by S. L. Viehl
“Jory! Over here!”
“How did you fool the junta for eight seasons?”
“Did your coach know?”
“Jory! What do you have to say to your fans?”
The lights made it hard to see, and I stumbled a few times. The PRC agents ended up half carrying, half
pushing me through the media and down a narrow corridor formed by security barriers and police
bodies.
The spots faded from my one good eye, and I saw my fans were also waiting—hundreds of them,
packed like sardines on both sides of the barriers, dressed in their StarDrivers tunics and jackets. Some
of them carried handmade signs. As soon as they saw me, they began yelling, just as loud and raucous as
they had when I’d brought in the final sphere-down in World Game XXXIX.
None of them wanted my autograph now, though.
“Alien scum! How dare you!”
“Disgraced the game!”
“Get off our world!”
“Filthy breed!”
When I passed a man pressed against two cops and the barrier, his arm shot out and landed an
off-center punch to the side of my head. I lunged, but the agents dragged me back.
“You bitch!” the lousy puncher screamed. “You fucking alien bitch! How could you do this to me?”
I looked, saw who it was. “Oh, bite me, Coach.”
As we walked through the gauntlet, the fans began spitting on us. The PRC agents swore and shielded
their faces with their hands, but I kept my head up and didn’t allow myself to flinch. By the time we
reached the glidecar, I was literally dripping with saliva and mucus.
“Here.” After shoving me in the back, one of the agents tried to hand me a handkerchief.
“What are you, going soft?” Another one snatched it away. “Let her remember what we think of her
kind.”
My skin crawled with disgust and humiliation, but I only used my sleeve to clear my eye and wipe off my
face. He was right; I needed to remember this.
Once security cleared the road, the PRC drove me directly to New Angeles transport. On the way, I
was informed that all of my personal assets had been confiscated and were now the property of the
PRC. They allowed me only enough credits to buy passage to the next inhabited solar system.
“And you shouldn’t come back,” the agent told me. “Because if you do, this will seem like a bon voyage
party.”
I wasn’t the only one being deported that day, either, as I found out when they loaded me onto an orbital
shuttle.
“What’d they snatch you for?”
I looked down two rigs, and the other prisoner grinned back at me. Judging by the size and shape of his
blunt tusks, he was a Nivid. Just my luck. I’d run into them a few times—they were rabid sports
fanatics—and they never knew when to keep their mouths shut.
As he immediately demonstrated. “Beat the waste out of you, huh? U’flargot PRC, always get off on
pounding us.”
That seemed a little too warm and fuzzy, even for a Nivid. He sure as hell didn’t have any bruises, and he
didn’t know me.
A grunt erupted from him as he shifted in his rig. “Ought to be a law protecting us from them, instead of
the other way around.”
On the other hand, maybe he did. I thought about it as I watched the viewport and the dwindling sight of
my homeworld.
“Been down there long?”
I already knew that for the right info, the PRC would pay any alien or crossbreed a little good-bye
bonus. And who better to cozy up and leech me than a chatty sports fanatic who just happens to
be getting kicked off Terra at the same time?
When I didn’t answer, the Nivid decided to tell me his life story, which was almost as tedious as he was.
I ignored most of it, until he got to the part about trying to join the alien underground.
“—heard they were all over in New Angeles, but try making a contact, I mean, paranoid doesn’t even
come close—”
If he was a spy, he stank at it. If he wasn’t, he was an idiot. Either way I was tired of his mouth. “Shut up,
moron.”
“Only trying to make conversation.” He attempted to stretch out one of his stubby legs, but the restraint
harness kept him pinned. “Don’t know why they have to keep us rigged like this. Not like we’re going to
jump shuttle, right?”
I certainly would have tried, just to shove him out an air lock.
“So what’s your story, lady? Get in a fight with a horny Rilken?” He huffed out oinking laughter.
My restraints were loose enough to let me lean over a little. “I gutted someone who looked like you.”
He stopped laughing. “Why?”
I gave him a slow, nasty smile. “I don’t like tusks.”
That kept him quiet until we docked with the passenger shuttle.
“If you attempt to return to Terra, you will be immediately detained and prosecuted,” one of the guards
told us just before we were pushed through the connecting portal. “The sentence for repeated violation of
the GEA is twenty years, dome labor.”
There was nothing on Terra worth two decades of excavating basalt so rich people could move into
exclusive vacation habitats on the moon. “Don’t leave the light on for me.”
The Terran steward on the shuttle didn’t remove our restraints until we had left planetary orbit. “Captain
wants to see both of you.”
The Nivid backed away as soon as my hands were free. “If it’s not too much trouble, can she go first?”
The steward shrugged. “Thanks. Where’s the bar? I need a drink.”
The captain received me in his office, a spartan compartment off the helm. I was in luck; he wasn’t a
full-blooded Terran. Someone in the family, probably one of his grandparents, had been an avatar.
He walked a circle around me. “You look like walking waste.”
I didn’t smile; my face hurt too much. “No time for makeup and a shower this morning. You know how it
is.”
“The usual spit-bath before mandatory deportation, eh? Well, I may be a breed myself, but don’t let the
feathers fool you,” he said as he folded his stunted wings and settled behind his desk. “I’m not operating a
charity route.”
That sent my first appeal right out the viewport. “Right.”
“I run regular jaunts to Terra, so I won’t employ you, either. Your kind jump ship, and I’m not getting hit
with conspiracy charges.” He tapped a few keys on his console. “Standard drop is on Andromeda in
Alpha C; that’s as far as what’s left of your credits stretches.” He hesitated. “The colony there’s pretty
rough, but if you’re smart, you can earn your way out in a few cycles.”
Peddling my ass at Main Transport, no doubt. “I’ll pass.” I took the ring I’d hidden in the knotted mass of
my hair and placed it on his desk. “How far will this take me?”
“Son of a fern.” He picked it up, rubbed off some dried spit, and examined it. “This is a World Game
ring.” He scanned it. “Sea starlite, yellow diamonds, platinum setting. Not bad. Not worth a fortune,
but—”
“It’s a Game ring.” My Game ring, and I’d spent two weeks flat on my back recovering after that
particular bloodbath. “You can get at least thirty thousand for it, forty from a collector. So how far?”
He checked the inscription, and hooted with pleasure when he saw the MVP. “Where do you want to
go?”
I had to get to the others. “Joren.”
“Not even for ten of these.” He shook his head. “Too far off my route, and they’re too damn twitchy
about Terran traders.”
I wasn’t a trader. “The nearest Jorenian vessel.”
“Maybe, if I can find one.” He thought that over, then squinted at me. “How much do you know about
them?”
“They’re tall, blue, and apparently”—I held up one of my six-fingered hands—“counting to twelve isn’t a
problem.”
The captain uttered a single, chirping laugh; then his expression turned serious. “You should know there’s
bad blood between them and the League. A while back the Jorenians gave sanctuary to some clone who
escaped from a Terran lab. Heard they adopted her or something. Anyway, when the League tried to
take her back, the Jorenians got angry and broke treaty over the whole mess.”
I folded my arms. “I’m not interested in making a new treaty with them.”
“You don’t understand. They broke with the entire League—every single member world. Pulled all their
pilots and navigators off every ship, colony and science station, even the ones only remotely allied to the
League. Since then they’ve had nothing to do with any League world, particularly Terra.” He made a
small gesture. “We’ve been told to give them a wide berth.”
Avoiding Jorenian ships wouldn’t get me very far. “But you will let me transfer to one of their vessels
when you locate one.”
He didn’t look happy. “If they’ll take you.”
“That’s all I ask.” The Jorenians couldn’t be as bad as all that, not from what Mom had told me about
them. And I was one of them—sort of. “Thanks, Captain.”
Before I got to the door panel, he said, “One more thing.”
I turned. “What?”
He held up a flashy StarDrivers pennant. “Sign this for me?”
After my interview with the captain, I was shown to a cramped, dismal-looking cabin, where I spent an
hour in the cleansing unit, then another icing down my knee, sterilizing my clothes, and tending to my
wounds.
I’d made a good bargain on signing the pennant, I thought, eyeing the knife he’d given me in trade. The
captain had offered a pulse pistol first, but I requested the blade.
“Pistols need recharging,” I’d told him as I’d examined the Omorr challenge dagger he’d produced.
Seventeen centimeters long and six millimeters thick, it had a clean, simple sweep from edge to tip. The
high-carbon alloy was also better than anything I’d ever used on Terra, but I didn’t tell him that. “This only
needs sharpening.”
“No knife fights on my ship,” he warned as I left.
You don’t fight with a knife, Jory, Rijor had told me when he’d given me my first blade. You kill with it
.
“Right.”
I put the knife aside, fixed myself a meal I could only pick at, then curled up on the too-short sleeping
platform. I kept hearing my mother’s voice, on my hotel console. She always sent her signals audio-only,
but the last one had been too short.
Come home, Jory. I have not been feeling well.
I closed my eyes, reaching for the calm Rij had always told me to find whenever I grew angry. Why
didn’t she tell me how sick she was?
Calm didn’t want anything to do with me, and the sounds of movement outside in the corridor kept
distracting me. After an hour, I swore, kicked the linens onto the deck, then got dressed.
In the corridor I bumped into a couple of Tingalean snake-people, apologized, and asked if they knew
where the bar was. They bared some fang and slithered past me without replying. I checked my
wristcom, and it seemed to be working.
So what’s their problem?
Two more alien passengers crossed my path, and likewise ignored me. I ended up accessing a public
console to view the ship’s schematic.
I sniffed at my tunic, which smelled clean. Must be my pretty face.
At the bar I spotted the Nivid, a little drunk and happily chatting up one of the big-chassised bar drones.
Which reminded me, I needed to tell him to keep his trap shut about the underground. As soon as he saw
me headed his way, however, he grabbed his server and jumped out of his seat.
“Here, it’s yours.”
“Relax. I don’t want your table.”
“Sure, sure.” He sat back down and covered his tusks with one split-digited hand. “Anything you say.”
Shadows fell between us, and I turned to see a couple of soldiers in brown uniforms approaching. One
was a tall, pale-skinned humanoid with four extra arms; the other looked like an overgrown purple shrub.
Both carried pulse rifles and nasty expressions. They also were weaving, enough to tell me they’d been at
the bar about as long as the Nivid.
“Terran.”
Everyone within ten feet of us simultaneously got up and took their drinks to the other side of the room.
I turned my head, gave them the once-over, and turned back to Tusk Face.
“Hey, I’m talking to you.” The bushy one prodded me in the back with something hard and leafy. “Get out
of here.”
His buddy’s cheeks hollowed as he hooted something my wristcom translated as “Now.”
I thought of the blade, which I’d clipped in its sheath to my belt. What would I tell the captain? It isn’t a
knife fight if the other guy doesn’t have a blade, sir. “Why should I?”
“We don’t want you spitting in the drinks.” The shrub extended a couple of arms—or branches, I wasn’t
sure which—and gave me a good shove. “Go on, get out.”
I shoved back. “I’m not your goddamn waitress.”
The hooter pulled his rifle off his shoulder and tucked the back end under one of his arms. Whatever he
said this time was either so obscure or so obscene it didn’t translate at all.
The Nivid jumped up. “I should probably go.”
I clamped a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down. “These morons friends of yours?”
“Not at all.” He stared past me at someone else. “I don’t want any trouble here.”
“I’m glad to know it,” a pleasant voice said. “Sergeant, unless you want to spend the war hacking out
latrines on a detention moon, you’d better shoulder that weapon right now.”
I glanced at the third soldier who’d joined our happy little group. This one wore an immaculate
brown-and-red uniform, rows of commendation ribbons, and a major’s insignia gleaming on his stiff
collar. He also had a brown pelt, warm, intelligent brown eyes, huge ears, and two slitted nostrils in the
end of his powerful-looking muzzle.
The eyes said puppy but the teeth said wolf.
The major studied me for a moment. “As I live and pant. You’re Jory Rask, aren’t you?”
Before I could answer, the Nivid knocked over his flask, spilling spicewine all over the table. “You’re
her? Jory Rask? The NuYork StarDrivers runback?”
Even the two soldiers jittered back a step or two, looking stunned.
“Yeah, that’s me.” I righted the Nivid’s flask. “What do you want? An autograph?”
“I’d rather buy you a drink.” The major turned to his men. “You two have something better to do. Go and
locate it.”
The shrub and the hooter staggered back to the bar. The Nivid was still sitting in the only other chair,
staring at me and muttering, “Jory Rask?” under his breath.
I l
eaned forward so only he heard me. “Go play with a junker, Tusk Face. And don’t run your mouth
about the underground anymore, or I’ll sew your lips together.”
Terrified, the Nivid bobbed his head, grabbed his drink, and fled.
“What’s his problem?” the major asked me as he took the vacated seat.
“Got me.”
He gestured for the nearest drone, who sped over to mop up the mess. “Carafe of spicewine okay?”
Synalcohol had little effect on me, thanks to my bad blood, so it didn’t matter what he plied me with.
“Whatever.”
“Don’t say that.” He slapped a paw over his chest with a dramatic flourish. “I’d love to have your
offspring. How about we get intoxicated, go back to my place, and you impregnate me?”