"We've been paying these rates to your masters for years! It is what your betters agreed to!"

"And you've been unfairly profiting from our masters for quite some time now," Alan replied smoothly to the less than pleased Bzkorran sitting across from Grace and him on a large, clearly fake fur cushion. "You've had your fun, and you've made your money. Now, it's time to pay what these polymers are actually worth."

The Trade Mistress stomped one of her four small but magnificently decorated boots.

"Silence!" she demanded. "I will not negotiate with slaves!"

"Perfect," Alan said with a smile, "Because this is not a negotiation. Because we are slaves, we wouldn't dare presume to speak above our station. We are simply messengers. We bear the minimum rates from our gracious masters."

The Bzkorran stamped all of her feet angrily.

"Then why aren't your masters here to discuss this unnegotiated change themselves?"

"Because they aren't inclined to speak with you," Alan replied as he idly stretched on his far less fancy but probably more comfortable cushion and wiggled his boots.

The Bzkorran started looking at Alan's feet.

"And… Um…" the clearly distracted Bzkorran asked, "Why is that?"

"Because they found out that you have been offering them the same price for PTFE as you are LDPE, and both prices are a joke," Alan said as he fully extended his legs, lifting his feet off the floor as he flexed them, extending his heels and curling his toes.

The Bzkorran's nictating membranes dropped, the eyes behind them glistening.

"S-so what of it?" the Bzkorran demanded weakly, "Plastic is plas… WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?"

Alan looked up innocently as he was pulling off his boot.

"Sorry," Alan naively said as Grace desperately tried to keep a straight face, "It's a bit warmer in here than I'm used to, and my feet are sweating something awful. "Sorry, do you mind?"

He pulled off his left boot, his foot covered only by a thin, sheer sock.

"YES!" the Bzkorran exclaimed, quite flustered. "I mean no!... um... I mean…"

"Thanks, mistress," Alan replied as he slooooowly removed his other boot.

"I like you," Alan said as he slowly slid his fingers underneath the sock so sheer and thin that you could almost see his toes and seductively scratched his ankle.

"You… You do?!?"

"Especially your sense of humor," Alan chuckled. "Plastic is plastic… You are so funny!"

A loud thump tore the Bzkorran's eyes from Alan's feet as Grace brutally ripped off one of her boots.

"Oh, fuck yeah!" Grace sighed, "My tender little toes were broiling in those things."

The Bzkorran gasped as Grace's other boot was carelessly cast aside.

"These fucking socks were a bad idea," Grace said accusingly to Alan, "They don't breathe."

She ripped off her sock, causing the Bzkorran to gasp, and shoved her naked foot toward Alan's face.

"See?" she demanded, "Look at how sweaty it is!"

"Get that out of my face!" Alan said commandingly as he roughly grabbed her foot right in front of everybody, "I'm trying to speak… Not that there is any point. They have refused our kind master's quite reasonable offer. We should go."

"Buuut my feeeeet…" Grace whined. "Can't I just rest them for a little bit?" she implored as she wiggled her naked toes.

"We can't inconvenience our masters, Grace," Alan said sternly as he shoved his entire hand down his sheer, stretchy sock, causing it to pull tight against his toes, outlining every single one.

"Oh, you're no fun at all."

"Now, Grace, our kind masters entrusted us with this important task," he said as he touched feet with her. "We can have a nice foot bath together when we return with the noble, but entirely unreasonable, Bzkorran trade mistress's refusal of their quite acceptable terms once one considers the going rate for these polymers in this sector."

"I suppose you are right," Grace sighed as she started to put her sock back on.

"N-now, let's not be overly hasty," the Bzkorran replied, "Y-you obviously do not know how negotiations work."

"We don't?" Alan asked guilelessly.

"Of course, I would initially refuse," the Bzkorran replied, "that is why your masters sent you. They obviously want to break our agreement and open themselves up to other merchants on this station. However, I am far too clever to fall for such a simple ruse…"

She blinked, never taking her eyes off Grace's sumptuously large and soft-looking foot with five little wiggling toes… five!

"Why don't we all relax our toes while I carefully review this proposal," she said as she stared at Grace's toes. Her assistant, however, was drooling over Alan's strong ankle and the tight cloth barely restraining his absolutely gorgeous toes was driving her insane.

She absolutely had to see them!

"Oh, that would be wonderful!" Alan said happily. "Our masters would greatly reward us if we returned with an acceptance… or at least a counteroffer!"

He shifted uncomfortably.

"I don't suppose you would mind if I removed my socks as well? I love my masters but these socks… I fear I may have to beg them for the kindness of different ones."

"Oh, it's fine," the Bzkorran tried to say nonchalantly… and failed… as her assistant stifled a happy squeal.

"Oh good," Alan said as he, with a smooth and fluid grace, slowly unrolled his sock as the Trade Mistress's assistant's heart pounded in her chest.

Not to be outdone, Grace roughly shoved her other foot skyward, ripping off the sock, shoving it practically into the Trade Mistress's face as she did so.

"We thank you for your forbearance," Alan sighed as he wiggled his toes and rubbed them… sliding his fingers between each toe, spreading them apart…

The assistant actually ran in place for a brief moment.

Grace looked at him and smirked. He knew that look.

Oh no… Alan thought as he braced himself.

"Oh, that feels so much better!" Grace exclaimed as Alan steeled himself, not knowing what was about to happen. "Why did you insist on these sweat bags?" she asked as she put her foot in her own lap and twirled it around, causing the two Bzkorrans to almost faint.

"This is neither the time nor the place," Alan said impassively. "Stop disgracing yourself in front of our betters."

"It… It's okay…" the Trade Mistress managed to say. "Our feet can be quite sensitive at times."

(like when they swell slightly as they become excited… times such as right then...)

"Ugh," Grace said as she started waving her hand over her foot. "It already stinks!"

She then proceeded to shove her foot directly into Alan's face taking care to try to push it into his mouth (with a fair amount of success).

Alan's eyes widened as Grace demanded, "Smell it! Smell what you did to me!"

Fortunately, Grace's foot stifled Alan's snerk and concealed his expression.

The Trade Mistress dropped the tablet she was holding while her assistant wanted to look away but couldn't…

…This was so hot!!! It was like something you would see in a porno, not in real life, and certainly NOT during a trade negotiation.

Alan squeezed his eyes shut, trying not to laugh, as Grace continued mashing his face around with her sweaty foot.

Finally managing to regain control of himself, he grabbed Grace's foot, roughly shoving his fingers between her toes, and shoved it away.

"Would you please try to at least pretend not to be a savage for just one moment!"

He looked over at the stunned Bzkorrans apologetically.

"Please forgive my associate here," he said, still trying to get foot funk out of his mouth, "She is from one of the less advanced tribes of my people, barely above naked savages."

Grace grinned as she slid her foot over and started poking his foot with it.

"Footsies!" Grace giggled.

"Um…" the Trade Mistress's assistant said nervously, "Perhaps our guests would like to soak their feet while you review their offer… I… I… (cough)… I could have a foot bath prepared…"

The Trade Mistress looked at her normally demure assistant with wide eyes.

"YES!!!" the Trade Mistress exclaimed, "Would you two like a foot bath? We often like to… um… soak our feet… We find it quite… relaxing…"

"That would be great!" Grace exclaimed, waving her feet around in the air.

"Grace! We shouldn't impose! Remember your place!"

"No! It's not an imposition at all!" the Trade Mistress blurted, "um… In fact, I was sort of in the mood for one as well!"

"Well," Alan smiled, "if you were going to have one anyway…"

***

A few hours later, Alan and Grace, stuffed full of tasty delicacies and more than a little drunk, tottered out of the Trade Mistress's offices with a fond farewell and promises that they would be the ones to convey any additional messages from their masters.

"You sLuuuuuT…" Grace giggled.

"It worked, didn't it?"

"How did you know they had a thing for feet?"

"There is this magical thing called school," Alan replied, slurring slightly, "in it, they have these things called classes, you know, the things you were always skipping. Bzkorran traders are very widespread, even reaching into the Federation. The fact that their feet are a major erogenous zone as well as one of their exciting taboo naughty bits was considered relevant… as well as the fact that they find our feet very enticing, you know, with the extra toe and all."

"You're such a sexy little toe-nerd!" Grace snickered as she leaned onto him for support.

They walked, laughing and weaving, through the belly of a run-down station towards their equally run-down (but slowly getting better) ship.

"Hey," Grace slurred, "with the extra cash, do you think we can get a… a couple of new power relays? Void knows we need them."

She glanced up at him meaningfully.

"Yeah," Alan replied very quietly as he pretended to nibble on her ear, "I see them too."

Grace wrapped her arms around Alan and whispered, "They've been tailing us for the whole level. No way we're going to make it."

"Nope."

"Hey!" Grace slurred, "Let's go this way!" she exclaimed, pointing down a narrow dark passage. "I bet we can get there a lot faster…"

***

Crunch!

Alan slammed the final assailant's head into a protruding metal pipe and released his… hair?... allowing him to slump to the ground.

“(gurgle)… Mercy… Please…" the one now lying flat on the deck begged while Grace crouched over him with a happy gleam in her eyes.

"So much for us being harmless…" she said, not taking her eyes off the last of the group still conscious (and quite possibly still alive. The others weren't looking so good.)

"We can still salvage this," Alan replied calmly as he straightened his clothes. "You know what they say about the dead and telling tales. We aren't overly soiled. If we keep to the shadows, we can possibly find a place to clean up."

“(gurgle)… Please…”

"Let's hope so," Grace said as she grabbed the sides of the last mugger's head and slammed it down, hard, into the metal deck plate… repeatedly… "Sweetie, could you start making sure that…"

"Yes, dear?" Alan asked as he expertly laid another still breathing mugger's head partially across a metal curb…

"Never mind," she said brightly as she started checking the others. "You know (snap), with those eggshell skulls of theirs, they really should have reconsidered their career choice, you know?"

"Anything good on them? (stomp)"

"Good enough to stick around?"

"Fair point."

***

"You have to be kidding me!" Captain Vexp exclaimed as Alan and Grace, beaming from ear to ear, showed him their tablet. "You got them to pay how much?!?"

"I told you, Cap," Grace said triumphantly, "Unless it's a rare alloy or some of the really scarce ones, you're wasting your time with metals. Polymers… That's where the bucks are at!"

"That and certain ceramics," Alan added.

"They were robbing us!"

"Yep… You want to know the best part?"

"What?"

"They still are."

"What?!?"

"We can probably get another ten percent out of them, easy, maybe even twenty, but that would be pushing it," Grace said and then added with a smirk, "They probably want us to return for another round of 'negotiations'…"

***

After two additional rounds of negotiations, the final agreement was signed with the promise that the humans would drop by the next time they docked.

"I think someone has a girlfriend," Grace giggled as they approached their ship. "Am I going to lose my sexy little pinky toe?"

"You're one to talk," Alan snickered, "Oh! That tickles, Trade Mistress!"

"I will say one thing, though," Grace smiled, "Those pervs give the best foot massages!"

***

The crew was beyond jubilant upon their departure as they gathered in the galley for quite the feast (by their standards).

It had been one hell of a payday and then some!

"…And we can probably increase profits even more!" Alan said enthusiastically, "We can streamline the scrapping process to only cherry-pick the more valuable materials and components and then resell the rest as mixed salvageables to a larger processor. They have the volume and scale to make that end of the trade profitable. A small outfit like us has no business trying to compete with them… literally."

"Yeah!" Grace crowed, "Stop wasting your time pulling the copper out of inductors and start making money! You say your planet's environment is already shit, right? We can build a few refining processes easy and start extracting precious metals, rare earths, and other goodies as well."

"We can?" the captain asked Alan, the "smart one".

"If she says we can," he said, "then we can. Grace's people are masters of chemistry. She might not be able to find Sagittarius A on a star chart and has the social skills of one of those hyper-roaches of which she is so fond, but she knows chemistry. All of her family does."

"Yeah, just like Alan knows what fork to use and which species like feet pics," Grace snarked, "I know shit that's actually useful!"

"Feet pics?"

"You really don't want to know," Grace snickered.

The conversation turned to less useful topics as everyone ate and the worms even started a crooning sing-along, with Grace gleefully trying to join in, delighting everyone.

During the singing, the captain turned to Alan.

"There was a most distressing incident at the station one of the times you were negotiating with the Bzkorr."

"Yes, we heard about that from them," Alan replied, "Dreadful business. We certainly stuck to well-lighted passageways after that!"

"Yes," the captain replied, "I believe it was the same time the pair of you showed up somewhat disheveled and lightly splattered with 'some sort of grease' that you insisted on laundering immediately 'so it wouldn't stain'. Odd considering the two of you aren't normally so concerned about such things."

"Because we aren't, we only have one remotely presentable outfit. Those were our going-out clothes."

The captain let out a low dubious whistle.

"Is this another thing that 'hardly ever happens'?"

"We've already covered this," Alan replied, "not every human is a killing machine, especially not us. Do you honestly believe that Grace and I, completely unarmed, could wipe out that many people of any species at once? We would have been slaughtered."

"I suppose you are right…" the captain said, looking at Alan uncertainly.

"Alright, you goddamn feather-dusters," Grace bellowed, "Now here's a real pirate song!"

Alan just sighed as Grace began to sing.

The king and his men…

met the queen and her crew…

And they allllll proceeded to booooone…

The Void be ours…

And by its power…

She looked over at Alan mischievously.

Where we want, we'll goooo.

Alan twitched slightly as Grace draped herself over him.

Yo-ho… All together…

Hoist the colors high…

Heave-ho… thieves and raiders…

Someone's about to diiiiieeee…

"That's… something…" the captain said.

"Yep!" Grace said as she looked deeply into Alan's eyes. "It's an ancient, traditional song from over a thousand years ago when pirates prowled our homeworld's oceans in cloth and wood ships."

"I'm not taking the bait, Grace," Alan said with a beleaguered sigh.

"Bait?" Beep asked.

"There are two schools of thought concerning that song," Alan replied, "the lyrics of which she completely butchered, by the way."

"I like our version better!"

"Your version of a not traditional anything that was written for a movie!"

"Bah," Grace laughed as she plopped onto Alan's lap. "You don't know anything."

"I can show you the goddamn movie!"

"Where they used the traditional song!"

"It's in the fucking credits!" Alan exclaimed, "It's right there in black and white…"

As Alan started his lecture, Grace grinned.

He took the bait, after all.

As Alan, mercilessly "encouraged" by Grace, continued his increasingly annoyed history lesson, the captain smiled at the two very strange and quite frightening "servants" who now pretty much ran the entire ship…

…and he was so grateful that they did.

For the first time, he actually felt not only hope but genuine optimism!

Beep was right, after all.

The humans were amazing. Okay, there was that somewhat questionable incident at that last stop, but Alan and Grace made them a fortune… and their involvement in all those deaths wasn't proven.

They weren't even suspects… and the people killed were known troublemakers… Even if it was his humans, it was probably justified… probably… Right?

Yep, the future was finally looking bright for his ship, his crew, and what remained of his people.

Perhaps, just maybe, the universe had finally cut them a break.