Forever Defend

by Michael Anderle

  “And then?” he prompted.

  “Then, I had our EI, Achronyx, check to see if it was legitimate, or a possible ruse.”

  “How did Achronyx accomplish this? And I understand that Achronyx is a program, correct?”

  “I wouldn’t call him a program if you don’t want something bad to happen to your ship. Rather, he is an Entity Intelligence, or EI. Far superior to a program.”

  “On what basis are you making this claim?” the captain asked.

  Tabitha snorted. “Because I am a programmer. If you would like to see how I can program your ship to ignore you, just keep barking up this tree.”

  “My apologies,” he told her. “We do not have many of these types of programs. They were outlawed over two generations back.”

  “Perhaps that was wise of the Torcellans,” Tabitha temporized, “but we do have them, and it was Achronyx that cleaned up your signals enough to show you had cause for concern.”

  The captain’s eyes opened wide. “Oh” was all he said.

  “At that point, we traveled from our workout room to the bridge, and made entry.”

  “By ‘made entry,’ you mean you took out the bridge guards, asked permission to join me, and then walked in before I answered?”

  “Operations require decisions to be made quickly,” Tabitha answered. “I determined through the information I was provided by Achronyx, coming from your sensors, that time was of the essence, and that as a Torcellan, you might need our type of help.”

  “Which type of help is that?”

  “The kind that can scare a Skaine asshat with just my angry-as-hell face.” Tabitha’s eyes started to burn in the middle.

  “So,” the captain swallowed, “you felt that you could protect the Hythethaneuk better than the security already in place?”

  Tabitha just stared at him.

  “Yes, I see…of course you do. May I ask for the record why you believe it?”

  Tabitha chuckled; it was deeper and more dangerous than any of her speech to date. “Our team has captured many Skaine slavers and pirates, destroyed more than twelve, and attacked and helped capture one Skaine battleship. To my team and me, the only good pirates or slavers are those pirates or slavers that are either in jail, or dead. No matter the race.”

  Tabitha looked at the captain, her beauty edged with fire. “How many kills or captures do your teams have?”

  “None,” the captain answered before he realized he was supposed to be doing something good for them here, and it had gone off track. He cleared his throat. “My apologies, Ranger Tabitha. I am not trying to irritate you. On the contrary, I’m trying to setup the prerequisites for the reward you and your men will receive for the altruistic support of a Torcellan ship without regard for your own lives.”

  “In short,” the captain smiled, “I want to help you secure a lot of money and acclaim from my people along with free rides for your team anytime you need to ship somewhere.”

  Tabitha stared across the table at the Captain before turning to Hirotoshi with a raised eyebrow. “Do you know of any reason we can’t accept this?”

  Hirotoshi pursed his lips, then shook his head.

  She turned to the other Tonto in the room. “Ryu?”

  He also shook his head.

  Tabitha took a deep breath. “Well, I’d rather we didn’t have an official meeting about this, but if your company wants to provide us free rides on your liners and money? Well, we will accept.”

  He smiled. “It will make you and your team very rich, Ranger Tabitha. Some have retired from the proceeds of mercenary compensation. This gift will be almost three times that amount.”

  Tabitha shook her head. “The team will figure out something to use it on, I promise you. Plus, I like how the free rides get ‘known security’ to use you guys again. Nice touch.” She pursed her lips. “How much is that in Yollin credits?”

  “Do you already have a plan for the money, Kemosabe?” Ryu asked.

  “Yes, if the team approves,” she told him. “I’m thinking we need to have a Ranger Team Two plot of land we can call our own.”

  “Where?” Ryu asked.

  Tabitha smiled. “How about some world that needs cleaning up? Grab some worthless land due to the crime, clean up the area, then sell it at an appreciated value because it is safe?”

  The two elder vampires turned to each other, a small smile on each of their faces.

  Oh yes, this was a Ranger who would keep them interested in life for a long, long time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Dirtside Bar, Space Station Ekuled, Eubos system

  Bastek turned toward the two humans and jumped, clearing ten heads before she landed on the back of a random Yollin and pushed off him to jump again. She hoped he wasn’t hurt much when her jump shoved his head down to slam into the table.

  Where the miners had located an old slug thrower Bastek didn’t know, nor did she much care when a slug caught her in the chest as she landed. She was thrown into the adult human, who caught her.

  “Go, Christina!” The mother, whose eyes flashed yellow once, held onto Bastek as the bouncer moaned in pain.

  “Ohhh, Torcellan titties, that hurts,” she cursed. The human threw herself in front of Bastek as the weapon was fired again.

  Bastek saw the woman jerk, then turn and throw a hand up, catching the slug thrower and easily sliding it behind her belt.

  Then she heard the woman’s guttural voice.

  ---

  “Here she comes, Mom!” Christina yelled, and pointed toward the cat-woman as her mother swore. Christina turned in time to see an old weapon trained on the two of them, and the young Yollin yelling something as he aimed. A moment later, Bastek landed in front of the two as the pistol went off.

  “Go, Christina!” her mom shouted as she caught the wounded woman. Christina’s eyes flared yellow and she took two steps before jumping into the mix of fighters. She grew claws on her fingers, but her damned shoes were armored and she couldn’t do anything about that. The idiot was able to get one more shot off before Christina’s clawed hand ruined his eyes. Focused on his pain, he didn’t feel much more when Christina broke some of his fingers yanking the pistol out of his hand.

  She tossed it to her mom.

  That’s when another fist came in from the side and punched her hard. She rolled with the punch and had just been knocked off her feet into another free-wheeling slug-fest when she heard the growl.

  “Well, shit,” she grumped as she dropped to the ground and dodged around the guys hammering each other. “Mom’s going to take away my options!”

  ---

  Dedek hadn’t meant to shoot the bar’s bouncer, but she had landed just as he fired. This time he aimed at the human female who had jumped in front of the cat female, and he fired a second time.

  Then his face was on fire, sight gone, his mind registering something wrong with the hand that had held the pistol, as well.

  ---

  Bastek saw the small child get pummeled, but then she lost her behind the back of the woman protecting her.

  “Attack my family?” the guttural sound came out in Yollin. “Eat it!”

  The woman took a step, and although she seemed to mass less than the Yollin she hit, he went down with one punch. With the same hand she had used to punch the Yollin, she backhanded the shooter, who was now holding his eyes.

  Reaching forward, she grabbed the mandibles of the one who had punched her child, and yanked him into the knee she brought up to meet him.

  Instead of the human’s knee shattering on the hard exoskeleton of the Yollin as she had expected, Bastek heard a crunch and a sob of pain from the Yollin.

  Ecaterina then tossed his whole body into a nearby wall. The Yollin’s motionless body slid down the side to lay in a heap on the floor.

  Bastek was starting to stand when the young female showed back up. “Lay down, we got this!”

  Bastek pointed behind the human. “Chair!”

  The yo
ung woman turned as she reached up with her left hand to catch the chair that had been thrown across the room. She turned it right side up and slid it next to Bastek. “Can you move?” Bastek nodded her agreement. “Let’s get you sitting up. Hope this doesn’t hurt too much!”

  Bastek was going to push with her legs, but it wasn’t necessary. The human was certainly stronger than she looked. Bastek’s eyes narrowed when she saw the claws.

  “I’m Christina, you are Bastek, and are you ok?”

  Bastek nodded again. Christina turned and dodged a body coming from Bastek’s right.

  Her mom showed up right after the thrown body. “I swear,” she said to no one in particular, “she gets that from her father!” She turned to Bastek. “I’m Ecaterina. Nice to meet you, Bastek.”

  A large Yollin came running up to the two of them. Ecaterina slugged him in the face, stopping him cold, then lashed out with a kick, sending his body back into the fight as so much dead weight.

  “Who are you people?” Bastek asked eyes watching the body flop around when it hit the mass of those in the middle of the floor all pummeling each other.

  “Bad Company!” Ecaterina laughed, looking around for her daughter. “I thought Nathan was stupid for naming us that, but I have to admit he was right.”

  Ecaterina’s focus was captured by something on her right as the large Shrillexian came up quickly on her left.

  Bastek tried to get up, but couldn’t. The pain in her chest was too much, although it didn’t feel like she had been hit in more than bone and muscle. “Fuck Shrillexian Kateriana!” Bastek shouted, trying to get the human’s attention to warn her about the alien fighter behind her.

  “I don’t do humans,” Shi-tan said as he caught the arm of a Yollin trying to use a club to hit Ecaterina in the back. He twisted the arm right, then left. The Yollin flipped in the air to land on his back, cracking his head hard on the ground.

  That Yollin was out of the fight.

  “Down!” Ecaterina yelled, so Shi-tan ducked low as a chair whistled over his head from Ecaterina’s direction. He was about to stand up. “Not yet.”

  This time both Shi-tan and Bastek were surprised when a whole table went flying over the top of him.

  That’s when the roaring started.

  “Oh, fugnuts!” Ecaterina said as Christina came running back, eyes afire.

  “Dad’s pissed!” she warned.

  Ecaterina pointed to the second floor. “You, up there!” Christina stepped into her mom’s clasped hands, and Bastek watched as she tossed the girl up to the second floor.

  “Shi-tan, you got R’yhek?” Ecaterina asked the Shrillexian. He looked around before he pointed toward the stairs.

  “He saw Christina go up to the second floor, and is going to join her.”

  “Good!” Ecaterina said, and came over to Bastek. “I’ve got you, so hold still.” She reached down to pick up the bouncer. “Sorry you took that bullet for us!” She turned around, holding Bastek. “Make us a path, Shi-tan, before the shit hits the fan!”

  Bastek wondered how it could get worse. It wasn’t until they had navigated the outside of the floor and gotten halfway up the steps that she saw the tall monster in the middle of the fight tossing bodies and slicing them up.

  His eyes glowed yellow.

  When the two women had made it to the top, Shi-tan yelled, “You three got her?” Bastek wasn’t sure if he meant Christina or herself. When Ecaterina nodded, Shi-tan growled, “Make way!”

  Those on the balcony turned to see a large green humanoid running toward them. It was all any of them could do to duck out of the way. Shi-tan jumped over the bannister, right back into the middle of the fight, landing on and taking out three Yollins as he reached the floor.

  ---

  “Bornnn with a shotgunn innn my hands.” Nathan tried to sing as he tossed punches and dodged various assaults, but his activities were doing shit for his voice. Not that it mattered to any of those around him.

  They had never heard the song before, anyway.

  He saw someone lash out at Christina, then someone else caught her and tossed her ten feet into another group of guys pounding each other.

  “Get back to your mother!” he ordered, his eyes flashing. “NOOOWWWW!”

  Where there had been a human a moment before, a seven-foot-tall Pricolici now stood. His roar caught most of those around him by surprise, and that’s when the ones who weren’t fighting each other started trying to get away from the beast in the middle of the battle.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t matter if they were still fighting or trying to get away. The creature’s long reach allowed him to grab them by an arm or a piece of armor or clothes, and the next thing that Yollin or alien knew, they had been punched and were flying through the air.

  Then the Shrillexian landed on the three Yollins, and it became a free-for-all to get the hell out of the bar.

  It was all over but the moaning.

  ---

  “I don’t do the Infirmary!” Bastek tried to argue as the male human, still in his monster form, easily carried her from the bar.

  “Not going to the Infirmary,” Ecaterina told her. “We will get you healed up and drop you back off here soon.”

  “Yes!” Christina could be heard on the other side of the small party, speaking to someone on comms, Bastek assumed. “Bring Prime in closer. We need quick access to Medical.”

  “They are going to want to talk to you as witnesses to the fight,” Bastek told them.

  “Wasn’t us that started that,” Shi-tan told her.

  Ecaterina cupped a hand to her mouth, but Bastek easily heard her conversation. “ADAM, need a quick review and erase from Dirtside Bar, Station 551, Eubos System.”

  Who is ADAM, and how is he going to erase the recordings? Bastek wondered.

  Bastek didn’t hear any response, but Ecaterina nodded her head.

  It took the group another five minutes to get back to their ship. “Anything here you want before we take off?” Ecaterina asked.

  “Why? Am I being kidnapped?” Bastek replied.

  “No.” She turned to the woman. “You are being offered a job, and we might not want to come back any time soon.”

  “My book, back at the bar,” Bastek admitted. “Gronnick’s Third Edition of Alien Physiology.”

  As the team boarded the ship, Ecaterina called, “We got that book, Prometheus?” A voice responded from the ship as they all trooped through the locks, and she was laid gently down on a chair Christina had changed from upright to horizontal.

  “We have all of Gronnick’s collection, including access to two originals, but those are untranslated works.”

  “Really?” Bastek asked, her eyes lighting. “You have Subverted Clinical Studies of Kahleck?”

  “Yes,” the voice replied, “but I don’t believe Gronnick was accurate in his assertion that he could ascertain what was wrong with the race through the writings of two physiology doctors from the Pehterians who had studied them.”

  “Pull us out, Prometheus,” Ecaterina ordered.

  “We are being told to get into a queue… No, never mind. We’ve jumped the queue.”

  “How did you jump the queue?” Bastek asked.

  “When you are with Bad Company,” R’yhek told her, “amazing things happen, and will just continue to surprise you.” He sat down across the aisle from her, handing a bottle to Christina, who had come to sit next to him.

  He raised a bottle of some liquid that smelled like Pepsi and smiled. “I guarantee it.”

  Bastek heard a new voice and cut her eyes to see a human male come from the front of the ship. “ETA twenty minutes, and then we get her healed up. Prometheus has a location off the ecliptic he feels is safe enough. We land, then leave, so we aren’t nearby too long.”

  “Wait!” Bastek raised her hand a couple of inches. “Are you the tall monster?”

  Nathan nodded. “Nathan Lowell, President, Bad Company.”

  Bastek’s eyes s
tarted to close. “I have to be dreaming.”

  Prometheus Major

  Bastek woke up and gasped.

  She was in an enclosed space, a large part of which was transparent.

  “Hello,” a voice said to her. “You are on Prometheus Major, and I have extracted the bullet that was lodged in your muscles. Your bone was chipped, not broken. We have corrected that issue, and removed all extraneous bone chips as well.”

  Bastek remembered what had gotten her here. She reached for the bullet’s entry point, but felt no scars.

  She had no clothes on, but found them once the device opened. They were on a table that was obvious when she looked around. Once she got dressed, more for others than for her, there was a knock on the door.

  “Hello?” Bastek called.

  The door opened, and Ecaterina walked in. “Hello Bastek, I hope you are feeling better?” When she nodded, Ecaterina continued. “We felt it would be best if another female spoke with you.”

  “Because you are less scary than Nathan?” she guessed.

  “Well, he’s basically a big teddy bear, but someone hit Christina and he is still a very overprotective dad.”

  Bastek nodded. “You are married.”

  “Mated, but it is the same thing,” Ecaterina agreed.

  “What is this place?” Bastek asked, looking around.

  “We call it a bunch of things, but essentially this is the heart of Medical on Prometheus Major. The little ship we used when on 551, or Ekuled, if I use the common name, is Prometheus Minor.”

  “That ship is little?” Bastek asked, but she was only half-listening. “How was I healed so well?” She focused on Ecaterina. “And how long did it take?”

  “The first is a secret for now, but if you end up being a part of the group, you will find out. I understand it took a little over three hours to heal you. I’m informed by our EI that it will be cut by another thirty percent next time, since he has your physiology mapped now. He went slower to understand what your body could handle.”

  “Why am I not tired?” Bastek asked.

  “More secrets,” Ecaterina answered.