Earth Fathers, chapter 18 (Patreon)

Max paced the length of the narrow room where he'd been placed. Compared to a spaceship, was downright palatial; however, he still didn't have room to do more than pace twelve steps in one direction before he had to turn and pace the same twelve step back. 

A narrow slot window gave him a view of most of the sprawling city, but they were up high enough that Max couldn’t see any detail. Even the ships were tiny models fit only for grasshoppers and ants, that’s how far up he was. The misty clouds were a beauty filter over the entire sprawling metropolis. 

Cables ran from one tower to another, and small cars zipped along. Max suspected they were as much to support the great heights of the inner towers as to provide transportation for people who didn't feel like going down a mile to the ground to walk a few hundred feet and then go another mile up into the air. He might be exaggerating with a mile, but felt like it. He was definitely not on earth.

On the good side, he had finally seen what he thought was alien mass transit. There were concentric rings that vanished out of the narrow line of sight the window offered. At each of those rings, the nature of the city distinctly changed. Max's tower prison faced the direction of the spaceport and he could see that it was outside those rings. 

In fact, the outermost ring was broken, leaving a gap for the spaceport and crowded marketplace of traders. Maybe the rest of the city didn't want to make it too easy for the trash that came in with the ships to get to the rest of their community. 

And maybe Max was putting human motives onto aliens, something which never ended well. For example, he had assumed that Carrington would want access to the various programs Max could sell her. So he had assumed it would be counterproductive for her to report to the authorities that his programs were beyond the scope of human capability. Sure, he thought blackmail was possible, but not this counterproductive involvement of the authorities when the program hadn’t sold yet. Or maybe Carrington and Bundy were in it together and they were going to steal the program.

Max sat on the edge of the world’s narrowest bunk and dropped his head into his hands. He was so screwed. The only way into the cell was an elevator, there were no door controls or access panels, and even if his captors had left the wiring out for him to poke around in, he didn’t know how to hot wire an alien door. The window was equally worthless as an escape route.

It meant he was stuck. All he could do was figure out a plan to minimize the danger to the rest of his family. And he would do that as soon as he knew what the danger was. He now knew why Hannibal Smith and Nate Ford avoided personal relationships. Putting others in danger was so much harder than walking into it himself. Well that and the writers had a bad habit of killing all the women who got too close to a lead in a male-dominated series, but Max was fairly sure that had more to do with the general suckiness of American culture than the inherent danger of running a con and being in love.

The door set into the long wall of his cell beeped, and Max turned toward it. Either aliens weren’t worried about elevator breakdowns, or they just didn't give a shit if prisoners were stranded during a fire. Then again, given how high up they were, having access to a stairway wouldn't be much of an improvement.

The door opened and Max only realized he had dropped into a fighting stance when he let his hands fall to his side. Kohei walked through the door. Kohei. Yep, those were Kohei’s giant freckles and his streaks of mint green. 

“What are you doing here?”

“I come to see you, Max Father,” Kohei said. Oh thank god, the fancy translator was turned on.

“Is the family safe?”

“Stupid James wants to shoot stupid people.”

“Well don’t let him!” Fuck. Max was going to give that idiot a tongue lashing to be the end of all parental tongue lashings if he even tried taking on an entire fucking planet of enemies.

“Rick Father locked controls and put all weapons away. Xander called him stupid.”

“Maybe don’t call him stupid to his face,” Max suggested. He knew when his dad called his ideas dumb, he tended to double down on whatever dumb-ass plan he was working on.

Kohei came the rest of the way into the room and the door slid closed. With one of the kids in the middle, Max couldn’t even rush the door. Kohei continued. “I promised to listen if stupid people don’t stop seeking to advance their own stupidity.”

Max snorted. The problem was that the aliens weren’t actually stupid. They hadn’t fallen for Max’s con. “What are they charging me with?” Once Max knew he could start to figure out how to jack himself out of this hole, or he could resign himself to it.

“Max Father, they do not accuse you of any crime.”

“Really? Because this feels a lot like a prison cell.” Max gestured to the room as a whole. 

“I have seen Earth prison cells. This does not appear equivalent.” Kohei slid toward the window. “This has much better view.”

Max's children are annoyingly logical. “Yes, but this also has a locked door.”

“Most doors are locked against people walking where walking is unwise.”

Max frowned. Maybe he wasn’t as screwed as he’d thought. But… “They brought me here using guards with guns.”

Kohei’s tentacles curled up a bit, and they should. Max did not appreciate being threatened like that. “Did you kill guards?” Kohei asked.

Max raised his eyebrows. “That's the sort of question your Rick Father might ask, and your Rick Father is paranoid about the fact that I'm a warrior.” Kohei’s tentacles relaxed, and Max shook his head. “Just because I know how to fight doesn't mean I fight everyone. Besides, I was outnumbered.”

“You were outnumbered by Hunters, and you killed,” Kohei said.

Max had to admit that had there not been so many guards he might have considered trying to fight his way through. He probably would've gotten his ass kicked, but he would've tried. “I had the advantage being on my home turf, and they didn’t give me a choice. I tried cooperating, and they were going to kill us anyway.”

Kohei’s tentacles gave a hard twitch. “I believe authorities have concern over reports that humans are warriors, so they send many escorts in case humans make troubles.”

At least they respected his ability to defend himself. That was more respect than most Marines gave him. “Why were they escorting us? You keep saying I'm not under arrest, but this feels like an arrest. And where is Dee? They separated us.”

“I am ignorant of location of Dee, but I understand the reason for the escorting. The authorities have accused Rick Father of manipulating a moron species in order to avoid sanction penalty on his navigation program. They also accuse Rick Father of being the source of weapon modification and armor that Max Father sold to others.”

“Oh fuck.”

Kohei’s tentacles snapped up into coils. “Translator translated oddly,” he said with a bugle. It took Max a half second to realize that the computer must have translated the word fuck literally. That was a glitch he had fixed in the translator on the ship, but for all its improvements, the trading translator needed fine tuning.

“I meant that only as a general expression of dismay.”

Kohei’s tentacles uncurled. “Dismay is appropriate, Max Father. Rick Father is distraught.”

“Fuck.” Max sank down onto the narrow cot. “What do the authorities want to do?” If they touched one finger on Rick’s smallest tentacle, Max was going to demonstrate the term “homicidal rage.”

“They wish to take Rick Father’s everything.” Kohei moved closer and brushed a tentacle across Max’s arm. Max caught the tentacle and used it to pull Kohei close enough to hug. Kohei’s tentacles wound around Max’s arms and neck and then Kohei was pulling hard enough that Max almost got dragged to the floor. He braced himself as Kohei hauled his bulk up into Max’s lap and curled and then curled his walking tentacle around Max’s waist. Xander was the only one who had ever wanted to sit in Max’s lap before, but if Max’s mother were here, he would have the same urge.

He wanted to curl up in someone’s lap while they figured this out. However, he was the parent, and now he had to pretend to have the situation under control when it was really one giant FUBAR. He held Kohei and rocked the way he had when Xander had been small… all of three or four month ago. They grew up so fast.

“I need information. We have to save the family, and that means I need you to tell me everything. Why do they think they have a right to take the ship? What will the authorities do? What will Rick do? Is there any way to get a lawyer?”

Kohei kept his leg tentacle tight around Max’s waist. “They believe Rick Father will flee. They hope to take the ship before he can.”

“They think he will flee?” When Kohei didn’t respond, Max realized that he thought Max was simply repeating information.  “Query, why do they think Rick Father will flee?”

“Every instinct tells Rick Father and Xander and James and Kohei to flee. Hide. Preserve as many tentacles as possible from predators. But Max Father is here, and that is like having walking tentacle caught by big predator and James is lashing tentacles and Rick Father is doing math and I am here and Xander is making words that are not words.”

Max leaned back so he could see at least a couple of Kohei’s eyes. “I need to speak with an authority. I want the right to argue my case that Rick Father did nothing wrong. Humans believe in the right to defend ourselves with words.”

“I will call for…” And once again, Max was treated to untranslated whale-song. He had to assume from the context that Kohei knew what Max was asking for.

“Then, I need you to give Rick Father a message.”

Kohei loosened his hold enough that he could rotate so that one of his larger eyes was centered on Max.

“If the authorities don’t listen, if they keep trying to blame Rick and take his ship away, I want you to tell him to run. Hide. Do not wait for me or give the authorities anything to save me. If I know that any of you are suffering because of me, I will be far more hurt than anything the authorities can do to me.”

“But Max Father—”

“Nope. If I can get free, I will come to the Hidden Planet, but you tell Rick he has to take care of himself and you kids. That is priority number one. I can take care of myself.”

“Max Father!” Kohei bugled and all his tentacles tightened until they were almost choking Max. Max held on tightly, wishing he could hug all his kids, desperately wishing he could hold Rick. However, his feelings didn’t matter as much as protecting his family. 

“You tell Rick Father that. Promise me you will give him that message exactly.”

“I no wish to give such promise.” Any tentacle not wrapped around Max was curled into a tight ball. Max could imagine primitive Hidden ones on their homeworld, curling up to hide in some crevasse when a predator came too near. 

“Promise me,” Max demanded. “I will hurt more if I see you hurt. You can only protect me by protecting yourself.”

After a long silence, Kohei said, “I hate promise, but I give it.”

“I hate it, too, kiddo,” Max said, and he hugged Kohei as tightly as he dared. “Me too, but we do what’s right for the family.”

Sometime doing right sucked. Max really wished the universe would stop trying to teach him that same lesson.