Escape

by Blaze Ward

  Lazarus liked the implication that perhaps freedom wasn’t necessarily a widespread thing in Innruld space. Wolcott didn’t suggest that the overlords weren’t a just and caring superior class. One did not do that with their kind, not if one wished to survive, but you could skate that fine edge, especially if you have just rescued someone from death and are helping those same authorities track down the blackguards that may have not filled out all the necessary forms in triplicate.

  “And to discover the secret of his origins?” the bureaucrat got a new light in his eyes. Just as cunning but not as violent. “Open a new trade route?”

  “Presumably there is at least one planet of his kind unserved by Innruld trade, my lord,” Wolcott caught the tone and seemingly joined the creature in a conspiracy of mercantilism. “I see no reason that a Vaadwig ship should garner all those profits. Perhaps I will need to undertake a few voyages of discovery. One hopes that the planet lies somewhere near to Dormell, so we can continue to use this Station as a trade base from which we might all grow wealthy.”

  Lazarus liked the gleam of pure avarice that appeared in the bureaucrat’s eyes for a moment. An untapped planetary market? Merchants needing to haul goods from Dormell?

  Who wouldn’t want to get rich in the next gold rush?

  They just needed the idiot human to finally remember what part of the sky he came from.

  It made a lovely game. Wolcott was apparently the master of it, well in advance of this Innruld bureaucrat for whom it was probably just a task that couldn’t necessarily be foisted off on one of the lesser species. Especially not if they could get rich.

  Can’t have the lesser species growing powerful now, can we?

  Lazarus hoped he could somehow engineer a meeting of the Innruld with Westphalia. Let the human supremacists run headlong into the overlords of the galaxy and fight it out. The Rio Alliance could use allies, but not the Innruld. Churquen. Qooph. Yithadreph. Even Vaadwig, as long as the rest eventually forgave him for the nasty practical joke he was about to play on one of their captains.

  Still, they appeared to be over the hump. The Innruld opened a drawer on his side of the desk and pulled out the ultimate weapon of the modern bureaucrat: the clipboard with its triplicate form.

  “Fill in as much as you know,” the being ordered Wolcott, assuming without any evidence at all that Lazarus was illiterate in Interlac/Innruld. “We will have him update the records as we learn more or he grows more linguistically adept.”

  “As you command, Your Grace,” Wolcott replied, taking the weapon and pulling out a pen with which to do battle.

  Lazarus watched, innocent as a doe. Wolcott never looked up, nor asked any questions, just filled things in while leaving most of it blank.

  They had Lazarus sign the bottom with a scrawl his own mother would not have recognized, and then it was back onto that long concourse of the station port. Pictures had been submitted already, so at some point Lazarus would hopefully be issued a standard Innruld identity card. Under an assumed name. As a lost refugee from unknown space.

  Maybe planning a revolution.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Aileen

  She didn’t like people. Noise. Chaos. Overload.

  That was why Aileen liked cargo. Simple problems. Simple solutions. Cure the ship’s emptiness with the fewest number of moves now or tomorrow.

  The rest of the crew understood that about her. Left her alone most of the time. Let her assemble and disassemble her cargo bays her way, just putting their muscle to work when she needed to change the configuration on an evolving basis.

  She’d been dead nervous about Lazarus. That size screamed predator to her subconscious. Male didn’t help, especially coupled with bulk.

  The shower had been a trap, to see how the human would react to her nudity. Her perceived vulnerability. With Wybert and Remahle armed and hiding close by, in case they needed to get involved and zap him with something.

  Nobody had mentioned anything to Addison. Wasn’t any need. Lazarus had mopped the deck without complaint. Scrubbed her back without comment, even though she knew from the look in his eyes that the female human form must look substantially like her, presumably without the whiskers and fur, but similar shape.

  And they had breasts. He had stared at hers more than once, but never stayed even within arm’s length longer than necessary. Never let his hands wander to where his eyes might have strayed. Behaved himself around total strangers.

  The human was an officer. Had been one in command of his own ship before this, from his stories. But he also took orders without complaint. Listened to Kuei, Khyaa’sha, and the Loadmaster without any of that male guff. Took orders, executed, waited for more.

  Asked to borrow a book politely, read it, and returned it with a speed that told her how literate he really was, moving on to the next book.

  Addison had him back on the ship now, buttoned up against any of the locals deciding to capture him for a circus or something. She was in charge of Thadrakho and a shopping list, at least until the Innruld dipshit in charge got over himself and lifted the cargo isolation on them that he had slapped around an unknown species.

  Nothing in the bays was time-critical. Addison had already built slack into the schedule because he had needed to go somewhere without the Innruld being any the wiser.

  They’d be cleared by tomorrow, if the locals held to form, and she could get rid of two of those six boxes along with about a third of the rest. Then move on and get loaded for the run to Aceanx and the next two boxes.

  She’d be glad when the stuff was gone. She wasn’t a rebel in any hard sense of the word, but didn’t like the Innruld any more than the rest of the crew. Those boxes would destroy lives when the contents made their way into those oh-so-delicate salons in the Skycity above her, or the others around the universe.

  Maybe break the Innruld. Or just give them something else to do instead of breeding the next generation, and they could kill themselves off and make the galaxy a better place.

  But that was tomorrow’s problem. Today, she had Thadrakho and shopping needs for Lazarus. And she needed to do it, because nobody else really read books and Addison had given her some extra cash to start a ship’s library. More than what they already had electronically, but Aileen liked the feel of waterproof pages under her fingers.

  Thadrakho followed quietly, like he did. The man lived for instructions from his nest queens, so he just automatically defaulted to subordinate around her, especially since she was usually moving boxes around and his height was helpful, even if Lazarus was so much stronger.

  Nobody was following them, as near as she could tell. Not that what she was doing was any great secret, but she felt better being anonymous. Addison had modified her marching orders slightly, so she found herself in a shop that largely specialized in Innruld fashion. Per her cohorts, anything big enough around the waist and thighs was fine, as the legs could be cut off later to the right height.

  She felt like a child walking into the store. Thadrakho behind her didn’t help, as he was almost as tall as the manikins in here.

  How could anyone control legs that long? Or keep arms from hitting everything when you moved? Must work, both the humans and the Innruld had arrived at the same design independently.

  “What need brings you?” the merchant asked, looking forever down than long, elegant nose at her and sneering that way he probably did with any of the lesser species.

  A Yithadreph shopkeeper would have asked “How can I help you today, mistress?” and been smiling.

  Aileen swallowed the retort on her tongue and flexed her whiskers forward solicitously.

  “Alien crew member needs new clothing, but is confined to ship,” she answered flatly. “Erect biped. Six feet tall. Heavier than the Innruld, but of the same basic design outline. Pants, shirts, outerwear. Shoes will be custom-made later.”

  “The human,” he said without emotion.

  “The human,” Aileen agreed. “My Direc
tor felt that Innruld might be a good fit for start, if we can find something wide enough.”

  She could see avarice at being the man who dressed the human warring with species distaste in his eyes. What would it do to his reputation to be known for also dressing humans? Would he be able to carry another line of clothing as a new species came to station?

  She looked around while the man stewed. Shirts and vests were generally available anywhere, as most species had shoulders and arms where you could always cut off or roll up sleeves, depending, if you could find the tremendous circumference humans had.

  Pants were where they differentiated themselves.

  “What are the human’s measurements?” the merchant finally asked, his greed apparently greater than his superiority.

  Aileen pulled out the piece of paper Lazarus had translated and read them off.

  “Color?”

  “He’s been in red from his emergency kit since we rescued him,” she felt like sticking a knife into the conversation, just because. “I’m more interested in size and fit. Color can come later.”

  “He wore a Clan design on his back earlier,” the man said. “Do we know the parentage?”

  Trust a tailor to notice that first. And assume it was his coat of arms.

  Aileen decided to be a little extra mean. The shopkeeper was another one of those oh-so-superior Innruld.

  “I could get a picture of the design, if you think it might be reproducible,” she said, laughing inside at the thought of Innruld overlords advertising for a human brewery, however innocently.

  Lazarus had found it amusing that he did. What might the rest of Innruld space be like if she could pull a fast one?

  “Do we know which Heraldic Officer of their College of Arms should be consulted?” he asked, suddenly breathless that he might be dealing with rich nobility instead of a poor spacer.

  “We have not yet identified his homeworld,” Aileen snapped. “I will consult with him and see what his laws and heritage allow.”

  Like, advertising a human drinks manufacturer, for a liquid most species consider poisonous, in a place no human has ever heard of.

  Screw you, buddy.

  But she never let that thought anywhere near her whiskers. Too much risk he might be able to read her if she did. And the best revenge on the overlords that she could think of was to make them look silly.

  “This way.” The shopkeeper led her deep into the store, towards a section in the back she wanted to translate as Fat Innruld Clothing. Certainly the cuts were generous, compared to the pale leanness of the masters. Lazarus was a foot shorter and probably comparable in weight to most Innruld, but she had never seen a fat one before.

  Didn’t know they came that big around. Better, some of them must be short and rotund, because she found several set of pants that would almost fit as is.

  Shirts were impossible here, as she looked around. Even the spherical Innruld didn’t have the shoulders of a human. She wondered if anyone did, or if they would need to just find something stretchy enough to wear like a second skin to keep him warm.

  Now you see why I have fur.

  Bottom half done, she took Thadrakho to a pawn shop that specialized in weird. Space was always a bizarre place to work, but most of your equipment was fairly standard. There were only so many ways to interpret physics.

  Thadrakho, however, had been in here before. He took her to the back and she swore the Necherle was drooling as he ran his hands over a piece of equipment she couldn’t have identified if her life depended on it.

  “Okay, I give,” Aileen said. “What is it?”

  “Sewing machine,” he clicked back at her, all four antennae stuck straight out in excitement. “I can learn human patterns and adjust things. Or make them from bolts of cloth.”

  Necherle were weird. No two ways about it. But service to the nest was baked into his genetic structure, and he had accepted Lazarus as one of them.

  And didn’t the galaxy need more Necherle tailors?

  Aileen looked at the price and blanched.

  “That’s how much a used one costs?” she asked Thadrakho, shocked.

  “Industrial model,” his voice oozed excitement through the clicks. “And I can afford.”

  Huh. Addison certainly hadn’t given her nearly enough funds for something like that anyway. But if Thadrakho was all in on buying it for himself, she could stretch funds for fabric and supplies.

  What would a human look good wearing, without any fur but the reddish-blond on top?

  While Thadrakho and the shopkeeper Vaadwig dickered over price, Aileen wandered the rest of the store. It wasn’t one she was familiar with, but obviously her shipmate had been in here before, as he walked right to the machine he wanted.

  There were books. She touched them lovingly. Addison mostly kept entertainment stuff for the readers, but she preferred histories and biographies over escapism. Plus, she had a human to educate.

  Two books seemed adequately interesting. She grabbed a third one, kind of a high school primer on Innruld Space that was truthful enough for someone just starting out. Fabric wasn’t something this store did, but she knew others on the station, closer to the Skycity elevators, where choices would improve.

  Aileen watched Thadrakho pushing the wheeled cart that held his new toy up to the counter and pull a wad of bills from his bandolier, humming to himself with excitement. They paid for everything and headed back to the ship with this first load, and to let others have a station break before her next expedition.

  And maybe, just maybe she could convince Lazarus to let her take a really good picture of that beer company logo.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Addison

  Dormell wasn’t a quivering mass of rebellion just awaiting a spark, but there were still angry people to be found, if you knew where to look. Addison had left Ereshkiki Nisab in charge of the ship and wandered down into some of the darker places on the docks, where the beautiful people never went, and might not even send their armed servants in small groups.

  It wasn’t unsafe, for civilians. Only intruders who might be spies, or gendarmes thinking the citizens they encountered here were law abiding and friendly.

  Addison knocked on a particular hatch that wasn’t ever left open during business hours. An eyehole slid open and three eyes peered out at him.

  So, the Kreeghal, Vallas, was on duty today. Good to know.

  Those three eyes studied him closely for a moment, unblinking and dark green, then looked around behind him before the woman grunted to herself and closed the eyehole. The hatch itself slid into the wall a moment later and Vallas almost smiled at him as he entered.

  Kreeghal were the next step squished for the bipeds, even smaller than a human. Four and a half feet tall, male or female, give or take. Innruld weight on legs not much longer than Aileen’s. Longer arms, so maybe a Kreeghal shirt would fit Lazarus’s shoulders, but the human’s torso was far too long, unless they found some sort of dress tunic that normally came down to Vallas’s knees.

  She turned her attention back to the corridor behind Addison until he was past the hatch and then triggered the mechanism to close it again and seal him in.

  The room was surprisingly well-lit for a dark back room where illegal deals were frequently made. Wooden tables and a few benches of a higher quality than this area of the docks should have had.

  Addison looked at the bar and snickered to himself. Lazarus had explained the immense range of ethyl alcohols humans regularly consumed: by color, taste, base ingredients, and apparent toxicity. But humans also had the concept of a tea room, so Lazarus would have probably fit in just fine here.

  Addison made his way to an empty table well away from the half-dozen others in here and coiled himself. The Tea House Keeper was an ancient Mizanet who moved with the deliberation of his age, oozing slowly across the floor on a monopod like the giant land snail he was.

  Addison wondered if the man moved at the pace just so the tea was properly
steeped when it arrived, or if that was just luck. Tea took a while, but Addison wasn’t in a hurry.

  Ameqran the Mizanet was built roughly like Wybert the Ilount, except his vertical parts were in the center of a single long foot, rather than at the front of the ten-footed-body. He had the four arms like Wybert on his torso, but moved on a single, enormous foot that could slither across broken glass or burning coals for as long as the man could hold his breath.

  The tea was perfect when it arrived. Ameqran was like that. Addison paid and nodded as the man slowly retreated to his bar, a polite glacier that made quiet, squishy sounds as he crossed the metal deck, even if he left no trail.

  Addison sipped at the tea, but he already knew it would be too hot, so he leaned back on his coil and studied the room. Mostly Directors of one sort or another, plus the merchants that they dealt directly with. Because this was a closed society, admission by invitation only. Innruld and their friends need not apply.

  His contact emerged from a rear chamber and Addison felt his breath speed up, just the slightest bit. Churquen were rare in this sector of space, but a woman like Eha would have stood out in a room filled with their kind, long graceful stripes starting at her neck and running almost to the tip of her tail, dark amber honey painted on an emerald background.

  Addison remembered to keep his jaw from falling open and cursed the cover identities that kept him from courting this woman openly. They had more important duties to the nest than mating, although he would have gladly given up his spy games for her.

  Eha, however, was all business, all the time. Honey colored eyes focused on him as she slithered close and they briefly entwined in greeting before she coiled nearby. Not across the round table, but on his left, just out of immediate reach.