by Lance Berry
The Calvorian next to Travis placed his gun against the side of his head. Travis nudged his head away and looked up at his captor. “Aliamar will want us ready for travel back to your shuttle when he’s done, won’t he? My friend’s leg is ruined. We need to get him up now, if we’re going to be ready.”
The alien’s eyes narrowed as he considered Travis’ words. The other Calvorian said something in their language and Travis’ captor lowered his gun just a bit. “Get him up,” the alien said to Bennis. He then looked to Travis once more. “You as well. Rise.”
Travis nodded to Bennis; now it was all about timing. If they did this right, they had a shot at regaining control of this situation. If not…then death would be preferable to a Calvorian penal camp anyway.
“C’mon, buddy,” Bennis encouraged as he held onto Drake’s waist and threw the wounded man’s arm around his own shoulder. He glanced at Travis as he and Drake stood, and there was a new certainty, a firmness and clarity of purpose in Bennis’ eyes as he slowly got Drake up on his good foot. Travis rose at the same time, holding tightly onto the clump of dirt.
Once they were all up, Travis nodded. Bennis faked like he and Drake had lost their balance, beginning to fall into the Calvorian who stood nearest them, while Travis turned to the guard behind him.
“Punk-ass bitch,” Travis snapped, and threw the dirt into the alien’s eyes. With a grunt, the Calvorian’s free hand automatically went to his eyes while Bennis threw himself against the other alien, wrestling with him for his weapon. Drake suddenly realized what was going on, and helped Bennis in the struggle.
While Calvorians were bi-pedal humanoids, their anatomy generally only held superficial similarities to human beings. However, the males of their species did possess an Adam’s Apple. Travis bashed his captor in the throat with a direct punch, and the alien’s windpipe immediately constricted. He dropped his gun as his eyes popped wide, but then closed again due to the pain and the fact that the dirt dug deeper into his eyes. Travis knew he had to hurry; the thin air was beginning to affect him again, and his footing was starting to become uncertain. He quickly took full advantage, delivering the strongest blows he could manage to the alien’s sternum, then finishing him off with a leaping roundhouse kick to the side of his head. The alien fell dead to the ground, blood leaking from his nose.
Bennis and Drake’s luck wasn’t going as well. They had managed to get the other guard to the ground, but he was on the verge of managing to push them both off of him, while still retaining his weapon. Travis picked up one of the Zuk-Lars his unit had been forced to discard, and raced over to the trio. He threw himself into their midst and shoved the gun into the alien’s mouth. There was only enough time for the Calvorian to register surprise, before his face disappeared in a muffled explosion and a spray of blood.
“Oh, Jesus,” Bennis muttered, his face covered with blood. He rolled off of the Calvorian and promptly threw up. Drake angled himself back onto his rear and buried his face in his hands, his body shuddering with his sobs. Travis stood, looking down at the nearly headless corpse, and felt a swell of satisfaction. The knots that had been in his stomach ever since he first got a look at Jones’ ruined face gently uncoiled and were no more. He turned to look at the crater’s crest, from where Aliamar’s grunts of pleasure continued to rise steadily. In that moment of clarity which had finally come to him, Travis knew what he had to do. He set his rebreather mask back in place and drew in a deep breath of full, luxurious oxygen as he mentally braced himself.
“Drake, just rest here. Bennis, grab your rebreather mask and a Blastrifle, and come with me.”
“No,” Drake said angrily as he uncovered his tear-streaked face. “I want to come with you.”
“Stop it, Tony,” Travis whispered, trying to keep the element of surprise on their side. “Look at yourself. You’re useless to us and you’re useless to Danielle. Bennis and I will take care of it. Wait here and keep lookout. Any trouble, fire once straight up. That’s an order.”
Drake huffed angrily, fresh tears threatening to overwhelm him, but he nodded in acquiescence.
Bennis finished wiping his face and mouth with his jacket sleeves. He found a rifle as ordered and reclaimed a rebreather mask. He then gave a gun and mask to Drake, and obediently followed Travis up the mound. They reached the top and peered down.
The crater itself was only about fifty feet deep, its sides sloped downward at a moderate incline. Almost immediately they spotted Danielle and Aliamar. She lay flat on her back, a blank and expressionless stare in her good eye as tears rolled down her face. Her left eye was swollen shut, black-and-blue from where Aliamar had struck her. Her short crew cut was disorganized, some hair having been torn out in the struggle, and her armor’s chest plate had indeed been tossed aside as Travis had surmised. Her once-proud uniform shirt was in tatters, her breasts exposed and full of bloody scratches and bite marks. Her arms lay splayed wide, unmoving on the ground, and her legs were resting on Aliamar’s upper thighs, her body no longer able to resist in the slightest as he remained in a kneeling position, thrusting into her. There was blood all over Danielle’s thighs and lower torso. The look in her good eye was one of emptiness, as if her mind fled elsewhere in order to disconnect itself from the damage her body had undergone, and hide from the pain.
Bennis took careful aim with his Blastrifle, but Travis rested his hand on the scope, cutting off his vision. The young corpsman looked at him in confusion as Travis shook his head…and instead made a motion to the left and to the right, signaling for warning shots only. Bennis opened his mouth to protest, but the look in Travis’ eyes cautioned him away from it. Bennis fired as ordered, one shot striking the ground to Aliamar’s immediate left, surprising him so that he stopped what he was doing to Danielle, then another shot to the right, making him angle his torso around to face them.
“How–“ the Calvorian began in surprise.
Travis aimed his own Zuk-Lar at him, as he and Bennis carefully made their way down the slope. “Get up,” he said in a dark and foreboding tone, as if daring Aliamar to defy him. Aliamar studied the grim, set features of the two young humans, and decided it was too dangerous at the moment to try anything. He slowly withdrew himself from the girl, and both Travis and Bennis grimaced as they caught a glimpse of his strangely designed genitalia.
Aliamar stood, pulling up his pants as he did so. “What now, Private Rand? I have spoiled your female, and killed many of your own men. Will you kill me as you should, or will you want to take me prisoner…knowing that to do so would be a very dangerous thing?”
Aliamar was correct: in the entire history of the Earth-Calvorian war, the capture of Calvorian soldiers was an extremely rare thing. Calvorians didn’t believe in being taken prisoner, and would rather die fighting or kill themselves on the spot. Aliamar currently had no weapon handy with which to do himself or any of the humans in, but with his superior strength, all he had to do was wait for one of the troops to slip up and let their guard down on the march home. Then again, perhaps there was another way…
“I’ve heard that for all the brutality of your people, you have a type of honor among you,” Travis said to Aliamar.
“We do. We always keep our word. If we are your ally, we are your ally until you betray us. If we say we will kill you, then you are already dead.”
“And that goes for everything? Keeping your word?”
“Our word is who we are. To break an oath is to make oneself no longer worthy of living.”
Travis nodded, studying the tall, powerful figure in front of him. “I want to make a bond with you. I also believe in honor, and my word is who I am.”
Aliamar chuckled mirthlessly. “What do you have to offer me? I am already your prisoner…for now. I believe you should–what is your term? ‘Quit while you are still ahead’.”
“Do you want to hear what I have to say, or aren’t you interested in winning your freedom?”
Aliamar and Bennis both looked at him curio
usly. “Go on,” the alien said.
Travis nodded toward Danielle. “That is not my woman, but she is my comrade and my friend. It’s my duty to avenge her for what you’ve done. I’m willing to bet your freedom that I can teach you a lesson you won’t forget.”
Aliamar threw his head back and laughed heartily. Bennis stared at Travis in dawning horror. “Travis, what the hell are you doing? We’ve got him! We have to take him back to base–“
“Shut up.”
“–take him back and turn him over to command–“
“SHUT UP!” Travis bellowed, his voice carrying far on the thin wind. Bennis fell silent, dumbfounded. Travis looked to Aliamar once more. “If I win, you come with us as our prisoner–willingly. No matter what happens along the way, you don’t try to escape and you don’t pull any tricks to try and get away. You’re ours, fair and square.”
“And when I win?”
“If you win, you get to take two of us back with you. Danielle as your property, and me.”
“Travis, I’m not going along with this…” Bennis began. Travis kept the Zuk-Lar focused on Aliamar as he half-turned to Bennis and pointed a finger in his face. “Shut up and go stand over there,” he said as he now pointed to a small ways just back up the incline. As he was partially turned so that Aliamar couldn’t see his face, Travis winked quickly, and Bennis clamped his mouth tight. Bennis nodded in a subdued fashion and headed to the spot Travis had pointed to. Travis turned fully back to Aliamar and noticed the alien was observing the two of them carefully, no doubt assessing whether he could use their divisiveness to his own advantage. “If I agree to this, what is to stop me from taking all of you back with me, once I defeat you?”
Travis nodded at Bennis. “His gun. And our other ally, waiting over the ridge.”
Aliamar shook his head in disbelief, and Travis couldn’t half blame him. Even from where Bennis now stood, it was clear his hands were beginning to shake slightly, his grip not as certain on his gun as it should be. And as distracted by his thoughts for Danielle and the pain of his own ruined leg, Drake would be lucky to be able to aim his gun correctly, let alone get off a good shot if Aliamar came charging over the crater’s edge. But by letting Aliamar think that he would completely have the upper hand in this situation, it was the only sure way to draw him into the confrontation Travis sought.
Finally, the Calvorian nodded to Travis. “The female is already my property. But I agree to your terms, because this should be amusing for me.”
“Don’t bet on it,” Travis said as he unlatched his armor, keeping his rebreather mask on while he let his chest and back plate fall to the ground. It was a risky gamble bordering on stupid, based on what he knew about Calvorians, but Travis would need the faster mobility he wouldn’t have if he kept the armor in place. He then set his gun next to his discarded armor.
Aliamar turned and walked slowly to an open area of the crater, away from Danielle’s unmoving form. Travis approached him and stood no more than a foot away, sizing him up. The alien was tall and physically imposing, but Travis reminded himself that in spite of their technology, Calvorians were essentially just large hunks of unthinking muscle. Big dumb brutes.
Without announcement, Travis’ fist shot forward toward Aliamar’s Adam’s Apple. He was determined to take Aliamar down sweet and quick, with no attempt to outlast him in a grudge match. Yet just as swiftly as Travis had made the punch, Aliamar’s own hand shot up and wrapped around Travis’ fist to hold it midway, blocking what might well have been a fatal blow.
“My subordinates are subordinates because they are stupid,” the Calvorian said evenly, his eyes narrowing in some disdain for the human. He pulled downward, forcing Travis to step forward and bend down, slightly off-balance. At the same time, Aliamar’s other hand came up, the fingernails extending an inch outward from their standard length. Travis had heard that Calvorians could do that, but it was an amazing and off-putting thing to see. The hand descended, arcing toward his face, but Travis brought his left arm up, warding off the blow at the expense of torn fabric and rent skin.
Travis cried out, but quickly centered himself as Sensei Ling had taught, brushing away the pain even as he kicked out hard, striking Aliamar squarely in the chest and pushing him back to give himself some distance. The alien snarled in anger, his dark nose crinkling as he bared his sharpened teeth. For a moment, Travis felt a surge of trepidation threaten to overwhelm him, but then he remembered a passage from the manual Bruce Lee had written on Jeet Kune Do:
Forget about winning and losing; forget about pride and pain. Let your opponent graze your skin and you smash into his flesh; let him smash into your flesh and you fracture his bones; let him fracture your bones and you take his life! Do not be concerned with your escaping safely–lay your life before him!
And Travis did; Aliamar rushed forward, his hands outstretched to grasp his opponent, and Travis let him come. He threw his arms up and outward, pushing Aliamar’s hands aside, and stepped forward in the same moment–turning his torso as Ling had taught him, to put more force behind the fist he sent smashing into the alien’s face. Aliamar grunted in surprise at his broken nose as he stumbled back a couple feet. Travis did a quick two-step forward to close the gap and swung again, connecting to his enemy’s cheek before he did a leaping roundhouse kick which sent the alien sprawling onto his back.
Unfortunately, Aliamar was more resilient than the Calvorian this kick had previously worked on. His head snapped up, teeth freshly bared, and he managed to push himself up off the ground and to his feet in an instant. Now the nails on his other hand extended to their full one-inch length and he nodded appreciatively. “Well done. I promise to tell my fellows aboard my ship that you met your death bravely.”
You’ll never get the chance, Travis thought, but just as quickly pushed the thought away. Jeet Kune Do taught that to fight, one had to be in the “now” of combat, to allow the mind to not be at all disturbed. He focused solely on Aliamar and waited for his next action.
The speed with which Aliamar moved was incredible. He shot forward, bridging the distance between himself and Travis in barely two steps. He swung one arm wide, and Travis arched backward, determined to not let his claws swipe him again. So he moved forward more and swung with his other claw, his nails this time skimming across the front of Travis’ shirt, gashing it open.
As Aliamar swung again Travis ducked, dropped, and spun his leg around in one amazingly smooth motion to sweep the Calvorian’s feet out from under him and send him thudding onto his back once more. The alien roared in frustration and as Travis rushed forward, Aliamar jumped up to a crouched position and sprung toward him panther-like, catching Travis in his mid-section and the two of them fell to the ground. Aliamar’s jaws came down and clamped onto Travis’ shoulder so tight and deep that Travis could hear the teeth pushing down into the muscle beneath his flesh! He screamed in agony even as Aliamar’s nails found purchase in his upper arms and he slowly began to drag them down the length of both. The pain was blinding in its purity, but Travis fought through it, redirecting his pain into anger as he managed to pull one arm loose. He jabbed his left index and middle fingers into Aliamar’s right eye, twisting deeply as he did so. With a sharp gasp the jaws released and Aliamar cried out in torment as Travis twisted his fingers again and pushed in hard and quick one last time, finding his grip and with one ruthless tug–out came the eye from its socket!
Travis didn’t look at the eye; in all his dreams, fantasies and nightmares of combat, he had never pictured himself doing anything like what he had just done. He felt the detached eye slipping around wetly in his grip and heedlessly tossed it aside. He sat up, trying not to retch at the thought as Aliamar stood and stumbled back, clutching at the desecrated socket and swearing a thousand oaths at him. Travis forced himself up, doing his best to push the pain away, forcing his arms to work against their better judgment. All his body wanted to do was shut down so that it could take the necessary time to recuperate.
But there was no time; this needed to be finished now, while it was still possible.
Travis moved forward and swung in tight and hard, delivering a solid right to Aliamar’s solar plexus. He blew out hard air, and Travis pressed forward, delivering fast and jarring left and right blows to his face. Aliamar tried a grab at Travis’ wounded shoulder, but Travis caught his arm at the wrist with one hand and brought the other fist up hard to bend his enemy’s arm backward at the elbow and shatter the bone entirely.
Aliamar screamed in pain and amazement, and Travis took the moment of advantage to grasp him by the neck. With his arms so weak and wounded, it was a clumsy and unattractive flip…but Travis did manage to throw him onto his back. He then leaped up into the air as high as he could manage and brought his heel down hard on Aliamar’s face.
With a final expulsion of air, Aliamar’s only eye closed and he lie unconscious…defeated.
“Kill him…”
Travis turned at the sound of the voice and spotted Danielle sitting upright, supported by Bennis. She had become conscious during the fight and was now at least partially lucid. Kneeling behind her, Bennis was staring at Travis in slack-jawed amazement, looking at him as if he were Moses come down from the mount with the Ten Commandments in hand. He had thrown his jacket around Danielle, covering her upper body, and her pants were back up around her waist.
