by Juno Wells
Thula and Bula flanked Griggs as she headed for the door, trying to see into the bag to figure out what it was they gave her. Eggs, maybe. Bula smiled. "Costumes with hiding places for many things. Many useful things."
"Knives," cooed Mirti.
Thula nodded, sharp teeth flashing as she chattered at the windows. "A stunner. Something useful. Many weapons. Lockpicks. Other tools. It will be useful."
"Thank you," Griggs managed to stutter. There looked to be at least three more outfits in the bag, along with robes and shoes. She set her heels before they could chuck her out the door. "I can pay for these, really. I don't want to just take them. Let me offer something in return."
"You've already offered much," Bula said. "And you are a special friend. You offered to help us and others, and some day we will cross paths again. These outfits were made for a special lady, who is as dangerous as she is beautiful. That is you, friend. Happy hunting. We will find you."
Thula had a silver bracelet, complicated and finely-wrought, and held it up for Griggs to see. "Look here, look here. If you need help in your mission, friend, press these two pieces together and it will call us. We will come, we will find you. Keep this close, don't lose it."
"Don't lose it," Mirti and Bula called, and then the door opened and a rush of garbage-scented air nearly knocked Griggs back a step.
Before Griggs could do much more than repeat her gratitude for the gifts, she stood outside and the door clicked shut behind her. Griggs scanned the street, searching for Vrix, and shook her head to clear it of the chaotic chatter from the space chickens. All kind souls, to be sure, but overwhelming in their attention. Next time she needed to drag Vrix in as well, so someone else bore the brunt of the fluttering and chatting. Griggs snorted to herself; next time. There wouldn't be a next time unless something went quite wrong. At least the bracelet was pretty; she wasn't so sure the chickens would be able to save her if the situation was so bad that Griggs actually needed help. She glanced at it and shrugged. She didn't have much jewelry, and at least this would remind her of the mission and the crazy space chickens.
She spotted Vrix on the street a few stores down, and picked her way down the rickety stairs in her flimsy slippers. The space chickens needed to introduce heavy boots to their store, otherwise—
Something crashed into her from behind, and a heavy, dark fabric closed over her head. She couldn't breathe. Arms tightened around her chest and a foul smell filled her nostrils, and Griggs screamed. She dropped the bag and threw the assailant over her shoulder, trying to stomp on his face despite not being able to see. She ripped at the hood, but her hands were bound. Someone else tackled her, jabbed a stunner into her side, and Griggs went to her knees. Her feet slid in the mud and electricity raced through her, stealing away the feeling in her fingers. She gritted her teeth and swung her legs instead. She just needed a little room to breathe.
Newton damn it. She lashed out again and vowed she'd never give up without a fight. She'd die fighting before she let anyone treat her like property again.
Vrix
He was just disconnecting his communicator after an unhelpful conversation with Frrar when Vrix looked back at the shop and saw two robed and hooded figures closing in on Griggs as she left the store. His hearts stopped as they threw a hood over her head and tried to carry her off, a scooter waiting nearby. Vrix roared until the windows rattled, and launched himself almost twice his height closer to the bastards.
But Griggs fought back. Slipping and sliding in the mud, and hampered by a flimsy costume and no weapons, Griggs fought like a wildcat to get free. Vrix's world came crashing down around him as one of the assailants hit her with a stunner and she cried out, and the battle rage overtook him.
Griggs managed to knock one down and put her heel in his throat just as the second son a bitch tried to lift her off the ground. She yanked at the hood and then Vrix was there, barreling through the attacker and carrying him a few feet past her until the lumpy robes fell motionless to the ground. Vrix pummeled the body until there was no chance it would get up, and turned to help Griggs.
She crouched a little unsteadily in a fighting stance, still struggling to get the hood off, and the fabric muffled her voice as she growled. "I don't know who you are, but I'll fuck you up. And then I'll find your parents and fuck them up, and—"
Her attitude knocked the battle rage back enough that Vrix could almost laugh. Ready to fight, blind and limping and half-naked. He took a deep breath and tried to get the scales and spikes to stop rattling as he approached her. "It's Vrix. They're both down. Let me help you with the hood, okay?"
Griggs stayed tense as he got closer, and he could just see her trying to sense where he was and when he was close enough to hit. The moment he was in reach, her arm flashed out and tapped his side, testing. Only then did she relax. Probably because she'd grown accustomed to punching him and could recognize him through touch.
Vrix snorted and shook his head, saying under his breath, "You're a piece of work, Griggs."
She exhaled a shaky sigh and Vrix worked faster to get the hood off. The second he pulled it off and her wild hair stood out in a gravity-defying cloud, Griggs turned away, crouched by the garbage heap near the stairs, and threw up everything she'd eaten that day. Vrix looked up and down the suddenly empty street, uncertain of what to do. Then he tried to hold her hair back so at least it wouldn't get any dirtier than the mud and ickiness of the street. Griggs coughed and waved him away. "I'm fine. Just need a second. Find out who those bastards are."
"Were," Vrix said. "You got one of them, I got the other."
"Yay us," she said, though her voice was a little weak. She remained bent over, occasionally coughing or spitting, but Vrix retreated so he could examine the bodies.
He pulled the hoods back and his lip curled. Slasu. Those fucking assholes. Worthless scum. Trying to steal Griggs from him, right off the street. They could have really hurt her. Some of the red battle rage returned and covered his vision with a scarlet mist. He needed a fight. The Slasu died too easily.
Vrix took their clan medallions and identification paperwork, and bit back a snarl. Something moved farther down the street, but a Tyluk merchant took one look at an enraged Xaravian with spikes up and turned the other way without blinking. The one good thing about a criminal planet—no one wanted to get involved in someone else's dirty business.
The door to the shop opened and the three women appeared on the stoop, clucking and fluttering their arms. Vrix looked around for a good place to stash the bodies so they wouldn't be implicated if the Slasu went around looking for their dead. "We'll be gone in a moment, I just need to—"
"Oh my, oh my," one said, her bluish-gray feathers standing up. "A spot of trouble found you already."
Vrix glanced at Griggs, worried that she hadn't straightened from her crouch to insult him and kick the bodies of the Slasu, and draped the robes back over the wrinkled faces. Bastards. "You could say that."
"We will handle it," another one said. She fluttered down the stairs and grabbed the boots of one of the Slasu. "Easy-peasy. Things disappear on this street all the time."
"All the time, all the time," the other two repeated, bouncing down the steps.
One picked up the bag Griggs dropped in the attack and handed it to Vrix, patting his shoulder in a rather matronly manner before joining her colleagues as they dragged the Slasu bodies down the alley and under their house. A great deal of clucking and then the sounds of ripping fabric and breaking bones reached him. Vrix grimaced, not wanting to know whether they were meat-eating feathered aliens, and crouched next to Griggs.
"We need to get out of here."
"Got it," she said, her hands still shaking as she wiped at her mouth. Griggs looked too pale, her eyes still dilated and wild as she searched the street behind him. "I just... My legs are a bit shaky. I landed hard on my knees and I don't know how these clothes are holding up."
He had a solution for that. Vrix took one layer o
ff his robes and wrapped it around her, careful to let her see what he did so she wouldn't flash back to the Slasu hood, then picked her up and cradled her to his chest. Not exactly a standard way to carry a slave around, but no one would challenge him when his spikes rattled. He couldn't get them to lie down, the rage and fury reacting to her fear and pain. Griggs protested for just a second, trying to figure out where to put her arms, then she gulped a breath and rested her head on his shoulder. "Don't tell anyone I let you carry me."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
Vrix strode down the street, also carrying her bag, and snarled at anyone who looked at them. It took an eternity to reach Pyix's, but at least there were only a half dozen patrons in the bar. Pyix took one look at them and handed over a large black bag, labeled with the Xarav words for medical supplies. Vrix nodded his thanks but didn't slow down, and he took the stairs two at a time to get Griggs and her tattered clothes safely away in their room.
He put her down carefully, making sure she had a solid grip on the door to the facilities before he stepped back, and put the medical bag on the bed. Vrix took a deep breath as he looked at her, not knowing what to do when there was no one he could kill to make her feel better. "Tell me how to help."
Something flashed in her eyes, some emotion he didn't recognize, and she just looked at him for a long time. Then Griggs peeled off the destroyed slippers and tossed them near the door. "I'm going to shower and get this stink off me, then you can fill me in on what you learned from the crew. Then we need to figure out how we're going to kill every fucking Slasu on the planet."
"Great," Vrix said. "And you can fill me in on why those three feathered aliens dragged bodies under their house and maybe ate them."
"They were hungry," she said, and the door clicked shut. “And they’re space chickens.”
Vrix shook his head as he puzzled over what the hell chickens were, leaving some of her clean clothes near the door, and unpacked the medical bag to find the right tools to heal up her knees and whatever scratches and scrapes she had.
He didn't want to take her into the Slasu club. It wasn't worth the risk. There was no telling how the two Slasu on the street knew how to find her, and no telling if they'd been followed for any length of time. Maybe that damned Tyluk sold them out. Vrix's lip curled as the battle rage boiled up again. Someone would pay for every mark on her.
But he had to be careful with her. As tough as Griggs was, Vrix remembered Isla's warning that her friend had some damaged spots. He certainly didn't want to be the one to cause her any pain. Vrix listened through the hiss of the shower for any sign that Griggs needed help, but nothing sounded out of place. So he took the opportunity to take the transporter locator out of his bag. Frrar hadn't sounded very confident when he said he thought it "sort of worked," but the engineer promised to bring Rowan in so she could take a look at it as well. Frrar told him about three tweaks to make to the locator. Vrix squinted at the old technology in his hands and shook his head.
Hard to believe that thing was supposed to transport them through space back to the ship. It seemed an impossibility, but Frrar claimed it would work. Vrix really hoped it didn't come to that. He didn't want to risk Griggs turning inside out, like all the experiments Frrar ran.
He didn't look up as the door opened and Griggs retrieved her clothes, disappearing back into the steam-filled room without a word. Vrix didn't know whether to offer more food, since she'd been sick, or perhaps a drink or two. He didn't know the protocol for situations like that. He fiddled with the locator a little more, checking and re-checking that all the right parts connected, then tucked it into his robes. Might as well start carrying it with him, just in case they faced a life-or-death situation and wanted to roll the dice with a transporter.
Vrix had all the medical supplies ready by the time Griggs hobbled out of the bathroom, her wild hair wrapped up in a towel. She eyed him askance. "What's all that?"
"We're going to wrap up your knees and make sure you weren't scratched anywhere by those bastards." Vrix pretended not to notice the redness in her eyes, which Vaant had previously pointed out meant crying. He pointed her to the bed. "Sit."
"It's not that bad," Griggs said. "I think it was just the adrenaline crash that made it hard to walk, it's just—"
"Sit." Vrix endured the silence as she refused to move, then held up the small medical scanner. "I'll tell you what the Galaxos said if you sit down and let me look at your knees."
She scowled but shuffled over to the bed, hugging her robes closer and rolling up her pants so he could see the bloody scratches on her knees. "Start talking."
Vrix ran the scanner over her knee and Griggs sucked in a breath as the healing started, and he gently touched her other calf to keep her from kicking him in the face. "They haven't heard anything else from Heidi, but they've seen more ships circling in the vicinity. They don't look like Fleet ships, so they could be Slasu or other traders. Vaant recommended getting out of here as soon as possible."
"We're working as fast as we can," she said under her breath.
He loved the scent of her skin, freshly washed and clean and smelling mostly of her. "That's what I told them. Did you get hurt anywhere else? I don't think your knees are that bad."
"Just a couple of scrapes. Nothing that won't heal on its own." When he started to object, Griggs patted his cheek and pulled her legs onto the bed, under the covers. "Thanks. I'll be fine. I just want to relax for a second and get my mind right before we have to do anything else."
Vrix packed up the medical kit, glad that Pyix believed in keeping all of his tech up to date and the well-stocked. "I'll get this back to Pyix and find out what else he knows about the Slasu. The two that attacked you were from a different clan than the guy outside the warehouse, so there's no telling if they're working together or separately."
She exhaled and her eyes started to redden again, so Vrix retreated. He didn't like her upset; he wanted to comfort her, to stretch out on that bed next to her and hold her close until she slept, safe and secure. But if she didn't want that, then he'd back off, as much as it pained him to see her suffer.
Vrix headed back to the bar before he changed his mind and draped himself around her like a warm blanket, and handed the medical kit back to Pyix. "Thanks. We had an incident a few streets over."
The older Xaravian grunted and stowed the bag, sliding a glass full of liquor down the bar to Vrix. "Not surprised. You're taking a dangerous path, warrior."
Vrix leaned his elbows on the bar and studied the liquor, wondering if a drink was a good idea. He lowered his voice and gestured for Pyix to get closer. "More dangerous than you know, warrior. The girl isn't my slave. We're on a mission to rescue one of her friends who disappeared a few days ago. We've run into a dead end and might need some help."
Pyix's eyebrows rose and the bones rattled in his hair as he glanced around the bar for any eavesdroppers, then leaned closer to Vrix as well. "Who took her?"
"We think it's the Slasu."
Pyix spat on the floor in response, his lip curling with disgust. "Fucking scum."
"Two of them attacked us outside that shop you recommended. The one with the three crazy women."
The bar owner flicked a bit of food off the bar and gave Vrix a sideways look. "They're unique, but good friends to have."
"I'm beginning to think you sent me there for a reason, after listening to the ladies a second time around." Vrix sipped the liquor, waiting for the older warrior to deny or confirm his suspicions.
"I don't like to see a brother going down the road of slave-owning," Pyix said, a hint of a smile revealing sharp teeth. "I meant to save you from yourself, and save the girl from a short life after she tried to kill you. It was a favor to run her in front of the sisters and see if they'd bite."
"Thanks," Vrix said dryly. "They disposed of the Slasu bodies as well."
Pyix grimaced a little. "I don't want to know how."
"No, you don't." Vrix glanced down the length of t
he bar, then slid the piece of paper with the name of the club over to Pyix. "I've been told the Slasu here might know where our friend is, or can at least find her for us."
Pyix shook his head. "Bad people, warrior. No honor, no laws. You might walk in and never get out again. Even if you get out, you'll have to pay a price you might not be able to afford just to get in."
"I don't think we have any other option. What kind of price? Money? Blood?" He hoped it was something he could handle, so Griggs didn't have to exert any kind of effort at the damn club.
Pyix slid a bottle down the bar to another customer before returning his attention to Vrix. "Your girl pays the price. Anyone bringing slaves in has to make them dance for the group, or at least the owners. They're slime, the Slasu, and have fucked-up ideas about entertainment."
"I'll leave her here," Vrix said. That was the easiest decision he'd made in days. "I'll go myself, and—"
Pyix shook his head. "They won't let you in by yourself. The Slasu are very suspicious, particularly of Xarav warriors, because they know we don't take slaves. You're too unlikely a customer unless you've already got a slave, and they'll expect some kind of double-cross if you just walk up and talk about purchasing an Earther."
Vrix grumbled as he scowled into the glass of liquor. Fates damn it. He couldn't risk Griggs. He couldn't. And he wouldn't make her perform for those bastards after they tried to kidnap her just hours earlier. He shook his head. "Then I don't know what we're going to do."
The bar owner drummed his fingers on the bar, frowning at he stared at the few patrons who gathered near the fire. "You should go. Take the girl, if she'll dance. It's the only opportunity you'll have to find your friend. There are rumors going around about what the Slasu are actually up to. One of the new arrivals said there are Fleet ships in this sector, but they haven't landed to arrest anyone. They're going to ambush someone, but there's no telling whether they're after you, the girl, or the Slasu."