by T. R. Harris
The mutant stepped up to the table.
“Pardon me, but I would like to join your game.”
The players eyed him up and down until one asked, “What are you? We see a lot of strange beings come through here, but I have never seen anything like you.”
“I am a Metachorian. There are few of us around, and those of us that are will be seldom seen.”
“That makes no sense. I can see you.”
“Then you should remember this moment. It may not come again within your lifetime.”
The confused alien looked around the table at his companions. They were equally confused.
“If you have the credits, you can play. No one will stop you,” replied the first gambler, one dressed in a flamboyant series of colorful overlapping capes.
“I have one issue,” Panur announced. “I see the average pot-bet is between one hundred and two hundred credits. I have but five hundred.”
The five gamblers at the table expressed a variety of laughs, depending on their species. “Then you shall not last long,’ said one of the others. “Seems hardly worth our effort to let you in.” The rest of them nodded their agreement.
“It is still five hundred credits. Within a few minutes, it could all belong to you—individually or collectively.”
More laughter.
“Then if you are so willing to donate your stack, we will be glad to take it. Sit.”
Panur looked small as he sat on an empty chair at the table. All the other players were much taller, even taller than Adam.
Panur smiled. “I said nothing about donating my credits,” the mutant corrected. “You will have to take them from me.”
“That is the plan,” said an alien with a face made of several flaps of loose flesh below two very wide apart and elongated eyes. Words formed from somewhere within the flaps and came out surprisingly clear.
“Let us begin,” Panur said, retaining his smile. “This is the first I have played this game, yet the process appears simple enough.”
The other five players looked at each with an almost pack-like bloodlust. Competition between them could wait. First they had to devour their weak and naive prey.
The game got underway. Adam’s butt was tied up in knots as he watched the mutant lose his first two hands. The five hundred credit bankroll was down to two hundred just like that. He hoped Panur was just setting them up for the kill. If not, this was going to be a very short day.
Then Panur won his first series of plays and recovered two hundred of what he’d lost.
But then he lost again.
The next hand got pretty hairy, but Panur managed to roll the winning card three times in a row. He now had eight hundred credits sitting in front of him.
Adam began to relax. Panur would do just fine. His incredible memory and microscopic attention to detail allowed him to accurately read the body language of each of his opponents. Subtle changes in pupil aperture, slight variations in respiration and facial twitches were an open book for Panur. And considering the variety of faces and bodies he was studying, it was remarkable he could do it at all.
Twenty minutes later, Panur pushed away from the table and called Adam over. He leaned in close and handed him a stack of chips.
“This should get you started,” he whispered. “There are two thousand Juirean credits here. That will get us the food and other supplies we need. Give them to the others while I continue gathering the credits for the power modules.”
“You want me to go now? Won’t you need these credits?”
Panur smiled. “I will do fine with what I have in front of me. Go now and then hurry back. It shouldn’t take long.”
Following instructions, Adam left the gambling hall and stepped out into the annoying dustfall. He contacted the others through their ATDs. They had each found what they were looking for; all they needed now was the money. They agreed to a meeting place and Adam hailed a pay-transport. He had the money now to afford one. Fifteen minutes later he was dolling out the winnings to Sherri, Riyad and Coop.
“Save some for cab fare back to the ship. Now go. It’s getting late and some of these places may close down for—”
There was a sudden roar in the sky, followed by a thundering boom down the street. One of the A-shaped buildings was collapsing, folding its heavy metal panels in on anyone inside. Half a dozen others lay in the street, dead from the small impact explosion. It wasn’t a large meteorite—just a chunk of iron a foot across. But arriving at ten thousand miles per hour, the small rock had enough kinetic punch to crush a building and kill everyone within a hundred feet of impact.
To Adam’s surprise, no one on the street seemed to pay the event much attention. Sure, emergency crews arrived to clean up the mess. But no one considered what just happened to be out of the ordinary. It probably wasn’t.
Adam looked at his teammates. “Oh, and one other thing: Watch out for falling rocks.”
9
Adam was back at the gambling hall forty-five minutes after leaving it. But when he returned, it was not the same place he just left.
A dozen creatures were on their feet, some waving flash weapons while yelling in a variety of alien languages, their overlapping screeches impossible to translate. And they were all yelling at Panur.
Upon seeing Adam enter, several of the angry aliens turned on him. Through his ATD, he disarmed all the flash weapons he could detect by mentally severing their firing circuits. Now all he—and Panur—had to contend with were physical attacks by the riled up mob. He wasn’t worried about that, either.
Adam pushed his way through the crowd to where Panur stood passively waiting for the first fist to be thrown. “What the hell happened? I’ve been gone less than an hour.”
“The cards seemed to have taken a turn for the worst,” Panur stated.
“He owes me—a lot!” cried the flamboyantly-dressed player from the table. He was also one of the creatures with a flash weapon—useless now, even if he didn’t know it.
“What do you mean?” Adam asked. “He could only lose what he had with him.”
“Adam…that is not exactly true,” Panur said sheepishly.
Adam focused his laser-like attention on the mutant. “What did you do?” He was afraid of the answer. The only thing of value the team had was—
“I wagered the Defiant. Unfortunately, I lost.”
Adam was at a loss for words, at least initially.
“How could you? You don’t own the Defiant. I do!”
“Technically it belongs to the Union Defense Technology and Development Department, but I get your point. It’s just that I had a sure thing…and there were a hundred thousand credits on the table.”
“We don’t need a hundred thousand credits. But we do need the ship.”
“Like I said, it was a sure thing.”
“Then why did you lose?”
The look on Panur’s face was disturbing. The mutant looked confused, lost even. “I…I must have misread the signs.”
If Adam didn’t have an entire room of angry aliens about to pounce on him, he might have spent more time thinking about the implications of Panur’s words. As it was, Adam knew Panur didn’t mis- anything, not normally. After all, he was a goddamn, five-thousand-year-old mutant genius. A game such as this should have been child’s play for him; it had been up until the time Adam left and came back.
Adam’s unbroken string of unfortunate and deadly alien interactions looked likely to continue. He certainly wasn’t going to give up the Defiant, and the aliens weren’t going to let them leave without collecting their pound of flesh…and more. Someone was going to die today, and if events played as they had on a dozen other worlds in the past, that generally meant a shitload dead aliens.
Adam looked around the room, staring down the barrels of a twenty flash weapons—all with their firing circuits severed. He wasn’t worried about them. He focused his attention of the defiant gambler who claimed ownership to the Defiant.
“
Listen buddy, I’m not giving up my ship. You can keep the credits and we’ll call it even. But we’re leaving now. So if you don’t want to get hurt, you better just let us go.”
The alien laughed. “I see you are a Human. I understand you to be formidable creatures, but I did not know you were also insane. I am Resric, a powerful citizen within the limits of Boraxx and the Western Territory. Most of the beings in this room work for me. They will fire upon my command.” He took a step closer to Adam. “It is time that you surrender ownership of your starship to me…before I have to force my claim at the expense of your life.”
Adam didn’t laugh, but he did grin. This caused the tall, flamboyantly-dressed alien to scrunch his face in some form of frown. “You obviously don’t know who I am. I’m Adam Cain.”
Resric continued to frown, until one of his companions leaned in and whispered in his ear. “Ah, the Human who journeyed to our neighboring galaxy and defeated the Nuoreans.” His companion leaned in again. “And he who attacked Juir with a single ship and decimated their military command and high political leadership.” After a third time, the alien boss was growing frustrated with the constant interruptions. “And yes, the warrior who also traveled to the Sol-Kor universe and killed their ravenous queen.” When the whisperer leaned in for a fourth time, Resric shoved him aside.
“It matters not! You come in here and cast out a name of a famous Human and expect us to believe you to be that person. And I suppose your gray cohort is Panur, the super mutant from the Sol-Kor who led their unsuccessful conquest of the galaxy.”
“As a matter of fact, he is.”
Resric laughed the loudest at this statement. “The genius of geniuses? This cannot be Panur. I noticed right off how he was reading my countenance. I let him believe he could until I had him in a position where I could defeat him, and all his possessions. Does that sound like something the smartest creature in existence would allow to happen?”
Adam looked at the now-docile mutant. Panur was staring vacantly off into the room and wobbling slightly. Adam had never seen him like this before. “I see your point,” Adam said. “But hey, even immortal mutant geniuses have an off day now and then.”
“Enough! Give me the ship, or I will take it when you are dead.”
“Not gonna happen, slick.”
“Then you shall die! Shoot!”
It was comical as twenty intense aliens fingered their weapons and then waited with savage grins as the targeting computers locked on. Adam was fairly close, so it only took a second. Next came the frantic pressing of triggers, accompanied by wide-eyed expressions of confusion, as not a single MK lit off. Adam stood patiently until all his assailants accepted the fact that their weapons were dead…and Adam wasn’t. They looked to Resric for guidance.
Although none truly believed him to be the famous Adam Cain, he was still a Human. In most cases, that would have been deterrent enough. But he was outnumbered twenty-to-one. Yet still the aliens hesitated.
Ignoring the unfathomable question why the flash weapons didn’t work, a smile stretched across Resric’s flappy face. It was Adam’s turn to be confused…until he noticed why the alien was so amused. It was hard to miss.
Across the crowded room came a deep, rhythmic pounding vibrating through the concrete floor, growing stronger by the moment. The Adam saw the dark bulk towering above the others in the room even before they cleared a path for the giant. Resric’s confidence was justified, especially if the huge beast was in his employ. It was a Druan, or what Adam figured was a Druan.
When your race is considered one of the major badasses in the galaxy, you’re often compared to other badass races, be they real or imaginary. Adam had heard about these giant creatures for years but had never seen one in person. He figured they were just another mythical beast designed to keep Humans thinking there was always someone more powerful and dangerous waiting around the corner.
Adam was now facing down a massive twelve-foot-tall creature, with long arms two-feet thick, and legs as wide as tree trunks. Druans—if the stories were true—came from a world with gravity twice that of Earth. On their planet they weren’t particularly fast or coordinated, but on Siron, with less than half their normal gravity, the hairy beasts danced around like ballerinas made of stone.
The major difference between Humans and Druans—besides the size differential—was that Druans weren’t very smart. In addition, their huge, scoop-like hands were good for moving rock from one place to another, but they weren’t very good at manipulating fine instruments or spaceship controls. As a result, Druans never developed much technology on their world, and instead were hired out to the galaxy for their brawn alone. This deadly beast was probably on Siron to act as a living bulldozer. And from the unblinking look in the creature’s solid black eye orbs, he fully intended to bulldoze Adam, and enjoy every moment as he did.
Adam had to be careful. He couldn’t let Panur see him perform any more feats of inhuman strength and agility or else the mutant might start suspecting something was up. But in Panur’s current mental and physical state, that probably wouldn’t be a problem.
Even with a twelve-foot-tall wall of muscle coming at him, Adam had the wherewithal to focus his concern on Panur. Correction: It wasn’t Panur he was worried about, but rather Adam’s plan to defeat the Klin. Panur was the key. And although he had no idea at the time what the mutant would come up with, Adam had to trust that he would. But certainly not in his present condition. Something was wrong, and Adam instinctively felt he was partly responsible.
Even with the fate of the galaxy riding on Panur regaining his powers, Adam eventually had to push his thoughts aside and deal with the problem at hand. The massive Druan was only feet away.
Adam held up his hands to ask for calm. “Listen, I don’t want any trouble with you.”
“Trouble. You.” said the thing, which had a remarkable resemblance to the Incredible Hulk, only was a deep, golden tan. The Druan wore chest armor of tied together sheets of metal, and pants made of an elastic fabric that showed off the bulging muscles in his thighs. The creature was barefoot, walking on pads almost three feet long and a foot wide.
The Druan pulled back a long right arm with a fist as large as a beach ball, preparing to strike. Adam had confidence he was quicker than the alien; his mutant enhancements were on full alert, ready for action. Even then, when the blow came, it was remarkable swift. Adam was able to shuffle away, keeping his body square to his opponent.
But then he backed into a wall of alien miners, tall and strong, who threw back into the makeshift arena that had formed in the center of the gambling hall. He wasn’t expecting this, or the follow up left hand thrown by the Druan. The fist hit him on his right side and sent him flying through the air. The peaked ceiling of the building allowed for plenty of height and flight time before Adam crashed into a cluster of gambling tables. Everyone was on their feet watching the fight, so the tables were empty. Several thick slate tops tumbled over on top of him.
A quick estimation told him he’d flown about forty feet from the Druan. Any other creature—Human or alien—would have had nearly bone in their body broken from the impact and the landing. But Adam’s mutant muscles had been ready for something like this. His bones bent, but didn’t break. However, his pain-suppressing ability was having a hell of a time keeping up. He felt like he’d just be run over by a freight train.
A stunned hush came over the room when Adam pushed the broken table tops away and stood up, a little shaky at first, but appearing unharmed. No one should have survived the hit, but the Human had. Was he truly the Great Adam Cain? Think what they might, but Adam wasn’t feeling very great at the moment.
The Druan hesitated, surprised to see that Adam was still alive. This was probably a first for the giant. One-and-out was normal for him.
A moment later the last of the cobwebs vanished from Adam’s head. Using his ATD and mutant brain cells, he produced a brilliant cluster of static electricity balls only inches f
rom the Druan’s eyes. The creature was blinded and raised his huge hands to shield his face. Adam lifted one of the thick slate table tops and threw it at the monster, Frisbee-style. It hit the Druan square on the chest and shattered into pieces against the metal plates of his shield. The giant barely reacted.
Now it was Adam’s turn to be surprised. He picked up another table top and tossed it. Even though blinded by the electric balls, the Druan shrugged off the heavy disks like pesky flies.
This isn’t working, Adam thought. The creature was too solidly-built and his chest too well-protected by his chest plate. Adam glanced down and smiled. But he was barefoot.
The next disk hit the alien’s left ankle. The table top shattered, just as the others had, but a large piece of slate was now firmly imbedded in the giant’s bloodied ankle.
The Druan cried out in pain. The look on his face was priceless. It was not only contorted in anguish, but also surprise. Adam figured the mighty beast had never been hurt before. This was a new experience for him. It wouldn’t be his last.
With the giant distracted, Adam ran forward and jumped. He wrapped his body firmly on the giant’s massive head and began punching at his face and huge ears. No one likes having their ears batted; the Druan was no exception. He stumbled back and lost his balance. His ankle gave way, having been nearly severed by the thrown table top. Adam was now on top the creature, sending fist after fist against the rock-hard skin. Eventually, the flesh softened and broke open, spilling blood across the face and into the alien’s eyes. Large arms and hands rose up, swatting at Adam, who jumped away before continuing to beat the Druan to a pulp from a different angle.
Eventually, the massive arms fell to the concrete floor and lay still. The face of the giant was a mess, but the creature was still breathing. He would live to fight another day. By then, Adam Cain would be long gone.
Adam was covered in alien blood—a common occurrence—when he climbed off the Druan and approached the gambler bigwig. Resric was in shock…and awe. He fell back against a long wooden bar and panicked. He was trapped.
