Crudrat, page 10
Maura looked at him a long moment. Strange, but she didn’t want to give the cane up. Some wrongness kept it hooked into her hand. It made sense, though, his talk. With a sigh she passed it over.
The alien weighed it in his hand, testing the balance and the heaviness of the silver end. He looked like he wanted to take a swing or two, but there was barely room for him in the hub let alone him plus a weapon. It would have to wait.
Maura turned to the murmel still lurking about them and their ever more entertaining activities. “Go on, you, go home. Settle.” She gave him the return home command. It was phrase that after weigh-out usually sent the fat beasties back to their dens, resting up for next shift.
The blue creature crouched still on the tunnel floor and watched her with a suspicious expression in his limpid eyes.
Maura felt like crying. She wouldn’t of course, none of that feebleness for her. But her eyes felt hot and itchy and wanted to spill over. Long turns they’d spent together, she and that fat murmel. But she was going to a place without crud. Not just the ice planet, because from what the alien had said even Kill’ki skiffs and spaceports had little crud hanging about. Murmels were made for crud, tinkered from the get-go to deal with the Wheel’s biggest space-made problem. There would be no purpose for him where she was going, and he’d likely starve to death from the lack.
She scratched the top of his head one last time and then turned resolutely away. She jumped, grabbing tunnel top and swinging herself into an exit tunnel, motioning Fuzzy to fall in behind.
Before the alien could do so, the murmel made to follow, as though he thought Maura’s gesture were meant for him.
“You,” Maura said in her non-quarter tone, “you stay. Settle.”
The blue beastie gave a little sigh and sat back, ears twitching in annoyance. Then he reached about and pulled his tail ‘round with his little paws and bent to wash the tip. As if to say, what did he care? It was clearly bath-time.
Maura and the alien crawled away. Rees took one last look at the remnants of the loot. He sighed regretfully but left it there. Tying up his sequensor robe in a little knot at the hem to keep it out of his way, he too crawled off through one of the black metal ducts toward military Spoke.
Behind them, the murmel sniffed at the leftover plunder with interest. He nibbled once more on the bit of plastic tubing as though to reevaluate his first assessment. Then, after great deliberation and a few more nibbles, he curled up to sleep in the center of the pile.
Maura and quoin Fuzzy jumped down out one of the ducts of the armiger dock zone behind a military skiff. They straightened as quickly as possible and walked out from around the spaceboat as though they were there on a particular mission. They headed directly for the alien skiff. What had Fuzzy called it? Oh yes, a whale. None of the armigers milling about tried to stop them. Maura timed their entrance with shift change, so that it looked as though they’d just entered the bay along side a new group of dockhands.
They walked shoulders back, heavy footed, all arrogance and confidence. The alien kept his robe’s hood pulled down far and his head dipped low so it was near impossible to see his face. Maura’s only concern was her hair, so she kept her hood tight, but she wanted them to see her face. For once, she intended to put her weird silver eyes to good use.
The group around the skiff was smaller than it had been, clearly some of them, gone off to question the alien prisoner, had not yet returned. Maura wondered if they still lay on the floor of the lockup, struggling to breathe. Cleaners had probably caught them up by now, robeless but alive.
There were four still prodding at the alien’s spaceboat, and they seemed to have settled into a more scientific approach to cracking the casing. They had an array of tools, from laser saws to plasma torches to old-fashioned rotary mechanical metal drivers, which they were applying one after another to the body of the whale.
The skiff seemed not to care what was attempted, nothing would get through its protective guard.
As Maura and Fuzzy drew closer, one of the sequensors broke off his fussing and came towards them, hand raised in greeting.
He looked to Maura first, apparently not put off by the alien’s immense stature. There must be more extreme triggering going on amongst progenetors than I thought, if the uppers see no need to question such massive height and obviously cloaked face.
“How do you do?” He bowed all politeness.
“How do you do?” Maura imitated his accent and bowed in turn. The alien followed her lead in silence.
“Who’s introducing?” the sequensor asked, unsure of who held higher rank.
“Maura Am Vern,” she said, no reason to lie. She hoped they couldn’t see the way her hands trembled. “This is my, uh, cousin.” Dismissed and unnamed, Maura had implied the alien was of much lower status.
Thus better knowing everyone’s relationships, the sequensor ignored Fuzzy and took a careful look at Maura’s face. She forced herself not to check to make sure her hood hadn’t slid.
“Am Vern, of course.” He sounded none too pleased at her appearance. “We should have known you’d turn your creepy eyes up as soon as word go out about this little gem. Well, come put those triggered organs of yours to good use and take a look.”
Maura and Fuzzy followed him over to the other group.
“Am Verns have come,” barked the man, as soon as they were within talking distance of the other sequensors.
One of the others looked up sharp. “Of course they have.” She sounded even less pleased than her compatriots with this turn of events. Maura noted, without much surprise, that her eyebrows were red and winged out. She was older than pearly-skin’s friend, but the same stock. She too would also lean anti-Am Vern by family politics. Maura wondered if there was anyone allied with Am Vern stock amongst this lot, or if her family members simply preferred to make enemies of every highstock in the Wheel.
So far no one had yet been pleased to see Maura’s eyes. Except old pearly skin and that only because he wanted to turn them into earrings. Maura pretended all business, narrowing her triggered eyes in a way she hoped came off as menacing. She used foreman’s tone and foreman’s words. “Report!”
“Ain’t that typical Vern? All they got is formality and regulations, no class,” grumbled the third sequensor, not looking up from the diamond edged saw he was testing on the hull of the whale.
“Report,” barked Maura again. She and quoin Fuzzy shifted subtlety ‘round so that they were as close as possible to the side of the alien skiff. Maura had no idea where the door would be located, but she figured she could follow Fuzzy’s lead.
“We can’t get inside this blasted thing,” explained one of the sequensors, sounding more that a tad annoyed.
“Have you tried sonic guns?” Maura pulled the one she tucked into her rags out from inside her robe. The gun would never fire for her, but the sequensors didn’t know that.
All four reached to stop her. “No!”
In that same instant, while all attention was on Maura, the alien reached over and did something to the skiff with three quick movements. A small drawer slid out from the spaceboat’s side. He placed his key-card into it. Instantly, it slid back away.
The skiff shuddered once. That got the sequensors’ attention away from Maura and her pistol. As they all watched in amazement, a door fell downwards from the hull’s side, exposing a set of stairs and a tall opening.
Quoin Fuzzy threw off his two robes and leapt for that opening. Maura broke towards it as well. Two of the sequensors grabbed at Maura, pulling the white robe from about her head, so that her blue hair shone under the dock lights. One drew his sonic pistol and seemed torn between whether to shoot at Maura or her too-tall accomplice. The fourth sequensor went after Fuzzy, already partly inside his whale.
That fourth sequensor, for all his chip-improved skill and strength, was no match for the alien. Fuzzy twirled the silver-topped progenetor cane about in his hand, almost faster than eyes could follow. It hit the sequensor square in his stomach and sent him flying backwards.
That decided the one with the sonic gun. As the two holding Maura shoved her struggling form down onto the deck, she saw him shift his aim onto the alien.
“Watch out!”
Quoin Fuzzy ducked to one side.
“Go!” Maura called, struggling to get loose from the sequensors and their triggered strength.
The sequensor fired his sonic gun missing Fuzzy but hitting the ship.
The alien skiff vibrated, letting off that impossibly loud screeching noise. Apparently, opening the entranceway didn’t turn off the spaceboat’s defensive mechanisms. The two sequensors holding Maura and the one with the gun all fell backwards.
Their grip loosened, Maura kicked one in the head, and clawed at the fingers of the other, managing to writhe free. She crawled away, clawed her way to her feet, and dashed towards the opening.
The skiff started to emit a humming noise that Maura took to be the engines revving up.
A sequensor caught her foot, bringing her back down sharply to her knees on the deck. It was the kind of fall dented a tunnel and cost a ‘rat her license. Maura gasped at the pain.
Fuzzy’s white head appeared in the shadowed darkness of his skiff's entrance.
“No good,” yelled Maura, “go without me.”
The alien didn’t seem to hear. He leaped back out of the skiff, onto the floor of the docking bay.
A voice came over the loud speaker, an automated computer voice. “Decompression in ten ticks,” it said, and then, “Nine…” It continued to count down with perfect measured time, dispassionate as only a computer could be.
Rees had managed his end of the business.
All around them, dockworkers and armigers scrambled for decompression safety points. The sequensors didn’t seem to notice. They hung onto Maura, no matter how much she jerked and kicked. Even her running muscles weren’t strong enough to combat their chip-enhanced grips.
“Eight… Seven…”
Then there came a new noise, the sad wet crunch of breaking bone. Fuzzy was there, whipping about with his cane as though it were an extension of his already impossibly long arms. Sequensors went soaring.
“Six… Five…”
Maura had never seen such physical combat. Sequensors were supposed to be the best of the Wheel’s best, triggered to be faster and smarter than even other progenetors, chipped to be strongest and most able. Yet that big white fuzzy alien felled them like they were the rejects. Like they were nothing. The cane nipped out to the side, then whirling to the front, a spinning wheel all of its own and just as deadly. When all four sequensors were eating deck and not looking likely to get up any time soon, Fuzzy offered Maura a massive paw and hoisted her up. Only then did he turn back to his skiff.
“Four…”
Maura regained use of her feet. Her knees were screaming but she worked well enough to follow him.
The alien was inside, Maura was still a handbreadth behind, scrabbling to reach the entrance in time. She wasn’t yet in as the door began to raise against take-off.
Out of the corner of one eye, Maura thought she saw a flash of blue streak across the docking bay floor and leap into the alien’s boat, tail lashing.
“Three…”
“Stop,” yelled the last of the sequensors, the one with the sonic gun. “I’ll fire on you, crudrat, not the skiff. You, at least, will stay behind and answer to the Wheel.”
Maura froze, the entrance just one leap away.
“Two…”
10
As soon as humans entered space they determined how best to fight in it.
~ Proverb
Maura had nothing to lose. What kind of life portside would she have in a sequensor embrace? No, there was an ice planet in her future. With a glance over her shoulder at the mouth of that deadly gun, Maura dove. Crudrat’s reflexes kicked her up into a flip. She came out of it into a vault over the rapidly closing door, sliding through the narrow space left, and into the open body of the alien skiff. The door clanged shut just missing her foot. Behind her a sonic gun sounded and the whale shook, screaming its objection into the docking bay.
Maura’s murmel sashayed over to her and placed one paw on her ankle.
“What do you think you’re doing here?”
The murmel looked up at her, wide blue eyes all innocence. Not even a chitter of apology.
“And how am I gong to fill that fat belly of yours?”
The murmel turned away. Clearly Maura was not going to be reasonable about this. He went to investigate this new alien world he’d leaped into.
The skiff shook, and Maura decided she best follow the murmel’s example.
She looked around at the interior, but she wasn’t looking exactly at it, not yet. She was hoping that Rees had made it inside, perhaps while she had been lying flat to the deck while Fuzzy bashed sequensors with a cane.
No such luck.
“Where’s Rees?” Maura asked. “We got us a murmel but no Rees?”
Fuzzy had made his way to the front cockpit of the spaceboat and sat down in what must be a steering seat. It was a strange kind of interior, all round and molded, no sharp edges or corners anywhere.
“Sorry, non-enemy, it would appear that he didn’t make it in time.”
Maura damped down a great well of sorry, knowing they couldn’t afford to wait and see if he would. She pinched her ear to stop the tears and looked around at her new nest. It seemed almost tunnel-like. Maura felt hugged by close rounded walls and darkness. It was alien-odd to see no blue floating through the air. Upon closer inspection, the skiff's inside was beamed with rib-like curves of white. They seemed to form a boned skeleton upon which the black skin of the hull was stretched.
Maura shuddered, for that thought made the whole set-up uncomfortable, like she was riding inside the belly of some beast. She climbed to the forward part of the ship.
“So why’d you come back out for me?”
The alien glanced up at her like she was crazy to ask, then quickly looked back down at a complex sequence of sliding knobs he seemed to be moving about within a three dimensional sphere.
“We are bonded,” he said, as though that was all the explanation needed.
Maura nodded, understanding. “Rees was not.”
“Exactly.”
At the twist of a dial, the skiff shuddered again and lifted up off the bay floor. Maura stumbled slightly, and after a quick glance about, wedged herself into a curve of the cockpit. It looked a fit area to brace against and mostly out of Fuzzy’s way.
The decompression alarm sounded, loud enough to hear, even inside the skiff. The countdown had ended.
“Air is still going to be tight. We got a murmel but no Rees.”
“What?” The alien glanced up.
“Stowaway, hopefully it’ll all work out,” said Maura, hoping not to distract him from important work. Like saving their collective asses.
The skiff hovered, swinging about, as the bay doors began to open. A screen in front of Fuzzy lit up, showing the huge dockside walls and multiple military skiffs, and the illuminated control rooms of the vacuum-safe area around the top side of the bay.
“There!” Maura pointed to Rees’s small blue head.
He was the center of a hive of subgenetor activity in one of the control rooms. It was a broiling mass of citizenship milling around her friend’s small white-robed form. As they watched, Rees shook both his attackers and the robe off, and crawled like a murmel up the wallside of the room. He popped the cap off of an air duct there and disappeared inside. It was a tight fit even for Rees and none of the subgenetors were able to follow him. Last thing Maura saw of him was the underside of one dirty foot.
The alien skiff screamed and shook violently.
A couple armigers had clearly run to their spaceboats right before decompression and were now taking it upon themselves to bring down the alien ship the hard way. Pot shots inside a spaceport were considered big stupid, but these were desperate ticks for the military. No Spoke would be happy if the alien got away. Everyone would feel the burn of sequensor vengeance regardless of rank. Battle regulations were spaced easy under such circumstances. The alien skiff was under an onslaught of gravity fire.
Behind them, the decompression doors were beginning to slide shut.
“We must leave the small one behind, non-enemy.”
Maura’s face felt prickly and stretched. “Ain’t right, he did more than his fair share.” Then, after a pause, “I’m thinking maybe he knew all long that he might get left behind.”
The alien nodded in one jerky motion. Sliding his controls about he brought the skiff around and dove it out under the closing bay doors without a dust’s worth of room to spare.
“We will come back for him,” the alien said, no doubt noting Maura’s stricken expression.
Maura, knowing the significance now, replied simply, “Your bond on it?”
The alien swallowed. “There is no bond to action, only to a person. But here is a promise, little blue — there is a debt, a barter in play, help for help. And this one sees now what a world it is that your friend is left to. Balance requires reciprocate aide in equal measure to what your Rees did this day.”
“Good enough,” Maura replied, but she hadn’t much faith in a simple promise. She herself made a vow, with or without Fuzzy’s help.
Just then she felt her whole body, organs on out, commence a floating expansion.
“Woah!” Her every little skin hair took on life of its own.
Next to her Fuzzy looked even fuzzier as all his fur puffed out, no gravity to weight it down. She realized this must be space’s free float. There weren’t a speck of gravity spun to life in a skiff, not even an alien skiff – too small. She’d heard about this, dire warnings doled out to keep the crudrats cleaning. It’s what happened when a spaceport halted spin. But she’d never thought to feel it.
Fuzzy maneuvered his ship around, unperturbed, while Maura floated off to the side and bumped into the hull, like dust in an air duct. Only then did she realize he was completely strapped in.
