Captivate (Alien Cadets Book 2) Page 9

  The only person who sought her out was the little Crosspoint, who now seemed to cross her path every time she turned around, and possibly other times that she didn’t realize.

  He spoke to her kindly, but Claire didn’t appreciate it. She’d been a prisoner in Faal’s zoo for too long. When the Crosspoint briefly tied her up in his cabin, he’d crossed a line that would take a lot for her to erase.

  The day before the ship would reach Selta, Claire was watching from the cooking area and saw him enter the common dining area. All the ship’s guests had food synthesizers in their cabins, but most of them preferred to eat ‘real’ food, prepared by hand. For that, they came to this central dining room where they could receive food appropriate to their species and wealth. Claire was learning that most people in the galaxy thought a lot about food.

  Claire needed to leave the dining room now, but she waited until the Crosspoint was politely levitating his trash (seeds, pits, and cores of fruit) to the trash.

  She tried to slip out unobtrusively, but it was no good.

  “I would like to speak with you again,” she heard the Crosspoint say. “I’m going on from Selta, and may not see you thereafter.”

  Claire nodded noncommittally. The thought of Selta made her feel stressed. The Diarena was stopping there for several months, and Claire wasn’t sure what would happen during that time. She hadn’t had the nerve to ask the Diarena whether she might continue to work for her. The Crosspoint seemed to be waiting for her to say something.

  “The Diarena stops at Selta. I suppose I will as well,” Claire said.

  The Crosspoint smiled, giving a rather disturbing view of wide molars in his mouth. “Excellent! You will have many chances on Selta. I’ve heard there are human cafés springing up already. But before you go, I wanted to introduce my friends to you."

  He gestured three Merith toward her, and Claire pursed her lips.

  "Friends, this is the human I told you of. An actual human. I have checked.”

  “I thought they were furry,” said one of the others, she sounded disappointed.

  “No, you’re thinking of the other new species, the one the Vel are sponsoring. The humans are from Earth, part of the Spo Enclave.”

  “I’ve heard they’re dangerous,” said another.

  “All sentient species are dangerous.”

  “I’ve heard they’re mad, as well.”

  “Yes, but with a certain sincerity,” her Crosspoint said. "They feel nothing like the Rik when you challenge them."

  Claire snorted. Challenge?

  He noted her noise. "I won't be the last who mistakes you for a Rik. There are many Rik on Selta.” He looked intently at Claire before gliding away from her. “You dislike deception as much as I do, and I respect that. May peace walk by your side, and truth shine on your head."

  Against her will, Claire was slightly touched by this benediction... but she really hoped he was wrong about the Rik.

  The next morning, Claire had still not asked the Diarena about her plans. She’d learned from Kitteh that the ship, Final Say, was continuing on. The Diarena would charter a new ship after her stay on Selta. Claire had also learned that she was not welcome to remain on the ship after the Diarena left.

  “I regret it,” Kitteh told her. “You are decent enough and I admit to some fondness for your pet, but we cannot harbor someone Faal is hunting. His connections could blacklist us from the ports in fifty worlds. We cannot afford it.”

  Claire felt more than a little fear churn in her stomach at these words. She’d hoped they might allow her to remain anonymously on board, but apparently that was not an option.

  The Diarena was worse.

  “I cannot and will not harbor you from Faal forever. I’m not unhappy to have foiled him thus far, as we have a feud of long-standing that must be maintained. However, I suspect that Faal has already deduced what ship you must be on, and your usefulness to me is quickly waning. I do not wish you any harm, but from Selta you must find your own way.”

  Claire felt downright ill now. “Do you know if Faal is already on Selta? Will he be waiting when we land?”

  The Diarena cocked her head like a bird. “I do not know, but I suggest you plan to leave with the bulk of the crew when we arrive. That will be the easiest time to slip away. Perhaps it is needless to say, but you are not to contact me if you remain on Selta. Do not make me regret my kindness to you.”

  Claire thought of the Crosspoint roping her to the chair and the Diarena’s complete lack of interest in her escape. She had an underwhelming sense of kindness.

  Still, the Diarena had gotten her to a neutral place where Claire might have a chance. That was worth a lot.

  “I thank you for your kindness,” Claire said. “I will disembark today.”

  She waited in the loading bay with all her possessions. They were more than they had been. She had a knapsack of sorts from Kitteh, along with two uniforms that had been adapted for her while she worked on the ship. Kitteh told her to go ahead and take them with her - they wouldn’t fit a Merith any longer. Claire still had the small hoard of cash she’d stolen from the zookeeper, and to her surprise, Kitteh had also given her a salary for the last two weeks.

  “The Diarena told me to pay you standard fare for your time,” Kitteh told her.

  So at least this time, Claire told herself, she was not going into an unknown planet completely without resources. She had enough money to live for a week or two on Selta, clothes, and at least a chance of evading Faal.

  The descent was the smoothest of glides. The ship was settling into a divot in the moon's surface (one of many hollowed out for this purpose), and one of the bulges on the bottom of Final Say would line up with one of the many tunnels snaking from the central shipping cavern.

  The crew began to gather nearby, waiting for the doors to open and the rush to begin. Kitteh and her crew of Merith gals were grouped on the right. They chattered with lots of expressive blinking. The few Spo were loosely grouped on the left, clearly self-segregated from the Merith. Claire stood behind both, segregating herself by species also.

  When the orange lights around the bulk doors began to flash, Claire’s faint optimism began to slide into fear. Eventually the bulk door began to open, after the tunnel had been made airtight, Claire assumed, and the atmosphere rushed in. The air was moist and cool and Claire took a deep breath. The coolness felt wonderful, like a fall evening on the beach, but the smell was all wrong for the beach. There was a faint metallic tang of sulphur and rust.

  No one was planning to escort Claire off the ship. Kitteh was busy with loading fresh food and supplies and the other Merith females didn’t care what Claire did. She’d been on the ship for less than a month, but Claire found it surprisingly hard to leave. She’d felt safe there, and it was hard to let go.

  Still, there was no option, so Claire headed down the tunnel with the first group of crew who had business on the moon. Kitteh had explained the basic layout of the city, and how to get to the closest commercial district.

  The tunnel dumped out into a central docking cavern, and Claire stopped in amazement when she got there. Cavern was the right word, she supposed, looking at the towering rock ceiling, but not on the scale of any earthly cavern. Three major freeway-type roads entered from different points around the circumference of the cavern, and merged messily in two giant roundabouts. That was on the far side of the cavern, however.

  Nearer to her were great platforms filled with goods, as big as warehouses, but dwarfed by the size of the shuttles that hovered above them, hoisting and lowering huge pallets into their bellies. Other small tunnel entrances, like the one she'd just come out of, liberally dotted the edges of the cavern on two levels. Lifts and ramps connected the higher tunnels to the 'ground' level and gave the whole thing the feeling of a beehive. There were too many openings and pathways to count.

  Claire took a deep breath and jogged forward to keep up with the crew. She didn’t see Faal anywhere, so perhaps he
wasn’t waiting after all.

  Kit mewled softly from the bag.

  “It’s okay,” Claire told him. “I think we’ll be alright.” Claire actually wasn’t sure whether Kit was the baby form of a sentient species, or just an animal. Faal had collected oddities from all over the galaxy, some stolen, like her, and some legitimately bought. If Kit was sentient, she hoped to teach him English. If he wasn’t, then he was still good company.

  She followed the crew into a huge elevator and it descended, leaving Claire’s stomach somewhere above. When they reached the next level, the crew scattered, and Claire was truly alone.

  She was grateful that the overwhelming size of things seemed to have settled down. This part of Selta reminded her of a mega shopping mall. It housed level upon level of stores, apartments, restaurants, and all kinds of alien recreation. She saw one place that, based on the pictures in the windows, offered to remove your eyeballs, clean them, and put them back. The halls were spacious and lofty and so open that Claire could almost imagine she was outside, but narrow enough for her not to feel terribly exposed.

  She turned a corner and almost got flattened by a speeding ground-car. The driver swerved and hissed at her. She stumbled back, realizing she’d just stepped into a hall that had no pedestrians, only strange looking cars. On the floor was a yellow line. When she put her foot on it, it buzzed and vibrated her whole body, but in her distraction she hadn't noticed. Those must be the traffic warnings.

  She turned back the way she’d come, back to the public area that was all flashing lights, jostling crowds, and noise. Aliens bumped her as they went to and fro, it seemed everyone had somewhere to go except for her.

  Claire allowed the press of the crowd to lead her on, flowing through a hall that resounded to music like whale song, to a courtyard illuminated dimly green with swathes of luminescent paint splashed across every surface. The next hall was narrower, flooded with the smell of food. She smelled something spicy and familiar, like cumin, maybe, combined with the unmistakable smell of dead fish.

  Claire’s stomach growled. She’d been walking inward for at least an hour in a kind of trance, every now and then riding down a platform escalator to the next lower level. It was time to start thinking. Her vague plan had been to get away from the outer levels of Selta. If Faal tracked her to the Diarena’s ship, she didn’t want to be anywhere near the shipping bays.

  Claire began looking at the food vendors more carefully. She’d discovered on Final Say that she could eat a very specific selection of Spo food, and a few of the Merith proteins. She suspected they were lacking something though, because even in the last few weeks she’d lost weight and her fingernails cracked and bled easily. She picked at the crusty nail bed of her thumb while searching for food she could eat.

  Looking carefully at the shops and lost in thought, Claire didn’t see the shallow steps in front of her until she missed the first one. Thrown off balance, her hands flew out, and she struck the Merith next to her before landing hard on her hands and knees.

  “Don’t touch me, bruck!” the Merith said and kicked her hard in the ribs before she could say anything. "Rik scum."

  The kick made Claire gasp and she instinctively curled up, pain shooting through her torso. No more kicks came, the Merith must have left. But then Claire felt a tugging on her back, as someone tried to pull off her bag.

  “No!” Claire tried to twist around and away, but her ribs hurt so bad, she crumpled back to the ground. She felt her bag slip off one arm, and she grabbed the strap with her hand. The alien pulling at her bag was a furry creature with a long snout, a Tergre.

  “You... can’t have my bag,” Claire ground out. It pulled harder and Kit leapt from the bag to the back of the Tergre, chittering angrily. He sank his tiny teeth into the alien’s forelimb.

  The Tergre jerked and flung Kit away, throwing him into the crowd.

  “Oh no!” Claire said.

  The alien used her distraction to jerk the bag out of her hands, and waddled quickly onto the nearest platform escalator. He rose up and away and more Merith entered the escalator, blocking him from view. Claire looked back and forth, between the fleeing alien with her bag, and the spot where Kit disappeared into the crowd. Tears filled her eyes.

  “You’re so stupid,” she told herself, getting painfully to her feet. The Tergre was already at the next level, soon he would be around the corner, and she could barely walk. Her knees hurt from her fall, and when she tried to take a deep breath, a sharp pain wrapped around her midsection.

  Claire limped over, getting jostled by Merith and Spo, and found Kit, curled into a ball against the far wall.

  She sank down next to him, tucking her knees to her chin. She cuddled him in her lap, and cried. So much for all her advantages. It had taken less than two hours for the galaxy to reduce her to nothing yet again.

  When she got to her feet, just as painfully as before, if not more so, her vision narrowed. She was hungry, hurt, and penniless. She wandered down the hall, lightheaded and hollow.

  “God, if you hear me, I need help,” Claire said. “Not that my desperation has moved you in the past, but... I could really use… something. I don't know what to do next.”

  Then Claire saw him. The zookeeper. He stood on one of the large platform escalators. The only reason she spotted him was that he happened to be surrounded by several short Crosspoint. He’d turned to look at something and she caught a clear glimpse of his profile.

  Claire ducked back down against the wall, letting the crowds flow between them. This was no good, she couldn’t wander around waiting for the zookeeper or Faal to find her. Her only chance was to go back to the ship. Perhaps Kitteh would let her stow away until the next stop. Or perhaps she could give Claire some more money. Claire didn’t like the idea of begging her for help, but she was too scared to do anything else. She felt the overwhelming need to see someone familiar.

  When she was sure the zookeeper had passed, Claire limped back the way she’d come, heading upward and out of the city. It seemed much longer than the downward trip because she expected every moment to see Faal or the zookeeper. When she finally made it back to the shipyards, she slunk back onto Final Say as unobtrusively as possible. Kit was riding on her shoulder, and he mewed happily and stroked her hair in approval.

  CHAPTER 11

  Claire hid herself in the loading bay without speaking to Kitteh. She was pondering whether she might stow away on her own to prevent Kitteh from turning her away.

  A catwalk ran along the wall, and it was lined with small storage lockers that didn’t get much use. It would have been comfortable to sit on the edge of the catwalk, her feet dangling over, and an arm around the nearest support strut, but she didn’t do that. Claire sat in the darkest spot, arms around her knees, and watched for signs of the zookeeper, or Faal’s security guys.

  She’d come back aboard tentatively, but Kitteh hadn’t been around, and none of the other crew cared what she was doing. They knew who she was, so they didn’t stop her. Perhaps they thought she was on an errand for the Diarena.

  Claire didn’t dare go back to her room, and she had to know if the zookeeper came looking for her. From this high vantage point she had a good view of the ramp that led into the bay and the bay itself. If the zookeeper came up the ramp, she’d know immediately.

  The purr of the large caterpillars made the catwalk buzz comfortingly as they moved pallets down the ramp, but Claire didn’t move from her cramped position. Kit slid down the back of her shirt and curled up against her back. It was his favorite spot when she was stressed.

  Other Merith came and went. Merchants, she supposed, and ground crew, and entrepreneurs looking to make a little cash with on-demand, last-minute shipping. Beggars occasionally came up the ramp, and a group of prospective passengers came through on a guided tour.

  Claire’s adrenaline spiked with every group that made its way up the ramp and under her twitchy feet. Were they looking for her? That Merith, facing away, could t
hat be the zookeeper? The shape of his head – but no, now he turned and it was clearly not him.

  What question would he ask? Claire could imagine the whole thing.

  “Do you have a human aboard, a Spo cadet? No, she's illegal. Yes, yes, I know they’re a recognized species, but they can’t hold a job. And Faal is looking for this one. Dangerous, too. Oh yes, you’re lucky she hasn’t caused any trouble yet... Oh, there's been trouble with the passengers already? Unsurprising. You’d best take me to her immediately.”

  And then they’d go look in her quarters and in the mess hall. Soon the agitation of fugitive hunting would be palpable. Claire would wait, motionless, and then sneak into the largest of these storage lockers, and hide until they were back in deep space.

  Claire’s eyes followed a new group of visiting Merith that had just cleared the ramp, heading toward the interior doors. She didn’t see Faal’s familiar insignia on them, but she studied them as they passed through the door, just in case. Then she heard something strange, and her head whipped back to the ramp.

  A human voice. She heard a human voice! It was speaking Spo, but so differently than a Spo sounded.

  There he was, a man coming up the ramp. He walked with two of the Spo crew that she knew by sight, but she barely spared a glance for them. She couldn’t make out the man’s words from here, but he seemed to be asking them questions. Claire smiled involuntarily as she watched. Didn’t he know the Spo didn’t gesture that way when they spoke?

  He was average height which looked short next to the Spo, with medium brown skin and thick, black hair. He looked Indian, subcontinent India not Native American, and he had a certain intensity that said cop to her, though he wore no uniform.