Escape

by Blaze Ward

  She glanced up at him now, across the empty sled, everyone moving at a Yithadreph’s walk.

  “So far, so good?” she asked quietly.

  “Yeah,” Lazarus nodded. “Keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

  “I do understand that feeling,” Aileen grinned. “Like a charge of lightning in the air that hasn’t grounded out.”

  And then they were back at the airlock hatch. Lazarus watched Aileen enter a complicated code to open the door and everyone filed inside. He walked sideways as they did, just waiting for someone to come running at them from a side corridor, violence or madness in their eyes.

  Nobody did, but that didn’t stop him from standing just this side of the hatch as Aileen closed them back up.

  Only when the metal sealed did he feel the knot in his shoulders relax. Aileen had the same movement in her shoulders, so maybe it wasn’t just him.

  They grinned at each other for a moment.

  Onto the lift, they ascended back into the relative safety of the ship, but Addison was standing there when they arrived. Or coiled there. Whatever a Churquen did when they stood up on their tail.

  The look on his face was not promising.

  “Addison?” Aileen asked as the lift stopped.

  “Lazarus and I have been summoned by my superiors,” he announced in a tight, almost angry voice.

  Yes, that was the other shoe Lazarus had been expecting.

  Chapter Thirty

  Addison

  Addison watched the impact of his words on the team that had just delivered the cargo. Aileen’s scowl was predictable, but Remahle’s snarl took him aback for a moment.

  “And they expect us to just accept that?” Remahle growled. “Turn him over to them when they ask, so they can pick his brains for anything he might know?”

  Addison turned his attention on the Kr’mari. Noted the tiny hands, designed to hang to limbs and help climb trees, also ended in claws that were half-flexed right now. Pack-sign. Lazarus was one of them, as far as much of his crew was concerned.

  But the orders from Eha had been very specific. And they had come from her, so she was on station right now.

  Waiting for them.

  “Those are my orders,” Addison said, trying to keep a lid on things with his crew.

  His friends.

  “I’m going with you,” Aileen announced in a tone that Addison might have used to slice meat.

  “You’re not cleared for this,” Addison attempted to soothe her.

  “I don’t care, Addison,” she snarled up at him. “If Remahle’s right and they basically intend to kidnap Lazarus, I’m done flying for them. If you allow it, then I’m done with you, too.”

  Addison felt his eyeslits snap open in surprise. She was angry. Lazarus hadn’t moved from the thing he called parade rest, except that his shoulders and those terrible muscles across his upper chest had flexed. Like he was holding a similar rage inside, but not giving it voice.

  Addison considered. It was poor tradecraft, allowing someone into a different cell that they didn’t know. That behavior opened up all sorts of risk, but Aileen wasn’t bluffing.

  “Addison,” Kuei’s voice suddenly sounded over the intercom. She must have been listening in. “That goes for me and Khyaa’sha as well. You’ll need a new crew if your superiors carry through with this.”

  Addison felt the world drop all the way through his long intestines like a swallowed ice cube that stubbornly refused to melt.

  “What you’re talking about is mutiny,” he said in a very quiet tone. Not an accusation. Maybe pleading instead.

  “Yes,” Aileen took a step closer and poked him in the chest with one finger. “We’re supposed to be better than the Innruld.”

  “The orders just say to bring him,” Addison tried a different tack. “There’s nothing that says he can’t continue to fly with us.”

  “If it was that easy, they would have shown up on your deck to talk,” Aileen snapped. “Not separated you and Lazarus from anybody that might help stop them from doing something stupid.”

  Addison didn’t have a good response to that. He felt the same way.

  But what choice did he have? Effect his own mutiny? Tell Eha and her people to take a slithering leap into a river?

  But looking into the eyes of these three, he understood that Eha had just put him into an impossible situation. As Lazarus had feared, Addison expected that Eha would demand everything the human knew, and might resort to violence and maybe even torture to get it.

  Lazarus would give them the location of the Rio Alliance if pressed, but he might also route them directly to Westphalia without saying anything, and let Eha’s people fly into a deathtrap that might cause all of Innruld Space to become fair game.

  “You realize it is all a trap, right?” Lazarus finally spoke, in a voice so deep in tone and dark in color that Addison felt his scales flex up like feathers unconsciously. “Aileen’s right.”

  “We won’t know until they force it, Lazarus,” Addison replied. “The rest is just speculation until then.”

  “Granted,” Lazarus agreed. “But I want you to understand that I’m feeling boxed into a corner much the same way as those seven Innruld did. You’re my Director and Aileen’s my boss, but I will not walk into a cattle chute without a fight.”

  Addison didn’t understand the terms Lazarus used, but there was no mistaking his intent. Those Innruld had just been punks bullying people. It hadn’t ever gotten personal, either way. Just two groups solving a simple problem with violence that the Innruld didn’t really understand.

  Eha and her people would probably be prepared for trouble. Expecting that they could overwhelm a human on numbers, assuming they didn’t just bring in some stun weaponry and beam Lazarus down if he resisted. And Aileen when she fought back. And Addison when he took sides.

  Sides.

  There were only supposed to be two. Had only ever been two. Humans represented at least two more, depending on how you wanted to count it.

  Either way, nothing would likely ever be the same.

  “Kuei,” Addison raised his voice. “Listening?”

  “I am, Addison,” she replied immediately.

  “Round everyone up and send them back here,” Addison decided. “This needs to be a crew-wide thing, if we’re going to do it.”

  Lazarus retained the frown on his face, but Aileen smiled. She’d been with him long enough to know how his mind worked. And could probably read the scales around his chin for cues.

  What was the best way to prepare for mutiny?

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Lazarus

  Lazarus studied the room after the bouncer finally let them into what he could only describe as an old-fashioned speak-easy. Locked door with a vision slit in it and some serious deadbolts holding everything to the frame. Vaadwig bruiser protecting inhabitants.

  The only thing that threw him off was the smell of tea. His brain kept expecting that whiff of alcohol to permeate everything, but instead herbal hints filled the air. The folks in here were an eclectic mix of species, some he knew and some he had only read about in Aileen’s books, like a Zentra, over by the bar.

  But Addison had led them to the farthest, back corner. Aileen had found the two of them chairs, hers a stool with a foot ladder and his a folding, metal thing probably meant to make an Innruld uncomfortable, should one actually be allowed in here.

  The shopkeeper was a Kdari, another of the leotaur folk like the woman that had won the poetry slam, according to how Aileen had scored it. He wore a tight shirt in green under a black apron sporting various stains, and gray quadrupedal pants that came down to the tops of round boots done in black leather.

  The man approached with menus and left them with as much of a smile as Lazarus supposed he and Aileen were likely to get, as the tea-master seemed to know Addison on sight. Fortunately, Khyaa’sha had prepared him, so Lazarus knew what three or four of these mixes would taste like, stuff safe enough to indulg
e in without risk of poisoning or accidental narcotic overdose.

  Aileen seemed more nervous than he did, but Lazarus supposed that she was feeling like she had reached the end of her bluff.

  He had known that something like this would be coming from the first moment he came to understand that Addison Wolcott, the intrepid smuggler, was working for an organization. Criminals, rebels, or just businessmen, they would demand to know what value Lazarus might provide, that they could exploit it to gain an upper hand against someone else.

  That their enemies happened to be the Innruld that would most likely be getting their due, just meant that Lazarus was more likely to make common cause with them.

  If they asked nicely.

  He silently tapped his left wrist on the edge of the table, just to remind himself that the metal and leather bracer was still there. Aileen noticed the motion and a small smile came as far as her eyes.

  Addison seemed distracted by the room, but Lazarus had no baseline against which to compare. He had, however, managed to sit himself in such a way that the front door, the bar, and the doorway to the interior were all in front of him. Wouldn’t help him if they came with beams out, but at least they’d be in front of him.

  Just because, Lazarus shifted his hands to the underside of the table, lifting slightly with his wrists to see how much it weighed. And that it was not bolted to the floor.

  “Do you think that will be necessary?” Addison asked in a low voice.

  “I’m hoping they have the sense God gave a goose, Addison,” Lazarus replied. “What I don’t know is what form that will take. Do they shoot on sight? Talk until I’m blue in the face? Offer me an actual deal, although they have no idea what I want?”

  “What do you want?” Aileen spoke up, watching the Kdari slowly make his way over to take orders.

  Lazarus let the interruption frame his thoughts and give him time to think. Tea was ordered and the three of them were alone again.

  “Eventually? To get home,” Lazarus told her. “Maybe bring an embassy with me to negotiate trade and political alliances against Westphalia. Kind of depends on how this goes today.”

  He hoped it would go well enough that he could take Addison and Aileen with him. They would probably enjoy Brasilia, he thought. And Addison, or at least Cormac, knew the way back to Ajax, so Lazarus couldn’t just steal a ship and rely on luck and intuition to get him there. He would need the others, if he wanted to take his own ship home.

  Other conversation at their table stopped as the interior door opened and a person Lazarus interpreted as a female Churquen slithered into view, tea mug in one hand and eyes only for them. Addison had started with a quiet gasp when she appeared, so Lazarus assumed that she was the reason they were here.

  He looked for goons accompanying the woman, and saw none. No obvious ones, anyway. Nobody was paying that close of attention to them.

  He decided not to touch the tea when it arrived, suddenly too nervous about what someone might put in it. He’d try to find a way to interrupt the others as well.

  It would have been nicer if she had brought along soldiers to make an obvious threat, instead of just triggering his paranoia by joining them as if nothing was going on.

  Or was it all that innocent and Lazarus had overreacted? But Aileen had joined him out on the precipice, as had Addison, so maybe there was more to it than just him being a stranger.

  The woman slithered to the open fourth spot at the table and nodded to him, specifically, before glancing at the others.

  “Addison,” she turned her attention that way as she coiled herself. “Brought friends?”

  “Eha, this is Aileen Enjehn, my loadmaster,” Addison replied conversationally, like this was just tea and not a deeper conspiracy. “And Lazarus, who is probably the reason you have come as far as Zhoonarrim to speak with us, rather than sending someone else.”

  Lazarus rose from his uncomfortable chair and offered her a bow. She might misinterpret a hand out to be shaken, as that wasn’t an Innruld thing. What other cultures needed to make it obvious that you were unarmed by offering an open hand?

  Eha studied him for several seconds as the tea-master returned with several small pots steaming lightly. After the Kdari retreated, Lazarus reached out with a leg under the table and lightly tapped Aileen with a foot as she reached for her mug.

  She looked around confused for a second and then turned her head his way. Lazarus shook his head ever so slightly at her and then smiled at the other two.

  Aileen retracted her hands like she had touched a hot stove.

  “You seem nervous, Lazarus,” Eha offered. “I really did just come to talk.”

  Maybe so. And maybe she’d been in transit during the time he was on Aceanx, and hadn’t caught up fully on all that news. He was not feeling charitable, or overly warm.

  “Culture shock,” Lazarus lied facilely to the woman. “Back home, there are primarily four intelligent species for most of known space. I can see nine in this room alone, none of which I knew six months ago save myself.”

  “So it’s true,” she said. “Humans are from a distant part of the galaxy that has never yet encountered Innruld Space?”

  “Addison and I believe it is just a matter of time,” Lazarus replied, locking his attention on the woman and trying to read her non-verbal cues. “Either one of your ships will stumble into human space, or more likely one of our explorers will come here.”

  “Is that how you arrived?” Eha’s eyes were almost the color of hammered gold. Vertically slit like Addison’s. Larger than the Director’s and expressive, but she wasn’t telling him anything right now.

  “I was fleeing for my life from an enemy task force,” Lazarus decided to let that much truth out. It would keep them nervous about humans, at least for now.

  “Task force?” she asked.

  “Twenty-one warships formed up and fighting as a single squadron,” Lazarus replied.

  He let his mind wander back to the ambush. The sixteen Phalanx-class destroyers of the GunWall itself. Four Archer heavy destroyers being protected. And the CommandWall at the back that had been too prepared for a simple navigational error dropping everyone into the same area at once.

  “They were too much for the one warship I commanded,” he continued after a beat. “My ship was badly damaged, so my crew evacuated and I fled into trans-space, looking for a place to blow the ship up. It contained secrets Westphalia should never have.”

  “I see,” she said, slightly taken aback, probably at the thought of human war fleets running around in a galaxy that didn’t understand what organized war really was.

  “After that, I was in an emergency escape pod that was accidentally destroyed on my first encounter with Shiva Zephyr Glaive.” He smiled lightly to take the sting out of the words. “Wybert continues to apologize, but all my technology was lost, save the suit I was in. Addison rescued me and has offered me a berth on his ship for the time being.”

  “The time being?” She glanced over at the other Churquen for a moment.

  Something passed between the two of them that Lazarus couldn’t identify, except that Addison seemed almost smitten by the woman. Was there some level of mating dance also wrapped up in the relationship? How might that alter all these equations?

  “It is open-ended,” Addison spoke now, his normal voice a little husky, as if to confirm Lazarus’s speculation.

  “What if we were to make you a better offer?” Eha came right out and played her first card.

  Badly, too, since she had no idea what that might constitute. If Addison had told her anything at all of value, she would have most likely approached it differently.

  Lazarus smiled and leaned back slightly, using a technique his sainted mother had frequently trapped her foes with, usually over coffee.

  You just listened with a vague smile and waited for them to start telling stories and lies. Mother never corrected them at the table. If she liked you, she might ask later, in privacy, for clarificat
ion of some point you had made.

  But she was most definitely listening.

  Many of her bridge buddies had come to fear that smile.

  Lazarus smiled brightly at Eha and let her talk.

  “What would convince you to join us?” she asked quietly, suddenly floundering in rough waters.

  Aileen was the only one here that was a good swimmer. She just smiled at the spy as well. Their mothers must have been friends at some point.

  “I already work for Director Wolcott,” Lazarus offered innocently, nodding to Addison just to see how far he could take her before she twitched.

  “There is a larger organization,” she offered vaguely, possibly realizing finally how thin the ice under her scales had gotten.

  Lazarus scanned the room once, but nobody was paying much attention. Neither he nor Aileen had touched the tea, but both of the Churquen were patiently sipping.

  In the back of his mind, Lazarus was waiting for one of them to pass out suddenly. The table wasn’t that heavy, at least for a human who was angry and possibly fighting for his life.

  “What could I do for a larger organization?” Lazarus let his voice and his face grow more serious.

  “You commanded a ship, a warship,” Eha said, falling quieter. “And Addison tells me that you were a scientist of some sort as well. We need better technology to fight our overlords.”

  “Overturn Innruld Space?” he asked, just to see how far down that damning path she might be willing to commit herself. “Bring down the masters? What would you replace them with?”

  “Why does anything have to replace them?” her eyes grew slitted and predatory now. Her voice got raspy and harsh. “Or anyone? Can the people not be free?”

  Oh, shit. He was dealing with a true believer, not just a con artist dressed up as a politician, like he had been expecting. Those were the most dangerous ones, because they tended to rely, at least historically, on cults of personality, rather than organized legal structures.