by Blaze Ward
Glaxu hadn’t paused long enough to see it. He was onto the second human with two strides.
Maybe he was showing off. Just a little. Take the momentum and leap, letting your mass carry you past your bewildered dipshit of a target at his head level, so his eyes are just starting to turn when you draw a dewclaw across his face.
Not the dewclaw today, because Valentinian had insisted on shock bracers. With good reason. Butler Vidy-Wooders had indeed started this, security recordings of the incident would confirm that.
But this particular human had done nothing to warrant lethal force. At least not yet.
Glaxu wasn’t interested in finding out what these two could do that would require such a hostile response, so he was taking them both down in a most civilized manner.
Pre-Meditated Self-Defense, as Leader had described it.
One shock bracer to the side of the head, right where humans apparently have a significant collection of nerve endings, right behind and below the ear itself.
One arc of electricity later, and the second human was down.
Butler Vidy-Wooders was just getting himself turned around from where his stupid leap had taken him.
“You think you’re cute, bird?” the tree shrew snarled as he started back this direction.
“You could go whimpering back to the Widow,” Glaxu snapped, goading the shit some more. “I promise not to embarrass you too much in public, as long as you behave like a proper, little lapdog.”
My my my. Sensitive spot, Captain?
Glaxu considered just shooting him right now. He hadn’t brought along a pistol powerful enough to kill a M’Rai outright, unlike Valentinian or Kyriaki did when on station these days. Still, the little popgun in his holster would probably stun the monster long enough for Glaxu to do nasty things to him.
And he felt the need.
But again, self-defense.
I couldn’t run, officer. He was so big that he would just chase me down and squish me.
No, best to wait for the drunkard to escalate things. Hopefully, no innocent civilians would have the unluck to be needing this corridor in the next few minutes.
Glaxu checked the floor around him. Mostly clear, save for he and his opponent, plus that bench and planter. Both other humans down, although the first one was rolling himself over, or trying to. Blood seemed to be leaking from his face.
Apparently human noses were more fragile than Mondi beaks.
He made a note to stay away from the slippery spots on the floor where the blood was dripping. He was already uncomfortable fighting on steel decks, rather than the wood ones he had in Outermost. Wearing these boots in public was a painful fashion failure, however necessary it might be.
But you had to do these things when you might need to maneuver rapidly.
Vidy-Wooders went for a pocket and Glaxu nearly drew his pistol right then, except that the man came out with what looked for all the world like a rigid snake made of black leather.
Ah. Sap. A human weapon. Easy to manufacture. Generally considered nonlethal under most legal systems. Still deadly in the hands of a raging M’Rai.
Vidy-Wooders flicked it back and forth in his right hand.
“Wanna dance fancy for me, little bird?” the giant taunted, advancing slowly.
Glaxu rotated to his left again, rather than merely give ground. Doing that would eventually put his tail feathers up against the bulkhead at the end of the corridor with the big portal to watch ships sailing into and out of dock.
“Can you even dance, ox?” Glaxu fired back. “I thought you were just a dumb thug with a big mouth.”
The M’Rai charged, hand out to one side with that snake all set to bite or sweep.
Glaxu didn’t bother doing anything except scampering off to one side, letting the brute cut the chord of his circle while shifting away.
Making your opponent angry is a good thing, if it makes them sloppy. Vidy-Wooders didn’t have that mad gleam in his eyes right now.
No, he looked suddenly sober, as if everything up until now had been a ruse. Either that or he was a high-functioning drunkard who could still fight inebriated.
Glaxu didn’t wish to find out. At this point, the security tapes would show him defending himself without attacking, save for the two fools on the deck.
Vidy-Wooders waved the snake at him again. It was all Glaxu could do not to take a bite at it, but he doubted the M’Rai understood that he was technically offering the Mondi a late lunch.
“Come fight me,” the giant bellowed, stepping forward and swinging overhead.
Glaxu slipped the blow by stepping back, glancing around just enough to confirm how close to the wall he had gotten. He exploded sideways and raced to the center of the corridor as the giant turned.
“Go home, amateur hour,” Glaxu snarled. “Leave the fighting for experts.”
Oooh. Another chink in the big man’s armor. Must have all sorts of adequacy issues tucked up in there. Wonder what a competent psychologist might make of him, given six months and an unlimited therapy budget.
Vidy-Wooders began to stalk now, howling with indignation and holding his hands out as far to his sides as they could go.
Glaxu wished he could grin in the human manner right now, just to taunt the beast silently. Being only a meter tall, he could slide right under those hands unless the giant got almost down on his knees, which would end this fight pretty damned quick.
The beast charged again.
Glaxu cursed himself silently, as a boot as big as he was just missed connecting with his arm as he moved away. He had been thinking of the tree shrews as handsy creatures, forgetting that they could also kick.
If one of those feet connected, Glaxu was pretty sure he’d have a broken leg or head.
He had had about enough of this shit.
One wing went to the bandolier and brought out the new knife-whip. It looked even less dangerous in his hands than the pistol did.
He moved backwards a safe distance and squared up on the giant humanling.
“Last warning, Butler Vidy-Wooders,” Glaxu called out in a nice, clean enunciation that even low-budget security systems ought to be able to record cleanly. “Go away or I will hurt you.”
“You can’t hurt anything, roadrunner,” the M’Rai snarled back and began to stalk closer.
Technically, the M’Rai captain hadn’t been there on Kryuome, when Glaxu had decided that he had had enough of that particular taunt. Too many of Truqtok’s people had latched onto it as a way to bait the Mondi.
After three of them ended up dead, the remainder had learned to keep more civil tongues in their mouths.
Still, he had promised to kill the next shell-less bastard who called him that. Looked like maybe it was Butler Vidy-Wooders’s lucky day.
Or something like that.
Glaxu remained perfectly still as the man closed. Again, it was a shame that he couldn’t grin in a way that the M’Rai might appreciate. Bayjy had told him that a Mondi grin looked more like a constipated weasel than anything.
The failures of cross-species nonverbal communications.
Mondi did growl. Louder than a feline purring. Less than a canine showing anger.
But the corridor was quite empty and rather quiet at the moment.
Mondi growls and M’Rai footsteps.
Glaxu watched the beast’s eyes and his center of gravity, so badly off for having to engage such a compact, speedy target.
The hands gave it all away. Glaxu watched the muscles telegraph the attack.
The sap came overhead, but intentionally wide, the goal to force him to remain in the center instead of floating to his left again like he preferred. Lining him up for another kick.
One mighty boot reared back like a cobra trying to scare someone off. It started forward, but at a rate that cobras would have been embarrassed by.
Glaxu exploded into motion to his right, just enough to plant his outer two toes, then he pushed back to his left as he moved forw
ard.
The big, leather boot, underpolished but probably black when it left the factory originally, passed by his back so slowly he brushed his tail feathers against it, crossing in between the M’Rai’s legs and landing his hop just behind the stupid tree shrew.
The knife-whip had never been blooded in his possession. Fitting, since he had only owned it for an hour.
Time to remedy that.
Hop to the left foot and plant to kill inertia. Compact everything like a snake about to leap into space. Snap the right arm out and across a horizon with the wrist pinions. Rotate on the shoulders, the hips, and the left ankle for torque.
Head comes around faster than the arm, so you can spot the blow. Your target is three ugly meters tall, scaled proportionally to a human like Valentinian Tarasicodissa. He is wearing boots that come nearly to his knees, front and back.
Nearly was the key.
Wasn’t it always?
Glaxu watched the extended edge, out near the weight that pulled the blade taut, enter the back of Butler Vidy-Wooder’s knee, just below the hinge point.
There was no blood yet. No pain either, as the nerves were limited by chemistry.
Glaxu finished his rotation, a miniature dust devil coming to rest on the deck with one hand out. Because he was angry, he hopped onto his right foot, slashing outwards with the left and letting the shock bracer add a bit of electrical overload to the signals racing madly up the monster’s spine to tell his brain that he was suddenly in a great deal of trouble.
Butler Vidy-Wooders tried to turn around, and discovered that one of his legs didn’t work anymore. He collapsed instead, falling onto his side and then his back.
Glaxu figured that if he didn’t do it now, he’d have to fight this stupid bastard again, and the moron would probably bring enough friends next time, if he ever got out of a lifterchair.
Did the Widow need this punk enough to have an expensive doctor repair that level of damage?
Glaxu decided not to find out. He could always claim that his training had taken over and he was running on autopilot right now. Whether station security would buy it was a different story for a different day, but it would hopefully look reasonable.
He hopped into the air and snapped the knife-whip again, this time cutting a deep gash right across the M’Rai’s throat, nearly to the spine.
He landed, blowing air heavily as the adrenaline lit a fire in his belly and under his ass.
One more jolt with the shock bracer, holding it against the flesh for long enough that the human was out cold and would never wake up again.
Redtip Windrunner Oedressa Farther Glaxu hopped backwards and surveyed his work, collapsed knife-whip describing a compact figure eight in his right hand as he turned to track the humans. One was out cold, and would remain that way for a few more minutes.
The other had managed to crawl as far backwards as a handy bulkhead, where the cold, impersonal steel had stopped him, much as he wanted to keep backing away. Red blood drained from the human’s nostrils and stained his face and his clothing, but the eyes were only vaguely human right now.
They grew enormous as Glaxu locked eyes on him and started to advance. Strange sounds emanated from the creature’s mouth.
Signs of panic, Glaxu assumed.
He pointed at Butler Vidy-Wooders with the knife-whip, watching the human’s eyes mindlessly follow.
“You will tell the authorities that it was his idea,” Glaxu stated clearly, the anger in his voice evident. “He started it. He decided to attack one Mondi and you went along with it. It was all his fault. Otherwise, I’ll come for you next.”
The smell of ammonia joined the harsh copper of the blood. The man had just pissed himself in fear.
Well, that was a new one.
“Am I understood?” Glaxu demanded in a voice that not-Dave-Hall might have used.
The man seemed incapable of rational vocabulary, but nodded like a shaken rag doll.
Glaxu decided that he could not ask for much more, and this could be the only chance he had to get away from station firepower, depending on how specist the bastards were.
He approached the lock and keyed it open, using his card-reader to unlock the secondary systems that would keep out any but the most capable burglars.
Inside, he locked everything twice and hurried to the cockpit. Food could wait until he was away, regardless of how hungry he was.
The death of Butler Vidy-Wooders would make the galaxy a better place, of that Glaxu had no doubts, but he didn’t know how it would impact the Widow’s mission. Hopefully, she was too far along with her new ship to back out now and buy something neither he nor Leader would see coming.
But Glaxu could not think of a better way to inject chaos right now.
She might realize he was a spy, but she might do that anyway, him having killed her pet M’Rai, even in a duel. This way, the truth would never been known. Not for sure.
If she hired a more competent pilot, she might do better, but without Vidy-Wooders or Redtip, she would be back to her starting point.
He would buy Valentinian time to make use of this intelligence.
“Chatosig-Six Flight Control, this is Mondi slayership Outermost, requesting a lane assignment for outbound flight,” he said into the radio as he raced through his pre-flight.
Glaxu held his breath as he waited.
If Security had seen the carnage on their cameras, they could just lock his ship down tight now and knock politely at his rear airlock.
It would be polite, the first time. They were like that.
Four big bolts retracted with hollow thumps and Glaxu found that he could breathe again.
“Outbound lane two five three, level four assigned, Outermost,” a woman’s voice came over the line. “Safe flight.”
“And you,” he replied, killing the line and bringing the nose of his ship around. Like Longshot Hypothesis, Outermost backed into a station and could fly directly away, without vectoring around on thrusters like most ships.
What fool had thought up that silly of an architecture, anyway?
Engines live, he brought power to the wings, keeping the geometry compact and streamlined. There was no atmosphere up here, but being small would make him hard to hit, if someone opened fire.
Time to get gone.
27
Athanasia
Technically, the idiot was not yet one of her employees, but Athanasia supposed that Station Security was right in the assumptions they were willing to make. Butler Vidy-Wooders had sold Hard Bargain and salted the funds into a bank.
She wondered if the M’Rai had any next of kin that had a claim on the funds, the kind of thing that financial facilities required on their paperwork in the Dominion. Out here, it was probably a much less orderly state in banking as well. They would declare him dead, wait a year, and probably claim all the cash.
Athanasia made a mental note to see if she could come up with a way to bribe the authorities here. Maybe a signed investment agreement giving the man a share in her vessel for some amount of cash. If she was willing to take a third, they might be willing to let it slide and make the rest just vanish.
She knew how accountants worked.
“Is that all you have?” she asked as the recording finished and she was again looking at the face of the head of Station Security.
“That is correct, Ambassador,” the woman said.
At least they had decided to honor her Dominion rank, even way the hell across Wildspace. Perhaps it lent the station a bit of importance.
Or something.
“We will need some time to make arrangements here,” Athanasia went ahead with her bluff. “Paperwork had been signed but not yet filed, as we worked out the correct authorities to handle things. Butler Vidy-Wooders was to be hired on as our Pilot as part of the partnership that was taking place.”
“As long as you take your new plaything elsewhere and remain polite, we won’t have any issues sorting things out here,” the wom
an said in a way that finessed one of the most polite threats Athanasia had seen from the locals.
Take your new warship and go play pirate somewhere else. Don’t bring your troubles onto my station, any more than you already have. Pay cash up front.
Athanasia understood those lines, and was willing to work within them for now. Dominion-427 was just about ready to back away from the station, minus more than a third of its original crew, and make the long run for Cronus Prime, bearing notice to the relevant parties that Athanasia had chosen to remain well and away from Dominion space.
She wouldn’t ever return. So be it.
Losing Vidy-Wooders just meant that she had to hire another pilot who understood Wildspace, one she didn’t have nearly as good a hold on as she had done with the M’Rai.
Redtip would have been acceptable, but she could understand him fleeing. The Mondi wouldn’t, couldn’t be sure she hadn’t set the giant on him, either as a test or just to eliminate all options.
Redtip fleeing neither implicated him nor exonerated the creature. She might see him again at another station, and might not. If she did, the only relevant question would be if anyone had seen Valentinian Tarasicodissa or the man calling himself Dave Hall,
Or that little bitch of a renegade cop, Kyriaki Apokapes. Athanasia still had a score to settle there, as well.
Still, in a tenday or so, she would have enough firepower to do pretty much anything she chose, short of starting a war with one of the few multi-systemic empires and republics that had clawed their way out of the primordial slime of Wildspace and last longer than a generation.
The M’Rai pirates had done a reasonable job of breaking the last major political force around here fifty-five years ago, and in the process necessitating eventually putting this ship on blocks until someone else could afford to put it back into commission.
It would rise again, like the bird of legend that was consumed in the fires, born again, and return to conquer. Rather like Athanasia.
She was looking forward to going hunting for Longshot Hypothesis aboard her own Phoenix.