The sheer size of the open market worked against . One thing worked for though—racial prejudice. The Abominators had used humans as their superpowered stormtroopers before the Xiniti destroyed them. Even though humans and aliens seed to interact peacefully here on the edge of both human and Alliance space, the aliens gave humans extra space.
It hadn’t been so obvious on the trains where different cars were designed for different species’ needs (chlorine atmosphere, for example, or chair sizes), but the aliens gave humans enough space for three. I didn’t bla them either. Many of the humans here weren’t normal. They looked like supers—whether it was due to glowing eyes, bulging muscles, or wings. Whatever their looks, the humans here wore pistols on the belts, rifles across their backs, and wore armor.
“Do you think you can find her? I can take a few of the bots.” Marcus pulled out his own pair of sunglasses.
We stood next to the base of one of the silver gray towers, flipping from the view of one spybot to another. Above us, the trains humd, moving away from or into the station above us. Slls of spices, grilled at, and body odors from aliens and humans alike filled the area. Given the strangeness of so slls, I couldn’t be sure.
No one interrupted us. I imagined it was because we were visibly human in addition to showing up as Xiniti citizens to anyone with an implant.
After a ti, Marcus said, “I think I found her. I’ll send you coordinates.”
He sent video along with the coordinates. Tikki stood in front of one of the floating boxes I’d seen earlier except electronic goods displayed across the top. Two bipedal slugs stood behind it, talking to custors.
“That looks like her,” I said. She wore the sa green and white jumpsuit as in the pictures, holding a small cylinder and asking questions of one of the slugs. Whatever the slug said persuaded her to buy. She pulled a device from her pouch, and tapped on it. When she was done, she pocketed both devices.
As she stepped away from the booth, we got to see the other side of hatred for humans. Three hrrnna, horselike aliens the size of ponies, blocked her way. Eight limbed, their front two forelimbs were ready to grab.
She started talking to them, smiling, but her eyes darted between them.
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Marcus said, “I’m going,” and wings erupted from his back, his costu parting as they extended. It was good to see that it worked. Programming the costu to adjust to his shapeshifting had been a pain.
I tapped my palm and a helt extended from my costu and surrounded my head, absorbing my sunglasses. A glance around confird that no one was close, so I activated the rocket pack and shot into the air.
I angled myself forward because I wanted to avoid the level’s ceiling, wheeling around because the coordinates Marcus gave placed her behind and to the right. I called back all the spybots, ordering any that were low on fuel back into my pouch. The rest were to fly over to where Tikki stood and give a 360 degree view of what was around her so that I’d have warning if the hrrnna had friends.
I’d shrunk the window showing Tikki and turned it translucent so that it wasn’t as much of a distraction. Out of the corner of my eye though, I still watched it. A few seconds into my flight and about the ti that I passed Marcus, the situation changed. One of the passersby stopped to stand next to Tikki and talked with the Hrrnna.
“Stand” wasn’t the best description though. It was a plant riding in a floating pot. It floated. I wasn’t sure if this was the sa plant I’d seen before, but it was of the sa species. Several blade-like leaves grew out around a stalk in the middle of the pot. The leaves operated the pot’s controls. Small branches grew out of the stalk. The branches rustled as it faced the hrrnna.
I wished that the spybots were closer so we could get sound, but I didn’t have ti to fiddle with them. I’d made it there, allowing to discover that the spybots had missed an important detail—there were more aliens behind Tikki and the plant in addition to the hrrnna in front. My implant labeled the two bear-like ones with dual segnt torsos and six limbs “waroo.”
I landed between Tikki and the waroo, saying, “Your people sent to help. They’re just about to leave,” to Tikki.
She said, “Thank you. These sophonts were just about to let us go.”
One of the waroo said, “Going to rip you to bits, murderers.”
The plant’s fronds rustled and my implant translated them as, “I hope you brought guns.” It also labeled the plant as an “Emperor’s walking blade” plant.
“Kind of,” I said.
Marcus landed next to , absorbing the wings back into his body.
The hrrnna hissed and the waroo backed up a step. Interesting, I thought. Shapeshifters get extra points for scariness around these guys—and then I rembered that the Abominators had been gray skinned shapeshifters. Of course, Marcus didn’t look like an Abominator. They’d been five limbed and hadn’t been shaped at all like a human, but once transford Marcus had grey skin and however many limbs he wanted. Seeing him couldn’t calm things down at all.
“Hey,” I said, “we’re not here to fight you, but as mbers of the Xiniti nation we’re here to protect her. So if you attack, we will, and you'll be seen as criminals in the eyes of the Alliance.”
"Won't be much of a change," one of the waroo growled and they charged us. So did the hrrnna.
“Dammit,” the plant said, and a turret popped out of the bottom of its pot.
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