I'm here to find any human who needs me. But also one specific human. She looked around her. She had sought him on a hundred worlds. Are you hiding here, my brother?
Crowds filled the dusty, cobbled roads. Circular aliens spun forward like wheels rolling away from a car crash, laughing and chattering. A hogger sat under an awning—a furry alien with a thick snout and curved tusks. The pig was selling swords with "dragon claw" blades, if you believed the sign. To Leona they looked more like polished hogger tusks. A group of elderly, furry aliens with drooping white mustaches hunched over a wooden board, moving living game pieces attached to weights. The tiny pawns fought with needles and buttons instead of swords and shields. A massive, transparent aquarium rolled by, belching smoke. Leona had to leap aside. Inside the tank, mollusks peeked out of spiky conchs the size of pianos, glaring at her. One spat ink toward her, smearing the wall of his tank. Leona leaped aside again when a towering, six-legged camel stepped over her, as tall as a tree. Leona just barely dodged the steaming pile he left on the road. Alien flies the size of watermelons buzzed toward the meal, cackling with glee.
"Out of the way, pest!" one fly said, buzzing by her.
Leona was tempted to shoot the damn thing.
"Eat shit," she muttered.
"Don't mind if I do!" The fly joined his friends at the feast.
Leona sighed. When flies called you a pest, you definitely needed to climb the social ladder.
But right now, she had concerns more pressing than cheeky flies. Before she blasted off this planet, she had to find any human she could. Especially one long-lost human.
She kept walking until she found a pub. A rusty sign hung above the doorway, depicting a snake curled up inside a mug. Leona stepped inside and waved away smoke. A handful of mustached caterpillars reclined on cushions, smoking hookahs. As Leona approached them, they curled backward, puffing smoke her way.
One of the caterpillars, a beast the color of bruises with a glorious white mustache, harrumphed. "Who let the pest in?"
Leona reached into her pocket, pulled out a photograph, and unfolded it. "Have you seen this man? His name is Bay Ben-Ari, though he might be using an alias. He's my brother."
The caterpillar snorted. "He's a pest! We allow no pests in here. Begone before we call an exterminator." He blew smoke in her face.
Leona left the bar. She stood on the sunny street, gazing at the photograph. She had not seen her brother in a decade. He would be twenty-four now. Leona had used software to age an old photograph, turning him from boy to man, but how accurate was it? If she finally found Bay again, would she even recognize him?
I'll know him by his hand, she thought. His left hand, curled up since birth.
She walked down the road, skirting a cloud of gaseous aliens, and entered another grimy pub. A few aliens with long, thin snouts sat at a bar, snorting ants from jars. A slug lay in the corner, carefully dropping grains of salt on himself, then shuddering. An alien that looked like a skin balloon hovered in the shadows, mouth opening and closing, gulping smoke that rose from a bowl of embers below. A reptilian humanoid stood by a window, sighing with pleasure as two females peeled off his old skin; he emerged reborn, his new skin soft and pink. An alien toad with stony scales sat in the fireplace, gazing balefully from among the flames.
Here too Leona showed her photograph of Bay. Here too the barflies shouted at her, called her vermin, kicked her out. She left.
Leona traveled from pub to brothel, from gambling hole to fighting pit. She peered into a hundred shadowy dens where aliens grogged, pounded each other into pulp, lost their scryls at games of dice and stones, and mucked in the mud with anything that could crawl, flap, slither, or hiss. Here was the city's rancid underbelly, far from its soaring temples and palaces. If there was anywhere a renegade human would hide, it would be here.
Yet there was no Bay.
Leona found no humans at all, not since seeing one in the crowd.
"Time to blow this joint," she muttered.
She began heading back toward the spaceport. Sand swirled around her boots, rising to coat her clothes, hiding the brown and blue colors. Her muscles ached, and her wounds stung. Leona couldn't wait to enter her spaceship, to fly away from this world, to float through the silent darkness of space. She could have a long, luxurious shower, then spend a few days reading, sipping tea, and relaxing before she reached the next world. There too she would search for humans, for hope.
My time here was not a failure, she told herself.
No, she had not found Bay here on Til Shiran. After years of searching, her brother still eluded her. But she had earned some money. She had inspired a human in the crowd. She had shown this planet human pride. Drop by drop, she would fill that ocean.
Leona was walking across a dusty courtyard, passing by a sandstone temple tipped with golden minarets, when she heard the jeering crowd.
Leona frowned, swung Arondight to her front, and gripped the rifle.
Trouble. She knew its sound like an old song of childhood.
Eyes narrowed, Leona followed the sound down an alleyway. She approached a stone archway, scattering six-legged rodents who were chewing on bones. The creatures hissed at her, each glaring with eight eyes. Past the archway, Leona found herself on a wide boulevard. Temples, obelisks, and shops lined the roadsides, selling everything from weapons to fabric to spices.
It was a nice neighborhood. Leona didn't like nice neighborhoods. Nice neighborhoods attracted Peacekeepers.
Leona hated Peacekeepers.
She spotted them ahead. One of their tanks idled on the roadside, its white paint peeling. Several Peacekeepers stood atop a temple, wearing tan armor, gazing down at the boulevard.
Galactic thugs, Leona thought, stomach curdling. The Peacekeepers were the police force of the Concord. But Leona feared them more than any criminal.
These particular Peacekeepers were Tarmarins, same as the scaled beast Leona had fought in the canyon. On every planet, the Peacekeepers recruited the locals. On every planet, the brutes were the same—brainwashed, thuggish, and extremely dangerous. The Concord was a loose alliance of ten thousand civilizations. The Peacekeepers kept the alliance glued together.
Leona hated them almost as much as scorpions. Almost.
She saw the source of jeering now. A crowd filled the boulevard, pointing, laughing, mocking. Those aliens that could fly hovered above, wings flapping. One scaly creature with leathery wings spat down. The crowd surrounded something. Leona was a tall woman, but some of these aliens stood twice her height. She could see nothing from here.
She walked around the crowd, approached a monastery, and climbed the wall. Leona had always been good at climbing, famous for scaling trees and cliffs even as a child. She hopped onto the monastery's balcony, ignoring the shrieking nuns. The nuns were female Tarmarins—smaller than the males, scaleless, and so frightened they fled indoors.
Leona leaned over the balcony's balustrade, peering down at the road.
From here, she could see what the crowd was surrounding.
Her heart broke. Her fists trembled.
She had finally found more humans.
There were a couple dozen—men, women, children. They were on their knees, holding soapy sponges, scrubbing the street.
The aliens surrounded them, spitting, laughing. When one human tried to rise, an alien kicked him down.
"Scrub those streets!" shouted a burly Tarmarin. "Scrub 'em till they shine."
Another alien, a beaked creature with shimmering blue feathers, pissed on the cobblestones. "Clean! Clean it with your hair, vermin." He gripped a woman's gray hair and tugged it down. "Use your hair as a mop."