Space Patrol!

by Sarah Nicole Nadler

  Three of them were clearly Corians, and although none wore that distinctive robe as Krash had done, their stark gray uniform instead made the blue skin and pointy ears even more visible, despite the dim light of the dive they had entered. Lissa’s stomach tightened as she thought about the Corian in their cargo hold. But then the fourth figure stepped into view and her breath stopped.

  He was human. A tall fair-skinned man, about mid-twenties, with broad shoulders and muscular arms that filled out his Space Patrol uniform, he now stared about the room as though he were looking for someone. And as his gaze swept the room, giving them all a professional assessment, his brilliant blue eyes fell on the group of Earthlings and went wide.

  He seemed just as surprised as they were.

  Ash muttered, “Holy cow’s milk.”

  “He’s handsome,” Shika whispered back. Ash jerked his head around to give her an incredulous look. Lissa looked also. Shika ignored them both—she had eyes only for the young man who now strode over to them.

  “Have you seen this alien?” he asked them in English.

  “You’re from Earth!” Lissa was agog.

  He gazed at her, hesitated for a moment. “Not anymore,” he said at last.

  Lissa looked at the tiny 3D picture he showed them. She had never seen that species, much less the individual he was searching for. They each shook their heads, Shika blushing slightly as his eyes met hers intently, and Lissa snorted softly when she realized the man held the African girl’s gaze a second longer than he had the others. Ash gripped his spear tightly and cleared his throat. The man’s eyes shot to the boy and he seemed to withdraw.

  “Apologies.” He bowed his head slightly to Ash. “Your mate?” “My sister,” Ash replied coldly.

  The man glanced at Shika again, this time raking his gaze over the white paint that covered her torso and circled her arms, and Lissa could have sworn there was renewed interest there, but he said only, “I am Will of Coria.”

  “Shika of the Mursi Tribe, Earth,” she replied, her black eyes wide as she held his gaze.

  He bowed again, and although he glanced around the table, he spoke only to Shika, entranced by the young woman whose large black eyes held his so gently and the few pieces of space armor she wore. “My companions and I are searching for an escaped convict.” He gestured again at the holo. “If you see him, steer clear and contact Space Patrol.”

  “We also have business for Space Patrol.” Lissa was loath to interrupt—the two were obviously having a “moment”—but she recognized his uniform and knew he was what they needed to turn Krash in. Will turned to look at her, taking in the rumpled outfit and her short stature.

  Ash saw the look she gave him and told the Patrolman, “This is Captain Lissa Phelps—Ambassador of Earth, and this is Octavian Stubergott III, our navigator.” He gestured to the octopus lounging on her shoulder. Turning in his seat, he added, “Shiro of the Kazakhs and Stephanie Wu of America.”

  They each nodded at him and received a stiff military bow of his head in return.

  “I heard about Earth’s invitation to join GTC,” Will murmured. “It would be good to have other humans in space—besides the few slaves they manage to capture.” His jaw clenched.

  Lissa caught his eye. “We intend to end that disgusting trade.”

  He looked her up and down again, appraising, but she held his gaze, refusing to show any discomfort.

  “Space Patrol will assist you to the fullest extent of the law,” he said finally. “If that’s truly what you want.”

  “Speaking of which ...” Stephanie butted in. Lissa thought her pretty friend looked a little miffed that the handsome Patrolman was giving Shika all the attention. She flung back her long black hair and gave him a coy look. Lissa grinned wryly.

  “We captured a thief aboard our cargo ship,” Stephanie told Will. “We were looking for someone to take him off our hands.”

  He blinked at her flirtation but otherwise seemed not to notice. Shika shifted in her seat and again Will rested his eyes on her face for a long moment, something softening in his gaze.

  “By the laws of space, you could simply eject him,” Will told them all. He spared a questioning look to Lissa as captain.

  “That’s not really our way,” Lissa told him diplomatically.

  “I’ll take him into custody, then,” He turned to gesture to his three companions.

  “Er ...” Ash looked alarmed.

  Will paused and looked at him.

  “The thief said his name was Krash, and he's a Corian,” Lissa told Will. “I don’t know if your friends will be happy about it.”

  Will looked down his nose at her. “They are Space Patrol—they’ll do what is right.” She shut up. Stephanie rolled her eyes at Will’s snobby reply, but Shika looked, if anything, even more impressed. Lissa caught her fussing over the smeared white paint in her arms and winked at her. Shika’s dark cheeks turned a heated pink, and she stuck out her tongue behind Will’s back.

  Will spoke briefly in Corian to his three companions and then called for a third booth. Lissa kicked Ash under the table, glaring pointedly at him until he offered Will the empty seat beside him and across from Shika. They fell into discussion as lunch was served to both parties.

  “How did you wind up in space, Will?” Lissa asked him as she poked at the brightly colored salad in front of her.

  “My parents and I were kidnapped by space pirates when I was five,” he told her. “I was sold separately.” His eyes seemed to darken as he told the story, their blue brilliance turning dim. “Things might have turned out badly for me if not for Captain Ortor.”

  At Shika’s questioning look, he added, “A Space Patrol captain was monitoring the slave pit that day. He saw me go up on the auction block, crying and fighting like a wertll.”

  “A what?” Ash asked.

  “A feline known for its spirited nature,” Octi told them.

  “Ah.”

  “Anyway,” Will continued, “he bought me and freed me—took me aboard as a cadet.

  Unheard of, really, but he saved my life.”

  “And now you’re in Space Patrol,” Shika said.

  He shrugged.

  “He’s the youngest captain in the fleet,” one of his companions told them proudly. The Corian had skin a darker blue than Krash, his white hair twisted into a masculine bun at the base of his neck. Two silver studs pierced his right ear, and Lissa saw when he opened his mouth to grin at their surprise that he had also pierced his tongue. He reminded her of an alien punk rocker more than a member of the elite law enforcement in the galaxy. Things were different in space though, she supposed.

  “Humble, isn’t he?” The Corian nodded at Will.

  “That’s enough of that,” Will announced to his crew, each of whom laughed with good humor.

  “You’re their captain?” Lissa was surprised in spite of herself.

  “Why so shocked?” Will asked. “Aren’t you captain of the Forty-Five?”

  “Yes, but ...”

  “I went to Space Academy, alright?” Will ran a hand through his blond hair, standing

  it on end. “My adopted father wanted it.”

  “Captain Ortor,” Ash repeated.

  “Yeah.” There was sadness in Will’s face. “He died in the service while I was still in school.”

  Shika reached across the table and put a dark hand on his arm. He looked up and seemed to get lost in her black eyes for a moment. Her eyelashes fluttered. Ash cleared his throat again, but this time Lissa thought he looked amused.

  “I’m Ash,” he said, pointedly leaning across the other two to offer his hand to the first Patrolman.

  The Corian paused to listen as his translator explained the gesture, and then accepted Ash’s palm in his own and squeezed it firmly. “I am called Aewn, second mate on the 108th Patrolship. This is Erdon and Krywith,” he added, gesturing to the other two Patrolmen, one beside him in the third booth, one sitting across and next to Shika.
>
  Ash and the others each nodded, and introductions were made all around. Erdon was the most human-looking of the three—he looked to be hardly older than Will, with his hair cropped short, no piercings or marks on him, and his skin a pale blue. He was not as jovial as Krywith and Aewn; his smile was reserved, although he did nod to each of them and give a small bow from the waist in his seat when Lissa was introduced as the Earth ambassador.

  Krywith was the only one of the three who looked exactly how Lissa had thought a Corian would look. His three fingers on each hand were long and delicate-looking, like the hands of a concert pianist, and he wore his hair in a long flow of white down his back, framed by two elaborate braids. His pointed ears peeked through and a tiny communication device wrapped above the left one, which Lissa understood when he was introduced as the comm officer.

  The talk between them died down as both parties dug into their food, until at last Will asked Lissa, “What brings you to Jeropul?”

  “We’re interested in finding a market for Earth goods,” she told him. “Our people voted to join the Galactic Trade Company, but it’s not in our ... interests to accept their first offer.”

  “Human slave trafficking,” Will guessed.

  “We were supposed to be a ‘sampler,’” Ash scoffed. “The OneWorld thought they could just swoop in and sell us off-world. They were wrong.”

  “All of you are escaped slaves?” Will’s eyebrows rose.

  “Freed slaves,” Lissa corrected him. “The 32nd Patrol caught Captain Nask before he left orbit. They determined we were illegally seized, freed us, and left us the ship.”

  “And spaced that piece of pirate trash!” Shiro added.

  “But without slaves or galactic credit ...” Aewn protested. “How do you plan to join GTC?”

  “We want to negotiate a contract for commerce in another arena,” Lissa said. “Certain Earth resources previously unexplored.”

  Will cocked his head.

  “The contract isn’t ratified yet, though,” Stephanie said. “We’re here because we’re hoping to prove that there is a market. To try to find allies or investors ... something to prove to GTC that raiding us would be less profitable than letting us create our own niche.”

  “So you’re looking to sell ... what?” Krywith asked.

  Lissa eyed her crew. Ash nodded slowly. Shiro bent his head sideways, indicating it was her call. She took a deep breath.

  “Blueberries have flourished on Earth since your people last visited,” she told the comm officer.

  Will gaped at them. “You have blueberries?”

  “Why so surprised?” Lissa asked him. “You know they only grow on Earth.”

  “Yeah, but ...” Will scratched his head. “They’re legendary on Coria. The berry that gave Corians their color.”

  “Really?” Now it was Shika’s turn to gape at the aliens across the table from them.

  “You think blueberries are the reason your skin is blue?”

  “It’s a scientific fact,” the scholarly comm officer told the Earthlings. “To this day, our entire hierarchy is based on how deeply pigmented the family line is—which has been traced back to exposure to blueberries on Earth.”

  “Wow,” Stephanie breathed. “So when Krash ate those blueberries ...” She gave Krywith a questioning look.

  “According to legend, it took a thousand blueberries to produce a significant increase in skin hue. Which is why they were considered so valuable—only royalty or the extremely wealthy could afford to eat enough blueberries to change their pigment. That became an easy way to trace lineage, and hence the high value of dark skin today.”

  “Amazing,” Shika whispered. And Lissa wondered if that was why Will thought her friend was so stunning: if dark blue was considered attractive, how much more must the African girl’s lovely black skin be?

  “Imagine,” Ash sounded amused. “A place where the darker the skin the more respect and rank they give you.”

  “It is not this way on Earth?” Erdon asked him. “No way.”

  “For one thing,” Lissa explained, “our skin color stays the same, no matter what we eat.”

  “Unfortunately, there has been a lot of rivalry between races on Earth,” Stephanie told him, her almond eyes taking all of this in with some interest. “In some areas, darker skin is considered a sign of being less, not more.”

  “It’s stupid,” Lissa insisted. “There’s absolutely no correlation between the color of human skin and intelligence, goodness, or personality. It’s just prejudice and justifies a lot of horrible things that happen to people.”

  “Prejudice is a horrible thing,” Erdon said, his voice low. Lissa realized, with his pale skin, he probably spoke from experience. “That is why many of us prefer Space Patrol to life on Coria. Our people are very wise in many ways, but ...”

  “They are still fallible,” Stephanie finished for him, and Lissa saw compassion in her friend’s eyes that made her chest twinge with pride. Who on Earth had not been exposed to racism at one point or another? It was a sickening practice, but some still managed to justify it to themselves and others.

  Lunch came to an end, and at Will’s behest, Octi granted Erdon access to the Forty- Five to take Krash into custody aboard the 108th Patrol. The two of them left by MTrans after Erdon gave a short bow in Lissa’s direction. She sighed in relief to know the thief would not be on her ship when they returned.

  The five humans, Will, and the remaining two Corians sat back and enjoyed the live entertainment the bar offered. Drunken aliens bungled about, laughter of all types filled the hot desert air, and the clink of glasses and murmur of the wait staff all mixed together as they watched a tall willowy alien performer do sleight of hand from behind the bar.

  Lissa was just putting her hands together to clap in delight at his latest feat—Will had assured them that all forms of approval were acceptable in a mixed crowd such as this, cultural differences being what they are—when a yellow light flashed through the room. The place went instantly quiet as the flash came again, followed by a slow wail that sounded ominously like an alarm klaxon.

  “What is that?” Lissa asked Will, who went stiff beside her.

  Before he could reply, the enormous entertainment screen above the bar went dark, flashed yellow, and then words began to scroll across it in multiple alien languages. A news feed.

  “Pirate attack!” Will said. As one, he and his crew stood and turned toward the door. The comm officer was already tapping his earpiece when they stopped again. The screen had stopped flashing and now showed a video feed from some security camera overlooking the bazaar. The camera pointed not at the dome but out into space.

  There was nothing but blackness and stars for a moment, and then suddenly ships appeared—an entire armada—black and silver irregularly shaped spaceships that dropped into orbit near a bright dot already hovering above Jeropul.

  Krywith was muttering something urgently into a communication device at his shoulder. Lissa and the others watched as the video camera zoomed, and then zoomed again onto the bright dot which she now identified as the 108th Patrol—Captain Will’s warship scout cruiser, twice again the size of the Forty-Five, monitoring the bazaar dome below.

  The armada settled into orbit surrounding the 108th. Krywith turned to Will and said, his violet eyes wide, “They are not responding to hails, Captain.”

  Will opened his mouth to speak.

  With a burst of flame and molten metal, the 108th Patrol exploded into a fireball that temporarily blanketed the view screen. Will’s shout of anguish was echoed throughout the bar as all the clientele cried out in anger or despair. And then chaos erupted around them.

  Lissa dimly knew that to fire on Space Patrol was the most suicidal thing the alien pirates could have done. Surely, they knew there would be retaliation. And as she grabbed for Will’s shoulder, meaning to offer some sort of consolation or comfort for the horror he had just seen, she realized there was no way the pirates could have
known that three Patrolmen and the captain were not aboard. They probably meant to hide their crime by killing any witnesses—which meant every person on this planet, and especially Will and the two Corians, were now in grave danger.

  Shika leaped forward, ray pistol in hand, and grabbed the sleeve of Will’s uniform. Will hardly glanced at her, his eyes glassy and dull. Shock, Lissa realized. Between the two of them, they began to haul him away, Krywith falling in behind to guard their backs along with Ash, who had his own gun out and was sweeping the room with his black gaze. Shiro shielded Stephanie as one of the panicked aliens came too close to her; the look he leveled the wide-eyed creature had the alien running the other way. The crowd made for the exits, a swarm of varied bodies and shapes.

  “This way!” Aewn shouted, before plunging into the madness toward the nearest doorway.

  Will shook off his stupor enough to grab Shika and push her behind him, drawing his own weapon and elbowing his way forward through the crowd. He led them down a back alley between two tents, ignoring looters who took advantage of the rioting to grab fistfuls of gold jewelry.

  “We must get to your ship,” Krywith called urgently ahead to Lissa, who ran just behind Shika and Will. “Any moment now they could penetrate the dome. At that very instant we must establish an MTrans link before they start up a jamming field.”

  Not for the first time, Lissa wished she had some sort of communication device to reach the Forty-Five from the surface. They were supposed to be here to buy such things, damn it! She thought fiercely. She was so sick of space pirates that it almost choked her.

  Sure enough, in the dark sky above them, bright flashes began to rain down on the dome, and before they had made it halfway across the dusty alleyway, the bazaar’s only protection shuddered and disappeared. Lissa pressed her tracking device around her neck, watching as her crew all did the same, urgently signaling to the Forty-Five hidden in orbit above them. They all paused for an instant, and yes, there came the golden glow of MTrans as Octi locked onto their signal. The desert disappeared and the reassuring firmness of the Forty-Five’s oak plank deck was beneath their feet again.