A…swarm?
Oh, hell no.
“Ignore them. The Grel are very disciplined now. They keep the station clean. Where would all our garbage go if not for them? Ungrateful heathens.”
He let me finish my meal, chattering on about one subject or another and asking me random questions about myself which I refused to answer. I think he thought I was amusing. When I’d eaten my fill, he snapped his fingers at the twins.
“Take Callie back to her room so that she can change, and then meet me in the Center.”
The twins jostled me towards the door without giving me a chance to say anything, and I made sure to shoot a glare over my shoulder at Rathal. He waved at me and winked.
Ass.
We marched back down the maze of halls and to the crossroads of four converging hallways that I’d mentally marked as the halfway point between the dining room and my quarters. From my quarters, which were at the end of a hall that stretched about fifty yards to the first right turn that led to another hall, then another right before the throne room. Straight would take us to the throne room from the crossroads, and then it was a right, left, left, right, left to get to the dining hall. We were halfway down the hall leading to the throne room when a reed thin, pink skinned female alien skidded to a stop in front of us, her chest heaving. She was wearing a diaphanous white veil over the lower half of her face that matched the knee length white flowing dress she had draped artfully over her thin body. She’d have been downright ethereal if it wasn’t for a single detail.
She only had one eye.
One huge orange eye dominated the portion over the veil. A nictitating membrane slid over the bulbous orb every few seconds.
Did humans look as odd to aliens as they did to us? But then I suppose I was the alien in this scenario, wasn’t I?
Weird.
She had a delicate jeweled diadem over her pink bald head with teardrop pearls hanging all around it that brushed over the top of her long pointed ears. There was anxiety swimming in the depths of orange, the membrane blinking over and over in rapid movements. She twisted her hands together in front of her almost in time with her blinks while staring at the twins with a helpless air.
“Please forgive me, Hassa, but I need your assistance in the kitchens. There was an incident with one of the Grel involving one of the cooks, a male Nuller, that I’m afraid has turned fatal.”
Hassa grumbled a curse under her breath before nodding stiffly at the pink female. “Thank you, Viami. I will take care of it.”
Viami gave a quick shallow bow and left down the hall like her ass was on fire, her long thin legs eating up the distance until she disappeared around a corner.
Hassa turned to look at me and her sister who stood too close behind me, her hot fetid breath washing over me. “The Nullers will want compensation. Always with the compensation,” Hassa groused. Her lips lifted off her impressive teeth in a silent snarl and her sister’s eerie cackle had me wanting to climb up a wall.
I shifted subtly so Rixa wasn’t directly behind me.
Hassa snapped her teeth together in two quick bites at the air in frustration. “Nasty things, Grel. Always eating the small feathered Nuller. So inconvenient. Come. We will take the morsel back to her room once I have dealt with the Grel.”
Oh, see, I didn’t like being called food, but satisfaction at being asked to follow them to a new part of the palace had me biting back a retort. Each new area they showed me was another place for my mental map. Eventually they’d show me a way out. The first step to escaping was knowing your way out. The quicker Icould get to the hangar bay the less chance there was of me being caught.
Rixa nudged me forward with her head to my shoulder when Hassa turned to double back the way Viami had walked off and I followed without comment. We turned right at the crossroads, down a short hallway that had two arched doorways on either side. As we passed them I glimpsed a well furnished sitting room, with a massive gold chandelier dangling over rich white furniture, and a small library with dark shelves. We turned left at the end of the hall and walked through an open glass door that led to an open arcade with sweeping clay arches that looked out to a small garden with a round fluted fountain. Pale stone two seater tables were set opposite of the arches. It smelled like fresh rain out here and had this place not been my fancy prison, I’d have enjoyed the scenery more.
Past the arcade was another door and a landing to a wide descending staircase of orange brown clay. I could hear the din of clanging pots and pans over the low buzz of a room full of voices coming from the stairs. I had to jog to keep up with Hassa, whose four legs were better suited for pretty much everything. We passed two more landings before the stairs ended in a hall about fifty feet wide. A myriad of food smells drifted past us to float up the stairwell, with a heavy scent of seared meat that had my mouth watering.
The temperature up until this point had been comfortable, but as we had descended it had risen steadily. If I had to guess it was close to eighty degrees down here. There were four arched entryways with busy kitchens beyond them and I could see high flames on several flat, streamline open flame stovetops. That, combined with the roughly a hundred people down here had the space feeling downright claustrophobically hot. Sweat was already gathering on my back and dripping between my boobs under my armor. I had a feeling we were in whatever counted asa basement in a palace as there were no windows to let even a ghost of a breeze through.
The enclosed space, even as big as it was, was so full of organized chaos and people it added to the back of house vibe. It made me remember with less than fondness my time working in restaurants as a teenager.
Aliens were passing back and forth across the wide hall between the four rooms, carrying trays and pushing carts laden with dishes. On the opposite wall from the stairwell were double doors with red glyphs above them. The glyphs lit up and a cheerful tone dinged just before the doors opened revealing a lift and out of it two more aliens pushed silver carts loaded with dirty dishes out and across the hall to the second door on my right.
There was a godawful squawking coming from the farthest kitchen to the left, like chickens when a fox was in the hen house. A small crowd of staff clustered in the hall outside the arch leading into the kitchen to gawk and wring their hands as the pink Viami frantically waved at us to hurry.
Hassa growled, her ears pinning back in annoyance before she padded down the hall, expertly weaving around darting kitchen staff who tried their best to avoid the horse sized jackal alien in their midst. She disappeared through the left door closest to the lift. I turned to Rixa and raised an eyebrow. “How long is this going to take?”
Rixa’s long tail swished low and she arched her front legs forward in a long cat stretch, jaw opening wide in a toothy yawn, purple tongue curling, and then flopped onto her side and laid her head on her front paws. “Could be awhile. Sit. We will wait.”
A short rotund alien with four arms and brown scales scurried over with a chair for me, his wide eyes never leaving Rixa. As soon as the chair was placed next to me the little dude fled like Rixa was going to eat him if he stayed a second longer. I glancedat the chair and then at Rixa’s prone form. She’d closed her eyes and appeared to be napping.
“Hey, Rixa?”
