Deuces Wild Boxed Set: Books 1-4: Beyond the Frontiers, Rampage, Labyrinth, Birthright

by Ell Leigh Clarke

  “That man has the patience of a saint,” Ryu muttered to Tabitha under his breath. “It does not make for good television.”

  Tabitha snickered, but they stopped hastily when Hirotoshi turned to look at them as if to say, “You could help me instead of laughing, you know.”

  “Hey.” Tabitha stood up and walked around the table to sling an arm around the alien’s shoulders. She waved a casual finger in Hirotoshi’s direction. “What don’t you like about him?”

  “It looked at me funny,” the alien growled. It curled its lip at Hirotoshi. “Look at his face. It’s an affront.”

  Tabitha looked at Ryu, who shrugged. In the beginning, she hadn’t been able to tell the vampires apart, so she had no idea why this alien didn’t like Hirotoshi in particular.

  “Kemosabe,” Hirotoshi disgustedly told Tabitha in Japanese, “please explain to our friend that I mean no offense and am only trying to enjoy my drink.”

  “Good luck with that,” Ryu muttered.

  “I could do that,” Tabitha replied in the same language, “but it wouldn’t be as much fun.” She turned to the alien. “I know this man. He picks fights wherever he goes.”

  Hirotoshi’s face went completely blank. “Kemosabe!”

  “He wants to pick a fight with me?” The alien shook her arm off. “I won’t bother with him, then.”

  “Wait, what?” Tabitha shook her head. “That’s not right.”

  Hirotoshi shot Tabitha a serenely satisfied look.

  She shook her head. “No, what he needs is for someone to knock his face in,” Tabitha urged. “Most people can’t do it, but I bet you could.”

  Hirotoshi’s face turned stony as the alien eyed him. “Most people can’t fight him?” He pointed at Hirotoshi but looked at Tabitha with what could best be described as amusement. “Him?”

  Tabitha nodded. “Sure, he doesn’t look like much, I’ll give you that.” Her eyes were dancing. “But he can fight. I mean, pretty well I’m led to believe.”

  Hirotoshi told Tabitha, “Our next practice session, I will show you pretty well—”

  The alien launched himself at Hirotoshi with a roar, and Tabitha stepped neatly out of the way. In her earpiece, she could hear Katsu asking if it was Hirotoshi who’d gotten in a fight first.

  She winced as the alien tried to slam a chair over Hirotoshi, who sidestepped it. “It was strange, like he was trying to be an ass. He kept prodding the alien, and it was all I could do to—”

  “I won!” Katsu yelled after being informed by Ryu that it was.

  “Like hell, someone’s betting and I’m not involved!” Tabitha shot back. “New bet, Ryu, Hirotoshi. Whoever punches the most people wins!”

  She didn’t wait to see what the others thought of her bet before leaping into action. One of the alien’s friends was coming at Hirotoshi with both hands up. Tabitha wasn’t sure what his plan was, but this was a brawl. Brawls had one rule: beat everyone up except your friends.

  Other than the rule that there were bars in every location, this was the second most universal rule. It probably had something to do with the fact that so many of the fights were due to alcohol or its equivalents, and those were served in bars.

  Which were in every system already. In this case, she figured correlation was causation.

  Tabitha picked the alien up and heaved him over her shoulder. He caught a table on the way down, and there was the clatter of silverware and shattering glass.

  “Music to my ears.” Tabitha grinned when another alien slammed sideways into her. “Sonofabitch!” She collided with a table violently and skidded, the alien’s full weight driving her into the metal edge. “Fuck, you’re heavy. What do you eat for breakfast, fucking cannonballs?”

  “That seems unlikely, Kemosabe.” Hirotoshi had maddeningly regained his composure, she noticed. He was brawling with enough efficiency and grace that it appeared to be show-fighting, not a proper brawl.

  “Loosen up a bit, Hirotoshi!” Tabitha yelled back at him. She slammed her elbow sideways into the chest region of the alien who had tackled her and grunted in satisfaction when it gave a bellow of pain. “Gotcha, you big blue bastard!”

  “I don’t know what your count is,” Ryu called, “but I am up to six.” He leapt nimbly onto one of the tables to avoid a tackle, then jumped down once more onto his opponent, driving a fist down as he did so. “Seven,” he amended.

  “I am falling behind.” Tabitha punched the blue alien three times before he had time to put up his guard.

  “That counts as one, Kemosabe,” Hirotoshi told her gravely. He spun in a circle, fists lashing. “I am now up to eight. Also, both of you be careful not to spill my drink.”

  “Why the hell would you want to drink that?” Tabitha yelled back. “I should do you a favor and spill it!”

  “I wish to appreciate the fine culture of Farha Station.” Hirotoshi lashed out with his leg and caught an opponent in the temple with his heel. “I should have asked. Do kicks count?”

  “No,” Tabitha and Ryu chorused together. As usual, Hirotoshi was up on the two of them when it came to fights.

  Three aliens rushed Tabitha at once. She leapt into the air and scissored her legs out, catching two of them in the face, then came down and flipped the other onto a nearby table. She dragged him back off and punched him in the face.

  He went down like a stone.

  The other two got up dazedly, and a flurry of punches directed at each managed to take them down again. Tabitha couldn’t be sure exactly which part of their anatomy to hit to take them out of the fight, so she needed to hit them in many places very quickly.

  Luckily for her, punching was a form of exercise, and she had been told to keep up her exercising.

  Many of the remaining patrons fled into the main part of the station, screaming, but one of the remaining aliens was rushing toward the humans…

  And the table with Hirotoshi’s beverage.

  “Dammit. Hirotoshi!” Tabitha grabbed the alien and swung him, but he was much heavier than he appeared. “Oh shit!”

  Hirotoshi plucked the drink off the table as Tabitha arced through the air and smashed onto it, taking the tabletop to the floor.

  “I believe you’re losing,” he remarked, taking a sip of his drink. “What did we say the forfeit was?”

  Tabitha’s eyes flashed red as she climbed to her feet. “Losing? Oh, it is on. Get ready, Donkey Kong!”

  Chapter 8

  Tabitha

  Farha Station

  It had been a terrible day, but Edif was finally relaxing with a beer. He’d been minding his own business when the fight broke out.

  He didn’t look up. It was just Okk, one of the station’s more notorious bastards.

  Okk had never met a newcomer he didn’t want to punch, and apparently, no force in the universe could stop him from doing it, so most everyone had given up at this point.

  Okk would run off the newcomers, and everything would go back to being quiet.

  Then Guildert, a local Torcellan information broker, landed on Edif’s table and broke it. A few seconds later Okk followed, and then a brawl broke out like Edif had not yet seen.

  And, well, it had been a bad day.

  He drained his drink, uttered an old battle cry his grandfather had taught him, and charged at one of the newcomers. If it was going to be a fight, he was going to get in on it, dammit!

  He decided to work his way up by going for the smallest one. The short, pale alien with dark hair on its head was wearing a long coat and carrying two absurdly large pistols. Retrospectively he would decide he should have paid attention to how large those guns were, but at the time he didn’t hesitate.

  The alien was talking with one of its compatriots when Edif charged. He managed to take it over sideways and directed a punch at its head.

  “It’s been a bad day, alien.” He bared his teeth at it. It had flat teeth, which would make it a stupid herbivore, right? “And you’re about to suffer for it. But, hel
l, you got into this fight, didn’t you?”

  Its eyes flashed red, and it bared its teeth as it cocked its head to the side. “I don’t think I’m going to suffer,” it said.

  And its teeth started to lengthen.

  Edif shoved himself back with a scream. “Demon! Demon!”

  Tabitha laughed hysterically as she picked him up, whipped him around her head, and slammed him back to the floor.

  “It’s been a bad day, alien,” she mocked him. “And you’re about to suffer for it. But, hell, you got into this fight, didn’t you?”

  Nearby, Hirotoshi gave a small shake of his head as he drove an elbow into another alien’s face. The thing howled and spurted purplish blood, which he stepped out of the way of.

  This new ship didn’t wash his shirts very well.

  He slammed his fist into another alien as the thing charged him, and tackled two more as they went for Ryu’s back.

  Tabitha was still taunting the one, trading punches with it and not getting any closer to winning the bet.

  Her loss.

  Hirotoshi and Ryu faced each other as they each dispatched their latest enemies.

  “Eleven,” Hirotoshi asserted.

  “Eleven,” Ryu echoed dangerously.

  They looked around to where the last alien in the bar was looking at them with a sort of panicked expression, and both of them took off like a shot.

  The alien fled, screaming, but it wasn’t fast enough. Hirotoshi reached it by a slim margin—possibly aided, though he would never admit it, by the fact that Ryu had somehow been shoved sideways into a puddle of spilled liquor—and his punch sent the alien skidding across the lobby outside to sprawl in a sad-looking stand of fake potted plants.

  “And I win,” Hirotoshi murmured, bowing.

  “I want a rematch.” Ryu’s face, as he wiped liquor off of his hand, was annoyed.

  Meanwhile, Tabitha had released her opponent, who stumbled away with a little moan was looking around.

  “Dammit.” She went up to the bar, where the bartender was polishing glasses as if nothing noteworthy had happened. “A glass of something different than you gave me last time, and the names of three snitches, please.”

  “What is a snitch?” the bartender inquired. He placed a glass on the bar and filled it. “Here you go, kind patron. You will be pleased to know that according to bar rules, all subsequent drinks are bought by the person who begins a bar fight. That would be Okk.”

  Tabitha looked around. “Okk?” A muffled whimper of pain sounded from somewhere amidst the broken furniture and Tabitha hoisted her glass in a toast. “Thanks for the drink, man.”

  She turned back to the bartender and took a sip. Her eyebrows went up as she drained it and then looked at the empty glass.

  “Damn, this is good.”

  The bartender nodded. “I am gratified to hear it, kind patron.”

  “Hirotoshi’s right. You need to stop saying that.” She patted the bar. “But regarding snitches. Let’s say information brokers. Where would I find one of those?”

  “Ah.” The bartended only barely kept himself from referring to her as “kind patron” again. “You would want to speak to Guildert. He is a Torcellan.”

  “Where would I find him?”

  The bartender gestured with one towel-bearing hand toward a particularly large pile of unconscious brawlers. “Under that pile of bodies.”

  “Well, fuck.” Tabitha grimaced. “That isn’t how I like to begin business relationships. At least it will show him I’m serious, though, right?” She waved a hand in a circle. “Yo, Tontos.” She pointed. “We need to find a Torcellan in that pile.”

  Ryu and Hirotoshi walked over curiously, and for a few moments the only sounds in the bar were the thuds and whimpers of unconscious people being picked up, examined, and dropped to the side, and the clunks of clean glasses being set on the bar by the bartender.

  Finally, they reached a pale figure with lights still twinkling in his hair. Tabitha pointed at him curiously.

  “That Guildert?” she asked. He nodded.

  “Okay, one more question. Where’s the nearest seedy hotel?”

  “Upstairs.” The bartender smiled. “Five hundred edru and no questions asked.”

  “Well, then.” Tabitha put the money on the counter and nodded to Ryu, who picked up the Torcellan and slung him over his shoulder.

  They headed upstairs and made their way down a dingy, sticky hallway to an equally dingy and sticky room, where Tabitha tied the Torcellan to the foot of the bed and Hirotoshi pulled a syringe out of a hidden protective pocket in his coat.

  Ryu and Tabitha frowned at him, and he smiled. “It’s a secret.” Then he reached down and slapped the Torcellan in the face. “You. Wake up.”

  “What…” Guildert shook his head from side to side, looking around. “Where am I?”

  “Not important.” Tabitha considered. “Let’s just say, no one’s going to come looking for you here. Now that that’s out of the way—”

  “Why are you holding me captive?” He yanked at the handcuffs, looking panicked.

  “Because I’ve never met a trustworthy information broker, that’s why.” Tabitha crouched near him. “So here’s the deal. You’re going to give me information on the Skaines. Where I can find them. Where any big slaving or drug running operations are going down. Then I’m going to pay you because I am not a thief, but I am going to pay you a reasonable amount and not whatever trumped-up price you give outsiders because you’re tied to a bed and I’m not an idiot.” She patted his face. “Sound good?”

  The Torcellan pushed with his legs and tried to draw himself up. “I do not make deals without establishing the price of the information, and without being free to choose or decline the contract.”

  “Ohhhh.” Tabitha nodded. “So you’re saying you can’t deal with us while you’re all tied up?”

  “Precisely.” The Torcellan inclined his head.

  Tabitha pursed her lips, then shrugged. “Ok, sure, I get it.” She stepped back and gestured at the Torcellan. “Hirotoshi, shoot him.”

  “Wait, wait!” The Torcellan flailed wildly, jerking at his bonds. “Don’t kill me! For the love of all gods, don’t kill me! I’ll tell you what you want to know!”

  “You know, this really was an unnecessary diversion,” Tabitha commented.

  “It was,” Hirotoshi agreed. He looked into the Torcellan’s eyes and allowed his teeth to lengthen somewhat. “Shall we agree not to have any such diversions from here on out?”

  “Yes, yes.” The Torcellan nodded so fast his head hit the bottom of the bed a few times, then winced as the pain shot through him. “Of course. No diversions.”

  “Excellent.” Tabitha sat in one of the chairs and gave a pained look. “It’s sticky.”

  “I suggest you throw those pants out when you get back to the ship,” Ryu commented. “Don’t even try washing them. You realize you’re probably sitting in a pile of alien—”

  “Eewwwww!” Tabitha stood up, pushed the chair at the wall, and shuddered when it hit the floor in pieces. “Oh, God. This day has been disgusting. Hirotoshi, get the information we want. I’ve still got the heebie-jeebies crawling all over this body, and this body is supposed to give heebie-jeebies, not get them.”

  “Mmm,” Hirotoshi murmured. He looked at the Torcellan again. “You were going to tell us about the Skaines?”

  “There is a deal happening nearby.” The Torcellan swallowed as he stared into those red eyes. “I-I helped set it up. They’re trading guns for…for slaves. And drugs.”

  “Ah.” Tabitha’s face went stony. “You helped set it up?”

  “I…” The Torcellan looked like he was going to faint.

  “I don’t suppose we have time for recreational torture,” Tabitha suggested. “Just a few electrodes, maybe?”

  “If you leave now, you can still make the rendezvous!” the Torcellan gasped. “It is happening in no more than half a day. It is in the Dwest system, t
he one with the binary stars, one red and one blue. If you go now… If you go now—”

  “If we don’t take the time to torture you, you mean?”

  The Torcellan shook his head but said, “Yes!”

  “Hmmm.” Tabitha looked at Ryu and Hirotoshi and asked over the comm, “Katsu, what do you think? Jun? Kouki?”

  Katsu’s voice came back sounding very pleased. “Jun and Kouki are doing push-ups, so I’ll vote for all of us. We know where this slimeball is, so why don’t we go for the deal and come back for him later?”

  Ryu and Hirotoshi nodded slightly to indicate their agreement and Tabitha shrugged.

  “Looks like it’s your lucky day, buddy boy. Give us the details.”

  The Torcellan gasped them out. The meeting would take place on one of the continents on the planet below, an island about half the size of Australia. There, in the shadow of an erupting volcano, there would be so much radio interference that no one would notice the deal going down unless they flew directly overhead…which, of course, no one was going to do with the volcano there.

  Tabitha relayed the information to Katsu. “Can you verify any of this?” she subvocalized.

  “One moment,” he replied. The three stared at the Torcellan, who was sweating. Katsu’s voice came back. “The facts he’s giving seem to be correct regarding the eruption and the island. Moreover, two Skaine warships left this station yesterday, heading in the vague direction of that rendezvous point. We should be able to easily make it there in time.”

  Tabitha looked around. “Damn. I was kind of hoping to be able to kill him. That fight really didn’t take the edge off.” The Torcellan’s eyes opened a bit wider.

  “Soon you will have many Skaines to kill,” Katsu pointed out.

  She smiled. “You always know what to say.”

  Tabitha nodded to Ryu and Hirotoshi. “Let’s go.” To the spluttering Torcellan, she added, “We’ll make sure someone gets the message to come get you tomorrow.” She swept out, adding under her breath, “But we’ll be back for you soon, asswipe.”

  Ryu followed her, but Hirotoshi knelt beside the Torcellan and pushed his sleeve up. The needle pierced the skin, and the Torcellan drew his breath in sharply as Hirotoshi dispensed the liquid into his bloodstream.