“Do not kill the Jacob!” the king screamed at his guards. “Must live and fight for new king!”
The second enemy turned to run, but he was still close enough for me to crack him on the top of his helmet. The loud gong from the impact probably deafened him. He went down hard, right on his face. He’d have a mouth full of dirt and weeds when he woke up but at least he’d live to see tomorrow.
A few feet to my right, Beatrix clobbered a guard hard enough to dent his helmet. I wasn’t sure if he’d make it out of the fight or not, but her hammer wasn’t glowing, so she was giving our enemies a chance to live. Her second opponent fired his rifle and winged her in the hip. That earned him a not-so-soft kick to the groin, and he squealed before passing out.
“You okay?” I asked.
“It’s just a scratch,” she assured me before she dove to one side to avoid another energy bolt.
Skrew had found a big stick somewhere and was standing in front of Yaltu, brandishing it like he was ready to clobber someone. Not for the first time, I was grateful I’d rescued him from slavery and certain death. The little bastard had spirit.
“Capture the Jacob!” the would-be king bellowed as he pointed at me.
He wasn’t paying attention to Reaver, who was battering her way through his troops with two helmets, one in each hand. Every swing of her arm resulted in the sharp, metallic noise of helmets crashing together at high velocity. Guards staggered left and right, and every time they brought a weapon up, she batted it aside before giving them another whack to the brain-bucket.
Four of her opponents ran for it but made the mistake of fleeing toward me. One fired a shot in my general direction. When Ebon intercepted the angry hyphen of energy, the bolt disappeared, absorbed by the Void-tech weapon. A vrak tried to run past me, but I caught him by his nose, picked him up by his face, and slammed him into the ground. He started snoring almost immediately.
The second guard tried to slam on the brakes, slipped, and ended up at my feet. He smiled sheepishly, and I smiled back before I slapped the side of his helmet and knocked him out cold.
I heard Yaltu yelp and turned to see two vrak closing in on her and Skrew. The vrak were unarmed, but they were strong, and I wasn’t sure Skrew, a stick, and the gentle dragon-tamer with a glorified firepoker could fight them off.
I quickly searched the ground, selected a fist-sized rock, took aim, and chucked. The projectile arced through the air, hit the first guard slightly left of center on his helmet, ricocheted, and hit the other right below his pointed ear.
The first guard went to his knees but didn’t go all the way down until Skrew jumped on his head and started pommeling him with tiny fists.
“Take that!” he said as he punched. “And that!”
Skrew continued to pepper the vrak, who I was sure had been unconscious from the moment my rock had struck him.
With all the guards down, the last opponent I needed to deal with was the king.
The fat vrak cowered into the back of the rickshaw as if he could somehow force his way through the fabric and metal and disappear from sight.
“Look at me!” I growled. The king tried to cower even deeper but only managed to curl himself a little further into the fetal position.
“I said look at me!”
He did, with one watery eye. “Please no kill. Please, no.”
“He can kill dumb not-king,” Skrew added helpfully. “He kill Dummytrios. Kill him dead. I say he kill you too. Maybe he pull legs off and eat. Maybe he like vrak-meat.” Skrew crossed his arms, satisfied with his own logic.
I leaned in toward the shivering king. “What is your name?”
“Is called Graggle,” he said.
“And why do you think you’re the king?”
Graggle shrugged. “Nobody else king. Demetrios dead. Someone to be king. So, Graggle say he king now.” He paused and squinted at me. “But maybe Graggle not king?”
“Maybe not,” I agreed, doing my best to keep an angry expression on my face. I wasn’t sure if the alien knew what an angry human looked like, but he seemed to. He was just a charlatan who’d managed to convince over 20 vrak to serve him—he wasn’t doing too badly, all things considered.
“Maybe you king, strong human?” Graggle asked me. “You kill Demetrios, so you king now?”
I considered the question. I didn’t want to be king; I wanted to find the rest of my crew and my Marines. But I didn’t want to leave a power vacuum for some warlord to exploit either.
“Graggle heard how king die,” Graggle continued, “but Graggle did not see. Graggle was in prison.”
I glanced down at the vrak’s round belly. “You’re awfully round for being in prison. How long were you there?”
“Seven horrible long cycles,” the vrak said.
“And what did you do to get thrown in prison?”
Graggle let out a deep, shuddering sigh. “Did sell Ish-Nul and Kakul slaves for king. But not all sold.”
He closed his eyes in shame, and I tried to keep my fury at bay. Hearing that he was a slaver made me want to jettison my plan in favor of a swift execution.
“What do you mean you didn’t sell all of them?” I managed to say through gritted teeth.
He kept his eyes closed and raised a hand as if to ward off the lethal blow he was certain was incoming.
“Did set some free,” he whimpered. “Not like to make slave. Not like to sell. But need eat, yes? Did set free and make big lie. Said slave died, but they not.”
I wanted to send my fist through his head and out the other side. I wanted to roll him up in a ball
