Chapter Thirteen

LAZ

As I lifted the small bag of tools from the counter, I made sure to thank the storekeeper. The old Xylo grunted in reply. He half-heartedly twirled the end of his long, wispy mustache. He pretended like he wasn't paying attention, but I knew his unblinking eyes remained fixed on me until I left his shop.

The putrid stench of the Xylox atmosphere assaulted me as soon as I stepped outside. I reached inside my hood and pulled the rag down over my face, securing it before I moved down the sidewalk.

It wasn't only the air that stunk on this planet. Only a few street lights were working. The simple action of walking down the road was enough to drain the life out of anyone. The impoverished community I saw in front of me lay in shambles, and I could only assume it was representative of the other towns on the planet.

Some buildings and formerly tall towers stood lopsided on their bases. Squatters claimed any crumbling high-rise buildings that happened to remain upright, developing distinct communities of their own. Many families, forced into homelessness because of the war effort, ended up populating the ruins of abandoned construction sites.

Now it was nighttime and children were running around unsupervised. Young, unemployed Xylo hoodlums loitered in groups on street corners, guffawing and hurling insults at passing strangers.

It was easy for an off-worlder to pick out the homes and businesses of the fortunate. The entrances to the upper-class residential and commercial structures were chained and bolted shut. The expensive areas hired private security to watch their places day in and day out.

I passed an old brown warehouse with an unusually large number of power cables and wires running through dirty windows. The warehouse was eight stories tall, but only the first four floors from the ground up were in use. Foggy purple lights and loud, obnoxious music emitted from the building. Judging from all the shifty individuals entering and leaving, I suspected it was a casino.

The warehouse was a mental landmark I used to remind myself that I was near our room. I had passed this way a few times without incident, but today a scuffling disturbance caught my attention. My Xylese vocabulary was limited, but cries of distress were universal.

The commotion came from behind me, in an alley sandwiched between two buildings constructed a little too close together. When I approached, I saw a hysterical older woman clutching onto her purse. Two Xylo men had her trapped.

I wondered if I should even get involved. Did I care if another Xylo random died? We were at war with their planet, after all. But I didn't have time to think further. In front of my eyes, the half-naked and barefoot assailants wrestled away her purse and shoved her to the ground. One slipped his hands around the stolen purse while the other held her down. Before the sick pervert could reach under the hem of the thrashing woman's dress, I sprang into action.

I noisily dropped my bag of tools. The two men turned their small black eyes in my direction. The one on the ground withdrew his hand from the screaming woman's legs but stayed sitting on her ankles, which prevented her from running away. The second Xylo with gold hoops on his ears tilted his head to one side and started inching toward me.

Were they brothers? They looked similar, and I couldn't imagine anyone voluntarily partnering with one of these losers. Pierced Ears barked at me and pointed at the woman at the ground emphatically. The skin around his mouth cracked when he grinned.

I hoped he wasn't offering me sloppy seconds.

From the corner of my eye, I could see the terror on the woman's face. Her wide eyes didn't have any tears, but her expression was distraught and hopeless.

Pierced Ears motioned to me, beckoning me closer. As he raised his hand, I strode forward and grabbed it with my fist. I yanked him toward me and twisted his arm, sending him to his knees. He howled at my feet and handed over the stolen purse without prompting. I held him by the hoops of his ear and swung him into the side of the building. The bloody earrings tore off in the scuffle and bounced across the ground.

The other creep leaped off the woman's legs, calling out to his unresponsive brother. While he was distracted, the woman crawled backward and took shelter in a corner of the dead end. The angry Xylo turned on me, wailing in despair. He looked at the ground, reached down, and grabbed a shard of broken glass. Holding it pointed away from his body, he started to charge at me.

I didn't have to think. My military-trained arm swung out instinctively and caught him by the wrist. I took a step, turned, and twisted, pinning his arm behind his back. As the thug struggled with me, I punched him in the face. His jaw dislocated with a loud popping noise. After I kicked the scrawny Xylo off his feet, I picked him up and hurled him towards the wall, next to his fallen brother.

Even though he had a severe injury on his face, the mean bastard was determined to finish the robbery. He sprang from the ground again and stalked toward the woman. I knelt down and retrieved a knife from my ankle strap. If my fists weren't enough, I would have to use a weapon.

The woman covered her face with her arms and ineffectively tried to keep her assailant at bay with an outstretched leg. I swooped in from behind him and threw my arm around his neck. I attempted to pull him off of her, but his adrenaline-induced rage made him stronger than I had anticipated. As I pushed his broken jaw and pressed my blade over his throat, his head squirmed out of my grasp. He opened his mouth, revealing two rows of jagged gray teeth that sunk into my hand.

"Fuck!" I roared. My fingers opened and dropped the blade to the ground. My skin was usually tough enough to withstand some bruising, but the sheer force of his bite penetrated my hand. Blood started to flow out of the puncture wounds and down my wrist. I tried to ignore the pain and gripped his head with both hands, jerking it forcefully to the side. His lifeless body crumpled at my feet, leaving my bloody palm print visible on his neck.

My arm was starting to glisten blue from my blood. I grunted and returned the purse. She pulled herself to her feet shakily and started bowing to me, saying something in a different language that I couldn't understand.

I waved my good hand at her. I didn't have time to talk, and I didn't want her to come up and get a good look at me. But as I backed away, I stepped on the end of my cloak. My foot pulled my hood, revealing my face. The woman took one step toward me and halted abruptly. Her pale lips opened. Now she started moving back as she raised a crooked finger at me.

"Don't worry," I assured her breathlessly. "Do you speak Standard? I'm not going to hurt you –"

"Halt! Present your identification."

Shit. Not again. I stopped moving, but I could see the shadow cast from the Xylo drone hovering behind me. My muscles grew tense, and I was ready to fight. But I had forgotten about the woman. Would I be able to protect her too? I took a chance and looked up, staring at her. It looked like she was trying to hide inside the wall.

"Without identification, the penalty is death. Present identification in 3..."

I saw her throat move as she swallowed. She seemed to be thinking about something, and eventually she reached into her purse, taking out a thick green card. She walked up to the drone behind me and held her card over its scanner.

"Thank you for presenting your identification."

I grabbed my things and nodded at her before staggering off in the opposite direction.

I held my palm under the light of the motel hallway and ran my fingers over the crude stitches. Dried blood still covered my hand. The salve had sealed up part of the wound, but I had needed to finish closing the cut myself. I spread out my fingers, but when I tried to wiggle them, a sharp jab of pain flared up in my hand.

"Damn," I growled.

I heard faint giggles around me. A potbellied Xylo in a pink silk robe stumbled up the stairs. He wrapped his hairy arms around two Xylo women clutching near-empty bottles of hard liquor. I opened the door quickly and ducked into the room before they could see me.

"Finally. What took you so long? What happened to you?"

Gabriella clapped a hand over her mouth and pulled off her covers. She hobbled towards me and patted me down frantically. I took a step back from her and held out my hand for inspection. She pored over the blood stains on my cloak.

"I'm fine. It's not as bad as it looks."

Gabriella was determined to help me. She brought me some water and forced it to my lips. I gratefully chugged down the drink as she took the bag from me and set it down at her feet.

"No offense, but you look like shit. What kind of a store did you go to?"

I handed her the water and wiped my mouth with my sleeve. "It's nothing. Two Xylo thugs got in my way. One bit my hand, but I closed it up before it could hurt me."

"Are you sure you're okay? Maybe there's something I can get you, or watch over you."

"No, you've..." I bit my tongue and shook my head. "No thank you. You should get back in bed. Did you drink the medicine I left for you?"

"Yes, I did." Gabriella sank to the foot of the bed. "It's not the best thing I've ever tasted, but it's helped with the soreness. It's getting easier to move around."

"That's the idea."

I stripped off my stained clothes and tossed them onto the chair. Gabriella watched as I dumped out my treasure. A can of black spray paint rolled across the floor and stopped at a bedpost. We would use the paint later to disguise the hover bike. I needed the tools to adjust the stolen communicator so I could talk to my people.

"Listen, Laz. I've had some time to think about what happened to me. I just realized that I haven't thanked you."

"What for?"

Gabriella tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. I replaced the coupler and began the hot-wiring process.

"You know. Rescuing me. Fixing me up and everything else. You could have left me to die out there, but you didn't. Thank you. I know I've been hard to deal with for the last couple of days, but I'm truly grateful."

"Don't mention it."

"I still don't understand why you came to get me. There are plenty of other women on Earth who would be happy to marry a sexy Maztek commander. You could have gotten a refund from TerraMates."

"It's my job. This isn't my first rescue mission."

"Oh, right," Gabriella muttered quickly. She blushed and started to stammer. "Of course. That wasn't exactly what I was insinuating, but it's good to know."

"I wouldn't have left you there," I said tonelessly. I held the communicator closer to my face. Sweat was starting to accumulate on my furrowed brows from my concentration. The stitches on my palm stung. "If I ended up going to Xylox, then I ended up going to Xylox."

"That sounds...logical," Gabriella replied slowly. She couldn't sit still – she was jittery and fidgeting with her hands. "I guess I just wanted to make it clear that this isn't my usual personality. Being the damsel in distress, I mean. I've always been an independent woman."

"I don't doubt that. Fuck!"

"What's wrong?"

The pliers fell from my grasp and hit the floor with a clang. Gabriella rolled off the bed and sat next to me.

I set down the communicator and grabbed a sterilizing salve from my satchel. She took the tube from me and squeezed some onto the bleeding wound. I almost started to tell her that I could handle things myself, but I managed to hold my tongue. To be honest, I guess I didn't hate the way she tenderly dabbed ointment on my cut with her small fingers.

"You know there's nothing the matter with asking for help, right?" Gabriella reached over and grabbed the communicator and pliers from the floor. "My back is still killing me, but my hands are perfectly fine. Why don't I give it a whirl? Tell me what to do, and I'll follow your lead. I used to bead my jewelry, and I have an ex-boyfriend, so I have some experience manipulating small objects."

"We can try," I agreed after some thought. I laid my palm face up on my lap. "You have smaller hands, so it might be easier for you to twist these wires."

"Which ones need work?"

Gabriella leaned close to me and held up the communicator to my face. I couldn't help noticing that her soft breast pressed against the side of my chest. I swallowed and leaned away. She looked up at me expectantly with innocent, blue eyes.

"Hello?"

"It's complicated. Loop the thick black wire over the orange wire, then twist the green, white, and red wires together, and thread them through the second hole. Be very careful with the three wires. They're thin and solid copper, not stranded. If you break one of them, the whole thing's useless."

"I'm not feeling any pressure at all," said Gabriella, taking a deep breath. She raised her eyebrows. "It sounds simple enough. Here goes nothing."

"Take your time."

"Uh-huh." Gabriella slid the black wire under the orange one smoothly. "Now that I've got the easy part out of the way, time to twist some wires together."

She began to hum a strikingly familiar tune. I wrinkled my forehead and sat up straight, watching her carefully. As she brought the communicator close to her face, she narrowed her eyes into slits and poked out her tongue from the side of her mouth.

"Is that a popular song on Earth?"

"What? Sorry, it's a weird habit of mine. I hum it sometimes when I'm concentrating. It helps me shut out all the other noises in the room. It's not a pop tune - it's just a song my dad wrote for me. He used to sing it to me all the time."

"Your father?" There was a strange flutter in my stomach. No. It couldn't be. "What was his name?"

"His first name was Keith, but everyone knew him by his second name, Marshall."

"But your father's last name is Stein, correct?"

"It's not. Hang on a second...got it." Gabriella held up the communicator triumphantly.

"Your father's last name?"

"Stein is my mother's maiden name. She had it changed after Dad died. It let her claim she was a single mom and receive payouts from the government. My Dad's last name was Hathaway. Does it matter?"

I was stunned. I hadn't moved a muscle, but I felt the floor shifting beneath me. I couldn't describe the strange feeling coursing through my body. Gabriella set down the communicator and slowly inched closer to me.

"Laz? Are you okay?"

"Your father. Marshall. Does he have a slightly protruding right ear?"

"Yes, he does. Wait a second. How would you know that?"

I found myself without the proper words to say. Except one. The only thing that came out of my mouth was the single word invading my mind.

"Naima?"