The Alien Negotiator

Bastard was sitting behind another wall of quartglass, one that ran from the ceiling to the floor around his desk, probably with some windows he could walk through on the sides. Paranoid, or justly prepared. Mark had never been in a Merka building, let alone their HQ, but he knew they had a habit of killing people who disagreed with them. Hence, the danger rating on the job. Hence, the pay.

Relax, fucking relax Mark. Princess wanted you to relax, and it was important you stay focused when this all went to shit. Think of the stars, instead. Remember the stars, endless, beautiful stars, against the inviting obsidian of the gentle void.

"Taralavra Industries to see you, Kalar," the gecko beside them said.

The praca on the other side of the glass prison waved them in, and the gecko pressed something behind his console, opening the doors into the deadliest place on Fuck'Tarl.

"Greetings, Valamakala Vatalalarama," the praca said. Now that he was this close, Mark could see the subtle curves of the hip and waist highlighted by the reflective suit. A woman. Funny, he'd figured man, considering the reputation of pracas, but apparently that was a stupid guess. Her bone mask hid her emotions, her face, but her bone antennae were rising and falling slowly, and her eyes were blue. Cold, calm, and calculating mood, far as he knew according to praca physiology.

"Kalara Vatalrmlara." The princess made a small bow as she came up to the quartglass-protected desk, while her ensemble of bodyguards stood in various places around the room, facing different directions. "Well protected, I see."

"You can never be too careful." The praca gestured to the bodyguards surrounding the princess. "Expecting violence?"

"Merely a deterrent."

"Come now, we're not humans. No need for such peacocking."

Now where did a royal fuck like this Kalara praca learn what a peacock even fucking was.

"I am here to discuss your unjustly acquisition of the Taralavra Industries West Bay 5."

"Unjust? Do tell."

Vala stepped closer to the glass, and her fellow praca bodyguards came up beside her. "Your troops marched into the building, and, at gunpoint, removed our workers. Sent them home, on threat of death if they did not comply."

"Of course. You did not keep your precious Bay 5 defended."

"We had a truce."

"Did we? I remember no such contract."

"It was a verbal contract between you and the great Travkala."

"Ah yes, Travkala, may he rest peacefully above the clouds."

"... he would have wanted peace between our companies, Kalara." The princess started to pace, slowly, hands folded across her chest, one arm up at the elbow so she could gesture with her hand as she talked. Very ambassadorial, in a way. This girl knew the body language for negotiation; it was similar enough to humans, considering how similar they were to humans, relatively speaking.

And he could see that she was calling out that she knew Kalara was responsible for Travkala's death. Shit. Shit shit. He did his best to not reach for the safety on his weapon.

"Perhaps, but he is gone. Your company's juvenile antics will not go unexploited. It was an opportunity, a business opportunity, and we took it." The bitch waved a hand, dismissing her argument. "This is Frk'Tarlvr, Vala. Money makes the rules here. Understand that we had every reason to kill all that worked at Bay 5, and yet we did not, to avoid this very confrontation you are instigating."

"You disregard the lives of the people you affect in your pursuit of profit and patents."

"Is Taralavra Industries any different? People die due to resources devoured. The fact they die indirectly, rather than directly, does not change that you caused them." Kalar shrugged, folded her arms across her chest, same as Vala, and stared at her. The bone mask of her face didn't hide the glowing of her eyes shining through it, and the hardening color, hints of red coming through what were blue before. "Do not judge us."

Vala walked up to the glass, and slammed a palm against it. Long fingers, thin hands, three fingers and a thumb, wrapped in black gloves. She shouldn't have done that.

A loud siren went off, invisible source but loud enough to pierce helmets. It lasted only a moment, but it was enough to have every member of Merka R56 Industries drawing their rifles or pistols. Same for Vala's troupe, who all pulled their weapons out. Panic mode.

Vala slowly stepped back from the glass, and looked around. There were twice as many Merka mercs in the room as there were her bodyguards, her praca included. In a gunfight, it probably meant she'd die, and all her bodyguards would die, but not before taking down a lot of the enemy with her. Except, they wouldn't be able to take down Kalar, not with that fucking quartglass in the way.

"You have a temper, Vala," Kalar said.

"And you are a ruthless murderer."

"Come now. I've spared your Bay 5, no one died."

"That was Bay 5. What of Dock Gamma 4?"

"That was an unfortunate accident."

Vala's fingers twitched at her side. "Seventy-five praca, five dermites, twenty-two humans, and four trekvar died, because of your itchy trigger finger, Kalara."

"Seventy-five? I am sure it was seventy-six."

"Partakava survived."

"I do not know who that is," Kalar said. Mark didn't believe it though. Fucker's glowing eyes, shining through the bone mask, squinted. Slits.

"Of course you do not." Tweeting a strange, shrill sound, typical angry praca noise, Vala looked back at her bodyguards. Her red eyes brightened into amber, like fire.

He didn't like that.

"He sends his regards." Vala raised her hand, and slammed it against the glass again. When she lowered her hand, a small black disc was stuck to the wall. There was a single second where Vala turned around, putting her back to Kalar, before the world disappeared.

The shockwave rippled the glass like a stone dropping into water. Mark had enough time to realize something was wrong, before the glass shattered, and the force of the explosion sent debris and smoke in all directions. Whatever it was Vala had planted against the quartglass, it caused the explosive force to shoot in a specific direction, Kalara's direction. A hurricane in a room maybe fifty by fifty feet, all thrown Kalara's way. Air, bits of glass, torn metal and ripped up, probably extinct-plant-species desk, all churned into the air, and sent everywhere.

Everything went to hell. Vision, gone. Hearing, almost gone. Reflexes, stunned.

"What the fuck!?" Mark grabbed Vala's arm, and threw her to the ground. Smoke, noise, hollers and screams and chaos. A contained war, with all the misery and death and ear-splitting mayhem to go with it, confined to a single room.

Whatever bomb she used, it let off spectral smoke filled with tiny bits of morasteel, destroying censors, and making AR worthless, including his. It also wrecked the lungs of anyone unlucky enough to breathe it. Everyone's helmets were equipped with auto breathers, a tube that came down to fit snug along the teeth between the lips, complete with a faceguard. Keep the mouth closed, lips sealed, and breathe through that and you're fine. Vala didn't have shit.

He reached down, and threw Vala a second time, toward the door of the room. Praca were light, and he had little trouble getting her some air time, out of the center of the cloud of death dust, and out of the direct line of fire. Much as the smoke blocked much of the light, it didn't block it all, and the muzzle fire of lasers or slugs dotted the smoke, like mini explosions in rapid succession. But hopefully she'd be safe for a few seconds while he tried to save his own fucking life.

When no one can see anything, the first thing they do is start firing blindly at anything moving. Trained soldiers didn't, trained assassins didn't, but bodyguards and security? Poor sods didn't have the training. They hesitated, fired blindly, and made no attempts to move their own bodies to better positions.

Hesitation is defeat.

He threw himself to the floor, and bullets and lasers and everything under the stars flew overhead, tearing through armor, flesh, walls, everything. But not him. On the floor, he had a moment to recognize the different muzzle flashes, and take aim. Ignore the screams of pain and death cries of your fellow idiots-at-arms, and take a second to line up the shots. The geckos and others working for Merka were using weaponry issued by Merka. Seemed Merka had a thing for morasteel chambers and trintilium fuel; made their weapons have a blue tint to the muzzle flash or vent discharge, depending on bullet or laser.

He looked over at Vala beside him. This fucking bitch. She knew this was going to happen. She knew this would turn into a shit show. She knew this was a suicide mission. No wonder she could afford eight fucking D.R.Es.. Fucking damn it.

The door to the room burst open, and four more Merka stormed in, before they were swallowed up by the bomb's spectral smoke. That shit was practically alive with how pervasive it was, and it flooded out into the hall with speed, lured by the metal beyond. As it buried them, the four soldiers opened fire.

None of them noticed the two people on the floor, too busy shooting at the other cuts of color in the spreading smoke.

Lucky him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Can you breathe?" he said. The shadow of colossal buildings buried them in darkness. That was what Platform F459VX was known for, its dark alleys, deep down near the gutter where the poor struggled to survive. It did make it easier to hide from shit, though.

"Y... Yes." Couching and sputtering, she started tweeting and whistling — quietly as least — hoarse sounds. "My lungs will recover quickly. Prava lungs are smaller, with smaller alveoli, and—"

"Uh huh. Got it." Mark's wouldn't have, you bitch. Either she knew all the guards she hired had breathers in their armor, or she didn't care. "You got a safe haven we can get to?"

"From here? No. And the streets will... will be crawling with Merka for four weeks."

"Four weeks specifically?"

"It's... praca business. Rule 143.vii of the Business Conflicts manual."

"You have rules about assassinations?"

"Rules, as in, guidelines that maximize profit. If after four weeks, the assailant is not captured and forced to compensate damages within that time, inter-business relationships can—"

"Yeah yeah, whatever. More stupid Fuck'Tarl shit."

"... Frk'Tarlvr."

He groaned into his breather, and turned to stare at the stupid princess. She was bleeding blue blood from some scrapes, but she'd be fine. He was covered in blood; none of it was his.

"Four weeks? I have a hideout we can get to, but it'll be a week-long trek through the sewers from here."

"Seven days?" She forced herself to stand, and walked over to him, glaring down at him, the glow of her eyes cutting through the bone mask. Red. "You cannot be serious."

"I am, princess. Seven days, underground, old sewers."

"The sewers are dangerous! Many have been overrun by scum for centuries."

Shrugging, he reached down, and started working on an entrance gate, a flat, square of stained metal on the alley street. Entrances into the sewers were used by people on the ground floor all the time; not much surveillance down there made it a great place to sell drugs, or steal them from dealers. Not a place for a praca princess.

"Yeah, just stay near me and I'll keep you alive until we get to the hideout. Merka will follow us down here, no doubt, but I know the sewers well enough. Lot of places to hide. And when we get to my hideaway, we can bide our time, wait out the four weeks, before we stick our nose out." He walked up to her, looked up at her, and removed his breather for the express purpose of exposing his mouth so he could frown at her. "Got a problem with that, princess?"

"I am not a princess."

"Then stop acting like one."

"I... do not act like a princess, mongrel."

Oh this was going to be a lovely vacation.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~One week later~~

"God I hate you," he said.

"I hate you more."

"You don't understand. I don't think your species understands the way humans hate. I hate you with a human's passion."

"I hate you so much, I would dip you into acid and piss on you as you dissolved."

"I hate you so much, I'd hang your skeleton up as a shrine, that I could spit on it every morning, for good luck!" He kicked at a bit of metal, a random pipe or something, and sent it careening down the sewer tunnels. It slammed into some of the pipe tanks that ran along the old, dirty walls of metal, sending ringing echoes through the halls. Bad idea to make noise, but he did not give a shit anymore. "And this stupid fucking planet! What the fuck is this!?" He gestured to the tunnels, the massive pipes of stained metals that lined the walls, and the railing to the side that showed the water flow where sewage was being dumped. "Earth figured out ways to use shit for fertilizer, why the fuck—"

"There are no plants on Frk'Tarlvr! And the recyclers will clean the water—"

"It's fucking disgusting! I can taste—"

"You cannot taste the shit in the water! It has been filtered out!"

God damn it this woman. This fucking, god damn... fucking... woman! Oh he was going to break her neck, break it in twenty places, and throw her into the shit water.

A week. A fucking week, surviving on emergency food pills. A week running around and hiding inside the old tunnel system. A week of having to hide inside fucking maintenance closets together. At this point, he was intimately familiar with the patterns of this pampered rich princess's breathing; half as fast as him. And her breaths didn't have the same wind in a tunnel sound like a human's, but more like, wind against grass, just quiet. Why the fuck did her breathing sound like wind on grass? That made no sense!

You're just fucking annoyed because it's been seven days of hiding inside closets with this woman. Calm down. Her breathing is fine. You're fine. Hell, she's probably fine, you're just upset that—

"Mark, is it possible for you to walk any louder? Your footsteps can wake the dead, and that is impressive, considering Frk'Tarlvr cremates its dead."

Kill her. Oh fucking god kill her. Just shoot her, accept that you won't get paid, and shoot her. No one will know it was you. You can toss the body into the shit stream right beside you, it'll get caught in the water recycler, so damaged that the evidence can't be used to blame you. Do it!

He sighed, grit his teeth, gave her the finger, and kept walking. Or, marching, according to her. And he started putting an little extra weight into each step, so the sound echoed through the tunnels a little louder. Juvenile, but deserved.

"I can't believe you tricked us," he said.

"Trick? It was no trick! Kalara needed to die."

"You hired us to protect you during a deal, not a fucking suicide mission."

The damn stick woman slapped him in the back of his head. With his helmet off, he felt the gloves of her fingers more than he'd like, and this was the fourth time she'd slapped him. Fucking princess.

"You did protect me during a deal. The deal did not go well."

"You knew it wouldn't."

"Of course I knew it wouldn't, but her accepting the deal was not an impossibility. I simply planned for the likelihood that she'd disagree."

"You started a firefight!"

"You agreed to such a possibility, hence the danger rating on your contract."

"People's lives are worth more than a credit!"

"The contract contained the danger rating! I have no guilt for the folly of you and your comrades."

This god damn fucking alien bitch. Kill her, just kill her. But he needed her alive to get paid. Mission successful, if she lived, and that was the only success criteria. She had to live. Maybe it'd be worth it to kill her anyway.

No. Remember the stars. Remember the stars.

"You better fucking pay."

"I am pracalavala. We always settle our debts." She stopped, and put a hand to her chest, above where the reflective dress exposed her sternum.

"You treat money like a religion."

"Do not jest, Mark. I know a little of human history. Your hilariously shortsighted capitalism was your entire planet's religion for thousands of years."

He rolled his eyes, and shoved her. Tall, light, she had to step over quickly to catch her weight under her hand-like feet. Her boots were up to her thigh, but they weren't really boots, more like gloves with long sleeves, for the feet. Ugh, like some sort of monkey with long fingers and long toes.

"The praca economy is so much better? Your fucking ridiculous money practices encourage murder. There are no laws here, literally!"

"Murder is a risk, like all business." She brushed off the shoulders of her jacket that sat open, showing off her long, lithe figure, and the revealing dress underneath it. Christ, he hated that he thought she was hot; for a praca. It'd be so much easier to yell at her if she wasn't wearing a reflective, almost see-through dress with plunging cleavage! What a bitch. "And those who take risks too often end up getting destroyed. I believe humans call it the circle of life?"

"Economics and the circle of life, in the same fucking sentence. Christ."

"Who or what is this Christ you keep mentioning? Ever since we took the sewers, Christ this, Christ this. And sometimes, Christ Almighty. What madness is this that haunts you?"

He choked on a laugh. No, don't laugh, you're too angry to laugh.

"Nevermind, it's just a human phrase."

"You have many."

"More like you have none."

She tweeted a strange, shrill sound, almost a shrieking whistle, before she stomped her foot, and started walking. "Just because you do not understand the pracalavala, does not mean we are without culture, Mark."

"Stop calling me Mark! Name's Mark Tarver. You can call me Tarver, or Mister Tarver! Otherwise, fuck off."

She tweeted another shriek at him; such a weird juxtaposition of tonal quality, and delicate volume. "Then you are to call me by my full name only, Vatalalarama."

"... lala?"

"Vata. Lala. Rama. Philistine."

"Vatalalarama Philistine. Alright."

"No, it is not my last name! No no, you...." She paused, and the color of her eyes changed. Praca eyes were normally pink, red when upset, and blue when being cold, far as he could tell. A few tweets came out of her, tiny, quiet, but without any shrill to them, and her eyes flashed green for a few moments. And he recognized that sound from other praca. That was laughter.

Maybe she found dad humor funny? He was no dad, but dad humor came naturally to any man his age. He'd said it automatically, not because he wanted to.

Did he care if she was laughing? No, fucking course not. But it was a far better sound than those weird, shrill, harsh whistle sounds she made when upset, like some sort of angry parrot. Her laughter was so much nicer on the ears, like a singing cockatiel. He'd never owned the bird, but he had a passing interest in old Earth, so he watched some nature holovids every so often.

If he could keep this god damn woman alive until they found a secure escape point, he'd have to money to visit Earth again. Maybe even meet an agent, start doing trips for people, or shuttle—

"You're doing it again," she said.

"What? Doing what?"

"Staring off into nothing."

"I'm daydreaming."

"About?"

"About a world without you."

She tweeted a laugh, and shook her head, tail flicking left and right behind her a little faster than before. "I doubt it. Come, Mark Tarver, tell me what you are thinking about."

Maybe he shouldn't have tried to be funny for that one split moment, if she was going to get nosy and buddy with him now.

"No one likes living on this planet. Many are trying to get off it, me included." The praca owned the planet. Maybe a few more digs at it would hurt her feelings, too. Good. "Excuse me for wishing for a better life."