“Truthfully,” Mitha replied, gazing directly into her eyes, “I don’t know. Perhaps if we find a place to hide, but I don’t know Blackway that well. Maybe nowhere is safe. Also, we can’t trust anyone. Without credits I doubt anyone is willing to help us.”
“Okay,” Kat pondered out loud, “so the choice is between being trapped on a Makaen ship with the very substantial chance of getting caught and thrown out of an airlock or staying on Blackway a bit longer with the very substantial chance of getting caught and sold as slaves. Those options suck.”
“I believe we have better odds going on the Makaen ship,” Lirid stated. “At least we’ll be away from this place. And I prefer dealing with one alien species at a time.”
“Okay, just for the sake of argument, what’s the plan should we make it onto the ship unseen?” Kat asked her brother.
Lirid furrowed his brow and pouted his lips in thought.
“We sneak in, hide between the goods in the cargo hold, wait until the ship docks at another space station or planet and sneak out again. From there we can plan our next move. If we’re lucky, we’ll find a more respectable captain to take us home, maybe even someone from Cassidiri.”
“That’s a big if, Lirid. Here’s another one: what if we get caught?”
“Well, Kat, then we offer the crew a lot of credits to take us to Cassidiri.”
“Credits we don’t have,” she added.
“Well, yeah, not right now. But on arrival we will,” her brother replied. “They just have to wait for the payment.”
“And what if they don’t want to wait?”
Lirid squeezed his sister’s cold hand. “I’m a pretty good negotiator. I’ll get us home. Promise.”
Kat didn’t share her brother’s confidence. His plan had more holes in it than a piece of Swiss cheese that had been used for target practice in a Swiss cheese shooting competition. The biggest one was the fact that Lirid was anything but a good negotiator. He tended to say stupid things in the most delicate and awkward situations, making everyone feel even more awkward. And the most annoying thing was that he himself didn’t even realize that he had put his foot in it. He could be so thick sometimes, that big numbskull.
“Why don’t we just ask someone here to take us and pay them when we arrive on Cassidiri?” Kat suggested.
Mitha shook his head fiercely. “No, that’s a bad idea. No one here would let strangers on his ship without payment in advance. Furthermore, if anyone on this space station finds out we’re without a ship, that we don’t have any means to leave this station, and that we don’t have credits to buy support, we’ll be easy prey for anyone who doesn’t have scruples about selling us to a slave trader. And I assume that there are a lot of them here. Plus, news travels fast. In that case, the aliens outside will be the least of our problems.”
“Mitha’s right. But when we’re already on a ship far away from this space station, they won’t have a choice. They’ll have to take us home,” Lirid stated.
“Or throw us out of the nearest airlock,” Kat murmured.
“Don’t think so negative,” her brother scolded. “I’ll promise you everything will be fine.”
Holding her head low, Kat glared over to the Makaen at the table in the back. With their claws, horns, ridges and slit-shaped black pupils, they reminded her of how demons were portrayed on Earth. They were drinking ale and laughing out loud. Her stomach tightened. That sound alone made her feel sick. Her gut feeling told her this was a bad idea. No, this was the worst idea since the creation of bad ideas. It was the ultimate god all bad ideas prayed to for inspiration to become uber-bad.
“I don’t know…” Kat hesitated.
“Come on, sis. I’ll never let anything happen to you. You know that.”
Kat closed her eyes, praying for an epiphany, but her mind drew a blank. She didn’t want to stay on this station a second longer than necessary. They had to help Lucas, and that wasn’t possible from here. They needed to get back to Cassidiri as fast as possible, but the thought of being trapped on a ship in the middle of space with aliens who could slit her throat with their razor-sharp claws made her stomach churn. Kat wished she could just call her father and ask him to pick them up. Unfortunately, sending a message from this backstreet space station was all but impossible, Mitha had explained earlier. Not only because of the sheer distance between the station and the nearest communication array, but also because the station used communication jammers to hinder any potential notifications to law enforcers about illegal shipments.
Kat really didn’t want to do it, but she couldn’t come up with an alternative. Moments slid past until she finally sighed in resignation.
“Okay. Let’s see if we even succeed in getting from here to the Makaen ship. The first hurdle is getting out of here without the scary aliens outside getting us.”
“Let me,” Mitha replied.
He stood up, walked over to the table the two Makaen were sitting at, bowed two times, spoke with them briefly while pointing to the square, then bowed again and went back to his seat.
Lirid and Kat had followed him with their eyes, totally baffled. Kat couldn’t believe Mitha had dared to speak to them.
“What was that about?” she asked, bewildered. It was never a good idea to mess with Makaen.
“Wait for it,” Mitha answered, lifting his index finger.
Kat turned back to the Makaen, glaring at them from below her hood. She saw how their eyes flickered with anger. They stood up so quickly that Kat flinched instinctively. The Makaen ran out of the tavern and crossed the square. Through the window, she witnessed the Makaen assaulting the ugly green aliens. And even though the ugly aliens outnumbered the two Makaen, the huge Makaen pummeled every single one of them within an inch of their lives. Kat assumed the green aliens—should they survive the beatings—would come out of this fight looking even uglier than they already were. A small part of her felt sorry for the green aliens. A very small part.
“I think it’s time to leave,” Mitha said, packing up his datapad.
“What did you tell them?” Lirid asked, astonished.
Mitha lifted his shoulders. “I told them that I heard the green aliens say really nasty stuff about the Great Goddess and Makaen females. Makaen men are extremely protective of their women and don’t take insulting them lightly. And as you know, Makaen also have anger management issues. An explosive combination. And lo and behold, our first problem is solved. The aliens are far too distracted to come after us. Come, let’s find the Makaen ship.”
Glaring out the window one more time, Kat let out a nervous, breathy laugh. Then she reluctantly stood up and followed her brother and Mitha out of the tavern.
Chapter 3
To Kat’s disappointment, sneaking onto the Makaen freighter was easier than she had imagined and hoped for. Two Makaen were standing with their backs to them at the far end of the ship, having a discussion with a member of an alien species unknown to Kat. The doors to the cargo hold were open and there was only one crew member—a young male—standing next to the entrance, watching the dark crates being lifted into the hall by a robot. Actually, he had more attention for the working girl who was trying to score a client than for the cargo and potential stowaways. Overall, it was rather anticlimactic.