“Your weird friend is not there,” the elSha said.
“Just let me past,” Sato said, trying to sound tough.
“What?” one of the Besquith said. “You don’t want to help us?”
“Yeah,” the other said. “We’re down on our luck, and a few million credits should fix it.”
“A few million,” Sato said and laughed out loud.
“You don’t want to help us?”
Sato started to say something, but it died in his throat. It felt like a curtain began to descend over his eyes, one that blocked him off as a willing participant. Words came out, they just weren’t the ones he’d planned to say.
He looked at the elSha and spoke with a snarl. “Why don’t you take your two pets for a walk before someone gets hurt.”
The elSha took a step back in confusion. The Besquith took it more personally. “What did you say, you filthy little monkey?”
“We should rip your head off and—”
“Why don’t you try it, Efko-uf?”
The elSha’s translator didn’t render the phrase immediately, because it was working from Sato speaking English. Suddenly switching to Besquith caught the computerized device off balance. So the elSha was confused when his two partners roared in anger and attacked without apparent justification. Straight up murder hadn’t been part of the plan. At least, not until whatever Sato had said had changed the plan.
The curtain over his perceptions lifted, and he gasped. Rick was there, holding the shredded remnant of a spine in one hand, and drenched in blood.
“Are you okay, Mr. Sato?”
“Fine?” Sato answered, looking down at the…what, puddle of guts and gore? “Holy shit,” he said. “Where were you?”
“I picked up our elSha friend here,” Rick held out the elSha by its tail. “He was moving quickly to get ahead of us. I knew he wouldn’t be alone, so I slipped away to see what they were up to.” He shrugged. “Took me a second.”
“How did you track the elSha?”
Rick held up one bloody armored hand. “Trackers? You created them.”
“Oh,” Sato said, “right.” He’d invented a low-level radioactive tracker based on nanites, capable of being dispersed with minimal chance of detection. It was one of a thousand little projects he’d undertaken that had never quite made it to the level of being delivered to Alexis. He barely remembered building it into the Æsir.
“Come on, we need to get out of here,” Rick said, offering a blood- and gore-covered hand. Sato’s eyes went wide, and he took an unconscious step backward. “Oh,” Rick said. “Sorry.” He looked around and opened a panel, pulling out a hose. He easily snapped it from its fitting, and water began spraying. Rick used it to wash himself clean of the mess.
“Do you mind?” the elSha asked.
Sato gasped, unaware the alien was still alive. “What are you going to do with him?”
Rick finished his cleaning job and somehow turned off the water hose, stuffing it back into the panel he’d pulled it from and closing the door. “I haven’t decided,” he said, looking at the dangling elSha. “What about you? Was this part of the plan your Kaa and GecSha partners had?”
“I just work for them,” the elSha admitted. “Those morons didn’t know anything about this. If they bothered to cut me in for a decent—” Whack! Rick hit the elSha in the back of the head with his other hand, and the alien fell limp.
“You kill him?” Sato asked.
“Not likely,” Rick admitted, lifting the body to look closer. “He’s still breathing.” Rick walked to the edge of the promenade and sat the elSha to the side, propping him up like he was just chilling. Rick patted him on the head and returned to Sato, who was still staring at the deceased Besquith. “We better leave before security shows up.”
“Okay,” Sato said and gingerly stepped through the watered down gore, following Rick toward the hotel. “I do have a question,” he said.
“Yes, sir?”
“Why didn’t you just use your gun?”
The armor shrugged under the wet, blood-stained robes. “I forgot.”
* * * * *
Chapter Three
Back in their little hotel room, Rick used the ‘shower’ included to give himself a more thorough cleaning. He had bits of Besquith everywhere. The armor was completely sealed, of course, but he still wanted to make sure no slivers of bone or teeth worked their way into a joint.
Of course he’d been untruthful with Sato. He hadn’t used any of his weapons because he simply hadn’t needed to. The pair of Besquith only had blades and a small laser pistol each. Their natural weapons, claws and teeth that could rend the metallic skin of a CASPer, were no threat to him. He’d been happy to work his annoyance out on the pair.
I tried to warn him, Rick thought as he used a micro-pick from his built-in toolkit to get a bit of bone out of an elbow seal. I knew one of those shifty fuckers would start something. He briefly popped his helmet to check the seal and frowned at his visage. So familiar, and so alien at the same time. He buttoned it back up as quickly as he could.
Sato was sitting on the bed with their newly acquired counterfeit identification credentials spread out and a pair of slates, busily working on something. He seemed no worse for wear at almost ending up as a Besquith snack. When Rick had come up behind the Besquith, he’d expected to find Sato cowering in fear. Instead, he’d found the little guy actually threatening the beasts! To put paid to it, he’d called them “Efko-uf,” which in Besquith meant an abandoned pup nobody wanted, raised clanless. The lowest of the low in the aliens’ society.
Can’t imagine why they went apeshit.
“Everything okay?” Sato asked without looking up from his slates.
“Yes, sir,” Rick replied. A notification
