Here's another story fragment looking for a story. I have no idea where to go from here. The word "What?" fills in for the brilliant dialogue I haven't written yet, because I don't know if this is a spy thriller, a murder mystery, or a political intrigue story. Any suggestions would be welcome.
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Political Asylum
“Caf’ka,” I said, “ta vu’si o n’mar.” I wanted coffee, with cream and sugar.
“Vu’si o n’mar!” said C’los, the old alien who passed out the flyers and fetched me coffee. “Ma tau!” C’los wiggled his ears, a sign of pleasure.
“Ma tau!” I said. Yes, I wanted my coffee hot. We went through the same routine every morning. C’los never got tired of it. C’los had been on Earth for 20 years and hadn’t learned a word of English. So I talked to him with the limited Sk’late I knew. Ten words maybe. No, eleven words.
The aliens I worked with insisted that C’los fetch me coffee. It was a dangerous neighborhood. The Sk’late immigrants were hard-working folks, taking the jobs Earthmen didn’t want. Most of them worked in the illegal sweatshops, sewing shirts 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. But some of the kids went bad. They ran in gangs and dealt x’an to the string-outs. Fly-by shootings were so common the locals didn’t even get scared any more. They just walked on by while the peacekeepers cleaned up the mess, another dead kid. No one talked, so they never solved the crime. A week later, the victim’s gang would do a fly-by in the next neighborhood. Another kid would die. So it would go, back and forth. There was no end to it.
The aliens I worked with were originally from K’marka, a world four lightyears from Sk’lataria, and sharing the same language. They got green cards during the amnesty ten years ago. They spent their days typing immigration forms for $25 a page. They sent me clients and I cut them in for 50%. It was legal arrangement, since my partner was a licensed attorney on her home world. But I didn’t like the deal. I was the talent. I had the license. I worked the cases. All my partner provided was a crummy, run-down office in the bad part of town near the starport. She also provided a half-witted Sk’late interpreter, because I was not even slightly inclined to learn an alien language to talk to people on my own planet. And she provided C’los, who passed out flyers to bring in the traffic off the sidewalk. And coffee. C’los brought me coffee.
My specialty was political asylum. My days were divided between immigration court and consultations with new clients. Today was no different. So long as the civil war on Sk’lataria lasted, my calendar was full. I didn’t charge much, but I made it up in volume. I lost track of my clients. They all had the same story. The rebels had raided their nest, then the government had raided their nest, etc., etc. They were fruit pickers. Neither the rebels or the government had any reason to persecute them for political reasons. It was all so pointless. They would all be ordered deported, but none of them would ever really leave Earth. My fees barely paid the bills after the UN took its cut off the top.
So I was expecting the usual when she came in, another Sk’late fruit picker with a bogus political asylum claim. I was wrong. My ears perked up when she said, in perfectly enunciated English:
What???
I took a closer look at my new client. Her face was intelligent and quite attractive. She wore an elegant n’aris tunic on her slim athletic frame, with a stylish g’aran band around her waist. She wore three precious l’lan rings on her long tapered fingers. A far cry from the rough work clothes worn by my typical client. A member of the Sk’lar nobility perhaps? She was obviously in a great deal of stress, but bravely managed to keep a cool composure. She reached in her purse and pulled out something slim and metallic. In her right hand was a Sk’lar needle-gun, an elegant contraption with a deadly purpose. She didn’t point it at me, but she didn’t exactly point it away from me either. I pondered carefully before responding:
What???
