Earth Husbands are Odd (Earth Fathers #2) - Lyn Gala Page 0,50

alien mass transit. There were concentric rings that vanished out of the narrow line of sight the window offered. At each of those rings, the nature of the city changed. Max's tower prison faced the direction of the spaceport, which was outside those rings.

In fact, the outermost ring was broken, leaving a gap for the spaceport and crowded marketplace of traders. Maybe the rest of the city didn't want to make it too easy for the trash that came in with the ships to get to their core community.

And maybe Max was putting human motives onto aliens, something which never ended well. For example, he had assumed that Carrington would want access to the various programs Max could sell her. So he had assumed it would be counterproductive for her to report to the authorities that his programs were beyond the scope of human capability. Sure, he thought blackmail was possible, but not this counterproductive involvement of the authorities when the program hadn’t sold yet. Or maybe Carrington and Bundy were in it together and they were going to steal the program.

Max sat on the edge of the world’s narrowest bunk and dropped his head into his hands. He was so screwed. The only way into the cell was an elevator, there were no door controls or access panels, and even if his captors had left the wiring out for him to poke around in, he didn’t know how to hot wire an alien door. The window was equally worthless as an escape route.

It meant he was stuck. All he could do was figure out a plan to minimize the danger to the rest of his family. And he would do that as soon as he knew what the danger was. He now knew why Hannibal Smith and Nate Ford avoided personal relationships. Putting others in danger was so much harder than walking into it himself. Well that and the writers had a bad habit of killing all the women who got too close to a lead in a male-dominated series, but Max was fairly sure that had more to do with the general suckiness of American culture than the inherent danger of running a con and being in love.

The door set into the long wall of his cell beeped, and Max turned toward it. Either aliens weren’t worried about elevator breakdowns, or they didn't give a shit if prisoners were stranded during a fire. Then again, given how high up they were, having access to a stairway wouldn't be much of an improvement.

The door opened and Max only realized he had dropped into a fighting stance when he let his hands fall to his sides. Kohei walked through the door. Kohei. Yep, those were Kohei’s giant freckles and his streaks of mint-green.

“What are you doing here?”

“I come to see you, Max Father,” Kohei said. Oh thank god, the fancy translator was turned on.

“Is the family safe?”

“Stupid James wants to shoot stupid people.”

“Well don’t let him!” Fuck. Max was going to give that idiot a tongue-lashing to be the end of all parental tongue-lashings if he even tried taking on an entire fucking planet of enemies.

“Rick Father locked controls and put all weapons away. Xander called him stupid.”

“Maybe don’t call him ‘stupid’ to his face,” Max suggested. He knew when his dad called his ideas dumb, he tended to double down on whatever dumb-ass plan he was working on.

Kohei came the rest of the way into the room and the door closed. With one of the kids in the middle, Max couldn’t even rush the door. Kohei continued. “I promised to listen if stupid people don’t stop seeking to advance their own stupidity.”

Max snorted. The problem was that the aliens weren’t actually stupid. They hadn’t fallen for Max’s con. “What are they charging me with?” Once Max knew he could start to figure out how to jack himself out of this hole, or he could resign himself to it.

“Max Father, they do not accuse you of any crime.”

“Really? This feels a lot like a prison cell.” Max gestured to the room as a whole.

“I have seen Earth prison cells. This does not appear equivalent.” Kohei slid toward the window. “This has much better view.”

Max's children were annoyingly logical. “Yes, but this also has a locked door.”

“Most doors are locked against people walking where walking is unwise.”

Max frowned. Maybe he wasn’t as screwed as he’d thought. But... “They brought me here using guards with guns.”

Kohei’s tentacles curled up a bit, and