Tobias Buckell - Ragamuffin

Metztli held up a tentacle. “Wait.” It closed its eyes. “Okay, it will be allowed.”

Pepper face forward. “Malik, we can close and reopen wormholes with it, if you capture it. Malik, I don’t know what numbers you have for an attack, but get every ship you can over here.”

“Pepper…” Malik looked down. “Three century I ain’t seen you. You asking me to walk into the heart of a Teotl megaship like this?”

“Yes.” Pepper stared at him.

Malik shook his head. “You the big man. I go trust you on this. But only because it’s you, you hear? And Monifa of the Pride go skin me.”

“Get the ships over here,” Pepper said. “Get the captains over here for a grounation and board us. There is a docking bay at the center of the forward axis we came in at.” It was zero g, and they weren’t accelerating.

“Anything else?”

“Bring me guns,” Pepper said. “Lots of guns.”

Malik spread his hands in an “of course” gesture.

“And watch out for the Azteca, they’re probably going to be somewhat jumpy,” Pepper said.

“Azteca?” Malik asked. “What the hell you talking about?”

“We’ll explain when you get aboard,” Pepper said.

Metztli watched the curtain of goop fade to translucence. “I live to see the end of my race.”

“No.” Pepper looked at the alien “I called a grounation. Our captains will be there, or at least near enough to talk and to discuss what happens next. We need your help with your technology, and you’ll have a chance to speak your piece to them all. Take good advantage of it, but realize most of these ship captains will be somewhat antagonistic. Your cousins waged war on them, and there are many who will remember it.”

“Thank you,” Metztli said.

There was no favor being done. Pepper intended to own the Teotl craft now. The Teotl had nothing but their technology to stand on for bargaining.

“So now we should make our way out to the docking bays, meet the captains there,” Pepper said.

“We need to get Xippilli on a stretcher of some sort,” John said. “If we can get him aboard one of the ships, we can probably still save him.”

Ah, Jerome, Pepper thought, letting himself shake his head. A man, and yet still not quite in control of the mess in his own head.

He couldn’t stop thinking of Jerome as the young kid he’d first met at carnival and rescued from the Azteca so long ago.

Jerome helped Pepper strap Xippilli onto a length of sturdy, weblike material that stiffened into a stretcher. Metztli had one of the dangerous spiked-skin Teotl deliver it, and with a smile Pepper kept his rifle trained on the Teotl until it left.

“Metztli.” Pepper held up the button in his hand. “Your head if you play with me on this trip to the docking bays.”

“No tricks. Our lives are in your hands.”

Xippilli groaned as John and Jerome lifted him up, and Pepper walked ahead behind Metztli and his snaillike chair.

The odd procession left the control room for the corridors, taking tunnels known to be secure and airtight.

It took the better part of a slow hour to get to the elevators leading to the bays. They all piled in, and Jerome relaxed.

In the tunnels he’d been waiting for an attack. By Azteca under Teotl control, or by one of the dangerous Teotl.

Now it was just Metztli, still collared.

And the dying man. Jerome knelt and checked the cloth tied down across Xippilli’s stomach.

What a horrible thing.

His stomach flip-flopped as he felt himself grow lighter. Jerome looked around the elevator, windowless and claustrophobic. “I feel funny,” he said.

“We’re getting to the center of the nest,” Metztli explained. “Closer to the center, the spin doesn’t create gravity. We float.”

“Ah.”

And as Metztli predicted, Jerome found himself bouncing off the floor and feeling dizzy.

Globules of blood broke free from Xippilli’s bandages and floated in the air between them all.

“They actually go be able to help him?” Jerome asked again. “Maybe,” John said. “Maybe.”

Metztli ripped his collar off so quicky Jerome didn’t realize what had happened. Pepper spun and kicked off the roof, dodging Metztli’s attempt to place the collar around Pepper’s neck.

“Damn it.” John pulled a pistol free from its holster, but in the close quarters Metztli had him beat, a free tentacle snapping out to grab the gun.

Jerome shrank back, pulling Xippilli’s stretcher with him and trying not to bounce off the wall toward them as he did so.

Metztli filled the whole center of the elevator, tentacles writhing as Pepper tried to overpower it. “If you keep struggling, the gold tips contain neurotoxins deadly to humans, and I will use them,” Metztli hissed. “Now that I finally have freedom, I can act to better serve my kind. Do not forget our desperation today.”

Everyone froze. Metztli’s gold-tipped tentacles hovered a hair’s breadth away from all their necks.

“I always wondered why tentacles,” Pepper said.

“Zero-gravity self-defense is more practical in this physical form,” Metztli said.

“More to you than I suspected.” Pepper looked somewhat bemused.

“Different forms for different purposes,” Metztli whispered. “I need you all under my control, to bargain with. Your leaders might choose to save you and leave us for dead. I cannot watch my kind die. Your life seems valuable to these humans we’ve encountered.”

“That’s fair. I understand you.” Pepper kept his hands out. The two stared at each other. Jerome tensed. This would be it.

The elevator shuddered to a stop.

“Get out,” Metztli ordered. Jerome looked back and forth at the two, then started to try to move the stretcher out. Metztli twisted its torso and looked at Jerome. “No, leave him.”

Jerome turned back. “We can’t. He dying.”

“He’s useless and a waste of resources. We don’t need it to control the Azteca, leave the body.”

“No.” Jerome wrapped his arms around the stretcher. He’d shot the man. That was a beef between humans. The aliens would not be doing any killing, they did not rule everyone as they thought.

Metztli snapped a tentacle in Xippilli’s direction and Jerome flinched.

“Oh, shit,” John said.

Jerome looked down. A small puncture in Xippilli’s neck released a tiny pinprick of blood into the air.

“No, no.” Jerome twisted around and stared at Metztli. “I don’t understand.”

“Jerome.” Pepper shook his head. “Don’t.”

Jerome had thought he’d started to understand the Teotl somewhat. Understand what horror they’d faced fleeing through the wormhole. Sympathized.

But now Jerome felt anger bubble. He shoved the stretcher forward at Metztli, bracing his feet on the doorjambs. Creatures. Foul, disgusting creatures. Manipulative killers.

“There has to be a cure,” Jerome shouted, as Metztli wrapped its tentacles around Xippilli and rotated in the air, throwing Xippilli and the stretcher against the wall and flying into Jerome while dragging Pepper along in the air like a puppet.

The impact knocked the air out of Jerome.

Metztli wrapped a tentacle around Jerome’s neck while holding onto the doorjamb with another tentacle for leverage.

“Jerome, do not do anything,” John said.

Jerome hung in the air with Pepper, breathing hard. They always looked out for him. His dad and Pepper. Even risking their lives for his mistakes.

Now Pepper was a hostage and at risk, and if the creature could kill Xippilli as casually as it had, it might well kill John for being not as valuable as Pepper.

It was time for Jerome to create an opportunity. Time to right things.