[*?]

  His fingers fidgeted as he moved the data card casing around his hand.

  The card itself was safe elsewhere on his person, he would never have it out where it might get stolen. Even if he wanted the right people to think he would make a mistake like that. Moving his fingers helped to release some of his nervous energy as well.

  “Stop glowering like that. It just makes us look suspicious.”

  He looked over and raised an eyebrow at the beautiful woman beside him. Her blue and white feathers were far more likely to draw attention than anything he did. Her race noticeably uncommon out here away from the trade hubs.

  “I knew we should have covered you up. People have been glancing at you all morning. They are going to easily remember someone like you. Your far too pretty and put together for a frontier station like this.”

  Her eyelashes fluttered and her cheek feathers puffed up a bit, clearly flustered. He knew they needed to lay low, but she wasn’t the rough living sort. Coming out here had been a mistake, even if it had bought them a bit of time.

  “You brute, tossing out lines like that.”

  She had been quiet with that one, he would have probably missed it if his ear wasn’t swiveled towards her.

  “You know as well as I do that a weirdo covered in clothing would stand out just as much. That’s why you agreed to let me do the talking. The benefits of a pretty face outweighed the downsides, even if it was close.”

  He grunted. They both knew she was right, that was why she did the negotiations. He hated using her like that, but reality demanded compromise. All he could do was protect her.

  It still stung though.

  “And yet here we still are. There had to be something we could catch a ride on before now?”

  She looked down as he returned to people watching. He had clearly struck a nerve. Things were starting to go out of control it seemed.

  “Yea, plenty of rides back. All you have to do is cough up enough credits to buy a small ship or find a captain sleazy enough to buy me. No long hauler wants freeloaders taking up valuable thrust ratio. Not to mention food and water supplies. I could put you on a ship crew tomorrow if you would let me, plenty of sailors looking for work around here, but no one is going to take both of us.

  There's no use in having a Crova on board a ship that is just moving cargo. Not negotiating and not giving out ‘favors’? I’m basically poison to the contract.”

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  Ah, that explained the nerve. He truly didn’t want to leave her behind, but if they got caught out here, they would both have a quick trip out of a ‘malfunctioning’ airlock. If it was safer for him to draw attention elsewhere, he would do what he had to.

  “Wasn’t this supposed to be near human space? Why is everything a hauler? Where is their vaunted ‘tourism’ or whatever other crazy things they get up to?”

  That had been the whole plan in the first place. They had needed to disappear, and the frontier was the best place to do it. Of course, the only crews on the frontier were either industrial or military. For any sane race at least. He didn’t think a mining or construction barge was a great way to ‘get away’, seeing as how they barely had drives to begin with. And the military?

  He shivered just thinking of it.

  There were good people in the galactic military, but they wouldn’t be the ones who got to decide anything. The ones that did?

  Well, there were reasons they were out here and not relaxing in some trade hub.

  All that left them with was those ‘not great ideas’. The first and foremost of which were human ships. No one else would shoot themselves into deep space just to look at exploding stars. Even the races that did enjoy explosions either just found one in controlled territory or trusted a human crew to do all the hard, and therefor dangerous, work.

  It was probably why humans were so crazy. It was their races sole export.

  It was just the thing they needed to disappear though.

  A few trips out into deep space were the fastest way to lose just about anyone. So long as they weren’t human at least. Once the trail had gone cold, they could think of the next step. Hell, they might even find that next step on the ship. Human ‘tourists’ were notorious for having more money than sense and the individuals they attracted from other races were exactly the same.

  Except this frontier station they had come to hadn’t seen a human anything in years.

  ‘The whole reason we came to this heap of trash was because it was advertised as near human space. Such a waste’

  “How much do we have left? It might be time to buy a ship after all.”

  Buying ships left a massive trail. No one wanted unknowns doing whatever caught their fancy in a potentially massive bomb. There were ways to get them discreetly and ways to erase the trail, but those ways were far beyond anything they would be capable of. The humans were also rumored to simply build their own, which was even more absurd than it sounded, but the rest of the galactic counsel had thrown up their hands at that point. So long as they stayed in human territory or deep space, no one said anything.

  Not much help to them here.

  “Maybe. We have enough to buy a very small ship. We might even be able to get captain shares on something bigger, given our specialties, but either way we would be broke. It would mean actually using whatever we bought to make money. We would just starve to death otherwise.”

  He sighed. That meant having a target on their backs when they had no way to quickly uproot and leave. Selling a ship took a long time when you were being chased.

  He tensed up. It seemed like their time here might just be shorter than he thought. He had been worried for a while, so when he noticed someone pointing in their direction it stood out. The only reason he hadn’t bolted the moment he noticed was that the ‘asker’ seemed to be too young to be the ones after him. He still got up and moved his companion towards the door though.

  He wasn’t about to be caught underestimating the forces against him.

  ‘I hope it hasn’t gotten to the point of fearing every child that looks at me funny.’