Lucky finally, after some deliberation, moved her queen.
“Ok,” Visha whispered excitedly. “Have you ever heard of someone called Gloria Samuels?...”
A few minutes later, Lucky let out a long low whistle.
“Cousinhumper….” she muttered. “Are you fucking serious?”
Visha nodded.
“And that’s why I’m telling you this. Any new arrivals could be agents from any number of organizations trying to find out anything they can. Word has come down that Sheloran has attracted all sorts of interest… interest from people you do not want interested in you, people who would think absolutely nothing about giving any of us an Epstein.”
“So that’s why the narc is here,” Lucky snickered as she moved her queen pointlessly around the board, wasting time.
“Narc?” Visha asked in alarm.
“The peacock looking bitch that came in yesterday,” Lucky snorted. “We’ve all been playing nice with her, more out of pity than anything else. A Novux in max? Seriously? That’s like getting a Plath in here.”
They both chuckled.
“It’s so cute when she is trying to ‘talk street’,” Lucky chuckled. “I’ll make a point to bring up Sheloran, see if she bites. If she does, I’ll just dump everything we know about her, which is squat, and maybe she will just leave.”
“We had a new arrival too. Check.” Visha said as she slid her bishop across the board. “She makes all the right noises and does all the right things. I have absolutely no reason to suspect her, so of course, I do. She is just… too healthy? She really takes care of herself, perhaps a little too well. That’s her, over by the water dispenser.”
“Ooo, pretty,” Lucky purred. “I see what you mean. She is making me all sorts of confused over here. Yeah, watch that one.”
“I don’t know why they bother. Check.” Visha replied. “All they have to do is take half of the people here into a room, set some restaurant takeaway in front of them, and turn on the recorders.”
“And until they leave, we gotta run a tight ship,” Lucky grumbled. “If I ever get out of here, I’m going to present Sheloran a bill for lost business.”
“Speaking of you getting out of here,” Visha said, “since I have you alone...”
“No.”
“You haven’t heard what I have to say yet.”
“I’m nobody’s bitch,” Lucky said, “Check. I’m independent.”
“And where, exactly, has that gotten you?” Visha pursed her lips thoughtfully as she stared at the board. The bunny was getting better. “How long have you been in here?”
“If they are so great, why are you still in here?”
“Well, there’s being above the law,” Visha replied with a wince, “and then there’s shooting someone in the chest with explosive bullets above the law. Nobody in the Republic is that above the law, which is a good thing, I suppose.”
“Well, that explains it,” Lucky shrugged.
“I’m here in jail because I’m still playing the legal game,” Visha said as she moved her rook. “Doing the classic delay and bargain thing. That’s the story anyway. The truth of the matter is that my people want someone here to look after people should they find themselves landing in here. You know, a kind word, a pack of chips, and a firm, gentle reminder that they might want to keep their fucking mouth shut. That and all sorts of interesting information filters through a place like this. So it works to our advantage to have a long-term presence in this lovely resort.”
“That’s nice and all, but it’s that ‘shooting people in the chest with explosive bullets’ thing that has me reluctant to sign up. I don’t want to get out only to wind up back in here for life.”
“Oh, that wasn’t because of who I’m with,” Visha replied as she shifted a pawn forward. “Well, it was, sort of, but it wasn’t an order. It was a fuck-up, my fuck-up, not theirs. I was a (heh) ‘major player’ in the organization. By that, I mean a little fish in a tiny puddle, but I thought I was hot shit. Well, I got involved with this guy, a very pretty and much younger guy. I thought it was love (or at least a pleasant little arrangement) until the asshole stole my banking info and took me for around a hundred grand. Unfortunately, it wasn’t my hundred grand. He didn’t know that, though. Check.”
“Dammit,” Lucky muttered as she looked pensively at the board. “So you killed him?” she asked as she placed a paw on her rook.
“I wish,” Visha muttered. “What I should have done was take a deep breath, put on my big-girl panties, called a certain someone, and told them face-to-face that I had been ripped off. It would have been bad but survivable. It wasn’t the first time someone wound up in my position, and it won’t be the last. I would have wound up on the hook for it, but I could have worked it off or gotten it back with the organization’s help and a little loss of face, the end result of which would have just been a steady ration of shit for a little while. God, why didn’t I do that?” Visha groaned, burying her face in her hands. “That’s what we’re supposed to do. We would have beat that little turd until candy came out… Idiot!”
“So, what did you do?”
“I grabbed my pistol, drove over to his place, and broke in,” Visha muttered. “I knew he was out because I had a hacker trace his car that I gave him, by the way,” she added, still a bit peeved about that even after several years. “I had it all planned out,” she smirked. “I was going to jab a switchblade into his fancy desktop (which I bought him) and then link it to a hacker I hired. His type usually hides their credits in a file somewhere, usually in the cloud, but he would have accessed it from his desktop so my hacker could find his cache and clean out every single credit he had. While that was running, I was going to sit and wait for him to come home and then make him kneel in front of me while I took everything from him! It was going to be so good.”
Visha’s face fell.
“What I didn’t know was that his fourteen year old sister was staying with him.”
“Oh… shit.”
“Turns out she had run away from home again and was crashing at her ‘cool’ big brother’s place. It turns out that a shitty person comes from a shitty family, and his little sis was hiding out from them. I used a key-cracker, so it sounded like the door unlocked normally. She probably thought it was her brother coming back early, so she sprinted out holding a fucking holo-pistol, you know, those replicas they use for shooting games? Why the hell do they make them look so fucking realistic? It looked exactly like a 12mm… exactly… ex… (sigh).”
Lucky just looked at Visha with a mixture of horror, sympathy, and pity.
“She probably didn’t even realize it was sort of pointed at me,” Visha said quietly. “And why was she so quiet? She just popped out from the hall with that fucking chunk of plastic in her hand, happy to see her ‘bro’ and...”
Visha closed her eyes and shook her head.
“My reflexes, honed from hours of weekend corporate security seminars, kicked in, and I put two high explosive rounds in her chest before she even knew what hit her. I didn’t see the stupid orange ring until it was lying on the floor. How could I have not seen that?… How?”
“Creators...” Lucky gasped.
“At least...” Visha said, her eyes still closed, “At least I wasn’t a punk. I didn’t run off and leave her to die. I called it in. I called...”
Visha shuddered. Lucky instinctively reached out and put a paw on her shoulder.
“It didn’t matter,” Visha said, her eyes misting over. “I bought the good bullets. That poor kid was dead long before the med team got there.”
Visha shook herself and blinked hard a few times.
“So I didn’t kill the son of a bitch,” she said with a lifeless voice, “I murdered his kid sister in his living room. At least I wasn’t a ‘punk’. If I had been, my people would have disavowed me, if not worse. I didn’t ‘sleaze’ out and abandon that kid, and when some wannabe hotshot tried to get me to turn evidence, I gave him a long rambling confession that he didn’t realize was the plot for season 2 of Galactic Gangster Kwaii Kats.”
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
Visha laughed.
“Oh, he was pissed. He got all excited and ran it up to his superiors, and they excitedly passed it on. Before long, an Interpol AI identified it and inquired whether they had apprehended Pirate Kitten or Ninja Kitten. It didn’t help my case much, but it did get me back in good with my people who thought it had style, which is very important to them. Thank God that Interpol AI was on the ball because word got out that I had rolled over on them and were ‘considering options’. I was about to get Epsteined. To be honest, I wouldn’t have minded at that point. I had just killed a fucking kid… Oh, God...”
Visha buried her face in her hands.
“I fucking killed a kid, Lucky… I...”
Lucky walked around the table and wrapped her arm around Visha, who leaned over and buried her face in Lucky’s chest…
For about two seconds.
“Get off of me, you fuzzy dyke,” Visha growled as she gently pushed away from Lucky, “Quit stalling and get back over there. It’s your move.”
“Sorry, my naked mole-rat fetish was kicking in again,” Lucky smirked as she returned to her side of the board. “You are just so pink and wrinkly. I just couldn’t help myself.”
“Heh,” Visha smirked. “And… thanks… (phew)… There’s a reason we don’t talk about how we wound up in here, huh?”
“Well, it makes me feel a little better about ‘reflexively’ extending my claws,” Lucky muttered as she clicked her tongue unhappily. Visha was going to win again. Goodbye, knight.
“That, we can work with,” Visha said quietly. “Me, I’m fucked and deserve to be, but you? Five years served for manslaughter with all of the extenuating circumstances? Just say the word, and I will tell our guys to get to work.”
“Ok, so no bullshit,” Lucky said as she gamely moved her knight forward to be sacrificed, “let’s say that I do go to work for The Saints. About how much could I reasonably expect to earn?”
About thirty seconds later, Lucky’s ears shot up so hard and fast they actually made an audible “fwump”.
***
Serugnktti sat in a cell with a small grey furry xeno who was perched on the back of a huge human woman, grooming her hair as the mountain of a female smiled blissfully.
“And you use… urine?” Serugnktti said dubiously
“Yeah!” the grey furry thing squeaked happily. “We use pee! My urine is especially fragrant for many of us but odorless for humans. A small splotch on your shirt is how we let each other know that someone is ‘cool’.”
Serugnktti looked over at Donna.
“Is this correct?”
Donna smiled and nodded.
“Yep! I thought it was weird when I started hanging out with these guys. But, it turns out they were using it to leave invisible messages, using it to mark hiding spots, blind drops, and even marking each other to let them know that they were ‘in’. I mean, who would have thunk it, right?”
“Just a little on your shirt!” the grey xeno squeaked and nodded earnestly. “We call it our pee-flag! Everybody does-”
The little grey xeno fell silent as Lucky and Kalexala, a Juon female, entered the cell.
“Gizz,” Lucky chuckled, “Don’t pee on the narc.”
“Don’t listen to her, narc,” Kalexala said, her hide rippling with amusement. “She just wants to pee on you.”
“Wha?” Serugnktti clucked, her blue feathers shimmering, “I… I’m not a narc… pssh...”
“Mmm Hmm...” Lucky said with a smile. “Gizz. Take your bladder for a walk. No, Donna, you sit your ass back down.”
“Umm… bye, narc!” Gizz squeaked and got the hell out of there.
“Guys,” Donna said nervously, “Do you really think I should be here for this?”
“Absolutely,” Kalexala said soothingly. “It will save us a trip later.”
“It’s just that I’m trying to be good and stay out of troub-”
“Donna, there isn’t going to be any trouble,” Lucky purred. “We are just going to have a little chat with the narc about why she is really here, and she will want to talk to you afterwards.”
“Guys!” Serugnktti squawked, “I am NOT a fucking narc! I’m just a Novux who has made a mistake or two.”
“First of all,” Lucky smiled as she entered the cell and flopped down next to Serugnktti, “if a Novux made ’a mistake or two’ that didn’t involve an anti-tank weapon, they would be bundled off to the Federation Embassy and given a blanket, warm beverage, and a beak massage.”
“And second,” Kalexala said, her skin rippling with laughter, “nobody here says they made ’a mistake or two’. Most of us are pre-trial, dumbass.”
“Well, forgive me for not being a hardened criminal!” Serugnktti huffed. “And you are right, my friends should be getting the Embassy involved any minute now… or at least they better...” She added quietly.
“Oh, that was good!” Lucky smiled. “Did you take drama in college?”
Serugnktti flashed her blue feathers. “Do I look like I went to college? The trade school didn’t have a fucking drama club, asshole.”
“Oh, Iiktiithii,” Lucky called out in a sing-song voice.
A strange fuzzy insectoid (?) with long bushy antennae (and long, sharp mandibles) walked in.
“Yeah?”
“Sniff our friend here.”
Iiktiithii waved her antennae in Serugnktti’s general direction.
“Hmm… organo-metallic compounds, designer proteins, traces of industrial ethanol (refined, not distilled) and Republic bio-safe clear coat number 157… high-dollar hair dye, or feather dye in this case. The beak is fake, too. It’s been covered in a very nice cultured keratin which would pass for natural if it wasn’t still curing. Well, it would, except for the fact that the actual beak is comprised of another protein complex entirely. Pretty insulting, actually. They totally messed up the color match on both the feathers and the beak in what you poor three-quarters blind people call the ultra-violet range, too. Good thing this isn’t a prison movie, birdie, or you would be fuuuucked.”
Iiktiithii reached out a strangely branched “hand,” and Lucky pulled out four honey buns from her shirt. Iiktiithii trilled happily and shambled away.
“Uhh… so I like to enhance my plumage, so what? And I’m sure that I’m not the only life form that sculpts parts of their body!”
“You are covering up red accent feathers that denote your pedigree and concealing your slender, beautiful, over-bred pecker,” Lucky smiled. “You are a red-frill.”
Serugnktti scoffed and stretched idly, moving one of her feathered limbs towards her neck.
It suddenly stopped moving.
She looked over and froze in terror. Wrapped around her wrist was the slender end of a Juon tentacle!
Her other wrist was similarly bound.
Pound for pound, a Juon was one of the strongest sapient creatures in the galaxy. They were pretty much entirely comprised of pure muscle. The Juon that those tentacles were attached to would have absolutely no problem literally ripping her arms off.
Only Humans, Drax, Xvli, and a few other species had a hope in hell of successfully taking on a Juon hand to hand. A Novux was NOT one of them.
“Please, no pushy the panic button,” Lucky smiled. “Nothing bad is going to happen to your red-feathered butt. The last thing any of us wants is a hurt agent in our happy little home. You are as safe as you can possibly be. In fact, you are going to have a new best buddy. Donna, say hello to your new best friend.”
Donna beamed at Serugnktti. “Hello, bestie!” Donna exclaimed.
“Donna here is going to be your ‘mom’ while you are our guest. She can handle just about anything that comes your way… well… now that Sheloran is no longer with us.”
Donna winced and clutched at her boob.
Serugnktti slightly cocked her head involuntarily at the mention of that name, causing Lucky to burst out laughing and a riot of colors to wash over Kalexala.
“You are right!” Kalexala chuckled as she released her wrists. “She is here about Sheloran.”
Serugnktti just signed and drooped her head into her breast. Oh, this was bad. So much for drama club. This was NOTHING like improv!
“It’s ok, bestie!” Donna said as she wrapped a leg-sized arm around the Novux. “Want to hear about the time she whooped my ass?”
“…yes, please...”
***
Dr. Henry Chapman poured his twentieth cup of coffee that day as he reviewed his notes concerning Sheloran.
Things just didn’t add up.
By all accounts, the Plath were damn near primitives, choosing to live as close to a pre-industrial life as possible while still being connected to the galaxy as a whole.
A lot of them still rode “horses”, for fuck’s sake.
They had no native technology to speak of other than a truly astounding natural pharmacopeia, all of which was discovered sometime in the distant past, and even that “research”, if you could call it that, ceased hundreds or perhaps even thousands of years pre-contact.
But, somehow, Sheloran was producing devices beyond anything they could make, and that was using off-the-shelf components.
What was her secret? Was it something that she obtained somehow?
And if so, from where?
He pulled up everything they had on the Plath species. It wasn’t much, just one bit of sociological “research” from one grad student who visited their homeworld years ago that read more like a travelogue than anything close to scientific.
He had already been contacted and was equally at a loss. Sheloran, quite simply, should not exist. There was no human equivalent.
Was she a mutant? The next evolutionary step for their species? It would explain a lot.
There were just too many unknowns to form any real conclusions.
All he knew was that they had two examples of weapons tech that contained definite advances and an incident involving missiles doing the “impossible”.
His eyes flickered across his glasses, and a blank screen appeared in his vision.
A few moments later, a silver-haired woman in a green blazer appeared.
“Hello, Henry,” the woman said with a smile.
“I require Sheloran.”
“Didn’t know you swung that way.”
Henry scowled.
“She possesses vital technology that we cannot allow to leave the Republic. Get her alive.”
“Cerberus is quite unhappy that one of their prospects is loose,” the woman replied. “They are already taking steps to regain their property.”
“I disapprove of your lapdog’s methods,” Henry replied. “We need her cooperative and not filled with a burning desire to murder us all. That part’s important, trust me. Perhaps another agency could be brought to bear?”
“She is running with Jon Wintersmith, Sheila Donovan, and Gloria Samuels,” the silver-haired woman replied calmly. “Which agency would you suggest? If you want her before she disappears for good, Cerberus is the only group with the kind of ‘reach’ that can get into that serpent’s nest and fish her out.”
“Whatever, just make it happen,” Henry replied. “We also have absolutely no real data concerning her species. I need a technological espionage mission to obtain whatever information the Federation possesses concerning them.”
“Not a problem,” the woman in the green blazer replied. “Should we obtain a sample of their species as well?”
“That would be quite useful.” Dr. Chapman replied. “A few dozen live samples should be sufficient.”