by Tim Marquitz
The sidewalks were cracked and scuffed, and the buildings looked worn and weathered, a sharp counterpoint to the gleaming brilliance that first greeted their entry into the atmosphere.
No wonder security was so lax.
Taj found herself tightening her grip on her pistol and glancing about furtively, her head on a swivel. Dent seemed oblivious to her concern, chattering on like a tourist guide and pointing out things he felt were interesting about the city, even if they really weren’t.
And once more, Taj wondered how damaged his brain was as there seemed to be far more artificial to the android than there was apparent intelligence.
“Here,” he called out a short while later. “This is the place.”
“Finally,” Taj muttered under her breath. The thrill of the trip had faded a while back.
“Looks…questionable,” Cabe told the mechanoid, glancing back at the rest of the crew, a displeased look pinning his whiskers back.
“Well, it’s not as if a being who deals in secretive information can exactly advertise his business and set up shop in the Art or Trade districts,” Dent clarified, “hence the less than sparkling location we find ourselves in now.”
He started off toward a door hidden in gloom at the end of the alley. The crew slowed, putting a little space between the android and them.
“I’m quite sure this is what we need to do right now. We need supplies and money if we’re gonna have a chance at finding a new home, not that I need to tell anyone that.” Then she pointed at Dent, who walked on ahead, seemingly oblivious to their conversation, the android still spitting out travel details alongside the occasional inappropriate word. “Right now, he’s our only hope.”
“Which tells you how gacked we really are,” Lina said, and the crew nodded their agreement.
“Enough! Let’s get this over with,” Taj told them. “We can brandish I told you sos later.”
“You’re taking all the fun out of my self-satisfaction,” the engineer told her. “I was already warming up an I told you so, wrapping it around my tongue for ease of access.”
“It’s what I do,” Taj replied, glancing up to see Dent waving at them from the door, which was now cracked open.
“Come on,” he called out.
Taj shrugged and hurried toward him. The others followed her closely, but she kept her eyes locked forward. That was where their future was, and the last thing she wanted was miss out on an opportunity to see her people to safety.
Dent disappeared inside, and Taj ran up behind him to keep from losing the android, her eyes adjusting to the dimness of the small hallway they’d entered. Dent didn’t seem bothered by the darkness, Taj presuming his eyes were better attuned than the species he pretended to be.
He marched on, leading the way down the hall until it turned to the right. Then he came to a halt a moment later, a door appearing out of the gloom at the end of the second hall.
The whole place smelled of mold and dust. Taj snorted to keep from sneezing.
“This the place?” Torbon asked.
“It is indeed,” Dent answered, knocking on the door in a clearly prepared series of rhythmic thumps that sounded juvenile in its simplicity.
“Oh cool, a secret knock,” Cabe muttered, shaking his head. “This is like every bad holo I’ve ever watched.”
Silence followed the knock for what seemed like a long time afterward, and Taj found herself glancing over her shoulder to watch the corridor behind them while she waited.
Though she couldn’t hear anything out of place in her surroundings, and the musky scent of the building didn’t trigger her sense of alarm, she stayed ready regardless, hand on her pistol.
The crew grew tense as they waited, and Taj just wanted to get it over with.
When she was ready to kick the door down and storm inside, she heard latches unbolting on the other side, then the door was eased open. A pair of bright emerald eyes stared out at them, their brilliance catching her off guard.
They shined like emeralds in the dim lighting.
“Zi vall ra,” the alien said, and Taj realized the translators didn’t even attempt to make sense of the words.
“Ra tora bal,” Dent answered, and the alien hiding behind the door offered a dour grin and opened the portal wide, waving for them to enter. The translator ignored Dent’s comment, too.
“Come in, come in, Dent,” the contact said, breaking into a wide grin. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Thank you, Pandu,” Dent answered, replying with his own grin, however twitchy it might be. Pandu didn’t seem to notice or care.
That was when Taj got a clear look at the welcoming alien.
Like Dent’s Sperit form, the alien contact was short compared to her and her crew. However, quite unlike Dent, Pandu was nearly wider around than he was tall. He had short, stubby legs that didn’t look as if they’d be able to hold him up let alone allow him to move. She couldn’t see anything resembling knees on the man.
Taj immediately pictured him dropping onto his side and rolling wherever he needed to go.
She bit back a laugh, disguising it behind a loud cough, and followed the rotund alien inside. Pandu’s shirt barely managed to contain his bulk, looking more like a blanket draped over him, and she could swear she heard the material screaming as he waddled away. Tiny arms, thick as tree roots, swung back and forth stiffly as he walked, as if they were engaged in the movement solely to keep him from toppling over sideways.
Torbon wasn’t so restrained, and Taj heard him chuckling behind her. Lina hissed at him under her breath, telling him to shut up, but he ignored her.
“I wasn’t sure you’d ever arrive,” Pandu told Dent as he led the way through the small foyer toward a thick metal door at the rear of the room. “I’d begun to worry after receiving your frantic message.”
“I was uncertain myself,” Dent answered as Pandu pressed his squat hand upon a sensor plate set low on the wall beside the door. “The Terant arrival had me concerned, I’ll admit. I had not expected them to track me down so quickly.”
Pandu nodded as the door clicked and swung open their way, the alien clasping its edge, pulling it toward him. “I can understand your concern. I had plenty of my own once I learned you had escaped the Terants and were making your way here with utmost haste.” Pandu shuffled to the side of the hall, basically moving behind the door itself as if he moved too slow to get out of its way.
Dent stiffened then, freezing in place. “Wait! How did you know I escaped? I hadn’t sent you any—”
The wafting scent of leather oil and alcohol struck Taj right then, and she realized why Pandu had taken cover and Dent had stalled in his apparent accusation.
She bared her teeth and hissed.
“Bloody Rowl, we are so gacked.”
Chapter Eleven
“The mechanoid is all yours, Doran,” the wide alien mumbled from his safe spot behind the door. Only the shuffle of feet answered him from within the other room. “Remember our deal,” the round alien whined. “I have your word.”
Taj reached for her weapon, realization sinking in fast, only to hear a gruff voice warn her away from it.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Furlorian,” the voice said, a shadowy figure strolling out the doorway, followed by a dozen others, all dressed similarly in black leather pants and loose, frilly shirts.
Their auburn skin stood out in stark contrast to the paleness of their shirts. The men had narrow, crimson-colored eyes, and each wore their bluish-black hair long, some of the men tying it back with strips of colorful cloth, which stood out in sharp contrast. Their features were long and thin, almost hawk-like, completely the opposite of Pandu, their chins coming to triple, bony points. Several hid the growths behind scraggly wisps of blue-black beards.
Each of the men held a blaster pistol. All the weapons were pointed in the crew’s direction, blackened eyes of death staring them down.
“You did good reaching out to us, Pandu.” T
he first man out the door patted the little alien on his head, as if he were a pet. “The boss will be proud. And fear not, we’ll hold true to our promise, as we always do.”
Taj groaned when she realized who the men were. “Pirates,” she muttered, easing her hand away from her gun as she’d been told, all under the harsh scrutiny of the pirates.
“We prefer to be called mercenaries, if you don’t mind,” the lead pirate, apparently the one Pandu had called Doran, told her, waving his gun in her direction. “We’re businessmen, out to make a deal wherever we can, that’s all. Nothing so cutthroat as what one would associate with pirates, I assure you, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation, now would we?” he asked. “Now, all of you, ease your weapons out of their holsters and hand them over like good little cats. Your guns are making me a mite nervous, and that’s never a good thing for a sensitive fellow such as myself. I wouldn’t want to mistake your hesitance for defiance. That wouldn’t end well.”
Taj growled at the man, and he simply grinned back, no hint that he was remotely threatened.
“You can do as I ask, cat, or we can end this right here and now and I have my men shoot you,” Doran said, shrugging, clearly happy with either option. “The boss has no interest in you or your crew, if we’re being completely honest here. He only wants him.” He pointed at Dent, his grin widening. “Hand the `droid over without a fight and you can go on about your business. I’ll even have the boss call off the men currently encircling your ship at the port, landing pad J-17 I recall it being.” He turned to the man standing at his left-hand side. “That’s the right one, yes, Gully?”
“It is indeed,” Gully responded, nodding. “Plenty more cats on board the ship there, a Wyyvan one, unless I’m mistaken.”
Taj grunted as she realized she’d walked her people straight into a trap, but she still felt she had some wiggle room to defy the man, hoping to call what she believed was his bluff. “There’s no way your ships have arrived already, and my crew are keeping tabs on us through our comm.” She tapped the side of her head. “If you had men approaching the ship, I’d know. We’d have seen your ships land.”
The pirate leader chuckled. “What, you think all the men we have available are in the ships following you? Come now, don’t be so naïve, child.”
He shook his head as if he pitied her, and Taj hated the man even more then than she had moments before when he’d gotten the drop on her.
He was reaching max Vort dislike right about then.
“We’ve an army on Kulora, and more beyond, and those three ships are only a tiny part of it. They’re still in space, in fact, making sure your own ship doesn’t leave without my say-so. And, if I ask them nicely, they’ll blow your ship up from orbit just to make me happy. Shred it right there on the tarmac.”
“You’re lying,” Taj told the pirate.
“Am I?” he replied. “Care to test my resolve, Furlorian? You wouldn’t be the first to try it, for sure.” He winked at her. “Sometimes, people need to learn the hard way. Are you one of those people, cat? Do you need to suffer to learn your lessons?”
She glared at him a moment, but no matter how much she didn’t want to believe the man, there was a malevolence behind his eyes that told her he wasn’t one to play games. Unfortunately, she couldn’t reach out to Jadie or Kal to confirm anything without alerting the man to what she was doing.
They were on their own.
“So, am I to take your silence as acquiescence to our terms?” he asked. “They’re quite generous, if I say so myself, but I’d rather not have to repeat them. Saying them out loud again might make me feel as if I’m being overly generous, if you know what I mean. The boss always says I’m too nice. Might need to prove him wrong here soon if we can’t come to an accord.”
Taj glared a moment longer, feeling the tension in her crew growing as they awaited her decision, and then she gave in, knowing it was the best move to walk away right then. She eased her bolt pistol from its holster and handed it over by the barrel to one of the pirates who stepped up to collect it.
“There we go,” Doran told her, offering a pleasant grin as if he’d politely asked her to dinner and she’d accepted.
It made her regret handing the weapon over.
However, as much as she needed Dent and his resources, she wasn’t willing to sacrifice her crews’ lives on a desperate, half-gacked attempt at resistance. This was not the hill she chose to die on.
“The rest of you, too,” the man said, waving his pistol at the crew, a hint of impatience in the gesture.
There was a weighty moment as the crew hesitated, but Dent’s voice cut through it all, reinforcing the pirate’s demands before things spiraled out of control.
“Do as they ask,” the mechanoid said. “I will not see you hurt only to prove a point as to who can be the most chair. Please, pass over your weapons while you still can. I will go willing with these…men. There is no need for violence.”
Doran grinned. “That right there is a smart `droid,” he noted with a wry chuckle. “I’d do what he says. Well, most of it, at least, minus that chair part, whatever that was about. Is that some kind of secret code you’ve worked out?”
“I wish,” Taj muttered, motioning for her people to comply.
The crew mumbled and complained but did exactly as ordered, passing their weapons to the man standing before them. He collected them without a word and moved back behind the rest of the pirates.
“There, that wasn’t so difficult, was it?” Doran asked, not giving them a chance to reply. “Now, if you don’t mind, clear a path so we can go show our friend here his new digs and introduce him to the boss.”
A handful of weapons waved at the crew, black barrels pointing ominously, and Taj and the others were forced to step aside.
“Pleasure doing business with you, cat,” Doran told Taj as he and his men strolled past. Guns stayed trained on them the entire time, but Doran didn’t waste so much as a backward glance.
Dent did, though. He stared back at the crew, looking as forlorn as his Sperit features allowed, as long as he could before he was led down the hallway and out of sight. Taj felt her stomach knot into a ball, the last image of the mechanoid’s face burned into her memory.
Artificial or not, there was no hiding the sorrow she saw in his expression. He’d failed in his mission, and who knew what the pirates had planned for him.
“Gacking Rowl!” she shouted, spinning around to face Pandu, ready to beat the round off him.
He wasn’t there anymore.
The alien had scurried through the doorway, faster than Taj would ever imagine he could move, and the last she saw of him was his smirking face as he pulled the heavy door shut with a metallic thud. The rest of the crew jumped at the sound.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaah!” Taj kicked the door and felt a sharp stab of pain reverberate up her leg. There was no way they’d get that door open, not without any weapons on hand. “Rowl’s bloody gack!”
Unable to question Pandu to find out where the pirates were taking Dent, she spun around again and bolted off down the hall after Doran and his crew. She couldn’t let them get out of sight.
“Taj,” Cabe called out as he chased after. “What are you doing?”
“I need to see where they’re taking him,” she answered, not bothering to slow her pace.
The rest of the crew followed her, weaving through the hallways until they hit the streets again. There, only a short distance ahead, was Doran and his men, the group clearly not in any kind of rush to ditch the Furlorians. Dent muddled along in the middle of the group, several guns blatantly trained on him to keep him from trying to escape.
Cabe clasped Taj’s arm, dragging her to a halt as she tried to take off after them. “Are you insane?”
She hissed, batting at his hand. “We can’t let him get away,” she told him. “He’s our only chance at making a real go of settling somewhere. Besides, he’s counting on us.” She shook Cabe loose, but he grabbed her
again, this time harder, desperate to hold on.
“Maybe that’s true, but we can’t go running off after them like this,” he implored. “We’re unarmed, outnumbered, and we don’t have a clue as to what we’re getting involved in.”
“You mean like when we were on Krawlas?” Torbon asked, an eyebrow raised in Cabe’s direction. “Seems we did all right there.”
“Not the same thing, and you know it, Torbon,” Cabe hissed at his friend. “We need to be smart about this. This…” he motioned to Taj trying to chase down the pirates, “isn’t what I’d call smart.”
“What do you suggest?” Taj asked, fighting to get the words out past her rage. The last thing she wanted to do was waste time arguing while Dent—her people’s future—was hauled away, never to be seen again.
“We need weapons and a plan,” he said. “We don’t have either.”
“We don’t have time for all that,” Taj nearly shouted.
“Then we make time.” Cabe stepped around her so he was in her face, not letting her go. “I’ll follow them, sneak behind and see where they’re going.” He tapped the side of his head. “I’ll keep in touch via the comm so you know what’s going on. You three return to the Discordant and get some weapons and people to help us out, and then come find me. We can work something out then, when we have our own army at our back.”
“What if they’ve already gotten what they need from Dent and have destroyed him by then?” Taj asked.
“Then we’re no worse off than we are now, but I won’t let that happen.” He grabbed her again and pulled her in close, planting an insistent kiss on her lips, stunning her into silence. “Go, now!” he told her as soon as he broke free, shoving her back toward the crew.
She stood there, staring, a finger trailing her lips.
An instant later, he was gone, racing off after the pirates, who’d disappeared around a distant corner. She struggled to catch her breath, only realizing too late that he’d pulled the same trick on her that she’d done to him.
“Gack!” she muttered a moment after he was gone, torn between racing after Cabe and doing what he suggested.
