While writing Space Deputy there was a character who walked on- and off-stage without affecting the plot at all, and yet, I knew he had a story to tell. This is Ryce’s tale.

Aprons On!

Ryce’s hatch-brother, Arth, kept the claw on his left index finger sharpened to a fine point. As they sat in their cabin, waiting for permission to disembark at the Fleam Space Dock, Arth punctured a sheet of paper. A specially designed board kept the paper in place on Arth’s knee as he pinpricked random patterns.

Zszcrip, zszcrip, zszcrip. The jittery rhythm with which he stabbed the paper revealed his nervousness, and perhaps, his regret.

Ryce reached across—the twin beds they were sitting on were close enough for him to simply extend an arm—and ripped the paper from Arth. Then he ate it. Eating it was a mistake. It tasted like freeze-dried yams. Ewrgh.

“What the eggs-hell, bro?” Arth protested.

“Pricking paper isn’t really creative,” Ryce said.

All saurelles have thin lips. When Arth pressed his together, they vanished from his khaki-green face.

Humans, the Federation’s dominant sentient species in terms of demographic, political and financial power, called saurelles “lizard people”. Ryce had never protested the nickname since, to be fair, his people did resemble lizards. Other saurelles argued that as the first species in the galaxy to attain space travel, well before humans, saurelles deserved more respect.

Arth cast aside his empty board and recapped his index finger claw. “I realize you’re upset, Ryce, but criticizing me—”

“It’s not a criticism,” Ryce said, suddenly weary of it all. “It’s a warning. Ma didn’t randomly choose you to be my escort. I’m an object lesson for you. Be creative, or else!” His tail curled and uncurled in agitation. “Pinpricks in paper barely counts as creativity. Try splatter painting or poetry writing.”

Arth got up and shoved his board into his backpack. “If you’re so smart about creativity, how come you’re the one with a one-way ticket to Fleam?”

“Because I couldn’t fake it.”

The heresy hung in the faintly musty air of the cabin.

Every saurelle was expected to display creativity. Failure to do so brought shame on the entire clan. Ryce had tried. But where he could appreciate his hatch-sister Diera’s throat singing and another sister’s hot coal dancing and even a hatch-brother’s scat crystal toe ring creations, for himself, Ryce had found every attempt at creativity to be soul destroying. The emptiness of what he made, from macramé chandeliers to rant attack lyrics, crushed his ability to pursue any of those endeavors for more than a few days. He couldn’t even get creative with cooking. As far as he was concerned, food dispensers were invented for a reason.

A low chime sounded followed by an artificial voice. “Disembarking will commence in eight minutes. Thank you for journeying with the Ebullient Busplane.”

“Ryce, I’m sorry,” Arth said quietly as they exited the cabin. Their walk through the space dock and down the space elevator would be their last time together.

Even now, with emotions boiling up in him and wanting to find the words to share them with his hatch-brother, Ryce’s lack of creativity choked him. He hugged Arth. “Be safe, bro.” Then he climbed aboard the inner-atmos shuttle that was headed for the Burghal Compound. A dozen other disgraced saurelles joined him. Unlike thin-skinned humans, saurelles felt no need to wear clothes, so he saw that his fellow saurelle passengers all bore the scale-rip mark that he did. Seven scales had been torn off their abdomens to show that their clans had cast them off.

Reflexively, Ryce touched his scar. His mother had cauterized it with acid to ensure that the scales couldn’t grow back. As if I’ll live long enough for that to happen. Bitterly, he reflected on his fate as the shuttle picked up speed and soon soared across an ocean.

Fleam was an habitable, although not hospitable, planet in the Reclamation Sector. It was icy cold where saurelles preferred heat; yet it was here that cast-off saurelles were expected to redeem their dishonored lives by losing them in service to a greater cause. The Burghal Compound was one of those open secrets that the Federation government ignored. The Burghal Corporation coordinated missions that required a sentient being to ensure success, but which were not survivable for an organic sentient. Inorganic sentients, true artificial intelligences, were too rare to sacrifice on such missions.

Ryce was literally travelling to his death. He contemplated the idea for a few minutes, adding in the noble thought that he would die saving lives. Perhaps he’d be sent out to shut down a radioactive mining orb or to infiltrate a pirate crew. Both were plot ideas in recent popular saurelle holo-movies. His clan would never know quite how he died, but if any of his hatch-brothers and –sisters thought of him, it would be with a melancholic sense of pride. He’d still be “poor Ryce”, but no longer “poor useless Ryce”. In dying, he could finally contribute.

He gulped, loudly.

Noble thoughts weren’t as comforting as he’d hoped they’d be. Seemingly, his fellow cast-offs felt the same. Claws scratched the shuttle’s floor and tails curled and uncurled.

The shuttle landed.

Ryce’s heart double-timed it. Pumpety-pump. Pumpety-

The shuttle door opened. A large saurelle with the whitening scales of old age poked his head in. “Hurry up. Your assignment is this way.”

Freezing cold air gusted in. Ryce’s neck scales rattled as he shivered. Hurriedly, he followed two other saurelles out of the shuttle. Apparently, this was a group assignment. The remaining cast-offs followed after a few moments hesitation.

The elderly saurelle—the one who hadn’t welcomed them to the Burghal Compound—didn’t wait for them, but headed for a long, low, white building.

With an icy wind scouring the frozen tarmac, Ryce understood not waiting around. He dashed across the ground, feet freezing, backpack banging against his shoulder, and into the relative warmth of the unidentified building.

Instantly, the smell of chlorine and cabbage told him he’d entered a hospital. That was unexpected. So unexpected that he stopped suddenly, and another saurelle crashed into him. He staggered but stayed upright. His understanding had been that cast-offs were expendable. If he was wrong, if the Burghal Compound actually treated people hurt while on missions, then maybe, just maybe he wasn’t about to die in the next week or so.

His cautious optimism suffered a blow at the sound of the shuttle taking off. Throughout the galaxy, shuttle pilots were notorious for enjoying a gossip. That this one hadn’t even gotten out at the compound to stretch his or her legs suggested bad things.

“Bags down over there.” The elderly saurelle pointed to a low trolley.

With varying degrees of reluctance, everyone deposited their belongings.

“This way,” the saurelle in charge beckoned them onward.

The maze of corridors felt familiar to Ryce. He’d been a hospital janitor a couple of times. No, five times. Cleaning was uncreative work, yet strangely, many organizations preferred to employ sentients to do it rather than robots. The five hospitals that had employed Ryce had all claimed that patients and staff responded better to a living janitor than a robot. Perhaps it was similar to the reason no bar employed robo-bartenders. People craved contact with other sentients.

“Whoa!” the cast-off saurelle nearest to their unnamed leader halted, rocking, in the junction where two corridors crossed.

Ryce caught up with her and peered around her shoulder. “Oh, heck, no.”

To their right, where they were being led, was a ward of limp yellow saurelles; all bed-bound, and all hooked up to IVs and monitoring machines. There were twelve empty beds. They were to be test subjects.

“You are not here to chase glory,” a saurelle in a white coat addressed them sternly. “Your families cast you off in shame. You will reclaim your honor. Important drugs are tested here. Your sacrifice will—”

A bed-bound saurelle to their left projectile vomited red bile. The bile splattered against a poster on the wall.

Ryce recognized the sponsor’s logo on the poster. It wasn’t a pharmaceutical company, but rather a beauty products corporation.

He’d be damned if he’d suffer and die for others’ vanity. His body made the decision before his brain caught up. He spun, and ducked a burly orderly’s grabbing arms. Accelerating away from the junction, Ryce’s familiarity with hospitals led him instinctively to the less tidy, cluttered back rooms; the staff rooms, store rooms, and forgotten rooms.

Even though he’d lost the two orderlies chasing him, security would be after him soon enough. If he stayed in the hospital, he was dead meat.

If he left the building, he’d be dead, frozen meat.

A quick death, without torture, was infinitely preferable. And darn-dash the fate that had led him to such terrible choices.

He careened into a staffroom, ignored the saurelle half-rising from a table, snatched up a thick, expensive coat from a rack by an external door, and dragged it on as he hauled the heavy door open. He slipped out and the door thudded shut. As the terrifyingly cold wind hurled itself at him, he shoved his hands deep into the pockets of the coat—and his fingers closed around a hoverby fob. He clicked it.

A hoverby a short walk away flashed its lights as its driver’s door opened. It was a sleek, luxurious personal aircar.

“Star gods, be praised!” Ryce dived into the hoverby, got its door shut and the engine on, and streaked out of the Burghal Compound like a saurelle with its tail on fire. The numerous times he’d worked as a valet served him well, now.

He flicked through the hoverby’s control system and set a path back to the Fleam Space Dock. It was unlikely he’d make it there. The compound’s security would come after him or they’d notify the authorities, making up some story to lead to his recapture.

Or he’d run out of fuel.

Ryce watched the fuel gauge redline as the coast of Fleam’s most habitable continent, and the one where the space elevator connected, loomed larger and larger. So far, he hadn’t observed any sign of pursuit. Not that it mattered. There was one advantage to lacking creativity. Ryce didn’t obsess over alternatives. He simply decided on a goal and went for it. Since the hoverby wouldn’t make it any further without refueling, he guided it into a gliding crash, one he’d be able to walk away from, and landed in what appeared to be a salvage and construction yard.

A human night watchman strode out, well wrapped in outdoor clothing, to accost Ryce.

“I need to reach the space dock.” Ryce spoke before the man could.

“Get your comet-blasted vehicle out of the yard.”

Ryce had no money to pay the man with, but he inquired hopefully about the chances of refueling the hoverby to comply with the demand that he depart.

“Do you think we’re a damn gas station?” The guard’s warm breath hung in white clouds in the air.

Ryce shivered in his borrowed coat. For once, despite a saurelle’s natural aversion to clothing, he was grateful to be wearing some. If only he also had boots for his feet. His claws were turning blue. “No, sir. But I need to reach the space dock.”

“What about your hoverby?”

Ryce shrugged. He neglected to mention it wasn’t his. “Hoverbys don’t fly in space.”

“So, you’d leave it here?”

“Yeah.”

The guard tried to scratch his chin, but the balaclava he wore prevented it. He rubbed the fabric instead. “Those shuttles over there.” A jerk of his head indicated six shuttles being connected to a hauler. “They’re headed for the Saloon Sector.”

Ryce thought that through. The Saloon Sector was adjacent—in the sense of “adjacent” in vast cosmological terms—to his present location, the Reclamation Sector. It was also the wild frontier of the Federation; not lawless, but nearly so. It had a fearsome reputation among law-abiding types like Ryce. His theft of the coat and hoverby were his first ever foray into crime.

He stamped his cold feet. For the six shuttles to reach the Saloon Sector, they’d first have to be hauled up via the space elevator to the space dock, and then, loaded onto a space freighter. The latter action meant little to Ryce, but the first one was vital. The shuttles were a means of reaching the space dock.

He tossed the fob for the hoverby to the guard, and dashed for the nearest shuttle.

Luck, fickle star god that she was, suddenly favored him. He’d have run past it, aiming for the pilot of the hauler to beg a ride, but when he glanced sideways he recognized the nature of the shuttle. It was one of the newer efficiency designs and could double as a lifepod. Ryce had cleaned a fair few of them.

He jumped, caught a cable, swore at the touch of freezing metal, and kept scrambling upward. He remembered the sequence to initiate an emergency release of the shuttle’s main hatch, punched it in quickly, then tumbled inside the shuttle and resealed the hatch.

He could ask the hauler pilot for a ride. Or Ryce could just take one.

When the shuttle’s internal lights stayed on, its atmosphere warmed and a quick check of supplies showed food and water, Ryce’s decision was an easy one. He stayed snug inside the shuttle through the journey to the space elevator, during the ride up to the space dock, through the chaos of the shuttles being loaded onto the space freighter, and finally, for six weeks travel time.

Then his luck ran out.

Someone opened the shuttle, and found Ryce happily occupied doing nothing. He was just lying on his back, arms crossed behind his head, tail tapping.

“Stowaway!”

The irate space freighter captain hauled Ryce out of the shuttle by his ear. The man ranted and raved. According to him, spacing was too good for a stowaway.

Spacing was the tradition of launching someone through an airlock to their death in deep space.

“I can work my passage,” Ryce offered. “I could clean. Ow!”

The captain of the space freighter was short, but determined, and his grip on Ryce’s right ear was a strong one. He pulled Ryce to the external hatch.

Ryce prepared himself to meet the Deep Dark.

Instead, the hatch opened to a lock-tunnel.

Ryce stopped resisting, or attempting to resist, his eviction from the space freighter. Evidently, it was docked somewhere, and there was no obvious advantage in attempting to stay where he was. So he trotted along with the space freighter captain.

The man released him as the lock-tunnel opened to an atmospheric dock, and then, to a large cafeteria restaurant.

“The Deadstar Diner.” Ryce’s thin lips moved as he read the sign.

“Oh, no you don’t!” A human woman appeared in Ryce’s path. Actually, she blocked the captain’s path. “Not again, Ishmael. You don’t get to dump your problems on me.”

Ryce studied the agitated female.

She was even shorter than the captain; a head shorter than Ryce, although her towering blonde hairdo made up the difference in height. She wore purple clothes that matched her purple eyeshadow and had pink lips.

Geez, but humans were ugly.

“Now, Darlene,” space freighter captain Ishmael attempted to placate the woman, but his own indignation sounded in his voice. “One of the crew just found the stowaway. You know my policy. It’s out at the next stop or out in space.”

Darlene leaned forward, stabbing a finger in the direction of the captain’s chest.

He flinched and released Ryce’s ear.

Ryce rubbed his ear as he stared around the restaurant. It was an incredible place. It sparkled with cleanliness with black and white checkerboard tiles on the floor, shiny metal trims to the tables, red booths and staff hurrying this way and that in smart black and yellow uniforms. Music pumped over the audio system, enhancing the experience but not competing with the roar of conversation from the many full tables of spacers, Star Navy crew, couriers and asteroid miners. Everything moved with purpose and élan, and the guiding hand for the incredible performance stood in front of Ryce: Darlene.

Even as the woman berated Captain Ishmael, she tracked and directed all activity in the restaurant.

Ryce wanted to bow to her. It was a bravura performance as a ringmaster.

“Sheriff Smith will have your guts for garters if you attempt to space anyone,” Darlene told Captain Ishmael. “Just as I will refuse you service if you dump anyone at my diner. No food, no fuel, no nothing!” Her finger poked his chest.

“Fine.” The captain retreated a step. “Fine, be that way.”

Darlene treated him to an eye-bulging glare. “I am not a charity. Your stowaway, your problem. You should have checked wherever it was he hid.”

“In a shuttle,” Ryce supplied the answer. “You have a lovely restaurant.”

Her glare turned in his direction. “Don’t try to soft-soap me, youngster.”

“I’m not actually young.” Ryce thought about it. “Although, compared to you, I am.”

Captain Ishmael hurried out, choking on his laughter.

Darlene’s glare relaxed a smidgen. Her eyes no longer bulged. “Follow me,” she told Ryce.

The last time he’d followed an old person, things hadn’t ended well. Still, the Deadstar Diner was far different, and far from, the Burghal Compound. So he trailed the terrifying Darlene to a booth and slid in opposite her, managing not to fidget as she studied him across the gleaming table.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Ryce.”

“And what’s your story, Ryce?”

Creativity is required to be a successful liar. Lacking creativity, Ryce told Darlene his story; the unvarnished truth of how he came to stowaway in a shuttle on Captain Ishmael’s space freighter.

Midway through his tale, a waitress in a smart black and yellow uniform and wearing space-rollers to skid around the restaurant at high, if controlled, speed served both Darlene and him with coffee and pie.

At the end of his story, Darlene swallowed the last of her coffee and set the empty cup down decisively. She signaled for a waitress, and gave the woman a curt order. “Tell Ishmael to stop hiding and get his butt over here.”

The waitress grinned a high wattage smile and zoomed off.

Darlene stared at Ryce. “I am going to offer you a job.”

“You are?” It was a good thing he was sitting in a booth. He’d have fallen off a chair. “You did hear me say I stole a coat and a hoverby?”

“Borrowed, and it sounds like the people you fled deserved far worse than that.” She rubbed her forehead. “I’ll never understand the saurelle conviction that creativity is honor. Do you think I want to run a restaurant staffed by creatives?” She didn’t pause for him to answer. “No! I want people who can take orders, follow recipes, appreciate the service we provide here.” Abruptly her finger stabbed in his direction. “Do you know what you are, Ryce?”

He thought of all the derogatory names he’d been called over the years as a result of his lack of creativity. He decided that a lady like Darlene shouldn’t have her ears sullied with such words. “No, ma’am.”

“Audience.” Her stabbing finger tapped the table. “Creative endeavor requires an audience. I saw how you watched the action here in the restaurant, tapping your tail to the rhythm of it. You saw the humor of people.” Suddenly, she wasn’t so scary. She even gave him a small, complicit smile with her pink lips. “That’s why I’m willing to employ you as a waiter.” Her voice hardened again. “You’ll have to wear an apron, though. None of that clothes-free saurelle nonsense. It’s a matter of hygiene.”

Ryce glanced at a waiter hurrying past. The man’s black and yellow apron wrapped around him. Meditatively, Ryce touched the scar on his abdomen. With an apron on, no one would recognize him as a cast-off saurelle. He could truly begin a new life, one where his lack of creativity was welcome rather than derided.

He’d never thought such a thing possible.

He could be both an audience and part of the performance, under Darlene’s direction. “Thank you, ma’am. I’d love to wear an apron.”

Darlene looked up. “Stop lurking and smirking, Ishmael. Ryce, jump up and get the man his coffee.” And as the saurelle ran to the kitchen. “Apron first!”

***If you enjoyed this free story, don’t miss the novel that inspired it, Space Deputy.***

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CMLJBPW/