Return

by Blaze Ward

  Just the endless gloom of the ocean depths.

  Right about now, he wished he had a knife, in case something came up from below for a nibble, but wishes weren’t fishes, so he turned and looked back up at the surface.

  There.

  Marker lights outlining the device at a depth of about fifteen feet, level with the bottom of the hull like a mat of seaweed.

  Oluchi swam up to the device and found the controls. He’d used something similar, and they were all designed to be used by tourists with a modicum of training, so getting it to turn and rise to the surface wasn’t that impossible.

  Hopefully, the sea wasn’t so cold that Eha would be unable to swim or hold on. Aileen had fur and hopefully a layer of insulation, since she looked like an otter already, and seemed fine with water.

  There were no drysuits for a Churquen. He doubted enough of them might take up such a daredevil hobby, if they were that afraid of water, but he made a note to investigate what sorts of things Humans might manufacture for all their new alien friends. He couldn’t make it, but if he had the inside track, he could make sure Eduardo’s friends could before anyone else, and then get cut in for a slice or a license.

  That was probably why Eduardo really wanted him involved. After all, if he was going to be a fixer he really need to think like a pimp. And most of his clients would probably be legitimate businesspeople. If he had to finally grow up and rely purely on his wits instead of just his looks, then that might be an excellent place to carve out his next niche.

  Especially as the aliens would eventually want to return home, hopefully with a list of needs that the traders of Yisan—the surviving traders—could deliver.

  Oluchi surfaced with the sled not far from the rear of the boat, on the side near the ladder. Heads appeared above him and he saw both Aileen and Lazarus looking down, so he waved.

  Aileen surprised him by diving immediately into the water, turning, and popping up almost in his hip pocket. Apparently, Yithadreph enjoyed water.

  Otter, right.

  The storm was starting to get ugly, so Oluchi was spending most of his attention keeping the sled from being pushed away as Cardinal sat still in the surf. Grace dove next, popping up on his other side, from Aileen. Oluchi let go of the controls and shifted out of her way, on the assumption she was a better driver than he was, and knew where she needed to go next.

  Instead, he focused his attention on the top of the ladder. Churquen could not use a Human ladder. He presumed she might prefer an old-fashioned brass pole like fire stations had in all the ancient classics. And she didn’t have the upper body strength of a Human, so she was just holding on to one of Lazarus’s hands with both of hers.

  The man was stronger than he looked. Or angrier. Never discount that option. He lowered Eha bodily until Oluchi could grab hold of her tail and sort of guide her over to the sled. Grace assisted by driving them right up to the point that Aileen was using her spare hand to keep the sled from banging too hard on the hull.

  Eha’s mask was closed, but she was on the edge of panic, so Oluchi just wrapped an arm all the way around her and then grabbed hold of the sled. After a moment, she realized what he was doing and wrapped her coil around his legs.

  He nearly lost his own grip in surprise, but then laughed at himself. Of course, that would be how a Churquen held on.

  Lazarus followed her down the ladder, with a bag over his shoulder presumably holding the blaster pistols, possibly including the one he had abandoned earlier when he was fitting Eha.

  Xiuying appeared last, breaking his gun down into parts and stuffing them into a bag he had stolen from the same closet as Eha’s helmet. Rather than jump, he walked slowly backwards down the ladder and sort of fell into the water, barely arm’s reach from the sled.

  Once Xiuying grabbed on, Grace backed them away, letting the tide carry them backwards. She turned to the left and opened the throttle. Oluchi slid his hands as close together around Eha’s chest as he could while holding on to the sled, thankful that she didn’t have actual breasts he might be touching right now. Although he supposed that might be acceptable, given the alternatives.

  She was holding on to both him and the sled for dear life. He could live with the bruises she was going to leave everywhere with her coils.

  Grace took them down about fifteen feet. The surf above was lashing and churning, but the waters down here were calmer. Oluchi glanced back and saw the lights of Cardinal receding into nothingness as they got far enough away from the boat.

  He heard the first explosion. Felt it in his rib cage. It wasn’t all that big, but the water transmitted the sound perfectly. They were too far away to see the boat, but he heard a long series of popping sounds after that. More explosions, but smaller.

  Finally, Grace maneuvered them to the surface, an octopus with all manner of strange legs trailing off the sled. Lights appeared above them and Oluchi recognized the van that had brought them out originally, with something like a cargo net trailing out the open door.

  Lazarus went up first, followed by Xiuying. Nobody had said anything to Oluchi, so he concentrated on Eha, glancing back over his shoulder when breaks in the waves and rain let him see a bonfire in the distance.

  Cardinal, burning.

  Terrible, terrible accident.

  Honest.

  A crane arm came out and a line dropped. It had a hook on the end that Grace secured to the top of the sled and then she motioned for him to move himself and Eha to the net.

  She didn’t want to let go of the sled. He couldn’t really blame her.

  Instead, he turned her to face him, and saw how big her eyes had gotten.

  “Eha, we need to climb into the vehicle now,” he yelled as he touched faceplates with her. “You’re safe, and now we can get out of the water. You have to trust me. We’ll take care of you.”

  Something got through to her. He felt the death grip slacken some around his thighs. She turned inside his arms and wrapped her own arms around his neck, to go with her coil around his legs.

  At least they both had helmets, because as soon as he let go, they slid under water, and she started to squeeze painfully. Strong arms grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back up before he got too far down.

  Grace. And Aileen a moment later.

  Oluchi was just a post that Eha was holding, as the other two women got him to the net. He grabbed it himself and tried to pull, but they weighed too much combined.

  Instead, more hands grabbed him. He looked up and both Lazarus and Xiuying had hooked themselves to the vehicle, laid out flat on their stomachs, and were pulling him up with just their arms.

  Once they got high enough, Eha started to breathe again. He could feel her heart pounding against his chest, but she looked around as Oluchi got one of his feet onto the cargo net and could push.

  Eha found her own grip, spun away from him, and flowed uphill like a dot of mercury into the rear of the vehicle. Oluchi joined her a moment later. She handed him a second towel and he dried the outside of his suit off rather than trying to explain drysuits to the woman.

  She was already cocooned and shivering, so he handed his towel to Aileen and sat next to Eha. She leaned against him and he sort of pulled her onto his lap, as much as he could, and let her draw strength from contact. It worked with Human women. Hopefully, it would work with aliens as well.

  Grace was in just after Aileen, and the sled was pulled up by the winch and stood upright as the hatch closed and the sounds of the storm receded.

  “Let’s go,” Grace called to the driver whose name he didn’t know, and Oluchi felt the van turn away from the storm and race away towards shore.

  Eha just sat, wrapped around him as she shivered.

  Oluchi smiled. Could he call himself a fixer now? He’d solved his first problem, but looking around he knew that there would be more.

  Thirty-Seven

  Lazarus

  Lazarus had moved quickly from the explosion and fire that was destroying Ardn
a’s yacht out beyond the harbor. This wasn’t a place where police carefully investigated things and possibly came to arrest him and his compatriots for their crimes, but news would get out quickly enough. The driver he didn’t know might talk. Or Eduardo might. Hell, the strangers in the back of the van with him probably couldn’t all keep their mouths shut about what they’d done.

  He needed to be gone off the planet before first light if he could.

  That might not be possible, as Eha seemed to be in shock, but Grace took another look at her and pronounced her fit. The NavCrawler Cormac might be the only person truly capable of knowing about Aileen, but she seemed to be in good enough shape. Nothing a long sleep and some food wouldn’t cure, at least to hear her talk.

  Still, Lazarus wanted to get back to the others, to his friends, as soon as possible.

  His other friends. He had made a few here, else they wouldn’t have been willing to do what they’d just done, even with the possibility of trade being dangled in front of them.

  The van was approaching the starport now over roads, rather than flying high. Nobody was allowed any elevation around the starport, so that ships taking off and landing didn’t have to worry. Everyone on the ground stayed low and drove on roads, hovering or not.

  Grace turned to him now and studied his face. Neither of them were wearing drysuits now, back in normal clothing, so they might be two strangers who’d met at a bus stop. She didn’t speak, so he remained silent until he knew what was going through her mind.

  “You aren’t staying, are you?” she finally asked.

  Lazarus nodded, a little surprised that she’d been able to read that from his face, but he supposed he wasn’t hiding it all that much.

  “Will you return?” she continued.

  Lazarus shrugged, unwilling to commit to words right now. Addison would certainly probably demand to return, but his intentions wouldn’t be polite. Hopefully, with Ardna and his people dead, Wolcott would be willing to let that one go.

  Eha was safe.

  Lazarus would have destroyed the place himself if something had happened to her.

  “Eduardo instructed me to protect you,” Grace said with a wry, sideways kind of smile. “I can’t do that if you leave. I’d like to come along, if I could.”

  Lazarus blinked. Blinked again. It didn’t help.

  Words failed when he opened his mouth. Right now, Grace Savidge didn’t look like someone who was just coming along because she had been ordered to by her boss.

  No, her eyes held ulterior motives. Not all that ulterior, and probably not what Eduardo Martìnez had intended, having only known him for a day. The man wasn’t that good at identifying the weaknesses of a stranger like Lazarus, was he?

  “It will be a while,” Lazarus managed to sputter. “Brasilia, and I’m not sure how long we’ll be there. Then hopefully returning the others home. Not sure when we’ll see Yisan again.”

  “You obviously need help staying out of trouble,” Grace smiled at him, drawing his own smile to the surface.

  “Quite possibly,” Lazarus said, “if the last year is any indication. Are you sure?”

  She shifted in such a way that she could touch the tip of his nose with hers.

  “Pretty sure,” she murmured.

  Lazarus was glad she didn’t try to kiss him right now, but didn’t think that was very far off. At least he was single, if it came to that.

  “He’s going to need lots of help staying out of trouble,” Aileen popped up and broke Grace’s spell as everyone laughed. “I can speak to that.”

  Lazarus looked around at the others.

  “I would also travel with you, if I may,” Oluchi said, with Eha still mostly wrapped around him.

  Her scales looked better. Almost flat. Her eyes, turning this way, were almost back to normal.

  Lazarus considered the former gigolo and playboy gambler. Oluchi Pryce would be a professional representative for Eduardo, which would be useful if Grace had personal reasons in coming. And the man had transformed from who he’d been when he walked up and joined them for tea. Had it only been sixteen hours ago?

  But he had changed. That much was obvious, and Lazarus was used to judging men and women to see who was ready and capable of promotion, when several crew members were all vying for only one open slot.

  Still, he looked at Eha. She nodded and smiled a tiny smile at him.

  “You need a killer, mate?” Xiuying asked. “Yisan’s been okay but with Khan dead it’s gonna get kinda boring. And this is the most fun I’ve had in years.”

  “We’re going back to the Rio Alliance,” Lazarus reminded them, looking at each face in sequence. “Anybody got active warrants for their arrest, when we get to a civilized planet?”

  He nearly laughed when each of them had to stop and think about that for a moment before deciding they were probably safe.

  An assassin, a killer, and a gambler. Sounded like the beginning of a bad joke, but he’d take them.

  It would be interesting when they met the rest of the crew.

  Thirty-Eight

  Eha

  Eha let the solidity of the pincke, the tiny cargo shuttle that had brought them Yisan, give her strength. The last day had been a nightmare made flesh, but hopefully they were past everything.

  Oluchi was talking to Eduardo Martìnez on a pocket comm as Lazarus and the dark-skinned woman did their preflight. Aileen was instructing the other Human, Xiuying, where to store weapons, as most of the gear had remained in the van when it departed.

  “What about clothing and personal effects?” Oluchi looked up and turned his head both ways.

  “Clothing we can handle at the ship,” Lazarus looked back over his shoulder with a smile Eha could only classify as cruel, but he also hadn’t told them the truth about Ajax yet.

  That it had uniforms for every size and shape of Human, plus a Necherle tailor who’d probably look on the whole affair as an exciting challenge.

  “And the rest?” Oluchi asked.

  “We’ll be to Brasilia fast enough,” the man said cryptically.

  Eha still hadn’t wrapped her coils around the star drives that Humans used. Open a hole in space and step immediately through it, rather than trans-drives that might take days to get even somewhere close.

  On top of everything else, that would give Humans an unmatchable edge in exploration. And warfare, if it came to that. Nothing the Innruld could do would let them catch a Human ship.

  “Good enough,” Oluchi apparently relayed from the Human trader. “He says good luck and Godspeed.”

  Eha agreed with that sentiment. Escape Yisan ahead of any vendettas related to killing a powerful merchant and decapitating his organization suddenly. Get to a place where there were hopefully rules around behavior and she could go back to being an Ambassador, rather than a prisoner.

  Oluchi flipped down a seat close by, but not next to her. His eyes studied her whole form, but it had the feel of making sure she was okay, rather than Ardna’s loathing or another man seeing her as a strange sex object.

  A friend. One she had known for less than a day, but concerned about her a person.

  Humans were weird.

  But hadn’t Lazarus been equally accepted by Addison’s crew?

  A stranger in trouble, and the Humans leapt to her rescue.

  “Everybody grab seats and strap yourselves in,” Lazarus called. “We have clearance to launch.”

  Aileen ended up next to her, opposite Oluchi, while Xiuying sat down across the bay. The seatbelts for Humans didn’t fit her all that well, but she’d made do on the flight here. She would make do on the way back to Ajax.

  The craft lifted a little and taxied over to the launch zone. In a way, it was similar to exiting a station bay into the tunnel that would take you out into deep space, in preparation for the trans-drives engaging.

  Here, the ship was headed up for deep space. Eha kept herself coiled around the seat and held on when gravity wanted to drag her to the right. S
tations in orbit were so much more efficient, for exactly this reason, but she couldn’t really argue with the success of the Humans, doing it their own way.

  The pressure on her relented after about forty-five minutes. Over shoulders up front, she could see darkness and stars as they cleared the atmosphere and began crossing deep space.

  Conversation hadn’t been impossible under the pressure of launch, but difficult enough that Aileen had settled for occasionally squeezing her hand silently.

  Eha still didn’t feel like chatting, but was far too polite to actually say anything. Instead, she just closed her eyes and leaned back, letting the absence of gravity loosen all the kinks that had worked themselves into her body, both from stress as well as bruises.

  “We are ready for star drives,” Lazarus said simply.

  For a moment, Eha felt the entire universe blink, too fast to notice except in retrospect.

  But that was the Human technology. Blink, and they’re gone.

  “Ajax, this is Lazarus,” he said. “Reply on this channel.”

  They waited. It might take a while, as Addison and his crew would have no idea when the pincke would be returning, so they might be off having their own adventures with the ship.

  She would ask how much trouble someone could get into in three days, but she had a strong answer to that silliness, so she kept her humor to herself.

  “Now what?” Grace asked, loud enough for the people in the cargo bay to also hear.

  “Now, we wait,” Lazarus replied simply. “We’re close enough to the right coordinates, but didn’t specify a tighter rendezvous than that. They might be anywhere within a few light-hours right now, so we probably have some time if people want to unfold the hammocks and take a nap.”

  Eha was off the chair, holding on with only the tip of her tail, before anybody else could even move, but they had to let go and fly, even in a shuttle this small. She could just stand on the Churquen equivalent of tiptoes and open the cabinet she wanted.