“More like crazy cat lady.”

By that evening, Cash had returned, and we spent time eating and drinking at the Desert Dryad and catching him up on everything. As expected, he was none too happy about Vomero calling Emery his hot cat lady. Dick and I urged everyone to keep an open mind on Emery

“She’s actually very nice,” Dick said. “A bit of a prude, but I'm sure you could work with that.”

He winked to emphasize his meaning.

“No thanks,” Cash scoffed. “Besides, I’ve got other female problems I’m trying to work out.”

“Ohhhh?” Dick said with no small amount of enthusiasm.

He turned to follow Cash’s gaze toward the bar where the beautiful Jelixic woman, Giana, was serving customers.

“Oh,” Dick repeated, sounding a lot less interested now that he realized who Cash was talking about. “Lame.”

“You’re just mad that she makes you nervous,” I teased.

“Of course I am!” Dick exploded. “Being irresistibly sexy is kind of my thing, and it doesn’t work when she’s around!”

Instead of sympathy, the group had only snickers and chuckles to offer for Dick’s confession.

“Imagine,” he continued, determined to explain the situation until someone understood where he was coming from, “for a second that all of a sudden you couldn’t do your light dagger thingy or spin kick someone in the face.”

Dick turned to Vomero, “Imagine you tried to technomance some piece of technology but nothing happened? Even worse, you shorted out your systems, instead.”

Dick buried his face in his hands in melodramatic frustration. “Hell, I even tried shedding a few pheromones.”

This statement finally elicited a reaction from the group gathered around the table. From indignation to mild disgust and stern disapproval, the reactions weren’t favorable.

“Oh stop,” Dick groaned. “It was just an experiment.”

I continued to glare angrily at him. He held his hands up in surrender.

“It was for science. Besides, nothing happened! Not one single whiff came out. I have no idea why.”

“She makes me nervous, too,” Cash admitted. “But I'm a real man, so I don’t let it turn me into an idiot.”

“Incorrect,” Dick said. “You’re only half a real man. You get an unfair advantage because only your non-bionic parts tingle when she talks. Say, you don’t have a bionic...you know...do you?”

“I’m plenty real in all the places I need to be,” Cash retorted, glaring.

“None of my parts tingle when she talks,” Ryuuk interjected.

“Do you even like women, Ryuuk?” Dick queried

“I’m a bit finicky in my mating habits,” Ryuuk said dismissively.

“Does that mean you swing both ways?” Dick asked, curiously.

“Avian mating biology is seasonal, rather than situational,” Vomero informed in his very Vomero way. “Avians often choose monogamy to just one mate for life, though there are exceptions to the rule.”

It was Vomero’s turn to be the focus of our odd stares. He shrugged nonchalantly, as if knowing obscure facts about Avian mating habits was normal.

“Also, they vomit a lot when aroused,” he added. “So, there’s that.”

"Oof,” Dick said. “Yeah, I bet that doesn’t go over too well with non-Avian women.”

Ryuuk just shrugged, neither ashamed nor particularly interested in talking about his species’ mating habits.

“How about you, Vomero?” Dick asked, leaning in earnestly. “Got any weird reptilian mating quirks?”

“We eat the genitals of our sexual partners after copulation and regrow them like a lizard’s tail,” Vomero said with a deadpan look on his face.

“Really?” Dick drew back from him in horror, instinctively placing his hands over his crotch protectively.

“No,” Vomero said matter-of-factly. “Now, stop being nosy. It’s none of your business.”

“You weren’t none too shy about tellin’ all my business, though,” Ryuuk muttered, sipping on his drink.

Vomero just shrugged sheepishly. I rolled my eyes, no longer interested in discussing people’s sex lives, and pushed away from our table. I walked toward the bar where Giana was conversing with a customer. She quickly finished up her conversation as she saw me approach and greeted me with a big smile.

“Skye!” she gushed. “I am so glad to see you’re okay. Cash told me you got into a bit of trouble but trusted you’d work it out.”

“Did he?” I responded. She nodded.

“He came by after that incident with your other friend and helped me fix the door he broke.” Giana dropped her voice an octave when she mentioned Dick, as if talking about him left a bad taste in her mouth. I couldn’t help but smirk.

“Well, it was all a misunderstanding that worked out in the end,” I assured, then switched the conversation to why I’d approached her in the first place. “Giana, do you get a lot of Outlaws here at the Desert Dryad?”

“Not really,” she said, looking thoughtful. “I imagine they like to stick to their own side of town when they come to port.”

“And what side of town would that be?”

“The east end, mostly. There’s a dock on that side of the city that’s run by an Outlaw, I think. So, they tend to stay toward that side of the city. There are a few bars and inns that have a reputation for being common Outlaw dives.”

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

“If they’re like most Outlaw dives I’ve been in, I’m sure they don’t hold a candle to what you’ve got going on here,” I said with a kind smile.

I thanked Giana for her help and paid my tab. Thankfully, most places on Rodan seemed to accept the common electronic credit transfer type payments we were used to in the Pact Worlds, not like the backwards Viridian city on Kalo-Mahoi. I wondered briefly if Viridi had survived the catastrophe on that planet and what had happened to some of the kind people we’d met there at the Merry Mermaid.

New Iberia was a large city, and like most things, transportation was privatized, rather than public. Emerging onto the street outside the bar, I pulled out my datapad and began looking up businesses located on the eastern side of the city.

Finding an address that looked promising, I hailed a hovercraft for hire and shared the location with him electronically. The ride was uneventful, but it was nice to see more of the city. It seemed like different sections of the city had their own vibe.

The northern end we were staying in was very industrious with a bustling commercial hub catering to off-world travelers. Free Market was the main attraction of the southern side of New Iberia. The vibe had been much more rustic and rural. Besides the large local commerce center there, it also housed a lot of factory type establishments that provided goods and services for locals and the various factions they formed.

Both of the parts of town I’d experienced, so far, seemed all business, with friendly and civil inhabitants just looking to make their way in the galaxy. The eastern district was the antithesis to that. As the hovercraft traveled deeper into the eastern part of the city, the mood changed to one I found hauntingly familiar.

Compared to the other places I had visited here, this area was wild. That was saying something, considering the last part of the city I'd visited had literal wild animals for sale. Unlike most areas of New Iberia where the natural landscape was leveled and scraped back for more functional construction, the east end celebrated the jagged, red rock cliffs and sandy dunes of the desert. Homes and buildings were carved into the side of the cliff faces. Others were constructed on metal stilts to accommodate the shifting dunes.

The most unique structures, however, looked like giant pole tents constructed of metal. Rather than sitting on the ground, like normal, these tents rested on large platforms that hovered over the landscape and sandy desert scape. Each platform looked like an inverted cone, which gave the entire construction the appearance of a child’s magnetized top hovering at different elevations above the desert floor.

One of these massive structures housed the area’s space port Giana mentioned. Large open platforms jutted from every angle of the “tent-like” top cone. Most of those platforms looked occupied by various ships.

“Busy day,” I commented to the driver, who was making slow progress through the narrow, congested streets.

“It’s been like this for weeks,” the young man said, “since the Great Haven thing. It feels like everyone in the solar system wants a piece of the action.”

“Action?” I queried. “What type of action?”

“Different things,” he said. “A lot of folks are helping with the salvage efforts or being paid to help with the salvage efforts. You don’t just clean up an entire destroyed city overnight. Others are looking to make money hunting down the Reavers.”

Something about his tone had me pressing the topic.

“You thinking of joining those efforts?” I asked, examining the guy more closely.

He had that fresh-faced, eager naivete I’d seen on so many faces right before they became corpses.

“I had friends in Great Haven,” he said, the anger and bitterness spilling out at he spoke. “I’ve heard people talking about putting together paid militias to protect some of the transport routes from those filthy bastards.”

I knew the futility of offering words of caution to someone sipping on a cocktail of trauma and anger. So, I just shrugged.

“You got anything special worth living for?” I asked.

I pointed to the sidewalk, indicating that I’d get out and go on foot.

“Ummm...” the young man stumbled, clearly confused by my question. “I-I’m not sure.”

“Perfect!” I said with mock enthusiasm, slapping my encoded tattoo on the scanner for payment. “Then, you sound exactly like the type of person these militias will be looking for.”

I popped open the hovercraft door and thanked the dumbfounded young man for the ride before departing.

The guy’s reminder about the Reaver attack brought my thoughts into focus as I searched for the Boundless, one of the bar/lodging businesses I’d seen in the directory. If the Outlaws preferred this side of the city, and the vibes I was getting from this place told me they did, I imagined an establishment named Boundless was a good place to start looking for them.

I had just spotted a holosign on one of the stilt-based buildings across the street when I noticed something that threw me off. I paused for a moment to casually observe my surroundings.

“Ryuuk,” I called loudly. “Why are you skulking around on rooftops and stalking me?”

A moment later, the Avian in question fluttered down to stand in front of me. His arms were crossed, and he wore a slightly miffed look on his face.

“I was just wonderin’ where you were wanderin’ off to all of a sudden,” he said.

“You don’t trust me?” I asked, admitting only to myself that the notion stung.

“More like, don’t trust ya to keep yerself outta trouble,” he lectured, pointing a finger at me. “But you keep goin’ off by yerself anyway without any backup or even a word to where ya might be headed.”

I chose not to acknowledge the relieved, warm feeling that emerged knowing that Ryuuk’s actions were borne of concern rather than mistrust.

“I’m looking for somewhere other Outlaws hang out,” I apologized by way of explanation.

“Ahh,” Ryuuk said, nodding as if just realizing something very important. “I see. All that mating talk done run you off and you lookin’ for a more genteel crowd to hang around.”

“You’ve never met any other Outlaws but me, have you?” I asked, sardonically.

“Not a single one,” he admitted, matter-of-factly.

“I’m here hoping to make acquaintances with some Outlaws operating in this quadrant,” I said. “We’ve been running around too long all on our own. Meeting Emery made me realize that a few local allies could go a long way to getting us all back home.”

“Well, why didn’t you just say so!” Ryuuk said. “And why didn’t you ask any of us to go with you?”

I thought about that for a moment.

“Honestly, I never thought about it,” I admitted. “Why would you want to come with me to an Outlaw dive, anyway?”

“Umm...hello!” he said, raising his winged hand in the air. “Remember me? Brainwashed shut-in who wants to experience evrythin’ in every new place we go? An Outlaw hangout sounds excitin’!”

“Fair point,” I mumbled. “You know, you could have just asked me where I was going and if you could come with me. Why all the secrecy?”

Ryuuk’s expression turned from exasperation to embarrassment.

“Well...I’ve been practicing being stealthy,” he said, scratching the back of his head sheepishly. When I simply stared at him dumbfounded, he explained, “I feel like everyone has stuff they’re useful for when things need getting' done. But what do I add unless there’s something far away that needs shootin’ at?”

I had no idea Ryuuk was struggling with his sense of purpose in our haphazardly-formed crew. Now that he said it, though, it should have been obvious. Ryuuk had literally lost his identity when he fled the abusive practices his employer on Avaria had put him under. Carl Marshall, the owner of a famous role-playing theme park named Fable, not only used an advanced, magical hallucinogenic to mind control his workers but had also put a million credit bounty on Ryuuk’s head for escaping with knowledge of that secret.

Not only had he lost the identity he had believed about himself for the past decade, but he’d been forced to hide his real identity to evade detection ever since. So, it stood to reason that he was looking to define himself and his role within our group.

“Well, I can think of a lot of scenarios where we might need someone who can shoot stuff far away,” I tried to say encouragingly, but he wasn’t buying it.

“Fine!” I said, seeing his doubtful expression. “Look, you make a good scout. You’re mobile and can observe from afar...very afar. But I guess you’re right that an effective scout needs to be stealthy. That's ok, you can work on it.”

“How did you know I was followin’ you?” he asked, frustrated. “You have no idea how hard it was to be that quiet.”

I chuckled. “I imagine it was torture for you,” I quipped, then bent over to pick up a white feather laying nearby on the ground. I twirled it in my fingers and looked pointedly at it in answer to his question.

“Ohhh...” he said, then slapped his feathered palm on his face. “You’re tellin’ me all my efforts were counteracted by questionable hygiene!?”

“Welp, that’s gross,” I said, dropping the feather back on the ground. “Come on. Let’s go find some Outlaws.”