Free Embarkment 2577 by Maria Hammarblad Page A

wouldn’t notice my extra arms and tail sagging.
    No one else entered the lift, and I had
a few long minutes on the way down to work myself into hysteria. I wasn’t up to
heroics like this. What would happen if they caught me? Chances of being sent
to my friends in the brig were slim to none, I’d be lucky to be teleported off
the ship with everyone else. Maybe they’d just shoot me.
    I led an extremely protected life on the
Bell with Adam buffering me against everything and everyone, friend or foe. Did
my friends face dangers like this all the time?
    When the lift finally slowed and stopped
on level thirty three, I forced my feet to move forward, into an alien crowd.
Moving like a Logg wasn’t hard; in my current mood both slumping and dragging
my feet came quite naturally.
    I met many guards holding more or less
human prisoners. A few of the captives still showed some fighting spirit, but
most were bruised and compliant. Some were unconscious, being pulled on the
floor or carelessly thrown over a furry shoulder.
    No one paid attention to me. Good thing,
because I couldn’t see very well through the mask. The spacing of the eyes
didn’t fit mine at all, and I had to look through one eye at the time. Losing
depth perception made it difficult to walk.
    The rooms on this level were huge, and
the corridor went on forever. Was I even going in the right direction? I was
pretty sure Anya said “right,” but nervous as I was, it might have been left. I
almost lost count of the doors several times, even though I only needed to find
the seventh.
    My hands cramped around the weapon and I
forced myself to relax. All these aliens might not be watching me right now,
but that would change the moment I accidentally shot someone…
    The seventh door looked exactly like all
the others, and I had no way to double-check if it was the right one. I hoped
for the best and approached. Nothing happened. Could it be locked? Maybe none
of the entrances worked without the computer, but the elevator had opened
willingly enough.
    There must be a manual override, other
than shooting the dumb thing. I just had to find it. When I stepped up to the
console next to the door my eyes caught movement above me. A camera. Maybe
someone on the inside was watching? I performed my best Logg imitation and
gestured to open the door. To my relief, it opened.
    The brig turned out to be a vast room
with cells all around it. I saw my friends over to the side, held in by a force
field. In the middle of the room was a console for the guard, and a single Logg
sat there with his hairy feet up. Should I shoot him?
    “Finally. I’m so tired of these humans
and things, they stink. I thought they’d never send someone to relieve me.”
    I nodded and gesticulated, doing my best
to look Loggy. “I’ve been hurt. My tail is hurt and the cursed human got two of
my arms, so I was sent to guard duty. They’re feisty.”
    The alien got to his feet and headed for
the door. He didn’t care. “Have fun with them, they’re all yours.”
    With the guard gone, all that remained
was figuring out how to close the door. I punched some buttons on random, and
was eventually rewarded with a whooshing sound as it shut.
    The rifle was so heavy, and the
ridiculous suit warm and uncomfortable. I made it to the brig, against all
odds. Didn’t I deserve to sit down and relax now? I drew a deep breath and
pep-talked myself; it wasn’t time to quit until I let the others out.
    I shuffled over to the closest cell and
squinted at the console next to it, pressing some keys with the suit’s claws,
hoping I would turn the force field off and not accidentally sound an alarm or
kill everyone. Nothing happened. “Bloody hell, why do you people have to make
everything so fucking complicated? What’s wrong with having one button labelled
‘open’ and one labelled ‘close’?”
    There were about ten people in the
cells: Adam, the Captain with his hair all tousled and wearing a pyjamas,