by Mima
Her body hummed and tingled, the sensation better than any cliff dive. Danger lay in both directions, but there was no doubt the righteous way seemed much more deadly. Was she going to try to double cross the captain and clean up this rotten apple? Or was she going to go the much easier route, keep her mouth shut about things that were none of her business, and join the crowd Darnell had himself chosen?
Abadom was big and black as pitch. He lifted himself from his seat at the other side of the room. “Go sit down, you drunk frog.”
“Non! I want the little bird. She ish speciale.” François surged forward, and the darker guard stepped up to meet him, shoving him hard.
“He’s just a drunk. Leave him be.” Abadom stalked toward François, pulling him upright.
Becca watched the fight unfold, astonished that the drifters with shaky backgrounds she’d hired were performing as smoothly as real soldiers.
The guards postured and threatened, the bar customers stirred as if angered by outsiders. The guards got angrier as they grew more nervous. Juan reached under the counter and released the sizzle net’s straps. It draped across his legs, glistening with fiberline.
Becca’s heart pumped hard. She stared at the tiny scrap of net she could see on Juan’s thigh. No matter what choices she made in life, the translucent fiberline seemed to follow her. Another Becca might be thigh-deep in the stuff as she built power grids into deep-space cargo ships.
The fight escalated into punching, and then Becca’s men pulled their knives. Becca held her breath. This was the moment. The guards would step forward and engage. Her men would sweep in behind, cutting the girl off from them. Mindy cried out, cowering in the corner. Becca’s view was wiped out as the guards kicked the table onto its edge, slid it behind them, and arrayed themselves in front of it as a human wall. They took almost the same stance. One leg forward, hands held loosely up from their hips, knees bent. People were going to get hurt. She’d so wanted no death.
Becca’s heart thundered. She tapped her plax-page with shaking fingers and summoned the backup team she’d hoped to never need. Juan wrinkled his brows at her, no doubt thinking she was just fearful. She wasn’t so much fearful as she was certain these guards would win. Decisively.
Sam, the surly waitress, stomped back behind the bar, folding her meaty arms next to petite Li, who had pulled his own knife. Becca eased off her stool and went to stand beside Sam, near the wall. It looked like she was removing herself from the fight, but she was really waiting for an opportunity to run in and get the girl.
The fight broke out in earnest. Becca sucked air like a fish out of water. It was ugly, full of grunting. The doors broke open again and her second team swarmed in. Mindy screamed again and her guards pulled their knives. They were long and shiny, with curved edges that made Becca shudder.
The mob of a dozen men pressed forward, the guards falling back to stand shoulder to shoulder, their bodies sealing off the corner. One guard fell and the remaining three pressed back even farther, still holding their line. There were more bodies on the floor, the fight so concentrated that some of her team actually stood on their fallen mates.
Juan dashed forward, stepped up onto a single chair in the middle of the floor, and leaped, flinging his arm wide. The guards looked up in unison. The outer pair knelt with deadly grace, leaving the center guard to jump up and grab the net that was meant to clear his head. The jump extended his body, leaving him open to the blades of her team.
Becca gasped at the beauty of the sacrifice. The man fell, twitching, bear-hugging Abadom to fall under the net’s neural sizzle with him. The pair of guards left hadn’t stopped fighting and now one of them grabbed Mindy from behind her barricade and raced through the path he’d opened along the wall. The other took on the remaining crowd, spinning and kicking, now making it clear that his limited mobility before had been a choice, not the skill of the crowd.
Juan and Zeke attacked the fleeing guard, trying to pull Mindy from him. Her wings flared and thrashed as Juan yanked on her. The guard turned toward the wall, kicked out, used it as leverage to spin up, and brought his straightened leg down in a spin kick that took out Juan like an axe. Zeke fell, staggering up again, but Juan stayed down.
The guard and Mindy raced for the back rooms, which were down a hall with a back door, a bathroom, an office, and a storeroom. Li suddenly came alive, screaming in Chinese, and dashed after him, but Zeke returned to the fight in the corner. Sam moaned. Becca glanced at her, but she just stared at the ongoing carnage in the corner, her work-roughened hands to her mouth. The scent of blood filled the air. This wasn’t how Becca had envisioned it. The chill that had encased her shattered with a fiery tsunami of rage.
Becca stomped behind the bar and thrust her arm into the ice chest. She hauled out her hidden gasmask and put it on, then triggered the damn gas. With a pop, the gas started to ooze from the vent in a hazy fog. Sam traced Becca’s gaze and saw it, looked at her with death in her eyes, then dove under the counter and rummaged in a box. When she stood, she had one gas mask on her elbow and was already fixing the other on her face.
A howl pulled Becca’s attention to the hall. The guard who had taken Mindy was also looking at her with death in his silver eyes. Li oozed down the wall to curl into a ball at his feet, clutching his stomach. Red dribbled in ruby tendrils across the dirty floor. The man turned and stormed into the storeroom.
Becca looked back at the carnage in the corner. The fight was over. Two of her men still stood. One leaned against the wall, his face swollen and bloody to the point that it took her a minute to recognize Zeke, and Chakandraman sagged into a chair, clutching his thigh. Sam hustled out and wrapped the gasmask on Chak. Returning to her barstool, Becca unstrapped her extra gasmask and handed it to Zeke. It was going to hurt like a sonofabitch on his damaged face. He spit onto the floor before putting it on, and Becca thought she saw a tooth.
The moans of the wounded on the floor faded out as the triton gas did its work. Her anger powered her with energy, and everywhere she looked, she seemed to see with exacting clarity.
Unbelievably, a bellow came from the hallway. She looked up. The guard stormed toward them, a homemade contraption of tape and a bag over his lower face. Chak drew an old exploder revolver and shot him in the head. He went down with a thunk.
Silence filled the room.
“You’re all ridiculous bullies.” Becca spat the words into the line of rumpies like a spray of laser fire. “I hate you and your precious tails.” Her arms started to shake with the force of her grip on the tray. “I don’t know what lies Gage told you about me, but he’s an asshole. He’s the one who kissed me, he’s the one who turned me down, and he’s the one who got angry when I asked to be with him!”
There was general silence from in front of her, but from behind her, a male voice shouted, “Fur-whore!”
She whirled, and the juice tumbled from her tray, spilling in a spray of red across the floor. “Fuck you!” She screamed it with all the air in her body and the whole mess hall fell silent.
Spinning back to the window, she took her tray and, with one gut-driven cry, swept all the dinner plates off the conveyor to the floor. “I hate this ship!”
Roscoe growled and reached for her tray, but she swirled it in the air and bashed his hands with it. “Leave me alone!”
The hissing blonde leaped through the window to land beside Becca and shoved her so hard she flailed back in a series of pinwheeling steps.
“Ahhh!” Becca staggered and dropped her tray.
“You keep your Lord-fucked hands to your own skinny ass!” one of the men roared from the first tables. He stood and threw his tray, food and all, at the blonde.
Snarling, she batted it away. “You dare attack me?”
From there, the rumpies sleeked through the kitchen window, and half the mess hall ran for the exit while the other half rushed forward. Becca was j
ostled by people pushing past her, and then one of the rumpies, a teenager by the looks of him, was in front of her.
Growling, he swung his fist into her stomach while she stood there with her mouth open. The pain astonished her as much as their contempt had. She bent, unable to breathe. Still buckled in half, she finally sucked in one thin wheeze, absolutely horrified someone had hit her.
“Bone bitch,” the boy snapped in her ear. “I’m gonna rip your hair out.”
Staggering forward, Becca wrapped her arms around his skinny torso and threw her weight around and down, spinning them both to the floor, which was strewn with food being kicked by dozens of milling feet. His teeth grazed her shoulder and she head-butted him. He howled and she wrapped her hand in his own long hair and yanked with all her might.
“I!” She slammed his head into the floor. “Didn’t!” She whacked him in the face with her other hand as hard as she could. Pain ricocheted all the way up to her shoulder. “Deserve!” She leaned into his face and screamed at him. “This!”
Pushing up from his writhing body, she threw herself into the melee.
“Becca Sharpin, stand for your sentence.” The bushy-white-haired judge sounded like he hadn’t calmed down from the righteous anger he’d worked up to during the testimony.
She stood from the cold metal bench. They were at London Moon, the first port on the Cider Pot’s course. Remembering how she’d dreamed of wandering the port shops and seeing new sites on her first venture, she fought back tears. Sitting in the brig for the past week and then spending three days in the jail here were not how she’d planned her first moon visit.
Her parents were in the front row, suffering, and the media lined the side wall, delighted about the shadow she now cast on her brother.
“Ms. Sharpin, you are charged with fomenting a racial riot. You are charged with eight counts of aggravated bigotry, assault, and libel.” The judge looked up from his plax-page and stared at her with fire in his eyes. “And it is my pleasure to hereby sentence you to thirty days forced work, race-sensitivity training, and one hundred hours community service. The damages you owe the Cider Pot total 3,450 creds, and the personal damages you owe the plaintiffs total fifty-six thousand credits.” He picked up a two-sided mallet and banged it down, sounding a low krong that rang in her skull. “Sentence complete.”
Becca bowed her head and listened to her mother cry.
OOPSY. You have found the ending called Temper, Temper. Click on this link to return to the Choice Index. Dare to decide again!
She couldn’t go through with it. She’d have to risk her team’s wrath by taking them down right away. By the time she got to her brother, she’d already have been dragged into looking guilty.
“Go ahead, Joe.” She nodded to him and he drove the loader onto London Moon’s starkly bright warehouse ramp.
Head held high, she walked past the customs agents, who pointedly stared at the ceiling while all three loaders passed by. Feor, last in line, stopped to close the cargo bay doors. When they arrived at the end of the short hall, they were in a large warehouse about the size of the Pot’s large bay. The moon’s workers swarmed the loaders to take off the crates. She walked up to the manager.
He looked distracted, tapping on his own plax-page and barely glancing at her. “Cider Pot overseer? You have your manifest?”
She handed him both plax-pages. “You have to help me. I’ve been trapped by Captain Fesner into serving a smuggling operation.”
The man’s head jerked up, his brown eyes huge with surprise.
She rushed on. “There are two manifests here, and you’ll find unregistered cargo deliveries that haven’t cleared customs. All three of the cargo team here are involved.”
He snatched both plax-pages from her and bent over them.
She felt dizzy to have rid herself of this burden. But no sooner had she heaved a sigh of relief than a woman pushing a solar-wiper nearby shrieked, “Baby’s been dropped!”
Becca stared in shock as the woman pulled out a laser knife. There was one moment where Becca caught sight of her shoulder badge. It read WAREHOUSE: JOLENE.
She dove to the side as the woman thrust the deadly meter-long blade straight out. Her teeth jammed together with the force of her fall. The stationmaster went urp and fell to the ground, mouth spurting blood. Jolene dove for the two plax-pages and scooped them up. She whirled on Becca, red laser knife flickering.
Bolt-fire lit up the warehouse, a crisscross of blue beams. Men shouted. She recognized Cal’s voice cursing in one long stream, but then had to roll from Jolene’s slash.
Heat sizzled past her shoulder. “Help!” Rolling back the way she came, Becca scrambled, trying to kick out at the woman.
A bolt zapped Jolene in the arm, and a bloom of blood spread across her tan flight suit. She fell, screaming, the laser knife winking out and rolling across the floor. Becca scuttled forward and grabbed it.
A boot took her in the gut, a blast of white pain. It lifted her clear off the floor and spun her over onto her back. She was shocked to see Feor flash past. He snarled, his triangular, deadly teeth gleaming. He dove for her and she triggered the laser knife. Her arm jarred beneath his weight, wrist twisting in a lash of agony. Hot liquid poured over her hand. His body slumped to the side, while his legs fell heavily across hers. Gagging, moaning, struggling to breathe, she flailed to get him off. Blood pooled everywhere. Was slink blood even red? Was it hers?
Dragging herself over to the thin cover of a crate, Becca noticed the crisscross of laser fire had slowed. She watched as Cal shot two security guards in quick succession. Then he got caught by a bolt, flew backward to the floor, and lay still.
Everything was quiet except for her choking breaths and several whimpering sobs of pain from around the warehouse. Jolene grunted and rocked, clearly in agony, her hand clamped to her wounded arm. Surprised she still held it, Becca turned the laser knife off. Her fingers slid in the thick blood coating the handle. Shuddering with shock, she doubled over and puked. How many deaths had she just been responsible for? The exit doors to London Moon’s main hall burst open and a swarm of security poured in.
Six hours later Becca learned she was one of three survivors of a firefight that had begun with sixteen people. She had three cracked ribs, several stunning bruises, and a burning desire to focus on nothing more than ship systems for as long as she lived.
The media briefly picked up the story of the junior admiral’s little sister breaking up a smuggling operation in a dramatic firefight. Rex called to chew her out and invite her once again into the navy. She considered it for five minutes instead of one this time, but returned home to look for a new internship.
HIP-HIP HOORAY! You have found the ending called Back to the Straight and Narrow. Click on this link to return to the Choice Index. Dare to decide again!
“Can you take them?” Becca asked, heart pounding. “I want them to hurt, but I’m not good at this.”
Gage grinned. “Kitten. Just watch.” He dove forward in a leap that turned into a roll when the big guy took a step forward and swung at him in a huge miss.
Becca stepped back, frightened, frantically thinking of where the nearest safety box was to call for help. The men were standing in front of it. She’d have to run around the corner, then down a long hall to get to another one.
The brown-skinned man stepped forward and kicked at Gage. He ducked back and blocked the man’s shin with crossed arms, thrusting down so violently the man toppled to the side. Spinning, Gage gut hit the treetop with a straight-leg kick. Becca gasped as the man wheezed and tipped over against the wall. With incredibly elegant speed, Gage had knocked two of them down. They weren’t unconscious, however, and she eyed the gauntlet she’d have to run to get to the box that would bring help.
The muscular man now stood between her and Gage. Whirling to face her lover, he howled and pulled a k
nife. Gage danced back, shock stretching his face. Becca glanced again at the man and saw it wasn’t a knife but a heat pistol, a highly illegal weapon that could kill everyone on this level if a stray shot pierced the hull. The man crouched, stretching his arms out as he leveled it at Gage. Gage ran across the hall, leaping up the wall.
The man tracked him and Becca ran forward to do the only thing she could think of. She shoved him, hard, from behind. He stumbled. There was a flash of light, and the treetop listing against the opposite wall squeaked and crumpled to the floor, blood crisping the front of his flight suit.
Whirling, the man lashed out with his fist. Becca dodged, tripped, and went down, painfully twisting her ankle. Gage was on the man from behind, grabbing the hand holding the pistol and sinking his teeth deep into his forearm. The man screamed, struggled, and dropped the pistol. Becca scrambled into their thrashing feet, her mind full of horror that one stomp could set it off.
She scooped it up and scuttled past them. The man was still hoarsely screaming and Gage was shouting. Thuds were exchanged. She winced, focusing on holding the gun carefully. She had no idea how it fired.
She came up short when faced with the brown-skinned man on his knees, but he shook his head, his mouth hanging open. “I didn’t know about any pistol!”
Gasping, she lurched to the security box and triggered it. Light flooded the area, and the vid whirled into recording. “We need help!” she shouted into the mic.
Gage and the muscled man continued to exchange vicious jabs and head-butts, each of them using his weight to fling the other up and around. After endless minutes, two men in black security flight suits arrived and broke them apart.
It took Becca several moments of shouting for them to understand she had a heat pistol. Then it took more frantic explanations for them to realize she didn’t want it and it wasn’t hers.
