And then it hit me.
“The Dredel Led are here for him. Not me.”
Jyen looked guilty.
“When I escaped with my brother, we tried to cover our tracks as best we could. But he can only make things he understands. Making a new body was hard enough,” she said, looking down at the wasted man. “But all the passports and clearances and permissions, they’re too complicated. Microscopic. We used my identity for a while until we could get forged credentials. I believe they may have tracked us here.”
“So,” I began awkwardly, “you guys going to leave now?”
“We need your help,” she said.
And I laughed. I realized it was a pretty bad move snickering in front of a twitchy level-four mutant and one of the most powerful entities in the galaxy—who also happened to be an addled drug user. But the concept was simply ludicrous.
“How can I possibly help you two? I should be asking you guys for help.”
“We’ve been imprisoned for the last thirty-something years,” she pleaded, and my smile immediately vanished. “We don’t know anything. Where would we go? How? It took everything we could do to get here and we were still followed. My brother is all I have. We want to be safe. We don’t want to hurt anyone.”
It was heartfelt. Those blue eyes were streaming tears. I didn’t know what to tell her.
“Jyen, I haven’t left this station in about a hundred and forty years. You probably know more about the galaxy outside Belvaille than I do.”
“Why have you stayed so long?” she asked, obviously not so enamored with the charms of the city.
The question threw me.
“I suppose I’m scared to leave.”
There was an ugly silence.
“Can you help us?” she asked.
“What can I do that he can’t?”
“Look at him,” she said. “It takes all his concentration—all his drugged concentration—to be able to change things. It’s really difficult for him.”
“I just don’t know what I can do for you guys,” I explained.
“Can you get us fake documents? And transport?”
“Oh,” I said, surprised. “Yeah, I can get all kinds of stuff like that. I was thinking…I don’t know, you wanted me to take on the Colmarian military or something. You came to the right place for forgeries.” I was quite relieved.
Jyen jumped up and buried her face in my chest, her arms around me. Which was considerably more pleasant than being hit with an electric jolt.
“Thank you. Thank you,” she bubbled.
I was back in my native environment. Sort of.
“Documentation, egress, ingress, orange stamps, R.O.M.s, no problem. We can also book some fake passage for your existing identity and place it in some other part of the empire while you guys move. We’ll have to think of a good place for you to migrate.”
Jyen held her hands clasped and the tiniest squeal of joy escaped her. When she wasn’t blasting people or wearing sexy clothes she really seemed like a little girl.
“Let me make some calls. I’ll get back to you tomorrow, okay?”
“That’s perfect.”
As I was about to leave, trying my best to ignore the smeared metal walls, Jyen reminded me:
“Please do not say anything of what you saw here.”
It wasn’t a threat. But when it comes from the sister of a guy who can earthquake an entire space station at will, it pretty much becomes a threat.
CHAPTER 12
Outside the building I felt good. I hadn’t realized I’d previously felt bad, but the specter of an entire species gunning for me had apparently weighed on my mind. Now it was just a matter of getting Jyen and Jyonal off Belvaille.
It might be hard without clueing Garm in, especially since she had closed the port when the Dredel Led showed up. Would she buy that it was for the greater good? Probably not. I had to convince Jyen to let Garm in on their secret.
I was thinking of people to get in touch with first when I heard a familiar noise. I looked back just in time to see a figure streak by, followed by a hard landing not five feet behind me.
“Son of a bitch.”
The Dredel Led was not looking at me, however. It faced the apartment building I had just exited.
I pulled my plasma pistol out with my left hand, tossed it about one foot to my right hand, so I could aim better. This was a terribly dangerous thing to do, but I did it without thinking. I caught it, raised it, powered it on with my thumb.
“Eat suck, suckface!”
Click.
Click.
Click.
I looked at my Ontakian pistol. There was no green glow. There was no abdomen-throbbing hum. It was absolutely inert even after flipping it on and off multiple times.
The robot turned around to face me and I knew I was going to die, really going to die. This was a new sensation for me: fear. Real, “there’s a poisonous spider in my pants” fear. I had to do something drastic.