---

Thank You for Doing Business with the Xyb’lor Principality

by Rachel Meresman

Jaxon was not a connoisseur of art, but he could identify a work’s salient features. And the salient features of these particular works were that they were valuable, lacking any obvious security system, and right there.

“Don’t even think about it,” Pen’s voice said pleasantly in his ear.

“I think the figurine on the left is solid karynite,” Jaxon murmured into his comm, low enough not to trigger the translation device on the table.

“You can’t steal it,” Pen said.

“You never want me to steal anything,” Jaxon said. “It really puts a damper on our relationship.”

“True,” Pen replied. “But stealing from the Xyb’lor would be suicidal. Which is why no one will think to look for us here.”

Across from Jaxon, Curator Third Rank I’dyglx held a swirling black sphere aloft in one dainty tendril. The Xyb’lor tilted the piece from side to side in front of what Jaxon presumed were its visual receptors, its cilia fluttering gently. Four other spheres rested, inert, in a case on the table, along with the circuit sculpture that was the official reason Jaxon was there.

I’dyglx made a sound like an obscene tea kettle. “These are fine specimens of constellation spheres from the Seventh Hegemony,” the translation device intoned. “But five is too many to exchange for a Srikeel sculpture, even an early one.”

“Is it?” asked Jaxon innocently.

Pen was correct that it would be incredibly foolish to steal from the Xyb’lor, but that didn’t mean there weren’t angles to be worked. For example an enterprising person could, hypothetically, convince their employer that the Xyb’lor would consider an early Srikeel circuit sculpture to be worth five Seventh Hegemony constellation spheres. Then when the Xyb’lor, with their love of art and famously militant sense of fairness, insisted that it was only worth four, said enterprising person could pocket a sphere for themselves. Jaxon already had a buyer lined up.

“Yes,” I’dyglx said. “It’s worth exactly 4.2 of them.”

“Wait, what?”

“4.2,” I’dyglx repeated. “But of course we can’t just cut off eighty percent of one, that would be ridiculous.” Its cilia trembled in what Jaxon assumed was its version of laughter. He forced out an awkward chuckle. “But we can offer something of equivalent value. Now let me see.” I’dyglx returned the sphere to the case and sucked the tendril back into its torso with a small pop. “A pre-cataclysm etching from Thall? Or perhaps a diptych by our own painter Xyg’ilyth’klig? We also recently acquired a lovely sculpture representing the ascension of Innocent A’e to the final plane.”

“Pen?” Jaxon whispered.

“Working on prices,” Pen said. “How do you spell Xyg’ilyth’klig?”

“Those are all interesting options,” Jaxon stalled.

“It’s hard to choose just from the descriptions, isn’t it?” I’dyglx said. “If you’d like I can bring them here for you to examine yourself.”

“Pen!” Jaxon hissed a minute later. “It just left me alone in here. With the holospheres, and the circuit sculpture, and everything on the walls.” There was no response. “Pen?”

“We’ve got a problem.”

Jaxon jerked his hand back from the karynite figurine. “What problem?”

“Lowry’s ship just came through the system gate.”

“But he’s not supposed to look for us here!” Jaxon exclaimed, figurine forgotten. The translation device gurgled. “Are you sure it’s him?”

“Unless there’s somebody else with a category three cruiser and appalling taste in ship colors,” Pen said.

Jaxon opened the door and stuck his head out. A dozen identical doors lined the hallway, leading to a dozen identical rooms and a dozen Xyb’lor curators dedicated to feeding the Principality’s insatiable hunger for ever more and novel art. There was no sign of Curator Third Rank I’dyglx. Self-preservation battled profit within Jaxon and won.

“Meet me at the docks in five,” he told Pen.

“I can’t,” Pen said.

“Why not?” Jaxon’s mind filled with images of Lowry’s ship already locked onto their own, explosion and death imminent.

“There’s a bunch of ships ahead of me in the queue,” Pen said. “They were very clear about staying in order.”

“Pen.”

“This is the Xyb’lor, Jaxon. I’ve seen less strict queues at military stations.”

“You need to get out of there,” Jaxon said. “And you can either retrieve me from the docks first, or abandon me to the Xyb’lor. Who will probably decide that the fair thing to do is to turn me over to Lowry.”

Pen was silent.

“Penelope!”

“Fine!”

Jaxon gave the holospheres a final mournful look, then grabbed the circuit sculpture and took off down the hallway. He careened around the corner and barely avoided crashing into two reptilian creatures carrying a carved stone column, then dodged around a Xyb’lor holding a stack of pale gray bowls.

“Sorry, sorry, excuse me, sorry sorry,” Pen was chanting in his ear.

“Pen, which berth,” Jaxon shouted. He darted between a Xyb’lor looped round and round with golden rope and a blue humanoid weighed down by an enormous blown glass sculpture.

“Sorry sorry—number twenty-three—hey! Watch it! Sorry sorry.”

Another turn brought Jaxon to the main doors of the facility and into a veritable gallery of ambulatory fine art. The various Xyb’lor and other art-carrying individuals in the vast atrium stared as Jaxon sprinted past them, looking like what he so often was but at this moment wasn’t—a thief.

“Keep the change!” he shouted.

Pen already had the airlock open as she slid their ship into berth twenty-three, forcing another ship to swerve out of the way at the last minute. Jaxon was barely on board before Pen took off again.

“Where’s Lowry’s ship?” Jaxon panted, searching the screen over Pen’s shoulder.

“It got lost somewhere in the mess I made of the queue.” She maneuvered them through the maze of ships with precise, angry jerks on the controls. “I can’t believe I did that. The Xyb’lor are going to kill us.”

“The Xyb’lor are not going to kill us for cutting in line,” Jaxon said. “There’s probably just some fine they want us to pay.”

“And we’ll pay it?” Pen asked hopefully.

“Of course not.”

“Ugh, fine,” Pen said. She swung wide around the last pair of ships between them and the gate. “Where to?”

“Somewhere Lowry won’t think to look for us.”

“Because that has worked well so far.”

“Just get us out of here.”

Pen did. There was that awful-familiar feeling, like someone was trying to wring Jaxon out like a wet towel, and then the screen was filled by a planet, its jewel-bright greens and blues jarring after the austere metal of the Xyb’lor station.

“Where are we?” Jaxon asked.

“Pharia,” Pen said. “It’s a new settlement, committed to self-sufficiency and living as one with the native flora and sub-sentient fauna. Nothing worth stealing unless you want to fill the hold with wool or joppa wheat.”

“Gross,” Jaxon said. He examined the circuit sculpture for damage, then carefully stowed it in a locker. “I can’t believe I had to leave the constellation sphere. What a waste.”

“We’ll still get the courier fee,” Pen said pointedly. “The constellation sphere shouldn’t have been ours to resell anyway.”

“The courier fee will barely cover fuel costs,” Jaxon said. “And if they weren’t willing to overpay, they should have hacked the latest auction prices.” Pen made a disapproving sound, which Jaxon ignored.

Pen, to their great and mutual frustration, possessed a set of morals that precluded nearly all the ways that Jaxon preferred to earn money. She rationalized her role in those earnings by merely piloting Jaxon’s ship to and from various jobs and never actually participating herself, then stayed up late writing vague and guilt-ridden letters to her mother. Jaxon told his mother that he ferried literal nuts and bolts from factories to shipyards and slept just fine at night.

“Let’s cool it here for a couple hours,” Jaxon said. “Then head to—”

He stopped and they both stared in horror at the garishly striped green and pink ship that had just come through the gate.

“How did Lowry know we were here?” Jaxon asked.

“The same way he presumably found us in the Xyb’lor Principality,” Pen said. Her hands hovered tensely over the controls.

“Shit, do you think he hacked the gate?” Jaxon asked. “Those are supposed to be unbreakable. Did they bribe somebody? Could we bribe somebody? Could we get manifests? Because that would—”

“Jaxon, focus,” Pen said sharply. “What do I do?”

“Right,” Jaxon said. “Open communications I guess.”

Pen typed in a command. The ship gave a morose trio of beeps.

“What does that mean?” Jaxon asked.

“It means he doesn’t want to talk to us,” Pen said. “I wonder why.”

“The ring was just sitting there on his desk!” Jaxon protested. “It would have been insulting not to steal it. How was I supposed to know it was sentimental—oh shit move Pen.”

They were speeding away from the gate before Jaxon had finished speaking. Bright orange lines streaked along the edge of the screen.

“Is he shooting at us? Pen, I think he’s shooting at us!”

“Yes, I noticed,” Pen said tightly. “You might want to strap in.” Jaxon scrambled for the co-pilot’s chair.

Whatever moral objections Pen might have to Jaxon’s work, it had given her extensive experience in dodging hostile fire. But they were smaller and unarmed, with nowhere to go except a pacifist planet that seemed unlikely to intervene.

“Can you get us back through the gate?” Jaxon asked.

“I can try,” Pen said, and gunned the ship in the opposite direction.

“Pen, this is the wrong way,” Jaxon said.

“I know.”

“Pen, we’re heading towards the planet. Very fast.”

“I know.”

“This ship isn’t intended for atmospheric reentry!”

“Do I tell you how to do your job?” Pen snapped.

“All the damn time!”

“And does it ever help?”

“No!”

“So stop backseat piloting!”

“Fine!”

“Fine!”

Jaxon bit his cheek hard enough to taste blood, but he didn’t shout as Pen brought them in at an angle that would send them spiraling into the planet’s gravity. At the last moment she yanked on the controls and the ship curved upwards, bouncing off Pharia’s upper atmosphere like a stone skipping across a lake. Jaxon’s stomach followed the trajectory a half-second later. Pen kept them on the curve until they were soaring back towards the gate.

Which was when the second ship came through.

Unlike Lowry’s ship, this one was gray and sleek, its surface bulging with what Jaxon knew to be some of the most sophisticated weaponry in the galaxy.

“Oh shit,” Jaxon said. “They really do care about cutting in line.”

Pen cursed and dodged out of the way of the Xyb’lor ship, the gate beyond, and—serendipitously—three missiles from Lowry’s ship. The missiles continued toward the Xyb’lor ship, before detonating harmlessly in front of it, blocked by an invisible barrier.

The Xyb’lor ship fired off three shots of its own. The three white streaks closed in on Lowry’s ship, mirroring its zigzagging perfectly. Jaxon and Pen stared at the screen in shock as Lowry’s famously ugly ship gave one last frantic zig and then exploded. The corona of wreckage was still expanding when the console beeped.

“That’s a comms request,” Pen said faintly.

“Accept it,” Jaxon said, equally faintly.

A burbling sound came over the ship’s speakers.

“What the—”

“Translator,” Jaxon said.

“Oh right.” Pen flipped a switch.

“— requesting permission to come aboard,” the ship said.

“Do you think they’ll shoot us if we say no?” Pen asked. Her hands were white where they gripped the controls.

“Let’s not find out,” Jaxon said.

The ship rocked gently as the Xyb’lor ship connected to the airlock. A minute later the door to the bridge irised open to reveal Curator Third Rank I’dyglx. Its cilia fluttered in agitation and one tendril held a gleaming metal device with a protuberance at one end. As the Xyb’lor stepped onto the bridge it extended the device, pointing the protuberance at Pen and Jaxon.

“I’m sorry. I knew it was wrong to jump the queue,” Pen babbled. “Please don’t kill me. I promise I’ll never cut in line again as long as I live—”

“It’s not Pen’s fault,” Jaxon spoke over her. “I ordered her to cut ahead in line. She’s a real rule follower at heart. It gets pretty annoying actually—”

I’dyglx waited until both of them trailed off. “One cannot simply keep the change,” it sputtered, its cilia flitting about wildly. “That would not be fair, or reciprocal. You did not specify which art piece you wanted, so I have brought The Ascension of Innocent A’e by the artist Hlin.”

I’dyglx gestured pointedly with the protuberant metal shape. Jaxon took it. It was heavier than he expected and warm where I’dyglx had gripped it. When he looked up again, I’dyglx was holding out a data pad. “Please input your species-specific unique identifier here.”

Jaxon pressed his thumb to the pad and it gave a contented beep. I’dyglx’s cilia slowed to a gentle undulation. Tendril and pad retracted back into its body and disappeared.

“The Xyb’lor Principality thanks you for your business,” I’dyglx said. “If you choose to return, you will be required to wait an additional three hundred and fifty-two galactic standard minutes to land, representing the time you had left before docking, and the collective time lost to all ships present when you disrupted the queue.” Pen nodded vigorously. “Have a nice galactic standard solar cycle.”

I’dyglx departed and Jaxon and Pen let out matching breaths. Pen eyed the door speculatively.

“You know, we could use this,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Next time we’ve got somebody after us,” Pen said. “All we have to do is go to the Xyb’lor, leave something they owe us behind, and we’ve got ourselves a personal bodyguard. They probably won’t shoot unless they’re shot at first, what with their whole fairness and reciprocity thing, but the people you piss off do tend to be trigger happy.”

Jaxon blinked at her. “The moral lines you draw are fascinating.”

“What?” Pen said with a shrug. “We’d be following the rules.”

“No,” Jaxon said firmly. “Absolutely not. None of this fairness and reciprocity business. From now on, we only work with people whose actions make sense. If they don’t lie, cheat, and steal, I don’t want anything to do with them.”

“You mean people like Lowry?”

“For the last time, I didn’t know the ring was a gift from his grandmother,” Jaxon said. “Now let’s hand off the circuit sculpture and then I’ll find us a new job.”

“Can it not involve stealing for a change?” Pen asked.

“Sure,” Jaxon said. He waited just long enough for Pen’s expression to turn hopeful. “We haven’t done any smuggling for a while.”

Pen gave a resigned sigh. “Fine. Just try to pick a job that won’t end with us being shot at.” She headed towards the door. “I’ll be in my bunk.”

“No promises,” Jaxon called after her. “And tell your mother thank you for the cookies she sent!” Pen made an obscene gesture over her shoulder and disappeared through the door.

Jaxon set The Ascension of Innocent A’e by the artist Hlin on the console and sat down to consider their options. Most of his contacts were on the sort of space stations where both the government and various criminal gangs would, to Pen’s sure dismay, be eager to take shots at a new smuggler. At the other extreme was the planet Lith, where the worst possible consequence of getting caught smuggling was a fine and the whole enterprise was factored into the government’s economic projections down to the bribes paid to customs officers. It was the sort of standardized and rules-based system that Pen would adore if she were willing to tilt her moral compass just a handful of degrees. Jaxon had never been interested because the low risk meant less profit and even less excitement, except—

He opened the internal comms channel. “Hey Pen?”

“Yes, Jaxon?”

“Thank you for breaking the rules to come get me,” he said. He waited for a familiar jab about Jaxon’s just barely tolerable company and the difficult job market for pilots.

“Your life is more important than the rules,” Pen said.

“Oh,” said Jaxon.

“But maybe don’t make me prove it again, at least for a bit,” Pen added. She closed the channel before Jaxon could reply.

“Ugh,” Jaxon said to the empty room. “Lith it is.”

The work would be boring and the profits dismal, but some things were more important.

---

Host Commentary

The only thing I love almost as much as space stories is cheery near-victimless heist stories so you should know this is basically cake for me. I love how Meresman has used the tone and the pace of the heist in everything from language to length, ideas to motifs. This is a story that comes in light on its feet, talks its way into and out of and into and out of trouble and finally into the good luck it’s been frantically digging for. Han Solo would nod approvingly. So would the staff of Leverage International, the Slingers and Nathan Drake. Any job you get out of ahead is a good job, even if you only got there in the first place because your point man has an impulse control problem. In so far as he doesn’t have any. And should.

That good natured frantic combination of charm and improv is always a good time and it also puts us in a really interesting ethical space. Meresman has done something very tricky here and given us a story that feels like the second stage of the characters’ evolution without compromising on either the set up or the wrap up. Jaxon and Pen are lying to themselves that it’s all about the money, but they’re professional liars so they’ve bought into their own hype. When that fades, when they realize what they really love is the puzzle and the rush of solving it, that’s going to put them in a really interesting spot. Because when you’re this good at this kind of work, to quote Jeff Winger from Community:

‘I discovered at a very early age that if I talk long enough, I can make anything right or wrong. So either I’m God, or truth is relative. In either case, booyah.’

That’s where they are, for me. Especially Pen, who is clearly way more up for the doing crimes part of her job than she quite accepts. When they realize that they’ll also realize they can target people whose downfall will do everyone some good. And get them paid of course. But mostly the first one. I’d really like to read that too, but if it never appears, well that’s just proof that Jaxon and Pen got away flawlessly this time isn’t it? Brilliantly done, and props to Isaac Harwood for nailing the tone. Thanks, all

As is always the case, we rely on you to pay our authors, our narrators and our crew, and to cover our costs. We’re entirely donation funded and last year that changed in some very exciting ways with becoming a registered US nonprofit. We ran a great end of year campaign in 2023 to raise awareness about all the new ways you can help us out including the fact that if you pay taxes in the US, you might be able to claim a deduction. Check out the short metacast on escapeartists.net for more ideas, and how to get in touch if you think of something else that’s more meaningful to you.
 
One-time donations are fantastic and gratefully received, but what really makes a difference is subscribing. Subscriptions get us stability and a reliable income we use to bring free and accessible audio fiction to the world. You can subscribe for a monthly or annual donation through PayPal or Patreon.
 
Not only do you help us out immensely when you subscribe or donate but you get access to a raft of bonus audio.  You help us, we help you and everything becomes just a little easier. Even if you can’t donate financially, please consider spreading the word about us. If you liked an episode then please consider sharing it on social media, or blogging about us or leaving a review it really does all help and thank you once again.
 
Join us next week for A Foundational Model for Talking to Girls by Brian Hugenbruch, read by Kyle Akers with Valerie on host duties and Summer producing. Then as now, it will be a production of the Escape Artists Foundation and distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International license and we leave you this week with the wise words of the Egyptian God of Frustration and I have no doubt, Jaxon’s favorite cartoon character.
 
“It’s not the principle of the thing. It’s the money.”
 
We’ll see you next week folks. Until then, have fun.