CHAPTER 3 - GUESTS

Kayden swiped his ID across a reader attached to door 125, and it swung open. The apartment consisted of just three rooms: the hallway, a bedroom, and a combined living room-kitchen. It was simply-furnished, with sleek, plain furniture and white-and-green striped wallpaper. Nobody else was there. He was still a little shaken by the events in the ruins, and quietly wondered if the thieves will get their comeuppance.

"I didn’t prepare food because, uh…" Kayden said, glancing out of the window overlooking the domed buildings of the town, "you wouldn’t be able to eat it, so uh..."

"It’ss fine," Nheka hissed. "Doess the city have food for chohjozra…? I have thiss for now, however…" she then took out what looked like a dried insect-like creature the size of a hand out of her bag and loudly chomped down on it with a meaty crunching noise, shards of chitin falling onto the floor.

Kayden covered his mouth and looked away, hiding the fact that he was about to gag. "Please at least take a seat first."

"What iss wrong?"

"Nothing. Er… uhhh… as for your question…", he quickly scrolled through a website on his datapad. "Yeah there’s some kind of… dunno how to pronounce that name, guess it’s like a cafe, in the local enclave at the edge of town. Been in that place a few times since it was founded three years ago."

Nheka tilted her beaked head. "Ssure… I do not intend to sstay in that place for too long. I came here to get away from.. Our ssociety. To take a break…"

Kayden sat down on one of the chairs. "Is there a story behind that you’re willing to tell?"

"Yess. It’s a bit of a long sstory, though one I am uncomfortable telling in full right now," she awkwardly sat down across two chairs at once, leaning onto two of her right arms. "It all sstarted on Akeruh, in the city of Mkhtyazbaa. A month or two ago, I had ssome issues, to say the least, with my ‘friends’. Or the people I ussed to call friends," she then paused.

"What happened?"

"Back there, I have been alwayss ssomeone ‘other’... Not in a major way. But I still wass ‘apart’," she continued. "I wass much less ‘ssame’ as my peers… Even though I love my civilization’ss culture, I wass very interessted in other speciess’ culturess… I sspent dayss sstudying human and relmai culture on the web… thiss wass to the detriment, according to them, of my sspiritual purity... They pressured me, ssaid that I musst ‘keep pure’... But iss true undersstanding of the ssecretss of exisstence not derived through many persspectivess?"

Kayden focused hard on understanding Nheka through her extremely thick accent. He was not particularly religious, and especially knew almost nothing of chohjozra beliefs. He just shrugged and said "I guess? How did they pressure you exactly?"

"Not comfortable. Bad memoriess."

"Alright, I’m sorry for prying. So what do you want to do, or talk about?" Kayden hastily changed the subject.

"You. Wrote that you will decide the route we will go after leaving New Arizona… Do you have any ideass? I don’t feel like sstaying khere, given what happened..."

"Right. So there’s this interesting and very populated forest-world just ten lightyears away, called Alacrity. I’ve been there in my childhood during a family trip, but I don’t remember much of it," he then showed some photos on his datapad. Rolling hills covered by trees perhaps hundreds of meters tall, with curved trunks; snow-capped mountains reaching far beyond the clouds; tree-climbing creatures with long, spindly, multi-jointed limbs; expansive cave systems burrowing deep into the crust… All of this clearly identified Alacrity as a quite low-gravity planet, confirmed by the fact that the people living there were very tall and thin, and so were their homes.

"How warm iss it?" Nheka asked.

"Depends on location, it’s a temperate world. We can choose an equatorial city if you so wish."

"Wonderful, of coursse… thiss jacket feels resstricting…"

Vague memories of the oppressive heat of Alacrity’s jungles, combined with those alien mosquito-equivalents that absolutely did not care about biocompatibility until after they sucked their fill, flooded back into Kayden’s mind, but he nodded in agreement.

"When do we sset off?" She asked.

"Tomorrow, I guess. Gonna buy tickets, say goodbye to my parents, and fill in some paperwork. Bit of a shame you don’t want to walk around town here some more, those shady bastards probably ar–"

"It is just boring," Nheka interrupted bluntly.

Kayden sighed and leaned back, thinking deeply about something. Suddenly, he was interrupted by the ringing of a call from his datapad. He quickly picked up the call.

"Hello?" A lengthy pause was heard, "Ah, hm, I only made provisions for us two but…" "Oh, congrats! If that's how you want to spend your winnings, sure." "Alacrity." "The next day but I am willing to make del–" "Alright, so tomorrow." "I said, Alacrity." "Cheers, see you soon."

He then turned to look at Nheka. "So another of my friends, Lai, wants to go with us and will be staying over here for a while first. He is a relmai. I know you guys have, ahem, a history with the relmai but I have a lot of alien friends, okay?"

"It iss fine."

Kayden waited a bit before checking his datapad and saying "So, the incident in the tunnels. Jonathan just said digging would take a few hours at the very least. Hope that ‘at the very least’ is correct."

Nheka nodded.

***

He was sitting at his computer, doing some boilerplate coding work for his personal game development project, one that would likely soon be put on hold, when the doorbell outside rang, or rather beeped repeatedly. Opening the door, he saw his other friend standing there.

Being a relmai, Lai was a humanoid covered from head to toe in very long but somewhat sparse magenta fur. A lengthy, triangular canine-like snout with four nostrils dominated much of his face, alongside similarly-fluffy pointy ears splayed out from the sides of his head, and reflective bright cyan eyes with two pupils each that constantly darted around. A mane of thicker fur, tied up into two ponytails, reached down his back. Lai’s limbs were quite long and had four digits each. Lastly but most noticeably, an extremely fluffy tail, proportioned like that of a squirrel, waved behind him. All of this was complemented by an absolutely bedazzling array of jewelry, even more than Nheka had, mostly earrings, bangles, and a choker made of some translucent, opalescent, brightly-colored material that seemed to change hue every time one looked at it. His clothing, consisting of a short-sleeved jumpsuit covered in oversaturated splotches and spirals of random colors, clashed with everything else. He was very thin, with a narrow waist and essentially no body fat. He stood taller than Kayden, about six feet tall.

The pink-furred alien adjusted his massive, pronged visor sunglasses, waved his hand around, and shouted "Ey Kayten! Been a looooong time since we med, huh?!" in a high-pitched voice.

"Hello Lai. We went bowling three days ago, remember?" Kayden replied calmly.

"That’s a loooong time by my standards! And I won soooo hard then!" Lai then chuckled audibly. "Didn't feel that happy for the rest of the week untiiil I won one of the medium prizes in the lotto. Thousands of umecs!" he waved his hand around.

"Right. Come on in, we gotta talk this over."

Nheka tried to hide her annoyance with the relmai’s mannerisms. Too loud and undignified for her tastes… the three sat down around the table, and the relmai was the first to speak.

"How bhar is Earth, again?"

Kayden looked something up and then crunched some numbers. "Fifty-three light years. That’s… about four or so jumps, if we take no detours to interesting planets on the way… less than two weeks if we skim every system, but we ain’t gonna do that. It will take… a few weeks or so, I suppose. Good thing I take remote classes," he replied.

"Is anyone else gonna come with us?" Lai asked another question.

"No, I don't think so. Also, this reminds me…"

Kayden then recounted to Lai what happened in the tunnels, including his uncle’s new involvement in pursuing the thieves, and the relmai stared in disbelief as he listened to the story.

"I used to work there! That’s insane."

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

"You, like, know half the town. Do you have any leads?" Kayden said, tapping his fingers on the table.

"Hmm… No. Nope nope nope, no clue. But– ya know what I can do– ibh ya get a recording that isn’t full of static or soooomething, I could maybe recognize the voices. Or something about the voices."

"I see. That’s probably not happening anytime soon. But thanks Lai."

Much of the rest of the day passed uneventfully. The three friends talked about random things, from various local occurrences around Upper Surwich, to the latest developments in astropolitics, to debates about the future victor in next year’s All-Oval Mind Olympics, often changing the subject several times in a row. After a while, Kayden went back to his bedroom to relax and think about today’s events, which still left him a bit shaken.

***

Two hours later, when the sun was high over the desert, Kayden was scrolling through the latest local news.

The Morning Star

– Aerglo Cygnus announces entrance into city politics

– New mall opens in Upper Surwich

– Flamerider system-edge astromilitary base expanded

– Upper Surwich Leviathans crush Mayisle Leopards 4-0 in NAFL Planetary Cup

– BREAKING: NEW ARIZONA PRECURSOR RELICS STOLEN FROM UNDER GREEN MOUNTAIN

Kayden clicked on the fourth article in shock, skimming quickly and taking note of some details.

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…The relics, mostly weapons and ritual implements of an unknown, minor, and likely isolationist civilization, were the pride of the entirety of New Arizona. Only some could be researched and processed by our limited throughput, and most were left stored where they were found, under heavy security measures…

…

…Two brave citizens who chose to remain anonymous have reported the attempted grand theft to the Upper Surwich Police Department, yet by the time the officers arrived, there was no trace of the criminals or of the artifacts, witness accounts proved inconclusive, and the recordings were unfortunately not usable for identification due to their low quality and apparent use of metamaterial invisibility cloaks, not legally available to civilians…

…

…We will continue looking for the culprits despite their apparent hiding. Citizens are advised to report any suspicious activity. Stay safe.

UPDATE: The suspected organizer of the heist, Jonathan Reynolds, has been arrested by the authorities. He now awaits trial from inside the defendant’s dock.

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Kayden actually screamed as he read the last part.

Nheka slammed open the door, startled, and Lai followed, darting his head around.

"What happened?!" Nheka said.

"My uncle," Kayden breathed rapidly and loudly, "fucking– he was fucking framed or some shit! Look!"

Nheka hissed in dismay, while Lai just put his face into his two paws and whined.

"What do we do?" Kayden said.

"Well, dry to prove it or something? Prove dhat he did nothing wrong," Lai suggested.

"HOW?!"

The relmai recoiled and fell silent for a few seconds. "No no wait. I know a guy who knows a guy who could help ya. Gimme a bit."

Lai took out his datapad, which was shaped more like a tiny laptop, with a slide-out keyboard with little angular characters below a shiny black screen.

He typed at it for a short while, using a pair of stylus-like implements that danced in his fingers faster and more precisely than a human could manipulate them. "Mmmm what was id what was id… oh right."

After calling a number, he started quickly talking, all the while putting in effort to suppress his accent. "Yea it’s me again." "Yea." "Is Oliver available?" "Yes yes it’s urgent." "Remember our agreement." "No no just..." "No I don’t need her. She's dumb as a tree." "I need Oliver…" he sighed deeply and loudly, "Just put Oliver on the line." "Okay great."

An anxious pause. Lai proceeded to engage in a long conversation with said ‘Oliver’ where he recounted everything that was told to him– with some corrections necessary from the other two. It lasted half an hour, interspersed with typing, both on Lai’s side and heard from the speaker.

"Alright!" Lai said. "Here’s dhe deal. Oliver Amani, a very very veeery well-connected kind obh rich man from Mayisle and something obh a bhriend obh mine, is pretty sure he can dig up some inbho about those people, and send id to me," the relmai pointed at himself, "One dhing however: it’ll take days to bhigure out anydhing. They will be gone by then. Courier comms delay will mean inbho will need to be general. Nothing speciffic. Ya get?"

"That… makes sense. Thanks Lai. Thank you so much."

"Oh oh wait! Another thing! Ya can’t just report them to dhe cops. Amani has a hunch the Sharkteeth Syndicate are the ones responsible. He wants to dig a little deeper than getting some pawns arrested. Got it?"

Kayden frowned. He knew of the Sharkteeth, that infamous cartel that pilfered the far frontier for illicit goods.

"What, do ya want your uncle proven innocent? Bringing down some higher-ups instead obh some thugs is how ya would do it."

"You know what, fair enough. I’m down. So the trip... canceled?"

"They'll likely try to get awaaay," Lai said. "Miiight be even on the same ship as us. We'll know," he giggled.

"Alright."

Kayden, deep down, was anxious about turning this trip into an exercise in vigilante detective work. But it'll all be fine, he assured himself.

***

A few hours later, when the sun already started setting, Kayden heard a knock on the door.

"Who’s there?"

"It’s just me!" He immediately recognized his mom’s soft voice.

Kayden opened the door. His mother, Mariam, was a somewhat short woman in her fifties, with brown skin and long black hair. She was heavy-set thanks to a poor diet, common in the frontier. She wore a light mauve dress, a wide-brimmed gray hat, and black low heels.

"Um… where’s father?" Kayden asked.

"Morgan was called to work extra time today," Mariam replied. "He will probably meet you at the spaceport tomorrow."

Kayden sighed. "Come in, mom. I uh… didn’t prepare food because you see…" he waved in the general direction of Nheka and Lai, who by then resumed their emotional argument, "they’re… yeah… and I totally forgot about you so uh…" he was clearly a bit embarrassed.

Before she could respond, Lai loudly slammed his fist on the table, angry at something Nheka said, and only then noticed Kayden’s mother. He suddenly fell silent and covered his face in an exaggerated manner.

"I’m sorryyy!" Lai whined, looking at her.

Kayden stepped aside to let Mariam walk towards the table. She raised an eyebrow and said "You don’t have anything to apologize for, sir. I assume you’re my son’s friend… what’s your name?"

The relmai brightened up. "Name’s Lainoujai Kaikuw-ma! Am the prettiest, most beautiful sapient being in dhe whole Oval!", he bragged, raising his head. But Kayden, who was a long-time friend of his, knew that the relmai was being somewhat sarcastic.

Mariam chuckled and turned to look at Nheka, who was still fuming. "And you? You’re that chohjozra friend Kayden told me about?"

"Yess nice to meet you… Not in the mood to talk much…", Nheka mumbled.

"Ah well," Mariam then went back towards Kayden. "Sorry, I have to go soon," she pulled him into a tight hug, and he responded in kind. "Stay safe. Be sure to write back!"

Kayden intentionally did not tell her about the incident and Jonathan’s arrest. Nothing would be gained from alarming his mother in such a way.

As soon as she left, Kayden tried to appease the two. "What even is it that you were screaming at each other about?"

"Sstuff... You won’t undersstand…" Nheka said.

"Right. Whatever was the topic, just like… don’t talk about it, okay?"

"Fine… He sstarted. It…"

"Nooo I– ugh fine whadever. I’m tired afder totay. Just gonna listen do music.", Lai paused. "Widh heatphones, cause you humans can’t appreciate our music."

"I also can’t appreciate the sound of nails on a chalkboard or three-year-olds banging on pianos, but what do I know", Kayden thought but remained quiet. Alien music was something that had a very niche human fandom at best. "Also, what even is a chalkboard? I only heard that word used in that expression."

The evening otherwise passed quietly, and the conversations stopped. Nheka meditated alone in the kitchen, while Kayden and Lai were in the bedroom. Kayden sat at the computer, scrambling to get as much functional code pushed to the repository as possible after filling in digital paperwork for tomorrow’s trip, while Lai sat on the bed, listening to his noise-music while playing an intense game on his datapad, which had a slide-out keyboard at the bottom instead of a touchscreen… and being dosed up to the eyeballs on some euphoric and stimulating drug that the relmai used frequently. Both were focused on their work and entertainment respectively, only occasionally engaging glances, lit up only by the faint glow of the wide monitor of Kayden’s computer rig. Instead of a keyboard, Kayden used a helmet-like brain-computer interface to ‘type’ code at a blinding speed. Outside, the planet’s single moon rose and shone through the open window, its featureless disk large, full, and reddish-orange.

Come midnight, Kayden placed two rollmats with pillows on the floor– he felt weird about sharing a bed with his friends– and tried to talk to Lai.

"I’m going to sleep, can you like… I know you probably don’t feel sleepy but can you get off the bed?"

No response. Lai was still focused on the game, which to Kayden just looked like random colorful flashing chaos. It took an entire series of nudges and pokes to get the relmai to respond and take off his headphones.

"Eeeh? Whatddyawant?", he rattled off.

"You can keep playing on the floor, I am a very sensitive sleeper however. Get off the bed, buddy."

Lai stumbled to his feet, flopped onto one of the rollmats, and continued his gaming session. Kayden figured that Nheka wouldn’t need any such encouragement to sleep, and after his usual evening routine, he quickly fell asleep.