He goes to leave Shaine’s place but stops. He goes and looks for food, anything that won’t spoil. He doesn’t find much. A couple of sleeves of crackers. A tin of dried meat. He grabs both and tucks them into the pockets on the inside of his cloak.
It’s nearly black out, the only light is coming from the spaced out lamps hanging from wires high above the street. They cast wide pools of light, and Nixon hustles through the spots that aren’t lit at all. In between is a special kind of black that he’s never gotten used to. He doesn’t like the mystery of the dark. There’s too much unknown, and he’s spent all of his adult life trying to avoid what’s out there when you can’t see.
Out there. Where you can’t see. That’s where he’s headed. He looks to the sky and the multitudes upon multitudes of stars.
How is there even room for a ship between all of them?
He hasn’t piloted these kinds of ships in a long time. Hasn’t been out among the stars where every direction is a possibility. Hasn’t been jammed up with opportunity, so thoroughly confused by the fact that any direction is an option that you just fly straight and fly far.
He flips the card over and over in his fingers. He rubs a thumb across the raised lettering of the codes. He presses the hard edges into the flesh at bottom of his palm.
He’s been walking a half hour now, and warehouses stretch out in front of him on either side of the street. These places are shut down. Empty. So he shouldn’t hear voices, but he does. And these aren’t human voices. These are grunts. Growls. These are Uzeks.
The hand that’s resting on the blaster now has two fingers wrapped around the trigger.
Just because these are Uzeks doesn’t mean they are associated with Uzel. Uzeks come in a variety of flavors, so there’s not a reason to panic. Not yet.
More grunting and snorting coming from the shadowy spaces between the buildings. Nixon picks up his pace and he pulls the blaster free from his waistband. He pulls the cloak up from the ground with his other hand to keep it out from under his feet if he needs to run.
Footsteps crunch behind him, and, in front of him, the lights from the shipyard start to glow. He’s still a mile away. Maybe it’s more. The Uzeks are talking again. Whispers this time, as much as something that speaks a language based on grunts and snarls is able to whisper.
He doesn’t speak Uzeki, but he has picked up a little and listens for the words he knows. He knows enough to know what he doesn’t want to hear. There’s two voices now, best he can tell, and they keep going back and forth. One grunts; the other groans.
He grips the blaster a little tighter. He eases the trigger back just a hair. He’s careful not to pull it too much farther, but he doesn’t want to be caught unprepared.
Then there’s a third voice. These grunts are higher pitched, almost sounding female. The crunching of street gravel picks up. They are walking faster. Nixo’s pace quickens. His followers double theirs.
He looks behind him. He doesn’t recognize the two larger Uzeks, but the third—the one that belongs to those higher pitched grunts—he knows. It’s the translator from the day before. She doesn’t look so innocent out here. Especially with the blaster she’s carrying across her chest.
Nixon gathers up more cloak in his hand and begins to run. All of the pain from his Uzeki beating he’d been trying to ignore has his body screaming at him. His knees. His shins. His nose. His chest and sides. It’s all there and singing a chorus of “What the hell are you doing now?”
He takes a fast glance behind and sees that the Uzeks are running too. Well, two of them. The translator isn’t. She’s standing still and pulling the balster up to her shoulder. Nixon turns back around and begins to run in a zig zag, keeping his this ways and thats unpredictable—two steps this way then five steps in the other direction before going back seven toward the other side.
He’s waiting for a shot to come, bracing for something to hit him in the back. He hears an initial shot, the deep thunk of a big blaster being fired. Then it’s the sizzle of the air as a wide column of energy gets closer. Its crackle is nearly deafening as it passes by him and slams into a warehouse wall a few dozen feet ahead.
Stone and metal explode from the wall, and only fancy footwork keeps Nixon from stumbling to the ground.
A second thunk, and this time it’s the ground in front of Nixon that disappears in a shower of dirt and rock. It’s all too close for Nixon to avoid. His feet get caught up in the loose debris, and he goes down sideways.
A third shot passes over his head just as Nixon rolls onto his back. Heavy steps approach. It’s the big Uzeks.
Nixon pushes himself up to standing and grabs the blaster that’s fallen out of his hand. He takes off in a dead sprint for the entrance to an alley that’s twenty feet away. He has his head down and fires a pair of blind shots up the street. They hit nothing, but do allow him to make it to the alley.’
There are still running steps behind him, but they stop just as Nixon gets into the deep darkest parts of the alley. They don’t leave the alley. They just stop following him deeper. They are like Koona hounds on the scent of a Grindl cat until the translator grunts something loudly in
