It would take another two hours for the patch of space that Trem had cleared to get into position, and Mindeham was getting harder and harder to manage. Elvenheim wished that Trem would hurry up with his 'space rubbish bin' program, because one potential launch a day wasn't really enough to keep interest in space travel going. And made it almost impossible to get insane brothers on the passenger list.

"I could live out on the ocean," Mindeham was saying.

"Could you?"

"In a boat."

"You know they'd find you," Elvenheim said for the hundredth time. "You don't have power of attorney. They'll say you're in trouble and get the coast guard to bring you back."

"They can find me much easier on a station," Mindeham muttered.

"Wendolina has assured me that on her station you will have full citizenship rights. And space is much better than international waters for this sort of thing. Remember what the lawyers said?

"If we don't explode or asphyxiate before we get there."

"It's super safe," Elvenheim said, rolling her eyes. "Look, Case is going up on our very own rocket. He wouldn't go if it wasn't safe, would he?"

"Where?" Mindeham said, looking around the shuttle lounge. He spotted Case's diminutive form eventually, and jumped up to go talk to him.

"Mindeham, wait--"

"Hello," Mindeham said, and Case flinched before he looked up.

"Hello," Case said cautiously.

"I'm Mindeham. My sister says you wouldn't be going up here if it wasn't safe. Is that true?"

"I guess..."

"But you're still scared, though," Mindeham observed.

"Terrified," Case admitted.

"Apparently we shouldn't be scared, because we're not going to explode, and Wendolina's place is better than international waters."

"That's why I'm going," Case agreed, looking nervous.

"This is Elvenheim," Mindeham said, waving a hand at Elvenheim's approach.

"Sorry," Elvenheim said, shaking Case's hand.

"Good to meet you," Case said.

"But not me," Mindeham agreed. "Do they have any spy satellites up there? Ones they're not telling us about, ones that we could run into on our way up there and make us explode?"

Mindeham saw the answer in Case's face before he said anything, and was suitably impressed when Case decided to tell the truth.

"Yes."

"Would be unlikely though," Mindeham said, evidently deciding that everything was going to be okay. He sat down beside Case, and rummaged around in his bag. "Did you want to play chess?"

***

It took a little while to figure out how to open the airlock of one of the broken pockets in the side of the alien ship, but Case managed after not too long. He didn't have to close it again, it automatically doing so after sensors noticed the pressure change of the air in the corridor. He walked quickly through the corridor, a small, dark figure in a bright, empty hall. He wore a stealth suit, a skintight pressure suit suitable for both short space walks and for walking in gravity and confined spaces, but with a tendency to tear, leaving infiltrators stranded. He investigated a number of different rooms, some damaged by human fire, some with neatly disassembled ships and humans in them. Morbidly curious, Case took a blood sample from a few. According to the hormones in the blood, they had died before they were vivisected, which Case took as a good sign for potentially finding his target.

He was more cautious as the corridor began to spiral into the body of the ship, and was therefore ready when he saw one of the aliens before him. The alien advanced quickly; Case drew a vial from his belt and sprayed the contents on the alien. The alien made distressing high pitched squeaks as it dissolved. Case carefully put the vial and his gloves on the dissolving pile, and put new gloves on from his belt. He stepped around the puddle on the floor, and carried on.

After a while, a subtle vibration came from his belt.

"Finally," he muttered, and got out his tracking unit. He had placed his trackers on all the gods a long time ago when technology wasn't as advanced, and their range was sadly short. He followed the tracking signal to one particular room, and opened it up.

"What?" Elvenheim begun, sitting up. She looked a bit disheveled, but ultimately unharmed. Case took off his oxygen mask.

"It's me," he said.

"Here to rescue me?" Elvenheim asked.

"Yes."

"Good," Elvenheim said. She stood up, and followed Case out the door.

***

It was a little more difficult getting out of the space ship than it was getting in. Case had to dissolve another alien, and they had to hide as a number of them went rolling past.

"What about the others who were kidnapped?" Elvenheim said.

"They tried to kill you, didn't they?"

"Yes..."

"They did that to everyone."

"Oh." Elvenheim was silent for a moment. "Do you have a plan to stop them?"

"Well, once I've got you out, a reasonable amount of governments have offered to nuke the ship into oblivion," Case said.

"Nobody's attempted to contact them?"

"Preasi's off making trading contacts, and nobody else wants to bother," Case said.

"Even you?"

"If the first thing they do when they get to human space is start killing and kidnapping people, no I don't want to spend time with them. I'd be happy to learn how they think, but I don't have the resources or the time."

They were walking down the last corridor when suddenly they were slammed into a wall.

"Ow!" Elvenheim whispered.

"Are they attacking the ship again?"

"It didn't feel like it," Elvenheim said. "It felt like..."

Case grabbed her hand. "Whatever it is, we should go. Now."

They ran to the airlock.

"I've got an extra suit in my pack."

"Do we have the time for me to put it on?" Elvenheim asked.

"Not really" Case said. Elvenheim took a few deep breaths, then breathed out and shut her mouth and eyes, Case led her through the airlock, and dragged her the last few steps to his space ship. They got inside, and Elvenheim gasped for breath. She looked like she had been stung all over by a swarm of bees, but the cabin pressure and the Light of Immortality were already healing the depressurisation.

"Get us out of here," Case ordered his computer, moving to the pilot's seat. The computer obeyed, taking them out of the larger ship. Case quickly flew them away out of reach of the ship's tentacles.

A strange, long brown ship flew right across their path, making Case swerve up to avoid them. Case's automatic scanner picked up a strange pattern of static from the ship, as it tried to communicate something to them, possibly an angry message.

"They warped when we were still on the ship, didn't they," Elvenheim said, sounding remarkably calm. Of course she would, Case thought sourly. This was an adventure, wasn't it.

"Evidently," Case said bitterly. "And now we don't know where we are."

***

After a few moments of frantic searching the sky, they discovered that they indeed were nowhere humans had recorded being before. Case's computer marked a few potential distorted constellations, but they didn't fit with one another, and there were a few hundred possibilities it pointed to being the direction of human space. Of course, there was the potential that none of the possibilities were right.

"And while we'll live long enough to check out the possibilities, I'm not sure your ship was built for it," Elvenheim said to Case. Case's ship was indeed built for discreet insertions rather than raring across the unknown universe, and had a very small fuel tank. While the warp drive could last longer, it wouldn't matter if they couldn't turn around and point in the right direction for their next warp.

"Fine," Case said with foreboding. "We'll go to the station."

One of the major things they had noticed when searching the constellations earlier was a massive station that was obviously the sun devils' destination. Multiple types of ships were passing to and from it, and Case and Elvenheim identified ones from at least three species.

"We should be able to barter something for maps," Elvenheim said.

"If the sun devils haven't just stolen other species' ships, and this is a pirate trading hub," Case muttered.

"Well, at the very least, we could kidnap someone off our ship and ask them where we are," Elvenheim said.

"You just want to learn a new language," Case said, but flew them to the station.

In any other ship, docking would have been impossible; however Case's tiny ship was not only good at squirming its way into places it shouldn't be, but had decryption systems for docking at secure ports, and after about half an hour these systems figured out how to get them inside the station.

"The air is a slightly higher pressure," Case said, reading from his screens. "We'll have to decompress in the airlock when we come back. There's nothing toxic that the systems can read, a number of unknown trace pseudo-biologicals, but that's what you'd expect from an alien station. Not enough oxygen; we'll have to wear masks."

"So our plan is to find some of the Bardlenni?" Elvenheim asked, as Case got their gear together.

"If we can. If we can't find them, the Wyrei might do."

The Bardlenni looked a little like cute furry scorpions. They were quite small, coming up to about knee height on a human when standing up. They were omnivores, like humans, and it might have been this shared mentality, as well as the fact that they had big baby eyes and soft looking fur, that made humans get on with them slightly better than they did with other species. The Wyrei, giant centipede-like creatures, were harder to communicate with, but were generally well-meaning.

"At least we didn't see any Rarey," Elvenheim said. They had managed to convince the Rarey to stay away from them, and that is as good as their relationship ever got.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Elvenheim and Case put on stealth suits under loose fitting clothes, just in case some of the pseudo-biologicals were toxic via skin contact, put on their masks, and grabbed Case's translation computer as well as some potential trade goods.

"Are we ready?" Elvenheim asked. Case took one last inventory of their plan and their goods.

"Yes," he said, and with some trepidation they left their ship.

***

Once they were out on the normal walkways of the bustling trade station, the two humans were of instant note. People chattered worriedly as they passed.

"I don't think they want us here," Case said.

"I've seen at least three new species since we've been here," Elvenheim said excitedly, not attending. "I hope you've got a camera running."

"Of course," Case said, blinking at the possibility that he wouldn't.

It was at that time a Bardlenni hurried towards them, looking harassed. It was always a little hard on the nerves for a human, watching a Bardlenni run up, for they ran on their hind- and fore-legs, with their more tentacle/tail-like middle legs waving about for balance. A human mind tended to think SNAKE-SPIDER-TIGER all at once as it tried to process what it was seeing. The Bardlenni shared the primate nervous smile, too, and the fangs didn't help.

"Hello," Elvenheim said cheerfully as it stopped in front of them, standing up. They tended to tripod on their hind legs and tails, which kept them nicely balanced. They did tend to look like some sort of turtle-headed furry trilobite from this angle, though.

"Why are you here?! You shouldn't be here!" the Bardlenni said through Case's translator.

"We were kidnapped," Elvenheim said with dignity, "by the ship out there with the rolling round tentacled creatures. We didn't come here by choice."

"We are getting into so much trouble! People are thinking Bardlenni snuck you in!"

"Well, even we know that you are too honourable for that. I'm injured on your behalf."

"How could you do this," the Bardlenni said. Case's computer translated it as a drawn-out wail.

"We didn't mean to get kidnapped and almost killed and dragged however far away from home," Elvenheim said, almost losing her patience. It had been a long day. The Bardlenni eyed her carefully.

"Did you want to go to the authorities?" the Bardlenni said glumly. "Only I don't think they would--"

"All we want to do is to get back home," Case said. "So if you'd be good enough to lend us a map, we'll be on our way directly."

The Bardlenni was shaking his head. "No, no. I can't give you a map to this place."

"Then how are we going to get back home?" Elvenheim asked. The Bardlenni hesitated, then dipped his head.

"You come with us. I can drop you off near known space. Bardlenni space, so safe space, too."

"Do you have room for my ship? It's 100 meters in length," Case said.

"Room, no. My cargo will be squashed."

"Well, I am not leaving it here," Case said.

"Well I am not squashing my cargo!"

"Well," Case said, "I won't leave it here, but I'll trust it to the Bardlenni. It can be extra cargo. For your government."

The Bardlenni wavered, then nodded. "Fine. I will take your ship and I will drop you off at the station where my cousin is. She will take care of you, help you get home."

"Thank you," Elvenheim said.

"It's a deal," Case said. The Bardlenni nodded.

***

The Bardlenni said his name was Praawthb. After a few goes, he still shook his head at the humans' pronunciation, but declared it good enough. He bristled a bit at their own names.

"You named after those friends of the devil, are you? Bad taste, very bad taste. I know it is hard, but I would disregard my parents and change them, if I were you."

"Oh, I used to be famous for disregarding my parents," Elvenheim said.

"Change your name," Praawthb advised again.

It took a bit of finessing to get Case's ship on board Praawthb's cargo ship, but the station authorities were reasonably helpful.

"Very eager to see you on your way," Praawthb said. "I'm helping them out by getting you away, you know, but they're acting like I'm tainted already. Bah! If I lose contracts because of you, I'm billing you."

"That's fair," Case said blandly. Elvenheim shot him a look. Case looked innocent, but she bet he felt he could pump their relationship with Praawthb for information. She guessed humankind would benefit, though.

Praawthb kindly adjusted the atmosphere in his ship so that Elvenheim and Case could walk around with only a feed for the extra oxygen they needed, and herded them to safety seats at the back of their large flight control deck. Most of the other seats at the back were also full; a number of young and old Bardlenni, and a few with visitor tags that marked them as passengers. The teenager Elvenheim sat to stared at her without saying anything. Case managed to get the small child sitting next to him into quite an involved conversation.

"Hello," the teenager said eventually.

"Hello," Elvenheim said. That seemed to be enough for the kid. Meanwhile Case seemed to be talking to the child about... economics?

"What are you--" she began.

They blipped into warp.

***

It took three hours to get visas to get onto the station, and it took Praawthb threatening to space them to keep to his schedule for them to hurry it up.

"I wouldn't really," Praawthb assured them, as he waved them out of the airlock.

Praawthb had given them instructions on how to get to his cousin, a shopkeeper named Ieirech, but Elvenheim and Case did not need them in the end--the customs officials delivered them to her door. Ieirech looked very upset to have two rogue humans placed within her care, and as she argued with the customs officials used a number of curses Case's translator couldn't translate, much to his interest. The customs officials were very firm, made her sign something, and then left. She did the Bardlenni version of a glare, with a lowered face and wide eyes.

"And what am I supposed to do with you, then?" she asked.

"Your cousin, Praawthb, said you could arrange for us to be taken to human space," Elvenheim said.

"Oh, is that all? Sure I can take you to the human."

"Human space," Elvenheim repeated, but Ieirech went down on all fours, and gestured with a middle tentacle for the two humans to follow her.

"I guess we should go with her," Case said.

Praawthb's cousin led them around what seemed to be a marketplace, muttering about her reputation as the others stared at the humans following in her wake.

"Now, you remember my name," she said sternly, "and remember what you owe me."

"What do we owe you?" Elvenheim asked, but they had reached what evidently was their destination, and she left them at a doorway.

"Okay then," Case said, and opened the door.

"Excuse me! This is a private--what are you doing here?" a human asked, her brow wrinkling in puzzlement. It was Preasi. She looked just the same as she always did, with keen eyes and a long nut-brown plait which always took a while to get into a spacesuit.

"Elvenheim was kidnapped," Case said. "What are you doing here? I thought our trade with the Bardlenni was fixed?"

"Oh, I'm not here for the Bardlenni," Preasi said, flicking back an escaped wisp of hair out of her face. "I'm here for the Wyrei."

***

"If you are here to deal with the Wyrei," Case said, sitting down at the human-style table Preasi's tablets and scribblings were laid upon, "Why are you here?"

"I needed a neutral space," Preasi said. Elvenheim looked worried.

"Preasi, you're not planning on changing our deals with them, are you?" she asked.

"No, no. Our deals with their species will not change."

"You're not dealing with a faction?!"

Preasi looked shifty. "I have a reason."

"What possibly reason would you have for that?!"

"Lost tribes," Preasi said. Elvenheim was silent. 'The Lost Tribe' was a classic piece of cinema from their relative youth, about humans raised without culture or language to serve as pets and research subjects by aliens. It had scared enough people at the time that World had put out a set of guidelines to secure the human genome from aliens, not that anyone on the frontier paid any attention to them.

"Why, though?" Case asked.

"One faction of the Wyrei found a massive honeycomb nesting site, but while they can lay their eggs in it, the holes are too narrow for them to easily get the shells out to reuse it. According to those I've been in contact with, using humans to clean out the honeycomb nests is actually super efficient, and that faction has been breeding out of control. They came to talk to me to ask permission to kill the humans; I've been trying to find a better solution."

"Well, if you need help, we're here," Elvenheim said. "We don't have a ship, but we can help with planning and extraction if you need."

"Actually," Preasi said, eyes calculating, "That would be great. If you could take my ship and quietly get them out of there during negotiations, it would solve a lot of my problems."

"What are you planning?" Case asked suspiciously, but,

"Fine, we'll do it," Elvenheim said.

***

"Is this the place?" Elvenheim asked, as they appeared in Wyrei space.

"There," Case said, pinpointing something on their overlain map of the area. It was an ordinary-looking rock-ice moon, orbiting a gas giant.

"Preasi said it was near the big crater, and... there," Case said. "Signs of life. Did you really want to bring us down?"

"We have to," Elvenheim, which Case knew wasn't true. He had let her get him into this mess this far, though, so he might as well finish it and get in deeper trouble.

"I'm worried that they haven't guarded this spot," Case said.

"According to Preasi, their fleet is all clustered somewhere else nearby. They haven't figured out that the others plan on attacking the nest directly, and it's in their instincts to stay away from the nests, trying to make themselves a more obvious target."

"Let's just get in and out before they spot us," Case said.

They landed on ice and bare rock, donned their suits, and walked outside. The honeycomb rock, actually fossils of a spacefaring lichen that lived in this part of space hundreds of millions of years ago, spread on top of the rock and down into the ice. In the nearest parts, the small hexagonal holes, about the width of a human hand, were closed off, each one filled with a developing egg. They walked along the edges of the honeycomb, careful not to disturb the eggs. Eventually they got up to the ones that bulged, almost ready to hatch, and then they got up to the ones that were being cleaned.

"I can't see--" They spotted a small figure picking their way towards them. As it got closer, Case stiffened.

"Case," Elvenheim warned, but Case was hurrying towards the figure. Elvenheim caught up. The small child, in an old helmet and a spray-on spacesuit, stared up at them. Eventually it spoke, in the sign language humans used in lieu of the whole-body movements of the Wyrei.

"Why aren't you dead?" it asked.

***

The child led them into a small complex, which housed fifteen children ranging in ages from two to ten, and two growth pods stocked with genetic material ready to make new children at the touch of a button. While Case carefully destroyed the pods and their human DNA, Elvenheim talked to the children, with Case's translator helping with the dialect and broadcasting the conversation over to him.

"Why should we be dead?" Elvenheim asked the child.

"If you grow too big your hands don't fit into the holes properly any more. Then you're useless!"

"I'm not useless," Elvenheim said. "I've come to take you somewhere else."

The child looked suspicious, as their peers started crowding around.

"I'm still quite small," the child said, and then waggled their short, stubby fingers.

"Yes, but there's something more important for you to work on," Elvenheim said. "It's in a much nicer place, too."

One of the children started crying.

"I don't want to be put in an egg hole," they messily signed.

"You won't be," Case signed, coming over. "See how tall we are? We're from a place where you never get put in an egg hole. We heard you were here, and doing such hard work, and figured you'd want to go somewhere where you wouldn't have to clean egg holes all day."

"What would we have to do instead?" one of the children asked.

"Talk about what you were doing here," Elvenheim signed. "We want to know what it is like for you, so you would have to talk about it."

"And you can grow however much you want," Case added, which made the two ten year olds look rather relieved.

"Let's go," one of them said to the others.

"All right," the first child said, still with a suspicious look on her face.

"Good, then," Elvenheim said. "Shall we go?"

***

The two two-year-olds were tucked into Case and Elvenheim's suits, and the others were suited up with their help (decompression burns on their skin showed that they didn't always get their spray suits on properly by themselves). The journey across the honeycomb was nerve wracking, with Case and Elvenheim off-balance with the kids in their suits, and the four- and five-year-olds crying and occasionally running off. At least two of the older ones were reasonably trusting of them, however, and helped get the others under control. There was not much to do when a four-year-old put his foot through a half-developed egg, though, but ignore his frantic wails and screams, pick it up, and carry it along.

They got to their ship after what seemed like forever, and Case hurried to tag all of them as 'infants' in the computer, so it wouldn't recognise their commands if they started mashing the buttons on any of the consoles. They all seemed relatively impressed with Preasi's ship, which made sense as it was designed to be used for diplomatic meetings in a pinch. Case herded them all into the more comfy-looking meeting room, showed them how to use the food dispenser in the corner, and ordered the ten-year-olds to look after the rest of them.

"I don't think I am cut out to look after children," Case said to Elvenheim.

"Didn't you babysit your niece for three months when you were hiding from the authorities?" Elvenheim asked.

"And I was terrible at it then, too."

They had lifted off and were almost out of orbit when the Wyrei arrived.

"I should have updated Preasi's defensive systems before she left the last time," Case said, gritting his teeth as the ship ran through its defensive manoeuvres. "I don't think this is going to cut it!"

"Do you think we would survive a fall to the ground?" Elvenheim asked, sounding remarkably calm.

"The kids certainly wouldn't!"

All of a sudden, the Wyrei stopped firing at them. A strange static came on the radio, and Case saw the cause of the cease-fire: a new ship had just come out of warp, a strange blue-coloured hemisphere.

The radio tuned itself, and the static resolved itself into Wyrei dot-code.

"Someone's looking to trade for maps?" Elvenheim translated.

"Hopefully they're better defended than us," Case said. While the Wyrei were distracted, he accelerated the ship, got them to the minimum allowable distance away from the moon, and put them into warp.