Ifhethoughtonekiss was going to end my escape escapades he was sorely mistaken. The stunned stupor he’d caused had faded pretty quickly and I watched him walk in front of me completely confident in himself. He seriously acted like I’d been tamed by his sexual magnitude. It was one fucking kiss. Maybe that was his weakness? Hubris.
How very male of him.
He was chattering merrily about what stall made what and by who like I’d somehow been tamed by the power of his prowess. It was a damn good kiss, but not enough to make me a good girl just yet. There was still the burning need to get back to Korsal and reenter the fight. They needed me. I had this horrible sinking feeling that if I wasn’t there to provide air support then they would lose. It didn’t have to be the war, but a single battle lost could mean one of my friends died in the muck.
Jack was a badass juggernaut killing machine, but she wasn’t invincible. One plasma round from an Insect could turn her toash. And then there was Patty who, while capable, especially now that the little psychopath had her vines and nanos working overtime to keep her alive, was still mostly human. There was no superpowered Rijiteran ancestry keeping her at hulk level strength. Aga, Rema, Ohem… any one of them could be taken out and I wouldn’t be there to help protect them if I was fucking stuck here playing house with Mr. Arrogance himself. Not to mention Sam, that little helpful idiot, was right in the thick of it trying to patch us all up.
You know what evil assholes did in a war? They bombed hospitals. What if the command on Korsal didn’t think to set up an eye in the sky to keep whatever wounded tent that Sam and the Healers were in protected? Nope. I was going to make another break for it. Fuck it. Anu and the others needed that intel though, but he’d made his deal for the kiss, so I was reasonably certain he wouldn’t back out if I took off again. It was a risk I was going to take. The market place was busy and Rathal’s grip wasn’t very tight on my hand.
It wouldn’t take much to slip my hand away and make a run for it. The hard part would be not getting caught again immediately. Rathal had the home field advantage in that he knew every single inch of this station and all the people on it knew he was the boss. They’d box me in if I made a run for it and he was chasing me. So I was going to do what every single hostage in all the thriller movies did. I was going to create a distraction. The challenge was picking which one that would work the best.
I could maybe shove a stall over? That would create a scene. I looked around at the shifting crowd and the vendors calling out their wares and decided against it. It would just bring attention to me and that wasn’t what I wanted.
There was the tried and true shove and fight tactic. If I could find aliens that were already having a disagreement I couldmaybe shove one from behind into the other and start a fight and then dip in the confusion. Viable option, especially with how much haggling was going on at various stalls. Though I had to remember the twins who trailed about a car length behind us and I had to keep in mind what Rathal said about the surveillance cameras. They were everywhere and so well hidden or disguised that I couldn’t pinpoint where they were to avoid them. I needed to blend in a way that would let me melt into the crowd and become just part of the background.
I kept my field of vision as wide as possible, scanning my periphery while mumbling acknowledgement at the appropriate times while Rathal rambled to keep up the appearance that I was listening. The market was chaotic and chaos was distracting. It took a lot of discipline not to get sidetracked when a particularly weird alien walked by. On theSolus, most that I’d run into had been odd, but still humanoid in some way that my mind could work around to find a description that would sort of match something I’d seen on Earth. Even if that description was more along the lines of deep sea fish, I could still find something recognizable in the aliens I encountered not to totally freak me out. Here? Incredibly odd shit was slithering, crawling, flying or oozing along the paths between stalls. The Jabba the Hutt creepy crawlies I’d been so weirded out by? Down right mundane now.
I shuddered as a blob of viscous brown goo jiggled past me on some kind of rolling platform while it chittered into its holovid broadcast in front of it from a light source on its platform. Alright, I was gonna press pause on the visual scanning part of my escape plan because what the fuck?
“Uh, Rathal? Exactly what kind of vetting procedures does this station have? I mean, why are there so many different species here? Are they all pirates? Also, that one doesn’t have a face. No face, Rathal. Why doesn’t it have a face?” My voice had pitched higher and I was slightly embarrassed by how tight Iwas clutching his arm to avoid bumping into the weird faceless critter that scuttled along on what had to be ten thousand legs.
Rathal stopped and shifted to look after the retreating form of the alien in question. “That is a Vosud, a clever species that I have found works very well in all things agriculture. The one who just passed is called Onal. She has a mouth, you just can’t see it until it's opened and she has no need for eyes. She has a very sophisticated frontal lobe that can detect vibrations. She can also taste pheromones to help her navigate.” He started forward again at a leisurely pace, pointing another random stall out that had a weaving loom on its table. “See that? The proprietress makes clothes out of her own silk! Isn’t that interesting.”
“Uh huh,” I muttered, trying not to stare at yet another huge spider lady pulling silk from her backside like one would from a ball of wool and weaving it on the loom with her graceful fingers.
Rathal tutted at me. “You need to lighten up, darling. You’ll get frown lines scowling like that. And to answer your earlier question, my humble station has a very thorough vetting process. No one with hardline ties to the Unity, whether it be familial or simple assets, are permitted here. I can’t have someone who’s second grandmother twice removed is a Unity council member nor can I have some rich Unity merchant waltzing in here trying to get a foothold on my tradelines. Black Marketing is a tough business and I don’t need the competition—”
What a weird turn my life has taken. Alien pirate politics. I was living in an alternate dimension, there was no other explanation. I had to get out of here and back to war. War I knew. War I understood. War was a comforting familiarity. This? This was weird. That spider lady was weaving a shirt with six arm holes.
“—Jewel thieves are also a nuisance. Callie? Are you even listening to me?”
I jerked my eyes off the rapidly forming six armed shirt and up to Rathal’s stern gaze. “Yep! Totally. Jewel thieves are the worst. Can’t be stealing stolen goods from thieving pirates. It would be an outrage. A scandal.”
Rathal narrowed his eyes. “You think you’re funny don’t you?”
“Not at all. As a matter of fact, everyone seems to think I’m too serious.”
He lifted his upper lip to show me his fangs before continuing forward again. “Right. Anyway, as I was saying. There are many species here because I try not to bar anyone who hates the Unity and wishes to see its downfall.” He looked at me and smiled. “There are a lot of different species that hate the Unity and wish to watch it burn, thus they are all gathered on my station. We are one big happy Unity hating family here, my dear. Don’t you just feel right at home?”
Yeah, sure. Just swimming in cozy feelings. I absolutely wasn’t taking a noted interest in a group of twenty or so aliens all cloaked in the same red hooded ceremonial garb heading our way right as a second group of laughing drunks stumbled their way right in front of the twins, cutting off their view of us just as the red cloaked group passed me. It would be an awful shame to the feeling of hominess if someone was to crawl under the convenient train that looked like it had a stiff ribbing holding it up like some sort of Chinese dragon street puppet while Rathal blabbed on about how cool his station was.
Why, it would be downright criminal for someone to shuffle along hunched under said structured cloak train all the way across the Center and to the lift and then knock out the poor unsuspecting alien wearing said cloak, stripped him naked while his brethren waited for the lift doors to groan open, and then stash his unconscious body into a trash bin just to ride down the lift disguised as a red cloak wearing alien so she could escape to the docking bays. Uncivilized, uncouth, and all the ‘un” words.
I grinned to myself as the rest of the group shuffled off the lift and didn’t seem to notice or care that one of their group stayed behind. My heart was pounding in excited euphoria that I’d pulled that off so smoothly. I hoped that the cameras didn’t pick up my roll under the last train but at the same time, it was damn cool and I kinda wanted to see the playback of that Mission Impossible shit I just pulled.
Oh man, the twins were going to be piiiiissed. My grin widened until my cheeks ached. I was almost sad I wouldn’t be around to see their faces once they realized I’d escaped again on their watch. The surveillance playback would be comedy gold.
The lift grinded to a halt with a shuddering jerk and the doors squealed open on level four, just one level under the hangar bays. I kept my pace normal, just a regular alien out to catch back up with its buddies at their ship. Nothing to see here. Tension gathered under my skin as I passed two security guards holding wicked looking plasma rifles at low ready. One glanced in my direction, but the hood was deep and my face was well hidden. He went back to talking with his partner after only giving me a cursory glance and I let out a breath.
The skywalk I was on branched into four different directions up ahead of me, one of which led up a short flight of stairs to another lift that I was assuming stopped at the hangar bays. I was halfway to it when I heard the lift I’d just come from screech open.
“Really, darling, I thought we were past this for today.”
I jerked to a stop and looked behind me. Rathal was exiting the lift and adjusting his collar in annoyance as if this minorly inconvenienced him, but one look into his eyes and I saw the hungry anticipation.
“Shit,” I cursed and took off running, chucking the cloak off of me as I went. Rathal’s evil laughter followed me up the stairwell.
“Run, run while you can, my prize! Whatever shall I do with you when I catch you?” he jeered merrily, the sound of his heavy footsteps picking up speed behind me.
