Silky came to stand beside me. “What the big lunk said,” she told the Tail in a menacing whisper. “Anyone messes with him, they answer to me.”
The Tail gaped with his mouth. “Noble sentiments,” he said, “but not tempered by grace, diplomacy, or much evidence of cognitive capacity. You would bring dishonor to us and your presence here is a disgrace. Leave, immediately!”
“We’ve nowhere to go,” I told the Littorane. “Seems like you’ve maneuvered us just where you want us – into a fight. Where is the honor in such manipulation, Tail of the K’Teene? If you wanted a fight, you only had to ask.”
The Littorane slowly pivoted his torso to bring his face up close and personal to mine. I expected his breath to taste of fish, but it smelled like butter. Maybe my taste was still thrown by that tea.
Silky intervened. “My human friend often speaks in riddles that make little sense to elder races such as ours. Let me restate his words so there can be no unfortunate misunderstandings. Speak one more threat or insult, you ugly fish head, and he’ll rip your tail off and shove it up your cloaca.”
The Tail acted surprised at Silky’s venom, but when she gave him a psychic blast of predator threat for good measure, he flinched and then… and then he walked away!
I couldn’t believe we’d faced down the embodiment of Littorane martial spirit so easily. Maybe his insults had been some kind of a test: to see how easily we could be cowed?
A smooth-scaled Littorane in the white of Schaek’s faction approached me on all fours with head down low. It tentatively curled its tail in my direction, touching my hand with its tip. I gripped it and shook it like a loose handshake.
“I welcome you, human K’Teene-Joshua Ndeki.” The translated voice was female. “I, Clesselwed, lead the most progressive faction of the young un-mated.”
She – assuming she really was a she – gave me a strange sideways look and began to gently bob her head. Probably she was screaming at me in scent language but all I noticed was the strip of skin between her nostrils changing from crusty yellow to lurid purple.
What’s going on? I tried to ask Silky telepathically, but I received only amusement in reply.
A crowd of relatively light-framed Littoranes joined Clesselwed, politely mobbing me. I guessed they were more of what Clesselwed had called young un-mateds. If the Littoranes had an equivalent of teenage rebellion, then I had probably just become their idol by standing up to their number one authority figure. Still, if two of the triumvirate had been impressed by us, and I was now the pinup hero of the young and trendy, Caccamo would be proud of his new inter-species liaison officer. More to the point, we had now won ourselves a base of operations to plan our next move.
You would think by then I had learned not to take the future for granted, even the next few seconds of the future. It always jinxes things.
Clesselwed’s group suddenly shuffled aside to allow the Tail to approach, flanked by two heavy-duty Littorane brutes.
“I underestimated you, K’Teene Joshua Ndeki. You have achieved your objective. I do not wish the situation but I embrace it.”
“Thank you, sir,” I told the ugly Littorane veck. “You are gracious.”
“Quite so.”
One of the heavies handed me a knife. “What’s this?” I asked, feeling stupid even as the words leaked out my mouth. Everyone backed away to form a ring around the courtyard. All bar the Tail who also had a blade, except his was twice as long as mine and viciously barbed.
The Tail hissed a challenge at me. “You may now attempt to rip my tail off and shove it wherever you will.”
I tested my weapon. The blade was flimsy, blunt, and looked brittle. This was not a fair fight. No matter, I always fought dirty whenever I could. Without telegraphing my intention by looking up at my opponent, I suddenly threw my knife underhand. I was aiming for Koelb-Ndo’s snout, but he was fast for a big thing and twisted aside. My blade embedded in his left thigh, the hilt snapping off as I expected it would. If my weapon had been sound, I would have rushed him at the same time as my knife strike. But this was an uneven fight and I wanted him overconfident to even things up.
“Relax, human,” the Littorane told me. “I invite you to rip off my tail, but I do not threaten you similarly.”
“You mean this isn’t a fight to the death?”
“Human, I mean I shall not cut off your extremities and force them down your throat. I shall merely sever your head from your torso. It is, I suspect, the fastest way to cease your irritating babbling.”
Before he’d finished speaking, he charged me.
If anyone tells you Littoranes are lumbering beasts out of water, give them a sharp kick in the shins and tell them to shut the frakk up.
The Tail came at me faster than anyone I’d seen in my life.
— CHAPTER 38 —
I feinted right, then dodged left, getting down low and kicking up with my right leg to trip up the big Littorane. I kicked his front right leg all right, but sweeping legs isn’t easy when you face quadrupeds with legs slung low like a lizard. Koelb-Ndo caught my leg in his and dragged me along, trying to rip my leg from its socket. I managed to roll away to the side, and although I hadn’t left my leg behind on the courtyard floor, it still hurt like hell.
From the stance of a big, fat lizard, the Littorane pivoted the upper half of its body into centaur mode so he could slice down at me with his serrated sword.
I ducked, and then ducked again on the reverse strike. Koelb-Ndo wasn’t kidding when he said he wanted to decapitate me. As he recovered, I boxed his snout with a flurry of rabbit punches. I could tell they were hurting him, but he sucked up the pain and stood his ground while readying his next sword swing. With his sword arm high behind his head, aiming the weapon’s point at my throat, Koelb-Ndo hesitated.
Not one to waste an opportunity, I took a risk and swung a furious uppercut that smacked his lower jaw plate into the top of his mouth.
The sword strike didn’t come. Instead, a giant hand seemed to punch me in the side of my ribs and sent me sailing across the courtyard. I fought to suck in air. I had to fight even to know where the frakk I was as I tumbled across the arena and into the deep well of water.
Everything hurt. I couldn’t breathe. I was drowning.
A little sense returned to my head and I broke the surface of the water, gasping air into my burning lungs. Terror seized me. Out in the air I had a chance, but in the water I would be helpless against the amphibian. But as I reached the edge of the pool, I saw the Tail of the K’Teene watching with crossed arms, as if waiting for me to hurry up and take my killing. Its heavy tail was as long as its torso and head, and probably as heavy too. It gave little flicks, impatient to batter this upstart human. There was no doubt in my mind that while my attention had been on Koelb-Ndo’s sword, the amphibian had hit me with his principal melee weapon.
I shook off my white ritual robe, heavy with water, and ready to betray its human wearer with the many opportunities it offered my opponent for grappling holds. I took a moment to lick my wounds.
The Littoranes in the crowd watched my every breath and movement. Clesselwed the awestruck teenager, stood beside Silky who watched with clenched fists and kesah-kihisia flushing lilac. I could tell by the tension in her stance that she knew the two heavies who had flanked Koelb-Ndo now loomed behind her, ready to stop her intervening.
“Don’t worry,” I gasped at Silky, “I’ll finish this in time for dinner.”
Koelb-Ndo must’ve decided he’d given me enough of a breather because he came charging at me in full-on dragon mode, springing up at the last moment. I think he intended to grab my thigh in his jaws but I twisted away and slammed my boot against his tail, striking about four-fifths along its length and catching it against the sharp edge where the courtyard dropped down to the pool. I felt tail vertebrae snap. Then the big Littorane hit the water, unleashing a spray of water ten feet into the air.
“Diving underwater to escape won’t save you,
” I taunted as loudly as I could to the crowed, although I couldn’t manage much more than a stretched whisper. “You need to come out here and fight.”
Koelb-Ndo emerged from the water far more efficiently and elegantly than I had. In a smooth motion he was out and at me in a blizzard of tail flicks, sword swipes and lunges.
I ducked, parried and rolled, landing punches and kicks wherever I could, but not nearly enough. None of the alien’s attacks connected fully, but I was picking up bruises and cuts. If this was to be a fight of attrition, it was one I was losing fast.
I could feel myself slow, but neither of us were young and fighting exhausts even seasoned warriors. A natural lull broke out while we got our breath back, each of us pacing a safe distance from the other, watching warily.
The Littorane was favoring his right leg, the tip of my blade still embedded in his left, but I was hurting everywhere now. I needed to change the rules of this game and quickly.
Now! Attack! Now! Attack!
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” I replied in a whisper to Silky’s telepathic message.
I did as she asked and launched myself at Koelb-Ndo, throwing everything into this assault. Naturally, Koelb-Ndo saw me coming and reared up, a rampant reptile with sword back and pointed at my chest.
I was heading for a head chopping, but trusted my safety to my wife.
I felt the wash of the telepathic broadcast she aimed at the Littorane. Silky could elicit simple reactions, an evolved ability meant to confuse prey just before a Kurlei struck. The emotion she was building in Koelb-Ndo was one of hot-blooded passion. She was urging him on to violence. Was this the moment she switched sides, willing the Littorane to kill the encumbrance of her human husband?
No doubts now, lad, said the Sarge in my head.
He was right. If my belief in Silky was brittle, my trust in the Sarge had never wavered – well, except for that one time in the ship’s hold, and look how that had turned out.
I cast away every iota of doubt, and closed the last two steps to my opponent.
All of a sudden, Koelb-Ndo looked disturbed, his head jerking to one side.
I feinted left. The big Littorane may have been put off, but he was not that distracted. He flicked the blade at my neck. Not a full-on head severing, but hard enough to chop out my gullet. I ducked beneath his swing, put my weight down on my right foot and sprang, arms outstretched, at the alien’s throat.
I grabbed his neck in a choke hold and tried to throw him over. My bulk proved too much for him. His right leg snapped as we fell to the ground, each of us twisting, writhing, kicking as we desperately sought to pin the other down beneath our weight. I was a big Marine, but the Littorane was bulkier. His broken leg would have evened the grappling match except for one thing: I was angrier. I was furious at the mayor for one thing. I was angry too at the way Silky joked I was an idiot a little too often. Above all, I seared with the injustice that after centuries of service to the Corps and then the Legion, I’d been dumped here on this dirtball poor, corrupt mess of a planet and then forgotten. Koelb-Ndo was the focus of all that bubbling rage that I’d never released.
Well I was letting it out now. The poor Tail of the K’Teene just had the misfortune to get in the way.
The grappling contest wasn’t even close. With a triumphant primal scream I twisted over and pinned him down.
He raked my right leg with the claws in his left, but I didn’t release my hold on his neck. His tail flicked over and lashed at my spine. I only tightened my hold. If I loosened it, I knew I would die.
His thrashing grew stronger and my hold began to slip. I daren’t look at my leg because I knew it was a mess of flesh ribbons gushing blood. I tried to thrust the alien down because if he dug his claws in a little higher up and deeper, he would sever an artery and it would all be over. I had lost the feeling in my damaged leg, but my arms felt all I needed to know: Koelb-Ndo’s labored breathing giving up its struggle and yielding to slow suffocation. His tail stopped thrashing and his body stilled.
Koelb-Ndo threw his sword away. I watched it clatter along the arena floor.
It had been just me and the alien in a close-up fight to the death. I had forgotten the crowd until a ripple of hissing erupted, but they kept in position, marking out the makeshift arena.
I tightened my grip on Koelb-Ndo’s throat. I was close to passing out myself but I didn’t trust the Littorane. Maybe by throwing away his sword, he had just conceded the fight, or maybe this was a ruse, a last chance to show off to the crowd how the clever Littorane could defeat the dumb human.
“That was magnificent,” said a female computer-translated voice by my left ear. I looked up and saw it was a young Littorane dressed in the white robe of Schaek’s faction. I guessed it was Clesselwed. “You can let him go now,” she said. “You have vanquished the elder.”
I held on for another half second but my strength was gone anyway. I released my grip and rolled away onto my back, fighting to cling to consciousness.
“You fight well, human,” said Koelb-Ndo. I could hear his choking gargling voice, but the computer translation ignored its user’s distress. “More importantly, you fought dirty. I do not like your smell, but I accept you two could form a valuable new branch of the family. Distasteful, and an embarrassment I would not wish to speak of in public, but nonetheless valuable.”
“You fought well too, Koelb-Ndo. I hope we never fight again, but if we do, I’ll kill you.”
“Well said, K’Teene-Joshua. I too relish the chance for a rematch, but we have much to achieve together first.”
While Koelb-Ndo was carried away on a stretcher, Silky helped me to my feet. “Thank you,” I told her.
“For what?”
“For distracting Uncle Koelb-Ndo.”
She shook her head like a human. “I didn’t. Well, a little. It is Clesselwed you should thank.”
“I thank you for your support,” I said to the young Littorane who stood on all four limbs a little to Silky’s side. I bowed. She bowed back, which was wonderful, but I still wasn’t sure what the hell was going on here.
“The way you stood up to Koelb-Ndo, the Tail of the K’Teene, in defense of your mate and your family. It was such a powerful display, that I could not fail to be deeply moved.”
I felt a slap on my shoulder, and saw that Schaek was in upright mode congratulating me. “Come, K’Teene-Joshua Ndeki, put your weight on my shoulder and let me show you to your quarters before you are mobbed by your legion of young admirers.”
He led me indoors, but I wasn’t taking anything in. My leg was agony!
“What just happened?” I whispered to Silky.
Schaek stopped. Laughter trilled from his speaker. “Littorane gender relations are complex and very different to your own. In time, you must learn this aspect of our lives, but your effect on Clesselwed and many others is simple to explain. At your wife’s signal, and powered by the passion you stirred in her, Clesselwed made a sudden but compelling visual and scent display directed squarely at my honored colleague, the Tail.”
I frowned at Silky. “Does he mean like when César puffs out his chest and struts in front of Shahdi?”
“No,” she replied. “Stronger. Imagine police lieutenant Rachel Silverberg stripping nude and writhing her buttocks mere inches before your nose, while begging you to mount her.”
Crazy aliens! Why did they always think of me as a baboon on heat? “So you’re saying I’ve gotten a new girlfriend. Marvelous.”
Silky laughed.
“Not so,” said Schaek. “Not one new admirer, Ndeki. Dozens. Perhaps this amuses you, Sylk, but although Clesselwed has little formal authority, her influence within the clan is substantial and her attitude to you will be noticed by many.” He quivered his tail. “As was mine. Congratulations, I’m impressed by both of you. All I expected you to do was rise above Koelb-Ndo’s ritual taunts and all would have been well. Instead you provoked a fight to the death. You will be the talk of the
young un-mateds for years to come. Most important of all, was the Heart’s reaction. The triumvirate is not equal. I am the Head, Koelb-Ndo the Tail, but Lady Viraladunesh is the Heart who drives us all. Your singing displayed passion and your fight too. Nothing could have impressed her more.”
We ducked through a hatch and into a noticeably cleaner area. More sterile.
“Ah, welcome,” said a Littorane who seemed to be expecting us. More Littoranes fussed in the background.
I grunted something in reply.
“I’ll leave you in Doctor K’Teene-Luelmas Cisselc’s capable hands and tail. K’Teene-Joshua Sylk, follow me.”
Silky responded as if his tail had slapped her face. “Please, where do you take me?”
“To your quarters.”
“But–”
“Separate quarters, of course,” said Schaek firmly. “For now, at least.”
I stroked her kesah-kihisia tenderly. “I’ll be fine,” I said. I could tell she didn’t believe me – I didn’t believe myself – but I willed her to go so she wouldn’t see the full horror of my right leg. She had barely left the room before the Littorane medics had to grab me as I fell, dizzy from blood loss.
I looked at the strips of flesh and bloodied cloth on my leg, and hoped the Littoranes would hide us well. For the next few days, I wasn’t fleeing anywhere else.
— CHAPTER 39 —
Three days ago I had been fleeing for my life, wanted for the murder of Governor Lawless, the sworn enemy of the mayor, and having to sit down a lot because so much red stuff had leaked out of the mess that had been my right leg. Silky had to beg the Littorane medics not to amputate.
Whatever species you chose to describe me, people who normally walk around on two legs, and had lost the ability to extract oxygen from water, tended not to hang out with Littoranes. The K’Teene family compound was the perfect hideout, and being able to rest my leg meant it was nearly fit for duty.
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