Stowaway

by Robert E Colfax

  He took a quick glance in the direction of the sword fight. He could only see one Helgan. Lexi was still up. She looked to be in her element. He assumed the Helgans would all be watching the Honor Challenge on their viewscreen. A challenge was supposed to be a really big deal with them, bigger than the World Cup or Super Bowl on Earth. I hope Lexi is managing OK. She seemed pretty confident she could handle them. He could only trust that she was as capable as she seemed to think she was. He held no illusions about how long he would have lasted.

  Ron had to duck his head to get through the small hatch. Once inside, he noted that the ceiling of the corridor was no more than an inch over his head. Well, they are a short people, although so are Vankovians and Urania has plenty of headroom. What do I do now? Why did I come in here without a plan? Like I told Lexi, there shouldn’t be more than five to seven Helgans on board. Probably all in the control room watching my girlfriend chop up the other two. Hopefully.

  Ron headed to the front of the ship. His mother was probably behind one of the closed hatches he passed. Like Urania this ship only had the one level, but he couldn’t afford the time looking for Geena unless he first disabled the crew. All he needed was to be caught in the act. It wasn’t much of a plan, he knew that, but it was the best he could do. He wasn’t familiar with this ship’s design. It wasn’t much, if any, wider than Urania, just longer. The hatch he entered through was all the way aft. Urania’s was midship. Inside, there were fewer branching corridors. Like on his own ship, it was a fairly straight shot from the hatchway to the control room.

  He silently entered the control room, thankful there were no small, noisy branches for him to step on. He stole a quick glance at the screen the five Helgans were avidly watching. His breath caught as he saw Lexi trip over the body of a practically headless, obviously dead Helgan. Based on the loud cheering, the Helgans loved it. He assumed they weren’t cheering about their headless man. She recovered far too quickly and acrobatically for the stumble to have been accidental. Lexi mentioned over a latte one afternoon that she had been a good gymnast in middle school and her first year of high school. Dammit, she’s stalling. Time for me to move quickly and acrobatically. He did take a moment to wonder what else she was going to prove to be unexpectedly good at. Maybe I should just expect her to be good at everything?

  He tore his eyes from the viewscreen. None of the crew looked to be armed. He silently moved into the room, dropping the first two Helgans by slamming their heads together hard enough they lost consciousness. He had no idea how much punishment a Helgan could take. Those two might never wake up. He didn’t really want to kill them. But then again, maybe they shouldn’t have grabbed my mother!

  Three to go. The remaining Helgans turned at the loud crack of two heads colliding followed by the soft thud of two bodies dropping to the floor. As the closest Helgan turned to confront him, he grabbed both an arm and the front of the guy’s, or rather, woman’s shirt. Using the leverage of his greater height to throw the Helgan across the room, hard, cleared his way to the remaining two, now twisting away from the viewscreen to join the melee.

  Two more. Three sets of fists flying, with his greater reach and, as it turned out, greater strength, both were on the floor in seconds. One was bleeding from a smashed face. The other one wasn’t. One of the last two, the one bleeding, was also female. Ron was pretty sure he heard the other fellow’s neck snap when his fist connected. He hit the man really hard. He realized that he no longer felt unsure about himself. He just felt angry.

  Ron took a moment to glance at the monitor. Lexi was still parrying with her Helgan. As far as he could tell, both she and her adversary looked uninjured. He left the control room without a backward glance and began opening hatches along the central corridor. The third one opened onto a storeroom in which he found Geena on the floor with her arms and legs bound with zip-ties. She was awake and looking scared, blinking in the sudden light. “Ron?” She sounded amazed.

  He squatted and pulled out Lexi’s knife. As he cut through the ties, he wondered why zip-ties and not manacles, but didn’t really care. It saved him from trying to search the bodies up front for fobs. “Are you hurt, Mom?”

  “Yes, but not badly. I’ll need help standing, I think, but should be able to walk and maybe run once I’m on my feet. I don’t think I’m in any shape to fight. I counted seven of them, five male, two female, when they threw me in here.” As he reached down to pull her onto her feet, she wobbled a moment, favoring her left leg, then stabilized. “How did you get on the ship? Is Lexi OK?”

  “Later, Mom. I’ve knocked out the five on the ship. Lexi is outside, giving the other two lessons on how to use a sword. One’s already failed the final exam. She’s waiting for us to get off their damn ship. We need to go.”

  ***

  Out of the corner of her eye, Lexi finally saw her people exiting the Helgan ship, angling away from the fight, circling around to enter the barn from the far side. Geena was limping and holding her right arm with her left hand. Momentarily distracted, Lexi didn’t move fast enough to block the Helgan’s thrust at her heart. She was getting tired, and all she was able to do was to lean sideways and twist her upper body slightly. His blade burned as it sliced between her ribs and left arm, tearing into both the biceps and triceps in her upper arm and leaving a painful gouge over her ribs just below her breasts.

  The shock of the sudden pain caused her to stumble sideways, hitting the ground hard. Still, she managed to retain her grip on her weapon and keep her eyes on the Helgan. He pursued his advantage relentlessly and she found herself in the ridiculous situation of defending herself from a supine position, her short opponent looming over her.

  Fighting a standing opponent from the ground was almost always a bad idea. On the other hand, the mercenary forgot whatever schooling he had concerning fighting an opponent on the ground, if indeed he ever had any. Seeing an opening, Lexi sliced into his thigh with a backhanded blow. Putting all the strength she could muster into it, she immediately brought her sword forward. She missed her target, his wrist, but struck his blade with enough force to send it flying from his hand.

  The Helgan dove after his blade, both of them surging to their feet at approximately the same moment. Her left side burned like a son-of-a-bitch and her left arm hung practically useless, throwing her balance off. The sweet coppery smell of her own drying blood was distracting. She knew she was hurt. She just didn’t have time to worry about it.

  The mercenary was approaching cautiously, limping from the gash in his thigh. Lexi glared at him, her anger evident. With the Samues finally clear of the Helgan ship, she now had plenty of time and abruptly decided that the Helgans needed to be taught a lesson. One she felt fully capable of teaching despite her injuries. It might just help the next poor sots who crossed their paths.

  She knocked the Helgan’s next hacking blow far to one side. Her sword flashed back leaving a thin line of green fluid seeping from a diagonal slash across the man’s belly. The wound was small, and probably stung, but like the cut over her ribs, wasn’t deep enough to be incapacitating. Still, it should have rattled him. As he attacked again, now taking more care, she parried another swift strike and stitched a line of green down his sword arm. That one, she knew, while not deep enough to be crippling, would hurt.

  Her adversary’s next stroke was both weaker and slower, easier to sweep aside. He tried, attacking her in an almost frenzied manner, now eager to bring an end to the Honor Challenge. He feinted for her head again, hoping to draw her sword out of position. She ignored that. She easily blocked his next seven attacks, her sword moving almost faster than he could follow. Her next slash opened his forehead to the bone, forcing him to continually wipe at his eyes to clear them of blood.

  In that moment, the Helgan knew he would die here today on this Field of Honor on a backward ball of dirt. Lexi first attributed the awful smell to his blood but then noticed the dark stains creeping down his pants. Still, despite his fear, pride surged through
his weakening body. Losing his life to an unknown female who proved to be the master of the blade his people dreamed of fighting was honorable. His comrades on his ship were his witnesses. He would fight on. He would show this one what it meant to be Helgan!

  Honor or no, he was forced to back from her, completely on the defensive now. Two more lighting fast strokes and two severed ears were on the ground. They twitched. I wonder if Helgans have hamstrings. Probably. Let’s find out. I’m actually getting hungry. I asked Geena to pick up luncheon meats. A ham sandwich might be nice. She jumped and kicked the Helgan in the shoulder, spinning him around, feeling agony in her arm and ribs. As she landed, her sword sliced into both of his legs. It wasn’t a deep cut, but did answer the question of whether or not he had hamstrings. With a Becks. She watched as he flopped to the ground unable to get back up. She looked down at him, saying, “You can keep your ears, bubba, if you can find them.” Then she added, still speaking northern Henimin, “And potato chips.”

  The man wasn’t dead, but she had crippled him. Assuming the Helgan ship had something comparable to Urania’s medical bed, they should be able to reassemble him. She squatted next to him. “I’m not sorry. Your Honor Challenge is a stupid custom. One that your people use to bully helpless people. There is no honor in it. You didn’t give me a choice.” She shook her head sadly, picked up his sword, collected the third one from his dead partner and headed for Urania’s hatch. She could do with some reassembly herself.

  Chapter 21

  An Interesting Day

  Lexi’s first stop was the ship’s small lab. The lab was one of the few rooms Ron and Geena never used. Lexi had plans for it. To start with, she wanted to analyze the chemistry of green blood. She also needed a lab to reformulate Geena’s meds. After securing the three Helgan swords in an otherwise empty, chilled case she joined the others in the control bay. It’s nice to have a sword again. I’ll ask Ron to make a rack for these in the armory. If they were going to be using swords, she wished she had been able to collect hers from her father’s storage locker.

  While Lexi was stowing her prizes, Urania displayed the end of the Honor Bout on the forward screens. Ron and Geena weren’t there to see it happen, but Lexi was clearly injured by the end of the bout. They watched her walk on board under her own power. She didn’t rush to the medical bay, leaving them to wonder how bad her wound was. There looked to be a lot of blood on her ruined vest and the sleeve of her ruined shirt.

  Urania lifted from the barn as soon as Lexi strapped herself into a chair. Since Lexi wasn’t talking about it, they were all silent until they were outside of Earth’s atmosphere and the artificial gravity came on. It wasn’t really automatic, just Urania taking care of them. Lexi quickly unstrapped, went to the head and vomited, wondering how she held it as long as she did and thankful she didn’t need to use the zero-gee attachment. Kneeling there, she wondered, When did I become a killer? Too much TV? This was much worse than what she did to Jameson. He deserved it. As far as she knew, these guys were just culturally indoctrinated idiots. She took a deep breath and rinsed her mouth. Returning, she said, “Well, that was kind of exciting.”

  Geena said, “Lexi, you’re hurt. It looks bad. Are you OK, darling?” She had been exchanging questioning glances with Ron for the last few minutes.

  Lexi nodded. “I will be. I let myself get distracted. It cost me. I’m going to need to have the surgical bed patch me up. How about you, Geena?”

  “Yes, Lexi. Thank you. I’ll have a few bruises, but nothing significant. I’ve been beaten up worse. This time, I just didn’t react quickly enough when I saw their ship. They grabbed me as I was going to the car for the champagne. Sorry, it’s still in the car. I tried grabbing the bottle to use as a weapon and one of them kicked the door closed on my wrist. That’s my worst injury.”

  “All things considered, I feel less like celebrating than I expected,” Lexi admitted.

  Geena stood. “Let’s get you to the surgical bed. That looks ugly. Ron, you coming?”

  Geena suppressed a gasp once Lexi was prone on the bed with her ruined vest and the shirt underneath cut away by the waldos, revealing the extent of her wounds. Both women noticed Ron suppressing something, probably anger. The wound on Lexi’s arm was far worse than the gouge over her ribs, but well within the capabilities of their surgical equipment to handle. “How did you manage to handle two armed Helgans,” Geena asked, watching as Urania cleaned both wounds. “I’ve always understood them to be unbeatable,” Geena continued.

  The equipment applied a thin layer of biological epoxy designed for repairing muscle severed during surgical procedures to the torn surfaces. The porous substance would hold everything together without inhibiting the growth of new connective muscle fibers. Eventually it tracelessly dissolved.

  With industrial strength, localized pain-killers, Lexi didn’t feel the equipment cleaning and sealing her wounds. “Unbeatable? Pffh! Urban legend. I don’t think those people have ever actually fought anyone who knows how to handle a sword. I know the two I sparred with didn’t. They’re just bullies who like to slice up helpless people. I don’t tolerate bullies and I’ve never been helpless.” She paused. “Why aren’t they chasing after us? Urania, anything on the sensors?”

  “No, Lexi, they’re not following us.”

  Ron looked embarrassed as he said, “Other than the second one you fought, they might all be dead. Most of them wound up on fairly intimate terms with floors and walls. I wasn’t trying to kill them, but I’m almost certain I broke one man’s neck.”

  “Let’s hope some of them survived,” Lexi said. “I’m pretty sure leaving a fully functional starship complete with jet skis and alien bodies laying around for Earth authorities to find would not be a good thing.”

  Geena broke off the concerned look focused on her son to ask Lexi, “Are you having a reaction to the pain-killers? I doubt they have jet skis.”

  “Sorry, Mom,” Ron said. “Lexi was moaning about everybody’s lack of ray-guns. I pointed out the Helgan ship had them, but they were the size of jet skis.”

  Geena stared at him a moment before looking back at Lexi. “They’re probably slightly smaller than that. To answer your question Lexi, Helgan culture is, well, different,” Geena began, again flashing a concerned look at her son who might have beat more than one person to death today. “What it boils down to, though, is that you bested them in an Honor Challenge. That means that, for this group at least, we are totally off limits. They can’t touch us. Apparently, that supersedes the insult they suffered from Ron invading their ship and bouncing some of them off the walls. Good thing, too. Helgan ships are armed with beam weapons significantly larger than jet skis. Missiles, too.”

  Lexi frowned as she tried to sit up. The waldos pushed her back down. Urania’s voice said, “Lay still until I’m done.”

  “Really?” Lexi, flat on her back, said. “Shouldn’t we be armed? Why aren’t we armed? For situations like this? What if we need to fight back some day?”

  “No, Lexi,” Geena replied. “Other than Helga, the Accord worlds don’t allow non-military ships to be armed. Even on Helga, a ship has to be registered as belonging to a mercenary company. Once they register, those ships are subject to conscription for military service. Helga is also the only Accord planet where slavery is legal. Like I said, their culture is different.”

  “So we’re unarmed, yet we have shields,” Lexi pointed out.

  “Yes, dear,” Urania said, “we have military-grade shields. They weren’t removed when Vankovia decommissioned me. There was no reason to. All starships have to have shields. As far as I know there is no junk or debris to run into in hyper-space but there is a lot of it in n-space. Then there is radiation coming from nearby stars to be concerned about. Plus, there are pirate ships, illegally armed pirate ships, to defend against even if we can’t fight back. I’m more than fast enough that we should at least be able to outrun them, as long as our shields are effective.”

  �
�And Helga allows slavery?” Lexi continued.

  “Yes, but honestly,” Ron said, “it may not be prevalent. We really don’t know. But it is true that at least some of them own slaves. Mom’s fate would have been to be sold. She was fair game because from the Helgan point of view we were in honorable competition with them even though we didn’t know it. They must have been after the Rose too. On the other hand, if they had been on a mission to rescue hostages, they would have freed the hostages and enslaved any of the criminals holding them.”

  He looked at the progress the Waldos were making closing Lexi wounds. His girlfriend almost died today. That wasn’t easy. “They adhere to their code. Although they are unfortunately haphazard when it comes to ensuring the hostages they’re supposed to be rescuing survive. No one not in desperate straits wants to be rescued by a Helgan team. There are a lot of stories about them. They’re not bad people, Lexi, just different, like Mom said.” He paused, smiling but looking grim. “And apparently not as adept with swords as we all believed.”

  Lexi looked thoughtful. She was thinking about the Helgans. Ron did the grim smile thing better than she did. She’d need to practice that. Geena looked tired. Ron got up to get her a painkiller. As he handed her a pill and a cup of water, he said, “It’s been an interesting day all around. We fought Helgan mercenaries and won. Well, Lexi did. I just beat up some of them. We finally recovered the Rose. It’s in Lexi’s backpack. And I learned that, against all odds, Lexi and I can be parents someday if things work out that way.”