was thinking too hard about all of this and she just needed to accept her position now. It wouldn’t be forever.
With that in mind, she took a new look at the clothes on the racks, but nothing stood out. This time it had nothing to do with the thought of spending another person’s money. She just preferred... sleeker items. She wasn’t flowy.
Luci stood at the edge of the stall and was so intent on the clothes that she didn’t notice an alien sidling up beside her. Lena did. She still felt responsible for keeping the younger girl safe, and more than a decade in law enforcement didn’t just disappear because of one tiny alien abduction.
She stepped closer, watching to see what was going to happen. Maybe the Zulir was just looking at the clothes like Luci, but she didn’t like the look of the guy. Trouble looked like trouble no matter the planet.
And when he bumped into Luci and took off walking swiftly, she was sure something was up.
“Mmmph!” Luci brushed against the rack before sorting herself. “Rude!” she called toward the retreating form.
She wasn’t hurt. But still... “Do you have your wallet?” Lena asked. They’d each been given one to hold their credit chips and communicators.
“It’s right...” Luci trailed off and patted her back pocket. “I thought I...” Then she looked at the ground as if it must have fallen.
Son of a bitch.
Lena took off running. That lowlife couldn’t have gotten far.
The market hadn’t seemed so packed earlier, but now she dodged carts and parents and children, doing her best not to slam into anyone while trying to keep up. She caught a hint of dark fabric and was certain it was the person who’d grabbed Luci’s wallet.
She sped up.
Someone yelled as she barreled around them and made them fall over, but Lena didn’t waste time calling out an apology.
She’d dodged through two more stalls and passed through a shop before she realized she was being followed. She hadn’t been moving for long, but her lungs heaved, long out of practice that came from daily sprints. She didn’t see the stupid thief, but she didn’t want to give up.
And she would have kept running if she hadn’t heard an authoritative voice yell, “Freeze or be frozen!”
A cop sounded like a cop no matter the planet, too.
Lena froze, held her hands up, and slowly turned. Two Synnrs in patrol uniforms stood tall, one with her wings out and another leveling a blaster right at Lena’s back. Wonderful. “A thief took my friend’s wallet,” she explained. “I was trying to find him.”
“Damaging property and disturbing the peace are crimes, newcomer,” the winged guard said. And she put enough emphasis on the word newcomer that Lena knew she wasn’t supposed to like it. The Synnrs were more accepting of humans than Apsyns, but that didn’t mean prejudice was non-existent. And Lena did not want to find out how bad things could get.
She kept quiet. Neither of the guards seemed interested in going after the thief, and continuing to talk would only make things worse.
“Well?” the female guard demanded. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
Lena mulled her choices. Say nothing, admit to nothing, piss the cops off? Or apologize and hope they didn’t take it as a confession? She’d know what to do back home, but in Osais she didn’t know anything. “I was trying to help my friend,” she finally said.
The cop snorted. “You’re coming with us.”
Lena didn’t fight them. It was useless. Arrested by aliens. How had her life come to this?
THE MUNICIPAL STATION in downtown Osais was the last place Solan wanted to be. It was full to the brim of people trying to go through the necessary bureaucracy to go about their daily lives and the criminals and troublemakers the patrols pulled off the streets. Patrols he knew were on high alert after a bomb had destroyed part of the city less than a month ago.
Apsyns.
War was on the horizon. The mounting threat had sent him to live for months on the Apsyn-controlled planet of Kilrym. He’d gotten used to things there. Not Apsyn life, not their hatred for anything non-Zulir and their sickening sense of superiority over everyone else. But he’d been able to just be Solan the soldier, relied upon by his crew for his skills.
And no family obligations.
Now he had a sheaf of paperwork in his hands that needed to be filed before his brother could get married and there would be even more