Her most enjoyable service call so far was a shuttle from none other than the Winged Hussars, one of the Human Four Horsemen. The most famous merc units on the planet, the Horsemen were descended from the only four merc units to come back alive from the first time Humans went to space. She liked the Hussars the best because they were a space navy unit—and a dardy one at that!
The other bonus was the Hussars had aliens in their unit. Lots of them. The pilot of the shuttle was a reptilian elSha, and its copilot was a Human woman. Not only did they get along, but from their interaction, they seemed to be the best of friends. The shuttle was a unique design proprietary to the Hussars. A big delta wing design with foldable canards, it also had shields and dual ventral/dorsal laser arrays. They’d delayed leaving almost an hour to give Ripley a personal tour.
“You grew up on Earth,” the copilot asked, “didn’t you?”
Ripley had been schooled by her parents to volunteer as little as possible to outsiders about her and her siblings. The woman had long, blonde hair almost the same shade as Ripley’s fur. She looked stunning in her black coverall uniform with the blue stripes down the arms and legs that denoted a pilot. “Yes,” she admitted. “My parents saved us on a contract.”
“Wow,” the woman said. “I’m Lieutenant Jane Kowalczy. My family helped found the Hussars.”
“So you own it?”
Jane laughed. “No,” she said. “The Cromwells own it.”
“How does that work?”
“It’s complicated,” Jane said, then changed the subject. “One of the Egleesius captains is a Zuul, you know. Captain Drizz of Nuckelavee. He’s a pretty cool guy.”
“Are there a lot of Zuul in the Winged Hussars?”
“I don’t know how many,” she said. “Hold on.” She closed her eyes, and Ripley realized she had pinplants. “Personnel records say 48 Zuul. That’s not a lot. I know many are in security and the marines, though. Pegasus had a whole Zuul platoon, but they were killed in the war.”
Ripley was sad to see Jane go, and she wondered what it would be like to sign up with the Winged Hussars and fly away into space with them. They wouldn’t care she wasn’t Human, and might not even care she hadn’t been raised by Zuul. Sonya was always worried they were trapped between two worlds. Ripley tried not to let it get to her. Still, her tail hung low as the Hussars’ ship took off.
* * *
Shadow shook sweat from his head and sighed. The afternoon heat was higher than normal near Brisbane. It didn’t help that every time a shuttle came in, it sent blasts of rocket exhaust everywhere. He straddled a truss on the new cafeteria’s roof, a hammer in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. He could see a pair of the local kids’ dogs under a shelter near the motor pool. He felt for the primitive animals; not being able to sweat properly must suck.
Dogs were a problem for him and his brothers. Their parents hadn’t been able to ban the animals from Silent Night’s compound, though Shadow suspected Alan had tried. The simple truth was Zuul looked a lot like German Shepherds, at least in the general design in their heads. Of course, the similarity ended there. For one, Zuul had reversed knees. Shadow considered it a common-sense design; it allowed his people to leap, turn, and accelerate in ways no Human could match.
Their internal physiology was close enough to Humans. Most mammalians in the galaxy were as well. Heart, liver, lungs, something like kidneys, a lymphoid system, etc. He’d read a lot about it in school. Earth was an interesting planet—only a member of the Galactic Union for a century, however they’d been close to colonizing their star system without Union tech. So they’d written a lot about how many races resembled terrestrial life so closely.
Shadow wasn’t much of a study on many subjects. He wasn’t called to one thing or another like his brothers and sisters—his calling was more transcendental. However, he did like biology to some degree, and he had to agree with the scientists. It was interesting that he could eat the food on Earth just fine—there were plenty of things he and his siblings could eat that would give a Human worse than a gut-ache. In fact, any race in the galaxy that couldn’t find something to live off of on Earth—meat, vegetable, or other—would be considered an exotic.
Either way, he didn’t hate dogs on Earth. He didn’t like them, either. Usually he and his siblings tended to cause a dog to go berko. Their parents had a video of Shadow and the other pups trying to engage a company member’s Great Dane in play. Reportedly the dog had never been the same until its dying day.
The real problem was every bloody Human who encountered him and his siblings tended to treat them like dogs. Talking down to them was common. Sonya was the worst at dealing with it, and Rex’s response was to crack the shits. Humans couldn’t usually tell when Sonya was moping, but it was easy to tell when Rex started snarling—and he was a big bloody Zuul.
Shadow clipped the water bottle to his tool belt, grabbed the pneumatic nail gun, and went back to work. Bang, bang, bang, check to be sure the runner was secured, scoot down, nail again. As long as he kept up a routine, it was good, mindless work, which let him think about the
