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We aren't supposed to know the name of the ship. If something goes wrong and we are ignorant, the law cannot trace us back to it. It doesn't stop us from knowing. The older kids always know when its name and registration change. They say they can tell by the physical condition of the port we are in: those registration forgeries take place on the most remote outposts in Human space, in places outside space fleet control where things are the most rundown.
Meanwhile, our pirate captors make sure business goes on. The quality of the patron goes from rough-edged to jagged, and only the most experienced kids go out, accompanied by a personal handler. Sometimes neither of them comes back. It makes the captain and crew furious.
We are the money. Our physical appearance matters. We are well cared for, if underfed. The slaves in the holds below us need the food more than we do. Their treatment, however, is brutal and harsh. As long as they have arms and legs to perform a required task, the scars and bruises, even a missing eye or ear, does not matter. They only have to be capable of working when they leave.
***
"—SURE IS AN UGLY SON of a bitch."
Yeah. I had listened to the Frairy expound on my natural good looks for a while.
The time had come to engage with my surroundings again, so I groaned and rubbed at my nose.
The Tabisee glove took off some of the skin.
Shit! Someone had removed my headgear. The armor, however, still lovingly clenched my body in all the most awkward places.
I opened my eyes to a low-ceilinged, plascrete-lined bunker with heavy shadows along the lower sloping walls. It smelled faintly musky. In the center of the room, a Frairy, a Carquetchian, and two transparent pinkish beings who looked like sacks of water sat around a sturdy metal table playing cards. Memory told me the pink blobs were Brktar, but my chips contained no details on them, and I didn't have a language pack for Brkt or Carquet. The only other objects in the room were two vertical-barred cages. I was in one. Meeroush lay in the other one. He seemed to be unconscious. Or sleeping.
I decided to jump into the fire. "I didn't arrest your people," I said to the Carquetchian as I sat up.
"He knows that." The Frairy glanced over at me. The Carquetchian and the Brktar continued playing their game as if I had never spoken. "If you speak Basic you can get your message across to them." He grinned at me, exposing even rows of sharp little teeth. "Don't expect to develop any detailed plans, though."
I stayed with Frairen for now. "I have to get out on the streets. There's someone I have to find."
"Not happening."
"We can make a deal."
"With what? You don't even have salvageable wetware."
Was that the first thing people checked for here? "We can work out something."
He turned his attention to the activity at the table without answering.
I glanced at Meeroush's outstretched form. "What's wrong with him?"
"He's fine."
"I need to get out of here before he wakes up."
"Why? He's your ally."
"Not on this world, he's not!"
"Yeah." The Frairy looked at me, his small, round eyes bright and critical. "Maybe being illegal makes you an unwelcome guest to your allies. Anyone who ever favored Earth Alliance's membership in the Whooex Union is already under pressure from the Endar Primacy for just acknowledging you even exist."
"I didn't plan to come here. I was injured—"
"You realize your timing is really bad, right? The Earth Alliance is up for admission to the Trade Consortium again and everyone has an opinion on it."
"Is it true? Is everyone protesting EA membership?"
"Nope."
"But the Endar said—"
"The Endar think your membership is an extremely bad idea." He paused to watch the Carquetchian lay a card on the table with one of its lower branch-like extremities, then continued. "You guys stir some bad blood with them."
"I got nothing to do with that."
"Want to tell them?"
"No."
He threw two cards on the table and one of the pink beings gave a sad, haunting shriek. The Frairy cursed it soundly when it extended a pink pseudopod and absorbed the pile of plastic and metal shapes at the center of the table into its body. The stuff moved slowly to clump in its abdomen.
I wondered fleetingly how one went about robbing such a creature. The possibilities were not pretty.
Still cursing, the Frairy tossed more coins on the table while the Carquetchian shuffled the cards with three of its appendages.
"What's a Frairy doing on the Moneyworld?"
"What are you and the rest of you bastards doing on a Frairy world?"
"What?"
"This is my homeworld, lady. The rest of you people are here at our tolerance and because of a stupid pact made several thousand years ago. You're an infestation that has commandeered the host."
"Wait." I had to put that one into words. "You're saying Frairies are native to the Moneyworld?"
"Where do you think we're from?"
"The darkest pits of hell" didn't seem to be a diplomatic response from someone locked in a metal cage, so I shrugged. "I don't know. Not here." This Frairy seemed angrier than Thok. Maybe not having a sidekick to transport you through the walls of the highest-security vaults in the Whooex Union or hitch rides on the outside of starships lowered your social skills a notch.
A familiar-looking green scarf lay on the floor next to the reinforced door across the room.
"You clubbed the Tabi ship! Why?"
"To help them out."
"By damaging their ship?"
"I damaged a comm node so the pilot couldn't receive a command from the Sat Quar diverting him away from the Tabi compound to an Endar-specified med center. He can't receive the order, there is no charge of flagrant disregard."
"Oh." He had saved Saurubi from an encounter with the leather-layered High Jerak. Meeroush and Shoff had anticipated the Endar diversion. "Why do you care what happens to a Tabi med-evac? Unless you're working with them."
"Aw, you found us out," he said sarcastically.
"Look, I think that's great. You're an ally. I'm an ally. Right now, I need to get out on the street."
"Hey!" He lifted his little hands to stop me. "Not working with you. Don't want to know the invasion plans."
"Invas— I'm not a spy!"
The other players put down their cards and focused various forms of ocular sensors upon me.
How much should I say? Shit! I had no idea whose side these beings were on.
I shifted my feet and metal rattled.
"Chains?" I snatched the diversion, half in relief, and half in outrage. "You didn't put him in chains." There were no restraints on Meeroush.
"We didn't lock his cell door, either. Be grateful we're trying to be friendly here. Some of the places we could put you would leave you too traumatized to work with afterward."
Considering some of the terrible things I had seen one species do to another, or even to their own, I decided to accept the current situation as it stood. "Okay. What do you want from me?"
"We don't want anything from you. And we don't want to know what the EA's up to, either."
"The EA's not up to anything! There was an accident. I was dying in the Vasty and my rescuers didn't have the resources to save me. They brought me here in error." How many more times did I have to tell this story?
"Right. And the Zeeks upgraded you for free."
Oh, sarcasm. I should have known the civility wouldn't last. "They grew me an arm. And I'm grateful," I added.
He shrugged. "Why'd you run from the Tabisee? They're the closest thing to an ally you have on this world."
"Because I need to find someone."
The Frairy cocked his head to one side and studied me critically. "Really? Because I thought you said you came here in error. The EA needs to work on its deception skills. You guys are awful liars—or is it just you?"
"There's this kid," I tried to keep the frustration out of my voice. "She left the rescue ship when they carried me off."
"Kid? Young offspring? As in Human?"
"Yes."
"You a slaver? We don't like slavers." Surly sounds rippled around the table.
"God, no! She was rescued from the accident with me."
"Who is she?"
"I don't know."
"Man, you are losing credibility fast."
"She survived the accident with me. I saw her leave the ship when they carried me off. She waved at me—"
"She in the company of others?"
"Others? No." I anticipated the next question. "She's young. A fledgling Human."
"How long ago?"
"Ninety days," I said glumly.
"Street rats got her." He turned back to the game.
The swift ease with which he dismissed the kid's chances of survival made the skin of my scalp crawl. "You mean rats rats, or street gang rats?"
"What? You think we're not civilized? The vermin is manageable. It's the dregs of civilization I'm talkin'. The kind of filth that steals and kills and crushes hope. The kind who will cut your throat 'cause they want your blood to clean their dirty blade."
"She's Human. Maybe this tall." I gestured her approximate height with my hand. My original right hand. "In ninety days someone has to have seen her."
"Local 100866," the Frairy said in Basic. The Brkt with the visible winnings wobbled. "What is talk on streets?"
"No two-leg, Human-like." Local's voice was an amplified sound of bubbles breaking on the surface of water, but it ran through Basic.
The Frairy looked at me as if that settled the issue.
"Excuse, please," the other pink guy burbled timidly. "Cluster merchants, not ours, water market level report theft food recent past. Owner notes small loss but not incident. We thought internal incompetence, but many reports. Perhaps wrong?"
"Yes! No!" I was up with a rattle of chain, gripping the bars of the cell. "Is still happen?"
The one the Frairy had addressed as Local 100866 drew a card. "Possible. Curious. Think is youngling?"
"Yes! Where thefts? Can take me?"
The game at the table continued without a response.
Ninety days. Was I crazy? I was so swept up in my own problems I had never fully thought through the logistics of this situation. Could a Human child her age survive on an alien world, unnoticed, for three earth months?
Meeroush shifted position in the cell beside mine.
Getting out of here would sever my connection to the Tabisee—to their benefit as well as mine.
"Please let me out of here." Meeroush didn't intimidate me nearly as much as Shoff; I had the impression she would take my ass apart and enjoy every drop of blood she spilled, but the big male could put a severe hurt on me, too.
"You'll be okay. We won't let him kill you."
Very funny. I clung tighter to the bars, intent on making Meeroush pry me off if he came after me.
The mixed lot of beings at the table played several hands in silence.
There was something I had to ask. "Excuse me. Are you guys... Frairies...uh, telepathic?"
The card game stopped. Four sets of eyes locked on me again.
"Can't people play a game of cards around here?" The Frairy laid his cards face down on the table and glared at me.
"I'm not trying to offend anyone. It's just...I'm pretty sure the other Frairy I met was telepathic."
He relaxed into wariness. "Who did you meet and where?"
"He called himself Thok. He..."
"Where?" he barked.
"Not here. Inside the EA. He was traveling with a MoMo."
"Then he's a traitor to his people and the lowest form of filth." He turned his attention back to their game.
Because he was a telepath, or because he traveled with a MoMo?
Maybe it was because of the way he dressed, I thought sarcastically, but the Frairy before me hardly qualified as stylish in his batik sarong and scuffed half-laced, untied work boots.
"Why is he a traitor?" Linking myself to Thok was not the most strategic move to make, but if I kept the conversation going, I might pull some useful information out of it. "He's the only other one of your people I've ever encountered."
He slapped cards on the table and one of the pink guys wailed again. "How did you come across that despicable piece of offal?"
"I had a brushing encounter with him on an EA station."
"What? Were you both in the same jail cell?" Snorts and ringing tinkles that I took as amusement rippled around the table.
"Something like that." I really didn't care what his problem with Thok was. He hadn't answered my question. "Are you telepathic?"
He kicked the chair back and walked over to stand in front of me. Despite the fact the top of his head met me at mid-chest, his movements emanated a dangerous level of bad attitude. A heavy-nailed forefinger poked me in the chest armor through the bars. "No one on this world is telepathic. Insinuating anyone on this world is telepathic is an accusation. An ugly accusation. It gets people killed. Got that, Flygirl?" He turned away.
Flygirl? The Frairy on Mandragala had called me that. "Hey! What's your name?" I demanded.
"Duff," he snapped as he settled back into his chair and resumed play without a backward glance at me. "Not that it will help you."
I looked over to find Meeroush sitting with his back propped against the far corner of the cell, watching me.
"What did you do to me?" I asked him.
His hand, casually resting on his thigh, rolled to reveal a silver rod about fifteen centimeters long. He flicked his thumb against it and a ripple of white energy crackled across one end.
Okay. I moved further down the front of the cell bars and turned eyes forward again.
The game continued across the room in a mix of Frairy curses and squeals while I internally squirmed under the burn of Tabisee eyes. I knew from experience with Saura, the only way to reduce the hostility level was to open a cautious discussion on the errors I had made and let the anger vent.
I looked back over at him. "You okay?"
The ears moved forward and down and his eyes smoldered golden fury.
A loud click-click sound cut through the noise of the card game.
Duff instantly sprang up and across the room. With a rattle of keys, he threw open my cell door and scurried in to unlock the shackle around my ankle. "We got trouble," he snapped in Meeroush's direction.
The security officer was out of his cell and into mine before Duff freed my ankle. "Who?" he shot at the Frairy.
"No idea," the Frairy replied. "We have a cheap-ass warning system with no video because our allies won't share their tech."
"It would expose our alliance," Meeroush said. "Is it the Sat Quar?"
"We know they are out on the street, headed this direction." He gestured impatiently with a hand. "There are only two exits out of this place. You can wiggle out of this by claiming we took you in during the riot, but Flygirl has to go into the drain."
"They would never believe a Tabi—"
"Fine. You tracked the saboteur here and caught me. Whatever. But you have to claim your right to take me in for questioning over the damage to your med-evac. You can't let them take me into custody. Your med-evac, your jurisdiction."
The Carquetchian was pulling the metal grate off a large, round floor drain with its little squiggly finger-roots. One of the Brkts slithered past him and down the opening.
Meeroush grasped me by the back of the suit and dragged me out of the cell and over to the edge of the hole.
I'd just seen what the pink guys at the card table could do. "No! Wait!"
"It's the only way out for you," the Frairy said. "The Brktar will mask your presence until we can get you back."
Get me back? "No—"
"Shut up, Zant." Meeroush slapped the helmet down over my head. The self-situational cams inside it flickered on to show thick green moss lining the gaping circle at my feet.
"How deep?" he asked Duff.
"Enough. They won't see she's down there. The moss will counter any heat signature."
Crap!
"Can we retrieve her without a problem?"
"Don't worry, our friend will stay with her. It's easier than getting her back from the Sat Quar."
"Keep your mouth shut, Zant," Meeroush hissed at me. He lifted me out over the floor drain with one arm.
"Wait!" Duff and I exclaimed simultaneously.
And I thought he didn't like me.
"Shut off her comm. Otherwise, you'll have to listen to her squeal the whole way down."
Meeroush gave me a broad grin. Then he dropped me.