Death Drop (The D-Evolution)

by Sean Allen

  “Well, I admit, at first I was curious. I’d never seen a Human in the flesh—no one has in quite some time—and I wanted to see what your species could do. I thought, perhaps I could use you to strengthen my crew if you proved to have any extraordinary abilities. I must say, I was disappointed when it turned out all you could do was fight and fly. I have been doing both far better than anyone in the time of the Durax for longer than you can imagine. So I turned to thinking about alternate sources of profit from your discovery, and the choice was obvious: turn you in and collect the reward. But then I realized something. Your genuine lack of memory and your inconsolable desire to find your own kind was too rich a proposition to pass; after all, why turn in one Human when you can cash in on perhaps an entire lost colony or secret world!

  “I tried to get you to lead me to them while still part of my crew, asking you questions, trying to get you to remember where you were from, the faces of your friends; and then, of course, there was the purchase of your own ship. I thought if you felt like you were alone to pursue your kind, you would remember where they were. But your motivation waned as time went on. Like the fire that raged in your eyes when you first woke up from cryo, your burning desire to know was slowly dying, the more comfortable you became.”

  Dezmara shook her head in disgust and clutched the bottom of her chair in a crushing grip as she recalled the hours-long sessions of confiding in Felix and his seemingly genuine interest in helping her. It was all a lie.

  “So I set you free, staging my death in the run to Xilun, taking away the only sense of belonging you had and fueling your passion to find more Humans!”

  “You murdering sonofabitch! You killed all those runners!”

  “Well, technically, my crew killed them, but yes, I gave the order. It was necessary. Covering up the Serian’s escape from one ship was hard enough, but keeping the ruse from seven other captains and their crew would’ve been impossible. Of course, the one was allowed to escape to tell the tale, and I see he did a wonderful job!” Felix was enjoying this, and as Dezmara’s face twisted with deepening despair, his scaly lips curled higher and higher at their corners.

  “So, what, Felix, did something go wrong? Did your little plan not go quite as expected? I mean, I don’t see any other Humans sitting at the table!” She had struck a sour chord with the pirate captain, and his smile flattened until his face was expressionless. The corner of her mouth twitched up in her signature, smart-assed smirk. The annoying grin on Fellini’s face had vanished as well, and he cleared his throat uncomfortably as he pretended to hack on cigar fumes.

  “What can I say?” Felix said with a little less bravado than before. “You’re a good pilot. Much better than I gave you credit for.”

  “Meaning?!” Dezmara prodded.

  The rough lids around Felix’s eyes narrowed, and he stared at Dezmara with frustration and a small trace of jealousy. He held the look for several moments, and the room was silent except for the inhalation of air through the bony extrusion on Fellini’s head and the soft crackle of incinerating leaves inside his cigar.

  “For years I tried to follow as you searched galaxy after galaxy, but I couldn’t risk getting too close without raising your suspicions. Keeping a comfortable distance wasn’t enough to track a ship as fast as the Zebulon; you would soon vanish, only to resurface again when the payoff and the port was right in whatever run was offered by my friends here in Trillis.” Felix motioned toward Fellini with a backward brush of his hand.

  “So you got tired of waiting for me to find the Humans, and you went in with shit-bag here to set me up—congratu-fucking-lations! NOW WHERE ARE MY FRIENDS, FELIX?!”

  “But,” Grinnik continued as if he hadn’t heard Dezmara’s last question, “I still had hope your memory would come back and you would find your home”

  “You mean your payday, don’t you?” Dezmara interrupted.

  “So I hired a tracker to inform me of your condition and your whereabouts. I have to say, it was much easier from then on. But as time went by, I came to realize that you weren’t going to find any more Humans. You’d been roaming the universe for eight long years and you were no closer to the answers about your past than when I found you. At first I was disappointed, and I considered having you killed for all of my trouble. One hundred thousand tolocs is, after all, not much money when the entirety of space is your chest for the plundering. But then something rather simple, yet very powerful, occurred to me: what could be more valuable than an item that is truly the last of its kind? The Durax haven’t been able to track down any Humans in hundreds of thousands of years—even with all their powers and ravenous devouring of world after world—and your fruitless searches seem to verify the fact that you are the last Human in existence.

  “So, as you said, I went in with Mr. Fellini here, set you up, and here we are!”

  “And who was better than you at following me? I thought you’d been ‘fighting and flying in the time of the Durax better than anyone!’” Dezmara poured on the sarcasm, but Felix was unshakeable.

  “I don’t quite understand how he did it either. Let’s ask him, shall we?” Felix nodded at Fellini, who gave him an irritated ‘hey, I give the orders ‘round here’ look before reluctantly jabbing his finger into the hidden control unit in the table. The doors opened once more, and for the second time in one day, a familiar face walked into the room. She thought her heart had died when Felix turned out to be a betrayer, but the subsequent backstory of his underhanded plot to murder and deceive anyone necessary so he could use her to get paid had, unfortunately, brought it back to life. This time, her heart dropped into her stomach, never to return from the cramping, painful stabs of emptiness that twisted her insides and churned the acid into a frenzy of torment.

  “YOU TRAITOR FUCKING BASTARD!” she screamed, and in an instant, Dezmara leapt to her feet, gripped the back of her chair, and sent it hurtling across the boardroom with unnatural speed toward the head of Simon Latranis. The partially enclosed wheels on the bottom of the seat passed between Felix and Fellini, missing the Turillian’s head by mere inches, and the projectile was dead on target. A green flash whipped out from behind Felix, and Simon’s body jerked to the side at the last possible moment as the chair slammed into the wall, crushing the wood in a flitter of small grains and splinters.

  Felix uncurled his tail from around Simon’s midsection and coiled it slowly into its natural position behind his back. Fellini was standing in front of his throne-like seat with his pistol aimed at Dezmara, whose chest and shoulders were heaving forcefully as she snarled at Simon, lost in animal rage. Felix waved his hand at Fellini once more, and the Turillian slowly lowered his gun and sat back down.

  “Set’le down now, luv,” Simon said as he motioned down to the floor with both paws in front of him. “I understand you’re upset, but the guv’na here jus’ wants his knick-knack returned an’ this ‘ole thing’ll sort out.”

  “This is getting ridiculous!” Fellini shouted. His face was crinkled with impatience, and he looked at Felix with disapproval. “Just get on with it, already!” Felix’s lip twitched, and his eyes narrowed, and Fellini lowered his head like a scolded pet.

  Simon looked at both men with confusion, but Dezmara was lost in her own world, wondering if she could dodge bullets long enough to kill at least Simon, if not everybody at the end of the room, with absolutely no weapons. She longed to feel her automatics pulsing in her hand and to hear the sound of shells jingling onto the table as bullets bored bloody holes into the three thieving, murdering liars in front of her. What she wouldn’t give to hear the ring of her blades as she pulled them from their sheaths and completed the chop job that someone or something had started on Felix since the last time she saw him. Her yearning for a weapon ignited a spark in her mind, and she glanced down to see that her vambraces were still around her forearms. Whoever had disarmed her must not have known about the velocity magnet and, although it wasn’t a weapon, Dezmara felt a glimmer of hope stoke t
he fire inside her.

  “Luv? Did you ‘ear what I said? Jus’ give ‘em back whatever it was you took, an’ we’ll all go our own way.”

  Dezmara shook from her bloodthirsty visions and glared at Simon. He was blathering on about something that made absolutely no sense, and she was certain it was another mind-screw, but she decided to see where it was going.

  “What in the fuck are you talkin’ about?!”

  “Whatever you stole from Felix three years ago. It wasn’t in the cargo containers an’ we couldn’t find it in the Ghost. Jus’ give it back an’ be done with it!” Simon moved cautiously toward her as he pleaded, ready to dive under the table if Dezmara made a move for another chair. She decided Simon was playing a game she wasn’t interested in exploring any further, and she changed subjects to the only topic she cared about anymore.

  “Where’s Doj, you sonofabitch?! What’d you do to him?!”

  “Nothin’, luv, honest! Little bugger wouldn’t come out of the pipes when I set down on Clara, so I had to leave him behind.” Simon had a look of genuine remorse as he spoke, but there was no way Dezmara was going to buy it.

  “He wasn’t there, Simon! Where the hell’d he go if you didn’t take him?” Almost as soon as the words spilled from her lips, Dezmara remembered the strange tracks in the sand as she slept on Clara, and the Zebulon star freighter she thought was the Ghost as she fought the Triton in The Firebug. “That Mewlatai, the one the Dissension is looking for, flew a black Zebulon just like yours! He was on Clara—he’s got Diodojo!” she thought. The notion was disturbing, but the three assholes running the show here didn’t seem to know anything about the Mewlatai, and she didn’t want to give them anything they could use against her. In the end, she decided the best thing to do was to keep her mouth shut and try to get herself out of this mess.

  “I should’ve known,” she said with seething hatred. “He never trusted you. He knew what you were and I should’ve known!” A light came on in Dezmara’s eyes. Simon backed away as the muscles tensed in her arms and she stepped forward. “It was you—you fucking asshole! Diodojo didn’t bump his head on the run to Prosiris. You fucking hit him!” Dezmara’s hand reached for the seatback to her right as she took another step around the table.

  “Didn’t want to, luv,” Simon said fearfully as he took several steps backward with the palms of his hands out in front of him. “He wouldn’t let me be an’ was makin’ it hard to report on our position. Last time, he attacked me an’ I had to defend myself. Didn’t mean to club ‘im so hard, luv, ‘onest!” She didn’t want to admit that Simon—her Simon—could do such a thing, but his admission opened a floodgate of horrible epiphanies.

  “Wait a good goddam minute! If Felix is the captain of the Triton, that means the crash was a fake, and the only way they could’ve made it back to pick you up was for you to sabotage The Bug!” Dezmara was livid as the picture of Simon, perched on the folded wing of The Firebug just before she launched to free the Ghost from the Triton’s snatchers, scorched her brain.

  “Didn’t do anythin’ drastic, luv! Knew you’d make it out of there an’ back to the ship in one piece!”

  Dezmara had heard enough; it was time for someone to die. She snatched up the chair and it lifted easily around her side as she coiled her muscles and prepared to transform the seat into a bludgeoning ram.

  “Enough!” Fellini hollered as he jumped from his seat and slapped his thick hand down on the table. Dezmara stopped in mid wind-up and then dropped the chair with a crash! Simon’s eyes were still locked on her and he stood stone still. Something was going on that Dezmara couldn’t quite figure out. Fellini wasn’t shouting at the exchange between her and Simon; he was ordering Felix to go on with their plan. But Felix hadn’t finished wringing the sickly fruit of their evil plot and lapping up the sadistic, sweet juices of Dezmara’s torment, and he fired a reproachful look at Fellini in response to his outburst.

  “I know you’re enjoying this, but it’s time to get on with it!” Fellini continued his tantrum.

  “Mister Grinnik, what’s he on ‘bout?” Simon said, turning his head slightly in Fellini’s direction without taking his eyes off Dezmara.

  “Enough with this ‘Felix’ and ‘Mister Grinnik’ shit! It’s time!” Fellini ordered.

  “Perhaps you are right,” Felix said. He gripped the top button of his coat with an oddly shaped hand. It was divided in two like a meaty, scale-clad pincer with three clawed thumbs to the inside and two similarly armed, but longer fingers on the outside. He unbuttoned each round fastener as casually as if he was taking off his coat to sit down for dinner, and when the last button was undone, he slid the jacket from his shoulders and tossed it onto the table. Running over his big shoulders and down his chest to the tops of his pants was a custom harness of black hide with four holsters: two on each side by his upper abdomen and two more just above his hips.

  The jeweled handle of a large cutlass stuck up from his belt, but that wasn’t the weapon Dezmara was concerned about: it was the four golden pistols on his front that put her on edge. The tips of the tolocnium forged barrels hung down past their carriers like the glimmering snouts of hooded, metallic wolves waiting to be pulled from the darkness and set loose to wreak havoc. Pearl handles, custom made for their master’s unique grip and inlaid with swirling flourishes of golden ore, curled out from the slanting holsters like the decorated bones of those who had fallen under his barrels.

  The big bumps on top of his shoulders rolled forward and two more arms appeared from behind him and unfolded from the elbows with a loud pop! pop! All four of his hands moved into position and hovered over the handles of his guns as he prepared to draw.

  “Aw, shit!” Dezmara said with a disbelieving laugh as she shook her head. “Feleon Gulkar. Captain Four Guns Feleon…I have to say, I never saw that one coming!”

  “Four Guns Feleon?!” Simon said as he slowly turned away from Dezmara and looked behind him. “What’ve I done, luv?”

  “Mr. Latranis,” Feleon said, “I don’t know how you stayed under cover all those years and still managed to report to me without raising any suspicion—you must be one helluva spy—but your services are no longer needed.”

  “What in the shite’s this all’bout then, guv?”

  “He played you, Simon,” Dezmara said. “I never stole anything from him.”

  Simon looked like a rat caught in a trap as he peered from Dezmara to Feleon. “You said she had precious cargo what belonged to you an’ this entire mess was ‘bout gettin’ it back!” Simon was staring at Feleon in disbelief.

  “She is the cargo, you idiot!” Fellini shouted. “The containers were a trick to keep you off the scent and lead her back to us without rousing her suspicion! She is the prize, and the Durax will pay a fortune beyond your wildest dreams when we hand her over! You’ve had your fun, Feleon. NOW DO IT, YOU PIRATE TRASH—KILL HIM!” Fellini was facing Four Guns Feleon, but his arm was stretched out and a finger pointed at the Kaniderelle in a condemnation of death.

  Chapter 45: Shift Change

  “Gladly,” Feleon said as he flexed the fingers on all four hands over the pearly handles of his guns, “but there’s something I must do first.”

  “Screw you!” Fellini yelled as his reserves of patience finally ran out. His hand moved down to the table to snatch up his gun, but it never came close to the knurled handle or smooth, metal trigger. In the instant between Fellini’s last words and where his hand stopped, cold and quivering above his pistol, Feleon’s tongue had launched from his mouth and killed the Turillian. Neither Dezmara nor Simon saw it happen—not because they weren’t watching, but because their eyes simply weren’t fast enough.

  The fleshy weapon was thick and muscular and extended several feet from Feleon’s wide open mouth to where Fellini was still standing, shivering in his death throes. Several long barbs on the end of the tongue were embedded in Fellini’s head between his eyes, which were now truly as vacuous and unseeing as they had app
eared to be. The Turillian fell in a limp heap into his chair as Feleon whipped his tongue back into his mouth. The pirate’s eyes closed and he made several lip-smacking, gulping noises as he sucked down the blood, bone, and brain matter still coating the tip.

  “Ahhhh,” he said as if he’d just tasted the most wonderful meal of his life.

  “Well, Four Guns,” Dezmara said after an uncomfortable pause, “can’t imagine the Gamorotta’s gonna be very happy about that.”

  “Impudent weasel,” he spat. “I needed him to set up the run to lure you in, but I never really planned to share the loot. The Gamorotta are like weeds. Another will spring up to take his place before the night is over, and I assure you no tears will be lost over the passing of Leonardo Fellini!

  “Now, where were we? Ah, yes. My dear Dezmara, you’re going to the Durax. And, Mr. Latranis, it’s time for you to die!”

  “You really think the Durax will cut you a deal,” Dezmara said, stalling for more time to think of a way out. “They’ll mind job you six ways from Satarnis Six and take me for free.” She wanted to make a move and touch the button on the vambrace, but the damn thing took so long to extend and unfold, she’d be shot to pieces before it could do anything for her.

  “You think a sailor of my reputation hasn’t come across a shipment of precious Serum in his travels? My dear, I’m immune to the powers of the Durax! Too bad the same isn’t true for you, eh? There’s no telling what they want you for or what they’re going to do, but I’m sure it will be…unpleasant!” In her short eight years, Dezmara had seen her share of bad guys, but there was something in the deranged, malicious grin of Four Guns Feleon Gulkar that chilled her to the bone.

  “’Fraid I can’t let that happen, guv’na!” Simon said. He sounded so confident that Dezmara wondered if it was really him before remembering that she actually didn’t know Simon at all. The shy geek that used to wrench on the engines of the Ghost and avoid confrontation at every turn might have been just a character.