Author's Note:
I just wanted to put a note in here about the use of italics for the speech of the characters. Anya speaks verbally in her changed form as a Copper, and to differentiate it from her usual speech patterns it is in italics with quotation marks. Gersha speaks mentally when he is in his changed form, and it is marked by italics with no quote marks. You'll know it when you see it.
As usual, thank you for taking the time to read my stories. Feedback is welcomed, whether you use the contact feature on my biography page or leave a comment here. It is appreciated as long as it is constructive.
Any errors are entirely my own fault. I did not use an editor on this one as I usually do with most of my stories. Feel free to point them out if you find them.
*
"I erased it because I really don't think there should be copies of these films just laying around," I shot in the general direction of Lee's tiny corner. "Even if it is on a viewer Gersha probably carries everywhere."
Grey nodded and sat on the floor by the door. Not liking being the only one left standing, I sat back on the bed in front of Gersha. He nodded at me and said, "I thought that since she had stolen them, she could be the one to hold them. I mean, come on, Grey, you had to touch her to know she had them or you would have let her be taken by the guard."
I glared at Grey but he only shrugged and shot a nasty look at Gersha while Lee sat in his corner and chuckled. Gersha said something in what must have been his native language, and Grey nodded, "No, no. You were right to give them back."
"Uh," I held up a finger and looked around, though Lee continued to do whatever he was doing in the corner. "Nobody ever answered my question. What -- exactly -- are we going to do with the films now that we have them and the man that wanted them is dead?"
Lee spoke, looking up from his corner, "We can reroute some of the money remotely, but the rest we would have to physically be at the bank to move unless they change their policies. Every one of us would be recognized on the spot if we walked into these establishments. The pictures will be a challenge, but I think if we play it right and feed them slow, we could make a pretty nice nest egg off of them."
"What are the politicos doing right now?" Grey asked.
Lee looked at a vid screen in his lap that I hadn't seen earlier and tapped a couple things out on the surface, "No one seems to have noticed that the films are missing yet. The guard at the ball must have just been there because she got caught coming out of an off-limits hallway. Either that or the admiral hasn't taken his latest find to his office yet. Our intel said his routine was to take whatever he managed to pick up back to his office, have some fun with them, and then when they'd left he checks to make sure everything is straight in his office. My guess is we should probably be off world by the time he checks everything in his office. This guy isn't above having troops go door to door and tear things apart until whatever he wants is found."
"Right," Grey looked as though he were lost in thought. "See if you can put a small amount of the money into a private account under a pseudonym and get us a comfortable ride off this dirt ball." He looked at me, "All of us."
~*~*~*~*~
It seemed to take days for Lee to arrange our pick-up and shuttle tickets, but I knew it had only been a couple hours. We would have to take a shuttle to a moon base and then link up with a cruiser, but he had gotten us decent berths and we would have a comfortable ride to wherever we wanted. Or course, 'wherever we wanted' had to be together since I had the films and they wouldn't let me out of their sight.
We were on the shuttle and heading to the station when the vid screens cut to a news broadcast about the robbery. I knew what was missing, but the admiral must have gone over the edge when he discovered the films were gone because the shots of the office on the screen showed that it had been ransacked. The admiral was shown stating that he checked his belongings every night, and tonight something had been taken. A security chief came on with the usual spiel about how they would find out who had perpetrated the robbery and that they already had several leads. The broadcast ended and the usual views of where the shuttle was headed returned.
"We'll have a couple hours to wait for the cruiser then we can take it wherever it's going," Grey had taken the seat next to me and had seen the broadcast. "Lee's pulling up the ship's itinerary now and we can choose a planet later."
The station proved to be just like every other space station I had seen -- plain and utilitarian. I used some of the credit Lee had managed to get for us and got some new clothes. The tight leggings and loose, flowing top were not my idea of a good outfit but Grey had told us that with the amount of credit we were using to travel we had better look the part. I was counting on being able to find clothes that were more to my tastes when we reached our destination, wherever that may be.
We boarded the cruiser and were shown to our compartments. I was more than surprised to find that Lee had only booked two rooms -- one for him and Gersha and one for me and Grey. Grey brushed past me into our berth, only looking back when I didn't follow. "It would have been suspicious if a group of four bought separate berths for the trip. Not to mention it would have cost almost as much as Lee took to cover our entire trip."
I was a little skeptical that that was the only reason when I saw that the room only had one bed, a small table with a chair, and a tiny bathroom. When I made to back out of the room, Grey stopped me with a hand on my back. "I can't sleep with you," my eyes must have been wide and terrified because he dropped his hand and looked at me.
"You can switch with Lee if you'd like, bunk with Gersha," his voice was low and he was obviously trying to be soothing. "Their compartment is outfitted so that Gersha has a tank and Lee will get the bed."
"Then why wasn't that the case when he passed out the room cards?"
"Because Gersha is a morph and in a tank he would be in his more natural form, and Lee is more comfortable with him like that than I am," he said, his face turning a little pink at the admission. "But you are welcome to try to sleep in a room with him."
The thought of sleeping in the same room on a shuttle as a morph made me shudder and I changed my mind. Sharing a bed with Grey had to be better. I shoved him into the shower compartment so I could change into something slightly more comfortable to sleep in and then climbed under the scratchy covers with my back to the room.
The shower hissed to life and I sighed. With Grey in the shower, I could slip out of the berth and do some snooping around the shuttle on my own. I slid into a body suit as quick as I could and palmed the door open. My hair was back in a bun, and I strode down the corridor away from the front of the ship. If it was run like any of the other shuttles I had been on, the maintenance crew would be the only people lurking around in the hallways. Sure enough, there was a welder working on a door near the galley and no one else in sight.
I found the rear lounge empty and quiet except for the hum of the engines underfoot. The shuttle was a newer Star Class, but aside from being larger and having better first-class appointments it was laid out much the same as a Planet Class. In the empty lounge, I would be able to shift more of myself into my other form than I had been able to in weeks.
My arms lengthened and my hands grew into full talons. The body suit had a slit in the back that allowed my tail to be free. I sighed as my face began to shift to a more reptilian shape and I was able to stretch my jaw fully open. Where I had had silver skin before was now covered in tiny silver and gold scales shining in the dim light of the room. There wasn't enough room for a full change, but I longed for the time when I would be able to stretch my wings. With my facial changes came the eye shift that allowed me to see every single electrical conduit running through the ceiling, walls, and floor. The brightness of those lines running with electricity made me squint after being accustomed to the duller sight of my other form.
I let my head fall back and stretched my arms toward the ceiling, smiling when my talons scratched along the metal panels nearly nine feet above where my head had been.
"You and I aren't that different, child," a voice said from the door. I spun to see Gersha leaning against the wall. "Your other forms are just larger than mine."
As I stared at him I allowed my body to return to the more constrained form I'd had when we first boarded the ship. It was almost painful, like putting my foot back into an ill-fitting shoe after having taken it off. "How did you find me?"
He smiled and walked toward me once I was back to something a little less spectacular. "It wasn't that hard. You couldn't have gone far. It gave Grey a good scare, though, coming into the room and not seeing you there. He thinks you were going to try to leave us high and dry and take the films for yourself. But I'm a morph. I understand that need to stretch."
