by Blaze Ward
But Humans weren’t that strong. Lazarus was using a euphemism for not very far.
She could grasp that. Lazarus had proven to be a stand-up being. The rest were criminal scum. Emphasis on the scum part, since she had criminal covered herself.
“But we want information from people you don’t trust, as well as possibly recruiting crew members?” Eha asked, still a little put out.
But Little Miss Perfect back there wasn’t used to not being in charge. Must rankle her fur, scales, whatever, to have to take orders from someone else. Aileen grinned where the spymaster couldn’t see it.
“I’ve been gone for half a year,” Lazarus said. “News of the battle might have made it this far out, but I’m more interested in learning what else we’ve missed. I can’t imagine that the Rio Alliance has won the war, or lost it, but things change. Especially with what happened to Ajax.”
“Your spy might have done more damage?” Eha asked. “Enough?”
Aileen watched Lazarus shrug those enormous shoulders and turn back to study the Churquen woman.
“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “Maybe. We can’t just land at Brasilia to ask, without knowing if the rest of you would be welcome.”
“And yet you only brought us two?” Eha asked, causing Aileen’s ruff to stand up a little.
“Aileen is stronger than she looks,” Lazarus said. “And both of you are smarter than I am, at least when it comes to the sort of street smarts we’ll need at a place like Yisan.”
Aileen felt her ears go back and her whiskers press flat. Humans apparently blushed by turning red in the face, but Lazarus had spent too much time around her, because he grinned. That just made it worse.
“Bad?” Eha asked.
“It is a wretched place, from everything I’ve heard,” Lazarus said, his expressive face screwed a little sideways as he turned his head fully to engage the spy. “Everything is available for sale on the docks, if you have enough cash and people don’t think you are a cop.”
“Then why not bring the rest?” she asked.
Aileen had heard the story. Hell, Eha had, but she just presumed the other woman wanted to talk through her own misgivings.
“Wybert would get into a fight if he was here, so he shouldn’t be here,” Lazarus said. “That means Addison needs to stay back and keep a watch on the Ilount. That means Ajax. It cascades from there, but you two are needed the least to maintain my ship, so you’re free. And you’ve got the skills I need. Cargo and espionage.”
Aileen shrugged in turn. Lazarus was right. She knew the docks better than anyone on the crew, and he’d said that Zhoonarrim Station wasn’t all that different from Tershuvi Port, on the surface of Yisan. She’d shoot first if it came to that, and then argue legalisms with Humans later.
Assuming Lazarus didn’t do it first. He could be violent when he wanted, just like he could get the rough spots on her spine with his nails when she needed it.
They made a pretty good team. Eha would bring her own skills and sensibilities, but she was going to be all about overthrowing the Innruld, so it would flavor her swim.
Aileen shrugged again, internally, and lined up the star she wanted on the viewer and locked it in. This would be about three jumps, unless she got dead lucky with the first one, but she wasn’t trying to get that close to Yisan from here. Just into the system where they could look around and see what the smugglers were up to.
She was, after all, already an expert at smuggling.
Ten
Eha
From orbit, Eha wasn’t all that impressed with the planet. Maybe a little stormier than some of them she had looked at. It was an oceanic world for the most part, apparently similar to the Human home world, but with even less dry land.
Churquen didn’t swim, but the city was located a little inland on a protected bay, so she had little fear of having to get near that much water. No, it was still the Humans she would need to fear.
Lazarus had explained that about half of the Humans would see her as some sort of animal, even after she spoke, betraying their own Westphalian background. The others would most likely be trying to get coordinates out of her so that they could be the first to arrive on an alien world, either for trade or predation.
She knew how to use the pistol she wore. The technology was different, but the physics of an opposable thumb grip and a trigger were universal among bipeds, and she qualified for her top half.
And her tail could always wrap around some fool tight enough to break bones or strangle them. Her kind hadn’t evolved with poison to kill their prey.
Humans were especially strange in having ports like this on the surface of a planet, rather than in space, but she wasn’t trying to change them. This ship would land on the surface of Yisan at a place called Tershuvi and make a modified First Contact. Information and maybe some trade, whatever could fit into the aft cargo section safely, if anything presented itself.
Information was still central, though.
Up until now, all the stories of the Rio Alliance and Westphalia had been filtered through a single Human. She had no reason to doubt him now, not after actually flying aboard Ajax and watching the man nearly shatter a small moon with that terrible weapon.
But she needed to see how the rest of Human space saw itself.
Innruld space was stable in a three-tiered cake. The Overlords themselves in the Innruld. Below that, their bureaucrats in all the various flavors and responsibilities. Then the combined collection of all the other species.
Eha hadn’t probed Lazarus too deeply for similar socio-economics of his home, so much as listened to the things he said and the places he talked about. Brilliant child from poverty elevated by education to prosper in the Rio Alliance military.
What would these people be like? At Zhoonarrim or Dormell, smugglers were usually one or two steps above the bottom of things, preying on the weakest for the strong. At best, they were evading the law to give the little people something that might provide some manner of escape from the drudgery of their everyday lives, but only at a terrible cost that might not be evident until much later. Like those six boxes she had caused Addison to transport to Dormell, Aceanx, and Zhoonarrim.
Yes, Eha Dunham understood smugglers. That snide smile they all developed after a while, if they weren’t dedicated to a higher calling, like Addison Wolcott. The sass in the eyes when they knew they were putting one over on the system that they nominally served.
What would Human smugglers be like? If she had to classify Lazarus as a hero, then the rest probably fell into a zone she understood all too well.
Back home, that made them the easiest to seduce or blackmail, with mind or body, if they weren’t careful about their lives.
“Stand by for landing,” Aileen said a little too loud.
From the tone, Eha assumed the Yithadreph woman was terminally insulted to be landing on a planet without any sort of traffic controls in place. After all, orbital space was huge, but there was still the risk of two vessels unable to maneuver well and trapped on intersecting vectors.
But Yisan was a smuggler’s paradise, and those sorts really didn’t believe in even the littlest amount of laws and structures that would make life better for everyone.
The Tragedy of the Commons, where everyone preyed on everyone else, rather than working towards a harmonious whole. In that, Aileen would classify the smugglers not much better than the Innruld on almost anything.
Eha could work with that.
Eleven
Lazarus
One of the reasons Lazarus had picked Yisan in the first place, over places closer to the line that would get him home, was that the surface gravity was so low compared to standard G. About ninety percent, which would be just a little heavier than the two women were used to, but not enough to seriously compromise them in the short term.
Addison had explained that Churquen didn’t swim worth a damn, but he wasn’t planning on going out on the water anyway, and he had Aileen if thin
gs got hairy. He could swim, but Aileen was as close to a Dire Otter as you could get. Her cabin on Ajax had been completely redone so she slept at night in her own wading pool.
She’d be fine on Yisan.
“Landing imminent,” Aileen called as the pincke began the last few feet of descent on oxygen/hydrogen thrusters, the pincke itself engulfed in a fog of hot steam. “Fifteen feet. Ten. Five. Three. Contact.”
Lazarus had his hands poised to override, but she was probably landing better than he could right now, both eyes on the screen as the bottom radar watched the ground come up, and both hands delicately adjusting as a strong crosswind off the ocean wanted to push them off the center of the pad.
She was an absolute natural. But he knew that. It was just another of the reasons he felt safe with Aileen and Eha with him, rather than any of the others.
Outside, the weather was just pissing down rain, but that wouldn’t really impact anything. It did, however, remind him that his two companions were used to living aboard a starship or stations, where there was no such thing as weather.
Thankfully, Thadrakho had planned ahead.
The pincke settled and Aileen powered everything down according to the exact textbook. He might not have done as good a job, but it had been years since Lazarus had flown with any regularity.
“Landed and secured,” she said aloud.
He nearly laughed at the sour look that came over her face as she looked out the front windshield and registered the slashing rain. If anything, Eha would be worse off, but they didn’t have to leave immediately.
“Local meteorological report says it should pass in about thirty minutes or so, and then we’ve got the rest of the afternoon with a high pressure front overhead,” Lazarus said helpfully. “That means clear and warm enough.”
She turned her glower in his direction and he grinned.
“You’ll be fine,” he continued. “A little wet and that’s only a maybe. Your shoes will handle it. Eha has to slither around puddles, you know.”
She relented, but he could see the growl in her eyes.
“I’m going to make myself some coffee,” Lazarus unbuckled and rose. “Would you like any?”
Without a crew consuming it, Ajax had nearly two tons of coffee beans down in the freezer. More than he could go through in his lifetime, maybe. None of the new crew liked the hit of jitteriness that accompanied the caffeine, but Lazarus was in heaven again, able to work first thing in the morning instead of feeling his way to coherence.
“I would like some,” Eha said. “Extra thin.”
Lazarus headed aft to the kitchenette and got to work. He would make himself a full batch that was a little extra-strong and pour some into a mug for the Churquen woman and cut it seventy percent with hot water, until it wasn’t much more than a pale tea by comparison.
But it also wouldn’t make her jumpy.
They sat and drank in companionable silence. Aileen took a few sips from his mug, as he had expected, but otherwise didn’t like the stuff. More for him.
Eventually, the storm front passed. Outside, the pressure rose rapidly and the sun came out, turning everything just a little muggy.
Aileen was dressed for it, with an extra jacket Thadrakho had made up for her in a waterproof material close enough to cotton duck. Eha had something like an opera cape, long in the middle to cover a little of her coil but shorter on the sides so as to not drag in the mud when she moved.
Lazarus had reverted to the reds today. He even had his original jacket, that bright crimson with the beer company logo for Lunatic Alchemist Brewing on the back.
Anyone in space who had ever been into an emergency pack, for any reason, would probably recognize that logo. Here, it would mark him as more of a refugee than a naval officer.
Hopefully, that would distract folks from the truth. And lend credence to his story of how he came across two new alien species nobody here had ever heard of.
They emerged into the early afternoon sun and Lazarus took a deep breath of the first natural air he had breathed in more than a year, with so much time in the graving dock getting Ajax ready to finally fly.
Aileen emerged next, and then Eha, and he looked around.
Tershuvi Port didn’t have a tram service that ran in a nice loop for sailors who didn’t want to walk. Nobody here was willing to pay for it, or for the taxes to support something so civil. And the pincke didn’t have any sort of land vehicle they could have hopped into and run about in, although Lazarus could see buying or stealing something if he was going to take his time getting back to Brasilia.
He shouldn’t dawdle, but the list of people who had known where Ajax was going to come out, and when, wasn’t that long, and most of them were Almirantes of some sort, or extremely senior politicians who should have been above reproach.
Somewhere, a bad apple threatened the entire barrel. So he was on Yisan, walking across the packed turf and gravel beds of the port. It was only about a half mile to the main terminal itself, and he had programmed the pincke to only respond to the three of them and nobody else, so that ship was safe.
And he had access to funds from Ajax, so they weren’t impoverished either. Lazarus just had to be careful, in the middle of a place he could charitably call a pirate haven, when he was Rio Alliance Navy, about as close to the cops as most of the people he would encounter on this planet would ever get.
He smiled and sauntered. Aileen had stubby legs, and Eha could only slither so fast, so it was more of a stroll than anything. At least it had been pouring rain, and most folks were inside, so he wouldn’t make much more of a scene than necessary.
After all, nobody on this planet had ever met a Yithadreph or a Churquen.
At least, not yet.
Twelve
Aileen
She knew better, but Aileen was still horribly insulted at how poorly this port was run. She was used to stations, where you docked according to rules and fees. Officials with clipboards—CLIPBOARDS!!!—met you before anything could be moved from the cargo deck.
Organization.
Addison had been a smuggler, not a pirate, so they hadn’t ever had to visit places like this. For a reason.
The surface under her feet as they walked was compressed gravel. Only the landing pads themselves were stable, usually either hardened concrete or cut stone. And it was apparently warm enough for grass to grow in strange clumps, although not any trees anywhere close to what she could see.
She already knew there was enough water to support them.
And the ships around here…
In Innruld space, most of the system-hauling ships never entered the atmosphere, leaving that work to local vessels or specialized shuttles like the pincke. Shiva Zephyr Glaive was a clockwise coil of a ship. You didn’t have to have symmetry.
Everything she could see was sleek and symmetrical down the centerline.
And boring. Mundane.
She wanted art in her marine architecture. Elegance. Design.
Pirates apparently made lousy artists.
They moved close to the main building, what Lazarus had called the terminal.
Again, nothing like Zhoonarrim Station, with the lower decks for working folks and then moving up to the spires of the Innruld in Skycity. Here, she could see a variety of buildings, but most of them had the look of warehouses, at least farther out.
Closer in, everything looked like bars and shops.
The bad parts of a system concourse, when you took a wrong turn and ended up down in the places where you had to occasionally pull a knife on someone.
Or, in her case, a pistol. Stupid, drunk Humans looking for trouble would get shot out of hand, and she could always claim ignorance of their laws. Or say she was defending her honor against a rapist, whatever the stupid, furless bastard had actually said.
If he wasn’t around to give testimony, he couldn’t call her a liar later.
You tall assholes keep that in mind.
“You’re growling,�
� Lazarus said quietly out of the corner of his mouth.
They had ended up walking side by side, with Eha a pace behind.
“Sorry.” Aileen felt her whiskers pull flat against her face.
“I’ll shoot first,” he offered.
And he would. Aileen knew Lazarus felt an extra layer of protective over all of them. Alien, true, but also women, and his culture had some sort of masculine overtones that said women were to be cherished and safe, or you weren’t a man.
Silly, but she would take advantage of that.
They came to a powered door made of something transparent and heavy. It slid to the side with a thump as they entered sensor range and Lazarus stepped through first.
Aileen had to tap it with a knuckle as she crossed the threshold.
“Silicon based?” she asked him as he had stepped to the side to wait.
“Safety glass, yes,” he said. “Silicon-based and refined with heat to a very stable form, covered over with a layer of polymer to keep it from scratching and hold shards when it shatters. Cheap to make and incredibly durable.”
“Huh,” Aileen reponded.
The weird shit you could do on a planet, when you didn’t have to plan for pressure failures.
Inside, the place looked more like a station. They were in a big foyer, surrounded by shops that seemed to be mostly bars, occasionally with some food, and at least one bodega. Escalators took the visitor to a second and third floor, with mezzanine balconies overlooking and presumably containing other shops.
The noise hadn’t fallen completely silent, but Aileen could see the ripples of heads suddenly turning this way to stare at her and Eha.
One spacer had been in the process of exiting the facility when they entered, and had staggered to a halt about fifteen feet away. Humans apparently came in just about every color of skin that you could imagine, as this one was much darker than Lazarus, almost the color of old wood that has been handled so much that oils had turned it nearly black. And his hair was matte black.
