Showdown on the Planet of the Slavers

by Helena Puumala

  “I think that there’s some question about that,” Kati replied evenly. “Someone I know sent me an ESP-feed to the effect that Chrush never paid for the lace crystal shard, and therefore has no right of possession.”

  “You got an ESP-feed?” Milla looked around her. “How? This place is blocked from mental rays, or whatever they are!”

  “The marvellous Milla is totally devoid of psychic powers,” sneered the Granda subvocally. “She doesn’t even know that the murk has flown the coop. Chrush must not have told her about that.”

  Kati shrugged. If Milla was mind-blind, she might be able to turn the fact into a small advantage for herself. Same with the fact that the farm workers accompanying Milla had apparently been told tales of a very dangerous woman, and had imagined themselves to have to face a well-armed amazon.

  “Yes,” subvocalized The Monk. “Maybe we can work some way to get out of this trap while we’re at it.”

  “Would you people like me to make some herbal tea for you?” she asked to gain time, more than to show off her hostessing skills. “I’m sorry that I don’t have any cookies to offer with it. I was baking some when Chrush attacked me with the knife he was making, and I had to defend myself with the hot cookie sheet, ruining both the sheet and the cookies in the process.”

  “Chrush attacked you with the knife he was fashioning?”

  Milla stared at her. The stunner dangled from her fingers. However, the farm workers were armed, too—hopefully with stunners only—so for the moment Kati merely made a note of the fact that Milla was not practised enough a gun-toter to not be affected by surprise.

  “Why would he come here to work on one of his knives when he knew that Gorsh was using this place to store his fancy woman?” she asked, more of herself than Kati.

  “Necessity, probably,” The Monk subvocalized. “Maybe he’s running short of knives. That could be why he called on Milla to come and fetch the unfinished one we took away from him. We’d probably be wise to keep it from him, if we can.”

  Milla, of course, was not aware of the Granda’s musings, and Kati was not about to enlighten her. She merely shrugged again.

  “You talking about that really creepy old man, Boss Lady?” one of the burly workers asked.

  At Milla’s nod he continued:

  “I saw his flit heading towards the city, a short while ago. He was flying crazy fast, as if he was being tailed by demons! I’d guess that he must have been leaving from here!”

  “Yeah, well,” Milla muttered. “We try to accommodate his needs since he does favours, sometimes, for my husband and myself. But as far as I know, he hasn’t made a lace crystal knife in years. It’s probably been more than a dozen years since he received his last shipment of the crystal, and that was after he’d gone around bragging that he and Judd would be going into the knife business big time. Supposedly he had helped Judd figure out how to obtain an unlimited supply of lace crystal, but the whole scheme fell through; to this day I don’t know why. Judd ended up going into the people business, instead, and he’s done pretty well with that, especially after he snagged the Lizard man to do his navigating.”

  “Did Chrush help him snag the Lizard man?” Kati asked, keeping her tone reflective of only slight curiosity.

  “No, I don’t think so. But he did tell Judd that the Lizard man would be able to navigate a space ship through time and vast expanses of space, and therefore would be a very useful creature for the people business. Chrush, being so old, you see, knows a lot of things that the rest of us haven’t had the chance to learn.”

  “So, something like me,” subvocalized The Monk.

  “Only with no controls on him, the way you have me keeping you at least slightly honest,” Kati mentally snapped back.

  She was starting to get the picture. The ancient coot with the unpleasant personality was the brains behind Gorsh’s enterprises. What price were Milla and Judd paying for his services? The question made Kati shudder; its answer would, without doubt, be one to make her stomach turn. She realized suddenly that she was going to have to take the old man’s libris with her as evidence. Or else download everything in it into her node for safekeeping. She shuddered again.

  “Are you cold, Miss?” the farm worker who had spoken asked solicitously, as he watched her shuddering. “There’s probably a jacket, or something, around here somewhere, that you could wrap around your shoulders. I understand that women, being smaller than us men, often feel the change in the weather, before we do. I usually tell my wife that there’s no need for her to suffer in the chill; clothes are for keeping people warm.”

  Kati directed a brilliant smile at him.

  “Thank you for your kind concern,” she said. “But I do think that I’ll be fine for now.”

  For Milla had directed her stunner at her again. But....

  “That worker won’t shoot you now,” subvocalized The Monk. “One won over, two to be dealt with, somehow or another.”

  The jini was still wrapped around Kati’s shoulders, invisible to the three other humans in the room. Suddenly Chrysalia’s whisper came through the jini, into Kati’s ear.

  “We’re getting close, Kati. There are three of us: Lank, a Waywardian law enforcer named Gerr, and me. Lank has a sonic cutter to use on the door, and Gerr has the authority to order Milla and her farm workers around. If you can stall for a bit longer, I’ll let you know when we land in the cabin yard. You can then let Milla have the knife—wrap it thoroughly first, though, so she won’t kill herself, or someone else, with it—and we’ll deal with her, and it. The farm workers won’t be a problem, I don’t think; they just want to go back to their work, not kill or maim people.”

  Xanthus Hsiss seemed to have left, probably to look after his body which would still have been in the Citadel cellar. Mikal must be on his way there, with another flyer, and a cohort of people frighteningly small, considering the resources Gorsh had. Presuming that people did take orders from him. If the citizens of Salamanka were, like the farm workers, just interested in getting on with their lives, they might not. Most people did not like to kill other people without a good cause. Now, crazies... that was another story, and they were dealing with at least one opponent who was clearly crazy—and on the loose.

  “You do have Chrush’s knife, Kati of Terra, don’t you?” Milla’s words were a demand more than a question, and her stunner was pointed directly at Kati’s head.

  If she let go a head shot, it would down Kati immediately, leaving her to wake up hours later with a nasty headache which even the Granda would have trouble easing. Kati was not quite sure why she hadn’t done so already, and then simply retrieved the lace crystal shard from the chair where Kati had placed it. Either she was afraid of the sharp knife, or of what her husband would do to her if she stunned her rival; whichever it was Kati was grateful for the circumstance that still had her physically well, and her mind (and node) operating.

  “Like I said, I don’t agree that the shard of lace crystal belongs to him,” Kati replied carefully. “By the way, how were you planning to take it to him, Milla?”

  “What do you mean, how am I taking it to him? I’ll take it back to the house, and maybe store it there until he comes to get it. Or, if I’m flitting to town, I’ll take it with me, and hand it over, there.”

  Kati smiled thinly.

  “This isn’t a finished lace crystal knife,” she said. “It has no handle, nor the nice cover which a finished knife has as a safety feature. You could cut off your own arm with this thing, and not even realize you’d done so before you were already bleeding to death.”

  “Nonsense.” But Milla shuddered. “Chrush was handling it. And you apparently took it away from him. It can’t be that dangerous.”

  “Chrush was wearing special gloves while he handled the shard. I think that they’re specially made to protect hands against lace crystal. Probably he brought them with him, ages ago, from his home world, Crystoloria, when he was exiled from there. Me, I was very careful n
ot to come even close to touching the blade, and I was very lucky that it got stuck on the cookie sheet when I used that to defend myself against Chrush.”

  “Not you,” subvocalized The Monk. “I defended you against Chrush with the hot cookie sheet!”

  “Yeah,” Kati subvocalized back. “But I’m not about to explain you to Milla right now.”

  “Right now I’ve got it wrapped in a bunch of dish towels but I’m not under the illusion that a wrapping like that will keep me safe while I handle it. One wrong move, even if I handle the package with oven mitts, and I’ll be in trouble.”

  “Where is it?” Milla asked. “I want to see the damn thing. And if you won’t bring it out, I’ll stun you, and my men and I will search the cabin for it.”

  A look of alarm crossed the farm workers’ faces. They, at least, had taken Kati’s warnings about the knife seriously.

  “Fine,” Kati said slowly, standing up. “Let this be on your conscience, Milla Gorsh.”

  She put on the oven mitt, and then, very gingerly, picked up the half-finished knife from the chair next to the one in which she had sat, holding it by the blunter end inside its cloth wrappings. She lay it on the table in front of her, letting go of it before removing the fat mitt.

  Milla walked over to the table to examine it.

  “It doesn’t look dangerous to me,” she said scornfully. “Gabe, come and pick it up for me.” She addressed the burly man who had spoken with Kati.

  He did not move, except to shake his head.

  “Not me, Boss Lady,” he said. “I need all my parts about me to run my farm. Not taking any chances.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud! I’m surrounded by cowardly idiots!”

  Milla glared at him, but Gabe stood fast.

  “Jervis, then. Jervis, you pick it up for me.”

  She gave Jervis a baleful stare. Jervis blanched, took a step forward, then stopped, shaking.

  Kati took pity on him.

  “Why don’t you pick it up yourself, Milla, if you don’t consider it dangerous,” she said in a saccharine tone. “It’s a cheap shot to order your workers to do something that you claim is safe, when you won’t do it yourself.”

  “You’re a goddamned bitch, Kati of Terra,” Milla snapped.

  For a moment Kati thought that she was going to use her stunner, but apparently the older woman thought better of that. While Kati heaved a surreptitious sigh of relief, she moved the stunner from her right hand to her left, reached for the oven mitt, and put it on her now-free right hand.

  “We’re in the yard,” whispered Chrysalia’s voice into Kati’s ear.

  Milla must have had her hearing node-enhanced for she aborted the motion that would have brought the dangerous knife into her mittened hand.

  “What was that?” she asked. “Who spoke?”

  “Did someone speak?” Kati asked in return.

  She was very glad that the stunner was in Milla’s left hand, which obviously was not her dominant one. It was dangling there, and to use it with her right hand, Milla would have had to remove the oven mitt.

  “I heard a voice coming from you, but it wasn’t your voice and your lips were not moving,” Milla said, and her voice sounded slightly frightened. “What sort of a weird creature are you anyway? Does your node have a voice separate from yours? Or are you wired up for sound somehow? But you can’t be that; Judd would have picked up on that and he would have had anything like that removed.”

  “Perhaps you had forgotten that I’m an ESPer,” Kati said. “Sometimes strange things happen around people like me.”

  The farm workers must have heard some sound from outside, for suddenly Jervis went to the door window to peer out.

  “There’s a flyer came into the yard,” he said. “People are coming out of it.”

  Milla looked up at him hopefully.

  “Is it my husband’s flyer?” she asked. “Maybe he’s come to get Chrush’s knife. Or—” and her voice cooled, “—maybe he’s come to visit his new fancy woman.”

  “No, Boss Lady,” said Jervis. “it’s not your husband, or his flyer. There are three people and they are all strangers to me.”

  There was a sudden commotion at the door, as if someone had used a heavy bar to bang on it. Jervis deserted his position at it.

  “Open up in the name of the legitimate Government of the Continent Nord!” shouted a male voice; then the banging happened again. “Comply immediately or we will break down the door!”

  “They wouldn’t dare, the government pipsqueaks!” Milla said, dropping the oven mitt and turning towards the door.

  “Gabe, shout to them through the door that they have no business breaking down private property!” she ordered.

  Gabe shook his head. Apparently he was not that easy to intimidate, and he had an inkling that his boss was not in as strong a position as she was affecting to be.

  “Not me, Boss Lady. I don’t act or speak against the new Government. I voted for the new Great Council.”

  “You voted for the new Council!” Milla was aghast. “I told all my people to vote for the retention of the old Council of the Families! It was corrupt, and much easier to manipulate than this one is!”

  “Yeah, that’s why I voted for the new one,” Gabe agreed. “It was a secret ballot; everyone could vote according to his or her conscience.”

  A grin flashed across Jervis’ face. Kati did not doubt but that he, too, had taken advantage of the secret ballot to go against his Boss Lady’s instructions.

  “Wonder what the count for, and against, the new Great Council was on Milla’s Estate. I bet nobody told Milla the precise figures,” Kati subvocalized to The Monk, and received an amused guffaw in return.

  There came the high-pitched whine of a sonic cutter from behind the door.

  Milla gave a muffled shout and headed for the entrance. She clearly recognized the sound and knew what it meant.

  Gabe and Jervis gave her a wide berth at the door, as she hurriedly threw open the mechanical locks, and switched off the high tech, electronic one. Kati watched her actions in fascination. She had not realized quite how well she had been sealed in. She had, at some point wondered about electrical locks but had assumed that the two mechanical ones must be plenty to keep in one woman, especially with the Cellar Creature having added its envelope. But, no, apparently there had been a lock of Shelonian make, too, holding her prisoner.

  As the door swung open Milla dropped her stunner into a pocket, and pulled a blaster tube from it. Kati heard Gabe and Jervis each gasp, and sent a quick psi-message via the jini to Chrysalia and Lank, to warn them.

  “Gerr, she’s got a blaster,” she heard Lank’s voice say; her hearing on its highest sensitivity. “Better let me and Chrysalia handle this.”

  Milla swore. Her surprise was gone—but she still had a blaster in her hand!

  Chrysalia acted before the door was fully open. She was small so she could slip in the door and around Milla while the larger woman was still concentrating on Gerr, and Lank who was pushing Gerr aside, while aiming a stunner at Milla. Perhaps the decision as to which male she ought to blast first was what slowed her down enough that Chrysalia was able to position herself before there was fire.

  Lank later said that he realized what Chrysalia was up to when blood began to trickle from the corners of Milla’s eyes.

  “You use that blaster, Milla Gorsh, and I will blind you,” the Crystolorian said in harsh tones. “And don’t think I won’t do it, Boss Lady. I’ve got my lace crystal talons poised to do exactly that.

  “Now, drop that blaster if you want to remain among the sighted!”

  It was probably the shock on Gerr’s face as he stared at her and Chrysalia that decided Milla. Kati doubted that she could feel the sharp points cut her eyeballs, two of which were poised to make a mess of the eyes. The blaster fell to the ground, having done no harm.

  “She’s got a stunner, at least, in her right-hand pocket,” Kati piped up from where she was s
till standing, behind the dining table.

  “Gerr, take it from her, and frisk her for other arms, while I make certain that she does not move a millimetre,” Chrysalia said, her voice icy.

  Gerr gave himself a quick shake and proceeded to follow instructions, very carefully.

  “Is there some strong tape or rope that we can use to package this murderous woman?” Chrysalia asked when he was finished.

  “I can look in the flyer, though I don’t think that we threw any in,” Lank said. “But it does have some supplies of its own.”

  “I don’t recall seeing anything like that here in the cabin, though you’d think there’d be something like that in the kitchen,” Kati added.

  “There’s rope in the mower,” said Gabe, “though I don’t think that either Jervis or I are slim enough to make it past the women at the door. And I doubt that the lady threatening Boss Lady Gorsh is going to want to make any quick moves to let one of us by.”

  “You’ve got that right,” muttered Chrysalia, but Lank was already heading towards the farm machine.

  “I’m sure that I can find it,” he called, and Gabe shouted a few instructions to him about where to look.

  *****

  “And Kati, don’t you dare heal that nasty woman’s eyes,” Chrysalia said as she wrapped the half-finished lace crystal knife into the small blanket that she had taken from one of the cupboards. “Let them heal on their own, and scar a little, just to remind her of what a miserable, slave-owning bitch she has been.”

  Gerr had deposited the bundled-up Milla into the flyer, and was now questioning Gabe and Jervis about the reports about the off-world slaves believed to have been seen on the Leaven Estate.

  “Oh, we’ve got them here, all right,” Jervis was saying, sounding eager to please. “Usually they come and they go, but lately the same ones have been here for months. On the part of the Estate that Milla works herself, mind you, not on the tenant farms. She wouldn’t let tenants have those workers; no, we have to till our plots with family labour, or pay for day-labourers ourselves, if we need them at seeding or harvest time.”