Kiel turned to look at the human. “That would seem like there is much fighting then if it is always required.”
Peter shrugged. “It isn’t always necessary. For example, those of us who are feistier will ask someone if they want to challenge to keep their spot. Typically, you’ve seen someone fight before they get to you. If you’re in the middle of the pecking order you know if you are going to accept the challenge or allow them to move past you and accept they are better already. If there’s any doubt, or you’re just stubborn, then you accept all challenges as fights.”
“Where do you rank?” Kiel asked.
“Probably equivalent to you, Kiel,” Peter said. “I answer to Dan, here, who is the brass, so to speak. I’m the muscle.”
“So, if you challenge me, then we are equal, correct?” Kiel asked.
“Yes, I’ll challenge you,” Peter said before anyone could get a word in edgewise. “What are the conditions?”
“What are they normally for your people?”
“My people?” Peter said. “The same as for your King, only what you came into the world with.”
Captain Kael-ven turned to his other side. “Royleen?”
“What?” the scientist turned. “You want me to accept a challenge?”
“Yes, if the humans would consider it. You are our top scientist. If one of them can best you, then we are in agreement.”
“What about you?” Dan asked.
“Me?” Kael-ven asked. “I thought it was painfully obvious that I have already been beaten by you. For me, it is leading my ship. I had the element of surprise, tactically superior position and I accepted my defeat. I am not at the level of Queen Bethany Anne here,” he nodded at her. “So that isn’t a question for me.”
“I’ll accept the challenge,” Marcus said.
“You?” William and Bill both blurted out.
“Way to support your teammate, you two,” Bethany Anne said.
“It’s not that, boss,” Bobcat said, pointing his thumb back at his friend. “Marcus here hates to play Monopoly, or checkers, or…”
“BET,” added William.
“So yeah, we’re a little surprised,” Bobcat finished.
“Perhaps,” Marcus admitted. “But you guys have never been around scientists when we get confrontational.”
“Uh, yeah that’s true,” William agreed.
“Word. And two scoops of hell-yeah to go on top of that. You start drawing in squiggles…” Bobcat began to say.
“That’s scientific notation, you Neanderthals,” Marcus retorted.
“I’ve got that shirt,” Bobcat said. “It’s just dirty at the moment.”
“Oh, sorry about that,” William interjected. “I think I used it last week to clean up an oil spill.”
Bobcat turned to William. “Shit, really?”
“Pretty sure, the grayish-green one?” Bobcat nodded. “It’s gone.”
“Well, damn.” Bobcat turned back to Marcus. “Sorry, no t-shirt but I’ll just agree with you.”
Bethany Anne put up a hand to stop the trio and looked at Kael-ven. “What would the challenge look like for the scientists?”
“They would each pick a subject and then the final question would be agreed upon by the two teams.”
“Teams?” Bethany Anne asked.
“Well, yes of course.” Royleen said. “The scientist always has a second who is subject to the direction of the scientist. It allows the scientist to drive the direction of the research and then move forward with other projects, is this not how you do it?”
“Well,” Marcus answered, “in some cases. In others, we are our own mini-group as one person. Is there any limitation to whom the support person is?” He pointedly looked at Bobcat and William who both leaned away from Marcus.
Royleen chittered as he watched the byplay between the three humans. “No. It cannot be mechanical, it must be organic and be able to confirm who it is, but they are allowed to support their lead in any way,” he pointedly looked at the two men leaning away from Marcus, “they possibly can.”
“Oh, good then.” Marcus smiled.
Bobcat and William looked at each other, confused.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
QBS ArchAngel
It took two days for them to get together. They already had half the crew of the Yollin ship with them on the ArchAngel, and for the challenges, most of the rest of the G’laxix Sphaea wanted to be there as well. Since the other half of the G’laxix Sphaea crew had been housed inside fourteen containers on the Moon, those on the ship took a few hours to move the ArchAngel in position and transit the aliens up to the ArchAngel for the event.
Not that the aliens weren’t watched, surreptitiously, by the Guardians to make sure no one decided to go on a walk-about by themselves.
Fortunately, they did not.
The largest open area available besides the Pod bay was cleared out and Peter and Kiel were in the middle of the room. It was twenty feet high, seventy-five feet wide and a hundred long. There were a few spots William had to clean up as he had been using it for ripping apart something mechanical.
Bethany Anne sat between John and Darryl, with Kael-ven on the other side of John and Scott and Eric behind them. “Where is Royleen?” she asked, leaning around John.
“He is not much into the martial sciences,” Kael-ven said. “He is busy learning what he can about the gravitic drives that Marcus has selected as his area of expertise.”
He put a raw potato into his mouth and bit a chunk off. After a couple of crunches, he swallowed. “He was surprised to find out that Marcus was the one responsible for some of the latest changes to the gravitic drives for humans.”
“He was pretty sure he was going to beat Marcus easily, I take it?” she asked.
“Yes. Scientists, I think, are always sure of their superiority.”
“What is his subject?”
“Old alien languages,” Kael-ven chittered in laughter. “He is sure no human has a knowledge of either aliens or what they say to be able to answer his questions.”
“I see, and the final subject?”
“General mathematics. I don’t suppose it can help Marcus at the moment, but gravity is but a small and very precise aspect of math. Royleen must have at least three to four different kinds of mathematics that Yollin scientists have been working with for at least four of our centuries. We have yet to encounter any human activity in those disciplines. So, if he can’t figure out the gravitic answers he plans on stumping him with those.”
“I… see,” she mused.
Kiel had rested the last two days. While he had worked hard to learn from his many, many fights with the humans, he had refrained from using some of the double-jointed moves his kind was capable of during martial trials.
Now, he was going to surprise the human with styles they had not seen from him.
As he stood in the middle of the room, he could hear the chitterings and exultations of his people, encouraging him, supporting him.
It felt good.
He had nothing against this human in front of him. In fact, he had not even sparred with this human yet. For his age, which seemed young to Kiel, he held a high position, so he expected this to be challenging.
But he had personal armor, where a human had nothing but soft skin. He had hard claws that cut and stabbed, the human had soft fingers.
While he needed to worry about blunt trauma from kicks and punches, at least he didn’t have to worry about knives or swords.
--
“Did you hear?” Tabitha asked as she sat down next to Gabrielle, offering her some popcorn as the two watched Kiel and Peter walk to the middle of the room.
“What, little one?” Gabrielle asked, reaching into the bag and grabbing a handful.
“We’re going to get an eyeful of Peter candy.”
“Huh?” Gabrielle asked around her popcorn.
Tabitha tossed a couple of popped kernels into her mouth. “He has to strip before he fi
ghts the alien.”
“Oh, six-pack solicitousness time?” Gabrielle asked after swallowing. “I’m good with that.”
“No kidding, his stomach could be used to teach Braille,” Tabitha agreed.
“Wonder what it would say?”
Tabitha snorted, “Who cares? Probably ‘you think this is hard?’ or ‘go lower.’ No, I mean strip,” she said.
“OOOOhhhhh.” Gabrielle replied, putting out her hand to push Tabitha back in her seat. “Move back, you’re blocking my view.
“Hey!” Tabitha responded, slapping Gabrielle’s hand. “You’ve got a boyfriend!”
“Yeah, a boyfriend that’s going to be with Bethany Anne if she ever has to fight the King of Yoll and she will be butt-ass naked.”
“Oh,” Tabitha paused, then leaned back. “Good point.”
--
Kiel nodded at the human, who started to take off his clothes and hand them to a person next to him who folded them and walked off the floor.
Kiel stretched up, raising his legs to their full height and roared a challenge. His people roared back their response, shaking the walls.
Kiel smiled at the human, who was patiently waiting for Kiel to finish.
“My turn,” Peter said as he waited for the noise to die down.
--
The sounds coming from his people impressed Kael-ven. They had come out to support Kiel and Royleen, even those who had chosen to stay locked up on the human’s Moon. He checked with them from time to time. Other than the lack of space, which wasn’t too bad considering they had been on the G’laxix Sphaea anyway, they were bored but were not being mistreated.
He turned to look around John at Bethany Anne. “I think you might want to close your eyes, it could get a little ugly.”
“I’ll bet you that this is over, and Peter wins, within twenty human minutes of the start,” she said, never taking her eyes off of the two on the floor.
“What do we have to bet?” Kael-ven asked.
She turned to him. “If Kiel wins, I’ll drop your time of service to two solar years.” She elbowed John when he snorted. “If Peter wins, you have to be willing to listen with an open mind and help me with an idea I have for after I take out your King.”
Kael-ven shrugged. “Done.” He leaned back. This was going to be an honorable way to reduce the sentence for him and his people. He wasn’t sure if she realized that when his time was up, so was theirs.
The Yollins finally quieted down as Peter spoke.
--
“In my life, there have been many times I have been called upon to fight. Sometimes, it had the potential to kill me. In one instance, one time, I saw someone I loved killed. Or,” he turned to find Ecaterina and Nathan in the audience. “She would have been if someone hadn’t intervened.”
Peter turned back to Kiel. “Since that time, in rare cases, I am called to pull from my people’s abilities, my kind. It takes something to trigger this and I always,” Kiel noticed Peter’s eyes start to change color, “always,” his voice went deeper, grittier, “think about what I felt when she was hurt.”
Kiel took an involuntary step back when the human in front of him changed. No longer was he smaller and soft. Now, he was easily as tall as Kiel, covered with fur and had knives for nails on the end of his hands. Then he howled, and the human’s side roared their support.
The fight was on!
Kiel leaped towards the human who ducked under him. But his foot was caught, and Kiel had to push his arms under him to stop his face from slamming into the metal floor.
Then he was yanked backward, and he twisted twice in the air before landing halfway back to the far wall with a painful crunch.
The screaming was loud, reverberating off the walls from both sides of the room.
Kiel grimaced, this wasn’t going to be easy, after all.
The human walked towards him.
Oh, and teeth, Kiel thought. Stay away from the teeth, too.
Kiel jerked forward, feinting to his left before launching and this time, using his legs to scissor kick, scoring a hit across the human’s body. When he landed, he could see the blood on his toes.
Good!
He turned back to see the human, not looking like he was much bothered by the cut.
The cut that was healing in front of Kiel’s eyes.
This was bad.
--
“Question,” Kael-ven asked as he saw Kiel’s successful slash across the changed human’s body start to heal. “Can all of you do that?”
“You might call it a caste thing,” Bethany Anne answered.
Kael-ven didn’t fail to recognize she didn’t answer fully, but he suspected that if this man followed his Queen…
What could the Queen do?
--
“You know,” Tabitha said, eating popcorn as the two guys fought. “That was some serious eye-candy. But you’re fucked.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll just make sure I screw him blind the night before her fight with the King,” Gabrielle replied.
Tabitha nodded her approval. “Good plan.”
--
Kiel was loping to his left, in a counter-circle. He had suffered two hard cuts through his soft sections, and he had found out that the human’s bite could break his arm.
He was in a world of hurt, and the worst damage that the human showed was some blood on the floor and some panting breaths.
So glad he was giving him a workout.
“Doooo yoouuuu exxxppeeeeccctt too wwiinnn?” the human asked him.
“I expect to try until I can do no more, human,” he voiced to a roar of approval from his people.
The human shrugged. “So be it.” He looked up at the ceiling and back at the Yollins for a second before turning to Kiel. “I doonnn’t sssuppose yooou cannn fllyyyy?”
--
“Oh, God this is going to hurt,” Bethany Anne said.
“What?” Kael-ven asked.
“I think Kiel is about to go for a longer, higher flight,” she told him.
“He has already gone,” Kael-ven pointed, “from there to there! How much further can he be thrown?”
“Try, up there,” John answered as Peter roared and charged Kiel, grabbing the alien and twisting around, flinging him from under his shoulders up towards the ceiling. Kiel’s body only stopped when he slammed into the top, then crashed back down to land amongst his supporters, some who had tried to dodge and a few more who had tried to help catch him.
“Ohhhh, I think we need someone to go help a few of them.” Bethany Anne said as aliens scattered amongst the chairs, Kiel’s comatose body pinning three of them to the floor.
Peter roared his challenge as Nathan walked out to the middle of the floor. Bethany Anne watched as Nathan snapped his fingers to gets Peter’s attention and then calm him down, helping him focus enough to change back.
--
“I’ll give that ass an eleven though,” Tabitha said, and then turned, hiding her blushing face saying, ‘Oh my God!’ when Peter turned and winked at her.
Gabrielle busted out laughing, then started coughing on popcorn kernels that were still in her mouth.
--
It took an hour to help clean up from the first challenge, and some medical attention was needed for both Kiel and one of those he had squashed at the end. Fortunately, the medical team had been studying Kiel since he had been hurt so frequently and knew he would be good again in a couple of days, not including his broken arm.
The friend that had tried to help soften Kiel’s fall was still out cold.
For the second challenge, Royleen and Marcus had a table brought to the middle of the room, and both set down electronic devices. Marcus pulled his from a brown backpack.
Royleen had another Yollin standing behind him as Marcus pulled another large device and sat it on the table.
--
“I don’t suppose you want to go for double or nothing, Kael-ven?” Bethany Anne asked as everyone resumed their seat
s.
“What is the double-part? How can I listen to your information twice?”
“No, sorry. Here’s the deal. I’ll still give you guys only two solar years, but on my side, if I ask you something that is not against your ethics you promise to do it for me. Or, you explain why you wouldn’t or couldn’t do it if you say no.” She nodded to the two out in the middle. “If Royleen wins, you don’t have to listen to anything, and only have two years.”
The Kurtherian Gambit Omnibus 05 - The Fans Version: My Ride is a Bitch - Don't Cross This Line - Never Submit Page 20