all the way around until he faced Max’s family. Then Rick stood. He was short, his walking tentacle curled more than it had been at any time since the pirate invasion.
“I hired Max believing he was moron species and would make a sufficient carrier of young.” His tentacles curled more, either because he felt guilty or because he knew how the rest of the universe judged his reproductive methods. Either way, Max wished he was standing down there, his arm tangled with some of those curly fry tentacles.
“He said he was warrior, and I believed he lacked an understanding of the meaning of the word. When I was a moron, I allowed Hunters on my ship. They tried to kill offspring, and Max killed many of them. He had no weapon so he used a maintenance hook to rip out internal organs. Then I knew he was warrior. I offered to return him to a place of safety, and he said he found me desirable. I find him desirable. We name each other husband. He can spend my money. He can claim my work.”
That caused even more tentacle twitching, and this time the mutters intensified to chatter, and when half the aliens sounded like cats in heat or tone-deaf opera singers, it made for a pretty cacophonous courtroom.
The judge stood, and Max expected the room to go silent. Instead the room transformed in the blink of an eye into a cocktail party sans drinks. Carrington stood talking to two Chosen ones while Xena headed for the exit. A small crowd had gathered around Bundy, and since he was short, he vanished under the moving wall of tentacles and backs.
What the fuck was going on? Max touched the screen, willing a barrel shaped alien to move aside so Max could get one last look at his family. At Rick. Despite every instinct that told Rick to hide, he was here. He had spoken up and defended Max the best he could. Max had thought he couldn’t love Rick more, but he did.
