by Scott Moon
“Stop! Both of you muchly stop that!” He ran forward and kicked Maximus on his haunches, hoping to disrupt the fight and separate them.
Maximus, his teeth gnawing at Zane’s collar, ceased shaking the man and his garments for a full second.
Zane reached behind his back with one hand, pulling out a dagger and thrusting it several times into Maximus.
The pig-dog grunted in pain, scrambled away, and disappeared, trailing blood into an alley. Mast fired at the same time, the blast ricocheting from the shoulder of the man’s coat. The energy didn’t penetrate, but the concussion stunned the man.
“If you move, I will shoot you deader than the moon,” Mast shouted.
Zane Trustman raised both hands to show he was unarmed, then clamped down his right hand onto his left bicep where he was bleeding. It seemed the puncture resistant sleeve had been pushed into his flesh by proxy. “That hurts like hell. Why didn’t you shoot it?”
“Why did you muchly bait Maximus into attacking and then scream like a small human girl child?” Mast asked.
“You named the Glakridozian beast? You’re sick. This whole planet is a waste of space. I hope your primitive people get wiped out when the Heart Stone starts drawing energy,” Zane said.
“I do not know what you speak of, but it must be a lie. You are a liar. Your name cannot possibly be Trustman. It should be Donottrustman. Muchly that is what I am saying,” Mast said, still aiming his blaster at the dangerous stranger.
“You better go after that creature before I do.”
“You better move away from that knife…”
“It’s a dagger,” Zane said with more anger than he had expressed thus far in the encounter. “A ceremonial tool…”
“Knife, dagger, whatever is, when you reach for it, you will be shot.”
“Then I won’t reach for it. Go get that beast and kill it before it drops the Heart Stone in your planet and ruins everything,” Zane said.
Mast realized two things: this man might be human but different somehow, and Maximus needed time to escape. “Maximus was a good Glakridozian guard dog. He will be missed.”
“I didn’t get that many good thrusts in. I missed his heart at least twice,” Zane said.
Mast whistled in alarm, a very Unglok sound. “You stabbed my friend in the heart?”
“They have big, strong hearts. Have to practically remove them from the chest cavity to kill Glakridozians.”
Mast made a concerned face, looking down to avoid eye contact. Humans were good at seeing things in the eyes and it was best to avoid these soul windows when attempting deception. That was what Mast Jotham, Deputy Sheriff of Darklanding, thought. “No, I think you hit him many times and he will die. Look at the blood. I have never seen the animal bleed this much. And I heard him keening his death sound.”
He felt the strange, untrustworthy human watching him.
A horrible noise rose from the next street. Mast thought it sounded like Maximus with a bad case of indigestion, or like the time he had got into the tigi before it was fermented.
“I never heard one of them squeal like that. Maybe you’re right,” Zane Not-to-be-trusted Trustman said as he stood up, one arm holding his side. “Can I have my blaster back? Darklanding seems like a dangerous place.”
Mast barely heard Zane’s words. He was starting to think Maximus really was mortally wounded. “No, you may not have your blaster. Get on out of here. Beat feet. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here is what I am muchly saying.”
Zane backed away, made a quick turn down a side street, and was gone. Mast ran to find the pig-dog.
***
Thad hesitated when he heard Maximus squealing in the distance. The sound made his blood run cold. He resented the thieves of Darklanding more than ever for keeping him away from the people and…animals who mattered to him. As it turned out, there had been a fifth perpetrator in the warehouse holding the money. The idiot criminals Thad was now accustomed to dealing with had become so sloppy, it made him lazy. Now he was spending his day tying up loose ends while his deputy and his dog got into trouble.
“Hold on, Maximus. I’ll be there quick as I can,” he muttered as he pushed through the crowd. What he saw next caused him to curse. The kingpin of the smalltime embezzling ring he’d broken up had already hired a new crew and was moving more goods than Thad recovered in the warehouse. This day just kept getting better and better.
Ugly Joe Nebu was short but nearly as wide as he was tall. He had hairy knuckles and too many rings. He swaggered like he had gotten away with the crime of the century. The man’s new crew looked like an upgrade from the three drunken miscreants and one hard case Thaddeus had pulled out of the warehouse and locked up in the brand-spanking-new Cornelius Vandersun Correctional Facility and Rehab Center.
This group consisted of four armed mercenaries who looked to have either military or law enforcement experience, one attractive middle-aged woman that seemed to be some type of ultra-efficient manager wearing a suit Shaunte might’ve considered last year, and a personal bodyguard with coal black skin who would dwarf Sledge if they stood side-by-side.
Maximus squealed a final time and went silent.
Thaddeus turned to face the last place he’d heard the Glakridozian, wanting to go check on the animal ambassador from the mysterious and distant Glakridoz. He knew Maximus could take care of himself and couldn’t imagine anything on Darklanding capable of getting the drop on the pig-dog. What he knew and what he felt were two different things, and he resented Ugly Joe Nebu and his crew more than ever.
“I’ll make this quick,” he said to no one. “And where the hell is my deputy? Shouldn’t they be together?”
“Sheriff Fry!”
Thad turned to see Dixie rushing toward him with one hand holding her ample breasts against gravity and the other waving a data tablet she couldn’t afford. She seemed upset to say the least. Her hair was in disarray and her shoes were covered with grime from the Darklanding streets.
He took her by one arm while keeping one eye on Ugly Joe Nebu and listening for his injured pig-dog. “Watch your step, Miss Dixie. What’s got you in such a tizzy?”
She drew herself up straighter. “I am not in a tizzy!”
“Great. I can get back to arresting criminals and saving wounded pig-dogs.”
“What? Oh, that. I think your pet ate something rotten. Or maybe he found a cute little Glakridozian bitch with low moral standards. But forget about that. I know where Tigerlily is. She’s in terrible danger…and is wearing fifty credits of clothing I bought her to work the floor.”
Maximus shambled out of an alleyway too low for bipedal creatures like humans or Ungloks to navigate. His fur was a mass of clotted blood and dirt. He latched his teeth firmly on Thad’s left sleeve and started pulling.
Ugly Joe Nebu spotted Thad. “It’s the sheriff! Move that freight hauler out of here! Gunk, if that crazy-ass lawman tries to touch me, squash his head!”
“We’ve got to help Tigerlily!” Dixie shouted, grabbing his right arm and pulling on it.
CHAPTER FIVE
Shaunte told herself she wasn’t celebrating the stock crash by drinking wine. She also pretended it was good wine, as though there was good wine anyway on this horrible planet. With her right hand, she tapped the screen to urge on the scrolling numbers and mute the ongoing news commentary discussing the fall of so many hedge firms. She held a small tablet in her left hand. It was a single-purpose device that only monitored her financial incentives arriving from the TerroCom deal.
It was something. She could live in comfort or even retire. The problem was Darklanding was her career, her legacy, reputation as a business person. Maybe it didn’t matter what other people thought, but she wanted something more than daddy’s money and the deals he had set up for her. She had to make it on her own. She had to make Darklanding a success.
Reluctantly, and against her better judgment, she began to review business memos without puttin
g away the wine bottle. The first was a long, rambling narrative from Dixie about one of her girls named Tigerlily. The madam of the Mother Lode was so exhausting. How did she keep making money when half of what she did ended in disaster? Shaunte found the woman’s exaggerated sexuality exhausting and wanted to slap her silly every time she slid off a barstool and had one of her accidental panty reveals. Yet at the same time, she admired the woman for her perseverance and the way she could run her game without anyone knowing and keep up her act. If it was an act.
Shaunte was pretty sure it was an act.
As a memo writer, the woman was just as obtuse. Shaunte highlighted sections that seemed relevant, then finally made a copy to work from and edited the memo until it made some kind of sense. It was like being a cryptographer. What she came up with was that Tigerlily had left the Mother Lode almost two days ago under possible duress. There was no description of a suspect, no notes from Tigerlily left behind, and no witnesses. So the girl was either in dire danger or had just run away.
Shaunte moved to the next memo. Her wonderful sheriff had recovered a mountain of SagCon property, including exotics, from a warehouse run by a shady character named Ugly Joe Nebu. She’d seen the man’s name before. He’d originally come to Darklanding as a controller and had done a good job. She pulled up another screen and made a note to replace him. It was a shame. He’d been good at his job before he got greedy. At the very end of Thaddeus’s report, she saw a note that he had some follow-up to do.
“Of course,” she said quietly. “Nothing could ever be simple. Why are there always three crises at once?”
The room didn’t answer, and neither did the wine.
She went through several more memos and reports, barely looking at them, clicking almost as fast as they opened. One caught her attention because it came right next to a warning from her father that was characteristically direct.
Memo one: My name is Zane Honorfield I have attached my full resume to this electronic memo. You’ll see that I have adequate military, counter-espionage, and private security work to assist you with all of your problems in Darklanding. I am also rated to isolate and remove dangerous aliens and artifacts. More on this later, should certain things about Darklanding be confirmed. You might be in more danger than you realize. But I digress. Let me get to the point. Darklanding is now a billion-credit operation. One way or another, it is earning or losing that much each year. My analysis of your situation is also noted that your chief law enforcement specialists has been off-planet more than is ideal. I’m offering my services as a security specialist and alien removal expert for a very reasonable price. Also, I can quarantine insecure dangerous alien artifacts as well.
The memo from Zane Honorfield went on to list surprisingly accurate numbers. The man probably knew how many freighters were coming and going from Darklanding better than she did. If half of his resume was true, he would definitely be a good candidate whenever she needed a replacement for Thaddeus. Of course she hoped that he didn’t leave, but maybe he would retire and stay.
She smiled and sipped her wine for a time, swiveling her chair away from her workstation.
The final memo of the day was from her father, as usual.
Memo: Don’t trust Zane Pinkfellow. He left our service some time ago. Also, he’s rather embarrassed by his surname and will likely change it.
Shaunte powered down her computers, vaguely fascinated that her father’s warning arrived at the same time the man’s application hit her inbox.
She went to the window and opened it only to hear Maximus on one of his romps. Everyone loved the creature, but the horrible sounds and smells the pig-dog made amazed her. More than one of her daydreams about running away with Thad had been ruined by the thing tagging along.
CHAPTER SIX
Thaddeus counter-grabbed Dixie with his right hand, twisting his wrist around hers until his hand was in a dominant position. He held her firmly enough to make her gasp.
“Well, I never… Don’t get rough with me, Sheriff Fry! I’m not that kind of girl.”
“Just wait, Dixie. You might notice I have a few things going on right now.” He yanked his left arm free of the pig-dog, who didn’t let go right away and was thus pulled halfway off the ground. “Maximus! Stop.”
The Glakridozian sat back on its haunches, his expressive eyes mimicking Dixie’s indignation but without the flirtatious undertones. “Snort, snort.”
Thad almost heard “Mast Jotham” in the animal’s grunting and snorting but quickly decided it was his imagination. “If you two will give me a moment, I’ll be right with you. I can only do one crisis at a time.”
Ugly Joe Nebu and his crew were scrambling onto a freight hauler that would take them to the spaceport. “Get the hell up there! Leave the rest! We need to go, go, go! You lazy slugs!”
Thaddeus strode through the crowd that had queued up to board other transports. He tried to shove his way through a cluster of people, but it was too thick. “What’s going on here? Why aren’t you people working or getting drunk?”
He grabbed a man by the arm, spun him around, and yanked him close enough to breathe into his face. “I asked you a question.”
“There’s no work. We’re getting out of here. If we can get on any space-vaccing transports.”
Thad pointed at Nebu and his people taking advantage of his delay to drag a few more pallets onto their freighter. “I need to stop that man and his crew.”
“Good luck,” said the man Thad still held by his coat with one hand.
Thad pushed him away, then jumped onto a stack of metal shipping boxes. “That ship right there…the Drunk Panda…has enough room for all of you! Please proceed in an orderly manner!”
Seconds later, he was swept into Ugly Joe Nebu’s ship along with fifty other people who didn’t exactly fit. Stuck shoulder to shoulder with Nebu, he could smell the thief’s breath. “You’re under arrest, if we can ever extricate ourselves from this mob on your ship.”
“Well played, Sheriff. Well played. I mentioned I can’t breathe.”
“Maximus, get in here and clear these people out,” Thad said, unable to raise his hands to help project his voice.
“What’s that thing going to do? He can’t bite everyone. They’ll attack that monster and probably barbecue him over a slow turning spit,” Nebu said.
Maximus rammed his way through the throng farting like he’d been holding it in for days.
“Oh my God, that’s horrible,” Nebu gasped. “I think that smell has scared me straight. Nothing but law and order from me in the future, Sheriff Fry.”
“I’m still taking you in,” Thad said.
“You would,” Nebu said accusingly.
***
It took time to figure out the automated paddy wagon that had come with the Cornelius Vandersun Correctional Facility and Rehab Center. Thaddeus glanced over his digital tablet to make sure Ugly Joe Nebu and his crew hadn’t slipped their cuffs. They remained in a circle around a lamppost connected at the wrist by restraint cuffs.
“You might as well forget it,” Dixie said, genuinely put out. Sitting on a trolley bench, she fanned her face as she watched a new crowd gathering to enter the spaceport. Maximus sat at her feet, licking his wounds. “I’m sure the jerkface has moved her by now. Girls run away all the time, but this is different. He didn’t give her a choice.”
“I’m working as fast as I can,” Thaddeus said, punching the summon command and hoping for the best. A flashing icon indicated the paddy wagon would arrive in less than an hour. He looked at Nebu. “I may have to leave you all here for little bit.”
“Okay, Sheriff. I promise we won’t try to escape,” Ugly Joe Nebu said.
Thaddeus eyed the thief as he walked over to Maximus and knelt. The pig-dog was covered with dried blood but had quit whining about the pain. The animal almost seemed to be sedated. A goofy smile curled the corner of its mouth.
“You look like some Glakridozian field medic gave you pain meds or i
s that something you can do naturally?” Thaddeus expected some eye rolling or flatulence, but the animal merely stared at him as though he was too cool for school. “All right. I need you to look mean if you can. Guard these prisoners while I check on Mast. Can you do that?”
Maximus nodded several times, then shambled toward Nebu and the others handcuffed around the light pole. He growled with such intensity that goosebumps spread up Thad’s arms.
“Snort, growl, growl,” Maximus said as he inched forward. Stopping a few feet from Nebu, he lowered his head almost to the ground and made horrible clicking noises from deep in his throat.
“You’re not going to let that thing eat us, are you? We didn’t kill anybody. We just took some stuff SagCon wasn’t watching closely enough,” Nebu explained, pulling against his restraints.
“Only if you break free. And then, it will probably only eat the slowest one. If I were you, I wouldn’t take the chance,” Thaddeus said. “Come on, Dixie. Let’s find Mast and then we’ll get your girl Tigerlily.”
Dixie stood in a flourish, stretching her arms out to each side to loosen her muscles, or more likely, show off her large bosoms. “It’s about time, Sheriff.”
Thaddeus turned back to his prisoners. “One last thing. If my paddy wagon arrives, get in it.”
“How are we supposed to do that handcuffed to the pole?” Nebu wondered.
“You’ll figure it out,” Thad replied without turning back.
***
“Where is that filthy animal from Glakridoz? I’m afraid he may be mortally wounded,” Mast said.
“I have him guarding prisoners at the entrance to the spaceport,” Thaddeus said. “What are you doing?”
“I am muchly pointing this blaster at Zane Trustman, who I do not muchly think should be trusted. He is named very wrongly is what I am thinking.”
Thaddeus studied the man sitting on the raised sidewalk. He looked about as relaxed as a moviegoer enjoying the preview reel. Without warning, Thaddeus lunged at the man and grabbed the front of his coat. He hauled the athletically-built stranger to his feet and shook him.