by M. D. Cooper
Konto shrugged. “Meh, she already hates me, and it might save her life, so …”
“Who hates you?”
“Deenia.”
“Huh?” Larry snorted. “Since when?”
Konto stopped walking so abruptly Larry smacked straight into the back of him. The shoppers around them tutted their annoyance at having to change direction a fraction in order to walk around them.
“Wait a minute,” Konto muttered, then he wheeled around and peered down at the boy. “They already have twenty-four kids. Plenty of scope for ransom. Why’d they need twenty-five?”
Larry’s wide eyes blinked in confusion. “Huh?”
“They came for you, specifically for you. The returned to the scene of the abduction so they could …” The truth clicked. “So they could get the rich kid. You’re the one they were after in the first place.”
“I was?” said Larry, grinning proudly. His face fell again, almost immediately. “Wait. I was?”
“I think so. Or maybe your old man blabbed about how much he’s worth and they decided they wanted you, too. I don’t know.” Konto sighed. “Either way, they’ll be back for you.” He sighed again. He felt the situation warranted at least two, with the possibility of more to come. “Which means you’d better stick with me.”
Larry jumped up and punched a fist in the air. “Woo-hoo!”
“Halt!” crackled a robotic voice.
Larry attempted to freeze in mid-air, but the station’s artificial gravity put a stop to that idea. With his legs locked and rigid, he landed heavily, and Konto had to catch him to stop him toppling over.
Konto winced as something sharp pricked the back of his neck. He spun quickly and saw a shiny silver sphere drifting away from him through the crowds. “Ow. What the fonk was that?”
Larry didn’t move for a second, then he shifted his eyes left and right, blinked a few times, and looked in the direction Konto was glaring. The ball floated off at around Konto’s chest height, weaving through the throngs.
“Oh, I thought it was another bad guy,” Larry said. “That? That’s just a bioscanner.”
Konto touched the back of his neck. A tiny droplet of blood smeared across his fingers. “They’re new,” he muttered, then the significance of what Larry had said filtered through. “Wait. Bioscanner?”
Larry nodded. “Yeah. The guy in the shop probably called them, what with you acting so suspicious and shouting at him and all that stuff. It just takes a DNA sample to check you’re who you say you are.”
Konto’s face paled.
“You’ll be fine, Mr Garr,” said Larry. He placed the back of his hand at the side of his mouth and whispered theatrically. “Unless you’ve got any deep, dark secrets you’re trying to hide.”
Konto stared at Larry in silence for a full two-thirds of a second, then he was off, charging through the crowds, using the full weight of his bulky frame to knock them aside. “Out of the way! Move! Coming through!” he bellowed, shouldering through a pack of chattering high-haired Thoorians and sending them sprawling across the floor.
He vaulted a Snurk, slid between the legs of a Golleeat, and gave two elderly Vaporoids a wide berth. The bioscanner glided around a corner up ahead, and Konto picked up the pace. It was smaller than his head and moved effortlessly through the crowds. The shoppers, in their rush to get out of Konto’s path, seemed to be making life even more difficult for him. They criss-crossed in front of him, tripping over each other in their hurry to not be there.
Konto skidded around the corner into a wide shopping precinct that stretched ahead of him as far as the eye could see. He stopped, his head snapping left and right as he searched for the silver ball. The crowds were thicker here, an ever-moving tangle of heads and arms and tentacles and tails and Kroysh knew what else.
There! He spotted it at just above head height forty or so feet away, moving away from him. It had slowed to a crawl now, encumbered by the tightly-packed throngs around it. Konto set off after it, pushing through forcefully, but not enough to send everyone scattered in panic again.
He closed on it quickly, until there was just one obstacle in his path—a large, wolf-like Greyx who plodded along slowly, examining its clawed fingernails.
“Coming through,” Konto said, shouldering past the Greyx.
“Hey, watch it,” she protested in a petulant voice that reminded Konto a lot of Deenia.
With a lunge, Konto grabbed for the ball. It was only then that he realized his mistake. He was not holding a bioscanner. Instead, he was clutching the metal skull of a hulking, seven-feet-tall robot.
No, not robot. It turned, revealing patches of its face had survived intact, including its eyes. They narrowed angrily as the metal jaw twisted into a sneer. “Can I help you, man?”
“Hey, who’s this guy?” asked a smaller humanoid in a brown leather jacket. A squidgy green blob sat on his shoulder, pulsing gently, its two eyes looking Konto up and down.
“Uh, sorry,” said Konto. He moved to turn away, then stopped as the blob formed the shape of an arrow pointing left. Konto looked that direction, and there was the bioscanner, swooshing through the crowd, heading towards a door marked Security.
Konto glanced back at the shapeshifting green thing. “Thanks,” he said, then he was running again, shouldering, elbowing and pushing his way after the thing, closing the gap, but not closing it fast enough. The sphere had reached a completely pedestrian-free area around the security entrance. It deviated slightly, making for the security panel built into the wall which would allow it to open the door.
Still running, Konto took the knife from his pocket and unfolded it. One chance. He had just one chance.
Catching the knife by the blade, he leapt into the air and hurled the weapon with all his might. It whistled as it flipped end over end above the heads of the oblivious shoppers. There was a satisfying thunk and an even more pleasing series of angry sparks as the blade buried itself deep in the control panel, shorting its circuitry.
The ball drifted to a stop and examined the damaged panel, rotating ever so slightly on its axis as it looked the damage over. By the time it figured out what had happened and turned, Konto was on it. He pulled it to his chest, forced his fingers into the first available join in the bioscanner’s outer casing, and pulled with all his might.
His muscles strained. The thin edges of the metal plating cut into his fingers. He gritted his teeth, hissed through them, and reminded himself how much rested on him pulling this thing apart.
With a screech, the metal casing bent back. Konto thrust a hand inside, bunched it into a fist, then ripped out a tangle of wiring. The sphere became heavier as its anti-grav capabilities shut down. Konto let it clang to the floor, then stomped down on it a few times, for good measure.
Once the bioscanner was in a sufficiently large number of pieces, he fished around in the debris until he found what he was looking for. A tiny glass container sat nestled in a mess of circuitry, an even tinier droplet of red suspended in an anti-grav field inside.
Konto held the vial up to the light, nodded, then crushed it between his thumb and forefinger. He sucked the blood smear from his fingertips, making sure there was no trace of it left behind.
“That was close,” he muttered.
And it was at that point that he noticed three things.
The first was the wailing of an alarm.
The second was the squad of Zertex shock-troopers shoving their way through the crowds in a really rather determined manner.
“Uh-oh, Larry. We better move,” he said.
And that was when he noticed the third thing.
“Oh, shizz,” Konto whispered. “Larry!”
CHAPTER FOUR
The shock-troops were approaching from the left, so Konto went right, lowering his head as he slipped back into the now panicked crowds. Zertex was the government for vast swathes of the galaxy, including this sector, and their soldiers weren’t known to worry too much about little issues like colla
teral damage.
Shock-troopers were low level grunts, but a particular brand of low level grunts who didn’t simply not care about the concept of civilian casualties, but actively encouraged it. Their thinking—although that was a generous description of the process—was that everyone had the potential to be a threat to security at some point, and while in an ideal galaxy the crime would come before the punishment, the actual order those two things happened in was, ultimately, merely a technicality.
Konto had dealt with guys like these before, but rarely unarmed. Had they been anything but shock-troops, he could have explained the situation to them, maybe even got them to help. Unless he went in fighting, though, this lot would put him down before he’d opened his mouth.
Going right took him back to where he’d left Larry. He was moving with the crowd this time, as everyone hurried away from the approaching shock-troops. Konto crossed the flow until a group of hat-wearing women were between him and the Zertex squad, then risked a glance back. To his relief, they hadn’t spotted him.
In fact, they didn’t seem to be heading his way at all. Instead, they were pushing off to Konto’s left. He glanced along their projected route and saw the cyborg, Greyx and humanoid-with-blob hurrying away.
For a moment, Konto would have sworn the little blob sprouted an arm and waved at him, but then they were gone, lost in the crowd.
Konto pressed on, back around the corner, back in the direction of the gun shop. The crowds had been thinner here earlier, but now that the shock-troopers had spooked them, everyone was flooding here from the main plaza, and the place was filling rapidly.
“Larry!” Konto called. He ducked, searching for the boy through the sea of bodies and appendages. “Larry, where are you?”
He heard the shout right at the edge of his hearing, mostly smothered by the hubbub of the shoppers around him. “Mr Garr, help!”
Spinning, Konto searched for the source of the sound, but his view was blocked by heads and hair and hats in all direction. “Shizz,” he hissed, then he roared at the top of his voice: “Grenade! Everyone down!”
Screams split the air all around him, but the shoppers, who were all versed in what do in the event of a terrorist attack, and who were already on edge thanks to the shock-troopers—threw themselves to the floor, covering their delicate parts with their less delicate parts, and praying to whichever god or gods they believed in for protection.
Only a few people didn’t drop. Konto spotted Larry at once, kicking and struggling in the grip of a red-skinned, lizard-like Xandrie. Another of the gangsters stood with them, frantically jabbing at the ‘call’ button of an elevator. This one was smaller, with blue skin, a blaster pistol and what looked to be a whip coiled up on his belt.
Clearly deciding the elevator wasn’t going to turn up any time soon, the two Xandrie headed for a door leading to the stairs. Konto hopped onto the armored back of a cowering shopper, then gave chase, using the larger members of the crowd as stepping-stones.
He arrived at the door several seconds behind the gangsters and stumbled through. A hail of blaster fire tore down at him from a gap in the stairwell above. Konto threw himself towards the steps and raced up, two at a time, sticking close to the walls to avoid the blasts.
“I’m coming, Larry!”
A grenade clinked down the steps and came to a stop on the landing right ahead of him. Diving for it, Konto snatched up the explosive and hurled it down the stairwell. It erupted a second later, filling the air with smoke and fire and noise and heat.
Coughing, and half-blinded, Konto staggered up the steps. He couldn’t hear his footsteps. He couldn’t hear anything, in fact, aside from the high-pitched eeeeeee the explosion had left ringing in his ears.
He rounded the corner and began up the next flight. He was almost at the top when something snapped tight around his throat and yanked him forwards off his feet. He hit the metal steps hard, then the whip that had wrapped around his neck tightened further, dragging him up onto the landing above.
Konto tried to grab for the rope, but a boot crunched against the side of his head, spinning him onto his back. The smaller Xandrie stood over him, sneering as he raised his foot up, then brought it sharply down.
With a wheeze of effort, Konto caught the boot and twisted. The Xandrie’s sneer became a wide-eyed look of horror as his knee and ankle both popped, one after the other. Babbling, the gangster reached for his blaster, but Konto caught hold of the whip and jerked it, pulling the off-balance Xandrie towards him.
With practiced timing, Konto angled his head so the man’s nose would meet the top of it on the way down. Blood sprayed. Sobs echoed. With the whip now loose, Konto flicked it free, twisted it around the Xandrie’s neck, and pulled.
The man’s eyes bulged, just inches from Konto’s own. His mouth flapped open and closed, desperately gagging for air as his own whip cut deep into his windpipe. His color changed from a pale blue to a troubling purple as his eyes went from bulging to bloodshot to glassy and still.
With a shove, Konto pushed the body off him, grabbed the blaster and hurried up the stairs. His splayed fingers traced along the wall, helping keep him balanced. Between the explosion, the strangling and the kick, his head was scrambled, but there was no time to stop and recover.
He made it three more flights of stairs before the lizard-thing hit him like a charging bull, smashing him face-first into the wall.
Instinctively, Konto fired an elbow behind him. It found its target. Once. Twice. The lizard-thing grunted, then drove a spiked fist into Konto’s lower back, knocking the wind from him. Konto’s head was pulled backwards, then—bang—the wall came up to meet him again. He raised his right arm so his hand was beside his right ear, trying to aim behind him with the blaster pistol, but the lizard-thing caught his wrist and pulled, and Konto hissed as his arm was wrenched out of its socket.
As he was pulled backwards off his feet, he caught just the briefest glimpse of a scaly red fist coming down, right before it smashed into the center of his chest. Blood burst as a bubble on his lips and he hit the floor, darkness rushing in from the edges of his vision.
Over the ringing in his ears he heard Larry cry out. He forced his eyes open and tried to lift his right arm. There was a grinding sensation in his shoulder which brought enough pain with it to push back the grogginess, but the arm itself was useless. That was disappointing.
Konto took stock. He was partly blind, mostly deaf, barely able to breathe, and only fifty percent of his arms were functional. That was the bad news.
He was also angry. Very angry, in fact. Angrier than he had been in a long, long time. That was also bad news.
But not for him.
The lizard-thing was halfway up the next flight of stairs when he heard the voice spitting at him from below. It was deep and gravelly, like the sound of two rocks grinding together.
“Is that the best you got?”
The Xandrie’s yellow eyes widened in surprise, but it didn’t last long. Dropping Larry, it hurled itself at the now-standing Konto, claws extending, tail whipping as it leaped towards him.
Konto side-stepped and the lizard-thing landed heavily beside him. As it spun, he thrust the three middle fingers of his left hand into its eye with enough force to make it shriek so loudly even Konto could hear it above the ringing sound.
It slashed furiously with its claws. Konto ducked, then struck again at the other eye, even harder this time. The Xandrie stumbled backwards, flailing wildly, blinded. Konto thought about reaching for the blaster, but decided against it. This thing had hurt him, and he couldn’t let that stand.
“I know a hundred different ways to kill you,” he growled, flexing the fingers of his left hand. Something that wasn’t quite a smile, but wasn’t too far off played across his lips. “Pick a number.”
CHAPTER FIVE
A few minutes later, Konto grimaced as his shoulder clicked back into place and pain spread like fire across his chest. He was sitting on a step sever
al decks above where the lizard-thing’s body now lay. Larry stood on the landing below, gazing up at him.
Larry had spent a solid two minutes vomiting after Konto’s fight with the lizard. Although Konto had warned him to turn away and not look, some of the noises appeared to have been … troubling for the lad, although Larry insisted it was all the jiggling and shaking of being carried that had brought on his latest puke fest.
Now, his eyes watery and his face red, Larry just stared at Konto, like he was seeing him for the first time.
Konto raised his right arm and bunched the hand into a fist a few times. It hurt, but then so did much of the rest of him, so that wasn’t too big a problem. The ringing in his ears had faded to background noise, and there was only a faint explosion-shaped imprint behind his eyes when he blinked. Now that his arm was back where it should be and his lungs had resumed most of their normal duties, he was good to go.
“Justice strikes like a meteorite.”
Larry’s voice was soft and shaken, but it echoed up and down the stairs, all the same.
Konto looked down at him. “What?”
“You’re not a garbage man, are you, Mr Garr?”
The question hung in the air for several seconds.
“You know I am, Larry,” said Konto. “You’ve seen me take away your trash.”
“No, I mean … Maybe you are now,” said Larry. “But you weren’t always, were you?”
Konto considered the question. “Kid, I can honestly say that I have always been in the business of taking out garbage, one way or another.”
“It’s just … that thing you said. About a hundred ways to hurt you, and picking a number. I have that on a poster on my wall.”
“Huh. Really?” said Konto, grimacing slightly as he used his right arm to pull himself upright. “Funny coincidence. Now come on.”
He turned towards the top of the stairs.
“You’re him, aren’t you, Mr Garr?”
Konto stopped.