The continuous swirl of beings that edged past Coleman’s booth was as diverse a lot as the he’d ever seen, but no one of the creatures gave his sign more than a passing glance, which usually turned into a smirk—or what Coleman guessed passed for a smirk—aimed in his general direction. Folding his arms and leaning further into the shadows, Coleman glared at the passing crowd and tried not to think about the time he was losing.
Two hours passed. The slug-grub things that were undulating in the middle of the room cranked their pseudo-music up until the Unberbelly’s neosteel walls vibrated beneath Coleman’s back and his head throbbed worse than if he had chugged the drink he’d been given. And still no one had given him more than a passing glance and a rude gesture or two.
He was staring at the pitted wall opposite him and on the verge of scrapping phase one of his one phase plan when a high pitched screech shattered his thoughts like a brick tumbling through a glass window. Jerking reflexively, he twisted around and—catching sight of the being shifting nervously at the booth entrance—groaned.
“What do you want, Hrian?” he said, slouching back down and glaring at the insectoid. “And why are you alone?” Hrian were hive creatures, and seeing one alone usually meant trouble.
The Hrian bobbed once—its short stature causing it to duck completely beneath the level of the table—then bobbed again, one of its six appendages lifting a hand to stroke its left antennae while three more of its hands were busy dry-washing. It had a long slit of a mouth that opened outwards instead of downwards, and no distinguishable head. Instead, its six eyes—four compound and two complex—were nestled between its uppermost shoulders and just above its strange mouth. It blinked slowly, tugged at its antennae once more, and then blinked again.
Rolling his eyes, Coleman repeated, “What do you want?”
“Oh. Ah-aaah . . . ha-ha-ha . . .”
The Hrian language was little more than a series of lightning fast chirps, clicks and scratches that ranged from high-pitched to spine-tingling to beyond anything the human ear could hear. Coleman’s suit computer did its best to keep up though.
“I said, what do you want, Hrian?”
“I-yah, I, um . . . couldn’t help but notice your advertisement, good human, and I wish to”—
“Sorry,” Coleman said, cutting the bug off. “I don’t hire lone Hrian. Company policy.”
“Oh. But, um . . . I assure you I am quite skilled in”—
“I said shoo, fly.” Coleman said, waving a hand.
Of course, the dumb bug just rattled on, not even looking at Coleman any more: “ . . . any number of useful skills, such as computer repair, hand-to-hand combat, swimming, horticulture, abstract painting, um, let me see . . .”
The Hrian was so busy ticking skills off on his stubby fingers that he didn’t even notice when the crowd parted and two towering creatures moved up behind him. Coleman, however did notice. Gulping, he made shushing motions at the babbling Hrian and squeezed further into the recesses of the booth.
“Is this Lone One”—
“—bothering you, human?”
The two aliens—Coleman thought they were Talorn, but wouldn’t have bet money on it—would have towered over him even if he’d been standing. Like the still talking Hrian they were insectoid, but where the Hrian was short, oddly proportioned, and clearly anything but a fighter, the two beings seemed to sweat danger, from their balefully glowing crimson eyes, to their glistening black, spike-covered exoskeletons, to the short, lightning-fast movements of their half-dozen limbs and the rapid flickers of their translucent wings.
One of the Talorn grabbed the Hrian by its lack-of-head, lifted the suddenly gibbering bug bodily off the floor and casually flung it back into the milling crowd. Then the black creatures turned back to Coleman.
“You are in need”—
“—of our services, human?”
Coleman swallowed and—suddenly grateful for the Underbelly’s no-weapons policy—shrugged carefully. “Possibly.” He flicked his eyes back and forth between the two Talorn, trying to decide which was in charge. “Like the sign says, the work’ll be dangerous, but the pay is good. What kind of work do you two do?”
The Talorn on the left moved so fast all Coleman saw was a blur of motion as the alien brought one of its armored fists down on the edge of the table, sheering the meta-rimmed corner completely off. Each of the bugs focused their eight red eyes on him.
“Whatever we”—
“—are paid to do, human.”
“Y-yes.” Coleman said, eyeing the jagged edge of the table. “I think we could possibly use the two of you.” The Talorn bowed low to him, their mandibles clicking, and Coleman had to force himself to look away. Those mandibles looked like they could sheer right through his arm, suit and everything. “There’ll be a crew meeting tonight. Give me your contact data and I’ll send you time and location.”
“We will”—
“—be there.”
The Talorn on the right produced a datapad and used its smallest, lowest set of arms to type in the requested data, then passed the pad to Coleman, who copied the data with two quick blinks of his eyes.
When he looked up, the Talorn were already gone.
Settling uneasily back against the wall, Coleman resumed watching the crowd. Inside, he was trying to decide whether to be nervous or overjoyed about the first acquisitions to his team. The two Talorn were obviously professionals—a fact that Coleman was beyond grateful for—but at the same time, he was not a professional. Not by a long shot. Would the two bugs take orders from him, or would they decide that the job was simple enough for them to do by themselves, and eliminate him to increase their share of the reward? He frowned, tapping a quick beat on the table top and wishing the slugs would get tired of dancing and leave. Now he had to keep an eye out for M’shtinyb’s goons and any dirty tricks the Talorn might try and pull.
The night—or what passed for night on the Heavenly Docks—grew older and older, Coleman shrank further and further into the shadows, the slugs kept dancing . . . but his crew wasn’t getting any bigger. Plenty of beings were stopping at his booth to offer their services, but most of them were crazy-types looking for anyway to make some money. The crazy Hrian that had first approached him came back to the table no fewer than six times in one hour, dry-washing its appendages and wheedling him to let it join up—Coleman finally aimed a kick at its thorax that sent scrabbling off into the crowd for good. Besides the Hrian there was a two-centuries old AI who couldn’t remember its own name but swore up and down that it had access to two million credits that Coleman could use at his own discretion; a drunk Ophmir that collapsed halfway through its introduction and had to be dragged away by the waiter AI; and a schizophrenic Dopatrine who’s head hadn’t grown back properly after it had been partially severed in an industrial accident up on MT-58C.
He turned each of the crazies away without a second glance, and over a dozen more like them. The problem was, it was only the crazies that would talk to him. Anybeing that looked like it had half an ounce or more of any kind of skill just walked right past him . . . or worse, stopped to laugh at him for a moment before moving on.
Two hours had passed since the Talorn had left, and with only an hour left before he was supposed to meet them and work out a plan, Coleman realized that he couldn’t afford to be picky. He needed bodies to do this job, as many as possible, and if he couldn’t get raw talent, then he’d have to settle for . . . well, raw meat.
He only had forty-five minutes left when things started to get a little better.
First, a group of waist-high Dral scampered up to his table and began chattering at him while they bobbed up and down like caffeine-hyped school children.
“I am Pug,” one squeeked, its huge black eyes twitching back and forth between Coleman and the passing throng.
“I am skilled ship’s mechanic and sometime pilot,” another chirped as it climbed up onto its neighbor’s shoulders so it could look Coleman in the eyes.
A third Dral bounced up onto the table and said, “And I am willing to work for you, human-guy.”
“Okay,” Coleman said, trying to look at all of the Dral at once, “But I’m gonna have to have all of your names.”
“What all?” Pug demanded, “I am Pug and I will be working for you.”
“Yeah, but what about the rest of you?”
“What rest?” the third Dral said, scuttling closer to Coleman, “I am Pug and I am wanting to work.”
“You’re Pug too?” Coleman asked, leaning back from the furless, rabbit-faced alien that was practically panting in his face. “You’re all Pug?”
It took another ten minutes for Coleman to realize the five Dral were actually one single sapient being named Pug. Something like a cross between a naked mole rat and a rabbit, the aliens had large, melon shaped organs that protruded from behind their bat-like ears. These twin bulges were constantly humming and vibrating, swinging between ultrasonic frequencies that Coleman couldn’t hear, to deep bass beats that shook his chest. He guessed that the organs were how the communal mind kept its members connected.
It took another five minutes for him to get used to talking to anyone of the five Dral without forgetting that he was still just talking to Pug. The first Dral that had spoken to him rattled off Pug’s contact information while the other four waited silently, hunched over and chittering to each other, both with their mouths and the strange lobes behind their ears.
Pug’s members had only just scampered off when two more beings planted themselves in front of Coleman. The being on the right was another insectoid, a Ragadine whom Coleman had seen skulking around the Underbelly before. He introduced himself as Chim the Thief, but it was his partner that Coleman was more interested in—at least, at first.
“This is Tane,” Chim hissed loudly, gesturing to his massive, lobster-ish companion, “A Ttarian from Unterpol who I rescued from Security two weeks back.”
“You rescued him?” Coleman said doubtfully, eyeing the Ttarian. Tane was huge . . . at least three meters tall, nearly as wide, and covered from what looked like its head to the end of its six clawed legs in a thick blue-green carapace armor that looked as tough as ships plating. Addressing the big lobster, Coleman asked, “Do you talk, friend?”
The Ttarian responded with a symphony of whistles and breathy squeals from a set of fluted holes that ran down either side of its thorax. Coleman’s suit remained silent, and the Ragadine’s mandibles crossed in a grim smile, “Ttarians are rare, friend Coleman. But rest assured, Tane goes where I go, and at the moment, I am interested in a share of your 500,000.”
Coleman shrugged and asked for their data.
The pompous Ragadine and its lurking lobster had only just left when an Oderan slunk up to the booth. A short demonstration of the amphiboid alien’s ability to generate electric charges across its wet, gray skin was enough for Coleman.
“Give me your contact data, and I’ll send you the place and time for our first get-together.”
The Oderan, Hispos by name, bowed its long neck and passed Coleman a datacard. “I look forward to working with you. Keep the card.”
The Oderan vanished into the crowd, and Coleman finally let himself relax—a little. With Hispos signed on, he now had a crew of seven beings, plus himself—enough to pilot a respectable ship or do pretty much anything else that might need doing. True, they were short on talent, but since Coleman was only putting low odds on his survival anyways, it didn’t matter too much. He had a crew and that was all that mattered, at the moment.
He took down his pad and erased the message, passed the datapad back to the waiting AI server, and had just paused to decide whether or not he even wanted to try his drink, when somebeing tapped him on the shoulder.
Stifling a curse he jerked around, knocking his antifreeze-colored drink over in the process—and stopped short.
“You packing up for the night, soldier?”
Coleman could count on one hand the number of humans he’d seen on the Heavenly Docks—hell, he could count them on one finger—and a female human in the Underbelly was the last thing he had ever expected to see. Especially a very . . . womanly, female.
“I—um, yeah . . . one too many drinks for me,” Coleman mumbled, gazing at her.
She was beautiful, no doubt there, but she was . . . exotic, was the best word Coleman could come up with. Standing maybe half a hand shorter than he, she was wrapped in a black, skin-tight vacsuit that accentuated her—Coleman swallowed long and hard as fifty emotions he had’t felt in a long time suddenly kicked into overdrive—accentuated her wares nicely. She had bright red skin that reminded Coleman of ripe apples on Old Earth, dotted with complex patterns that might have been tattoos or natural skin coloration. The patterns glowed with a soft blue-white light like starlight, swirling around her graceful neck in delicate curls like vines and lightly speckling her soft cheeks and delicate nose like diamond dust. Her short-cut hair shined with the same gentle color, a halo of light that bathed her face in a soft glow. Even the whites of her eyes glowed. Coleman was trapped by her eyes as soon as he saw them . . . they tugged at something just behind his lungs—his heart, maybe.
“You . . . glow.” He winced as soon as the words were out. Stupid. He was just plain stupid.
The woman—girl, really now that he looked closer . . . she couldn’t be any older than he was—laughed, a deep throaty laugh that tugged at his heart even more than her pools-of-light eyes. It was a real laugh. A human laugh. “Yes I do.” She grinned mischievously, “The being who ordered my inception had developed a liking for . . . shiny human beings.”
Coleman blinked, reality slapping him across the face. “You’re an exohuman?”
That gorgeous smile dimmed momentarily. “I prefer parasapien, but yes.” Then the smile was back. “My name is Anna, soldier. What’s yours?”
Scuffing his foot against the metal floor and hoping the dim light would keep Anna from seeing him blush, he answered, “Coleman. Coleman Ainsworth.” Inside, he was screaming at himself: Get a hold of yourself! Sure, you haven’t seen a fem since you jumped ship, but that’s no excuse! You’ve got a job to do!
Anna was still smiling at him, her eyes shining—literally—like starlight, but Coleman’s self-imposed haranguing had been enough to shake him awake. Forcing a casual smile, he extended a hand to her—Anna stared at it, clearly having no idea what to do with it—and said, “Well, Anna, its been a pleasure, but I have some, uh, business negotiations to attend to, so I’ll be seeing you.”
He tried to brush passed her, but a single small hand on his shoulder brought him up short. Reluctantly, he turned to look at her.
The parasapien smiled at him. “You may be the first Homo sapiens sapiens I’ve run into, Coleman Ainsworth, but you’re still a terrible liar. I’ve been watching you,” she pointed across to room to an empty booth, “all night. You’re organizing a job, and doing a terrible job of it. But, you’re in luck.”
Anna’s slim fingers tangled into Coleman’s own, and she pulled him closer, leaning in to whisper in his ear while Coleman’s knees melted out from under him, “I’m a pilot, Ainsworth. And the best one on the Docks. I’m gonna save your neck.”
For some reason, right at that moment, Coleman knew he was in trouble.
