“You’re so funny!” I said, stepping up to try and give her a kiss . . . and found her blasters poking me in the ribs.
“No Marc, you’re funny!” She said, a predator’s grin now on her lips. “You don’t come around for how long? Then you think I’ve just been waiting around, as if I have nothing better to do?”
“Hi Cheryl.” Tanya said from suddenly beside me, having moved up as noiselessly as usual. “I’d just like to get out of the way if you intend to splatter him all over the place.”
“I haven’t decided yet.” Cheryl said.
“Well, let me know.” Tanya said. “Blood is so hard to get out of this material.” She brushed a hand across her skimpy outfit, and then turned and walked back to the bar, leaving me standing there with Cheryl’s blasters still stuck in my ribs.
“Come on honey,” I said, “you know I would have been back sooner if it had been at all possible. I got dragged kicking and screaming into the stupid War of Succession. What was I supposed to do, desert?” I gave her my winingest smile, the one that used to work on mom, but somehow it did not have the same effect.
The smile she returned me did not look to contain much humor, but I consoled myself with the fact that she must have wanted to see me or else why would she have come here to see me? Her next words shattered that illusion.
“I really came down here to blast you, Marc. Don’t try to talk me out of it. You’re such a bastard. You deserve to die. You really do.”
I could see she was wearing down under my manly charms. How could she but help herself? Also, I really had been detained by the ridiculous War of Succession, which, had I guessed earlier at the treachery the Katons would attempt, would have taken my leave of them earlier, with no warning, but my sense of honor had overridden my common sense and I had expected them to be honorable. It had nearly cost me my life then and was nearly costing me my life now, I thought as I continued to feel the pressure of the twin blaster barrels stuck into my ribs.
We were holding up traffic in the doorway and beginning to draw a crowd as well, or I think Cheryl would have taken longer over her decision to kill me or not (with a less certain outcome). I heard noises of disappointment come from the crowd around us as she withdrew her blasters from my ribs and put them away in their holsters. Most sentient races, like humans, are violence loving barbarians, but I for one wasn’t sorry to disappoint them, especially since the violence would have been done to me.
“I’m off work at eighteen hundred, Marc.” Cheryl said vehemently. “You know where my quarters are. You had better be there this time!” With that said, and without so much as even the littlest little kiss, she turned and shoved her way out of Grubenstugels and was just that quickly gone from sight.
I returned to the bar and drank down my drink before acknowledging Tanya or Coto, who jumped back on the bar as I bellied up to it. Tanya was wearing a Cheshire grin, but once again, she was not smiling with me, but at me, as if I were the joke.
“I think I would have enjoyed living in the time before woman's lib.” I told her, returning her grin, grin for grin. “When the man owned his wife.”
“You know I might have liked that myself.” Tanya replied sweetly. “It’s too bad those good old days are gone. Ah, the nostalgia!”
She might have liked it, I thought as I waved down Grubenstugel’s wife, who came to serve me, but wouldn’t look me in the eye, which made me feel like yelling at her. It was none of her damn business if I let the women in my life walk all over me, nor was it my fault she let her husband walk all over her.
Human women weren’t completely happy, I theorized, unless a man had to work a little to win them. It was a situation I did not find bothersome at all. I thrived on stress, strife, turmoil and struggle. It wasn’t strictly true that human woman enjoyed freedoms that the women of other races did not, either, because many human women did not. There are many human worlds, four hundred and seventy-two that were known, at last count, and many were frontier worlds where there was little law and even less enforcement. There was a thriving black market and flesh would and has always been a commodity. Even here on the Kievor Trade Station such practices went on right out in the open. The Kievors did not interfere in the practices of their patrons, as long as those practices did not interfere with them. This was the reason human women were known to be so vicious. They had to fight like men or be treated as property.
I am not that kind of animal. I am no saint but my personal and moral ethics would never allow me to mistreat another human being in that way. I could not own another human. I do not take from the weak. I take from the strong. Those who have every opportunity and chance (and the willingness) to take from me. I feed on the predators, and leave the weak to feed my own prey. At least that is what I tell myself, and it seems to work. I am able to sleep at night. I guess I have always felt that anything that is too easy to get isn’t worth the taking. Cheryl is a point in fact of this theory. She is hardly easy to get, which is why I keep running back to her, I guess.
“There for a moment I thought Cheryl was going to splatter you all over the place.” Tanya said seriously. “I honestly couldn’t make the call.”
I looked at her, astonished. “You are kidding, right? You mean you really couldn’t tell she was joking?”
Now her eyes widened. “Marc! I know you aren’t that blind! You were this close”, she held her thumb and pointer finger less than a millimeter apart, “from meeting your maker!”
I ‘harrumphed’ and looked away from her. Cheryl was only blowing off steam. I had that much coming, but Tanya had completely misread the situation. Cheryl still loved me, even if I had been gone for over a year.
“She just wanted to let me know how mad she was.” I said. “Nothing more. She invited me to her quarters, didn’t she?”
“She’s going to kill you the next time you screw with her, Marc. I can’t believe you are so blind you can’t see it.” Tanya said. “When she’s had enough, you’ve had it!”
That statement didn’t deserve a response so I ignored it. My eyes tracked back to the bear looking aliens who were still rowdily playing their card game and swilling their variety of intoxicant, and it having its effect on them if their increasingly erratic behavior was any indication, but I thought long and hard about joining them.
My initial estimate of their competence had been logical and instinctual and completely accurate. I would own them in short order if I joined them, but eighteen hundred was only a few hours away and if I began gambling now I might have a hard time getting away then. Many aliens had strange ideas about letting someone, especially a puny human, walk off with all their credits. They often thought it was an obligation to sit there and let them have all night trying to win their losings back. It was generally simpler to clean them out completely. With nothing left to wager, there was no further excuse for me to stay at their table, and I could take my leave. Sometimes it worked that way, other times they still thought they were entitled to their losings. I did not credit my opponents ante so they might have yet another chance to win back their losings. So sometimes even cleaning them out completely did not get me away from their table cleanly. Sometimes I had to resort to violence.
Most sentient races are violent. Not all, discounting the Kievors, but most. The one factor that held true for every sentient species was that they had had to struggle to become the dominant life form on their respective worlds. Eat or be eaten, but some planets just couldn’t have been as fierce as others. Earth must have been a fierce place, by my reckoning, because humans are fierce, and we barely became the dominant species of Earth. We had really had to struggle. It had been no picnic for humanity. Thus we were a preeminent predator even among the many races, at least hand to claw. Technologically we were not so advanced.
That was a big part of how humans had gotten their reputations, as well, forced into it by the aggressiveness of other species.
The bear like aliens seemed particularly dense and slow to me, although they
were aggressive enough, the way they were acting towards those around them. They were obvious bullies. What caught my attention the most were the piles of Kievor Credits strewed upon the table in front of them so carelessly. As if it meant very little to them. Thinking about how few were left on the Credit Voucher in my pocket, I thought I might find a better use for them than their present owners.
The bears were about two and a half meters tall, hugely muscled, clawed, black furred and had large protruding snouts filled with what looked like razor sharp teeth. The kind made for ripping and tearing at meat. Otherwise they were similar to humans in that they had two eyes, ears, arms, legs and other similar attributes. They walked on their hind feet, like we do.
“Those are Magwa.” Tanya said. “They’re supposed to be incredibly dangerous.”
“They look slow and stupid.” I said.
“It’s your funeral.”
I was really tempted now, curious to see just how dangerous they were, and to show Tanya that I was not afraid, but the more I watched them the more I realized how catlike their movements were, how sinuous and graceful. I had to begrudge Tanya her insight, and no one would recognize danger better than she. I might beat them at cards, at least I was sure of that part of my estimation of them, but getting away with the winnings might prove to be another story entirely.
“You may be right, but they still look stupid!” I begrudged.
“You’ll look stupid when they rip your head off and stuff it up your ass.” She rejoined.
“I really don’t have the time right now anyway.” I said, squirming just the slightest under the taunt. “I have to go and meet Cheryl shortly.”
“Or she’ll rip your head off and shove it up your ass.”
“Maybe Cheryl would,” I conceded, “but it wouldn’t be these stupid brutes!”
I figured I could take care of my business with the Kievors while I waited for eighteen hundred and my date with Cheryl. At least this way I was likely to stay out of trouble and not let Cheryl down again so soon (I figured there had to be some grace period between my infractions if I was to keep the girl happy). I really did care about Cheryl and wanted to spend time with her, but my earlier protestations aside, I knew Cheryl and I knew that if I didn’t show up she really would hunt me down and blast me into my constituent atoms.
Coto and I left Tanya to her own capable devices and went back to the lift. I pressed the symbol for one, the first floor, the door closed and I could only assume we were on our way. There was no feeling of movement so there was no telling for sure, but it could be assumed. Many things had to be assumed when it came to the Kievors.
The lifts went straight to the first floor when was requested. When you had business with the Kievors they would let nothing else interfere. Or at least nothing ever had before. When I pressed the button for the first floor, I went there without stopping for anyone else, ever. Had this been explained to me? No. It was just something that in my limited manner I was able to deduce all on my own.
There was no feeling of acceleration, as I said, but at the end of this journey, a matter of only moments, I did feel the slightest inertia of deceleration and stopping. You aren’t supposed to be able to feel inertia with any of the Kievor’s gravitational devices, but I surmised that with the vast distance traveled in such a short span of time, it was nearly impossible to eliminate all inertia. There was no comprehending just how vast a Kievor Trade Station was until you saw it for yourself. I have seen smaller worlds, if that gives you any idea of the scale. It is huge beyond understanding, yet I had just traveled, possibly, thousands of kilometers without feeling but the slightest nudge of inertia. Their technological advantage was even larger than their Trade Stations. The lift doors opened and Coto and I exited. He went out quickly. He did not like elevators.
Level One was elevator entrances and offices and little else. The Station was one huge ball or globe, so that in order for there to be multiple lift shafts leading to this level, then on this level there must be many openings. I knew that the trans-metal could shape shift the Station to conform to whatever need was required at every moment, but I had never seen it do so on this level. What you saw here was what you got. Slide walks, lift entrances and offices. Kievor offices.
A green arrow began flashing on the floor under my feet, so I followed it. As usual the Kievors were on the job. I was tempted to disregard the arrows just to throw them off one time, as if to say; “You were wrong, I’m not here to see you! I’m just sightseeing!” But they weren’t wrong and there was no point in playing ridiculous games they would see right through anyway. The Kievor were no fools.
We followed the green arrow for two ‘blocks’ before coming to a slide walk, past more elevator entrances and the odd office, all showing closed doors. The Kievor did not socialize. If they were in their offices, you wouldn’t see them unless you were invited. The slide walks were located in every fifth corridor and alternated in their direction of travel. If you wanted to go in a diagonal direction, you rode your walk to the next intersecting diagonal walk and took that in the direction you wanted to travel. It was a simple system and rather difficult to confuse.
The walks operated on the same principal as the trans-metal, I assumed, some sort of molecular adjustment. They were fool proof, anyway. You simply walked onto it and it took you where you wanted to go. No jarring starts or stops. You told it where you wanted to go, or in my case today, it already knew where I was going, and that was it. Off you went, at speeds it was best not to think about too closely, because the human body was not designed for such speeds, or more accurately, the sudden stops from such speeds.
Today the arrows went across the slide walk. Still, Coto balked at following as I crossed, but only a moment. Coto hated the walks and held me responsible every time he had to ride one, always balking a moment before crossing or riding one, then acting standoffish for hours afterward, sometimes days, at my effrontery at leading him there. The dull aluminum colored metal floor had no effect on us as we crossed it. It knew we were not going to travel on it.
We walked another block and a half, following the arrows to a doorway that looked no different than the others around it, except that this one had our green arrow pointed at it. I didn’t bother knocking. They knew I was there. I pressed the stud on the wall next to the door and it opened. Or should I say it disappeared, the trans-metal flowing into the frame and leaving the opening where the door had been. Coto followed me inside.
The Kievor office could have been confused for any human office you might walk into on any of the human worlds wherever men congregated. There was a landscape painting on the wall behind where the Kievor sat at its desk. Rugged mountains splashed by red sunlight from a setting red giant star. A real wood desk of some beautifully grained wood no one in this Sector could say they had ever seen before. The computer screen no office worker, of any race, had yet escaped, but that I thought was largely show for the Kievors. I have been sure the Kievors were sybaritic since the first time I ever met them. There can be no other explanation for some of the things I have seen them do, other than that maybe they are psychic, which I suppose is a possibility, but a slim one, I wager. There were even pictures in video frames on a table in the corner. The main difference between this office, and why it could never be confused with a human office on some human world, was the creature sitting behind the desk facing me.
Kievors are one of only a few strictly herbivorous sentient species I have ever seen. Herbivores usually did not graduate or succeed into sentience. That honor is usually reserved for carnivores. There are more theories as to why this is so than I care to count, but the most logical to my way of thinking is that carnivores are more adaptable than herbivores, but there was no pat, irrefutable theory that explained it all beyond reasonable doubt. Even the Kievors did not seem to understand this, when it was they themselves the theory discussed. At least that was the way the story was told. I had never found myself with sufficient curiosity to ask a Kievor. I alway
s seemed to have more urgent, pressing needs.
That the Kievors had surmounted great obstacles to get where they were now went without saying. From prey to master race. Their history was well documented and available to any who cared to see it. They were the most ingenuous as well as the most careful species I had ever seen, and that in equal measure. Their rise to sentience and then technological advancement had taken longer than most races (they are a very old species) and had been filled with many near fatal disasters. The Kievor’s handicaps as a technological race were obvious the first time you saw them. Their disadvantages could not be missed.
The Kievors are four legged, hoofed animals. They do not have arms. They do not have appendages, other than their very mobile lips, which they use to manipulate the tools they are so adept with.
Like I said, the Kievor’s road to technological superiority had been a rocky one.
“Hello Captain Deveroux.” Said the Kievor sitting uncomfortably (it looked uncomfortable to me) behind the desk, the movement of its long mouth poorly fitting the words I was hearing. “It has been a long time since we have enjoyed your patronage. We were beginning to wonder what had happened with you. We are very glad to see that all is well.”
“There've been a couple close calls.” I admitted to the Kievor, though it probably knew everything and was only being polite (and not giving anything away either). This Kievor, like all of its kind, was a blend of brown, black and gray mottled short fur. The pattern reminded me most of camouflage army gear, designed to blend into thick vegetation. Every Kievor had its own distinctive pattern, I have been told, but they all look the same to me. Large protruding jaw and flat teeth for chewing grasses and leaves. Tall swivel ears for locating the predators which must once have preyed upon them. Eyes set wide on the sides of its head for an expansive field of vision, for the same reason it had its big ears. Then again those mobile lips that were nearly as adaptable as the human hand, and probably ten times a humans mass, begins to give you a clearer picture of the Kievor.
Chronicles of a Space Mercenary Page 9