Tobias Buckell - Ragamuffin

As Pepper dragged the alien out, Jerome waited until they passed, then picked up his pocketknife and followed them.

The wind kicked at them, stirring Pepper’s locks slightly as the odd trio waited before the Teotl shuttle. Pepper tasted salt, and a myriad of other things on the wind. He ignored it all and remained still as a pair of Teotl opened his coat.

One by one they removed items. The two shotguns first. Pepper kept the small flask John had given him in his hands, slightly obscured by the remote to the collar.

The irony of the creatures’ own devices being used on them like this was Pepper’s kind of irony.

“They’re actually taking us up,” John said. Pepper nodded. Jerome stood between them.

The disarming continued. Next came the brace of pistols by unbuckling a belt. The Teotl snorted as the smooth-handled hunting knife came out of its case, and the machete with the oak handle tugged out along with it. They found the two pistols by his ankles, stiletto strapped to his calf, and finally the handmade sword on his back.

Pepper stepped over the pile they’d made. “You’re staring,” he said to Jerome.

Jerome looked down at the ground. John grabbed his son’s shoulder. “You sure you don’t want to stay? You don’t have to get involved in all this.”

“I already in.” Jerome shook free. “Far enough in it don’t matter where I go now.” Pepper agreed silently. The boy had as much a right to get off the planet as John or he.

They grouped up and stood at the shuttle’s side. A split appeared in the shiny skin, a man-sized entrance growing to accept them. Pepper walked through.

Across the grass, from the edge of the city, Pepper heard a scream. The Teotl had what they wanted now. Someone was being sacrificed somewhere on the edge of the city.

John looked back at him. “You okay?”

“Keep moving, let’s get this over with.”

The shuttle’s inhabitants swung from cocoons as it gained altitude, while the humans remained warily at the back, shuffled into a corner.

The Teotl were insane to let them into their lair. What new minds were controlling them? They’d lost a certain edge Pepper expected. Maybe the Teotl who had managed to land on Nanagada in the old days had been a particularly nasty sort.

He sighed to himself. Too much gray, not enough black and white for his taste.

They hadn’t tried to kill him yet, though. That was a plus. He began to let the right hemisphere of his brain slip into sleep while he watched the bundles of Teotl inside the craft bounce around, dangling from the current top of the shuttle.

Then he noticed something, like the aftertaste of orange rind on the back of his tongue. Jerome and John leaned against each other, asleep. Peaceful. Out. Something in the air, targeted at them.

Pepper smiled. That was more like it. He closed his opened eye, slowed his breathing, and slipped into an apparent sleep.

Pepper shook John awake. He looked around and gagged on the taste of orange rind.

“Jerome?” John staggered up and looked at Pepper. “What the hell happened? Where’s Jerome?” They weren’t aboard a shuttle.

“Easy, man, we’re okay.” Pepper steadied him. John swayed for a second, unfocused his eyes, and checked the time. It glowed fuzzily in his field of view, laid overtop everything he could see. He’d lost five hours. “Jerome is outside keeping an eye on our hostage.”

“I’ve lost five hours?”

Pepper sighed. “I know.” He wiped his hands off. “They gassed us on the way up and tried to separate us. Would have made for some nice negotiating on their part, having Jerome.”

“What’d you do?”

“Grabbed the first warrior’s arm when he came in to pick us up. I don’t think they’ll try again. Spooked them.” Pepper’s lips quirked, a grin, gone before John even realized it.

“Okay.” John took a deep breath. A whole world trickled in through the edges of his vision. The walls, a polished gray rock of some sort, faded into swirls of bright, gaudy orange and blue. A clear patch glowed hot white, with squiggles of wavy lines through it.

Alien text.

John squinted, then held up a hand and cleared a section of his viewpoint, a window into the real. The drab wall returned. “The data overlays. They’re the same that the Gahe and Maatan use. Standard.” Everywhere John looked he could see and access data tied into the real physical location. It was a breath of fresh air. He hadn’t been in an environment like this for a long time. It felt like coming home.

“Standard?” Pepper asked.

“Very.”

Pepper nodded. “You start querying all this crap and learning it. I want you to be able to fly one of their shuttles.”

“You think we’ll be able to steal one?”

“The moment we get close enough to something we recognize we can run to, a ship, habitat, or a planet, yes.”

Pepper walked out, and Jerome handed him the necklace remote for their hostage. John uncleared his vision and began looking around the room. Did it speak Anglic? It should, the Teotl had encountered them enough. He pinged it. The colors shifted and the wiggles turned into text.

Utility room B50 . He could translate their text and access their public information. And why not? They were standard public data overlays, available to all.

Jerome walked in. “You okay?”

John nodded. “You?”

“Tired. Mouth tasting funny.”

“Orange peels?” John asked.

Jerome frowned and looked at him. “Orange?”

Nanagada didn’t have oranges. John had forgotten. He put a finger to his lips. He hadn’t had an orange in so long he wondered if he even really remembered what oranges tasted like. “A fruit, can’t find it on Nanagada.”

Jerome shifted a bit, indecisive. “You scared, being here in the middle of the Teotl?”

“Of course.” John summoned up a map of the Teotl starship from the public data overlay. It looked like giant, rocky potato. The thing was barely small enough to fit through a wormhole.

Right now it rotated for gravity.

John looked over and smiled. “I’d be insane not to be.”

“I feel sorry for the Teotl, a little bit,” Jerome said. “They ain’t no more. They the last of they kind.”

John looked at his son. As a boy he’d been told bogeyman tales of the Teotl descending from space in the great wars at the start of Nanagadan history. And told that some still stalked around Aztlan, causing trouble for Nanagadans. And particularly, little boys who didn’t behave.

And yet he was still willing to try to wrap his mind around the various facets of the situation.

“You have sympathy for them?” John asked.

“No. But I think I coming to understand them,” Jerome snapped. He looked directly at John, then grinned. “They running from something dangerous too. They scared. They ain’t no gods, they just like all of we.”

A pair of Teotl appeared at the door and pointed at John.

“Jerome…” John stopped at the doorjamb. Bit his lip. “Don’t believe all that just yet. This wouldn’t be the first time we played into their hands.”

He turned around and Jerome shrugged.

“Listen…” Two Teotl flanked John.

“Need move,” they grated at him in simplified Anglic. They smelled of rotting meat, and John grimaced when he noticed the glisten of pus on their joints.

“I want my son to come with us.”

“Now. Move.”

John looked back. “We’ll talk later, Jerome.”

The Teotl led him out into the corridor, and the door slid shut, sealing them off from each other.

They descended deeper into the ship, John’s eyes getting accustomed to the faint dripping, the slippery floors, until they abruptly stepped out into a vast cavern.