“That’s fine. What do I say?”
“I don’t know, maybe something about some back-pay she’s owed.”
On the trip there, Sherri had read the full file on the crewmember. Sileen was from a planet in a neighboring Sector and had been crewing on cargo haulers for much of her adult life. She had been mated before and apparently had about eighteen offspring. Damn, Adam had thought. She’s fertile little minx!
Sileen had been on a ship that was owned and operated by a Silean company called Reessing. Since returning to Silea with a dead crew and a rabid alien locked in a storage locker, her license to crew had been revoked, and she never fought to get her status reinstated. She had been surviving on the meager pay of a loadmaster at one of the minor spaceports in the area ever since the incident.
Sherri remembered that even during the mock trial the Sileans held, Sileen would not sit in the same room with the Human. Now having that same crazed alien show up at her doorstep three years later would certainly be the highlight of her day.
Sileen’s apartment was on the fourth floor of the building, which according to Silean tradition was the worst location in a structure to be housed. Sherri drew her MK-17 and stood a few meters down the hall, while Adam approached the door. There would be a security camera on the entrance — every doorway had one — so Adam stood with as pleasant and non-threatening a look on his face as he could muster, and pressed the button.
Almost immediately, a voice sounded through the comm unit. “Who is it? What is your business here?”
“I’m looking for Sileen Jorus. I’m from Reessing.”
“Reessing? What do you want?”
“I’m here about the back-pay that you are owed.”
“I don’t have any credits coming to me from Reessing. You are mistaken. Go away.”
“You are Sileen Jorus, aren’t you?”
“I do not have any credits owed.”
“That’s okay with me. These are not my credits. I will get paid whether you take them or not…”
He paused for a moment; aliens were not known for their rapid decision-making. Finally, he heard a click as the lock on the door was released.
“You can enter, but be warned, I am armed.”
“All I want to do is give you credits. You don’t have to be so upset about it.”
The door slid open, and Adam entered a dimly-lit, unkempt room about ten meters square. There was a couch along one wall and a comm center above a cluttered desk; a transmission was playing on a monitor above the desk, a newscast of some sort. Another opening led to a small kitchen area, while another led to the sleeping quarters. And the entire place smelled of feces and dirty feet.
Sileen Jorus was about one-and-a-half meters tall with long, willowy arms that ended at four-finger hands with what appeared to be suckers on the finger tips. Her face was long, with large black eyes and stringy hair that flowed down to cover most of her face. She stood on spindly legs that seemed hardly thick enough to support her weight, and she was dressed in a loose pullover dress made of a gray colored fabric. She was standing by the opening to the kitchen, and holding a small laser pistol in her right hand.
“So where are these credits you say I’m owed?”
Adam had entered carrying Sherri’s portable data reader, so he raised it and pretended to check the readout.
Just then, two larger creatures of the same species — obviously males — sprang from the bedroom opening and scurried up the walls and onto the ceiling just above him. One of the creatures let loose and fell onto Adam’s right shoulder, while the other dropped to the floor and grabbed his legs. Adam struggled momentarily to get a grip on the slimy creature on his back, before launching it forcefully against the wall near the comm center. The other one at his feet was not having any luck tripping Adam, so the Human simply gave him a powerful kick that sent the creature flying into Sileen.
Then Sherri was in the room. She ran toward the diminutive alien, whose eyes literally grew to twice their normal size at the sight of the Human female. She let out such a high-pitched scream that Adam had to cover his ears just to tolerate the sound.
The alien began to shudder so hard that she dropped the laser weapon. Then she jumped and stuck fast to the wall above the couch.
Sherri stood a few meters away, holding her MK-17 steady at the alien. The two males had recovered somewhat and moved to the couch below Sileen.
“Don’t kill my offspring, please!” Sileen screamed. “Please spare them. They had nothing to do with what happened on the ship.”
“Relax, I’m not going to kill anyone,” Sherri said softly, trying to calm the hysterical alien.
“Oh please spare my offspring. Please!”
“Relax!” Sherri finally yelled, loud enough to penetrate the whimpering of the alien stuck on the wall. “I’m not here to hurt you or your…offspring.”
Sileen blinked rapidly several times, as her eyes began to return to normal. Then slowly she slipped down the wall, propping herself on the back of the couch.
Then Sherri turned to Adam. “That’s how she kept from being killed in the first place. That thing can squeeze into the smallest openings and stick to just about anything.”
Then she turned back to Sileen. “All I want to know is where you picked me up at? It had to be your last port before returning to Silea.”
Again, Sileen blinked several times, while her two sons huddled together on the couch, one of them licking the back of the other’s head. Adam just wrinkled his nose at the bazaar scene.
“That is all you want? You don’t mean to harm us?”
“No. All I want is information-”
“Locin-Annan!” said Sileen quickly. “That was the location.”
Locin- Annan! Adam nearly fainted when he heard the word Annan. During all his research into the word and its meaning, he had been going in a completely different direction. Annan was only part of the name — and the name of a place!
Sherri had no idea what was going on in Adam’s head at that moment, so she simply asked, “Where is that? Is it a planet or a city?”
“It’s the uranium mines on Zylim-4. Over in the New Regian system.”
Sherri turned to Adam with a large, satisfied grin. Sileen and her offspring recoiled at the sight of Sherri’s long, white teeth, but she didn’t care. “There you go. Zylim-4. In the next system over.”
“But the mines are off-limits to most merchants,” Sileen added. “The radiation is quite strong there from hundreds of years of waste being deposited on the surface.”
“Let us worry about that,” Sherri said to the still trembling creature. Then she moved in closer, and Adam saw all three beings shrink to about half their body thickness as they pressed deeper into the couch. “We are going to leave you now,” Sherri said, her voice deeper, threatening. “If you say one word about us coming here, or the information you gave us, I will come back and I will kill you-” then she glared at the two males “-and all of your offspring, and then all of their offspring. And I won’t just kill you all — I will eat you, too, bloody and raw. Do you understand?”
One of the males appeared to faint, while the other climbed into the grasp of his mother. “Yes. Yes I understand.” Adam noticed a wet stain begin to spread on the top of the couch. He did his best not to grin; Sherri was really laying it on thick — and it appeared to be working.
“Let’s go,” Sherri called to Adam as she brushed past him, heading for the door.
Adam hesitated for a moment, looking at the terrified creatures. Then he couldn’t resist. He leaned in closer and said, “ Boo! ”
The other male fainted, while Sileen let loose with a loud farting sound, and the putrid smell of feces in the room suddenly grew even stronger…
Chapter Twenty
As the Juirean shuttle approached Silea, the comm unit began to blow up with calls from the government, requesting destination, purpose, accommodations requested and more. Riyad answered none of them. Instead, he had located a quick emergency exit off the main cargo bay that he would use for his escape once on-planet.