Above all the ambient destruction of the exploding pleasure-maran, the rending of superstructure, the idling starship engines, and the bellowing roar of the tyrannasquid, the snapping sound of the broken knee was clear. Crisp.
And satisfactory.
The crocosaur fell to one knee, clearly in blinding pain, but he was not done. With a sudden thrash of his powerful prehensile tail, he whipped Rechs’s legs out from under him and sent him onto his back. Gat Hathor raised the mace, rippling with energy, over his saurian head and prepared to smash Tyrus Rechs into pulp, never mind the stun charge. That was just a bonus.
Rechs twisted to the side as the mace slammed onto the deck next to his bucket, sparks flying. A dent in the impervisteel deck testified to Gat’s strength. The mighty lizard followed the blow down, throwing all his mass into the effort. His leering broken-toothed grin came in close, jaws unhinging for a bite, because in the end everyone went back to the weapons their ancestors had started with in the long ago. Rechs smashed Gat Hathor in the face again, this time with an armored elbow strike. The lizard tumbled away, and Rechs leapt to his feet, both hands out and ready to grapple or strike, depending on the opportunities available to him in the next second.
Gat came lumbering at him, literally dragging both his lame leg and the smashed mace across the landing pad, the latter discharging charge sparks as it went. He swung wildly, and Rechs danced backward and then forward like a mongoose. The brutal blow passed harmlessly in front of him, and he slammed a knife-edged gauntlet into the slit eye of the crocosaur. The lizard’s orb burst, and Rechs danced backward once more as the mace came at him like an unsteady wrecking ball.
This time it connected—and dumped a huge charge across Rechs’s armor.
It wasn’t the most it could do. Much of the held charge had been dissipated by its connection with the deck. But it was enough to ring Rechs’s bell and light up his nervous system. A good ten thousand volts for sure. Certain death… if not for the armor.
Rechs’s mind fritzed out, and he stumbled away from the battle. The world went double as black billows of oily smoke swam across the deck. The ship was hitting the surface of the lagoon.
And what about the tyrannasquid?
Lyra was saying something to him over the comm.
The lizard had fallen and was clutching his gouged-out eye as he regained his feet. He still had the mace.
Rechs swore and charged—though he had no plan beyond throttling the scumbag. With the open palm of his armored glove he smashed the lizard on the side of the head, just over his ear, and drove all his rage into it. He might have felt the skull fracture, and his earlier research had noted that this was one of the best ways to kill a crocosaur.
Who cares, thought Rechs. The bounty said, “dead or alive.”
The lizard groaned and collapsed to the deck. Lights out. Or dead. Lying like several bags of wet cement on the deck of a now-literally sinking ship.
Standing there for a moment with really no moment to spare, catching his breath, Rechs listened as Lyra told him the inbound ships were less than two minutes out.
“Prep… for departure,” Rechs gasped.
He turned back to see the tyrannasquid release its embrace of the maran and slide beneath the waters of the lagoon. Sated for now.
Then Rechs dragged the lizard into the cargo hold of the Obsidian Crow.
As the door was closing behind him, he pulled off his bucket. His head was drenched with sweat. “Lyra, stand by on departure. Not yet.”
“I think we shouldn’t stand by, master,” said G232 from the cargo loading controls. “I think we should indeed depart this area immediately. You seem in no condition to both fly the ship and operate the omni-cannon in the running battle we are no doubt about to engage in in order to reach our pre-plotted jump point.”
“The little bot,” Rechs gasped. “Lyra, open the boarding ramp and move the ship to the bot’s location.”
He felt the ship begin to rise.
“Oh,” said G232, shuffling to keep up with the stumbling Tyrus Rechs as he threaded the curving corridors of the light freighter. “I thought you had come to your senses and we were leaving that one behind.”
“No dice, Three-Two,” Rechs muttered, slamming his gloved fist against the airlock control once he reached the main boarding hatch.
“Really, Captain. He’s quite unpleasant and rather difficult to work with. Don’t you think he has an unhealthy interest in weapons? It matches yours in some respects, which is quite logical given your career as a hired killer who often must engage in shooting matches with other hired killers at a frequency that statistically has proven to be well above the recorded average. But you have… how shall I put this… you have arms, Master. Human arms that connect to hands. He has none with which he might fire the weapons he is so obsessively interested in. It’s ridiculous when you process it using inductive reasoning. And I’m concerned he might just kill us all in our sleep… though I technically don’t sleep, and neither does the ship. Still… there are similar states. Not to put too fine a point on it, master, and I know how you hate me prattling on about the details… but… he is a lunatic as far as other bots are concerned…”
The little Nubarian gunnery bot came rolling up the boarding ramp, whistling a nonchalant and happy digital tune as the pleasure-maran it had just destroyed continued its descent beneath the waves behind it.
“Oh, here he is!” shouted G232 in an approximation of droll joy that only barely masked the conversation that had just preceded it. “I am so glad we didn’t leave you behind. That thought would never have occurred to us at all, and so there is absolutely no
