“What are you doing here, off-worlder?”
“Hey there, friends. Just stopping for some dinner.”
“We aren’t your friends.”
“I can tell you right now, boys, you’d rather be my friends than my enemies.”
“Are you threatening us?”
I sighed and looked longingly at the stew. There was some type of meat in a huge chunk, steam shivering off its hindquarters, lumps of green and orange and black vegetables clumped around it. My stomach growled. My mouth salivated. The woman set the stew down and moved away. The people around us backed off.
I stepped off the stool entirely and looked at the two youngsters, holding my hands down loose at my side, my gear bag hanging over my shoulder. With a quick flick of my fingers I bashed the two kids’ heads into each other so hard they split their eyebrows open and collapsed to the ground.
“A telekinetic! He’s one of those damn Curans! A charzbos!”
I waited a moment for the translator to catch up, but it didn’t catch the last word. It didn’t matter though, because panic was spreading quickly through the bar.
“Quick! Call the guards!”
Screams and yells stunned me and the place emptied surprisingly fast, the music screeching to a halt. The youths stumbled to their feet and ran out the door.
I was alone, except for the old woman.
I shrugged and turned to the stew. It tasted just as delicious as I had imagined it might, matching the brown liquor that I poured down my throat. It burned a bit as it went down, but warmed me up inside.
Something sliced into my side, and I fell to the ground, shaking uncontrollably, shuddering with pain, electrodes sticking out my body, the lines of tasers protruding through the heavy coat, the guard who fired it leering over me, lashing my hands to my body quickly, then jabbing a sedative into my neck, and everything went dark.
* * *
I awoke in a shitty, sparse jail cell.
My gear bag was nowhere around.
A shuffling made me spin and pull myself to my feet. I was not alone. A woman crouched in the corner, as far away from me as she could get.
I reached to my chest. My translator was still affixed beneath my coat. They had clearly searched me. All my weapons were missing, but they had left my translator there. I twisted it to make sure it was on.
“Hello. My name is Cartari. What’s your name?” As I spoke, I took better stock of my surroundings. Where I was, if I was hurt, what there might be around me that I could use as a weapon, how many guards were nearby. It was a fairly blank cell in a dimly lit grey room. There were some cushions on the floor, metal cell bars holding us in with plaster walls on the other three sides. One gate with a fairly pickable lock, if I just had something slender and metal. Not real tools or weapons to speak of. I was not hurt, though my ribs stung a little from the tasers. I could hear the voices of three guards around the hall and the sound of soft music playing. It was fairly cold. The woman was wrapped in a thick blanket, an amorphous blob.
I turned to look at her better.
“They brought you here with tasers. You’re a telekinetic. A charzbos. Are you a Curan?”
I nodded. “That’s right. How do you know about Curans?”
“We have heard you are a warrior planet. Always at war. Always expanding your empire. We don’t want you here. You can control things with your minds.”
“You can’t believe everything you hear.” I didn’t need everyone around here being afraid of me. I hadn’t realized there would be a myth about Curans all the way out here. I wondered if it was the Beast King Kajo that had spread that. “Anyway, I’m not here to hurt you,” I said. I peered through the darkness at her more closely, finally settling back down, sitting on one of the cushions. I rubbed my ribs. “What’s your name?”
She leaned forward into the light a little, the first time I was able to see her face, and I almost gasped, she was so gorgeous. A shocking surprise, to find someone so beautiful, in a prison, on a planet like this. Her eyes were an illuminating turquoise, almost teal, in a dark brown face, framed by luscious black hair, with finely chiseled, fragile features, like a carved china doll. “Zaya. My name is Zaya.”
“Zaya, why are you—”
The guard walked into the room and Zaya tucked herself back into the shadow and the blanket again. The guard stood and looked at me. I looked back at him evenly and waited for him to speak. When he didn’t say anything, I thought about slipping the Taser out of his belt loop at his waist and shooting him with it, but restrained myself. They might find another place to keep me, like in solitary confinement, if I messed with them too much.
“Where’s my gear bag?” I asked.
“In my office. I’m enjoying those sweets from Farian. Thank you very much,” the guard said snidely. Then he patted his belt and I realized he had one of my throwing knives buckled there. “Also, we split up your weapons. You won’t be needing them.”
“What charges do you have against me?” I roared and the lights rattled. I couldn’t help it.
The guard shrugged, looking uneasily around him. “We will think up some.” He walked back around the hallway.
Zaya shook her head when I looked back at her. “You shouldn’t have come here, charzbos.”
“What’s that word? A charzbos?”
“A charzbos. It’s what you are. Unruly. Reckless. Dangerous. Savage. Wild. Beast. You have a Charzbos King on your planet Farian.”
“Like, a beast, a barbarian?”
The translator buzzed. That was it. That was the word it was trying to find. Charzbos meant barbarian.
It was truly surprising that they had such stigma against us, but I was ready to fight, and I was ready to get out of here.
