Tobias Buckell - Ragamuffin

Pam pulled a pair out. “Head out through the kitchen to the back closet. That go take you to the basement, and from there you can get out through the window to the back street.” She let the top of the stove drop. She took the lid off a large pot, pulled out a pistol, and handed it to John. “Get under the street using the grate, head north until you bump into someone. Let them know what happen. They’ll help you get where you need.”

Azteca started knocking at the door. “Just a minute,” Violet shouted. Pam raised her dress to reveal a holster fashioned out of leather for the rifle. Another for the pistol on the left thigh.

She dropped the dress back down. “Hopefully they go be real polite.”

“You think you can fight back against all this?” John asked. “They’re dropping from the sky, better technology, better weapons, more people.”

“This house been in my family since my granddad. I ain’t go be running around in no sewer and giving all this over to them,” Pam said.

“They looking like they go break the door in now,” Voilet said.

“Chances is they won’t spot nothing.” Pam pushed back. “Now go quick.”

John turned and followed her directions down into the basement. He barely fit out the window, looking around for the Azteca. Knowing there was no back door, they hadn’t posted any guards.

As he scrabbled out, he heard pans and pots thrown to the floor and feet thudding around. Pam or Violet shouted angrily back at someone.

John tensed, waiting for the shooting. It didn’t come.

Letting out a relieved breath, he moved toward the nearest grate and pulled it free. With one last breath of fresh air he dropped down under the streets, pulling the grate back over him.

Had Pepper taken any longer to reach Jerome, he might have been too late. That bugged him. Was he getting soft? Comfortable in his ways? Nanagada might look like a tropical vacation, but Pepper wondered if he’d grown accustomed to it.

The steam car stopped on the edge of a plaza dominated by Tenochtilanome’s main sacrificial pyramid. Already today blood ran down the sides of it. A Teotl spacecraft had landed in the plaza.

“The boy stays,” Ahexotl said.

Pepper looked over and considered killing him. “Why?”

“So you don’t try anything strange, like attacking our gods.”

“Fair enough.” Pepper smiled. They had each other figured out all too well. He looked over at Jerome. “Remain calm. I’ll be back shortly.”

He stepped out of the car. Every muscle tensed, ready to spring at any second, Pepper walked forward with the several armed Azteca at either side. The wide-winged craft crouched above the stones, the pyramid rising up behind it.

Azteca warriors made a wall of bodies on either side of Pepper, feathered capes flapping slightly in the soft wind, rifles at the ready.

At the far end of the honor guard two Teotl stood. Warrior Teotl. Vaguely bipedal, they turned and faced Pepper. He noted the black, razorlike forearms, spiked fingers, and mirrored eyeplates. The creatures’ thick, chitinous skin would be almost impervious to low-caliber gunfire and edged objects.

Hard nuts to crack.

And behind the warrior-grown Teotl sat the divans on which the Teotl leaders sat, watching him from the shadows with their beady eyes.

The Azteca guided him to the shaded pavilion under the protection of one of the swooping wings. Throngs of Azteca honor guards stood in the background, looking over the proceedings.

The Teotl had returned from the skies and adapted to the local conditions quite quickly.

“Proceed to within five paces. No more. No less.” The voice came out of the air. The two warrior Teotl, polished and armored skins gleaming in the sun, moved to either side of him.

The three creatures in the couches stirred to stare at Pepper. Highly modified Teotl for thinking and planning, their bodies were crafted to support superfast brains. Radiator fans crested their skulls, the air above them rippling from dumped heat.

“Your body is laced with devices.” The center Teotl spoke Anglic. “Your physical abilities are amplified. You are not a part of this fallow world here.” A stubby, pale flipper flapped, as if it to indicate the city around them. “You come from beyond the outleading wormhole?”

“Yes.” He saw no reason to lie to them. Yet. Pepper looked up at the smooth underbelly of the craft. It looked like metal from the distance, but up close he wasn’t so sure.

“Did you come recently? The wormhole out to other worlds of your kind is closed.”

“I came before it closed.”

“And that was hundreds of years ago,” they said in a chorus.

“Yes.”

Three simultaneous sighs filled the air between the couches. They seemed disappointed. Or at least, were choosing to project it to him. A sigh was just as much a language marker as anything else.

Pepper regarded the mounds of flesh before him. “Why?”

A single measured tick of time passed as they conferred with each other with quick glances. “We have a deep need for emissaries.” More shifting. “We can reopen the wormhole to the next system by shoring open the mouth with exotic matter. But our species has a history of antagonism with yours, and presumably a reputation out there. We need help and advice to cross over.”

“Why?” Pepper folded his arms. Even though he didn’t trust them, if they were really going back to the other worlds, it might be a way to get back out to civilization decades earlier than planned. The Ma Wi Jung still languished on the bottom somewhere near Capitol City, useless to him. And even if fixed, it would require hundreds of years to cross the space required to get to a working wormhole.

If the wormhole back could just be fired up again, that was appealing to him.

“Your kind manipulates.” He spread his arms out. “We fell for your lies once.”

“We are now refugees. We have no time for deceptions and deceit,” the Teotl said.

Pepper stared at them. “Yes?”

“Our worlds have been destroyed for technological violations.” The words dripped out of the air and continued. “We have been deemed dangerous, our lease on existence terminated. We orbit this planet because we flee those who would destroy us. The wormhole we came through is temporarily closed again, but we will eventually need help keeping it closed. We seek to open and travel through the other wormhole to the worlds you once knew, but we need ambassadors and assistance.”

The beady eyes regarded him.

Pepper looked up at the craft. A working spaceship. Unlike the Ma Wi Jung . “I’m still listening,” he said.

“There are others like you. Ahexotl and Xippilli will be working to find more of them in the other large city. We’ll take you there to join up with these others, and there we will discuss terms and needs. Eventually we’ll take you to our home.”

“A whole other planet?”

“Our home orbits here right now.”

Pepper looked around at the Azteca. The original Teotl had manipulated humanity enough. This new set of lies would probably mean even more danger. But a quick ride back to Capitol City to get Jerome reunited with his father, that was worth a quick flirt.

“Okay,” Pepper said. “I’ll take the shuttle ride to Capitol City.”

The aliens hissed their satisfaction, and Pepper looked up at the giant wing overhead. Complex plots were not his thing, he preferred direct approaches.

But he would remain checked for now.

Xippilli followed Ahexotl toward the giant flying machine, looking at the Teotl with trepidation. He might know they were just creatures, as Ahexotl said, but somewhere deep inside he still retained the belief that these were gods.