“Oh, the human girl I plucked out of a car she was trying to steal has grown a conscience. How inspiring.”
“This is different.”
“Is it? Do you have any idea what other pots Soolie has had his weird little flipper in? You’re not as clean as you’d like to believe, little one.”
First crossed her arms. “At least I bought some soap with the money.”
Loritt couldn’t help but smile. He had a good eye; she was a clever little glot after all. So long as he could keep her focused.
“The Andrani will find their way back home, you have my word. You saved them from their fate. We have Jut’s ship, and we’ve publicly embarrassed him. That kind of hit against his reputation in the underworld is very hard to recover from, believe me. That has to be enough.” First’s rage hardened on her face. “For now,” Loritt permitted. “But we have to keep flying.”
“Whatever.” First spun around on a heel and headed for the viewing gallery’s exit with her new sextuple-legged nightmare pet following close behind.
“Oh, and First?” Loritt called after her. “The Gomeltic can’t enter the station. It has to go into medical quarantine, then it’s getting shipped home to Faan.”
First stopped dead, then turned like a moon going through its phases, and stalked at Loritt with such force and confidence that, for a moment, he thought she might physically pass through him without taking any notice.
Instead, she stopped short, less than a hand span away from his face.
“No,” First said, simply and definitively.
“It’s so far out of my hands, I couldn’t even wave at it, First. That is a dangerous animal. It has been banned from export since the Turemok first entered the Assembly. Its very presence here is a crime. There’s nothing I can do. I’m pulling strings just to keep it from being destroyed on sight.”
“Her name is Guinevere!” First threw down definitively. “And you will make certain everyone up the custody chain knows it. All the way back to Faan.” First stormed away, paused for a long moment to tenderly rub Guinevere’s snout and assure her everything would be all right, then stood again to glare at Loritt as if her resentment-fueled eyes could bore through dreadnought armor before she stalked off for the exit.
Loritt turned to Hashin, who had been standing a span outside of First’s rage perimeter. “She is an intense specimen, our human,” he said.
“She’s young,” the Lividite said. “As is her species. Their passions have yet to be tempered with experience.”
“Will that be a problem?”
“A manageable one. She assigns her loyalty strangely, but once it’s fixed, it’s damned-near impervious.”
“And you think she’s fixed her loyalty on us?”
“Honestly, it’s one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen. She’s bonded with a Grenic who hasn’t spoken more than a few dozen words to her in months and a subsentient, six-legged murder machine she knew for less than a standard day. I think we can win her over.”
Loritt’s various components took a long, mind-clearing breath. He took pride in his ability to read people of any species. A common strength among his race, a side effect of being made up of lots and lots of smaller people themselves. It was a skill that had been of great import while he built his little empire. It made managing his employees and customers easier than it might be for many. But Hashin and other Lividites were always opaque and unreadable, while First was so hot and loud she was almost blinding. Still …
“See to it. We need her.”
“Need her?” Hashin cocked his head. “Or need her approval? You weren’t so unlike her in the beginning, my old friend. Is that why she’s here? To act as your conscience?”
“Just do your job,” Loritt bit off.
“And the Andrani?”
Loritt froze in place. Damn that karking Vel poser Jut and his stupid, arrogant—“See them to quarters. Comfortable quarters, with generous rations. Wait a few days and arrange transport back to their home world. Small batches, no more than a half dozen at once. Stagger their departures by at least two days. The last thing we need is for somebody to come back and accuse us of trafficking them.”
“That won’t be cheap,” Hashin said quietly.
“Oh, now you care about our bottom line? Just make it happen. But don’t call in any favors. That just leads to questions.”
“I understand, boss. It’ll be hard to keep quiet, but I’ll think of something.”
“I know you will, Hashin. You’re the best cleaner I’ve ever seen.”
“I don’t actually clean anything. I just have a talent for helping people overlook the messes they didn’t really want to see in the first place.”
Loritt considered this while absently rubbing the side of his face. One of his jaw muscles was getting old and had begun to cramp now and then. “And are there any messes I don’t want to see, my friend?”
The first of the Andrani nervously worked their way down the gangway plank under Sheer’s unexpectedly maternal eye. She’d always been warmer toward reactors and conduits than other living beings.
“One comes to mind, boss,” Hashin said.
* * *
First trampled away from the docks and kicked over a waste receptacle on her way out the clamshell emergency pressure doors. She felt doubly betrayed by Loritt’s decisions.
It was bad enough he’d picked his pocketbook over principle where the Andrani captives were concerned. At least they would be safe in the end. But to send Guinevere, a defenseless pup, back to a world that hated her, that was inexcusable.
As she entered the surging crowds in the inner terminal, she passed a pair of customs agents, including one who looked an awful lot like the one who had processed her entry six months earlier, holding snares and stunners. Behind them, they pulled a counter-grav crate with generous air holes. So that was to be Guinevere’s cage, huh?
We’ll see about that, First thought viciously as she pulled out her deck and trailed after them at a less conspicuous distance. She paused by the pressure doors, knowing they were the primary way in or out of that section of docks, and busied herself with preparations while she waited for them to emerge again with their new cargo.
Sure enough, less than ten minutes later, the two of them reappeared with the crate in tow, floating noticeably lower and shaking randomly. Nearly everything on Junktion, indeed everywhere First had been in Assembly space since stowing away on that trade ship, was networked in one way or another. The crate was no exception, and it was an embarrassingly simple affair hacking into its unencrypted command prompts. With three swipes of her finger, First convinced the crate it was back in its pens and it was time to open its door and power down.
The crate, already encumbered by a hundred kilos of Gomeltic pup, abruptly dropped to the deck with a thud! With growing dismay etched into their faces, obvious even across lines of species and culture, the two customs agents looked back at the crate as the door swung open on squeaky hinges.
First smiled as Guinevere leaped free of her confinement. The smile didn’t last very long, however, as it became plainly obvious from the screaming and blood that “defenseless pup” was in no way an accurate description of her new pet. “Oh. Oh no…”
“Loose Gomeltic!” the second customs agent shouted above the din of the crowd while cradling his partner, who had just undergone a crash weight-loss program via losing an arm. Guinevere, propelled by six powerful legs and ancestral fury, dove toward the screaming crowd with unnerving speed. The sea of people parted to make way for her passage. Fliers took to the air, parents shoved their young under tables.
First’s grimace turned into a horrified, openmouthed gasp that she covered with a hand as she backed away from the expanding chaos and right into a wall that she was certain hadn’t been there a moment earlier. First looked up. Jrill looked down.
Her glowing red eyes shrank to pinpricks on either side of her razor-sharp beak. “Going somewhere?”
“Er…”
Jrill sighed heavily and clamped a hand down on First’s shoulder. “Come on, then.”
“Where are we going?”
“To recapture the vengeful food blender you just unleashed on the station.”
First grimaced. “Right now?”
“No, after we enjoy a light dinner and an exfoliating massage,” Jrill said. “Of course right now!”
“I’m sorry,” First stammered. “I didn’t know.”
“Tell it to that Mantalin.” Jrill nodded toward the customs officer who had so recently been relieved of an appendage.
“Sorry,” First whispered at the agent, not wanting to give herself away as the culprit. It was bad enough she hadn’t noticed Jrill surveilling her. Her street-scanning skills were getting rusty. How did she miss a two-meter-tall scarecrow with glowing eyes watching her work? Shameful.
“Don’t feel too bad,” Jrill said. “It’ll grow back in a few months. And the union will make sure he gets full disability pay in the meantime. Let’s just get your beast back in a box before it does permanent damage to anyone, yes?”
“You grew up around those things?” First asked.
“The Turemok build strong fences for a reason.”
First rubbed her temples, massaging away any hope she’d held for a relaxing evening catching up on her favorite Grenic soap opera played back at high speed.
“Fine, let’s get to work.”
* * *
Two hours into the search, and First was deeper into the bowels of Junktion than she’d ever been. Or ever wanted to be.
“You take me to all the nicest places,” she said to Jrill as they waddled through a reclamation tunnel, ankle-deep in a mix of fluids of a truly unmentionable nature.
“Oh, this is my fault, is it?” Jrill clapped back. “Because I could’ve sworn to Dar I saw you wiggling your finger magic on that deck of yours to let a killer loose among a civilian population of over seven million sentients.”
“I thought you said they were vegetarians?”
“So are your hippopotamuses,” Jrill said. “And they are one of the most dangerous animals on your home world. And before you ask, yes, we’ve exported them for the hunt. They were tough karkers, too. They represented Earth life honorably in our fighting rings. Fighting in water helped them. But they’re nothing like an adult Gomeltic.” Jrill breathed hard. “You’re very lucky it’s a pup, or the body count would already be in the dozens.”
“You stole an endangered species from Africa?” First demanded.
“No, actually. We relocated an invasive species out of South America. Or did you think Pablo Escobar’s escaped hippo colony disappeared from Colombia all by itself?”
“Who?” First asked, genuinely curious.
Jrill’s eyes closed entirely. “Dar preserve them, they are trying.”
First ignored Jrill’s sarcastic display of piety and focused on the tunnel ahead. “You’re sure she came this way?”
Jrill pointed toward her protruding proboscis. “Standard Turemok military kit includes an olfactory upgrade. Synthetic chem-sniffers can detect samples as small as twenty parts per billion. Trust me, she went that way.”
“How can you pick out anything in this stench?”
“We have filters.”
“Must be nice.” First swatted at yet another of the slow, corpulent, bumblebee-looking flies that had dogged her since they’d entered the labyrinthine tunnels of Junktion’s recycling system. Or tried to, at any rate. For the hundredth time, the swollen thing ducked away at the last possible moment, leaving First’s hand to hit only air.
“Why can’t I smack these fat little bastards? Their reflexes must be supernatural.”
“Actually, their reflexes are glot,” Jrill said. “Just awful.”
“Then how do they always get out of the way so fast?”
“Because their consciousnesses evolved to exist five rakims in the future. They always see what’s coming and just swoop out of the way. We call them timeflies.”
“So how do you kill them?”
“You don’t. You just learn to tolerate them until they lose interest and fly away. They’re carrion eaters, and you’re not dead. Yet.”
“What about in five seconds?”
“If they fly off, you can be confident you will live at least five more rakims.”
“How encouraging.”
Jrill shrugged. “You asked.”
They continued down the tunnel in silence for several minutes, until the question burning in First’s throat since she’d released Guinevere became intolerable.
“You’re not going to tell Loritt, are you?”
Jrill, obviously expecting the question, was ready with an answer immediately. “That depends on whether you repair your mistake in time, human.”
First swallowed. “I suppose that’s fair.”
“It’s more than fair. It’s overly generous.”
“So why do it for me?”
“Because I’m wagering you will be more manageable as a subordinate if you’re indebted to me personally,” Jrill said.
First rolled her eyes but continued down the narrow tunnel. She’d downloaded an app for her deck that converted its speakers and microphone pickups into a rudimentary ultrasonic motion detector. The render on the display didn’t have much in the way of resolution, little more than blobs, but it could track relative size, speed, and distance with enough accuracy to give them a warning of anything coming their way. So far, the path remained clear, except for the timeflies and a handful of small scavengers that ran for cover as soon as they approached.
“Out of purely academic curiosity, what’s the plan if we actually find Guinevere?” First asked.
“I assume you’ll work your strange bonding magic on it and we’ll drag it back to the crate you sabotaged.”
“That’s a terrible plan.”
“It was a terrible idea.”
First’s screen lit up with dozens of contacts from seemingly every direction at once. She threw a hand up to signal a stop just as the first tentacles sprang up out of the water.
“Whoa!” First said as a wiggling, sucker-studded arm wrapped around her ankle and tightened. Before she or Jrill could react, First was yanked inverted into the air. Her deck went rebounding off the tunnel wall and dropped into the fetid soup. Still on her feet, Jrill slashed and bit at the writhing mass of tentacles, trying to reach her. But there were so many, and she suddenly seemed a million kilometers away.
First found herself dangling while below her a huge, round maw lined with jagged black teeth emerged from the muck as the tentacle holding fast to her leg began to lower her toward it. Overcome with terror, First screamed for all she was worth.
Everything froze. First hung there, staring at the black points poised to pierce her in a thousand places from every direction. A hot stench even fouler than the surrounding sewage wafted up from the mouth to assault her senses and add to the horror. From out of the mud, an eyestalk extruded itself, blinked twice to clear its lens of filth, then extended to inspect First’s face.
“Oh, my word,” the mouth said. “I’m dreadfully sorry. I thought you were a sewer strider.” Two more tentacles reached up and grabbed First’s wrists. She struggled against them until she realized she was being turned right side up and gently set back down.
“There, no harm done,” the tentacled horror said.
“So…” First panted as she tried to get her heart rate back under control. “You’re not going to eat me?”
“Eat a sentient? Surely not. What kind of monster do you take me for?” the gaping, dagger-filled orifice said.
“Er…”
“I do apologize for giving you such a fright, though. It was careless of me. It’s just been a few weeks since one as big as you came along, and I’ve been feeling a bit peckish. I got ahead of myself.”
“That’s okay. I guess,” First said. She looked back at Jrill, who held a still-wiggling section of tentacle in one hand and quickly hid
it behind her back. “So you … live down here?”
“Oh yes. Best hunting on Junktion. Warm and rent-free. The reclamation department even pays me a stipend every month to keep the strider population down. Can you beat that?”
“What do you spend it on down here?”
“Hmm?”
“Your stipend.”
“Ah, most of it I send back home to my folks. The rest I spend on my music collection.”
“You know you can just download that stuff for free, right?”
“Pirate music?” The monster recoiled. “But then how will musicians earn enough money to keep creating?”
First nodded diplomatically. “I hadn’t thought of it like that.”
“Not enough people do. It’s a real problem. You have to support artists, or you have no reason to complain when quality suffers.”
“You’re probably right. Say, I dropped my tablet when you, ah, picked me up.”
The monster held up a tentacle. “Worry not. Just one moment.” The rest of its arms returned to the muck and writhed about.
“Here we are.” First’s deck appeared in front of her, covered in gunk, but otherwise none the worse for wear. She grabbed it.
“Thank you, um, sir? Ma’am?”
“Call me Bilge. And you are?”
“First.”
“What an odd name. You’re quite welcome, First. And tell your friend not to worry about my arm; she was just trying to protect you. Honestly, I’m embarrassed by the whole thing and will be quite happy to put it behind us.”
Jrill looked at the meaty tip and dropped it in the water.
“It’s fine, really,” First insisted. “One other thing maybe you can help with. We’re looking for my, ah, pet. It came this way recently.”
“What, the Gomeltic?” Bilge asked. “Nasty pieces of work, those things. You’re mighty brave keeping one.”
“Or stupid,” Jrill said.
“It went down the passage to the left maybe a quarter larim ago,” Bilge said.
“And you didn’t try to eat it?”
“A Gomeltic? Heavens, no. Way too much fight in those things. I’m more of an ambush predator, you see.”
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