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

by Ell Leigh Clarke

  “Ohhhh, they think they’re so tough. They think we can’t get in.” Tabitha stomped away from the entrance with Ryu close behind. “Just because they can read a language we don’t. Well, I know languages they don’t know.” She looked back at the aliens and jerked her chin. “Anda a la concha de tus madres y chupas pija.”

  “Do I want to know?” Ryu asked.

  “Not worth it.” She shrugged. “People in Buenos Aires didn’t swear as well as Bethany Anne. Just the classics, really. I don’t know how to tell someone to take a moose dick in the ear in Spanish. It’s ‘moose’ that’s tripping me up.”

  “Uh-huh. And how are we planning to get into the building? You know, while we’re here.” Did Hirotoshi have to herd her around this much, Ryu wondered. He’d have to ask when he got back.

  Tabitha sighed. “I guess we’re going to have to play alien knock-knock.”

  “I hate alien knock-knock.” Ryu sighed. “Let’s play something else.”

  “Like what? Some…Japanese…” She waved her hands in his general direction. “How did you get into places people didn’t want you to go?”

  “Generally, I didn’t. Or, if I did, it was in a battle, and I went in through the front door with a battering ram or a mounted charge.”

  “What was it like living such a boring life? I would not have lasted there.”

  “No, you would not. For many reasons. A young woman who made a career of sneaking into people’s… You know, I’m not sure how to compare what you’ve done and what you could have done in my youth. Sneaking into people’s treasuries or listening to their secrets, I suppose.”

  “Uh-huh.” Tabitha crossed her arms. “So what’s your idea, if you don’t want to play alien knock-knock?”

  Ryu approached the aliens and bowed respectfully. “A pleasant evening to you,” he said. “My associate and I wish to partake of your...”

  “Drinks,” Tabitha finished. “We want to have some drinks.”

  The aliens stared at them impassively.

  Tabitha snapped, “So what do I have to do to get in, dickhead?”

  The alien only stared at her.

  “By the way, are these Flexxent?” she asked Ryu.

  Ryu narrowed his eyes. “Perhaps? I have no idea.”

  They are, Achronyx said. And Ranger Tabitha—

  “Not now, Achronyx.” Tabitha studied the two aliens. “I don’t think I want to ask about whether they have sex with themselves.”

  “You’ll probably piss them off.”

  “Well, they’ve pissed me off!” She frowned. “They aren’t just letting us in, and they won’t even talk to us.” She snapped her fingers. “Here’s the plan. The one on the left—I rip his head off and beat his buddy to death with it. Then I rip his head off, too, and we go in and use them as bowling balls to knock people over. Those heads are huge. It could work.”

  “I think we should have a Plan B.”

  “You would say that. You’ve been no fun this whole night. ‘Watch where you’re going.’ ‘We should have a Plan B.’ Who are you, Hirotoshi in a Ryu mask?”

  Ryu bowed. “That is a fine compliment.”

  She shook her head. “No, it means you’ve got a stick up your ass.”

  “Hey,” one of the aliens said in Torcellan. “Either leave or stop being rude and speak something we understand.”

  Tabitha stopped. She turned around, and her eyes began to flash red.

  “I’d be happy to,” she told the alien sweetly. “Do you understand the language of Violence?”

  City of Karkat, Planet Flex

  The patrons of the Yud Skrow Lounge were some of the richest in Karkat. They sat at tables carved of pure crystal and dined on a parade of complicated dishes, typically numbering thirty-five or forty per meal. The waiters wore black, and never spoke. The patrons conversed in low voices, so as not to be heard over the sound of the seven captive Hafe Fish trilling in perfect harmony from their tank.

  There were no reservations, and the guest list was set for months in advance, the guests carefully curated and seated to ensure no violent rivalries surfaced in such a refined atmosphere.

  When the door shuddered on its hinges, therefore, it was a surprise to every one of the aliens in the lounge.

  Several screamed and fainted. The Hafe Fish shrieked and fled to the corner of their tank in a cloud of purple ink. At a table concealed in the shadows above the lounge floor, a Flexxent in an elegant suit raised a single finger for his guards.

  Though the guards stood at the ready, they wouldn’t advance through the lounge without their employer’s approval. Guards in armor with guns hardly complemented the atmosphere Benet Aljun’ra wanted to cultivate.

  The door shuddered again, and this time there was a scream from outside. Waiters, terrified of whatever was outside but even more terrified of Benet’s anger, ushered the guests out the back exits as the door shuddered on its hinges three more times in close succession.

  Finally, with a crash of splintering wood the door blew inwards, broken in two. One of the bouncers was thrown headfirst through the open doorway briefly, pulled back, and then thrown through the door to sprawl on the ground, toppling several crystal tables.

  “Finally.” A woman dressed in black threw the second bouncer in as well and sauntered through the doorway, brushing her hands. “I have to hand it to you, Ryu, that was a good idea.”

  “I in no way suggested using the guards as a battering ram.” The voice sounded both bored and annoyed.

  She looked over her shoulder and rolled her eyes. “Yes, but you did mention battering rams. I’m trying to give you credit as an integral part of this mission. Why can’t you take a compliment?”

  In the shadows, Benet Aljun’ra gestured again with one finger.

  Two guards fired, and both bullets hit the woman square in the chest. She went flying back through the doorway, and Aljun’ra smiled when they heard her voice from the street.

  “You bastard!” she bitched. “That hurt my ta-tas!”

  Aljun’ra narrowed his eyes. He brought his hand down in a chopping motion, and three guards ran out the door.

  Ryu managed to trip two of them neatly as they emerged. The third ran over the other two, oblivious to their grunts of pain, and made straight for Tabitha. He dove on top of her.

  He probably thought it was a safe bet. Flexxent were large for aliens, and he was even larger than most Flexxent.

  A moment later, however, his whole body shuddered and shot up in the air a foot or so before slamming down again heavily. It happened again. And again. Finally, he was hit so hard that he flipped over and landed heavily on his back.

  Tabitha climbed to her feet and looked down at her shirt, where two holes marred the black cloth.

  “This was one of my favorite shirts, jerkoff,” she snarled. “You think it’s easy to get new clothes out here?” With a sneer at the guards, she made her way into the lounge. “Let’s find our guy.”

  Ryu followed with a soft sigh.

  Chapter 5

  Tabitha

  “All right, everyone, listen up!” Tabitha came through the door with a swish of her coat and put her hands on her hips, scanning the room. “All…three of you. Where is everyone now?”

  Benet Aljun’ra said nothing. He sat in the darkness and waited to see what this woman would say before he gave any more orders. His guards carried guns that were more than equal to the task of terminating this small human.

  She was clearly wearing body armor, but that shouldn’t matter. The rounds were armor-piercing.

  When Benet gave an order to kill someone, they should have no chance of escape. The other three guards should have finished her off, but apparently, they’d gotten their asses handed to them outside.

  To his annoyance, she looked up at him. She didn’t seem thrown off by the darkness around his table.

  “You run things around here?” Tabitha challenged him. “Or should I say, were you running things around here?”

&nbs
p; “Kemosabe,” Ryu muttered.

  “He’s a hack,” Tabitha stated. She waved a hand at Benet in disgust. “Fancy suit, secluded table, sending guards out. We had a bunch of those in Buenos Aires. They aren’t worth respecting.”

  Benet’s lip curled. She was speaking Yollin—not the language of his people, but one he understood. She was clearly trying to provoke him.

  “How may I help you?” He kept his voice pleasant.

  There was no reason not to speak pleasantly, after all. As soon as he learned her purpose and any secrets he could about her armor and weapons, he would kill her. Meanwhile, he had a reputation to maintain as someone who never lost his temper.

  “You can tell me where your guests went,” Tabitha told him, annoyed. “I’m looking for Etoy Walce, and I don’t suggest you stand between him and me.”

  “Mr. Walce is unknown to me. He was not on this evening’s guest list.”

  Tabitha glared up into the darkness. She was willing to bet that this alien lied as often as he spoke. He’d probably figured out a way to lie without even saying anything.

  “Listen up, chicken asswipe. I’m looking for this guy because he’s been attacking supply ships for months and running off with things a lot of people, including some of his fellow Torcellans, require to do things like eat and build houses. If they’ve already got the goods, he kills them.”

  Benet sat back in his chair, bored.

  “Okay, don’t care,” Tabitha snapped, annoyed. “You don’t have to. You just have to tell me where he is. Or, should I say, you want to tell me where he is, because if you don’t, life is about to get very unpleasant for you. I’m an Empress’ Ranger, and I find those who knowingly shelter criminals to be just as culpable as—”

  Benet gestured to one of the guards who had managed to stumble in from the street.

  The guard may have just gotten the shit kicked out of him, but he knew better than to disobey an order from Benet. He shot Tabitha in the back at point-blank range, and she went skidding across the floor like a rag doll. The guard aimed again and shot Ryu as well.

  “I had to shut the droning off,” Benet explained from the darkness a moment after the tables stopped moving. “It was going on and on and on.” He sighed. “I was getting bored.”

  Tabitha picked herself up off the floor and stared up into the darkness, her eyes flashing red. Her teeth began to lengthen.

  “Then I’ll make this a little less boring,” she promised. She rounded on the guard. “I’m a Ranger. We try to arrest, but I think I’m good adding ‘shoot me in the back’ as a punishable-by-death offense.”

  Benet didn’t wait to see how Tabitha planned to deliver on that threat. He was gone out a private door a moment later. It locked behind him with three deadbolts and two computerized locks with bioscanners and separate sixteen-digit codes. It opened into a reinforced tunnel that led to his private shuttle.

  “That stuck-up sloth-brained monkey-tit twister!” Tabitha yelled. “Ryu, after we clean up here, we’re finding that ass!”

  Ryu faced down a charging Flexxent and ducked, catching the alien at thigh level and flipping it over his head and onto the floor. He brought his foot up in a smooth arc and slammed it down on the alien’s torso before kneeling to direct a punch at its face. “Yes, Kemosabe,” he agreed calmly when he looked up.

  “You’re definitely Hirotoshi under there.” Tabitha peered at him suspiciously. “I don’t know how you pulled it off, but since when do you say, ‘Yes, Kemosabe’ in that stuffy tone?”

  She took two steps and jumped at the guard who had shot her in the back. She kicked her leg out, and his head snapped back. He fell heavily to the ground, the gun falling from senseless fingers, and Tabitha stomped on his hand before looking back at Ryu.

  “You and that needle-dicked suit up there would have a lot in common!”

  Ryu’s lips twitched as he tried not to let himself smile. Normally, he’d be throwing insults back, but now that he knew behaving like Hirotoshi annoyed her, he was going to keep doing it.

  Her pain would be priceless.

  One of the guards charged him with a yell, but he took the time to incline his head deeply to Tabitha.

  “That’s very hurtful, Kemosabe,” he told her calmly. He ducked as the guards tripped over him, and sprawled on the floor. Ryu stood up, picked up one of the crystal tables, and slammed it down over the guard’s body.

  “I’m not sure…” She murmured.

  Ryu did the same with another table just for good measure. “You can’t be too careful, after all.” The tables were so delicate, and the Flexxent were so very large.

  Thankfully, after the second table, the guard didn’t seem to be getting up.

  Tabitha had hauled the guard who’d shot her into a big chair and was directing a series of punches at his face.

  “Don’t. Shoot. Me. In. The. Back!”

  The chair collapsed and the guard went down with it, unconscious from the repeated hits. Tabitha picked up his gun and grimly shot him with it.

  “Ugh. Jean has spoiled me for every other weapon.”

  “She would be most displeased to learn you even used anything else,” Ryu said, drifting up behind her. He pretended not to notice the three remaining guards at the back of the room, who were preparing to charge. “Out of loyalty to you, Kemosabe, I will not tell her about this.”

  “Stop calling me that!”

  “As you wish, Kemosabe!”

  “Argh!” Tabitha waved her hands at him. “How are you doing this? How do you look like Ryu?”

  “I am Ryu, Kemosabe.” It was taking everything he had not to laugh. “Perhaps we should deal with the guards who are coming at us.”

  “Perhaps you should… I… You…” She glared at him. “Pajero!”

  The two of them moved in unison, however, to head off the guards. Tabitha spun and brought her leg up, hitting one squarely in the middle of the chest. He wheezed and doubled over, fighting for breath. She grabbed him and used him to beat the second to the floor.

  Ryu, meanwhile, dispatched the third with several precise strikes to Flexxent pressure points.

  Sometimes reading Achronyx’s full report was useful. “Should I mention knowing what they look like?” He shook his head. “Would instigate too much bitching.”

  “Let’s finish this.” Tabitha’s eyes flashed as she strode toward the back room. “My favorite shirt is ruined, you’re being a pretentious douche, and I got shot in the back! Etoy Walce, come out!” She ripped the door off its hinges and flung it into the room.

  Several of the trapped guests screamed.

  “Who is Etoy Walce?” one of them asked.

  “A Torcellan who is not going to have any chance of—” Tabitha looked around. There were no other exits out of this room. “Is this everyone?”

  “Why?” Ryu approached.

  “Because there aren’t any Torcellans here!”

  Ranger Tabitha, I tried to inform you that you are in the wrong building. Etoy Walce was in the building next to this one.

  “What do you mean, ‘was?’”

  He heard the gunfire and left.

  Tabitha glared around the room. “Fine. We’ll go find him, then!”

  From behind them, someone cleared their throat. When Tabitha and Ryu turned, they saw a holo of Benet Aljun’ra, somehow looking both smug and annoyed.

  “There is the small matter of damages,” he asserted. “Before you leave, I will require a transfer of credits to cover the destruction of my property.”

  “The hell you will! Your guards shot me!”

  “After you broke in.” He gave a thin smile. “I assure you, you’ll find that the law is quite clear on this point.”

  “Ugh. Achronyx, arrange it.” Tabitha turned her nose up and swept for the door.

  It’s done, Achronyx reported as the doors swung open.

  “Kemosabe.” Ryu drifted up to her side unhurriedly as she marched down the street. “What’s the lesson here?”
/>   “Don’t take Hirotoshi on missions. You distracted me and made me fall off the roof. I knew where I was when I was up there.”

  Ryu gave her a look.

  “The lesson is to beat the shit out of the stuffed shirt, so he tells you the truth sooner.”

  “He did tell you the truth, Kemosabe. That’s not the lesson.”

  “You aren’t going to give up, are you? Fine. The lesson is to listen to your support team.” She waved her hand disgustedly. “I get it.”

  They took a Pod up to the Achronyx in silence, Tabitha inspecting her shirt and making annoyed noises.

  They had just stepped into the ship when Achronyx reported, “Ranger Tabitha, you have a call from Bethany Anne.”

  QBS Achronyx, Karkat spaceport

  Tabitha arrived in her room to see Bethany Anne’s call already onscreen. She sat on her throne, but her posture made it clear that this was an unofficial call.

  Or relatively unofficial, at least.

  “Glad I caught you,” Bethany Anne began. “I only just managed to get rid of the delegation from…whatsit. I don’t remember. And there’s another one coming in ten minutes.”

  “They’re presenting a report on the Ixtali,” John’s voice said from off-screen.

  “Hi, John,” Tabitha called.

  “Hi,” he called back.

  Bethany Anne got right to the point. “So, what’s this transfer of credits into Karkat? You know,” she added dryly, “the exceedingly large one.”

  “Oh, ah…” Tabitha managed a smile, but she was pretty sure it didn’t look at all genuine. “Funny story—we went into this bar, right, looking for Walce, and this total asswipe told me he wasn’t there and, well, to make a long story short, a lot of his bar got messed up and the law on their planet says that just because I broke in, I had to pay for everything. Even though he had people shoot me in the back!” she added indignantly.

  Bethany Anne raised an eyebrow. “You broke in?”

  “Well, they wouldn’t let me in.”

  “Mmm. At least you got Walce.”

  “Oh.” Tabitha cleared her throat. “About that. It turns out he wasn’t there.”