MILA

Oasis is on the radio again, the third time this hour. I understand if the Loreqi music industry is down in the gutter, but I don't think the solution is to play the same foreign song over and over again. We have centuries worth of music, for the love of God, choose something else!

I turn the dial, tuning in on some English-speaking Human adverts. Not the best, but better than living to Wonderwall on repeat. "—Christmas has come to an end, but here at HarvestHub, our Winter Sale continues on. From food to kitchenware, our prices are a bargain in the frontier—"

The phone rings, it's the ship. I pick it out, turning down the radio's volume. "Go for Abdi."

"How far are you?" DAVE asks.

"Well, hello to you too. I'm literally ten minutes from the spaceport."

"You were supposed to be here half an hour ago."

I roll my eyes. "Do you have any idea what the traffic is like around here?"

"Most of the away teams have already come back. Please, just hurry up."

"I have the package, it's not gone anywhere. What more do you want?"

"We're paying by the minute to dock here. The longer we stay, the more the Captain gets pissed."

"Look, ten minutes. Can you afford that long?"

There's a bit of silence. "Fine."

"How much are they charging by the way?"

"Five dollars a minute."

"Five dollars?! That's... three hundred an hour!"

"The Sor'Sohli are very greedy people."

"You don't say." I turn a corner. Then someone, this child in a halloween mask, suddenly has the bright idea to run straight into the middle of the road. I honk my horn, sticking my head out the window. "Are you bloody mental?! Get off the road!" I say. And then they take their mask off, probably recognising me, it's a Human boy, ten or twelve years old. I squint my eyes, thinking I have seen him before. "Ryan?"

"Sorry, did you just say Ryan?" DAVE asks.

"I'll talk to you later," I say, hanging up the phone.

Another voice, this one English, quite Brummie, appears out of nowhere. "Mila?!"

I stare out the other window. A man, likely with the boy, takes his halloween mask off, I roll down the stained window to get a proper look: scruffy beard, messed up hair, I knew that guy didn't I? That voice. Oh God. "Nolan?! Holy shit!" They're running from something, the mix of shouting voices nearby gives it away. I unlock the car. "Get inside!"

Nolan gets into the passenger seat, Ryan rushes into the back. The second I get a glimpse of their pursuers, my foot is on the accelerator, and I drive off.

What is he doing here?! This was meant to be a shopping run and all of a sudden, I almost drive over a member of one of the Centauri's away teams and run into Nolan of all people?! And what is he doing with Ryan? He should be with Eyha, shouldn't he? What happened to her?!

He laughs, like it's his first hit of dopamine in years. "Oh my God, it's great to see you!"

I give a nervous smile. "Yep, yeah. You too."

It's safe to say he's not drunk anymore. I was worried the time we would run into each other, he would be wearing my kidneys as a necklace within an instant. Okay, perhaps that was just an exaggeration from all the bounty adverts, but still.

His face and beard are all covered in grime and sand, maybe a bit of blood, less than a couple hours old. Maybe sobriety just came for him, maybe he went through a couple scraps. I don't know. Looking in the rear-view mirror, Eyha's kid looks similar, although he's a lot more silent, the depressing kind of silent. I doubt he is in the mood to talk with anybody.

"What err... what's up?" I say.

He hesitates for a couple seconds. "A lot, actually."

"Mhm, I can tell." I assume he's comfortable with some questions. "Why are you with Ryan?"

"Funny story. He was after my bounty." Judging by the grime, I assume Ryan met some competition. "Wait, how d'you know his name?"

"Okay, so I've been working with his ship."

His eyes widened a bit. "You've been working on the Centauri?"

"No, not working working, I've had a contract with them for a few months now."

"But you're still working for them."

"Mmm, yeah."

"And you didn't think to mention me. Put me on a whitelist or something."

"What would I have said? 'Oh, hey, see this guy worth half a million on the poster? Yeah, I went to school with him. He's just drunk, please don't hunt him down'." I say. "Besides, the Centauri docked here for supplies, how was I supposed to know someone would be coming after you? Or that you were even on this planet in the first place?" I look over at Ryan. "The ship knows about this, right?"

He nods.

"Well that's fantastic," I remark sarcastically. I need to get him out of this mess. "Okay, Nolan, run me through everything that's happened since you woke up."

"Umm, okay. Why?"

"The ship is going to be expecting the Feral, I'm going to bring them Nolan."

NOLAN

I told her everything, not whitewashing any bits, nothing was left out. She wasn't exactly baffled by the shenanigans that went on with me today, it was clear she tried balancing analysing and dealing with the traffic on the road. I was still overjoyed to see her, first familiar face in this ocean of weirdos. I guessed she was at the party in London, would explain how she ended up in this place. Though her drunk self seemed to have fared a lot better than my psychopathic alter ego. I was hoping to catch up with her, honestly. Didn't expect her to stress over my bounty.

Midway through, she told me to get an electric ray-shaver, supposed to slowly disintegrate your hairs, and wet wipes out from her glovebox. Make myself unrecognisable. I didn't think going through a rushed makeover would've been enough, but according to her, the scruffy beard was signature. There weren't any main

Second I finished explaining, she said, "Okay. That was... complicated. I've still got a bunch of questions about that, mainly where Ryan got a fake gun from. But yeah, that's good, we can work with this. Sorry for your loss, Ryan. I'm sure Eyha was a good person."

"Thanks, he said weakly.

"So, you don't know who attacked you?"

"Uh, no. Not really," I replied.

"Okay, we'll say it's road bandits."

"Road bandits?" I said, cringing at the name.

"Quite common out here, Nolan. Okay, I'm going to figure out an alibi, how's your beard coming along, by the way?"

It wasn't my best work, unfortunately. I could only do so much in a moving car using a cracked side-view mirror. Plus, the shaver seemed third-hand, it was as functional as an aeroplane running on human waste. The grime was largely gone too, but I didn't think wet wipes could hide all the scars on my face.

She glanced at me. "You look unrecognisable."

"I look like if Doris Langston tried swimming in a pool of crocodiles."

"Nobody will recognise you, calm down. Wait, who's Doris Langston?"

"That old PM, couldn't get a word out?"

"Do you mean Boris Johnson?"

"I'm pretty sure it was Doris."

"Doesn't matter. Right, your alibis. Ryan, again, I'm sorry for your loss, but would you be willing to... you know, lie to everyone?"

Ryan stared at both of us. His mother figure was killed by God-knows-who, to which he thought I was somehow involved. And he was being asked to lie about all of it for one of the most wanted people this side of the galaxy and someone who's just in a contract with his employers. There was no way in a million years he'd've agreed on that.

"Sure," he said.

He agreed, he actually just agreed on it. Or maybe he was lying, would've gladly ratted us out to the rest of the people on his ship the first chance he got. Even so, I had virtually no faith in Mila's alibi.

"Brilliant," she said. "Okay so, Nolan, drop your bender story. We'll errr..." She kept snapping her fingers, "sort out what's happened during then another time. In fact, take some InstaSober, okay? Again, in the glovebox, you'll be feeling better soon enough. Ryan, I want you to follow on with the idea you got the wrong guy. About your ambush, you already know about the road bandits thing. We'll get rid of the searchers that came in after that. Your car broke down, you followed the map, you ran into me. Do the both of you understand?"

"Umm, sure. Okay, I can work with that," I said, popping a bottle of InstaSober pills.

"Fine," Ryan said.

"Good."

Before I even brought up any questions outside my whole bounty, we had already arrived at the spaceport. It was a large facility, with dozens of starships consistently docking and leaving a series of complexes, all overseen by a tower near the edge of the place.

Mila showed her papers at the security booth, and eventually drove inside one of the docking complexes. One ship took up about half the place, four decks high and over a hundred metres long. Along the side of its hull painted 'CENTAURI - 2', all scratched and vandalised by the forces of space and nature. Mila drove into one of the open cargo bays, packed with crates, machinery, tools and weaponry. After a bit, she parked in a vehicle bay.

"Remember what I spoke about," she ordered, before we all exited the jeep.

Several of the personnel, a mixture of races, gave glares at us. Some just smiled, and waved at Mila, others were baffled by the strange man and child that were in her car.

Mila opened the boot, revealing multiple crates inside. "Help me with these things."

She passed one over to me, by God they were heavy, to the point they almost dislocated my shoulders. "What's in these?! Bricks?!"

"Calm yourself, they're not that heavy."

"But you couldn't've bothered to pack a trolley or anything? Shit!" I dropped the crate on the floor, and along came a series of cracks and shatters.

A man with an Australian accent called from down the bay. "Mila!" We looked over, it was a middle-aged guy, gesturing her to come over to him. I assumed he was one of the higher-ups in this place.

"Look, just stay here. Don't touch anything else in the boot please." She headed off, leaving me to the mercy of the awkwardness that was to come.

MILA

What does Bryce want? Is it the fact Nolan dropped a whole crate filled with expensive chemicals? I brought spares for a reason, there's no point in acting up about it. Or did he manage to recognise Nolan?

I meet up with him by the pile of junk at the end of the bay, praying it's the first. His arms are folded, he is clearly not happy. "What do you think you're doing?" he orders quietly.

Maybe it's the fact I'm 'late'. "Sorry, the traffic's an absolute nightm—"

"I don't care about your timing, Abdi. I care about the fact you've let the Feral onto this ship unrestrained."

Yeah, it's about Nolan. "That's not the Feral, he's just a friend of mine, Nolan. I ran into him on the way back."

"What's he doing with Ryan, then?"

"Funny thing—" I give a nervous smile, much worse than what I gave Nolan, "—apparently Ryan thought he was this 'Feral' fellow."

He raises his scarred eyebrow. "I'm not an idiot, Abdi. A member of Ryan's away team, Arvan called Eyha, should have been transporting him. DAVE confirmed this."

"I'm afraid they ran into road bandits along the way. Eyha has unfortunately... passed."

He's convinced on this part, and pinches the bridge of his nose. "I'll worry about this later. Just explain yourself please."

"Again: Nolan is a friend of mine. Ryan thought he was the 'Feral'. What more do you want?"

"So he's actually your friend then?"

"Yes. I've known him since Sixth Form. If he is the man you think he is, neither Ryan or I would still be alive. Hell, he saved Ryan when Eyha kicked the bucket."

"Please don't refer to her death like that."

"Sorry. The point is, Nolan here can't even get near a bee without pissing himself. I mean, look at him!"

He stares over, noticing him having some awkward chats with a few crew members. "When was the last time you saw him?"

"Two... well, three years ago."

"A lot can happen in three years, Abdi. And those scars on him are a dead giveaway. He could be a sleeper agent for all I know."

"He's not a sleeper agent, I can assure you."

Bryce turns on his radio. "Need a containment in the vehicle bay, automobile section, South Asian m—"

"I'm calling in that favour, Bryce," I interrupt.

"What favour?"

"Yangtze Station. That favour."

"Can you repeat, captain?" His radio requests.

Bryce sighs, and says, "My mistake, belay that. And call off the rest of your soldiers, there's no threat, over." Before turning back to me. "All right, Abdi. What do you suggest we do with him? I'm not having him under my payroll."

"I'll err... have him work for me. I'll pay him. Just don't tell anyone else and there won't be much trouble. It's that simple."

"What if someone else recognises him?"

I look back over at Nolan, somewhat socialising with the other crew members. "Nobody has done so far." That's a lie, obviously. The ones that apparently ambushed Eyha's car would likely have been bounty hunters. If I take Nolan on, that would attract much more heat. Perhaps Bryce would consider turning him in just to keep the rest of his crew safe.

"Fine. You're responsible for him, Abdi. Any trouble from him, don't expect to get the nice end of the stick."

"Of course, understood."

"And send those chemicals to the doctor."

NOLAN

Ryan had already left for somewhere, and within seconds a couple of the crew members were chatting with me. Originally, it started about where the hell I came from, but somehow I managed to waffle it into a discussion about fast food fries.

"I don't know," Fakushi, this Japanese guy, said to me, "I've always felt Jantar Fries were quite bland. Don't get me wrong, their Ha'si burgers I would sell both kidneys for, but somehow, their fries fall quite short for me."

"Give them credit," I reply. "Considering the fact they have to compete with at least five other chains, their fries fare pretty nicely."

"Well, maybe if you're Loreqi," a male Arvan, Koha, remarked. "Those people have no taste at all when it comes to foreign culture. Have you listened to their radio?

I had no idea what the hell kind of brands they were talking about. I assumed they were quite new, but then again, places like KFC, Burger King, or even StockBeef were even mentioned. My faffed strategy just made me bring up made up restaurants that apparently were actually real.

Mila came over, thank Christ. "Making friends already, I see?"

"You good, Mila?" Koha asked.

"Yeah, fine. Do you mind getting a trolley for us?"

"Ah, sure, sure." Koha left, and so did Fakushi.

"Okay, I've got good news," she said to me.

"What is it?"

"Good news, Bryce isn't planning on throwing you in the brig anytime soon."

"So he thinks—"

"Oh, no, he very much knows you're the Feral."

"So what happened?"

Koha brought the trolley. "Here it is. Do you need help with the crates here?"

Mila gave a friendly smile. "It's fine, Ko. We can take it from here."

"All right, be seeing you."

"See ya." Her smile dropped, and went back to me. "I called in a favour. As long as you don't bring any trouble, you're free to do whatever. Also, you're going to have to work for me now."

"Okay? What exactly is it you do?"

"I'm a pilot."

My eyes widened, and all I felt was confusion. "Sorry, you're a what now?"

"I'm a starship pilot. I take contracts involving that sort of stuff. Shipping, bombing, etcetera."

"Wh— I— You work in tech support!"

"And you're a shitty internet journalist, but you didn't expect to become a highly hunted psychopath now, did you?"

"Okay, I was drunk then. You don't learn how to become a starship pilot when drunk, that takes years of training and discipline, doesn't it?"

"Definitely. I don't even understand it myself."

"Do you still know how to fly?"

"Of course I still know how to fly. I might have been drunk, but it's like riding a bike. Outside the fact there are a ridiculous amount of buttons and switches. Now come on, help me with these crates."