Wayward Saint by J.S. Morin

Author:J.S. Morin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781643550077
Publisher: Magical Scrivener Press

Esper clasped her hands in front of her, eyes unfocused. This problem was more than mere cunning or magic could overcome. This was a problem of morality.

Two friends in danger. One she’d just met, young, innocent—in a twisted, jaded manner—and in unknown peril from a vile and disreputable father who, at best, might only corrupt her by example. The other she’d known for years since he was too young to remember a time before, who looked up to her and needed her help to navigate a galaxy that wasn’t designed to his biological needs.

And only one of them was human.

By any other measure, the choice ought to have been crystal clear. Save Kubu. Let Tiffany fend for herself. After all, failing at a job wasn’t the end of the world. Plenty of kids had grown up with rotten parents.

It killed Esper inside to even consider risking Kubu’s safety to help Tiffany escape from Odin. While Kubu was technically a Martian resident with sentient rights, good luck getting that legal code enforced galaxy-wide. She could wind up having to assault an animal detention facility when they got to Nephthys IV for all she knew. Genetics criminals gave local authorities a perfect excuse to incarcerate a talking dog. Or worse, hand him over to a laboratory for study.

“Can’t think like that,” Esper told herself. “Kubu is going to be fine.” She’d make sure of that, one way or another.

Tiffany’s problem still vexed Esper.

Candace St. Cloud had provided documentation proving she was Tiffany’s mother and legal guardian before Esper had agreed to take the job. The woman had seemed genuinely surprised that a hired gun like Esper would care about the legal niceties. That made the documents all the more convincingly genuine; Candace hadn’t had time to forge anything.

Roger St. Cloud, on the other hand, had plenty of time to line up his little legal duckies before sending his attack dog to play fetch. The question was: how had he done it? Were the documents Odin presented forgeries? Did Tiffany’s father have judges or politicians in his pocket on Wevem?

Sighing and pressing her thumb to pay the computer terminal in her cabin, Esper delved into the omni to find out.

It was half an hour before she and the touchscreen interface came to terms and brought up useful information.

Wevem was an old tesud colony. While the planet had gone cosmopolitan in the past hundred years, the original tesud charter was still their governing basis of law. Human residents like Roger St. Cloud lived under laws concocted by hard-shelled reptiles that had evolved from tortoises. Tesuds were widely respected among the Allied Races of the Galactic Ocean. Patient, soft-spoken, and deliberate in their thinking, the tesud people were ARGO’s foremost diplomats, philosophers, and social scientists.

Tesuds were also cold-blooded, egg-laying herbivores. Their legal codes had some peculiar quirks, at least from a human perspective.

It took Esper two hours and a room-service ice cream sundae before she finally discovered Roger St. Cloud’s trick.

Buried in tesud legalese, there was an inherent bias in child custody determinations in favor of the father.

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