Eagle X, Mission 21: CTRL

Part 16: Liam

Liam and the team watched from the boarding ramp of the strike shuttle as The Song Brothers met with a raiel official.

"Is that really a government representative?" Nubia asked while she fiddled with her ammo clips and knives.

Blockade grunted from the foot of the ramp, arms crossed over his chest.

"She's wearing the tunic and hat of office, and she has a dozen choir guard watching her back," Liam observed. "I've never met one in person, but I've seen them on the vids. Always women, always freakishly tall, and always wearing the same outfit."

"How can you tell its a she?" Nubia chuckled.

Liam ignored the disdain in her voice for the moment.

"The slim waist and the abnormally long fingers."

Nubia gave him a skeptical look. "You just described every raiel in the universe."

"She's got you there, Spider," Hitman laughs from his position in the cockpit. They weren't planning to take off, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

Liam was no expert on the tall gray aliens, but he'd learned to spot the difference in their genders during his time in the EC military. There are variations in facial markings and tone of voice people are taught to look for when interacting with the raiel. However, anyone who spent time with them learned that the raiel don't think of gender like other species do. Despite this knowledge, Liam had spent an uncommon amount of time staring at them through the scope of a rifle. It was the waist and fingers he noticed first.

"If she's in charge of an official ship, she's not only a female but also someone of note within their society," Liam added. "Think like a celebrity crossed with a religious figure. Let's be on our best behavior."

"They call them High Harmonies," Scott growls, grabbing everyone's attention, "or something like that."

"Wait, I've heard of them," Nubia said, sliding clips into the bandoleer beneath her vest. She squinted, trying to get a better look at the tall raiel woman with the strange crown. "The bloodthirsty curs I used to run with had a rule in regards to raiel ships: take the cargo and take the fuel, but don't fuck with the one in the steepled hat."

Everyone turned to the flying saucer and the congregating aliens beneath it. The High Harmony stood more than a foot taller than her security detail and The Song Brothers, making her nearly nine feet tall from soles to scalp. The pointed pontiff-like hat added another foot to her height. Her security stood in a circle while she sang to Pi and Pornim Song.

"Sons of my distant sister, what movements of the stars have set you adrift in this part of the sea?" Hitman's voice came over the comms as a whisper.

"What are you babbling about up there?" Scott asked.

"I've finally got the mid-range mic going on the shuttle."

"You speak raiel?" Liam asked.

"Don't say it like that. I'm into music and no one makes acoustic equipment like raiel. I've been teaching myself their language."

Liam imagined the pilot grinning from ear to ear. He really did fancy himself a DJ with the hottest music channel on the micro-station. Being Eagle X's only music channel made it hard to argue.

"I get your point," Liam finally conceded. "So what are they saying, hotshot?"

Pi had stepped before the High Harmony and begun to sing in reply to her own song.

"Distant sister to our mother," Hitman explained this is usually an honorific, "we transport refugees to a yet undetermined location. We ferry contraband to a felarnian criminal and weapons to a survivalist colony."