by Blaze Ward
The one Aileen had hidden in the engine rooms was half again longer and matte black, but scuffed and scarred far more than this pretty thing.
The guard handed the tool to the officer, who thrust it at Lazarus.
“Open it,” he ordered.
“Uhm, how?” Lazarus looked up at the man blankly.
“What do you mean, how?” the man howled like a lonely coyote on a cold night.
“He’s never seen or used one of these tools, Your Grace,” Aileen stepped around the sled and put on her best simper.
Lazarus had wondered how such apparent rebellion among the non-Innruld could survive and thrive, but he had been thinking in human terms. Humans got mean in situations like this. This person had never been thwarted in his life, so flustered was the order of the day.
Mad, wet, hen.
“You do it, then,” the officer snapped.
For the briefest instant, Lazarus saw a smile flash by on the Kreeghal’s face when he thought nobody was looking.
So, even their loyalists recognized absurdity. Good to know.
Lazarus stepped back and watched as Aileen slotted the head into a hole and adjusted it just so. She stepped back and gestured Lazarus forward.
“Hold and lift to unbolt the mechanism,” she ordered him.
Like he had never opened such a box to check the contents before.
Lazarus gripped it with one hand and braced his feet, understanding that he needed to put on a show now. Rather than grunt and twist, like he was loosening lug nuts, he flexed an arm-wrestling move and heard the bolt squeak in protest as it opened.
Again, jaws dropping open. Like maybe Aileen would have had to climb under the tool and drive upward with all her strength, if she didn’t have to resort to an impact hammer.
Those bolts would normally probably defeat casual strength. This one was barely more than finger-tight.
Aileen stopped his motion and moved the tool to the next corner bolt. All four gave up fairly quickly, and Lazarus lifted the lid off the box with his fingers and stepped out of the way.
The Customs officer pulled a smaller box from the interior. The brand name on the side made no sense to Lazarus, but it was pretty heavy and this crate had been holding machine parts and tools shipped from some central factory to the boonies.
Eventually, the whole box was emptied onto the deck, inspected disdainfully with a sniff and then packed again. Lazarus knew he’d have never gotten them to fit, but Aileen had apparently memorized the pattern and recreated it perfectly.
Awesome to watch.
“Close it up,” Aileen ordered him bluntly. “The officer and I must now fill out all the paperwork for a container that has lost the shipper’s seal.”
Lazarus had a hard time containing the juvenile giggles when she turned to the Innruld officer with an innocent smile.
“Unless there are other boxes here we should open?” she asked. “Each set of papers will take about an hour to fill out, so this sled should only take us three days, if we don’t sleep.”
Both of the guards snorted under their breaths. The Innruld crimsoned beautifully and then snarled in perfect silence as he realized that she was going to require the paperwork.
He had insisted. And those were the rules.
“Here,” the man practically slapped Lazarus on the chest with the clipboard as he turned away.
Lazarus watched them get about fifteen feet away, the Innruld striding like an angry stork and forcing everyone else to run to keep up.
“Your Grace, you forgot your prybar,” Lazarus called innocently, causing the whole party to stop, and the one guard to race madly back and take it from his hands.
Eventually, Lazarus and Remahle were alone in the bay as the outer door closed.
Remahle started giggling so hard that Lazarus was afraid he might fall off his stool.
He did, but the Kr’mari were gliders, so he landed on his feet anyway.
“Priceless,” Remahle managed to gasp out before the next wave of giggles.
Lazarus smiled.
“Now what?” he asked.
“Oh, she’ll absolutely hold his feet to the fire for that paperwork,” Remahle laughed. “She owes him from other trips to Aceanx. In about an hour or so, they’ll be back, and the next inspection will be mostly counting boxes, unless something has gone wrong.”
“What would happen then?” Lazarus asked nervously.
“Then they’d hang us good.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Lazarus
Civilian docks were nothing like the military versions Lazarus was used to. At least in Innruld space. But he also had no reason to doubt the similarities, were he to return to Brasilia Prime Station with Aileen and Wybert and the rest for a night of drinking.
Or, in this case, a semi-raucous tea room. The locals were in the middle of what Lazarus interpreted as an improvisational poetry slam as they got seated in a back corner, with Lazarus in a chair that was probably held in storage for any Innruld that might arrive. His feet swung, but that was okay. Aileen’s chair came with a small ladder she climbed to get up to table level and Wybert had a nest like would hold a burrito in the microwave.
The show on the floor was mesmerizing. A Vaadwig and a—what? It, she, was centaur-like in the same way that Wybert was, with an upright torso and horizontal lower half that had four feet down. Except she had fur and claws and looked like a spotted leopard in the parts of her fur that weren’t covered in a blousy, silk shirt in white that made her golden bits glow.
And Lazarus had never considered how a leotaur tailor might construct shorts until now. Four short pant legs for her, and then buttons down her left side of the…what did you call the long part? Torso was the upright. Stomach? Ribs? Abdomen? Something he had never needed to know before now and didn’t want to ask until later.
And she wore sandals that were open-claw, but protected all of her pads while looking stylish in red leather straps.
Female, if the standard design including breasts on the top part of the torso was followed, although he also wondered if putting them underneath like a cow made more sense.
Not even remotely the question to pose.
The Vaadwig woman looked positively dowdy by comparison, in a loose, gray shirt that buttoned up the front and a skirt that more resembled a tabard, split into three panels to fit around her legs and tail.
But they were warriors from the sound. It had apparently been open mic night in the tea shop. The crowd was heavy, but everyone was standing closer to the stage to watch the two women duel, in a manner where each completed a verse that riffed on the other’s.
Cheers, jeers, and whistles filled the air.
Lazarus just sat and absorbed it, sipping at his tea and trying to figure out how the drink was made. Dried leaves ground up and immersed in hot water was apparently a universal thing, but then you started to add spices. Aileen had assured him that everything that went into it was something Lazarus had tried safely before.
In a multi-species tea shop, he supposed that detailed and public ingredient lists were an absolute requirement. Don’t want to accidentally poison your guests. Bad for the business reputation.
So he watched.
The leotaur woman seemed to be winning, almost dancing with the internal rhythm of her words as she spat them out, rolling her voice from almost a high baritone up to a low soprano that cut the through crowd noise like a diamond blade.
The end came so quickly that Lazarus missed it. The Vaadwig apparently conceded defeat, more or less gracefully, and the crowd settled down to just clapping and stomping. He watched the two women hug once and then jump down into the mob to be surrounded and congratulated by their supporters.
“You have anything like this back home?” Aileen asked as the noise became low enough to talk without yelling.
“I’m not even sure what that was,” he said simply. “Except that some musicals frequently have a dance battle at the climax.”
“Danc
e battle?” Wybert’s face had almost collapsed in on itself, so hard was he scowling with all five eyes and both the outer four and inner two mandibles.
“Imagine the standard adventure fantasy story,” Lazarus tried to explain. “Culminating in the great battle where the hero kills the villain and rescues the princess.”
“You people are weird,” Aileen noted dryly before she grinned and almost rolled her eyes.
“Agreed, but the forms go back to the Iron Age, so I can’t argue with it,” Lazarus grinned back and then turned to Wybert. “With me so far?”
“Indeed, after some translation into something that makes more sense,” the Ilount replied. “We men must achieve great things to impress a nest queen, so we can mate with her. Slaying terrible villains falls under that rubric.”
“Okay, so in a more modern setting, you take the same story, but they are not fighting with weapons,” Lazarus said. “Instead, each side takes a turn dancing to show their grace and skill. Eventually, the two leaders of the sides duel, and of course the hero has the better moves. It is the same with many martial arts vids, although there the combat is more violent and deadly. Still, you must present great skill. Great fu.”
“Seriously, Lazarus, are all humans this crazy?” Aileen asked with a raised eyebrow that finally drifted into the perfect eyeroll while he watched.
“I’m positively boring,” he grinned at her. “I can’t wait to introduce you to some of the people I know back home.”
It was like a light switch had been flipped off. Her face got serious. Lazarus also felt serious take hold of him. The room around them seemed to fall into one of those periodic silences you got at a party.
Even Wybert sobered.
“You think Addison would do it?” she asked in little more than a whisper. “Go to Brasilia with a cargo?”
Lazarus felt a chill wrap icy fingers around his chest. Dare he allow that? Would it help the Rio Alliance?
On the one hand, his people could suddenly call on a lot of people who didn’t think human supremacy was the key to galactic development. Conversely, how quickly would the Innruld object and get involved?
Did Lazarus really want responsibility for perhaps unleashing a galaxy-wide war between species on his conscience? Because both the Innruld and Westphalia would get ugly before they settled it. Of that, Lazarus had no doubts. Supreme power never willingly surrenders itself. Some places had historically been willing to share power on ethical and moral grounds, but usually it required some level of violent revolution.
Like, say, the Rio Alliance issuing a declaration of independence from Westphalia.
Quando no curso de eventos humanos…
When in the course of human events…
“I don’t know, Aileen,” Lazarus finally said, having run any number of scenarios through his head in the silence that had faded around them as tea shop noise rose up again. “We still have your mission to Zhoonarrim first. After that, I’m not sure what Addison will want to do.”
“Will you stay with the ship after that?” Wybert asked, almost comically insecure in his tones. Hurt at even the possibility that Lazarus might move on, after the month or so serving with them.
Lazarus knew he had gotten lucky in being captured by Addison Wolcott and Shiva Zephyr Glaive. He could have just as easily been penned like a zoo animal, or tortured for information that might have given someone else an unmatchable edge in this space.
Especially if the star drives on Ajax were something so far advanced over Innruld Space that he could upset everyone’s apple cart.
And then there were the guns.
Addison had shown him a patrol vessel overseen by the overlords of space. They had ray shielding, but it wasn’t nearly as hard as an equivalent Rio warship’s. Or Westphalian. Would Westphalia’s navy roll over Innruld space if they came this far?
The Security Barc didn’t seem to mount anything bigger than a Star Spear, for destructive power, and only a few of those, relying mostly on Power Bolts, usually in twinned or tripled turrets.
Good for banging on freighters. Might tickle Ajax’s ray shields if he sat there and let them.
“I have to see what Addison has planned,” Lazarus temporized, looking at each of them in turn. “His next cargo might be taking him deeper into Innruld Space, when I need to see if I can find a way home. I don’t have money to buy my own vessel and just sail there.”
“What’s Brasilia like?” Aileen asked suddenly.
Normally, she was the shy one in most crew settings, so Lazarus was taken briefly aback.
“Crowded,” he said. “Population around four billion people, with over eighty percent of that being human.”
“Four billion?” Wybert goggled. “On one world?”
“Greenbriar, the capital city, has a population of about fourteen million,” Lazarus said. “Most of the non-humans live close by, so the population split is closer to fifty/fifty.”
“How do you fit that many people on a world?” Aileen joined Wybert in shock. “Or a city? There are whole colonies I know with fewer sentients.”
“Greenbriar is a city of towers,” Lazarus said. “Towering arcologies in a variety of shapes, although nothing like Skycity above us. Vast amount of land are given over to fields to grow crops.”
“Still, what is the population of the Rio Alliance?” Aileen asked timorously.
“All total?” Lazarus leaned back and Aileen nodded. “Probably about forty billion sentients. Westphalia is five times that, but they have many more worlds.”
Dead shock. Mouths fallen open. Whites of eyes.
Lazarus wondered what he had missed in his studies. Then it dawned on him. All of Innruld Space was physically larger than Westphalia, for worlds, but they were less densely populated. The whole of this Space probably had about one hundred billion sentients in it, but Rio and Westphalia were all human, for the most part.
Innruld Space had at least forty species as members. Just splitting that remotely evenly suggested maybe five billion of one species, living thinly on their worlds and in space, more in harmony with the land.
And easily, utterly dominated by the Innruld overlords, culturally, socially, and financially.
Humans arriving here would be like a nest of fire ants deciding to move into your back yard. They came and did whatever they wanted, and you just hoped that they didn’t decide to wipe you out or push you off the land.
“Oh,” Lazarus saw the truth. “We can’t tell the Rio Alliance about this place. Humans would overwhelm you in a generation.”
“How fast do your kind breed?” Aileen asked in a dry voice.
“Prodigiously, when necessary,” Lazarus replied. “One child per mother per year or two for a stretch of ten or fifteen years is not unheard of on new colony worlds.”
“Ten children in fifteen years?” Wybert’s mandibles flexed all the way open like a flower for a moment before snapping shut. “Every female human? Not even a queen?”
Lazarus knew that motion to be shock so great that Wybert had lost control of the muscles in his face.
A commotion nearby drew Lazarus’s attention. The room had fallen dead silent in ways it had not achieved even when the poetry slam was reaching its crescendo.
Seven Innruld had entered. Five of them were male, and two female. Well dressed in the height of fashion, from what Lazarus had learned. Towering over the rest of the room by two feet or more.
All eyes had turned to this table. Every head in the entire establishment.
The air had a charge like lightning was about to strike. Even Wybert noticed it.
Lazarus glowered back at the intruders just as hard as they stared this way.
The man in the middle of the social circle had a woman on his arm, as did one other. Three looked more like friends than bodyguards. They began to walk this way.
Lazarus considered weapons, but there were none. You didn’t go armed on station. Even Wybert’s powerspear was stashed just inside the airlock for when
he got home.
The round table was metal. Thin and relatively light. Four feet across on four legs. Cheap to haul to orbit for its strength. It would make a useful battering ram or shield in a pinch.
The chair he was seated on was wood. Elaborately carved and delicate, he had been afraid it might crack under his weight, but the men approaching all weighed roughly the same as he did. Just stretched an extra foot.
None of them looked like sailors. Fops in lace, seeing the cuffs peeking out from several jackets. The two women looked like high-bred aristocrats in the mold that Westphalia turned out, rather than working girls who might know how to take care of themselves in these sorts of rougher neighborhoods.
Lazarus slid forward on the chair until his feet hit the deck and he had a grip.
“What, pray tell, is this pitiful creature that sits in my chair?” the leader asked the room in a theatrical, almost melodramatic voice.
“Human,” Lazarus replied simply. “What species are you?”
Up close, those eyes weren’t blue-gold anymore. Something had changed them to a hard azure that almost glowed in the tea shop’s normal dimness. All of them were like that, to one degree or another. None of them had normal eyes, at least for an Innruld.
Lazarus wondered if they had consumed some narcotic chemical before entering an area that wasn’t necessarily off-limits to the Innruld, but certainly not their normal cup of tea.
“We are Innruld, pipsqueak,” the leader growled. “Your betters.”
“Really?” Lazarus smiled harshly at the man. “I don’t seem to remember getting that memo.”
He was aware that he had an audience consisting of most of the tea shop, on a night when an open mic poetry slam battle had the place nearly full. Wybert was practically vibrating with suppressed energy, but Lazarus had no idea if an Ilount was a match for even one Innruld, despite his greater mass and extra arms.
Lazarus grinned at the thought of a martial arts master from Greenbriar inventing a new form of Kung Fu to teach a decapeed with four arms. His own military training had included some level of unarmed close combat training, but nothing like Wybert might need.
