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  Sax flares his nostrils. His long tongue sweeps the back of his teeth inside his mouth. Whelk make for terrible food - they’re sticky, and they tend to fall apart into jelly after they’re dead. Still, he wouldn’t mind eating every last bit of this one.

  But that wouldn’t get Bas out of the casino. Wouldn’t get them off of this station, to Evva.

  “We need a ride, Agra. We’ll pay for it.”

  “With what? Last I recall, you didn’t have anything to pay with. That why you’re drinking water?”

  Sax blinks. Payment. He’d... never actually paid for anything in his life. Always on Vincere assignment, always covered by their contracts.

  He has no way of buying all the food he’s been eating.

  “I know that look,” Agra-Red says. “You’re lost now. What’re you going to do? Murder everyone in the bar when they come to collect the tab?”

  “You’ll pick it up for me,” Sax says slow.

  “And what would prompt me to be so generous?”

  “You’re buying her a drink for fixing your weapon,” Sax says, then raises his foreclaws. “You’re buying me a meal for letting you live.”

  Rather than looking scared, or threatened, Agra-Red jiggles its body and laughs.

  “I’ll give you this one, Oratus, you truly do believe you’re frightening.”

  Sax feels his eyes narrow, but again Bas comes to his mind and he forces himself to relax.

  “Yet,” Agra-Red continues, the Whelk’s eyes rolling towards a bowl of powder a robotic arm places in front of it. “If you really want a ride, there’s something you could do to get yourself on Plake’s good side.”

  “What?”

  Agra-Red leans over the bowl, its mouth expanding to wrap around the lips of the entire thing, and, with a slurping sound, all of the powder flows up out of the bowl and into the Whelk.

  “There’s a restaurant, Nova. Residential spoke two. Plake has what they want, but they don’t want to pay her what she needs to make for the trip to be worth it,” Agra-Red says. “Make them change their minds, and I’ll help you get your lift. We’re going back Core-ward after this anyway.”

  The Whelk is changing from its reddish hue to a purple color as the powder spreads through the thousands of spidery veins running along the slug’s mass. Agra-Red’s pupils dilate, itsmouth goes slack, and Sax figures this deal is done.

  He’s never played the part of blackmailer before, but recently his life’s been full of firsts.

  Sax stands, and when the one bartender looks from his safe space on the far end, Sax points to Agra-Red with his left foreclaw. The meal debt is passed.

  Sax turns, is about to make his way out of the restaurant, when curses, angry ones, billow from behind him.

  He wouldn’t have turned, wouldn’t have bothered, except the panicked, slurred replies come from someone he knows.

  Sax wheels around to see a pair of Vyphen standing over Engee, who, given her stumbling state, has taken hard to her drink of choice. A pair of other beverages, blue and green ones, now littering the ground at the foot of the bar tells all the story Sax needs.

  Engee’s alternating between apologizing and the kind of uncontrollable laughter that shows she’s a long way from her normal self.

  The Vyphen, though, don’t seem interested. Their own elliptic eyes are bloodshot, and their feathered arms reach for the Teven, who falls over as she tries to back away.

  Agra-Red, for its part, is slumped over on the bar, un-moving as its skin shifts between purples and reds.

  There might be more than one way to get a ride on Plake’s ship.

  The Vyphens back away in a hurry when Sax moves to stand over Engee, who’s tiny legs have her scrambling back beneath him.

  “Have a problem with this one?” Sax hisses, low and with a single raised lip - just enough to show off his teeth.

  The Vyphen, though, take the moment to recover and find some spine to stiffen. They both meet Sax’s glare with their rubbery faces, their bulbous eyes angled right as the Oratus. Sax realizes they’re the same pair from the Nexus, the ones that gave him the directions here. They’re so divorced from reality, though, that Sax doesn’t think they’d recognize themselves in a mirror.

  “Nothin’ you need caring about,” the right one, a blue-gold looking creature whose feathers are tight-trimmed. “She spilled our drinks, we’re just looking for a bit of payback.”

  “Yeah,” the left one, a mottled brown and green, whose own feathers are experimenting in a variety of angles, adds.

  “Then I suggest you order your next round, and have her and her friend pay for it,” Sax replies.

  The Vyphen cock their heads at him. As if this is a ludicrous request.

  “You’re not hearing what we’re saying,” the blue-gold Vyphen says. “Scrapper Station isn’t one of your military bases. We don’t follow your laws. We’re free to do as we like here, get what we’re owed.”

  “Yeah,” seconds the other one.

  Sax unfurls all four claws, watches the Vyphen track those sharp tips. He bets they’re imagining how painful they could be. Better make the consequences a little more clear.

  “Thanks for letting me know,” Sax says. “This Teven is mine. If you hurt her, then you’ll owe me, and I’ll take my debt the same way you’re taking yours.”

  The Vyphen glance at each other. Then the blue-gold one puffs up his feathers, makes them stand on end like it’s some sort of display. It’s a rapid pop, and large enough that Sax doesn’t see the second Vyphen pull a small miner from a holster hidden by his wild feathers.

  The weapon comes out, aims towards Sax, and then the Vyphen simply disappears in a flash, a bright red one that leaves a molten pile of flesh and a cluster of falling, burning feathers.

  Sax traces the blast back to the bar where Agra-Red is sitting, still looking droopy, but with its heavy, modified miner aiming towards where the Vyphen stood.

  “She really gave it a boost!” Agra-Red laughs, then looks down at the weapon. “Added just enough reserve juice for a surprise shot too. Turned him right to slag. Excellent.”

  The blue-gold Vyphen dances a look between Sax and Agra-Red, then books it for the exit. Nobody bothers to follow.

  Sax pads forward, sniffs and picks at the Vyphen’s remnants, then grabs the small fallen miner. With his tail, he boosts Engee so that she’s standing again.

  “Miners aren’t supposed to be fired inside!” the bartender’s squeaking from his hiding space, but it’s the kind of half-warning that nobody pays attention to.

  The rest of the bar doesn’t even seem to care - after a moment making sure they’re not the target, Sax hears all the conversations come back, the music start playing again, and life return to normal.

  A horde of small robots squeeze out of some vents and start dissembling the Vyphen’s body, carting its pieces off to some recycler that’ll, no doubt, turn it into some sort of food or energy.

  Can’t waste anything in space.

  Especially opportunities.

  “Did you not see what I just did?” Agra-Red replies when Sax offers up his defense of Engee for the ride. “I’m the one that took care of the problem. You’re lucky I can handle my grotto snuff.”

  “I would have cut them apart.”

  “After that one had shot you with the miner? Cause I didn’t see you doing it before. And they say Oratus are so frightening.” Agra-Red turns back to the bar. “Get Nova to buy the good, then we’ll talk.”

  9 The Beast

  An impossibly dense array of lines and circles stretches out against black nothing in front of me. I focus, and I’m falling as the lines rush around. They expand and zoom in further and further, twisting into different and more specific shapes until they lock, with the corner I’m standing in holding center place. Then, with a little push from my mind, a bright blue line traces from where we are to an enormous oval that dwarfs my little hideaway.

  “Kaishi, we’ve got to move,” Viera’s voice shak
es the Cache’s map away, and I blink back to the buildings and the thrum of ships flying overhead.

  Leaving the Cache is always a disorienting experience, like waking from a deep sleep. It takes a minute for my body to regain control of itself, and I realize that I’m cold. I shouldn’t be - I’m still wearing my mask, and Vimelia doesn’t seem like a cold planet - but chills are running through my veins nonetheless.

  I’ve felt like this before, in Damantum, back when I had the high priest Jakkan’s medallion around my neck. Back when everyone watched me, wondering who I was and why I had been so marked. No hiding then, and no hiding now.

  “They’re getting closer,” Malo, leaning around the edge of the giant bin that we’re crouched behind, says.

  We scrambled from alcove to inset, ducking out of sight whenever someone started to notice us. Anyone here could work with the faction we’d just escaped, anyone could work for Nasiya. I have to keep checking the Cache to make sure we’re staying on target. This bin - I don’t actually know if it opens - is a giant rectangle jutting out from the side of a many-stories tall building with sides of sculpted, shining copper.

  I suppose the reason it’s back here, hidden from the street, is that the bin is a stark gray, mottled and marked only by the giant pipe coming into it from a port in the building’s wall.

  “Who’s coming?” I ask.

  “A pair of those slug creatures. They’re wearing our enemy’s colors.” Malo states.

  No worry, no concern, just straight fact.

  Our enemies. I suppose that’s what the Wem are now. Two major factions on this planet, according to Jel, and we’ve antagonized them both. I glance out the other way of the L, a way which ends in another short alley between the copper building and a neighboring, muddy brown tower.

  “Then let’s go,” I say.

  We form our line, with Viera in front, Malo in back and me in the middle. It’s how we’ve been getting closer and closer to the spaceport, where the Cache is leading us. Assuming, of course, that we can even find a ship like the one that brought us here, and that we could find out how to fly it without Ignos in my head. A question we’ll have to answer if we make it that far.

  For now, having the hope is enough.

  We go through the small alley, which curls to the right, back towards the main avenue. A place we try to spend as little time as possible. There’s not that many people in the streets - most are in the tubes or the ships flying above, but there’s so many windows and so much movement it’s impossible to know when someone’s noticed us. And, as the only humans on the planet, we’re pretty noticeable.

  “Did you find it?” Viera says as we head towards the main road.

  “I always do,” I reply.

  “Are we closer?”

  “Every time.”

  We reach the end and Viera freezes at the edge of the buildings. She’s holding our only miner, which looks small in both her hands, but I can tell by the way her muscles tense that she’s seen something she doesn’t like. Malo immediately flattens himself against the wall behind me, getting his feet in position to spring, ready to dive towards the creatures pursuing us.

  “They’re everywhere,” Viera says. “They’ve got one of those big ships floating there in the middle of the street. Flaum leaving in groups.”

  We can’t fight them. We can’t outrun them. There’s only one other option.

  “We need a distraction,” I say.

  “I can sacrifice myself,” Malo volunteers. “I head out there, catch their attention. You two can run.”

  “No,” I reply. “Nobody’s sacrificing themselves here.”

  There’s movement back from where we came. The sound carries on the slick stone ground. Slurping, squelching pops. Some language I don’t know. But it gives me an idea nonetheless.

  “How many?” I whisper to Malo and nod back the way we came.

  “Only two, and inattentive,” Malo says.

  “Then there’s our answer,” I say. “Let’s take them, and maybe we’ll find something to use.”

  Nobody questions the plan. We retreat back down the ally, take a left and almost walk right into the two Whelk. One’s a bright yellow, like Jel, and the other a putrid green. Neither is looking forward, both appear in some argument with one another. They turn just in time for Malo to smash his fist into the green one’s face, for Viera, wielding the miner like a blunt object, to batter the yellow one. I, meanwhile, grab at the miners pasted to their skin. The weapons are partially inside the Whelks, as though sinking through their gelled exterior.

  The Whelks take the hits, and actually begin to laugh. That’s what I think the gurgling noises mean, anyway, given the wild expressions on their faces as Malo and Viera bring punches and kicks. Every hit shakes them, ripples through their the jelly skin without leaving a mark.

  I dig my nails and press my hand into the yellow one’s skin, get my index finger on the miner’s trigger. The Whelk realizes what I’m doing, and its short arms reach for me, but Viera grabs the thing’s gooey wrists and forces the attack wide.

  I pull the trigger and the miner fires, most of it still inside the creature. Its bright red laser melts the Whelk, turning its slimy body into a sizzling wreck. It’s not what I’m expecting and I stumble back, my hands still holding the trigger, and I keep it together enough to point the miner at the second Whelk. The red bolts keep going, burn through the green one and cascade against the side of the copper building, leaving charred, broken bits sprinkling to the ground. Malo and Viera grab the Whelks’ miners once I stop firing mine, and we’re armed.

  Which is good, because we can hear the pounding feet, the yells of coming reinforcements.

  I’m about to run towards the main street, a tactic that’s likely going to get us killed, when that bin catches my eye. The giant pipe running into the top of it has to lead somewhere - the bin’s too small to hold something for a pipe almost as wide as I am tall.

  I take my miner and shoot at the bin’s side. The bolts hit the bin’s walls, which break apart like paper. The superheated burns make a wide hole, and I find what I was hoping for.

  Damantum had a rudimentary sewage system; a series of stone canals that wound below most of the buildings to the sea. Seems plausible here, in this improbably huge city, that they would need some way to move the waste from the host species. The Sevora, from what I’ve seen, like things clean. I haven’t seen a speck of trash anywhere, nor any of the usual smells of living things.

  I smell those now. Horrible scents, burning my nose and making me cough, but they mingle with hope. Because there’s a way down through the straight pipe. A way out.

  “That’s not where I want to go,” Viera warns. “And if we get stuck down there, they’ll catch us anyway.”

  “They’ll catch us for certain if we stay up here,” I say.

  Malo brushes by me before I can head into the pipe, which is dark and wide, though there appears to be enough muck clinging to the walls that it won’t be a difficult climb.

  Even in our masks, the filth clings to our clothes, our hands and feet. There’s little light, and the rays sneaking in through the hole above dim and vanish quickly. But we keep moving, because what other choice is there?

  The pipe begins to curve, like a sloping J until it evens out going horizontal. Here the muck is deep enough that it comes up to my knees. We trudge along anyway.

  “I haven’t been this blind in a long time,” Viera mutters. “Though I’m not sure I’d rather see what we’re walking through.”

  “Does this remind you of the forest at night?” Malo asks me as we trudge.

  “The forest is alive, it sings and cries,” I say. “This, this is silent and dead.”

  Yet even as I say that, I know it’s not true. Things shift in the muck. My skin feels the quiver, and I wonder if it’s like back home. If there are strange insects burrowing deep, devouring what we leave behind. I blink my eyes, even though there’s nothing for them to see, because such thought
s only distract me.

  Far behind us, the noise of someone being brave enough to attempt a climb sounds. They’re moving slow. Whoever’s after us isn’t all that thrilled at the path we’ve chosen.

  Eventually the tube widens, until a much larger opening appears, and I see, courtesy of a few lines of low yellow lights casting their glows, that we’ve ventured into some kind of central chamber. Other tubes pour out, like ours, into this one, sending their sludge in slow spurting movements.

  “One of the worst things I’ve ever seen,” Viera says. “Here I thought we were in the land of greatness. Where miracles would be everywhere. And yet, I’m still surrounded by crap.”

  “This is the true nature of this world,” Malo says.

  “More importantly,” I say. “We’re alive. Now we just need to decide where to go.”

  We’ve made it to the edge of a large tube, one that descends too deep for me to see.

  “Don’t suggest that we climb down this big thing,” Viera says, peering over the edge. “I can’t see where it leads and I don’t really want to.”

  “We’ve come this far. We’ll keep going. Whatever it takes to get home,” Malo replies.

  “Do you have any emotion?” Viera fires back. “Do you think about whether you enjoy something or not? Whether you like the life you lead? Because I can’t get a read out of you. You’re just a statue that—“

  “Viera, stop it,” I interrupt. “Do you think here, of all places, is the time to have this conversation?”

  Viera shrugs, but she does stop talking, which I count as a victory.

  “I do agree with you though,” I say. I join Viera at the edge and look down; it’s a gulf, deep and dark. “I’d rather not make the jump.”

  No lights, except a small yellow trio around a single tube on the far side. One that, like ours, is gradually dispensing muck into its larger brethren.

  “Do you think that’s a sign? Do we go that way?” I point at the lights.

  “If we follow those lights, the Sevora after us will take the obvious route too,” Malo says. “But then, we don’t really have another way to go, do we?”