6

There seemed no point returning to the brig. She doubted anyone would believe her an unwilling participant in the deaths at the bar, anyway. Instead, after taking some time to take a number of deep, calming breaths, that almost reduced her fury to seething anger, she wandered back to the bridge. There, she found Friss sat in the navigation seat, feet on the console, crossed at the ankles, while Lap appeared to have decided to lay on the floor, their head beneath another console.

She glanced at the view screen but all it showed was the vast, empty blackness of space. There were barely even any stars noticeable in the view. They were, it seemed, nowhere near any planetary system. Lost in the void. She hoped they weren't actually lost but one look at the dangling wires and circuit boards on the floor, removed from the consoles, did not fill her with confidence.

"Where are we? Anywhere near civilisation? Somewhere you can drop me off and we can pretend we never met?" She looked towards Lap, flat, literally, against the floor. They didn't seem to be doing anything. They simply lay there. They could be dead for all Demi knew. "Is Lap alright?"

"Oh, yeah. They're just thinking. They do their best thinking lying down." Friss frowned as Lap crackled and crinkled something that sounded almost dreamy. "Drugs? What drugs? Okay. They're not thinking. They're high. Not the best of times, Lap."

Lap's flat body rippled and a staccato rustling sound emerged from them. Demi could swear it was a giggle. With nothing better to do, she moved to the navigation console, pushing Friss' boots from the surface, and tried to work out where they were. She had never really studied astro-navigation, but she had a talent for working things out.

On the screen, she saw various alpha-numeric identifiers. Lots of 'zeds' and nines, plurals and alphas. Nothing that she could fully understand at the moment. The first second she managed to connect to the Gal-Net, however, she would download everything pertaining to astro-navigation directly into her brain. For now, she switched the display to graphical representation, sending the results to the main view screen.

"We're outside the galaxy? How is that even possible?" She gaped at the blinking arrow with the words 'You Are Here!' above it, a sizeable distance from the outer rim of the galaxy. "Is this because of the emergency wormhole jump? Or did you plan ... no, no. Of course you didn't plan for this."

"Hey! I didn't know we could use the view screen for that! Nice!" Friss sat bolt upright and began tapping away at the console, tongue lolling from the corner of his mouth. "And, voila!"

The view on the large, wall-sized screen changed from a picture of the galaxy to a picture of Friss, standing in front of some alien shaped building, his fingers in a 'Peace' sign, huge grin spread across his face. Narcissist. Clearly. The building didn't look special, or famous, but Friss had obviously thought it worth posing in front of.

Demi took a closer look, stepping forward and then stopping her foot from falling upon the flattened form of Lap. She stepped to the side as one of Lap's thin hands tried to stroke her leg. The building didn't look familiar, but something connected in her mind. Something about the shape of the building. All layers and bulging protuberances. Walkways on the outside of the building and what looked like flags.

Other people stood in front of the building, behind Friss. Humans, various alien species of varying appendage configurations, all fascinated by the building, taking pictures, pointing. The aliens that appeared most in the picture, were insectoids. Pincers. Antennae. It all clicked into place and Demi looked towards Friss. It wasn't simply a picture of him.

"That's Imblibdor, isn't it?" She pointed at the picture on the view screen as Friss lifted his feet back on to the console, steepling his fingers as he nodded. "That's the building, the palace thing, that you 'parked' on top of. Did you do it on purpose? They're insectoids! That building probably held thousands from the same family inside it!"

"Do I look like the kind of guy that would deliberately park a space ship on top of an Imblibdor palace hive?" He thought about that for a second, waving a finger in admonishment. Demi didn't know if he admonished her or himself. "No! Don't answer that! But, also no, I didn't do it on purpose. It was an escape plan gone a little awry, that's all."

A crackling sound came from somewhere beside Demi's feet. It went on for several seconds and Friss' face morphed into a veritable theatre of expressions as he listened. The crackling stopped. After a second, Lap began making a mixture of crackling, crinkling, rustling and tearing sounds and Friss' expressions continued to change as he listened. Again Lap stopped talking and Demi decided astro-navigation was not the only thing she would learn as soon as she accessed Gal-Net. A Planeian language course had become another must-have download.

"What did they say?" Demi swatted away Lap's hand as they poked at her backside, the rustling 'laughter' returning.

"Oh. Nothing. Nothing important. They think humans are funny with all our bumps and sticky-outy bits. That's all." Demi didn't believe a word of that and Friss knew that she didn't believe a word of it. He sighed, giving Lap a fiery glance. "They said that I could have simply flown away, which is true in the strictest sense, but it was a matter of professional pride. They had, somehow, managed to seize my contraband. Landing on the palace hive was the easiest way to get it back. It's not a big deal."

"I think the thousands of people in that building may disagree." She didn't know Friss. She didn't like him, but she didn't know him. She wondered if he had learned to switch off his empathy, or whether he had been born without it. "I'm still not helping you. Especially not now."

He didn't even pretend to look disappointed. Instead, Friss leaned forward and tapped away at the console before pointing over Demi's shoulder, back towards the view screen. As she turned to see what he showed her, Demi's jaw dropped. It was a news feed. How the ship could access it from so far outside the galaxy, she didn't know. Probably some Gal-Navy secret tech. Yet, there it was. There she was.

It was manipulated, for certain, but it was unmistakably her. Demi watched herself as the news feed played the same scene over and over again, words rolling across the bottom of the screen calling her a mass-murderer, a terrorist, that she didn't bathe and that she sang karaoke badly. The words were enough to make Demi's breath catch in her throat, but the video, repeating over and over, made her feel sick.

In the video, Demi smiled. She smiled a lot, wild, wide eyes showing her madness as she held a blaster in each hand, firing indiscriminately at anything that moved. Perfect representations of her friends, her customers, Bob, the bar owner, all falling to a storm of blaster shots that tore limbs from bodies, heads from necks. Burning, smouldering bodies laid like a carpet. And then, the fake Demi licked blood from the barrel of one of the blasters. That didn't even make any sense. Blaster barrels became insanely hot when fired.

"I don't think you have much of a choice." Even Friss could see how upsetting the looping footage was to Demi. He switched it back to the picture of him on Imblibdor. "That wasn't my doing, by the way. That's Crime Response. They didn't even include me! Now that's criminal."

"Oh god." Demi's legs collapsed beneath her and she found herself sat on the floor beside Lap. The Planeian raised a flat hand and patted the top of Demi's head, the sound of leaves moving in the wind accompanying each pat. "It'll be the death penalty, for sure. My face'll be known throughout the galaxy. I can't fight that kind of thing."

"Don't worry about it. It'll all blow over. Look at me. Apparently I slaughtered an entire race and I'm still free." Friss paused as frantic rustling and crackling noises came from Lap beside Demi. "That's a technicality! I didn't know the moon had lifeforms on it! But, besides that, it's not all bad and it can be fixed. If you help me."

Friss dropped his feet from the console once again and began tapping away at the navigation controls. Demi had a modicum of admiration for Friss' efforts. Getting a dedicated console to do other things was difficult at the best of times, let alone with half the guts of the console dangling from underneath and on the floor, and with no access to Gal-Net.

After more furious tapping, a couple of slaps to the side of the console, one kick and several head scratches, Friss gave a triumphant 'ha!' and pointed towards the screen again. Demi had no idea how any of this could fix her fugitive status, if at all, but what he had sent to the view screen had her as soon as she saw it. The Imblibdorian impound yards.

They were huge. Easily the width of a medium sized moon, sitting in space far enough away from Imblibdor that gravity wouldn't cause too many issues. The thing that had caught Demi's interest, however, was the reinforced force field bubble that surrounded the impound yards and, in a separate picture to the side, the incredibly complicated panel layout that controlled the force field. She had broken through locks before. Virtual, real, electronic, digital, analogue. Every lock people could think of, all to get the money her brother and sister had desperately needed for their continued care. She had never seen something like this.

"Alright. I'm in." She held up a finger before Friss could say anything. "But you fix that footage! Even with my implant, I'll never get into Crime Response to clear my name. I'm warning you. Do not piss off someone who can digitally erase you. Fix this and I'll help."

"Cool. It's already part of the plan." Friss held out his hand and Demi remained wary of him.

After a few wiggles of his eyebrows, one thorough wipe of his palm against his trousers, more eyebrow wiggling and, finally a pleading look, Demi shook his hand. She didn't trust him in the slightest, but he had said he could fix the problem of her being a galaxy-wide wanted criminal. She only hoped he wasn't lying.