Page 50 of Leviathan

Now every part of her was disguised behind the strongest, deadliest design we could come up with.

“If the weapons check is done, that means it is time to go,” she said.

“It is,” I agreed, still unhappy about the fact that she was going down there but knowing that my unhappiness didn’t take a higher priority than her autonomy.

"Number one," she said, lifting her arm up, then dropping it down. "Engage."

She told me in advance she wanted to say those specific words to signal it was time to send her down, explaining something about an old show she had binge-watched in college. I pushed down my trepidation, closed the ramp to the shuttle, and started the engine. As I flew the shuttle down towards the planet's side space port, I realized that I was going to have to get used to this particular type of terror because if this went well, she was going to want to do it again. Maria wasn't one of my birds to be kept in a cage and protected. She was my partner.

I was going to spend a lot of time refining that MECH.

By the time I had it perfected, it would be able to withstand orbital re-entry on its own.

TWENTY

MARIA

"This is some Zootopia-level craziness," I murmured into the private com as I stared out at the spaceport. I was stationed right next to the shuttle landing pad, watching the crowd move through the pedestrian walkways between the pads. I'd already checked over the delivery and cleared it for contamination, and the trader had already left with the goods we had unloaded.

Now, it was just a matter of Lyrien's drones moving everything on the ship.

My MECH suit was great for carrying things; I could move boxes all day with the hydraulics supporting my every action, but Lyrien agreed with me it was better that I stay watchful. There were so many different species that inhabited the spaceport. There were multiple planets in this system, so the spaceports on each planet were used for a lot of intersystem trade. There were definite types of aliens, and my guess was that the four-armed, four-eyed ones all originated from one planet. My brain kept trying to categorize them, identifying features that lined up with creatures I was familiar with. There was a clumped group loading up a small spaceship that was definitely hyena-like, and other giant ones with wrinkly mud colored skin that looked like elephants with no trunks walking upright. There were too many to really take in all at once, but the longer I stared, the more I saw some of the social structures play out in the crowds. The hyena pack ended up having a bubble of space around them, like no one wanted to get near them, and seeing one of the smaller aliens around my size literally turn around and run the other way when they saw the pack made me glad I was completely hidden in my metal suit. No one even glanced at me twice.

"I don't understand that reference," Lyrien said in my ear.

"A lot of these aliens have fur, scales, or feathers," I said. "In my world's media, we had make-believe movies about what it would be like if the different non-sentient species on our planet had evolved to walk and talk like we did. This place reminds me of that. They're not quite the same, of course, with the whole arms and eyes and other things, but there are some similarities."

"Evolution, at least on planets with heavy competition, favors the most efficient designs," Lyrien said. "Bipedal locomotion is the most energy efficient, which is why many species develop that way. I can see from the history I’m able to access on the available net that this particular planet used to have large old growth forests before they encountered the Calicium and were manipulated into harvesting them on a massive destructive scale and exporting the wood in off world trades. The four arms originally evolved for climbing.”

"What about that guy?" I said, pointing at what looked like a lump of jello sliding down the walkway.

"Don't point at it," Lyrien said. "You don't want it to think you're initiating friendly contact. That species is remarkably difficult to kill, and its culture has extended periods of polite conversation to the point where they don't understand other cultures' social cues for ending communications. They're well known for extensive traveling and did not originate in this system."

I dropped my arm.

I was about to ask him more when a flash of silver, light moonlight, dragged my attention to a small familiar shape, a sight that shocked me for a moment before it vanished into the crowd.

Did I just see a human?

The hyenas caught my eye again. They had stopped what they were doing and were all focused in the direction the flash of silver had vanished, like they were a pack on the hunt that had caught sight of prey. As I watched, one of them took a step forward, and then they were all moving together, clearly on the hunt.

I took a step in that direction before I thought about what I was doing.

"Maria?" Lyrien said, his voice worried. "Where are you going? I thought you were going to stay by the shuttle."

I knew I should do that, stay there.

But at the same time, there was this strange feeling in my gut telling me I needed to go see what they were up to.

"I just need to check something out," I said. “I thought I saw a human.”

"If they’re on this planet they’re in a lot of trouble. Just don't leave the spaceport," Lyrien reminded me, not questioning me. Then his tone turned dark. "If I have to land on this stupid planet to come after you, I'd rather not crush an inhabited area. It would be a psychologically damaging experience."

"I won't," I said, meaning it. There was a level of risk I was willing to take while dressed up in my armor, but that risk did not involve crossing a border I knew for a fact I couldn't get back across, nor did it involve testing my alien boyfriend’s statement that he would commit mass murder to get me back.

It was easy to follow the hyenas when the crowd parted around them like they stank.

Lucky for me, the air was filtered through my suit. The only time I lost sight of them was when one of the giant elephant aliens came lumbering down the pathway. I was pretty big in my MECH suit, but not so big that I could shoulder check a mini kaiju, and they didn't move aside for anyone. I had to press myself to the side of the walkway like the rest of the crowd to let it go by, and when I did, the hyenas had vanished from sight.