by Blaze Ward
“Morty, we need to debark,” Xiomber said loud enough that the other turned. “Now.”
Xiomber tugged his hand and Gareth stumbled briefly as they landed on the sidewalk.
The lady-lynx kept riding by, but handed him a business card written in vermillion ink as she passed him with a hopeful smile. The smell on the card was almost enough to make Gareth chase after her.
“What are you?” Xiomber groused in awe. “Bottled animal magnetism? Morty, we gotta get this one undercover quick, before we’ve got a mob of horny women after us. That’s two already.”
There was a break in the traffic going the other way. The one called Morty bolted through it. Xiomber followed, dragging Gareth along numbly.
He was still holding the card, sniffing her scent. She made him feel all tingly inside, and kinda goofy. But it also let Xiomber pull him easier.
Traffic magically seemed to part around them, and Morty ducked into a shop, the other two in quick pursuit.
Now he’d gone blind.
Except, not blind. Sun blind. There. Man, it was dark in here. Okay, table. Bench. Sit. Good. Sniff card. Wow.
“Put that away,” Morty snapped. “I need you coherent. Not dunk on the scent of a Nari in season.”
“A what?” Gareth asked weakly.
“That woman on the slidewalk,” Morty pointed back over his shoulder. “She’s a Nari. She gave you a scent marker. Didn’t think Nari did that, outside of their own kind. It’s frightening, the power you have over women, pal. In other circumstances, we’d put that to use, but right now we need to hide.”
Reluctantly, Gareth pulled out his wallet and slipped her card in with the others he had accumulated from scientists and politicians he had met. It was sized close enough to fit.
The two lizardmen were eyeing him when he looked up.
“What?” he asked, nervous.
“Nothing,” Morty said.
Gareth watched him signal to a waitress. She was another of The Grace, although not as voluptuous as the first. If she were human, Gareth would have guessed her to be a teenage girl, perhaps. Petite and thin.
This one smiled, too, but Morty growled for her to get the tea if she wanted a tip, so she just winked at Gareth and sashayed away. She also had a mesmerizing bottom.
“Hey, pal,” Xiomber cracked wise. “Eyes over here, please.”
“Right,” Gareth reluctantly turned to the others, trying to figure out why he was here. Wherever here was. “So the two of you are criminals, engaged in a major felonious enterprise, and somehow I’m both the crime and the prize?”
“A little louder next time, maybe?” Morty snapped. “I don’t think the cook heard you in back. You wanna be in jail?”
“Sorry,” Gareth dropped to a murmur. “A little excited here. I’ve never been on an alien planet before. What’s next?”
“Now, we hide you from Maximus until we can get you to a lab and make some improvements to you,” Morty said. “Maximus has been doing the same to himself, but I don’t think he dreams big enough. At least not yet.”
“Maximus,” Gareth growled, remembering he was a cop. “What’s he doing now? And how do we stop him?”
Gareth watched the two share a guilty glance silently for a moment. Morty shrugged.
“So until about ten minutes ago, we were members of a criminal gang,” Morty began in a voice so quiet Gareth had to lean all the way down close to hear. “Our old boss, Cinnra, was a Warreth scientist, with aspirations of taking over the whole criminal underworld, across the entire Accord of Souls.”
“What’s a Warreth?” Gareth asked carefully, trying not to talk so loud that he got arrested just when the little man got to the good parts.
Xiomber leaned in and cut his brother off.
“Think birdman, Gareth,” he said simply. “Earth has lots of bird species, so imagine a humanoid a little shorter than you, about half your mass, covered with feathers.”
“Birdman,” Gareth acknowledged. “Got it.”
Sure. Why the hell not?
“So Cinnra had us build a very illegal, psionic wormhole generator, and locate him a human assassin,” Morty continued. “This would have been about, uhm…”
He paused, apparently doing some math in his head, eyes fixed on some strange spot on the ceiling.
“Maybe five Earth months ago?” Morty asked. “I think.”
“That was when Sarzynski escaped me,” Gareth snarled quietly. “We had him holed up with his gang. He escaped, and they all swore it was some weird gold light that did it. Oh, shit. Gold light. You guys.”
“Yup,” Xiomber noted with pride. “Boss nailed down the shape of the psionic signature he wanted in a human, and had us program it into the scanner. Bada-bing, bada-boom, and Bob’s your uncle.”
“Uhm, what?”
“He said we located our target and extracted him, one step ahead of the arm of law enforcement,” Morty explained. “You, given all the bitching Maximus has done about you since then.”
“Oh,” Gareth said with his own surge of pride. “So you recruited an assassin?”
“Yeah, but Cinnra thought he could control the human,” Morty said. “Found that out the hard way when Maximus turned on him.”
“What did the rest of the gang do?” Gareth asked.
“Went along with it,” Morty said. “The human’s a freaking killer. Our choices were pretty stark here. Your kind are not known for being the forgiving types, you know?”
“We’re not all like that,” Gareth replied.
He wanted to say more, but the young girl with the tentacles returned with a cast iron tea pot and three mugs. She set the pot down in the center of the table by leaning past Gareth.
He flinched and nearly screamed when several of her tentacles caressed his hair and neck.
“Hey,” Morty snapped. “You want me to get the manager out here?”
“Sorry,” she purred, withdrawing dreamily.
Gareth watched her face turn nearly umber with blush as she stepped back.
His subconscious couldn’t decide if the feeling had been feathers caressing him, or teeth looking for a place to bite. Or both.
Xiomber poured a mug and handed it to him, before serving them. Gareth sipped carefully, but the taste was yummy.
“So that thing you put in my mouth,” he asked after a moment. “How’d you know that would work? You said Maximus and I were the only humans here.”
“We reprogrammed him the same way,” Xiomber explained. “We can do that with humans, because they aren’t part of the Accord of Souls.”
“What do you mean: reprogram?” Gareth felt an uneasy tide nibble at his toes.
“The Chaa uplifted all the species to sentience a long time ago,” Morty said. “Before they left, as a matter of fact, and turned most of their own kind into the Vanir. Those Left Behind. But they also fixed everyone’s genetics pretty hard. We can eliminate disease and all that, but nobody can be improved past where the Masters left us all.”
“Except humans?” Gareth guessed. “And Maximus is upgrading himself? Like bad?”
“He’s improved his brain, so he’s way smarter than he used to be,” Xiomber explained.
“That’s bad,” Gareth replied. “Marc Sarzynski was a renegade from the Sky Patrol. Part of my class of Agents, before he went bad. Turned criminal. But he was already at the top of the pack, then. If he’s smarter now, you’re in trouble. We’re in trouble.”
Maximus
“You’re sure what it was that you observed?” Marc Sarzynski asked again, scowling heavily at the men of his gang, arrayed below him in the space that he thought of as his throne room.
It had been Cinnra’s personal aerie, once upon a time. Marc liked the vaulted ceilings above him, as well as the stone slabs stepping down from where he had put his throne. Each was about ten yards across by twenty wide, and the whole room was a series of steps. The only change he had made was to have a couple of Yuudixtl add stair steps everywhere, so all t
he non-gliders could get around here easily, and not just the Warreth.
He was recruiting more, these days, and going outside the insular Warreth clans that had been the basis of Cinnra’s power. The gang would need to feel more comfortable in here.
Marc scanned the mob of aliens a level below him, nearly a hundred faces from strange nightmares staring back. Five months ago, he had never even imagined that aliens existed. And now he had at least twelve species actively serving him.
The Warreth male at the center flattened his headcrest some as he spoke, an unconscious reflex that Marc had finally learned was the equivalent of a dog tucking his tail under. Body language of submission. It was good, being in charge. Things would get done around here, finally.
“The generators had all started running at once, so I went into the lab to see what was going on,” Deoar said, somehow pitching his voice loud while not sounding threatening.
The survivors of the takeover had all learned that lesson.
“When I got there, Xiomber and Morty had powered up the wormhole generator and were pulling someone through,” the birdman continued.
The creature reminded Marc of a Stellar Jay, with blue and black feathers, even though his beak was nowhere near as long as it would have been. Deoar’s was shorter, almost petite. Just enough to crack walnuts, rather than dipping into flowers.
“So somebody came through the first tube,” Deoar said. “Just as I entered the room. Then they bounced him out using a second tube and jumped in right after him. About that moment, the console overloaded and I had to concentrate on putting out the fires, but I know what I saw.”
“Describe it again,” Marc said in a voice that couldn’t help but be threatening. His nerves were shot this morning. It was not possible, what Deoar had described.
“Before I met you, boss, I would have said a short Vanir,” the birdman continued. “But I’m pretty sure it was a human. Same build, but not as tall. About what you used to be, a little taller than me. Golden hair.”
“Yes, yes,” Marc said. “The clothing. What was he wearing.”
“Garnet jacket with gold letters on a black logo and gold shoulder pieces,” Deoar replied. “Three white rings around the logo on the chest. White pants. Black boots.”
“And golden hair?” Marc confirmed.
“You got it, boss.”
Marc slammed one first down onto the armrest of the new throne but otherwise contained his emotions. Fear was a useful thing, in small doses. It would not do to completely frighten his people out of their wits.
“Ladies and gentleman, I should be possessed of an anger for the very gods, right now,” he pronounced, watching the five score aliens below him recoil half a step at the thought, anyway. Yes, fear of god was a thing they understood. “And I will exercise that rage on those two little traitors when we find them. Xiomber and Morty are to be killed, without mercy. But today is also our lucky day. They’ve managed to locate my worst enemy and actually bring to me, here in the Accord of Souls. The human Deoar has described is a Field Agent of the Earth Force Sky Patrol. For humans, the equivalent of the Vanir Constabulary, with just about as much sense of humor. That human is most likely Gareth St. John Dankworth.”
Marc rose from his throne and began to pace. He had the entire top platform to himself. Skylights overhead cast him in alternate spotlights and shadows as he moved.
“They will probably not have taken him to Yuudixtl, but alert our agents there anyway,” Marc commanded. “Instead, we need to be on the lookout for another human loose in Accord space. Perhaps we should alert the authorities, as well.”
Marc picked out a Nari male off to one side. Unlike most of the gang, Zorge was older, well into Nari middle-age, with white fur coming in along the edges of the orange and gray stripes. And he had actively chosen a life of crime, rather than being forced into it by circumstances.
If the cat-man had possessed any greater ambitions in life, Marc probably would have had to kill him when he first took over, but Zorge was content working as a spy, maneuvering in the shadows. All he wanted to do was run his own little network of informants. It was good.
“Pass an anonymous tip to the Vanir,” Marc ordered the old cat. “Let them know that there is a human loose in Accord space. Emphasize the golden hair, though.”
That got a laugh as Marc ran a hand back through his own pitch-black curls. In that, he looked much more like a typical Vanir, darker of skin and hair than Dankworth. And a foot taller, these days. If the so-called, self-appointed, Custodians of Order weren’t so damned tall, a human like Gareth could have easily passed himself off as one, but the women alone were six and a half feet tall, and the men usually seven. Freaking giants.
Like Maximus was now.
Morty and Xiomber had been in the process of researching how to rebuild him again, even better than the Vanir he appeared to be. He already had the perfect disguise, so perhaps their betrayal now was in his best interests. Internally, Marc shuddered at the thought of what those two damnable, lizard scientists might have done to him, had he put himself under their care for greater transformation when they were intent on duplicity.
The room had fallen silent at his introspective pacing. They knew better than to interrupt, but no new genius insight bubbled up right now. He was still getting used to having an IQ of two hundred by human standards.
“Find him,” Marc growled to his mob. “Bring him to me.”
Tea Room
Gareth had settled down some. The tea was amazingly good in this place, a gentle blend of vanilla, caramel, oolong, and some sort of berry that just seemed to fill in all the happy spaces in his soul.
Briefly, he wondered if the twins had added something to the jelly bean they had fed him, to make him calmer than he should have been. Probably not the worst idea, given their opinion of humans.
Morty was off, making a phone call to someone. And possibly having a smoke, if Gareth understood the vernacular correctly. He would need to have a chat with the Yuudixtl scientist later on the evils of tobacco, or whatever it was.
Xiomber had run to the men’s room, leaving Gareth alone for the briefest moment.
Keelee had just delivered a second pot of tea, leaning so close that she briefly seemed to press one breast against his shoulder in ways that made Gareth extremely self-conscious. Worse, at least half a dozen tentacles had taken their time tasting him.
Or whatever The Grace called it. It was positively pornographic, the way her tentacles caressed his skin, ran through his hair, idled at the edge of his collar. She seemed to hum, or perhaps purr, as she did so.
Gareth realized he was never, ever going to ogle a waitress in a public house again. Or perhaps any woman. His own behavior had never been all that bad, but suddenly he was on the receiving end of what his men had frequently done to those poor women they had encountered at landfalls, trapped by the need to remain quiet in a bar, rather than staging a loud, emotional scene in public that would get them fired. If Gareth reacted loudly, called attention to the treatment he was receiving, he’d be arrested.
By the Gods, he would be much more of stickler for the rules, if he ever got home. This sort of thing was just embarrassingly rude.
As was the way he seemed to be enjoying the feel of Keelee’s tentacles exploring his skin.
Thoughts of Philippa suddenly flashed to mind and he sat bolt upright.
“Keelee, you need to stop now,” he demanded weakly. “Xiomber will be back soon, and I don’t want you to get fired.”
She laughed, throatily, but withdrew, the most polite sandpaper to ever set his nerves afire. Gareth breathed heavily and concentrated on pouring himself more tea.
Burning his throat seemed like a good idea right now, but he blew on the mug anyway.
Morty and Xiomber returned at the same moment from different directions.
“Fardel,” Morty swore quietly. “You left him alone?”
“I wasn’t sure if you were coming back, Morty,” Xiomber snap
ped. “And I really had to pee. Besides, it’s not like he was going anywhere.”
“You okay, kid?” Morty asked Gareth. “You look a little flustered.”
“Huh?” Gareth looked over at the tiny man. “What?”
“I know a guy,” Morty said. “Had to skip my usual contact here, because she’s a she and I don’t need that level of complication right now. Let’s go. We need to get you changed into something a lot less obvious, and then off this planet before any of the old gang tracks us down.”
“You find us a lab?” Xiomber asked.
Gareth watched the other twin pull something from his back pocket and hold it up. It was almost a floppy wallet, but it was as big as his palm and barely half an inch thick. Looked like leather, though.
“Remember, I got everything here we need, but we still need to baseline the monkey-boy before we get crazy,” Xiomber continued.
“That’s next,” Morty said, digging into a pocket and pulling out several coins that he dropped on the table.
“Did you leave a tip for Keelee?” Gareth asked.
“Who?”
“Our waitress,” Gareth replied.
“How did you know…crap, she tasted you, didn’t she?” Morty snarled.
“It wasn’t that bad,” Gareth protested defensively.
“Except now she can describe you to the cops,” Morty hissed angrily. “We gotta get gone, right now.”
Gareth followed them out into the street. Morty pulled out a pocketcomm similar to the one Gareth would have had with him, except it was sitting on his dresser, back at The Arsenal, along with his money, his ID, and his Sonic Stunner travel vault.
Morty pressed a button and looked up. Within moments, a flying car dropped out of the sky like a gray hawk, landed right in front of them, and a side door full-winged open.
“Get in,” Morty commanded.
Gareth more or less fell into the vehicle, finding the back of the sky chariot a comfortable cocoon of crushed blue velvet. He sat on the bench facing forward, with Xiomber next to him and Morty across the way. The seat belts were more or less intuitive, but the two Yuudixtl didn’t move to put theirs on.