It was fast. Too fast. Any human who moves like that has to be stoked on combat drugs or hyped with military neurocircuit implants. Possession and use of such are strictly off-limits for humans, of course—and not just on the station.
Complicated situation, competing priorities. If the attack had been aimed at any other sort of alien, Zorro wouldn’t have skipped a beat before running over to help. He’s a pozzie and his mission is to maintain order. But the fat guy went after the Colossaur, so for a second Zorro didn’t react even though he already had his whip and sword out, ready for action.
That was his first mistake. A justified one, though. Intervening to help a Colossaur is a deadly insult.
Evolved from predatory reptiloids under a blazing sun, a warrior race par excellence, as devoted to strength and personal bravery as other species are to the arts or technology, the natives of Colossa have taken jobs all over the galaxy as security personnel, soldiers, or guardians (especially now that their planet is at peace, much to their regret). Even the weakest Colossaur would be a thousand times happier to get torn limb from limb than to let some pozzie clown help him tackle a measly human.
It didn’t look like he’d need help anyway. A typical Colossaur stands six foot six inches tall and weighs six hundred pounds, and that’s not just muscle: a good portion comes from the exoskeleton, a natural bony suit of armor up to two inches thick. The bounty hunter that the fat human attacked was even bigger than normal. A giant among Colossaurs. Nearly ten feet, from his short, thick, muscular tail to the sunken, beady eyes in his armored head. He must have weighed more than nine hundred pounds, and his bony plates were probably three inches thick in places. There’s nothing like that on Earth—the closest I can think of is a velociraptor crossed with a giant armadillo.
The people of Colossa aren’t the muscle-bound goons they might first appear to be. There’s no doubt they rely more on strength than agility, and rightly so: a pozzie, or even a drug-fueled human, could move and react faster. Grodos? Forget about it. Fast as lightning.
Yet even though their fighting methods are based mainly on their incredible power and resistance and their almost absolute lack of weak spots, they aren’t the least bit clumsy. On the contrary: they can move with uncanny, lethal fluidity when the situation calls for it, twisting around inside their own shells and taking advantage of the inertia of their own massive bulk, almost like the ancient Japanese sumo wrestlers on Earth.
Considering all this, anyone would have expected the obese human attacker to be reduced to pulp in a fraction of a second. He looked like a baboon trying to go up against a lion, with his hands tied behind his back.
But it turns out the human was very quick. And very fat, too. Fat enough that the impact of his mass, boosted by his onrush, achieved the unthinkable: he knocked the Colossaur down.
The two of them rolled across the floor in a confused heap of bony plates, tail, feet, and scaly or fatty limbs as thick as columns flailing in all directions.
When three more seconds had gone by without the attacker being reduced to ground meat, the Grodo moved so fast that even on the holotape all you see is a blur, rushing over to find out what the fuck had happened to his buddy to keep him from dispatching that insolent, suicidal primate once and for all.
But this time Zorro, true to his duty, did intervene.
That was his second mistake—and his last.
The next instant he was hit squarely by the microwave beam. The mortally wounded pozzie only managed to bring his sword down in a death blow, plunging it up to the hilt in his attacker’s side, and there it stayed.
Then Zorro rolled across the floor with what he himself would have called “great style,” wrapped in his black cape, letting his velvet Cordovan sombrero fall—and gazing in astonishment, first at the hole nearly a hand wide that had opened up in his stomach, then at the obese human who had made it. Who, by the way, seemed utterly unconcerned with the sharp blade dangling from his torso, and who was still holding the Colossaur bounty hunter’s maser.
A maser that, by all rights, should have been individualized. That is: incapable of firing a shot in anyone’s hands but its owner’s.
Zorro must have left this world full of astonishment.
But he missed one of the best surprises. The Grodo pointed his maser at the pozzie-killer—who should by all the rules of anatomy have been lying on the floor, bleeding out from the sword wound—but the Colossaur fired first. Only he didn’t shoot the human. He shot his own astonished companion.
Few energy or projectile weapons in the galaxy (and none that are legal, not even for baggers) can pierce the naturally ultraresistant armor of a Grodo insectoid. Their slick plates make them even slightly more solid than the flashy, impressive armor of the Colossaurs.
But not even a multilayered chitin carapace can save your life when you get hit right in the eye with a jet of acid that penetrates straight to your brain, eating through your flesh.
The Grodo collapsed without a word. Naturally. His race doesn’t use words; they communicate with pheromones.
I have to admit, Makrow 34’s escape plan was good—half brilliant improvisation, half careful coordination—and it worked to perfection. He’d probably bribed the Colossaur on the way here, promising him part of his energy-crystal booty. But acting alone, even a Colossaur would have been up against impossible odds. Everybody knows a bagger doesn’t trust his own shadow, much less another bagger. Old buddies or not.
Plus, it isn’t exactly easy to hit a target less than two inches wide, especially not one that can move faster
