by Scott Moon
“Why is your deputy leaving?”
Thad squared up with Zane. “It’s just you and me. Don’t chicken out now, son.”
“You’re stalling.”
Thad needed to give Mast and Dickles time. He hoped they knew what they were doing. “You expect me to believe Maximus has a planet-killing artifact in his gut?”
“Glakridozians are pack animals, very loyal. Your pet ate the stone before it could destroy his pack. He fell on a grenade, so to speak.”
“But there was no one to save your people, because you’re a coward.”
“I couldn’t save them!” Zane screamed, face livid with sudden rage. “We’re not native to the planet! We didn’t know! The filthy pig-dogs watched us die!”
Thad held up one hand to calm the man and put the other on his blaster. “Settle down. You can’t change it now.”
“No.” Zane’s voice dropped to a whisper. He stared at Thad like an eternal enemy. “It’s too late to save them, but not too late to make things right. I’ve traveled the galaxy in search of the knowledge I need. I know how to expose the hounds of Glakridoz to the Heart Stone. If my people can’t live there, nothing can live there.”
“That’s a crazy villain monologue if I ever heard one. You should get help, therapy, maybe a long walk on the beach and a visit to a spa or something,” Thad said, waggling his blaster at the man. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”
“You can’t arrest me.”
“I can.”
“On what charges?”
“Kidnapping.”
“Talk to General Quincy. I sent him proof the animal has a powerful bio-weapon encapsulated in his gut,” Zane said, an angry vein still pulsing in his forehead despite his apparent calm. “TerroCom won’t pass up a weapon like that.”
Thad couldn’t help himself, he laughed out loud. “There’s is no way I’m telling my boss that my dog has a bio-bomb in his gut. Turn around. I’m going to cuff you. Resist…and we’ll see what happens.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Thad flipped the plastic zip ties at Zane’s face and lunged low, diving for the hunter’s legs to take him down. He knew the nut job would fight. Might as well seize the initiative.
He wrapped his arms around his opponent’s knees, locking Zane’s legs together as he drove his right shoulder into the man’s right thigh. They hit the imitation wood floor hard, bouncing several inches into the air before Thad scrambled for a dominant position.
“You fight dirty!” Zane grunted.
“I like to win.”
Zane pulled a knife from his boot and stabbed Thad repeatedly.
Thad twisted free of the first two punctures, but the third bit into his rib cage. An inch right or left and it would have pierced his lung. He slammed his elbow against Zane’s wrist, again and again until the knife clattered away.
They continued to wrestle across the floor of the Mother Lode. The sounds of grunts, elbow and knee strikes, and labored breathing sounded louder than normal in the empty saloon. Thad wished Pierre would burst in with his shotgun before Shaunte heard the commotion and came running down the stairs to get hurt.
But Pierre hadn’t been the same since Dregg killed his young bartender. And Shaunte was probably voice-dictating a report with her headphones on.
Zane pulled a smaller knife from under his belt buckle.
Thad head-butted him and scrambled to his feet to create distance. “That’s why I was going to cuff you. How many of those blades do you have?”
Zane rolled onto his feet and started to answer.
Thad kicked him in the gut, launching him backward. “That was a rhetorical question, dumbass.”
“Where is your honor?”
Thad grabbed him, zip-tied his hands behind his back, then sat him in a chair facing the wall. “Sit there and shut up until you’ve thought about what you’ve done.”
“Are you putting me in a timeout?”
Thad moved across the room and called General Quincy on a secure channel. He watched his captive.
“Thad? You sound out of breath. Did you assault a planet without inviting me?” the general said over the secure data link.
“No, sir. Penelope and the squad of soldiers you assigned to her are in trouble.”
“For the record, I can’t talk about that. Whatever you saw or heard has a reasonable and innocent explanation,” Quincy said.
“Nothing about Pen is innocent.”
Quincy chuckled. “You got that right.”
“She’s my ex, remember?”
“You brought it up. Give me the lowdown, Thad. You sound like you’ve been in a fight and I’m starting to get worried.”
Thad explained the situation using Ground Forces shorthand in case Zane was able to hear from the other side of the room.
“Give him the pig-dog. Get Penelope back,” Quincy said, sounding older and less jovial. “We can track him down and recover the Heart Stone when he tries to leave Darklanding.”
Staring at the VoidHunter, Thad weighed the general’s words.
“I’m sorry about Maximus. If it makes you feel better, I really am sorry. I like that bloodthirsty mutt,” General Quincy said.
“I don’t trust this guy. He won’t honor his agreement. He’ll kill Maximus and Pen,” Thad said.
Silence filled the secure link.
“Get her back, Thaddeus. I don’t care about the Heart Stone. It’s just another resource we want to weaponize. I’ve got lots of weapons. There’s only one Penelope Fry-Grigman,” General Quincy said.
“I’m not letting him have Maximus.”
“Just get her back! Or I’ll come there myself with a damn army!”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“You have been muchly watching us is what I am thinking,” Mast said as he squatted to scratch behind Maximus’s ears.
“Snort.”
P. C. Dickles stood back, clearly uncomfortable with the reunion.
Maximus wove between Mast’s legs like a cat—a maneuver that would have tripped a human with shorter legs—then flopped onto his belly for a rub. Now that Mast suspected something was there, he could see a protrusion. The Heart Stone was oblong and the size of a human fist.
“Do you remember the way to the building full of strange darkness?”
Maximus twisted to his feet in a cloud of dust and crude noises, then rolled his eyes.
“We must quickly run and save the day.”
“Snort, snort, snort.”
Mast chased the animal from Glakridoz, amazed at the chubby creature’s speed. P. C. Dickles fell behind and was nearly lost in the neighborhood.
“I’m actually in very good…condition, working all day…in the mines. Just need to…catch my breath,” Dickles shouted after them.
Maximus looked back.
Mast waved for him to continue. “He will catch up. I will keep an eye on his not very fast running.”
“Snort. Ah-roooo.” The pig-dog sprinted between street lamps and shadows.
“Wait, I think that is muchly too fast,” Mast said as he slowed to a walk. “It is a good thing I also know the way is what I am thinking.”
Dickles jogged to his location, then bent to rest his hands on his knees. “I’d be able to keep up if my legs were five feet long.”
“This is probably correct,” Mast said. “Walk quickly. Who knows what that filthy pig-dog will get into without supervision.”
Dickles shook his head. “I’m coming. I’m coming.” He took several breaths and jogged a few steps to keep up with Mast’s Unglok stride. “Hey, do your people mine underwater?”
“It is muchly not a good idea, and also a strange question while we are saving the day.”
“Yeah, sure. I’ll disarm the explosives when we get there if your animal hasn’t already set them off. But we have a ways to walk, right? I might not have another chance to speak with you, and my Gloks aren’t good at Galactic Standard.”
Mast elected to ignore the insulting word. “Children are allowed
to mine by sifting the sands of underground lakes. It is a game to them.”
“What about going deep? Do you have tools or techniques?”
“There are tribes of Unglok swimmers who go down for long periods of times, mostly to look for lost tools or rescue those of us who cannot swim. And speaking of rescue, we must focus on our muchly important mission.”
“Sure. Just promise you’ll tell me more when we’re done. The mines are in trouble and if the mines are in trouble, Darklanding is done-for.”
Mast nodded, stopped at the corner of a building, and pointed across the street. “There is the building full of unusual darkness.”
Dickles frowned and crossed himself without thinking. “You weren’t kidding. That place is creepy.”
The building looked like a large block of prefabricated metal parts. Several stories high, it almost seemed alive with energy. Steam vented from grates in the street around it. There was a nearly subliminal vibration emanating from the place, like a megalithic battery or starship engine on standby.
“I thought this was a vacant lot, three lots actually. I remember wondering about it the last time I was in Darklanding,” Dickles said.
“I am muchly having an epiphany is what I am thinking.” Mast stepped forward, almost involuntarily. Fascination and fear caused his heart to race. “It is not a building. It is a ship.”
“So probably no explosive charges on it? I mean, I wouldn’t blow up my own ship if I were an intergalactic bounty hunter,” Dickles said.
“Let us look before we make badly wrong conclusions.”
***
From Maximus’ view, Mast and Dickles had finally found the ship. Maximus rolled his eyes at them and went to work.
He stalked around the hunter’s ship, identifying three bundles of danger by smell. The VoidHunter had been sweating fear when he placed the traps above the door hatches. He came upon Mast and the human miner they called Dickles or some other nonsensical sound that meant nothing to Maximus. The man smelled like rocks and things found in rocks, but also grease, dirt, sweat, and desperation. He didn’t laugh or yell as much as other humans and seemed focused on a goal like he was a hunt leader providing all things for his pack.
“Blah blah, Maximus! Where did you go? Blah, muchly blah, blah,” Mast said.
“Snort.” Why don’t they understand? For supposedly intelligent creatures, they didn’t listen very well.
He went to the door his bipedal friends had been tinkering with and sniffed it. There was a danger bundle, but on the other side of the door, a make-safe switch. Humans were clever with switches. Maximus had to give it to the two-legs, they were clever with a lot of things.
He jumped on the door, clearly demonstrating Mast or the Dickles human should open it. They shook their heads. They didn’t get it. So dense. How could he make them realize the danger bundle would explode if they didn’t get inside to turn it off? Whatever Dickles was going to do with the danger bundle would only make it blow up sooner.
Maybe they weren’t clever at all. Maybe they were like sheep-di-roz-yoon that walked on two legs.
Maximus drooped to all fours, scratching the surface of the door panel with his hoof-toes. “Groooowwl,” he growled. When they took a step back, hands up defensively, he increased his warning sounds and showed his third row of teeth, something he’d never done on this planet.
“I am muchly blah blah blah he’s warning us is what I am thinking,” Maximus heard Mast say.
***
Thaddeus paced, cursing the general and his ex-wife and Darklanding and every damn thing he could think of. Maximus was more than a dog. He refused to let Zane VoidHunter slaughter his four-legged friend.
The front door banged. Thad whipped around from his pacing to find Zane and the chair he was zip-tied to gone. “VoidHunter!”
Sprinting through the door, he brushed back his long coat and drew his blaster. The man couldn’t get far encumbered by a synthetic oak chair.
“That’s it. I’m officially having a bad day.” He kicked over the empty chair. Not far from the scene, there were people staggering through a drunken rendition of Dixie’s Mother Lode Delights. They didn’t seem to be alarmed by the hasty passage of a dangerous fugitive. Thad charged the other direction, ready for violence.
Zane VoidHunter had worn out his welcome on Ungwilook.
***
Maximus jumped on the door again, bobbing his head up and down to send an unequivocal suggestion they get inside and turn off the danger bundle before it exploded and turned them into shredded meat. Mast waved his hands, then tried to drag him away from the building. Maximus growled and broke free of the Unglok’s surprisingly strong grip. Rushing toward the door, he leapt at it and slammed his weight into it.
“He mostly wants us to go inside blah blah blah," Mast said. "The filthy animal is muchly determined. It’s showing many teeth to show us his wroth.”
"There's a cut-off switch inside! That animal is trying to tell us something blah blah blah, words blah blah," Dickles said.
Maximus leapt at the door again, hitting it with all his weight. It popped open. Scrambling inside, he put his nose to the floor, then the walls until he found the clever switch that turned off the danger bundle. Mast and Dickles followed him excitedly.
"That's it! I have it turned off," Dickles said. “Blah, blah, rump ruh!”
Maximus led them through a maze of corridors that smelled too much like the hunter. Somewhere in here was the former mate of the sheriff-pack leader. He could also smell warrior humans who were very tired and hungry.
Dickles pulled on Mast’s sleeve. “We need to slow blah blah or we’ll get lost blah blah.”
Mast jogged after Maximus. "We will blah blah lost. We have a pig-dog!”
“Snort, snort, snort.” Maximus was growing bored. This was too easy now that they were inside. He led his friends to his other friends and they had a big bipedal reunion. The human female who was no longer interested, or pretended not to be interested, in the sheriff-man squatted beside Maximus and scratched him roughly on both sides of his neck.
"Good dog. Can you lead us out of here? Good dog. Good, good dog," the Penelope woman said. Unlike other humans, she rarely made blah blah blah and other senseless bipedal sounds.
He led them through many turns and twists. The darkness was very thick, but he did not need to see. His other senses were just as good as his eyes. The humans, and even the Unglok, bumped into walls and each other and cursed a lot.
"This isn't the way we came in," Dickles said.
Maximus rolled his eyes. The way they had come in was dangerous now. He would go that way while his bipedal friends went this way. Once they started to leave, he sprinted back through the ship to confront a danger he had run from for too long.
The human who had trespassed on Glakridoz and learned his people couldn’t survive there waited for Maximus with a blaster. The weapon smelled as though it had been taken from a hiding place, maybe on the ship or maybe from a box in a trash-filled alley. Either way, the man still had plastic zip ties on his wrists that had been chewed apart from whatever he had been tied to.
Maximus didn’t speak human sounds, so he’d never been able to tell his friends the hunter from Glakridoz had a sharpened row of back teeth. The humans had practically worshiped Maximus and his pack, often trying to imitate them in an effort to survive on the hostile planet of Glakridoz.
“Come on, you filthy beast. Step into my trap and die! Give me the Heart Stone. Give me the justice my people deserve,” the hunter muttered to the shadows.
Maximus thought he could bite the human’s hand off, hamstring him and bring him down like prey. Without understanding the words, he knew this would make him look like something bad to Thaddeus and the others. It didn't really matter, but he could not stop thinking about it. He had become attached to his humans and his Ungloks.
It was a difficult choice. Should he savage this pathetic human or allow the sheriff to perform his strange conf
inement ritual where he put a lawbreaker in a room and fed him very decent food? Or should he bite the man’s face off? Zane VoidHunter had killed many Glakridozians and wouldn't stop until they were all gone.
Maximus thought he could run past the hunter and lead him toward the Penelope woman and her armed warriors. They would be able to see now and could use their blasters to serve justice to this xenocidal psychopath. Or he could take the man to the sheriff, who would punch him or something not as deadly as it should be. Maximus could not figure out why the sheriff-pack leader didn't destroy his enemies completely. He knew that his human friend could do that but often used something he called restraint and the rule of law. These were strange and alien concepts to all Glakridozians.
A space freighter cut through the night sky, washing Darklanding in noise and bright light. Maximus made his move as the moving shadows distorted the vision of his quarry.
“There you are, you filthy beast!” VoidHunter yelled.
“Ruh ro. Snort!” Maximus dodged the first blaster bolt and nearly stepped on one of the man's explosive danger bundles. This was a trap among traps and he had rushed right into it because he was thinking too much about helping his humans and his Ungloks. He forgot about trying to lead the hunter into a trap and focused on escaping. Muchly escaping, as Mast would say.
Zane VoidHunter sprinted after Maximus, firing his blaster rapidly.
Maximus squealed as he took a direct hit. He continued to run despite the universe-expanding pain of the injury
“You can’t run forever, you filthy beast!” Zane VoidHunter screamed. Red-faced and sweating, his fear, hatred, and anger boiled into a stew of uncontrolled emotion—easy for Maximus to see, hear, and sense despite his many injuries. “You’re just gonna die tired!”
“Snort, snort, snort,” Maximus huffed. It annoyed him that the hunter spoke clearly. Never a blah, blah, blah from the murderous nut job. Maximus ran faster, feeling he was running out of air but knowing it was death to stop now.
“I’m gonna…” The man huffed and puffed. “Wear your teeth around my neck…right after I grind up your hooves and smoke them…”