Conics Unfortunately: 46

Despite the fact that the nestor fold monitor had only one path, Ellipse felt she was at a crossroads. She could march up and ask the specifus bounty hunters prying questions, or she could follow Tejal’s advice and lie low.

Or she could attempt both. Both was good.

“Tejal,” she tried, “do you have like, a string or a clip or something?”

He frowned, displeased and disappointed, but stuck a hand in his pockets and rooted around for a moment. “You don’t have anything like that on you?”

Ellipse figured she probably had a twist tie, but that was about it. Shaking her head, she held out one hand to accept Tejal’s contribution. Slowly, like he could not bear to part with it, he deposited his grappling magnet in her open palm, and pinned her with the look of a man about to leave a beloved cat in someone else’s home.

“Do not give me that look,” Ellipse told him. “I am taking your advice for once.” She started forward, unwinding the loops of string, and then pulled her hair up and tied it into a ponytail. Her neck felt funny, bare for the first time in at least a year and now with a cold magnet dangling right from her ponytail, but maybe the change would throw off the specifus. Now she just needed a conversation plan.

“Wait, Ellipse!”

She ignored him.

“Ellipse, this is not the context for that advice! Stop! Get back here!”

When it became clear that Ellipse was being a rebellious captain, he quieted, and she fished out her light box and walked right up to the biggest specifus in the group, one with massive, mangrove-tree roots.

“Ex-excuse me-ee?” she flashed, trying to put in the awkward pauses and too-long-flashes most earthlings had when they started learning the specifus language.

Mangrove-specifus motioned for the group to stop and bent over so parts of their leafy head shaded Ellipse from the fluorescent lights. “What do you want, earthling?”

“Are any of you goo-ood with station mail ser-ervers?” Ellipse noticed a passing earthling in a classy blazer and suit pants give her an odd look, but ignored them. If she had not been trying to look bad on purpose, she could best any earthling’s attempt at accentless specifus “speech.”

The old wrinkly bonsai that Ellipse remember was this group’s leader slid out from behind the mangrove tree. Shaking their crinkly vines, the bonsai-specifus made a grand shrugging motion and flashed so quickly that Ellipse had to actually pay attention. “Why are you earthlings always assuming we’re good with technology?”

Ellipse almost responded with some snark about Spec Corp, before remembering that an incompetent speaker of the specifus language would never have gotten that. “Soo-orry,” she flashed back. “What. Did you flash?”

Bonsai-specifus wilted a little, probably sick of dealing with similar questions elsewhere in the universe. “I told you not to assume that all of us are good with technology.”

“Oohh,” Ellipse flashed, pressing the button for a long, dim, white light. “Soo-orry. Do you know soo-omeone who could help?”

The mangrove-looking member straightened in thought. “I thought I saw that the Conics was docked here at the moment. Their tech specialist is rather good.”

“Captain Maj is on earth,” the bonsai-specifus pointed out. “However, a visit might be nice. Perhaps the awful little earthling captain will tell us how much longer Maj and Min will be stuck in their legal problems.”

Internally, Ellipse screamed. Outwardly, she laughed, pasted on a smile, and tried to remember not to look fluent. “Thank. You!” she flashed. “I wi-ill send my crew a message that we. Have found soo-ome help.” She tucked her light box into her pockets and brought up her watch so she could tell Tejal and Focci to head back without her.

“Wait,” flashed one of the other specifus. Ellipse glanced away from her watch to see the broccoli-shaped bounty hunter push past the rest of their crew. They leaned in close, and Ellipse could see their tiny black eyes roam over her coveralls.

“It looks like the one from Un,” they flashed.

Bonsai-specifus stiffened. “The one that helped Max escape?”

“Same clothes, same canopy coloring,” Broccoli mused, “and I think that light box is the same model as the one the Conics’s temporary captain uses. Did we agree that the Savra earthling was the same as the Un one?”

Oh heck. Ellipse should have bought some new clothes back on Titan, when Tejal had gotten his leather jacket. Or she could have at least tied the upper half of her coveralls around her waist. That would have looked different enough to fool the specifus.

“Para,” the bounty hunter captain started, vines coiling in, “are you telling us that this earthling right here has somehow helped two of our targets elude us?”

Slowly, Ellipse began to back away. Searching the rest of the Nestor fold monitor might just have to wait until she came back through on the way to Triune from Planet Nestor proper.

“I would say that behavior more than confirms Para’s suspicion, Captain,” the mangrove specifus flashed. They stomped forward, three roots coming down at once, and Ellipse decided it was time to blow this popsicle stand. She pocketed her light box, pivoted around, and sprinted across the still-open space between her crew and the bounty hunters.

“Tejal!” she shouted, making a shooing motion with one hand. “Go! Go!”

“What about Focci?!”

“I will take care of him!” She sidestepped a root that had shot out under her feet. “Just go!”

Still reluctant, Tejal spun his chair and began to roll away. Ellipse slowed as she reached Focci, who had flopped around to follow Tejal, and bent low.

“Sorry about this,” she hummed, and then she grabbed Focci’s tail, right at the base of his tailfin.

He let out a hoarse, unholy yelp as Ellipse hauled him over one shoulder like Saint Nicholas would his gigantic bag of presents and pushed to catch up with Tejal.

“Ellipse!” Focci shrieked. “I am going to puke! Slow down!”

She tried instead to speed up, but her calves already burned from Focci’s extra weight. “How close are those guys?”

Instead of answering, Focci just yelped again. Ellipse heaved a deep breath and tried to lengthen her stride. Tejal was only a few meters ahead now! If she could just get along side him, then this would all work out.

“Tejal!” she shouted. “Get alongside me and take this mermaid off my hands!”

He did not even bother looking backwards. “No way! Then how am I supposed to move?!”

“I’ll help push, just take our big fishy friend and-

She had not noticed that Tejal had slowed to a glide until he reached over and yanked Focci into his lap. Immediately, Ellipse moved to the back of his chair, took the handles, and shoved as hard as she could. “Focci,” she sang, lowering her voice, because of course running through the station with two dudes sharing a wheelchair was completely inconspicuous, and she could avoid extra attention by just not shouting. “Did we leave our little door unlocked?”

“Probably?” Focci seemed like he might say more, but then he clutched Tejal’s neck and slapped a webbed hand over his snout to keep from puking.

“Tejal, do you know if we locked the dock door?”

“No, just shut up and keep running.” He reached down and gave his wheels a push, trying not to squeeze Focci off his lap in the process.

Well, hopefully they had not locked the door, because Ellipse figured they could use every second available to outrun these specifus. She kept pushing and kept running, even when an ache blossomed in her gut, and even when Focci let out little screeches because he felt sick or because he could see the specifus behind them.

They raced through the dimly-lit upper class passenger sector, and then clattered across the boardwalk in the indoor park, occasionally shouting at people to get out of the way. And then, as they neared the ramp that led down to the concrete floors of the shipping sector, Tejal craned his neck back and hissed at Ellipse. “Slow down!”

“What? No!”

A moment later, Mouthbot translated from the pouch of Tejal’s chair, volume somehow loud enough to hear over the wheelchair’s noise. Still looking queasy, Focci pulled his head up and sent Ellipse a worried look. “Don’t you know anything about physics?”

Ugh. The boys were the physicists, not her! Ellipse had read Universal Biology, not Calc-based Physics for Idiots. “Of course not. What does physics have to do with this?”

The chair flew down the ramp, and Ellipse figured she was about to find out.

Tejal pushed himself into the back of his chair. “The shipping district is full of stuff, and since we have a bunch of weight, and a ton of speed, our momentum is pretty high.”

“So?” Ellipse swerved around a shipping crate, and the axle of Tejal’s wheels barely clipped the metal box.

“So we can’t turn or stop very well!” Tejal finished.

That would have been nice to know earlier. Ellipse glanced backwards and gulped. She had run fast enough to put a good ten meters between her and the bounty hunters, but with how silent they were, it was unsettling to see them at all. Up ahead, she spotted a large group of tyran pushing a couple rows of crates across the hall, and then just behind that, the sign for the Conics’s current docking space.

Ellipse allowed the chair to slow down a touch as she approached the tyran shipping crew. “Can I sort of act as a counterweight in the turns?” she asked in English.

“Sounds like a bad plan, but do whatever you want,” Tejal replied.

“Cool.”

And then they were upon the tyran. Ellipse shoved the wheelchair through a gap in the first row of crates, then tightened her grip on the handles and threw herself to the right. Her shoulder glanced off a cold metal wall, but she made the turn.

“Turn us right!” Focci trilled. “Like now!”

Ellipse pulled left, and the wheelchair drifted through a wide U-turn, down into the next aisle. She dug her heels into the cement floor and leaned back, and then jerked the boys through the next gap between crates. As she cleared the high metal walls, she breathed a sigh of relief. Their large dock door was closed, and in the bottom of her vision, she caught Tejal handing Focci the card to unlock their smaller for-people door.

Ellipse gave the boys one more push, and then seconds later pulled them to a stop right beside the wall, where the little black card reader box was mounted on the wall. Focci tapped their card, and the door clicked open. As the boys headed in, Ellipse glanced over her shoulder one last time. Broccoli-specifus had just made it out of the crates.

Grinning, Ellipse pulled out her light box. “Later, slowpokes!” she flashed.

Broccoli-specifus’s two rows of lights lit up in confusion. “Wait! We are not going to-

Ellipse walked through the door, pulled it shut behind her, and dropped the deadbolt. She looked to the boys to find Focci sprawled on the floor, rubbing his dorsal fin, and Tejal rubbing his temples.

“We are never doing this again,” Tejal grumbled. “And I am never chasing down bounty targets again either.” A moment later, Mouthbot provided a much calmer translation into Trade Siren.

“Knowing us, we probably will have to do more running,” Focci sang, voice wobbling with exhaustion. He did not heave in gulps of air, but Ellipse could see his gills pumping, trying to find water. “But for now, I say we get out of here and have a nice long rest in the middle of empty space.”

Ellipse thought that sounded like a good plan.