by Blaze Ward
“Get up, human,” the Innruld snarled in an ugly voice.
The room seemed poised. Lazarus didn’t dare look around, but the other six invaders were all in front of him in a compact knot, like maybe they didn’t dare let the crowd get behind them if trouble started.
After all, when was likely the last time someone told a man like this No?
Lazarus pretended to study his options for several seconds.
“No. No, I don’t think so. I was here first. You can find someplace else to drink,” he spoke up to the man, and then let his face harden and his voice drop. “Or somewhere else to go.”
He hadn’t read the legal statutes involved, but Lazarus did know that there was a world of difference between starting a brawl and merely defending yourself from one. Back home, the time-honored tradition had gotten translated as the Texas Defense, after a region of harsh deserts located on Earth.
“Yer Honor, he needed killing.”
Except that killing the man would cause more troubles when there were many layers of violence short of that, when dealing with what Lazarus assumed was a drunk bully, however the man had gotten himself into this state.
The leader of the little tribe of outsiders muttered a curse under his breath and stepped clear of the small group. A hand like spiderweb descended on Lazarus’s shoulder and tried to pull him off the chair.
Lazarus braced his feet and smiled evenly at the man, unwilling to cede.
The man pushed next, a move telegraphed by hands, feet, and head. It had no effect either, other than causing the Innruld to grunt with useless effort.
The next move surprised Lazarus, but only briefly.
The idiot slapped him.
Open palm to the left cheek. Resounding crack that would have been audible even over the noise of a poetry slam. Sting, but nothing all that impressive.
The room gasped in unison.
A much younger Lazarus, when he had a different name, had been slapped harder by an angry woman. He had still gone into the military and the rest of his life, rather than remain behind with her.
“You know,” Lazarus spoke almost conversationally, given the silence, “where I come from, that’s a method used to issue a formal challenge. Usually a duel with lethal weapons between the aggressor and the aggrieved. Do you wish to do me personal violence, sir?”
Another gasp. Apparently nobody had ever talked back to folks like this. Maybe this particular person, even. He looked like a punk-ass bully.
Then the idiot made a mistake. In retrospect, a predictable one, but a mistake nonetheless.
He went for a backhand.
Lazarus caught it before it landed. Wrapped his long fingers around that tiny wrist that felt like a ten-year-old’s. Squeezed just a little. Twisted inward towards the thumb, in the direction no arm likes to turn.
Idiot rotated with his arm in a locked arm bar, suddenly facing his little mob of dancers, surrounded by the galaxy’s meanest-looking poetry mob.
Lazarus rose from his chair now, so he could continue twisting as the man tried to evade. One hand to keep the elbow straight. The other pulling it up until the man had the option of a dislocated shoulder or surrendering his height advantage.
One of the Innruld men raised a clenched fist and took a step forward.
Lazarus let go of Idiot One and punched Two in what he hoped was the softest part of the belly. No time to calculate the locations of internal organs he had studied previously. Just a belly punch in a bar fight.
Damn it, he was too old to keep getting into this sort of thing.
Two folded over the fist with a tremendous whooooooosh of air and collapsed. Three took a stutter step forward, as if to do something, so Lazarus poked him square in the middle of the chest with a fist. Not trying to break anything, fearful of bird bones on these people, but hard enough that Three landed on his butt after several comical windmill steps backwards.
One of the Innruld women turned and snarled at him. She had been on One’s arm earlier.
“I’ll hit a woman.” Lazarus promised her with the sort of lethal cold you found in the darkness between stars.
She was either less stoned than the men, or smarter. She nodded ever so slightly and stepped back.
Lazarus decided that he couldn’t really win the fight the way his first military instructor would have preferred. A dead Innruld, his head shattered all over the floor, would make one hell of a powerful statement, but he’d end up in jail, or executed.
Instead, Lazarus grabbed a handful of that pretty, blond hair that they all seemed to have. One’s was longer than any of the others’, so Lazarus got a good grip and pulled the man to his feet, and then kept him doubled over by dragging him to the front door and judo-tossing the Innruld over one hip.
He was just sorry that they were on a station, so there were no mud puddles for that pretty set of clothes to absorb.
The other six had remained frozen in place when Lazarus turned, so he beckoned them silently, his eyes promising painful mayhem if he had to come in there to get them.
The leader’s woman walked first, head upright and frozen on the distant horizon so she didn’t have to see the faces around her as she made her exit. The second woman drug her beau along in the first’s wake.
Lazarus locked eyes on the one still standing and smiled like a wolf coming over a rise at a wounded traveler. That fellow wisely helped his buddy to that being’s feet and they stumbled out of the poetry slam to giggles and cat-calls.
Lazarus waited for them to exit and smiled at the woman who seemed to be in charge now.
“Wait here, and I’ll retrieve your friend,” he promised.
Inside, nobody had moved, not even the normally aggressive Wybert of Capantzina. Lazarus grabbed the unconscious Innruld by collar and belt buckle and thrust himself into a fireman’s carry, like they did every year for evacuation training on a warship. This fool was lighter than some of the dummies Lazarus had been required to carry.
Two went into the corridor next to One, who was just now starting to regain his senses on the deck.
Lazarus fixed the woman with a hard stare for a moment.
“I dare not suggest that you and your friends are not welcome here,” he said with a cold sneer. “But perhaps you might impress better manners on your friends, should you decide to return someday. I’m willing to ignore his challenge and not send my seconds around to bring this fool to the dueling ground. I doubt he’d last ten seconds with a blade against me, and I have the choice of weapons. Keep that in mind, should you decide to send gendarmes or bullyboys after me. Humans aren’t fearful, little minions of the Innruld like some other species.”
The species was normally pale by comparison, an ethereal, icy beauty that made them almost mobile art installations. Even more so tonight with those eyes that seemed to glow with internal fire from whatever drugs or substances they had ingested.
She was the color of fresh snow right now.
Lazarus looked over the others with a sneer fit for the gods before returning to the tea shop. He sat back down in the chair that had apparently represented so much honor and authority before the slightest whisper broke the room.
“In three minutes, we should probably find a back way out of here and run like hell to the ship.” He looked earnestly at Aileen. “I don’t know if they’re smart enough to call my bluff, but we’re already loaded for Zhoonarrim, so maybe we should convince Addison to take off before those folks can send trouble after us.”
“You think they will?” Wybert asked. “You just handled seven of them by yourself.”
“That’s exactly why I think they will,” Lazarus said. “Nobody has had a reason to fear my kind before tonight.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Addison
Addison stared at the two like he was seeing complete strangers on his deck, and not his longtime Loadmaster and her new human assistant. Wybert had taken up what Addison could only quantify as guard duty at the airlock hatch, with that
stupid powerspear of his in two hands, ready to fend off hordes of police.
One scaly hand went up to rub against a sudden pain in his left temple, above and behind the bone ridge. Aileen and Lazarus sat perfectly still across the desk with the door to his office closed.
“Seven of them?” he asked, still trying to come to terms with the potential bounds of human violence.
If there were any.
“Three,” Lazarus replied. “One at a time. Punks with superiority complexes and no training at all. Sailors would have known how to handle themselves.”
“Human sailors, perhaps,” Aileen chimed in for the first time since completing her story. “How violent are your kind?”
Addison watched the human start to react to the Yithadreph woman, pause, and then shrug.
“I’m beginning to suspect moreso than folks around here,” he finally admitted in a rueful tone.
It wasn’t a topic that had come up before, other than an admission that the human had belonged to an organized military, something Innruld space didn’t understand. It apparently included close combat training. In addition to size, bulk, and weight.
Lazarus had, Addison knew, been at great pains to be calm and self-contained around the crew. Kuei had finally gotten around to mentioning to Addison the setup in the shower.
Addison wasn’t sure at this point that the three of them could have prevented the human from doing something that day, had he been inclined, based on this new information. Wybert was as close to a warrior as Addison knew, and he doubted the Ilount would ever impress a queen.
Addison opened a line to the bridge.
“Cormac, is everyone aboard?” he asked.
“Affirmative, Director,” the NavCrawler replied immediately. “Aileen, Wybert, and Lazarus had the last station rotation, since they were busy with cargo when you let the others have time.”
“File a flight plan immediately,” Addison decided. “Sudden priority cargo, if they ask, and get us launched and clear of the station as soon as the gates open wide enough that we’re not facing fines. Let Kuei know.”
“Immediately, Director,” Cormac said.
Addison settled back on his coil and studied the human. Bipeds blushed. At least humans shared that with many of them.
“How much trouble have I just caused you, sir?” the human sounded abashed.
“That depends on who those children were,” Addison replied. “And how embarrassed or frightened they were when they got back to Skycity. If one of them was the scion of a notable family, they might register a complaint and try to take you into custody. I’m sure the tea shop has video of everything, especially if it was a poetry slam night, plus all manner of witnesses. If it happened as Aileen described it, you’re facing a fine at most, but your name will go on a list.”
“Not the first time that’s happened, sir,” Lazarus managed to sound proud and embarrassed at the same time.
“Oh?”
“I wasn’t always a Captain, sir,” he said. “A Director of a warship. Before that I was a rowdy kid junior officer.”
“Troublesome?” Addison asked.
“Let’s just say that fifteen years since have turned me into several different people from the dumb punk I used to be?” Lazarus smiled wryly.
Addison nodded.
“We’ll probably need to stay away from Aceanx for a time,” Addison noted. “And hope that nobody here decides to pursue a vendetta to Zhoonarrim.”
“And after Zhoonarrim, sir?” Lazarus asked.
“Why do you ask, Lazarus?” Addison felt something start to pain his temple again, but he sat still and concentrated on relaxing the muscles from his waist up in bands around his middle. Rubbing his forehead ridges wouldn’t help.
“A conversation Aileen and I were having just before the trouble broke out.”
The human glanced over at the Yithadreph for some sort of permission.
Apparently he got it, because he nodded and looked back at his director for a long second.
“The population of Innruld Space is around one hundred billion sentients, sir?” Lazarus said.
“Conservatively, yes,” Addison agreed.
“The Rio Alliance worlds are a little less than half that, combined,” the human’s lips pinched in on themselves in an interesting manner. “Westphalia is about double Innruld, all things organized.”
“Two hundred billion?” Addison felt his breath catch. Aileen almost cringed.
“Yes, so combined we’re probably looking at two hundred billion humans in my sectors of space once you filter out the other species, Addison,” Lazarus said. “It registered on me, when Aileen asked, that humans also breed at a much higher rate than most other species. Your single largest population in Innruld Space by species is probably ten to twelve billion. And that’s all the various sub-species of Churquen combined.”
Addison nodded, then felt his eyeslits fall open to their widest as the implications hit him.
Two hundred billion humans? Fast breeding? Aggressive?
“Shit,” he managed to mutter.
Aileen nodded. So did Lazarus.
“I know the crew has gossiped about whether you would take Shiva Zephyr Glaive and set out for human space after Zhoonarrim, Addison,” Lazarus dropped his voice down into the personal and conspiratorial. “I’m not sure that that’s a good idea. My kind might quickly overwhelm you on sheer numbers.”
Addison nodded. Lazarus had thought to set himself up as a guardian of his new friends, against the might of two much larger places. It was a perfectly ethical solution, to hide Innruld space from the humans.
It was also doomed to utter failure.
“Won’t work,” Addison said, watching the human’s face as emotions played out around his eyes and chin, much like on a Churquen.
“It won’t?” Aileen spoke up, surprised by Addison’s response.
“It will not,” Addison stated firmly. “Suppose that neither Rio Alliance or Westphalia chance to come in this direction anytime soon. How much worse will it be when it does happen, centuries from now?”
“Oh,” Lazarus had a moment of insight. “How long have you have trans-space?”
Addison paused to think about it.
“The Qooph first discovered it about five thousand years ago,” he said. “Their explorations found others at various levels of industrial technology and uplifted them. I’m surprised the humans weren’t found then.”
“Five thousand years ago, humans had just started using written records and had not yet moved beyond bronze technology, Addison. We’ve been out in the galaxy for barely seven hundred years.”
Addison felt his jaw drop open again. It might become an occupational hazard, at this rate. But he held to his logic. It was still sound.
“Better then, absolutely, that we discover each other now,” Addison said. “While the Rio Alliance welcomes non-humans and needs help against Westphalia. Where will you likely be in a century?”
“Perhaps another twenty or forty billion humans, as we continue to expand,” Lazarus nodded in recognition. “So many worlds already have atmospheres that can be modified easily. Human crops and biomes can be delivered, and we can move in fast enough to make them more earth-like. What about your superiors?”
So, he had made that leap of logic. Had understood that Addison Wolcott was an agent of shadowy others, and not just a drug runner fighting his own personal war against the Innruld.
Not just.
“What about them?” Addison asked. “I own this ship. They assign me missions that I am free to skip, if I feel the risk is too great.”
“Will they want me killed before I can get home and let the humans know about you?” Lazarus asked. “Will they hear the stories of that bar and suddenly fear me more than the Innruld? Better the devil you know that the one you don’t?”
Now it was Addison’s turn to think.
He had approached it from the standpoint that any delay worked in the human’s favor, over the n
ext thousand years. Would Eha and her superiors understand that logic, or panic when they learned this painful, new truth?
What manner of nastiness might they find when they got to Zhoonarrim, not just from Lazarus’s enemies, but also people who might suddenly become Addison’s?
But there was really only one way to handle this. Rip the scab off right now and deal with the issue, while it might still be compact enough to handle. A century from now, humans might have expanded to another thirty or fifty star systems, if that growth rate was to be believed.
Why had his people never done the same?
But Addison knew the answer to that.
Innruld.
The overlords had maneuvered themselves into a position of authority two thousand years ago and set up the three-tiered hierarchy that Addison and Eha and others had dedicated themselves to undoing.
Innruld overlords controlling wealth and political power by co-opting the dangerous, seducing them with money and then either blunting them, or destroying them.
The armed tier. All those guards, bureaucrats, and servants from other species that accepted the wealth and prestige they got from keeping a boot on the throats of their own kind for the masters.
And the rabble. Addison Wolcott and friends. Underground rebellions. Piratical gangs. Men and women in the street just trying to get by, maybe making enough to take a vacation this year to a semi-exotic resort off-planet.
How do you convince people to throw off the chains they have come to define themselves by?
“How dangerous are you as a warrior on a dock, Lazarus?” Addison asked, getting right to the heart of the next station’s problems.
“How dangerous is Wybert?” the human volleyed back earnestly.
“About in the middle,” Aileen spoke up. “Better than some. Worse than others. Not a hero. Not a failure. Never a breeder, most likely.”
“Then I’m probably closer to the top than I realized,” Lazarus said. “When we arrived, the Innruld had a guard with him. Three eyes. Squat and powerful, with short legs and long arms. I think he was a Kreeghal.”