“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.”
5.
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 several 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 s
aid. 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.
“You’re the Magister.”
For a long time, Konto said nothing.
“The Magister’s dead, Larry.”
“But—”
“He’s dead, Larry,” Konto said, and the tone of his voice made it very clear the conversation was over. He marched on ahead up the stairs. “Now, are you coming, or not?”
After dealing with the two Xandrie, and the subsequent Larry-based vomit episode that had immediately followed, Konto had taken the time to raid the bodies for anything useful. As well as the blaster rifle, he now had a grenade, the whip, and a comm-device. The whip was coiled around his left shoulder, but everything else was either clipped onto or tucked into his belt and within easy reach. The grenade jingled merrily as he hurried on up the steps.
Two flights later, Larry was flagging. “Mr Garr, I need to stop,” he panted.
Konto tutted in annoyance, then gestured to the tracking device. “They’re only maybe thirty decks above us,” he said. “We’re almost there.”
“Thirty?” Larry wheezed. His legs gave out and he flopped onto the steps. “I’ll be dead by three.”
Konto sighed. Five years ago, he could have carried the kid.
He looked again at Larry’s bulky frame and pudgy limbs.
OK, maybe ten years ago. In his current condition – and he didn’t just mean the recently inflicted damage – he’d be lucky to make it halfway without exhaustion kicking in.
Konto backtracked down until he reached Larry. The boy was looking longingly at the doors that led out onto the deck. A notice on the wall announced it as: “432 – Fine Dining & Nightlife”. It needn’t have bothered. It wasn’t like anyone ever took the stairs except in an emergency. Or, apparently, a kidnapping.
Larry’s face was so red it practically glowed. It was mostly from the effort of climbing, Konto thought, but there was embarrassment mixed in there, too.
“I’m sorry, Mr Garr. I’m too fat.”
Konto blinked, taken aback. “Huh?”
Larry hung his head. “I’m too fat. Everyone says so. I’m a fatty-fatty-fat-fat. I’m sorry I couldn’t keep going. Are you mad?”
Konto shifted uncomfortably. The kid looked on the brink of tears. Killer alien lizards he could handle. Crying children? Not so much.
“Hey. Uh, no. I’m not mad,” said Konto. “It’s fine. Seriously. And who calls you fat?”
Larry shrugged. “Everyone. My dad. The kids at school.” He shrugged again, then raised his head. “Not Deenia, though. She tells the other kids to stop, but, well, they don’t always listen.”
“Oh. OK,” said Konto, which was pretty much the best he could come up with. He felt a pang of … something. Guilt or regret, maybe. He hadn’t said anything to Larry about being fat, but he’d definitely thought it. Deenia, on the other hand …
He awkwardly rested a hand on Larry’s shoulder. “So, um, you should just ignore those people. And don’t worry about the stairs. Everyone has their own, you know, things they find difficult, but also things they’re good at.”
Larry’s face brightened, just a little. “What do you think I’m good at, Mr Garr?”
In hindsight, Konto should probably have been prepared for that. His mouth flapped open and closed a few times, as he looked Larry up and down. “Well!” Konto ejected, more loudly than he had intended. “I mean … where to start? For one thing you have, uh …”
Konto’s sense of relief when the doors flew open and lots of people with guns rushed in was immense. People pointing guns at him was far more familiar territory. He pushed Larry behind him and quickly calculated the odds. They weren’t bad, but weren’t great, either.
Twelve uniformed station security officers had him in their sights. He could feasibly take them all down without a shot being fired, but there was a reasonably high chance of a few blasters being fired wildly, which meant a reasonably high chance of Larry being hit. Short of shoving the boy down the stairs, there wasn’t much Konto could do to protect him, and it was a long fall to the landing below.
“Freeze!” wheezed the lead security officer. She had sallow skin, crow’s feet, and an expression that said, ‘I’ve just run for the first time in a decade, and didn’t enjoy it.’
It took her a second or two to catch her breath before she could speak again. “You’re under arrest!”
* * *
Konto sat in an interview room, his hands cuffed to a metal table, the beady eye of a single camera staring down at him. He’d been formulating a plan that would’ve taken down the security team without putting Larry at risk when the kid had wandered over to them and started babbling about everything that had happened to them since his classmates had been taken.
At first, Konto had considered running and leaving Larry in the care of the station guards, but then he’d remembered the first security team they’d met, who had turned out to be Xandrie in disguise.
This lot had looked much more like Konto would expect station security to look – overweight and underwhelming, and several years past retirement age – but he couldn’t take the chance.
They’d been bundled into a wagon and taken to the nearest station. Another twenty or so officers milled around there, most of them pre-occupied with the eating of various sweet pastries. Yep, these were the real thing, alright.
Konto was studying the cuffs when the door opened. A short but rotund older man, with a mustache that appeared to be winning a turf war with the rest of his face, stepped inside and quietly closed the door behind him.
He carried a cardboard box, which he sat on his side of the table, safely out of Konto’s reach. Before he sat, he walked over to the camera, took hold of the wire dangling beneath it, then pulled, cutting off the feed.
Konto snorted. If this guy was going to try to be ‘bad cop’ he’d be in for a shock.
“Comfortable?”
“Not really.”
“Captain Howlanzer,” the man said. He reached across the table to shake hands, remembered the cuffs, then, in a futile attempt to save face, turned the gesture into a thumbs-up. He held it for quite a long time as he tried to figure out what to do next, then decided to pretend the whole thing hadn’t happened and to just sit down, instead.
The chair creaked as he lowered himself into it. Reaching into the box, he produced a slab-like Datapad. It was an older model. It had been an older model last time Konto had been on a station, in fact.
“So,” said Howlanzer. He tapped the screen and waited for something to happen. The Datapad whirred faintly as it struggled to wake up. “You’ve been a busy man, Mr …?”
“Garr.”
Howlanzer smiled and nodded, just once. “Right. Multiple counts of homicide, wanton destruction of station premises and property, endangering a minor.” He jabbed a thumb in the direction of the now-lifeless camera. “We see all.”
“Then you know why I’m doing it.”
The captain regarded him for a while, sucking on his mustache. “The children. Yes. But we can’t just take the law into our own hands, Mr Garr. Where would we be then?” He slid the Datapad towards Konto and tapped a video icon. “There’s something I want you to see.”
The Datapad’s ancient innards clicked and churned. A spinning icon appeared over the video image and stayed there for several seconds.
“Give it a minute,” Howlanzer said.
The icon spun. The pad strained. And then, a recording from a security camera filled the screen. Konto leaned closer and peered down. Larry’s dad, Nobosh, was trying to negotiate with the metal-armed Xandrie. At least, that was how it looked. When the audio kicked in a second or so later, it
told a different story.
“You idiot,” Nobosh whispered. “You didn’t get Larry! I told you to wait for my signal.”
“What did you call me?” the Xandrie asked. There was a flat, even tone to his voice, and Nobosh’s attitude immediately changed.
“No, I mean … Sorry, Ranock,” Nobosh said. “I didn’t … I just meant, you should have waited for my signal, like we planned.”
Ranock shrugged his alloy shoulders. “What does it matter? We have enough children.”
For a moment, Nobosh looked like he was going to start slinging around insults again, but he forced himself to stay calm. “Yes, but I don’t have an insurance policy on these kids, do I?” he hissed. “My insurance will only pay out for Larry. We need Larry.”
On screen, Ranock made a beckoning gesture. The gunman who had shot up the museum stepped into view, then Howlanzer tapped the pad and the image froze.
Konto hadn’t noticed his fists clenching during the video, or the way they had made his wrists swell so the cuffs cut into them.
“That son of a bedge,” he muttered.
“You can say that again,” agreed Howlanzer, sliding the pad back across the table towards him. He interlocked his fingers in front of him and leaned forwards. “I’ve just been talking to Larry. I haven’t shown him this, obviously. Probably couldn’t, even if I’d wanted to. That boy can talk.”
Howlanzer watched Konto closely. “He tells me you’re the Magister.”
Konto rolled his eyes. “That again. Yeah, he told me the same.”
“And what did you say?” asked Howlanzer.
“I said not to be so fonking ridiculous,” Konto replied. “Now, captain, what about those kids? My step-daughter is with them.”
“That’s beyond our remit, Mr Garr,” said Howlanzer, grimly. “I’m afraid there are shock-troops incoming to deal with it.”
Konto’s stomach tightened. “No.”
“There was a squad on board, but they’ve left in pursuit of some other target. That means – and I want you to listen to me very carefully here, Mr Garr – that means we have twelve minutes until the first squad arrives, and approximately twenty minutes until they begin the rescue mission.” He lowered his voice. “Have you ever seen a shock-troop rescue mission before, Mr Garr?”
Space Team: A Lot of Weird Space Shizz: Collected Short Stories Page 8