by Tim Marquitz
“Then he’s the smartest of the lot,” Rath told her, quite certain in his assessment. “This is a mistake.
Cabe gestured to Rath with his eyes, an I told you so aimed at Taj unspoken in his glare.
She let him have his quiet jab. “Funny, Cabe said the exact same thing a little while ago.”
“Then you should have heeded his warning, girl,” he said. “My men will—”
“Your men will regret their part in all of this in a moment,” she replied, yanking him hard against the wall as they neared the first alley where they’d tracked down Cabe and Dent earlier. She pressed her gun against the boss’s ribs, eliciting a satisfying oomph from him, and triggered her comm. “You’re on, Torbon,” she said. “Hit them.”
Around the corner, not more than a second later, there was a sudden burst of electrical energy, and Taj moved the pirate boss out where both of them could see what was going on.
The pirates stationed outside the building where Dent was being held shrieked in sudden agony. Torbon emerged from the alleyway, grinning, the charge rifle aimed at the pirates. Current surged from its barrel and engulfed the guards. They danced awkwardly under the electrical burst, smoke billowing from their eyes and mouths. Then, not more than a few seconds later, Torbon released the trigger and the men collapsed in charred heaps.
Taj waved Torbon back out of sight, Jadie along with him, and Taj moved toward the door of the building, the rest of her people alongside her, weapons out and ready. Cabe positioned himself beside her, inching forward enough to defend her should he need to.
She grinned at his protectiveness.
“Shouldn’t be long now,” Taj said, hunched down behind the boss, turning him into a shield to help reinforce her position and allow her to leverage the man against his people.
Right on cue, the door to the building was flung open, and a dozen pirates stormed out, guns in hand and fierce snarls aplenty. They froze when they saw their boss standing among the Furlorians, bound, a gun pressed unkindly to his head. They stiffened and came to a halt, clearly unsure how to react.
Taj made it simple for them.
“Unless you want your boss’s brains decorating the street, I suggest you drop your weapons and stand down,” she called out. They didn’t need to know she was bluffing. There was no way she could kill Rath in cold blood, tied up as he was, unable to resist, but all that mattered was that his men believed it.
The pirates hesitated a moment, and Taj thumped the gun against their boss’s skull loud enough for everyone to hear. The sound echoed between the buildings.
Rath grunted at the impact, and that got his men’s attention. The clatter of guns hitting the street followed.
“Excellent choice,” she told the pirates. “Collect those,” Taj directed her people, watching and waiting until they’d completed the task of rounding up the weapons.
When they were finished, she spoke to the pirates again. “Now, move over there and put your noses to the wall,” she said. Again, they hesitated but another thump of her pistol against their boss’ skull had them scrambling.
Once they were there, she ordered them onto their knees. “Everyone but you,” she said, pointing to the man nearest the door. “You get to go inside and bring out the mechanoid.” She motioned for five of her people to go with the pirate. “Do anything stupid, alert your friends, try to hurt mine, and I guarantee your boss will be nothing more than a gooey stain on the street. You understand?”
He nodded, let the Furlorians gather around him, and then led them inside the building without a word of protest. Once they were gone, Taj glanced over at the pirates huddled against the wall. She knew she needed to do something about them, but she couldn’t find it in herself to simply kill them, no matter how much of a threat they were.
Still, if the one they sent inside managed to bring out reinforcements, the last thing she needed was a bunch of angry pirates sitting nearby. Their presence could turn the tides on what had been a surprisingly successful plan.
She moved over to the first in line and smashed her pistol grip into the back of the man’s skull. He grunted and slumped unconscious. Taj returned her gun to the boss’s ribs, calling out to her people. “Knock the rest of them out.”
Her people did as they were told with no hint of dissatisfaction. They clearly enjoyed the opportunity, and Taj couldn’t blame them one bit.
Within a few moments, all the disarmed pirates were unconscious on the ground.
Not a minute after that, the pirate Taj had sent inside returned with his entourage in tow, Dent following along behind the group. His mechanoid eyes widened even further than possible when he saw Taj and the other Furlorians standing there, the pirate boss subdued.
“Interesting outcome,” he said, nodding in what Taj believed was approval. “I-I had not expected…this.” He twitched in time to his words, one eye fluttering and growing dimmer than the other.
It was clear he’d been through an ordeal in the time since they’d lost him to the pirates. He ambled slowly, even more awkwardly than before, swaying as if he struggled to keep his balance. His shoulders were slumped, and he appeared to have developed a hunched back, as if his servos were incapable of holding him upright.
“Neither did I,” Cabe replied before smacking the last standing pirate in the head with his gun. The man crumpled to the ground. “We should get going,” he told Taj. “I doubt the Ovrun security forces have much traction in these parts, but you never know.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” she told him, tearing her eyes from Dent’s battered appearance.
She then waved her people back toward the Discordant. They started off in a shuffle, surrounding Rath to keep it from being so obvious they were dragging along a bound man.
They might well get away with roaming the streets with weapons brandished, but there was no way someone wouldn’t report the hostage in their midst if he was spotted.
It was even more likely if the man were recognized.
Dent matched his pace to Taj’s, walking alongside her. He stared at the pirate boss as if analyzing the man. The boss stared back without blinking, appearing even more mechanical and cold than Dent ever could.
“All this fuss over you?” Rath asked, shaking his head. “It’s a shame you dragged these innocent souls down with you. They’re going to suffer for helping you, mechanoid.”
Dent seemed genuinely concerned by the threat, his alien features narrowing into a look of uncertainty. “I did not mean to involve them,” he said, “but be certain, I will do everything I can to ensure their bisque.”
Rath stared at Dent a moment, then burst into laughter. Sharp, slicing laughter.
Dent appeared offended.
“I’d heard you were a bit…damaged, but I hadn’t realized the extent, mechanoid. You should really surrender and let me free that information from your skull before it erodes to the point of being useless to everyone,” the pirate boss told Dent. “You’re no good to your people if your data is all muddled. In fact, you’re a threat to their survival. You could be the very reason they no longer exist. Do you want that burden on your mechanical shoulders?”
Dent stumbled at Rath’s words, his face pinched with distress. Taj slowed to stay right there with him. She wished she had a free hand to comfort him with. He looked like he could use it.
“Don’t listen to him. He’s only trying to get into your head, Dent,” she told the mechanoid.
“Quite literally,” Rath replied with a chortle. He looked about, casting his gaze over his shoulder to Taj. “You are truly in this deep, and you don’t even know it.” He shook his head, sighing like a disappointed parent. “What this `droid carries in his skull is worth more than the lives of all of your people combined, and my associates won’t hesitate to kill you to get their hands on it.”
“No one asked you, Rath,” Taj said with a growl. “Keep your mouth shut or I’ll have you gagged.”
He shrugged. “Gag me, shoot me, whatever. It won�
�t change anything. I’m only good as leverage for a short time, and then everything changes, and there’s nothing you or anyone else can do about it.”
“Then I best take advantage of the time I have, right?” She smacked him upside the head with her gun, drawing a pained grunt from the pirate boss. He glared at her, but she ignored him, not wanting to be drawn further in. “Let’s go, people, we’re on the clock. Back to the ship.”
She didn’t know exactly how honest Rath was being with his threats, but she didn’t like the idea that there might be more to the kidnapping of Dent than she understood. Not that she understood much more than there was money to be made by controlling Dent.
Rath had said associates in his tirade, which didn’t make her think he meant his men, the cluster of pirates he surrounded himself with. Given the haughty way he carried himself, she couldn’t see him considering his soldiers as anything near equal.
That meant someone else was out there searching for Dent and Rath was only a pawn in that. It also meant that target would land square on her crew’s back if they were still around when that someone came looking.
She growled, wondering how much more trouble she’d gotten her people into, all the while wondering how she was going to get them out of it.
Chapter Fifteen
Moments before they reached the Discordant, Cabe, who was leading the way, spun around and grabbed Taj. He yanked her and the pirate boss back into the shadows of a nearby pleasure craft and slapped his hand over Rath’s mouth to keep the man quiet.
A quick-witted Furlorian tore a thick strip off his shirt and handed it to Cabe, who then gagged the pirate boss. To his credit, Rath grinned through it all as best he could, not appearing to show any signs of discomfort or frustration.
The coldness of his stare was unnerving, so she peeled her eyes away, looking to Cabe
“What is it?” Taj asked him.
Cabe passed control of the boss to the Furlorian who’d offered up his shirt, and he waved Taj over, leading her to the base of the pleasure ship’s raised landing berth. Taj glanced around the corner and bit back a snarl. Torbon joined them a moment later.
Taj heard him muffle a gasp behind them.
“You have got to be yanking my tail,” Taj groaned.
Much like how they’d found the mass of Wyyvans earlier, a milling group of pirates stood near the Discordant. A quick count told her there were almost thirty of them, all armed and clearly waiting for them, ready for action.
“How did they know what we did so quickly?” Taj asked, racking her brain, and then it hit her. “Bloody Rowl,” she cursed. She thought back and growled low in her throat. “Doran,” she said. “He wasn’t among the pirates we lured out of the building. He must have slipped away in the chaos.”
She spun around and called over the group of Furlorians who’d gone inside. “Was there anyone else inside the building where you retrieved the mechanoid?”
They all shook their heads, and Taj raised her face to the sky, snarling. “Rowl giveth and Rowl taketh,” she muttered.
“Mostly taketh,” Torbon replied with a shrug.
“Doran must have realized things weren’t working out in his favor and fled, letting the rest of his men know what was going on once he was clear.” She gestured toward the mass of pirates around the Discordant. “They’re making it so we can’t get to our ship. They know we have their boss.”
“Why can’t we use him to push past?” Cabe asked. “I’m sure he’d make a good shield. Isn’t that what you wanted him for anyway?”
“There’s too many of them,” Taj replied. “Plus, we don’t have any idea if that’s all of them. There could be more hidden about where we can’t see. If we march in there, there’s a good chance we can’t control all of them, and they’ll end up getting their boss back. If that happens, we’re dead.”
Cabe nodded his acceptance of her reasoning, though it was clear he didn’t quite agree. Taj understood. They were too close to getting off planet, and now they were stuck once again, facing off with a large, dangerous force that had settled in beneath their ship to wait them out.
Worse still, the pirates were smarter than the Wyyvan soldiers who’d come calling. They didn’t mass at the end of the gangplank, waiting to be shot by emerging forces. No, they surrounded the craft and stayed out of easy fire lines. If anyone came out of the ship, it would be them in danger, not the pirates.
These men were well-trained.
“So, what do we do?” Cabe asked. “It’s not like we can sit around here waiting. The longer we do that, the more likely more pirates will show up and pin us between them, then we’re truly gacked.”
Taj agreed and tapped her comm, not remotely surprised to find the signal blocked again. She stared at the ship, wondering if her people inside had any clue of what was going on outside.
She hoped not, since she didn’t want to put any of them at risk, but she knew better. Lina had been tracking Dent, and she was sure the engineer was still doing it. She’d know he was outside.
Then it clicked in Taj’s head that Lina wouldn’t necessarily know the pirates were out there, too, only that Dent was. Now that he’d stopped moving, Lina might question why and come out looking for them.
Taj glared at the Discordant’s entryway and willed Lina to be smart and not reckless. The last thing they needed was her or any of the others coming outside and exposing themselves to being captured or killed. That’d seriously gack all the effort that went into the capture of Rath.
“We need to move,” she told the crew, shaking her head all the while. “Need to draw these pirates out, give our people a chance to react.” This wasn’t what she wanted to do, putting them all at risk, again, but she had to hope that making a commotion would ensure things played out in a way that Taj could control, at least to some small degree.
She growled and stepped around the landing berth, ready to call out to the pirates and draw their ire. Then she froze, the words clinging to her tongue.
Torbon bumped into her from behind. “What the gack, Taj?” Then he too stiffened in place, and Cabe glanced over their shoulders to see what had so stunned the pair.
“You have got to be gacking me,” he mumbled, pushing past them so he was stationed in front of them.
Taj continued to stare.
The pirates, suddenly aware something was going on, gathered and moved across the tarmac with purpose, weapons leveled.
Fortunately for Taj, that particular purpose didn’t involve her or her people.
There, on the far side of the Discordant, two squads of Wyyvan soldiers marched forward, headed directly toward the stolen leech craft and the mass of pirates surrounding it.
“Seriously, which one of you pissed Rowl off?” Torbon whispered.
Taj wondered the same thing.
It was one thing to have to face down an army of pirates, but now they had another army of Wyyvans to contend with at the same time. This was about as difficult a circumstance as Taj could imagine right then.
“Gack me,” Taj muttered and turned around, running her hand through her fur in hopes of spurring some sort of plan…any sort of plan.
Rath grinned at her through his gag, his amusement gleaming in his eyes. He was loving every moment of her frustration, even if he didn’t know exactly what was going on.
She wanted to give him a taste of the same violence she’d visited upon Vort. Her fist clenched in response to her fury.
Taj looked away, unwilling to face the pirate boss. Smashing her fist into his face wouldn’t do anything to help them no matter how good it would make her feel.
Dent wandered over to her side and peeked around the corner, apparently needing to see what the commotion was all about.
“That looks qu-quite unfortunate,” he said. “It seems my quest is dooooooomed.”
Taj sneered at the mechanoid. “Is that all you care about?” she asked. “Your quest?” Taj shook her head. “Your people are already dead, Dent. Dead and gone. Ye
t my people, those who risked their lives to save you, are in danger. They’re still alive, but they might not be much longer if this mess is any indication of our future.” She stabbed a thumb behind her, gesturing to the mass of soldiers from two armies looking to kill them all.
Dent stiffened, meeting her furious gaze, then he offered up a shallow nod. “You’re right. This…this…this is all my fault, and I will rectify it.”
Before Taj could say anything more, the mechanoid started off around the berth. He raised a hand, looking to get the attention of the massed soldiers on the other side while they faced off. As he made ready to shout, Taj ran up behind him and clapped a hand over his mouth, dragging him back behind the berth.
It was like lugging a boulder.
Dent mumbled into her palm, raising his hands in argument. Taj growled in his face, shutting him up.
“I’m not gonna let you surrender so you can feel better about this,” she told him. Or so I can pass the blame.
She sighed and let him go.
“Whatever we’re gonna do, we better do it quickly,” Torbon told her from his post near the edge of the berth. “Looks like both groups are calling in reinforcements. I can see the pirates hitting comms. Looks like the Wyyvans are following suit.”
Taj came over to where Torbon stood and glanced around the berth. The two groups of soldiers argued back and forth, each one claiming the right to the Discordant and the people aboard. Every second that passed seemed to escalate the demands from both sides.
And that was when Taj saw an opportunity.
She spun around and waved to her people. “Stay here and keep an eye on Dent. Don’t let him wander off.” Then she was gone, darting off toward the far side of the berth, hunkering low and running toward the back of the pleasure craft.
Cabe and Torbon watched her go, clearly caught off guard by her sudden flight since they didn’t run after her, and they disappeared behind her as she circled the far end of the pleasure ship. There, at the opposite berth stand, she edged around the corner and caught her breath, thinking about how she’d ended up there, preparing to do what she was planning.
