by Scott Baron
That made Charlie pause. “Shit. Okay, then. We need to load Ara up and get out of here ASAP.”
“What is an ASAP?” Bawb asked.
“As soon as possible.”
“Ah. Clever,” he said. “Then yes, I agree, we must depart ASAP.”
With great haste they gathered their things, quickly stowing them in the crates, then securing them to the makeshift harness Ara was becoming proficient in getting into and out of. In no time they had loaded nearly all of their gear.
They were fast, for certain, but not fast enough.
“Over there!” a voice could be heard calling out in the dark.
A series of probing attack spells were cast blindly in the direction of Charlie and his friends. Ara easily swatted away one, but the others, fighting blind at the moment, would have no such luck should one happen their way.
Bawb quickly retaliated, casting a killing spell into the night. By sheer luck, it managed to hit one of their assailants, dropping him in an instant. The sounds of panic around him quickly shifted to those of tactical adjustment. These were no untrained ruffians. These men had experience.
They quickly formed a testudo––a shield wall of overlapping wards, the frontmost of them muttering defensive spells, shielding the rest of their number as they launched offensive spells at the much smaller group of offworlders.
“These appear to be Emmik Sok’s forces,” Bawb said. “I fear they may have already found her and her men.”
“You brought them here?” Leila asked, casting one of the defensive spells they had taught her, and just in time, no less, as a stun spell came dangerously close to knocking her down.
“Not precisely,” the Wampeh said. “However, if they put out word, I’m sure locals had spotted our campsite prior to now. They would stay away normally––I layered a discomfort spell at our perimeter––but promise of coin can make men do foolish things.”
“And ignore spells,” Charlie added.
“It was not a barrier, Charlie. More of a suggestion to move along. In any case, we are quite outnumbered, even for me.”
It was true. Despite the furious castings Bawb was flinging at the advancing men, their shielding spells were too strong, combined as they were. Charlie did the math and knew in his gut there was no way they could overpower that many konus-wearing soldiers. Not as unprepared as they were.
An idea struck, and Charlie––for lack of a better one––dashed to the crates already lashed to Ara’s frame.
“What are you doing?” Leila called out.
“I have an idea,” he said, quickly opening a crate and pulling out his intended prize.
The carbine felt odd in his hands. He hadn’t been to a range in years at this point, but some things are drilled into you so many times you don’t have to think. All you have to do is trust your training to kick in.
Charlie racked a round into the chamber and took up a position between Bawb and Leila.
“Can you two keep up the defensive spells for a minute longer?”
“Yes,” Bawb grunted. “But if you have a plan, I suggest you make haste.”
Charlie shouldered the rifle and reached out to Ara. “Hey, I need you to give me a stream of flames over their heads so I can see what we’re fighting.”
“I’m happy to oblige,” Ara replied in his head.
“Okay, whenever you’re ready.”
He pressed his cheek to the weapon’s stock, lining up his sights in the general direction of the attacking mass.
“Are you going to utilize that?” Bawb asked. “Against strong magic, I fear it will have little––”
Ara sprayed a plume of flames, and Charlie opened fire on the now-illuminated attackers.
The report of the weapon firing startled Bawb and Leila. It was so unlike wielding a spell. Inelegant. Loud. Smokey. But it was something else as well. It was effective.
Cries of pain and panic reached out to them as they saw multiple Tslavar troops collapse to the ground as Ara’s spray of fire faded. Charlie didn’t need it, though. Now that he knew where the attackers were, he continued to fire, knowing at least a few rounds would find their mark.
“Bob. Attack spells, now!” Charlie called to the Wampeh at his side.
Without hesitation, the assassin shifted tactics himself and quickly strafed the collapsing lines of the enemy with a variety of spells, ranging from stun and disarm all the way to kill and maim.
Ara sprayed another burst, and the scene illuminated was one of chaos as the remaining Tslavars still on their feet scrambled frantically to retrieve their comrades and pull clear of the carnage. At least a dozen of the green-skinned men lay dead or dying, their blood soaking the soil, looking like pools of treacle in the fire-lit night.
“Leave now! Take your wounded and go, or there will be no survivors!” Charlie bellowed into the sky, firing a few shots for good measure. A violent punctuation to a bloody sentence. “This is your only warning.”
The Tslavar forces didn’t hesitate, gathering up their fallen men and scrambling back the way they came. Judging by the disarray of their retreat, Charlie didn’t think they’d be regrouping for another attack anytime soon. The magical men simply had no idea how to deal with the weapon from a non-magical galaxy far, far away.
The smell of burnt cordite hung in the air, a pale blue cloud wafting over the bodies of the dead. Ara, Bawb, and Leila all turned to look at Charlie. They’d never seen anything like what he had done. No one possessed such magic.
“That was horrifying,” Leila said. “And so loud.”
“Sorry,” Charlie replied. “I didn’t have time to warn you about that.”
Bawb eyed the inelegant-looking device in Charlie’s hands with newfound curiosity. That, and a healthy dose of respect.
“May I see this weapon?” he asked.
Charlie put the carbine on safe and handed it to the Wampeh assassin. He turned it over in his hands, feeling the head still radiating from the barrel. “It pierced their defenses as if they were not there,” he finally said. “Yet I feel no power in this device.”
“Because there isn’t any,” Charlie replied. “That’s the reason I thought it might work against them. All of their defenses seemed geared against magically launched attacks. This is from my galaxy, and we don’t have magic, so our people had to devise other ways of killing each other.”
Ara’s golden eyes flashed with interest. “And you utilized this weapon to negate what was an otherwise nearly-impermeable magical defense. All on a guess?”
“I didn’t think it would hurt. And at the very least, it might have distracted them long enough to finish loading so we could flee. Admittedly, the results were far bloodier than I had expected.”
The three beings so accustomed to their magical ways surveyed the raw carnage caused by a lone human and his crude device. The devastation was awful. Awful and awe-inspiring. Word would reach the Council of Twenty, undoubtedly. But though they may still joke about the foreign gladiator slave as people may, from this moment on, they would be forced to take the man from Earth far more seriously.
Chapter Forty-Six
It was a dump.
Not a literal one, mind you, but the next planet the Zomoki jumped to as she and her friends beat a hasty retreat was a rather shitty little world on the ass-end of a distant system. It was grubby, remote, impoverished, and all around unpleasant.
In other words, a perfect place to hide from the Council of Twenty.
They had learned their lesson after the run-in with Yanna Sok’s men, and this time, they set up camp a fair distance from the nearest city, though calling it a city was a disservice to cities everywhere. It was more of a shantytown, all told, and a run-down one at that. A decrepit den of scum and villainy.
Charlie and Leila set out on foot at first light to make the long trek into town, careful to downplay their appearances so as not to stand out among the locals and down-on-their-luck offworlders who traded there. This meant their most ragged clo
thes, with a healthy amount of dirt rubbed into the fabric for good measure.
Both wore konuses hidden under arm wrappings, and Charlie now carried the recovered pistol tucked away under his clothing as well. Having seen what it could do against an unexacting magic user, he decided it would be a good idea to keep it near at all times, if possible.
Funny, for a guy who never really liked guns, he mused when he grabbed it before heading out.
Of course there would be some spells more than capable of stopping projectiles, but it was a tactic the locals had not yet had reason to adapt, and therefore, the firearm still held an advantage. They were finally within just a few jumps of reaching their destination. The Balamar Wastelands.
“Ara said she’d take care of sourcing game for us,” Leila noted as they approached the small town. “That leaves breads, dry goods, and perhaps some cured meats, to last the voyage into the desert.”
“Agreed. And Bawb said the planet is teeming with life outside the affected area, so we should be able to source other items just beyond the perimeter of the wastelands,” Charlie said. “Let’s just keep a low profile. Get in, get what we need, and get out.”
“The sooner we leave this disgusting place the better,” she grumbled.
Her mood had only grown more foul when they arrived on the unpleasant world, and Charlie was beginning to wonder if there was anything he could do to ease the strain of the journey for her. She missed her father and friends, and there was little he could do about that, but if he could just find some way to brighten her day, even for a short time, he hoped her spirits might recover at least somewhat.
The town was, they discovered, even worse than they had been led to imagine.
“What a dump,” Charlie said.
“Let’s just get this over with,” his grumpy companion muttered.
They set out through the small marketplace, leaving the tents and stalls in search of the source of the warm bread they could smell wafting in the air. He wasn’t sure exactly what type of flour they were using, but it seemed on just about every world he had visited, both in captivity as well as during their escape, bread was a dietary staple, much like on Earth.
In fact, a lot of things were very similar, once you got past the various alien species and their use of magic rather than technology. And when he thought about it, even that was similar to home. Just replace blue or green skin with hues found on Earth, and ignore the eye stalks, pointed ears, and occasional tentacle, and you had the same socioeconomic woes found in any civilization.
The magic thing was a bit of a stickier issue, but even that could be considered similar to local tools and work habits of different cultures. While the people of Earth had settled on a basic template for their technological advances, the people of this galaxy had likewise based their lives on a common protocol. It just so happened, theirs was magical.
So much was for sale, vendors hawking their wares and haranguing passersby with offers of goods and services––some of them of the less than-savory variety––it could be almost overwhelming, but Charlie kept his eyes peeled for any suitable goods that might cheer Leila up. Unfortunately, he was having little luck.
“Hey, you. Yes, you, pretty thing,” a greasy-haired Tslavar thug said from where his shoulder seemed to be propping up the wall he leaned against. He wore a sleeveless vest that had seen better days but showed off his bulging muscles––the effect he was going for. Lounging nearby were a half dozen similarly clothed friends.
Great, an alien biker gang, Charlie grumbled to himself.
Leila avoided the temptation to voice the retort that crept to her lips, but rather, kept her eyes dead ahead, ignored him, and kept walking.
“Come on, cousin,” the man said, referring to her palest of green skin. “You’re obviously not from here. Why not spend a little time with me and my friends? We could make your stay more…pleasurable.”
“No, thank you,” she said, hurrying past.
Charlie felt the urge to punch the man, but kept it in check. They had to blend in. To go unnoticed. They couldn’t afford a confrontation.
Funny, he mused. I was almost tempted to break that clown’s nose. So much for my pacifist ways.
The leering man watched her appreciatively as she melted into the crowd but made no further moves. Given his unexpected impulse, Charlie was quite glad. It seemed Leila’s mood was rubbing off on him. That, or the grubby planet was already taking its toll on his psyche.
Chapter Forty-Seven
“Is that everything?” Leila asked as they tucked several loaves of coarse bread with the other provisions they had procured.
“Looks like it,” Charlie replied, double-checking they hadn’t overlooked anything. “This should tide us over more than adequately,” he said as he sealed up their bulging packs.
A high-pitched whimper was barely audible over the din of the teeming masses, but the animalist’s ears picked up the sound immediately, her head whipping around to ascertain the source.
“You hear that?”
“Yeah,” he replied. “What is it?”
Leila scanned the crowd, searching for the owner of the tiny voice. No one else in the streets seemed to pay it the slightest of mind, but she moved like a woman on a mission, elbowing through the crowd, eyes alert and scanning as the sound grew closer.
“There,” she said.
A young girl sat across the roadway, a box at her feet. Charlie wasn’t sure what species she was, precisely, just that she had deep umber skin and thickly dreadlocked hair the color of old bricks. The container in front of her shifted slightly, and another yowling howl sounded from its depths.
Leila rushed to the girl’s side and peered down into the box. Tears welled in her eyes, but, to Charlie’s relief, they were tears of happiness.
“May I?” she asked the girl.
“Sure.”
Gently, Leila reached down and retrieved the squirming animal, hugging the gray-furred pup close to her chest.
“Hey, little one, it’s okay,” she cooed.
The yowling ceased, and a pair of still-blue eyes focused on her as best they could. Charlie had seen it before. Though she was minimally powered at best, Leila possessed a true connection to animals of all types. Whether it was for that reason she became Visla Maktan’s animalist, or if she developed the skill because of her role, he was unsure. Regardless, the pup quickly calmed as she stroked its neck.
It was very young, Charlie realized. The little beast was so young, in fact, its eyes hadn’t even taken on their adult coloring. It was little wonder it was so upset. The poor thing was crying for its mother.
It possessed enormous paws for such a little animal, he noticed, but Leila was too busy burying her face in the animal’s thick fur to notice. Judging by her reaction, he doubted she’d have cared. It looked a lot like a wolf pup, but there was something to its shape that felt otherworldly. Then again, they were on another world, so he supposed that was to be expected.
“How much?” Leila abruptly asked the child.
The young girl’s nose was sharp, and the bread in their packs was fresh.
“One loaf. The dark kind,” she replied, sniffing the air.
“Pay her,” Leila said, then turned and began slowly walking back through the marketplace, cradling the pet without even bothering to ask its origins.
Charlie dug a warm loaf from his pack and handed it to the girl. She immediately tore off a steaming piece and happily jammed it into her mouth. The bread did smell good, he had to admit, and Charlie was glad he had purchased more than one loaf of that particular variety.
“Hey, wait up!” he called as he ran after Leila.
He needn’t have worried. She had stopped not far away and was procuring a large container of a thick white paste from a vendor.
“Boramus milk,” she said, dabbing a dollop on her finger and letting the sharp-toothed pup suckle it. “It’s best when diluted with water, but it’s perfectly suitable as-is, and it travels well.�
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“That’s milk?”
“Extremely dense and nutrient-rich milk. And they’re native desert creatures, so their milk doesn’t spoil easily.”
She paid the man and sealed the paste tight, the little wolf pup squirming in her arms.
“No, little one, not now. You’ll get more when we get back to camp and I can make you a proper bottle.”
Amazingly, the animal quieted down.
“I don’t know how you do that,” Charlie said.
Leila shrugged. “It’s just what I do,” was all she replied.
The cloud that had been hovering over her head was not only gone, blown to the winds, but her newly cheerful demeanor made the abrupt transition feel somewhat akin to a rainbow bursting through gray skies. It was a change Charlie was glad to see, and their friends would most certainly be glad of it as well.
“Come on, let’s get back. I’m sure the others will want to meet your new friend.”
“I’m going to name him Baloo,” she declared with a happy smile.
Charlie led the way through the crowd, making a path easily, the confidence in his gait sending a subconscious message to those in his way that while he seemed benign enough, this was not a man to be trifled with. It was quite a change from that couch potato engineer who had arrived all those years prior.
“Hey!” Leila shouted.
Charlie spun to see the Tslavar thug and his friends just as they snatched the pup from her arms.
“Give him back!”
“We just want to talk to you, pretty girl. Why don’t you come have a drink with me and my friends and I’ll give this thing to you.”
The hair on her neck wasn’t bristling, but the angry energy flowing through her was channeling to her konus instead. “I said, Give. Him. Back.”
The Tslavar tossed the animal to one of his friends. It shrieked in distress at the rough handling.
Oh shit.
A crackling had begun forming around Leila’s hands. They had taught her enough to defend herself, and the konus was a fairly powerful one, but this was looking to turn ugly, and fast.