It was raining in Citadel. It had been raining for the past two weeks--some kind of glitch in the Nomad Weather Control Station. The citizens of Citadel were unaccustomed to the wet weather. They had seen rain before, but only enough to field the hydroponics park. This steady downpour was beyond their scope. To them the rain was another affront to the city's natural order of drudgery, ignorance, and arrogance. Core officials released a statement yesterday that said they had technicians working around the clock to remedy the problem. The techs on the Nomad had been pulling twenty-hour shifts sifting through files of code trying to locate the glitch, but they hadn't found anything yet.

Fallon didn't know anything about the Nomad technicians, or the statement from the Core, or the hydroponics park, even though he was currently walking through it. All Fallon knew was that he was getting very wet. He grimaced. Ahead of him he could see 'plex security scanning the crowd. He hoped that they weren't checking papers. He was on Earth using a forged id-chip, and from what he'd heard Humans didn't take too well to illegal aliens--especially Greel. He ran his slender, two-fingered hand through his wet hair and looked around for a dark corner to stick himself into. It was too late. One of the security personnel looked at him and started to walk in his direction. D'jcik, he swore in his head. He knew even with his phony papers the guards would still lock him up.

He only came to Earth because of his family. He knew it was the last place in the sector where they would look. He had certain familial obligations to fill, but he wanted nothing to do with them--at least not yet. He didn't have time to think about all this. Those guards were walking toward him even as he pretended not to see them. A lie started forming in his head. About how he'd only just docked, and wouldn't ya just know it, the blasted navicom had fed him the wrong quadrant. He was supposed to be on Alpha Colony with a shipment of biotech, and could they kindly tell him where he might get a replacement navicom so that he could make the jump to Alpha C. He knew that there were holes in his story big enough to fly a star cruiser through, but maybe these guys were dense enough to swallow.

He looked up as if seeing the guards for the first time. Feigning a smile, he put up his hand in the human gesture of greeting.

"D'jcik," he said. The taller one looked at him suspiciously.

"Id-chip please," asked the small one, speaking unnecessarily into a translator box on his wrist. Fallon smiled, and waited for the translation. He just might have the edge he needed.

"I just docked in sector H. My navicom is on the fritz. I was supposed to gate to Alpha Colony, but apparently I've jumped to Earth instead. I've got a shipment of--"

"Id-chip please," he said again into the box. Again, Fallon pretended to need the translation.

"Sure, here you go," he handed over his fake Id-chip and uttered a silent prayer to the gods of luck. The tall one took it and slotted it into the reader. A few moments passed, and to Fallon they seemed an eternity.

"Seems to check out," said the tall one.

"You can go," said the small one into the box.

"Sure, thanks," said Fallon without waiting for the translation. The tall one shot him a look that would kill, but Fallon just smiled and started to walk away. He got maybe six paces when he heard the triple beep of one of the guards’ comlinks.

"Dispatch to patrol unit one-one-three-dash-eight, please respond," intoned a clearly digitized voice.

"Unit one-one-three-dash-eight, reporting."

"Be advised for illegal Greel immigrant, ship docked in sector H and traveling with stolen Id-chip. Orders are SOL for Greel. Repeat. SOL for Greel. Confirm."

"Confirmed," answered the familiar voice of the small guard, "orders are SOL. Unit one-one-three-dash-eight, out."

Fallon didn't like the sound of that. He started to trot toward sector H, but the tall guard had already outpaced him. Fallon stopped and looked over his shoulder to see the small one standing a few meters behind him, hand on the handle of a sidearm. Fallon put his arms above his head in what he understood to be a Human gesture of surrender.

...

Fallon sighed as the force gate activated behind him. He was in a holding cell some ten kilometers east and nearly one kilometer above the hydroponics park. His ship had been impounded, and his family notified of his whereabouts. Thankfully the security guards hadn't thought it necessary to rough him up as he believed was the human custom. Fallon looked around the cell. Apparently he was not its only occupant. A human was slumped in the southerly corner of the cell. The human was dressed in the manner of an outlander, only all in black. Maybe his luck wasn't giving out on him entirely. Then the human looked up at him, and Fallon saw his eyes.

TO BE CONTINUED...