Page 53 of Xel: Broken Bond
“I’ll let you know when I have more information,” Aiden said, completely ducking the question. “I’ve got to go, but there should be a ship landing in your back paddock any moment now. Good luck, and I’ll talk to you later.”
He hung up before I could say anything more, and I rolled my eyes. Bloody evasive bastard. “All right, then, let’s go meet this guy,” I said, glancing at Rohinavon. “Anything important we should know about him before we do?”
She shrugged. “He’s a smuggler. So he might mention a few illegal activities that you should just overlook. But aside from that, no.”
“Fair enough. Xel, you don’t have to come, but you’re welcome to if you want to.” Despite Rohinavon’s reassurances, I honestly wasn’t sure how much of a threat this guy was going topose, so I felt happier giving Xel the option, rather than ordering him to come.
“I’ll come with you,” he said, as I’d assumed he would.
I hadn’t heard the engines of any ship yet, so I was assuming the smuggler hadn’t quite arrived. But when we got to the back paddock, I found, to my complete shock, that there was now a large cluster of ‘bushes’ sitting in the middle of the paddock. To someone who didn’t know the property, the mass would have looked completely natural, and the only reason I knew it wasn’t was because I was damn sure that yesterday, the paddock had contained nothing but long grass.
“That’s quite the disguise,” I said to Rohinavon, as we came to a stop at the edge of the paddock. “Can I assume he has multiple disguises for the ship?”
She nodded, looking rather pleased. “Visual, infra-red, mirror panel and radio-wave cloaking. Unless you already know it’s there, it’s pretty much indetectable.”
“What about the smuggler himself?”
She grinned. “Let’s go meet him.” She led the way towards the ship, stopping a few metres back from it. “Yohana! Come out,” she called loudly. “It’s Rohinavon. These are my friends. They want to talk to you about my ideas.”
There was no response from the ship. “So he already knows about what you want to do, then?” I asked, while we waited. Perhaps he was doing some sort of security sweep on us?
“I mentioned it in passing,” Rohinavon said. “More as a fantasy than as a realistic plan. But he thought it was interesting. He transports the babies to Eumad, but he’s not generally in favour of the slave trade as a whole. It was something of a surprise to find that most smugglers have their own set of ethics. It’s not as simple as just being willing to trade anything at all for a handful of credits.”
The ship remained eerily silent… and then I heard a faint click behind us. I froze, at the same time as Xel glanced my way, his eyes wide.
“Turn around,” a husky voice said, and I did so, slowly, keeping my hands were he could see them. Behind us stood a creature that I immediately recognised as an Anicrian male. They were a small species, standing about four feet tall, and this one was covered in short, orange-and-white striped fur. He had a long tail and two nubs on his head that weren’t quite developed enough to be called horns. The females of their species were very similar, but without the protrusions on their heads. And in his hand, he held a pulse projector.
“Vonnie, please step away from the human and his pet,” the man said, not taking his eyes off us.
“They’re no threat to you,” Rohinavon said, though she did take a couple of steps away from us. “We just want to talk.”
“Xel isn’t a pet,” I told him firmly, not giving a shit whether or not that pissed him off. “I inherited him from his previous owner and I consider him to be a member of my family.” If we were going to be talking about dismantling the slave trade, it wasn’t a surprise to find that he objected to there being dimari here. Rohinavon had had much the same reaction at first.
“That’s cute,” the man said, with clear disinterest. “Vonnie? You want me to take you somewhere else? Some military boffin contacted me, and you know I never trust the military.”
“No, I honestly believe they mean to help,” Rohinavon said. “I’m not in danger here.”
“I’ll believe that once we’re both safely locked inside my ship,” the man said, and I realised then just how deep his distrust went.
“Neither of us are armed,” I told him, holding my hands out wider in a gesture of peace. “We’re not holding her against her will.”
“Then you won’t object to her leaving, will you,” the man said.
Rohinavon sighed, but she started moving slowly towards the ship. “I won’t be long,” she told me. “Let me just sort this out with Yohana.”
“You know, if you did want to leave, we wouldn’t stop you,” I told her. Perhaps this was all some elaborate charade, and she really was trying to leave? “We genuinely want to help you.”
“I know,” she agreed, her face giving nothing away. “Please, just let me sort this out.”
A small ramp appeared out of the side of one of the ‘trees’, and they both climbed inside, the ramp disappearing a moment later. I waited, wondering whether we were going to have to explain to Aiden that our visitor had bailed before we could even get the project started.
“My being here is a problem,” Xel surmised, but I jumped in before he could start offering to leave, or any other ridiculous solution to the situation.
“No, it’s not,” I told him. “You have every right to be here, and if other species want to work with the Alliance, they’re going to have to learn to deal with a few dimari being around. A simple conversation would solve this problem, rather than everyone jumping to conclusions.”
Xel nodded, a small, shy smile on his face. “Thank you, sir,” he said, and I felt a warm glow at that. He’d defended me against unkind remarks in the past, so it was the least I could do to make sure he felt welcome now.
After a minute or two of silence, the ramp suddenly appeared again, and Rohinavon led the way back down onto the ground.