Chapter 5: A Highman Night

Please note, there is a brief scene of a nonconsent/drugged young woman who is sexually attacked. This is not in the tags because it is not a focus of the story’s main characters.

The Green Wake lived up to its name. Every surface possible was covered in either green or gold. The effect was a little jarring for Ethan as he slid into a golden chair at an open green table. The deck had dark green tiles with gold trim on the border. The pattern was mirrored on the upper deck. Screens depicting different types of green plants were plastered all over the golden bulkheads above the tables and the golden overhead lights hung from the upper deck.

“Ca’m I get j’ut anything, sug’ha?” a gruff female voice asked him.

He stopped inspecting the picture above his table and looked at the woman standing beside him. “Uh, a menu please?” he asked and she huffed in response. Her short stature, orange complexion, and bright green hair made him think she was a Youmpet. Sometime in the distant past, a geneticist with a god-complex made an entirely new species of sub-humans. He’d hidden his illegal creations on a primitive planet called Umpet Prime, a Rim planet. History had speculated if the geneticist had created the species after a famous movie in the ancient past.

“Here,” the woman grunted out and dropped a single protected sheet on the metal table. She turned and strode off to another table without looking back.

Rolling his eyes, he picked up the menu and looked down the list. Youmpets weren’t known for their kind attitudes towards humans. The restaurant had decent prices so he picked something that vaguely sounded appetizing and waited for the waitress to return. He waited for twenty minutes before she returned and took his order. Knowing the wait would be longer for the food, he pulled out his tablet again and began searching for contracts that he might be able to take. It became very clear how much of a buyer’s market Oanus was. Everything available to be shipped out was at the lowest price possible and almost all of the deals had “non-negotiable terms” written in bold at the top of the contracts.

The station’s main exports were rich minerals, high-end electronic components, armor plating for ships, and fuel. All of the contracts for minerals and high-end electronic components were either way out of his price range or cargo capacity. Buying any armor plating required him to sign onto a shipping or supplier company because the Alliance heavily monitored any ships being built. Transporting fuel cells might be an option but it was a high risk, high reward proposition. He would have to purchase a large number of fuel cells and transport it to a station or colony that didn’t have an already steady supply. Stations didn’t run for long without a lot of power so he could potentially dump a lot of credits into fuel and not see a return for years, selling the fuel cells a few at a time. The risk was that he didn’t have a lot of credits he could throw away and still be able to fly.

While he was surfing the massive amount of information the station provided the food came. The mystery-meat burger tasted perfect and whatever they served for vegetables on the top was also delicious. A sweet and tangy mixture of flavors danced along his tongue with every bite. He continued to surf the net while he ate and tried to go over his options. A sector back the way he’d come was a smaller settlement that traded food stores. He could take the food stores and find an out of the way station to trade with for a small profit. Not for the first time, he considered joining a trading group or messenger service.

A communication on his tablet made him smile. The food he’d purchased had been dropped off at his hangar and the fuel he’d purchased to restock had been dropped off as well. He’d missed another message from Helen while he was trying to find a contract. She asked if he’d found her present for him yet. Rolling his eyes, he debated lying and telling her he hadn’t but the waitress came back with the tab. He did his best to ignore the Youmpets’ glare and tipped appropriately despite the poor service. When she snatched the ticket back from him and walked away, he sighed and got up from the table. A small gasp made him look up and the diminutive woman rounded on him, halfway to the kitchen.

“J’ut not stiff yip?” she questioned, looking between him and the tab in her hand.

“Just because hate goes one way, doesn’t mean I bare you or your people ill will,” Ethan answered in a soft voice and walked out of the restaurant. The food was good, but he wasn’t sure he’d be returning. A shop across the road from the restaurant made him stop short. His feet were moving across the street and his fingers itched to look at the new technology in the shop. A scream came from behind him and he whirled around, eyes scanning the area.

A Rhodaron woman was flopping on the deck like she was having a seizure. Her tail was waving back and forth and her forked tongue was flapping around inside her open mouth. Her companion had grabbed a human man in his claws and was in the process of ripping the man’s arm off. A long stun rod, extended and sparking, was in the man’s hand. The black jumpsuit and mask made the human look like an assassin from a holo-vid, but his screams of pain were all too real. Realizing he was standing in the street, he jumped back to the walk. A little farther down from the confrontation, he heard a loud crack followed by an inhuman bellow of rage. A thought struck him like he’d been hit by the stun baton.

Ducking out of the crowd, he ran down a side corridor, between two buildings, and pulled out his tablet. Quickly bringing up the stations warrant list, he found what he’d hoped he wouldn’t see. Helen and Viv Lane were wanted for conspiracy to commit murder and aiding and abetting an escaped slave. He brought up Helen’s contact information and quickly jammed a finger over the call button.

“Hey Ethan, I was beginning,” Helen’s voice came in over the speaker but Ethan cut her off.

“Pack your things, you’ve got a warrant out on you and someone tried to attack me. Get out of the hotel now! We’ll meet once you get out,” he ordered and ended the call.

Being cooped up on a ship for days on end didn’t allow him the luxury of being in his topmost shape. While his natural metabolism had kept him from being overweight, he didn’t have a lot of built-up muscle. Pulling up the schematic of the station, he consulted it for a moment before taking off towards the hotel. While he fast-walked, he looked over the warrant list to see if he appeared on a warrant as well. When nothing came up under his assumed name, he checked again under his real name. He breathed out a sigh of relief when he realized it had come up clean as well.

Stopping just inside a shop, he took stock of what he knew. A group of people wanted Helen and Viv for reasons unknown. They had contacts in the shipping companies, Alliance military, and used bounty hunters. They weren’t afraid of attacking anyone they thought would be in their way and had acted mostly in the shadows. If the warrants were real, he’d eat his boot. Glancing around the shop he’d stopped in, he found a box of assorted clothes. The Highman’s Tale sold brightly colored clothing of all sizes and shapes along with an assortment of cosmetics.

Grinning wide, he looked through the first couple of boxes for something that might help flesh out his plan. His grin grew when he found a wide-brimmed hat that sparkled in the light and a fake full gray beard. He scooped up the items and made his way through the other bins. After paying the owner a hundred credits, he stuffed his purchases into the shopping bag and ducked out of the store. It was next to impossible to tell if anyone was following him with all the people, but he’d assumed someone else would pick up where the other bounty hunter had failed. After he’d gone a little farther towards the hotel, he spotted a public restroom.

Ducking inside, he looked around the dirty bathroom and tried to bite back the bile that had risen in his throat. Three minutes later he emerged from the bathroom looking like an old man in a brightly patched jumpsuit. Highmen were joke tellers, artists, and entertainers that moved from place to place. The ancient society shared their laughter with kings and queens, political figures, inmates, and children at their birthday parties. No one was too poor to not be seen by a Highman. The brightly sparkling hat he wore drew gasps and giggles from some of the younger children as he passed. His idea and hope for survival for him and the women would be to disappear in plain sight.

He didn’t run as he made his way towards the hotel, he took his time. He stopped and bowed or danced for groups of children that ran by to greet him. The normal hatred between one species or another was ignored as he told a joke or danced his silliest dance. Youtret and Hingel children stood shoulder to shoulder while he danced, smiles on their reptilian faces. When the crowd of children allowed him to pass, he checked his tablet and noticed he’d missed messages from Helen. The first was for an explanation, the next was that they were leaving, and the last was they had gotten out of the building but had men chasing them.

Grimacing, he tried to plan the next step before shooting a message to Helen to make their way towards the docks. Thinking fast, he tried to imagine the direction they’d leave from the hotel and hoped they hadn’t just run down the main street. If they had, they might be caught quickly. He sent another message to get off the main street if they hadn’t already and try and get one street over while still heading for the docks. Wishing he could track their movements a new idea struck him. He called Helen and hoped she’d pick up.

“Little busy, what do you need,” Helen’s labored voice asked.

“Turn on your camera and aim it in front of you. I need an idea of where you are so we can meet,” he ordered.

“Fine,” Helen huffed out and the screen flicked on and swung around to show the street.

Looking for landmarks as quickly as possible, he pulled up the station map and tried to locate his friends. They were indeed on the main street but had moved off a minute after starting the call with Ethan. Looking down the map, he looked for a place they could meet without drawing attention to their pursuers and hopefully have a way to disappear. A large arcade caught his eye and he smiled. The flashing lights, large groups of people, and the propensity of the patrons to wear odd clothing would give them a place to hide and disappear.

“The Sundrop Arcade will come up on your right fairly soon. Don’t get caught before then. I’ll meet you inside, just head for the back of the arcade,” he ordered and ended the call without letting her respond.

He moved with a much quicker step as he turned off the side street he was on and crossed over the main street, careful of moving vehicles. The sheer mass of people made it easy to blend in, but he couldn’t get anywhere at a run. Once he got on Red Moon street, he turned left and made for the arcade with as much speed as he could manage. The women would arrive a few minutes after him and he needed to get their clothes ready. The arcade was just as he’d hoped, packed with people and it had lots of flashing lights. People of all ages and species played the various games that were scattered through the large building. Stepping past a group of teenagers, arguing who was the better shooter, he found a dark spot to watch the door from. Looking in the bags, he did his best to separate the other purchases he’d made into two piles, one for Helen and the other for Viv.

A familiar stacked redhead and a smaller blonde appeared in the doorway, dragging suitcases behind them. Viv led the way towards the back of the arcade, holding Helen’s hand, and Ethan followed behind them. A group of five darkly dressed figures appeared in the door, looking left and right. He knew they were the ones trying to catch the women. Picking up his speed, he grabbed Helen and Viv’s arms and all but pulled them into a corner beside a popular racing game. A human brunette girl was on her knees in the dark, bobbing up and down on the crotch of a Fentrion. The massive wolf species was known to have pheromones that drove human women into a trance.

Helen moved faster than Ethan. A blaster appeared in her hands, aimed at the much larger species’ head. “Let the girl go and get your rocks off elsewhere,” she ordered in a hard voice. “I will shoot you and it’ll bet security will let me off for putting a rapist scum like you down,” she growled out, blaster shaking.

“Fine, human woman, but I will remember this. I was so close and you’ve ruined it for me,” the Fentrion replied with a deep-throated rumble. He pushed the brunette off his crotch and tucked his massive cock into his jumpsuit. Without a word, he turned and left the human girl, who looked around confused.

She couldn’t have been much older than a teenager and Ethan wanted to go after the rapist to shoot him. Shaking his head, he realized why they were there and that they had little time. “Quickly, put these on,” he ordered and shoved the two bundles of clothes into Helen and Viv’s arms.

“Uh, what? How do I fit into this,” Viv asked, holding up an enormous yellow jumpsuit.

“Ugh, switch bundles,” Ethan muttered and looked out from behind the game station they were hiding behind. He spotted the dark figure, mask plainly visible in the flashing lights, looking around at all the patrons. “Hurry up,” he called over his shoulder.

“You want me to wear a fat jumpsuit,” Helen accused, disgust tinting her voice.

“Sorry, Helen, but you have enormous breasts. The only way to hide them is to make them disappear. They are too big to wrap up so I had to improvise,” he replied, exasperated at her reluctance to put the jumpsuit on.

“I didn’t think you’d noticed before. You wear that visor so much I can never see where your eyes are,” she shot back.

Ethan stood, shocked. He’d completely forgotten about the visor, so use to it being on his face, that he forgot to take it off. Scrambling, he took off his visor and stuffed it into a pocket of the patched jumpsuit. His eyes had to adjust to the flashing lights. When he turned back, Helen was struggling into the large yellow jumpsuit, keeping her gray one on and Viv had stripped down to her bra and panties to put on her bright red one. He hadn’t known either of their sizes and hoped everything would fit.

Helen’s suit was a large yellow blob and they had to stuff his jumpsuit around her stomach to help it look more real. Her body, normally voluptuous, was now closer to a round ball. Viv’s suit was a little small, fitting to her form tighter than anything he’d seen her in but it helped her look different. The wigs he’d purchased were both black rats nest hairdos. Helen’s eyes promised him a brutal murder in the future but Viv’s was a mixture of excitement and amusement.

“Here’s the plan, we stay here for a little while until they get bored or think you’ve given them the slip. You look different enough that you could blend in easily with the crowd and no one would be the wiser. Turn off your DataLinks in case they are tracking it. Go have fun and I’ll collect you in a little bit. Don’t stick next to each other but stay within sight of one another,” he ordered and pushed past them to help the brunette.

Her dark eyes looked glazed over and he knew she’d been hit by the bastard’s pheromones. Taking her hand, she stood without resistance and he walked her gently towards the exit. A dark figure stopped him with a hand on his chest.

“Where do you think you’re going, Highman,” the dark figure’s distorted voice asked him.

“The girl’s been raped by a Fentrion. Move Yibon-Akia look-alike,” he wheezed out in his best old man voice. A group of teens who had been standing nearby burst out laughing. Yibon-Akia was an action star for a bunch of poorly made holo-vids. His name became a joke when all the children dressed up in the costume he wore in the film and did the stunts better than the actor did.

“Move it then,” the bounty hunter ordered and pushed on Ethan’s chest.

Ethan allowed himself to fall, careful to let go of the girl’s hand so she wouldn’t fall with him. “HEY! YOU DON’T HURT A HIIIIGHMEN!” the large Youtret youth hissed out and attacked. One moment the mountainous youth was standing with his friends and the next he was sending the bounty hunter crashing into the bulkhead.