Gareth could have easily outrun Constable Baker on a track. One of the horror elements of the species descriptions in the book he had been reading spelled out the immense endurance and stamina of humans compared to every other species in known space, including the presumably-horrifying little fact that some human societies had been known to chase their pray to death, jogging lightly along for hours until the creature simply collapsed of exhaustion and died.
Only Terran dogs, Humanity’s secret weapon, could match humans for endurance.
He would have liked to tell the writers of such lurid squamph that the average human worked in a factory or at a desk, and was about as dangerous as the average citizen here, but they wouldn’t listen. He was a human, after all.
And it wasn’t Gareth against a single Constable. He had Talyarkinash to protect, and a strange and wondrous city into which he could easily become so disoriented that he became an easy target for some innocent beat cop.
Gareth would not kill an authorized law enforcement agent doing their job. He wouldn’t even hurt one any more than necessary to escape.
He had to represent all humans to the Accord of Souls. On his life would be their eventual welcome into broader galactic society.
Fortunately, rush hour was apparently the same, the galaxy over. Happy hour had dawned and people were starting to sneak out of offices a little early to get a head start on family life, or extra time down at the corner bar.
Just in the few seconds since they had emerged from the building and gone a block, the number of people on the sidewalk had practically doubled. Gareth was hard pressed not to run into people hard enough to knock them down, especially while also not losing Talyarkinash’s hand.
She was his lifeline right now, and he needed her like a lifesuit in a hull breach. Fortunately, she needed him just as much. Without Gareth and the brothers, she would have nowhere to go when the police did come back and started going through her files.
He tried not to shout out his internal joy that another criminal ring would be broken, because that meant he was about to go down with them. A cop like Eveth Baker would shoot first and he would wake up behind bars for the rest of his life, while they tried to figure out a way to completely wipe his memory without taking the rest of his mind with it.
That woman had the look about her.
And she was chasing them, gun in hand and down by her side like a well-trained operative. Gareth understood instinctively how dangerous she would be.
At the corner, the light held them for a second. Gareth glanced back and picked her up through the mass of bodies as she came after them. He watched Baker run into a walking tree (A WALKING TREE?) and lose her communications device, the handheld sliding under a car parked at the curb.
It gave him an idea as the light turned to walk.
“Talyarkinash, I need you to trust me,” he said as they pressed their way forward through the growing mob of strangely-smelling folks.
He felt her dig her heels in hard, because she stopped moving and he nearly pulled her over accidentally.
“Trust you?” she snarled quietly. “You?”
“I think I can get us away from her, but I need your help,” Gareth said. “Your trust. I swear that I will do everything I can to protect you, on my honor as a Field Agent of the Earth Force Sky Patrol.”
“Are you insane, Gareth?” she hissed.
Gareth decided that they were losing ground to Constable Baker while arguing. He pulled the Nari scientist along by sheer strength.
“Maybe,” he admitted as she allowed herself to fall into stride again.
It was like pushing against ocean waves to get to the calmer, open water, getting through the press of bodies.
There. An alley way between two buildings, possibly allowing industrial vehicles access to interior loading bays. The asphalt was worn and dirty, and no plants lined the walls.
He looked back and Baker had chosen pursuit over assistance. She was holding her gun and had foregone her radio for backup.
Gareth pulled Talyarkinash into the alleyway, like two young lovers sneaking off for a quick smooch out of the flow of traffic. Nothing could be further from his mind, but anything to confuse people worked in his favor.
Like New Metropolis back home, the streets were movie set facades, pretty on the street, but unwashed, ugly, and industrial in the alleys. Gareth counted dumpsters, trashcans, a parked delivery truck, and several overhead balconies, possibly good, old-fashioned fire steel escapes. None of the latter provided him the cover he needed, but the rest of the space would do.
Gareth measured off the strides he needed, pulling Talyarkinash along with him.
“She’ll be here in seconds,” he said urgently. “I need you stretched out on the asphalt here, like you’ve tripped and twisted your ankle, and I didn’t stop. She’ll see you, and come to arrest you. I’m hiding close by. I will jump her when she gets here. Can you do that?”
“The alternative is jail?” Talyarkinash asked.
“The alternative is Maximus finds out you’ve been helping me and the brothers, and kills you,” Gareth said simply. “I’m trying to prevent that right now. Later, I need your help to save the galaxy.”
The terror was still there in those ocean-deep eyes, like icebergs floating on a storm-tossed, angry sea. But something else appeared.
He might have been bold enough to call it hope, if he wanted to push his luck.
“You’ll protect me?” she asked quietly.
“I promise,” Gareth stated.
Before he could react, she lunged forward and kissed him, one arm around his neck and whiskers tickling his face. She felt ice-cold initially, but warmed in the second he held her.
“Go,” she ordered, tossing her bag further down the alley and stretching herself out, just as he had explained it.
Gareth loped over to one of the dumpsters and crawled into a shadow cast by the delivery truck, face all a-blush. Now all he had to do was hope that the driver was too busy having a smoke to come out in the next thirty seconds.
“Come back here, you bastard,” Talyarkinash suddenly yelled at the top of her lungs. “You can’t leave me.”
Gareth nearly surged out of his hiding place, then stopped himself. He peeked anyway.
Talyarkinash honestly looked like she was watching him run away from where she had fallen, as a cowardly Gareth had panicked and fled.
Like he had done the absolutely unthinkable and left one of his own behind.
But humans had no reputation for honor here, either.
“Gareth,” Talyarkinash yelled. “Come back.”
“Freeze,” an angry woman called.
Gareth recognized the voice from the building.
Constable Baker, right on time. Hopefully alone.
Talyarkinash stopped yelling. Glanced back and moaned wretchedly.
“Oh, you bastards,” she cried. “All of you.”
“Where is he?” Baker yelled.
From the volume, she had entered the mouth of the alley. Probably in a two-handed stance, one hand cupped under the other to steady her pistol, since she didn’t have the walkie-talkie with her. Most likely turned thinways to her target to reduce her silhouette.
Gareth held his breath.
“Where is he?” Baker repeated.
“Bastard abandoned me,” Talyarkinash replied angrily. “I fell down and couldn’t get up, so he just ran.”
“Show me your hands,” Baker ordered.
Gareth couldn’t see the Constable when he slid an eye even with the edge of the dumpster, but Talyarkinash was in clear sight, ignoring him as she faked a bum leg and held her hands up.
“Roll over on your stomach, hands behind your back,” Baker called.
She had to be walking slowly closer, as the echoes softened. Gareth might have done the same thing, approaching carefully and by the book.
Knowing who he was dealing with, Gareth might also have just shot the criminal on the ground with the stunner, to be sure. Talyarkinash had a dangerous edge underneath that scholarly brain.
But the Nari woman complied. Laid out flat with her hands behind her.
Trusting Gareth to save her life.
The surge of pride made him feel ten feet tall.
Shadows on the pavement as Baker got close. Gareth could track her now, with enough sun behind her.
He would be reaching for handcuffs about now. Moving towards his weak hand side so he could hold the pistol while snapping a cuff over a wrist.
Baker was left-handed, she would be shifting towards him, and turning her back on his hiding place.
He hoped.
There.
Now or never.
Gareth rose on silent feet and exploded out of his hiding place.
He had to pretend Baker wasn’t a girl as he was about to tackle her. All of his soul cried out in shame at hitting a woman, and doing it from behind as well.
Her being half a head taller, and almost as broad in the shoulders helped. He was back on the muddy turf, bringing down a burly tight-end short of the goal line to save the play, the game, and the season.
Slamming into her felt like that tackle had been. Damn, she must outweigh him, too.
The woman must have had a sixth sense. Something warned her and she glanced back at the last instant, tangled up with gun, cuffs, prisoner, and rampaging human.
They ended up in a jumble of bodies, but Gareth used all his training to force his way on top. She was muscled like a tight-end as well, so he didn’t have time to wrestle with her. Not if he wanted to survive.
God only knows what kinds of martial arts Accord cops were taught.
Instead, he broke every rule his mother had hammered into him as a child. He had hit a girl. Knocked her down and pinned her to ground.
Gareth punched her in the middle of the forehead, as hard as he could. It was like trying to open a coconut with a fist.
But it worked. Her head bounced off the hard pavement almost as hard as it had his fist and her eyes lost focus.
He punched her a second time, wailing inside at the thought of his father finding out when he came home. Another bounce.
This time she stayed down.
He checked her eyes. They were half rolled back, unfocused, but symmetric, so he had just knocked her out cold and into a mild concussion.
Still, he climbed up and rolled her onto her side so she wouldn’t somehow choke. The handcuffs had fallen just about with them, which was fortuitous.
Gareth grabbed Agent Baker and lifted her enough to shift her over to the dumpster he had used as cover. A quick snap and the handcuffs latched her to a ton of steel. He had no idea what a key might look like, but hopefully this would be enough of a peace offering.
He was a human. He was supposed to be a mindless, killing machine threatening all civilization with bloodshed.
Maybe, just maybe he could communicate with them by not using violence.
“Not bad, buddy,” another voice said. High tenor, nasty tones.
Gareth looked up at a Warreth male, standing in the mouth of the alley, holding a gun on him.
This one didn’t look like a cop. Too slovenly, compared to Agent Baker and her partner.
Gareth was willing to gamble that he had just found one of Sarzynski’s men.
“Stand up slowly, human,” the birdman said, confirming the first estimation.
Only one of Maximus’s men would know him by species on sight.
Gareth complied, hands out but not overhead. His mind was racing with options, but the birdman was far enough away that he could probably shoot Gareth without a problem.
He needed to get out of this alley, and quickly.
And he really needed to be away from all of this before somebody’s backup arrived.
“You work for Maximus?” Gareth asked carefully.
“That’s right,” the Warreth gunman said with a sneer. “Told us to watch the cops. Follow them around, in case they led us to you. And lookie what we have here.”
“I’d rather not,” Talyarkinash said.
She shot the man with Baker’s gun, both of them forgotten in all this excitement.
Gareth realized just how lucky he could be.
“Thank you,” Gareth told her as she emerged from behind the delivery truck, pistol in hand pointed at the thug.
“I did owe you one,” she smiled up at him. “What do we do with them?”
“Is that a stunner?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Hers.”
“Can you adjust the stun?”
“Sure.”
“Put it on the highest setting and shoot him again,” Gareth said. “How long will he be out?”
“Probably hours,” she replied, adjusting something with her other hand and then shooting the birdman again. “Now what?”
“Now I would like you to put the gun back in Agent Baker’s holster,” Gareth said. “And then we’re going to run like hell.”
“You just knocked her out,” Talyarkinash said. “She’ll be awake long before he is.”
“And she’ll have her handcuffs, badge, and gun,” Gareth agreed. “I’m trying to send them a message.”
“What message?”
“That we’re on the same side,” Gareth said.