Alexander Outland: Space Pirate (19 page)

“Well, good luck to them. I’m more worried about being up to my armpits in sewage slush, but that’s just me.”

Another group step back. They might be young, but they weren’t overwhelmingly stupid. Heroics is one thing. Heroics in raw sewage is quite another. “Sir, have you spotted anyone unusual?”

“No. I’ve been trying to find and stop a rupture. And get people out of here. Which I’d like to suggest you focus on. Even your escaped criminals don’t want to be in here if we can’t find and stop the rupture in time.”

On cue, I heard Tanner’s voice. “Run! Run! I can’t stop it, it’s gonna blow!”

“Take cover!” I flipped my face shield down.

This was enough for the military guys. To a man, they shouted, “Everybody, evacuate!” and then they followed their own advice.

Which was a good thing. Because Tanner knew what he was doing with explosives. I saw sewage sludge fly all around this portion of the spaceport. However, none of it went towards the
Sixty-Nine
. The kid was good.

I did the “usher the panicked masses out of the building” thing,
and then went over to the ship that had drawn the metaphorical short straw. Tanner was more than good. The ship wasn’t so damaged it couldn’t fly, but it was going to be making a lot of planetary jumps or have to be manned by Sexbots only.

“We alone?”

He nodded. “No one left in here other than our crew.”

“What about those minds you can’t read?” I didn’t want to discover Nitin lurking around the corner.

“I can still detect them, I just can’t read them.”

“So, should Nitin or Lionside be coming, you’d know?”

“Yes. I just can’t tell what they’re thinking.”

“Good enough for me. Let’s get back to the
Sixty-Nine
.” We trotted back. Slinkie was there, no sign of Audrey or Randolph. “Are they inside?”

“Yes. Their suits are over there.” She pointed to a pile of orange a hundred yards away. I was pretty sure I could see stench fumes radiating from them.

“Okay, did you run Randolph through the next part of the plan again?”

“No. Audrey repeated it to me, verbatim. I have to admit, she’s good.” Slinkie sounded worried. “I think she’s too smart for Randolph.”

“Why would that matter?” I didn’t disagree, of course.

“Because she’s self-aware and if she decides she wants to trade up, we’re screwed, because she knows everything about us.”

Slinkie had a very good point. “Okay. Noted. I’ll see what overrides Randolph has or hasn’t installed in her programming. But, unless your feminine intuition tells you she’s going to dump him in the next day or so, we have more pressing concerns.”

“She’s coming along fast, Nap.” Slinkie had the worry still going strong.

Tanner’s eyes were closed. “We’re still clear.” He opened his eyes. “But what are we going to do to keep people out of here until we’re ready to leave the planet?”

“What’s standard procedure for this kind of situation, do you know?”

“Yeah, I got that from the mind of one of the spaceport workers. As long as people in hazard suits are around, everyone else stays out. Considering the likelihood that no one else is going to be coming in to land any time soon, and no one feels safe enough to leave, either, if we keep one of us here in a suit, that should do it.”

“Slinkie and I both have appointments, and I want you along, Tanner.”

“If we don’t leave someone here, they’ll come back in. It won’t take much for someone to figure out that there are people in your ship, and the moment they do, they’ll arrest them. Or worse.”

I looked at the empty suits. “Not a problem. We’ll leave people here.”

S
linkie, Tanner and I got out of our hazard suits. Sadly, the smell did linger, but we decided no one was going to notice, since Tanner’s explosion had done a lot to expand the stink all over this section. I’d have thought our olfactory senses would have shut down by now, but no such luck.

I had yet to find a lock I couldn’t pick, but this was Herion, and no one was allowed to lock their ships up anyway. We chose the damaged ship, because I figured spreading the love was probably not in our best interests. We raided it and used what we could grab—clothes, bedding, utensils—to stuff the suits.

In less time than I’d feared, we had five reasonable facsimiles of sewage workers set up strategically to ensure that anyone looking in would see them. I locked all the entry doors. In the worst case, they’d give Randolph some extra time to go airborne and hopefully they’d keep everyone out, particularly since each door that had any kind of window in it also had an excellent view of one of our sanitation dummies.

“Okay, we’re at the best we can do here. Randolph has guns, ammo, explosives, and the ability to get out of the spaceport if he has to. The three of us need to get out of here, clean up, regroup with the Governor, and then hit the Crazy Bear.”

“Crazy’s the right word, Nap. How are we going to get out of here unseen without those suits?”

“Slink, you wound me.” I looked at Tanner. “Can you lead us out of here like you did at the Herion Military complex?”

“I should be able to.”

“Okay. So, the plan is that we slip out. If we get caught, we go with Hostage One.”

“Hostage One?” Tanner asked.

Slinkie sighed. “Nap likes to give our standard plans names. It’s stupid, but, whatever, it makes him happy. Hostage One would execute by grabbing you and threatening to kill you unless we’re allowed to get away.” She looked at me. “I hate Hostage One.”

“We could be more elaborate.”

“No. I hate Hostages Two through Twelve, too, so One is just as bad as another, so to speak.”

“Why do you hate Hostage One?” Tanner sounded genuinely interested.

“Because Hostage One always ends up with us running for our lives and having to flip into what Nap likes to call Improvisation One.”

“What’s Improvisation One?”

“Whatever works, whenever it works. I hate that one, too.”

“But you’re good at it, Slink. The best around, really. At everything.”

“Flattery’s nice. Not smelling like an accumulation of every dropping in the galaxy would be better.”

“Not to worry. I have a plan for that.”

“Nap, trust me. If you take us back to the bath house we were at earlier, we’re all dead.”

“It worked well on Thurge.”

“We had to leave Thurge before the ship finished landing. That’s how ‘well’ it worked.”

“It worked when we needed it to. Sure, it left some, oh, unpleasant residue, but it worked to get us off Thurge at a time when we
needed to get off.”

Slinkie looked at Tanner. “I hope you can run really fast. You’ll need that skill if you want to stick with us and stay alive.”

“Yeah, I’m picking that up.”

“Everyone’s a bastion of support, as always. Nice to see you fitting in so well with the rest of my crew, Tanner. Let’s get moving, and Tanner, remember—they will smell us before they can see us, so make sure we’re not close enough to be smelled.”

“I’ll do my best.” He sounded doubtful.

“If not, Hostage One is always fun.” Hey, it was always fun for me.

We slipped out the way we’d come in. We were fine within the spaceport, but as we reached the back Tanner announced there were people massed there. “None of them are military, just spaceport workers.”

I thought fast. “Okay. You lead. We’re going to run out. I want you shouting in that lovely Herion Military way. Tell them that you barely got us out and that this place has to be locked down for at least a full day. Slinkie, I want you looking like you’re barely conscious. We’ll hide the guns in your lap. Tanner having guns on him isn’t an issue.”

“What about the explosives cases?” We still had two left. “I can’t hide those in my lap.”

“I’ll carry one, Tanner can carry the other. No one’s going to argue with Herion Military, and if we do it right, they’re going to be too busy running away or rejoicing over a day off.”

“Can Tanner do it right?”

“I think I can manage. You know, I keep on saying this—I’ve been in espionage since I was fifteen.”

“We point to the whole ‘stranded on Herion’ thing as why we’re worried, kid. Stop taking it personally. Everyone questions my abilities all the time. I note that, for the most part, we’re all doing just fine.” I knew when it was not the right time to think about Saladine. This was one of those times.

“I have to admit, as your plans go, Evacuation Five usually works well.” Slinkie handed her explosives case to Tanner, who flung it over his shoulder. I picked her up—carrying her was always the best part of this plan as far as I was concerned.

Slinkie snuggled into my arms, we piled the extra guns onto her lap, then she shifted and wrapped her arms around my shoulders and put her face into my neck. This turned her so that the guns were hidden enough to fool a casual observer. If the plan went right, we’d be moving too fast for a non-casual observer, and the potential observers would be fleeing.

If it went wrong, well, that’s what the guns were for in the first place.

We got into position, and then took off at a trot. Tanner hit the door, slammed it open, and we ran through it before it could swing back.

“People, you were told to evacuate!” He bellowed rather well. “We have a dangerous sewage issue in there, why are you still out here?”

The crowd moved back, the combination of Tanner’s shouting and our combined stink.

“I want you people disbursed or, if you don’t want to be part of the solution, I’ll take you with us to Military HQ to see if you’re part of the problem.”

This did the trick for the majority. The crowd went down to two, both older men who looked like they’d been working in maintenance positions at the spaceport for a long time. Both were wearing jumpsuits and looked like I expected Randolph to in a few more decades, though they were bigger and less dog-like than Randolph, which on Herion was probably a given.

“Gentlemen, are you enamored of raw sewage?” Tanner sounded both angry and willing to take a personal interest. He was good, point of fact.

The men shook their heads. “No, sir. Just thought we’d be called in.”

“Look, I barely got these two out, and the lady’s not doing too well. I don’t want anyone else in there unless they’re in a Herion Sewage hazard suit, you got it?”

They nodded. “You want us to stay and keep people out?” the other man asked.

“Sure, that’s a good idea. Just stay out yourselves. Trust me when I say you don’t want to volunteer for this extra duty, no matter how tempting it sounds.”

The men grinned. “No, sir,” the first man said. “If we can help by staying right here, we’ll do it.”

“Fine. If anyone questions your timecards, just send them to Herion Military HQ for confirmation.”

“Yes, sir!” Both men saluted, Tanner jerked his head, and we trotted off.

“Think they’ll stick around and not go in?”

“Pretty sure, yeah. They usually volunteer to do the awful jobs because they get time and a half. This way, they’ll still get it and not have to do anything.”

“Nice. Unless someone questions or they go to HQ.”

“I’m hoping you’ll have us off this planet by then.”

He had a point. “Me too.”

“Can Nap put me down now?”

“Not yet.” Tanner sounded stressed. “We need to get somewhere we can’t be spotted. We left our best disguises back there.” He turned suddenly and we went into a narrow, dark alley. “Be very quiet,” he said in a low voice.

“Why?” I asked, in a voice even lower.

“Military complement coming.”

We moved as far back in the alley as we could. The good part was it was very dark. The bad part was it was a dead end. If they spotted us, we had nowhere to go.

“Can you believe the stink?” I didn’t recognize the voice.

“We need to ignore that and keep moving, men. Almondinger’s out there somewhere, kidnapped.” This voice I recognized. Nice to
know Lionside was willing to slay space dragons to find and save one of his own. I didn’t want to have to do Hostage One against Lionside. I didn’t want to have to do any of our Hostage plans against him. Hostage plans only worked when there wasn’t a total hero type against us.

Of course, I did wonder if Lionside was serious, since he knew full well we’d been arrested illegally. Then again, Nitin may have spun some story and bamboozled him. I didn’t figure it would be too hard.

The footsteps faded and Tanner relaxed. “They’ve moved on.”

“Thankfully. Great choice, leading us into a dead end. Nap, put me down.”

“I’m betting the kid didn’t have a choice. But, hey, you want to run after good old Bryant, just to say hi?”

It was dark in this alley, but I could still see the dirty look she shot me as I put her down. “You’re really a moron, you know that?”

“Could you two do your romantic bantering later? We need to move, and fast.” Tanner trotted out and we followed him.

We did a lot of dodging into side streets and, like we had at Military HQ, a lot of doubling back and crisscrossing. After what seemed like hours we reached the bath house. Found the employees’ entrance and then it was time to put the Legendary Outland Charm into action.

It was legendary, but even I had some niggling doubts. I’d never used the LOC smelling like a sewer. Just meant I’d probably have to charm a little harder than normal.

We slipped inside. A quick check indicated the baths were empty. “What’s that smell?” I recognized the voice. It was one of the bath girls. Didn’t remember her name, but it never mattered.

She rounded the corner and I grabbed her, hand over her mouth, her back pressed up against my front, the works. “Don’t scream. I’m not here to hurt you. Struggle all you want, though, doll.”

She relaxed and I let go of her mouth, though I kept my arms around her. She didn’t object. “Captain Outland, what are you
doing here?” She sounded breathless. I hoped it was due to the thrill of my return as opposed to our combined odor.