“I think I can manage Kronos,” I say.
His expression is one that suggests I just barely did it, but he found it adorable.
“Kronos, Boss, and Sharp,” I say. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Can we keep her? I want to keep her,” Boss says.
“I’m not a pet. I’m a person!”
They make a round of generally amused noises, as if I just said the cutest, funniest thing anyone has ever said. Kronos lifts up his camera. “Say that again,” he says. “I want to record that.”
“Get fucked,” I scowl.
That makes them laugh too; well, everyone but Sharp. He puts a big alien hand on the back of my neck and leans down to growl in my ear.
“Manners, pet,” he says, and the tone of his voice sends a delicious shiver down my spine.
“I’m not your pet,” I say again, but my voice is weaker this time, like I’m losing my resolve.
I wonder if it would be the worst thing to hook up with three aliens in a bar. They seem like they have money and access to shelter. I have neither of those things, and I am becoming increasingly aware that I am surrounded by true predators. Not just creatures who want to steal me, sell me, or fuck me. That’s bad enough. I can feel other kinds of malevolence in the room. There are creatures who want to devour me, but only after having tortured me first. There are truly dark things lurking in both light and shadow.
“Where are you guys going? What are you doing? Seems like a bit of a pick and mix assortment of different kinds of aliens. Are you a sport team? Are you criminals? Are you here for an accounting conference?”
They exchange looks with one another. I get the sense if anybody else asked the question, it would have been a bad question to ask. But they think I’m basically nothing more than a little animal, and as a little animal I can do and say things that real aliens, real persons would never get away with.
I intend to take full advantage of this dynamic.
“You don’t need to worry about what we do,” Kronos says. “All you need to know is that we’ll look after you. Everybody in this bar wants you for one reason or another. Every eye, ear, and alternate sensory appendage has been on you since you walked in.”
“I thought I was being stealthy.”
They all snort and laugh at that.
“I would put money on the notion that everyone on this station knows you are here. I would put even more money on the factthat some of them are going to come for you. The Laborbur’s failure to take you will only embolden others.”
No sooner has Sharp finished saying that, the door of the bar opens and two heavy-set aliens who look like trolls made of concrete and muscle come lumbering in.
They scan the bar with vicious red eyes. I know instinctively that they’re looking for me. I slide behind the Minotaur. He is more than twice my width and blocks me easily.
The other two stay sitting where they are, but I think I feel them get a little more tense.
If this were a room full of empty chairs, hiding might work. But a lot of the aliens can see what I just did, and more than one of them shouts out some alien equivalent of:She’s here!
The trolls come lumbering over, knocking over a few smaller aliens on the way. Some of them are able to avoid serious injury, others are practically squished. The trolls don’t really seem to notice. Ironically, they are the most armored of any alien in here, though they seem to be naturally pretty much invulnerable.
The slightly larger rock monster stops in front of the table. He’s only six feet tall, which is shorter than all the three aliens who have decided I should be theirs.
“Give.” He says a single, heavy word in galactic.
“No,” Boss says just as firmly.
There’s a moment in which the troll alien clearly has to consider this, because he didn’t think the answer would be no. The smaller one steps out from behind his friend and uses a few more words.
“Hand the creature over. She belongs to us.”
“What makes you think that?”
The smaller troll alien shifts uncomfortably. “We want her.”
