Dwarves in Space

by S E Zbasnik

  "A woman that hides behind conduits and crawl spaces to rescue her pitiful crew rather than confront the power holding her ship will come for this pathetic specimen," Sovann gloated, shouting to each of the beeping interfaces. She had no way to know where her foe was hiding, but it hardly mattered.

  "You should check your ship rosters more carefully, Ms. Vargas," the voice continued to gloat, each word passing to a new speaker to keep the Knight twisting to follow. "That pathetic specimen is no member of my crew."

  Segundo whimpered loudly at that bit of truth as Sovann glared at him. He looked away from her dark eyes, afraid she'd pluck out his soul, and focused on her shoes. A shadow moved on the floor, probably from all the bugs that other guard unleashed, but the Knight didn't care or notice. All her outrage was on the woman taunting her, "What were you? Special Forces? Undercover for the Corps?"

  Variel didn't answer right away, so Segundo filled the empty space, "I'm a third grade technician on a AH!" he shrieked as her blade bit into his side, drawing a line of blood.

  "Hear that, slinking tin hero? Your technician is bleeding. Come out and he need not bleed more."

  Variel remained silent, letting the cracks of a partly broken intercom hiss and dance around the bay. The only working lights circled Sovann as she turned over her shoulder, watching for the sudden appearance of anyone trying to do something heroic. "Bring me your djinn, talk him into his suit, and no one else need be hurt."

  She nudged the still tenant-less rock pile collapsed on the floor like a sleepy lava mannequin. The right shoe shifted at her kick, but fell back into place. "Captain? Answer me!" No panic overtook the Knight's steady voice, her sword humming as she paced about the grating.

  "Very well," Sovann responded to the thin air and grabbed Segundo by his arm, yanking him closer to her, "if that is your answer." She drew the sword back when the grating below her gave way, the Knight tumbling down the hole.

  Segundo blinked, frozen in place, as another set of grating broke open and the not-so-dead captain appeared, lifting herself out and reaching down to grab the hilt of a blade. She staggered to her feet and motioned to the frightened technician to get over to her. He wobbled a bit and began to follow when a gauntleted fist grabbed his ankle. Segundo smashed to the ground. Variel jumped over him and brought her blade down over the Knight's fist, almost severing her wrist, but Sovann released her prey in time, slithering back into the hole.

  Variel yanked Segundo up, kicking him out of the shuttle bay. "Get somewhere safe," she shouted, pointing towards the entrance far above the grates housing a homicidal snake. She realized how incredibly stupid it was to give up her tactical advantage before killing her target.

  Walking slowly, Variel kept her sword high, trying to pierce the shadows shifting across the floor. "WEST, knock off the racket!" she shouted to the intercom, which quickly fell silent. Only the sound of her pounding heart and the rattle of grates from Segundo's escape echoed through the bay. Sovann was silent as the grave.

  Variel stepped cautiously towards the single lit panel; the launch pad. A release sequence was partially entered with a time delay. The Knight had planned to grab Gene and go, leaving her friends behind, perhaps ordering her ship to blow the Elation to tiny cruise ship pieces once she was secure.

  She leaned against the panel, inputting the cancel command, when an arm grabbed her throat. She didn't pause and instinctively drove her kitchen knife directly into the gauntlet pricking a bit of skin. Sovann shrieked and released the captain, her hand shaking to dislodge the knife even as she brought the sword up.

  Variel volleyed it, sliding to the left, away from the panel; her own blade the only thing in the galaxy that could deflect Sovann's. The Knight gasped for a moment as she eyed up the woman she killed, standing before her armed with one of the most highly sought pieces of weaponry in the universe.

  "I should have known," Sovann said to herself.

  "But you didn't," Variel smirked and thrusted towards the woman nearly a decade younger than her. Sovann easily deflected it, causing Variel's blade to catch along the edge of the console. She'd never done well at the sword lessons; waving it about and being menacing was usually enough.

  Sovann rushed forward wide with the blade, causing Variel to step back, her heel sliding across the shell of her djinn. The Knight pressed her advantage quickly, a few stabs near Variel's head as she tried to dodge, dropping down and batting away at the blade as if it were a mosquito. This was going to end very quickly and very badly for her.

  Knights were supposed to fight with rules, orders of war and all that rot most who traipsed through the muck of soldering threw aside the first chance they got. At least the ones still alive did. Variel ducked down once more as Sovann swung wide at her head, getting more ambitious, and grabbed the grate she tossed up.

  Holding it up high like a shield, Sovann easily drove through it, slicing the metal and laughing as the pieces crumbled, giving the captain just enough of a window to punch her fist straight through to the Knight's unguarded nose. Sovann tumbled back, favoring the blood welling out her nose, a fire burning in her eyes. She thrust her blade out, Variel dodging it and half heartedly parrying even as the Knight stuffed up her nose, tipping her head back.

  Okay, Variel thought, she's had quite a bit of training with that thing. Quite a lot of training with that thing. Problem. She swung wildly, still trying to keep the Knight off balance, as she pressed forward, an insane plan nibbling at the back of her head.

  Sovann easily deflected that as well, trying to wear the over eager captain out. Still Variel pushed, swinging wide and getting little more than nicks into her own ship in the process. Sovann spotted an opportunity and her hot blue blade bit into Variel's retreating side, cutting through her skin to the meat below. The captain gasped, but didn't drop her sword. Instead she stepped back, further from her target, blood filling her shirt. Great, there goes another one.

  "I did not think Knights could retire," Sovann taunted, enjoying the sight of her prey teetering on the edge of exhaustion. Her blade bit twice more near the captain's head.

  "Shoulda read the rest of the handbook," Variel said. As she forced a swing to the right, Sovann parried and brought her deflecting hilt back, smashing it into Variel's cheek.

  She staggered from the blow, dropping to her feet, but getting closer to her target. Sovann stepped easily around her, watching the blood dribbling from both the side wound and the cracked cheekbone. "What were they thinking in those days? Seemed they'd let anyone take the sword that could please the officers."

  Gripping tight onto her sword, Variel swung her blade high, batting quickly at a few of Sovann's attacks, and rolled around the console to hide. The Knight scoffed at first at the childish move. She walked slowly towards her, just as Variel's blade bit through the layers of console and metal to slice into the shins of Sovann. The freshly wounded knight teetered, giving Variel time to rise and input a new command into the console. The launch button glowed green and she smashed her fist down on it. She only had a minute to get to higher ground before the entire cabin was sucked into unforgiving space.

  Yanking up her sword, she started to run towards the Knight's shuttle when Sovann's blade slicked across her lower back. Variel slipped to her knees, but kept inching forward, trying to get back to a balance, as the enraged knight engulfed her. The captain's sword clattered to the ground as Sovann swung wide, her blade now biting into sections of her own ship.

  Variel dodged as best she could, mostly lucking out. Sovann's pristine moves were erratic now, unused to the sting upon her own skin apparently.

  "Shuttle bay will be launching in 30 seconds, please keep all organic limbs inside the pressurized zones," the old warning tolled through the bay, even as Sovann twisted her sword, keeping Variel away from her dropped blade.

  "What do you think you will accomplish?" the Knight asked, her breath catching heavy upon every word. "You would kill us both?"

  "I was thinking just you, actually
," Variel responded, trying to slide under one of the shuttle's folded wings. The Knight's blade bit through the damn thing, shooting sparks of MGC into the air.

  "Shuttle bay will be depressurizing in 20 seconds. It was nice knowing you."

  "You are mad, whoever you were," Sovann gloated, her breath ragged as oxygen levels began to fall. "You will be nothing more than a bit of debris on a trucker's windshield when I am finished with you."

  Variel kept diving, her own muscles burning along with her lungs. This was going to end quickly one way or the other. Turning away from Sovann, her fingers found an old crate, packed full with sawdust and...ah, perfect. She ripped into the bag and threw a pound and a half of red glitter straight into the Knight's face.

  Sovann staggered back as the alarm system began to countdown. Variel yanked out the latch for the harness hidden beneath her shirt and secured it to the Knight's ship.

  "5."

  The Jaguar was raging, trying to blink through a glittering eye to catch sight of her prey.

  "4."

  "3."

  "Just open the damn thing!" Variel shouted.

  The voice paused and responded, "Fine. Please forward all complaints to the Red Carpet Cruise Line for loss of life or child."

  She hugged the ship's landing gear, wrapping her arms and legs around it, waiting for the magnificent power of a pressure imbalance, but only got a slight whistle from the door.

  "Warning, Shuttle Hatch is clogged. Cannot open door. Warning, Shuttle Hatch is clogged. Door is un-openable. I didn't do it."

  Sovann laughed, appearing like a murderess devil from old cartoons as she wiped the last of the glitter from her eyes and strode towards the woman chained to her ship. "You put up more of a fight than your other pets, but it's time to end this game."

  Variel glanced towards the shuttle bay door, most of it pushing against some invisible force, and then she spied the problem. An old dangling cord wrapped around the mechanism, holding it tight. Her fingers stretched out, trying to reach her abandoned sword laying but a few meters away. Sovann watched the tableau with interest, her own sword raising. She could so easily finish off the captain with one quick blow, probably even salvage enough of her shuttle to get out of this shit hole before breakfast, but she was curious to see just how this woman thought she could win.

  Giving up on her fingers, Variel swung her foot around, knocking into the hilt with the heel and rocking it closer. Praying she didn't slice into her damn ankles, she inched the hilt closer before slipping her fingers around it. The fact she was armed roused Sovann from her watch, but now it was more fair. Better to slay an armed enemy than catch one napping. Honor and all that.

  Variel'd been counting on that. As Sovann prepared to block the coming attack, the captain lifted her arm high and threw her sword towards the refusing-to-open hatch. It stuck deep into the door, a good foot above the jam. The Knight turned her head from watching the swoop of the flying sword, smirking at the woman's inane attempts to save herself.

  Then the blade melted through the hull, increasing the small hole out into space and slowly slipping to the jam. Sovann flipped around, her own blade about to slice through Variel, when the jam broke and the entire door fell open. The invisible hand of the universe reached in and scooped up all the untethered occupants of the shuttle bay. Old boxes smashed into the nose of the ship, scattering their remains, and a pound of bon voyage confetti, into the air.

  Variel felt her body rise into the air, the latch catching as her fingers tried to grip the slick metal of the ship. Air rushed past, most of the bay emptying quickly as the hatch finished its descent. Her fingers fumbled into her pocket for her breather. Then her entire bottom half dropped as a passenger latched on.

  She turned to look below her feet and spotted Sovann, one hand gripping onto Variel's pants, the other onto that cursed sword. At least she wasn't trying to kill her with it for once. Variel kicked at the Knight trying to climb up her pants, chanting in her head with each swing of her foot, Why won't you die?!

  Sovann seemed to hear her internal mantra as she batted against the captain's foot, failing to slice the limb off but slowly climbing higher. A fresh alarm started, the shuttle bay was about to close up and repressurize. Variel had one chance. Giving in now, letting the Knight live, could be the cause of any of her crew's deaths. Letting loose of the ship, she whipped back to the end of her tether. Sovann slid towards her knee but still gripped like a goblin to a coin. Slipping her hand into her pocket, Variel hauled out the guard's thieved knife.

  Glancing back to Sovann, who in turn looked up at the woman brandishing the blade with a glint to her eye, Variel shouted with the last of her breath, "Get the hell off my ship," and cut her tether.

  The line snagged, causing the blade to fall from her hand and slip out into the shrinking hole in space. Before the Knight could smirk, the final threads ripped sending both bodies hurling across the shuttle bay. Sovann released her grip on Variel, trying to find anything to grab onto to stop her flight but everything was cleared out, leaving an empty path into space.

  Variel closed her eyes, trying to forget every lecture she'd sat through on how space shreds and freezes, rips and pummels, and is a general asshole to the body. She was never slated for a peaceful death. Flying backwards out her ship was the closest she came to a quiet end in bed.

  Her eyes flew open as a fist clasped around her wrist. The fist crackled in red sparks, the black rock immobile against the pull of the universe. Gene's eyes sparkled, the smoke tamped down deep inside his suit as he grasped her tight. Variel's shoes banged into the shuttle bay door. A second too late and she'd have shot straight past the fire golem, but he always was one for last minute rescues. The pull lessened, but it was too slow. So much oxygen had escaped out the hatch, the fresh couldn't compete with the hole she inexpertly created. Variel struggled through the encroaching darkness, her lungs screaming at her brain to do something.

  Damn it! I won!

  And then darkness.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  "Wha..." Her hand reached out through the darkness.

  "Easy there, Cap." She knew that voice, that smartass, so certain of everything else in the universe voice. Orn.

  "Captain? Oh captain, you saved my life! I can never thank you properly. If I could, then I'd save your life..." Segundo, no one could whimper in the middle of his own sentences the way that kid could.

  "Give her some air."

  She lifted her eyelids to find the shuttle bay lights half lit above, then a wracked but smiling orc face replaced it. Monde ran a hand over her face, probably checking all the damage she racked up, and then nodded to someone else outside her vision.

  Variel didn't need to hear the suggestion twice, and started to rise, her head badgering her to get her ass back down, preferably for a month. She ignored it as her pilot fell into sight. "What happened?" Variel asked the universe.

  "Well, you challenged a Knight to a sword battle, got your ass soundly beaten to a pulp, opened the hatch door, and almost took a little jaunt outside without a sweater. Very bad idea, it's quite chilly in space," Orn babbled. It was what he did best in any situation, be it from joy or terror.

  "Yeah," she said, holding her hand to her head and finding a bunch of tubes following it, "I was thinking more after that."

  "Your djinn attached a breather after you lost consciousness," Monde said, packing up the kit he carted down to the planet. "WEST informed us of the change in management and I came rushing as quick as possible."

  "'Change in management?'"

  Orn slipped into his best impression of the insane computer, "Owner 23 has fallen out of warranty. Please re-register me."

  "Mmm," she mumbled, fighting through a fog of drugs, exhaustion, and the burn of syntho-plasma rushing into her depleted veins. "Wait, what about the third guard?"

  Grinning wide, Orn pointed across the bay towards the battered but mostly intact shuttle, "You're gonna love this. Turns out the guy was highly allergic
to dwarven cabbage beetle stings."

  "How allergic?"

  "Well, that thing that looks like a pink float balloon our elf boy is dragging across the bay is actually one very dead guard. Ha, guess gassing our food supply wasn't as easy as he thought."

  Variel could barely make it out through her mental fog, but she trusted Orn's judgement. When it came to ironic forms of punishment, her pilot could give the devil a run for his vids. "Can the ship fly?"

  "My lovely and in no way listening over my PALM wife has the ship almost up and running, so to speak. I'm assuming you want to use up one of our untraceable ambassador paths?"

  She nodded, slapping Orn on the shoulder. The dwarf smiled back at her, happy to forget as much of their unpleasantness as he could. She was more than glad to oblige.

  "I should attend to the other injuries obtained by the crew," Monde said and Variel waved him on.

  "Yes, check on Ferra first. And uh, don't say anything about the corset." She turned to the dwarf trying to help her to her feet, "right Orn?"

  "Me," he feigned shock as he glanced about the bay, "I don't know a thing about this core set? Is that a type of lifting system to get you ripped off overnight?"

  Variel shook her head, savoring the laugh as Monde vanished out the bay. Gene offered his silent arm to the rising captain hooked to an IV. He had the bags tied around his neck like party decorations. She looked to him and bowed her head softly. He, in turn, smoked his eyes out.

  "What? That's it!" Orn launched into a rage. "You bugger off into the ventilation system, leaving all of us to suffer at the hands of some mawgshit insane woman who wants to get her hands on a genie of her very own, and all you can do is puff a bit of smoke up our assess?"

  Gene turned his head slowly to the dwarf, staring down the pilot a good five feet shorter than him, and slowly buffeted one of his eyes in smoke.

  Orn leaned back, glancing to Gene, then back to the world to make sure he wasn't going mad, "Did, did the fire golem just wink at me?"