Dwarves in Space

by S E Zbasnik

  "I'm afraid I left it in my other jacket." He barely got the last syllable out before her hand smacked across his face, a ring dragging a tear into his skin.

  Orn blinked back the tears of pain, and smiled, "Please Sir, may I have another?"

  She raised her fist but thought better of it. Stepping back, she poked through the consoles, ripping up his posters to get a better view of the components below. Unsheathing her sword, she sliced right through the warped plasticine and dove into the mass of console. With her head half buried in wires, she cheerfully said, "I've met your like before, dwarf. So cocksure and witless right until--" she yanked out some wires and the bridge lights dimmed while a panel partially rose then tumbled back, "I destroy you from the inside."

  "My diet's about 89% bug legs, I'm way ahead of you."

  The Knight ignored him, still digging for something, despite the comm line clearly beeping near her head. A few of her bound hairs broke free and drifted into the torn console as she moved something to something else. He had no idea what she was doing; the bigger wires, some of the midsized ones, and all the small ones were outside his jurisdiction. Only Ferra'd be able to fix it. Or the captain...ex-captain.

  "There," Sovann rose, wiping some of the ancient space mold onto her face as she opened up the line to the ship. "Djinn, wherever you are hiding, whatever form you have taken, I will find you. This need not be a bloodbath, come out of hiding, give yourself up, and I shall release the hostages."

  Orn giggled at her seemingly reasonable request. Sovann tried to shut down the line, but failed to push the sticky button twice. The entire ship heard her turn to her prisoner and grit her teeth, "I will not hesitate to kill you all."

  "Oh, believe me," his giggles stopped as he eyed down the cold, calculating stare of a mad woman, "I know. But you done screwed up."

  "Is that so?"

  "Yup," Orn was giddy, like a kid telling his parents a story only he knew the ending to. "See the djinn you want, we call him Gene, well, funny story that, there's naught on this ship that smokey mountain gives a fig about except one person."

  Sovann wrapped her fists around Orn's coat and yanked him forward, straining his shoulders against the lock of his arms, "Who?! Tell me dwarf."

  Orn smiled wickedly, "The one you just killed."

  Dropping him back to his seat, Sovann drove her fist through the cracked console, coming back with bits of plastic sticking into her gauntlets. "This fucking job!" She leaned over the comm and pushed the button, turning it off. "One of you! Hello! Milad! Answer me!"

  "You have to push the button again."

  "What?" she turned to glare at Orn.

  "The button, it's sticky and to get a call through you have to..."

  "Oh yeah, I've got it, thanks. Milad!"

  The nondescript guard's voice crackled through the comm in the galley, "Yes, Sir!"

  "Get down to the shuttle bay, drag up the body of the woman I shot. We might need to necromance her."

  "Sir!" he responded, probably saluting in the process.

  "And have one of the others take that spirited elf down to the engines," Sovann ordered, rethinking her old plan. "This would be so much easier if we didn't need the damn thing alive."

  "Sir?" the other guard asked.

  "Do it, and never question my orders again!" Sovann thumped the button twice, cutting off the line.

  "Why are you doing this? Some giant scavenger hunt? Going for the Eye of a Basilisk next?" Orn mocked, unable to do much else.

  Sovann glanced towards the trussed up dwarf and she smirked, "Never you mind why I'm here. You all cooperate and you can go back on your merry little way."

  "Except for the one you shot."

  Sovann opened her hands wide, "Accidents happen."

  Yeah, accidents. Orn tried to wiggle, but a glare from the Knight paused him. Even as she flipped through a few buttons, trying to poke life into controls that cashed in their insurance claims centuries ago, she still kept an eye on him. Gas pocket, the Cap would roll over in her grave if she'd heard talk of her body being tossed to necromancers. Bunch of no good grave robbers poking their noses into other dead people's business. It was downright shameful.

  "Sir..." The voice cut through the comm, echoing from the shuttlebay, and as uncertain as a newborn foal.

  "Yes, what is it?" Sovann seemed to be in a particularly foul mood. Good.

  "The body, Sir, it's gone."

  "What do you mean gone?"

  "Gone as in no longer present," Orn jumped into the discussion, "disappeared, it done run off on its own..." His words choked in his throat as the Knight punched him in the gut.

  Sovann grunted, thinking to herself before calling out to her man, "Follow the blood trail, she probably crawled off into a corner to die somewhere."

  "Um, Sir?"

  "FIND THE BODY!" Sovann shouted into the comm before bashing the whole thing with the hilt of her sword. Very unbalanced indeed.

  She reached over and yanked Orn's face closer to hers, "All right, dwarf, you're going to tell me where every single environmental control on this space rock is located and you are going to do it without any smart lip or I shall vaporize your wife."

  Orn followed her fist hovering above the engineering lockdown, a button Ferra disabled about ten minutes onboard after a rather unpleasant experience from their earlier temping days when she pissed in the wrong person's cornflakes. It went much worse for him once she got out though. Shaking as if her threat had any merit, he gestured his head towards the poster of the burlesque dancer Gnome Rose Lee.

  Sovann dropped him and yanked up the antique, enjoying the groan from the dwarf as she fumbled through a batch of wires that mostly controlled the long abandoned half of the ship. Orn wiggled his arms, trying to find the right unlatching mechanism. He didn't have long before she caught on and got into a fresh stabby mood.

  Gods take whoever designed this crawlspace and jam them inside a sardine can. Then put that sardine can inside a pill box and shoot both into a black hole. Ugh, and I am having a very long discussion with Orn and his habit of throwing old candy sticks through the grates!

  Variel inched another few feet down her ship's arteries, her body barely fitting through the gnome sized holes. Apparently, it never crossed any of the designer's minds that perhaps one day, in the far future, a human may decide to go for a little stroll inside the crawlspace, you know, for fun, or to get her damn ship back. The half broken shield shimmered around her as the nearly invisible repulsion particles bounced into the low ceiling. And what kind of troll licking, second cousin of a gargoyle's ass fires a hand cannon on a spaceship?! Her old shield modulator took a pounding from that close of fire, but at least it absorbed enough of the blast that she wasn't picking up her own intestines, or dealing with a decompressed ship.

  When I get out of here, I am going to teach her proper spacial boarding procedure, with my fists. Variel banged her hands into another section of grating, the ancient metal digging deep into her palms. The air grew thicker, hotter, but didn't taste of excess MGC runoff. I must be getting near the engines, Variel thought as she drug along the inertia injector. It nearly cost them their lives twice over, she wasn't about to abandon it now. Besides, once she got these invaders off her ship, she planned to make a very quick getaway.

  "WEST!" She crumbled to her stomach, raising her bloody PALM up to her mouth as she whispered, "Come on, WEST. Answer. You're not playing hide and seek again, are you? Damn it, that bitch must have turned him off." She wasn't going to hear the end of it. The only thing her computer feared more than being switched off was a kindergarten class fresh off free candy and puppy day.

  Okay, I have to find my crew, rescue them, kill the invaders, dispose of a Knight, and the only resources I have is a hunk of plastic and a half functioning shield generator. Perfect.

  Variel knew she was going to need help, professional help. She tried to get her bearings; sniffing into the air she caught something foreign. Normally, the ship smelled of
a mess of electronics running too hot and a chemical epoxy with the loving touches of mold damage from a very unexpected water landing, but there was a hidden base note of, yes, over boiled kale and cricket soup. Thank the gods for elven culinary quirks.

  She belly crawled towards the scent, following her nose.

  Taliesin stood tall, his hands pressed against the wall, as the orc and the human sat rigid upon the chairs. His sister was still within arm's reach of their only guard, who foolishly kept waving his pistol about as if conducting a symphony. The other departed with a hissing Ferra, who glared murder at the assassin that let them all down. Even with her back to him as she fought down the hall, he still felt her accusations until she vanished down the hold.

  He'd failed to stop the invaders, only taking down one before Brena stepped in the way, and he was the reason their Captain lay in a pool of cooling blood. Monde pulled against their captors, pleading that they let him try, that he could do something to save her; but the guards -- their eyes as black as their spotted uniforms -- remained unmoved. Whatever the third guard was doing to her body, he...Taliesin let that thought drop entirely. Rage, while useful at times, would only be a problem now.

  Segundo looked at his hands, still shaking, as he murmured over and over, "Is she, so she's really...I've never seen, well I did see a lot of, but never someone I..." His voice trailed off, afraid to speak the words, as if voicing 'dead' would invite the reaper herself to visit them all.

  A small gurgle claimed Brena, as tears dribbled down her cheek. Taliesin turned to her, and subconsciously rose from the wall, but the guard -- an unctuous little man with far too much puppy fat on his face -- waved his gun at the assassin. The elf rested back, pretending he'd been shifting.

  Their guard writhed towards Brena, who, aside from the tears, seemed fully composed. Her mind must be in turmoil; she always felt the silencing of others more than other elves. After their mother went to sleep she locked herself inside the lute stringing room and refused to come out for two weeks. Then their father insisted she be tested. The endless drift in and out of specialist offices was only broken by a grim prognosis.

  But that guard spotted only an easy opportunity as he slid his greasy fingers over her dangling arm. Taliesin twitched at the contact, but tried to yank back his internal tiger. No, not yet. Composure before rage. Then the guard dropped his gun-less arm to her hip, resting upon it as if his sister was little more than a railing. Even Monde turned to the side from Orn's chair, eyeing up the guard leaning against the sink, touching the crying elf.

  Brena still ignored him, all her attention upon something no one else could sense, when he slipped his arm fully around her waist. Like a ballerina performing an impromptu dance, Brena gracefully snatched the thick soup pan off the stove and, spinning in the guard's arm, whacked him in the head.

  The gun scattered from his fingers, mercifully landing to the grates without going off. As his arms rose up to protect another swing, he backhanded Brena, the gauntlets splitting into her nose. Taliesin rushed forward, his own skull crushing into the exposed nose of the guard and savoring a solid crunch. Unable to do more than attack with his head, that was exactly what the assassin did, swinging it as if his brains were a tactile weapon. He'd have one hell of a headache in the morning.

  The guard threw his hands up, trying to protect himself from the volley as Brena slunk away, leaning into the bridge portal. Monde reached for the gun, but a wayward assassin boot nearly stomped on his fingers, kicking it across the deck. Suddenly, the guard got a break. Swinging his arms wide, he caught the elf's head with his hands and threw the assassin back. Taliesin staggered, and a knee to his intestines sunk him to his knees. The guard extracted a blade, not much larger than the kitchen knives, but with a jagged edge to inflict as much damage as possible.

  Blood gushed from his nose, which he tried to wipe away with the back of his hand, as he advanced on the fallen assassin. Grabbing Taliesin by the shoulder, the guard steadied himself, pulling the blade back. A cacophony echoed through the galley and the guard's face exploded, his brains falling into the sink as the body teetered back, crashing over the abandoned dishwasher. The knife clattered to the floor.

  The guard's still charged gun entered the room followed by a familiar arm and the ironic smile of the woman who shot him, "Only time guns should be shot in space is when you know you won't miss."

  Brena gasped so deep she risked hyperventilation as Monde turned to examine the bloody and bruised but very much moving body of their captain. "You are alive."

  "That your professional opinion, doc?" Variel switched the gun to safety and tossed it to Monde. She grabbed up the fallen knife and quickly sliced up Taliesin's bonds.

  "They were going to necromance you," Segundo said, shocked to see a dead body walking amongst the living. "Are you a zombie?!"

  "What? That's not how necromancy works," she said, focused on freeing the assassin. Segundo inched forward and poked into her exposed arm, one that banged into the low ceilings of the crawlspace for the past three decks. She pointed towards the kid, "Someone help him before I hurt him."

  Offering her hand to Taliesin, the bruised and battered but not beaten elf rose to her, "You are well?"

  She shook her head to bury a smile. She was about to ask him that, "Well enough. WEST is down, we need to restart him. Where's Ferra and Orn?"

  "That e-minor towed Orn to the bridge," Brena cursed out their captor in probably the elfiest way possible, but it still earned a moment of shock from a group that just watched their dead captain save their skins.

  "Ferra was escorted to the engines," Taliesin continued, trying to take the attention away from his sister.

  Variel slotted the knife into her belt and dug through their meager block, selecting a chef's knife. "What is she up to? You can't catch a djinn by...Oh, oh of course." She turned to the others and passed the knife to Taliesin, "She's going to cut off oxygen, create a vacuum until Gene has to flock to whatever small bits she's left on. Then out comes the lamp." At Segundo's gasp Variel added, "Figure of speech. Monde, get the others to the med-bay, patch them up and get them fitted with the breathers. Gods know when she's gonna take down the grid."

  "What about you?" the orc asked, gesturing towards the scrapes dotting the exposed skin beneath ripped fabric. That shirt's life was long over.

  "Superficial." She waved him off, before turning to the only other person she needed at the moment, "You're banged up pretty bad, Tal. Think you can still fight?"

  He winced at her continued use of the nickname, but nodded, "It is 'superficial' for now."

  She tried to stare into those yellow eyes, always cut off from the rest of the universe, and only got determination back. It was better than seeing fatigue or pain, but if he became a liability she'd hate herself in the morning. Assuming there was a morning.

  Variel nodded her head, "Right. Monde, take the others, get going." The captain shooed her orc as he offered a hand to the flighty Brena, who almost smiled at the captain but then frowned at her brother.

  Leading her towards his office, Monde nodded to the captain before whispering, "May your enemies wither in your path."

  "They're your enemies too," she said, laughing at the old orc greeting. It was the human equivalent of "good to see you."

  Segundo stood up so quickly his chair flew back. His poor uniform was tattered; the hems that weren't a rust red ripped straight up to his knee until he looked as if he tried to turn his pants into a skirt. But the kid stood tall, even staring into Variel's exhausted eyes with a determination that should have scared anyone facing down a full inspection. "This is for you, Captain!" And he ran head first after Monde, as if he were about to attack a barbarian horde armed only with cutlery.

  "That human is going to give himself a prolapsed colon if he is not careful," Taliesin muttered, trying to bring life into his hands.

  "Are you sure you're okay?" she asked, knowing the signs of fatigue and failing to win at what you shouldn't have
gotten into in the first place. There must have been one hell of a fight before their cloud scraper landed.

  Taliesin blinked slowly, trying some old elven techniques to summon every last bit of energy out of his cells. Mostly, it was mentally cursing at your limbs to obey and then offering them sleep in exchange. "Does it matter? Either way I am necessary."

  Variel sighed, "No, I suppose not. Now, let's go get Ferra." She slid her knife into a grate, yanking hard and throwing the metal to the ground.

  "Elves first," she said and helped in Taliesin who moved through the ship ducts for fun. Taking one quick stretch of freedom, she joined him.

  Shoving another pair of wires into her knotted hair, Variel pushed down on the power button and waited. "Come on!" She didn't wait very patiently.

  Taliesin stood closely above her, holding their only light source, an old child's lantern shaped like a gremlin that cackled every time it was turned on. The elf, upon flipping the on switch, banged the speaker into the floor until the noise ceased. Not many had set foot in this section of the ship in decades, mostly walled off or piled high with the ancient toys meant to keep any spoiled brats at bay.

  It was the first interface Variel thought of as she crawled behind the elf's disturbingly taut ass. The entire area was all but locked off and cleared of life support when it became too expensive to keep heating the entire ship. After grabbing their own breathers out of a security locker, she was surprised to find minimal oxygen leaking in. Orn swore he patched up those leaks months ago. No wonder the gas bill was through the atmosphere.

  "Captain," Taliesin whispered to her, "perhaps we should abandon this plan."

  "No." The terminal beeped and a grey screen appeared in a font from a previous era of manual typesetting: Eternal Error/Please restart machine or contact a computer mage representative at your earliest connivance.

  "Gods take you, you piece of shit software," she dropped down, sticking her head deep into the ripped off panel painted in bunnies and sloppy, half sized handprints. "We need WEST to track movements and get some eyes out of the ship." She snatched a peg from her hair and stuffed it into the cabinet, pinning a twitching wire to the wall. "And please stop calling me 'Captain.'"