Bad Bargain: A Space Rules Adventure Part 1

by Ian Cannon

  “Then let me talk to the general. He’ll want to see me.”

  “What general?”

  She clicked her lips impatiently and said, “The general, you know, the general! What’s-his-name. The king’s guy.”

  He flinched, said, “Ona’Oona?”

  “Yeah, that one.”

  This time, the laughter was immediate, painful, gut-busting. All of them laughed holding their bellies, slapping each other on the back. Even the bot vibrated and shimmied with the electro-giggles.

  Feeling the blood in her veins begin to simmer, she told herself—don’t do it. Think like Benji. What would Benji do? He’d look over his shoulder at me. Yeah—and then I’d do this:

  She spun around, mech-knee up, and kicked the nearest guard across the room. He smashed into the wall. Before the others could react, she went up into the air and came down on top of the floor bot with a crushing mech-boot that splattered its cogs across the floor. The other guards snapped to, each of them poised.

  At least she was thinking like Benji. It was almost like he was in the room.

  With her cuffed hands up in a defensive posture she sneered, “It’s important.”

  The admin officer looked at her wide-eyed. He wasn’t laughing anymore. “Why should we trust a Raylon scum like you?”

  She looked at him preposterously and said, “Because I’m a Raylon scum, dummy!” She relaxed, everyone taking a breath. “Look, there are plans to destroy your planet. I mean, destroy it. Blow it up. As in no more Orbin. The general needs to know.”

  The officer glanced over at his yeoman and nodded. The guy put pen to paper, ready. The officer said, “What message would you have us send?”

  Tawny licked her lips, thought and said, “Tell the general Tawny Dash calls him a green-skin.”

  The officer’s face showed perfect insult. He snarled, “Disgusting!”

  “Look, I’m telling you, if he doesn’t get this message, you won’t have many tomorrows. The Cabal will come, and there won’t be any stopping them. I think it’s worth one stupid message.”

  The officer nodded for his man to continue scribing. Tawny grinned in a tiny show of triumph and said, “That’s G-R-E-E—” They looked up at her. She said, “Yeah, you got it.”

  She was stuffed away in a holding cell. She shared space with a dozen other supposed criminals, each waiting for their next stop on the way to a planet side prison container. Most were Orbinii, others were from off world and had been caught in Orbin territory breaking citizenry laws—a Stathosian over there, a Pendulosi over here, there was even a Tremusian in the corner looking silently enraged.

  For Tawny, whatever patience she had was gone and she sat against the wall going silently out of her mind. Was her husband dead? Were they torturing him at this very moment? She didn’t have time to sit and wait, hoping that the general paid her a visit. She was ready to tear the whole roof off this place. Then, there was a voice, low and cutting…

  “I had to come see for myself. I would not have believed the reports otherwise.”

  She looked up. General Ona’Oona stood looking down at her with severe disgust written all over him. “The coward returns. The coward from Raylon.”

  Everyone in the cell acknowledged his presence and sank away. But not Tawny. She stood to greet him at the barred gateway and said, “Go on, get it out of your system.”

  He said with a frown, “You are a monger of the Cabal. You have no decency. You are bereft of essence. You are the intolerable one from a world of the intolerable many. It disgusts me to lay eyes on you, for it stabs my very guts even to see you rot in an Orbin cell.”

  “Are you done?”

  “Your filthy kind is a blight to the entire system, you callus, filth-stinking wretch.”

  “Guess not,” she supposed.

  “Your hive of disgust should be wiped from the planets. It should be rent away like the scum that it is, and you along with it.”

  “Now you’re getting personal.”

  He snuffled at her, sneered, “When the only thing sharing the banner pole of my great people is your head perched atop it I will know my mission is complete.”

  She said dryly, “That’s very poetic. You’re a very poetic man.”

  He shook his head articulating his lips, and for a moment she thought he might spit on her. He said, “I would ask why you are here but it would do me no good. You are a traitor to your own people, you have betrayed our confidence, and now you would do it again. You do not deserve the trial you will be given. But I will be there when you stand, and I will ensure you a trip to the moggot pits of Ontral.”

  He turned away, his low cape swishing at his feet and strode to the door. She blurted out, “I’m here to destroy the gun platform on Menuit-B.” He stopped in his tracks, turned his head slightly. She continued, “I’m here to wipe out the Cabal presence from the Stathos moon rim forever.” Now he turned around to face her. The look on his face was of utter deflation. The Menuit-B job. He had to know more. It was his duty. She grinned with a shrug and said, “What can I say, I’ve reconsidered the contract.”

  Calling the Royal Council to immediate congress wasn’t rare, but certainly unusual. It occurred when ushering a topic through the usual, legal circuits of the senate took more time than they had. A planet at war sometimes required such measures, and would then lean on the world’s wisest minds to decide for all. As General Ona’Oona had determined, this was one such time. The king agreed.

  Now, Tawny stood in the High Chamber of the palace facing those “wisest minds.” There were nine of them, with the king sitting front and center. They all bore administrator titles—Administer of Internal Defense, Administer of Interplanetary Commerce, Administer of War Communications, and on and on. Their platform was raised like a dais, the panel surrounding her in a horseshoe. She had to gawk up at them from her position on the stone floor. The ceiling was vaulted, the entrance doors massive. Four bailiff guards stood behind dressed in their regal uniforms, each holding long staffs.

  With Benji on her mind she had navigated her impromptu opening remarks as diplomatically as she could. The deal she laid at their feet was enticing. In short: Help me free my husband from the Mortus complex and we’ll agree to the Menuit-B job, no charge. She even added, much to her own surprise, “We’ll eradicate the threat of the Cabal from the entire Stathos moon rim and ensure the safety of the Orbin people from the interplanetary pounder they’re constructing.”

  Eyes switched back and forth. Conversations whispered across the panel. Tawny looked to the council member sitting at the far end. A woman—the Administer of Peace Affairs. She conversed with her associate sitting next to her. They all snuffled a final sentiment and looked down at her.

  The king said in his congenial manner, “You yourself are a member of the Cabal, are you not?”

  She gulped, maintaining her composure and said, “I was. I was a soldier. I was an assassin.”

  A round of gruffy snuffles.

  “But no more. I left the war a long time ago. I’m through fighting it,” she said.

  “Why should we trust you?” This was General Ona’Oona. He sat to the left. “You are Cabal. How do we know this is not a ploy? This smacks of a scheme.”

  She chanced a step forward. “I don’t care about the Cabal. I don’t give a damn about your war. They have my husband. That man is my war. He is why I’m here.”

  The female at the end raised her eyebrows.

  King Oto said, evenly, “You want us to deploy an armored wing and engage in combat against an unknown enemy.”

  The general added viciously, “To save the life of your husband, a known miscreant, data thief and criminal to the state!”

  “No!” Tawny rebuked. “I want you to deploy the—thing—and do the—whatever—as your price for having Menuit-B wiped out. How many different ways do I need to say it?”

  General Ona’Oona gave her a gnarled look.

  The Administer of Internal Security said in a robot
ic, foreboding way, “And that is why we should trust you? Because of merely what you say?” He looked to the other panelists before concluding, “I am sorry, but your words fail to carry such weight in these palace halls.”

  Tawny narrowed in on him. She recognized this Orbin. He’d been the one to interview her and Ben when they first arrived on Orbiter 1. Supreme Viceroy Olan, Administer of Inernal Security. She remembered his words, and grinned. “Eviscerate them like Molosian shark bait,” she said. Olan’s eyes widened. He perked. Tawny pointed at him. “I think you once said that.”

  He nodded, coolly. “I recall.”

  “This enemy that you’ll engage is not unknown. You know them.” She paused scanning her gaze across the entire panel, then returning to Supreme Viceroy Olan. She said, “They’re the ones that kidnapped Heiress Orona. They took her away from you, waited for your own security to drop its guard and stole her right off the planet.”

  The panel gasped and snuffled. Some of them cursed in the smooth-syllabled Orbinii tongue.

  “That’s right!” Tawny said keeping their attention. “They have already moved against you once. They’ll plot again. You need to destroy them.”

  Supreme Viceroy Olan bawled out, “Another ruse. Have you no shame? What is next, or should I ask?” He chuckled ridiculously. “Perhaps you have the key to the Omicron war consulate building, too. What would be your price for that?”

  “They bore the same markings. It is them.”

  King Oto raised a hand, silenced the room. He said, “Who is this group you speak of?”

  Tawny blinked. She didn’t know what to call them. She said, “They are a conspiracy group.”

  “Ha!” Supreme Viceroy Olan blurted. “Her preposterousness grows!”

  She closed her eyes. What had REX said? Her ship had described the group better than she ever could. Her eyes opened and she yelled, “They operate in secret for the purpose of creating corrupt, internalized power structures to topple governments internally. They have sleeper agents inside every planetary government, maybe even right here at Orbin.”

  “Impossible lies!” the supreme viceroy sneered, pounding a fist into the dais.

  General Ona’Oona turned his head slowly, gave the viceroy a curious look.

  Tawny argued, “There’s reason to believe the heiress kidnapping was an inside job. Someone right here in the palace helped coordinate it.”

  Viceroy Olan, screamed, “That is blasphemy!”

  “Is it?” Tawny challenged him. “How are you so certain? you’re the Administer of—what was it? Interior Defense, or something like that?”

  “I am,” he sneered.

  “How can you be so sure? Have you investigated this?”

  Her words dripped with accusation.

  General Ona’Oona’s stare narrowed on the viceroy.

  Viceroy Olan’s eyes went into severe slits and he whispered to Tawny dripping with anger, “Excuse me?”

  “Why would you not pursue this? What are you hiding? Could it be that you are a traitor to the royal Orbin family!”

  “You hold your tongue you vixen wench!” the viceroy barked, angry beyond measure.

  “Or what?” she screamed back, and then repeated. “Or what?”

  General Ona’Oona’s glare switched between them. The Raylon had a good point. He couldn’t refute that. Supreme Viceroy Olan was hiding something.

  “You are a Raylon traitor, a war deserter, combatant against the Imperium and an enemy of the state,” Olan yelled at her a hundred miles an hour. “We should have you executed, eviscerated and dismembered such that your pieces would be spread across our society as an emblematic showing of how we deal with your kind.”

  “Then come down here and do it, Viceroy!” Tawny cried. And with that, any shred of Benji’s diplomacy went right out the window. It was her way or the highway, now. This was a dogfight.

  “Perhaps I will,” his words came slow, full of intent.

  “You’re a coward—and—a traitor.”

  “Guards, imprison this little gitch!” Olan demanded pounding the dais.

  Ona’Oona watched with mighty fascination. Who could they trust? Which one of these was the traitor?

  The four bailiff guards encroached from behind, but true to her impulses, Tawny met them first. The first guard dropped with a leg swipe from her exo-suit that sent his staff clattering to the floor. She grabbed it—it was heavy to hold, very pleasing—and caught the next in the jaw before he could react. He went down hard. Tawny dropped straight down as the next one’s staff whizzed just overhead. She came back up with a rib-crunching jab to the mid-section putting him out of the contest, and spun around to face the final guard. He hardly hesitated; just came in with a spinning flurry. She blocked high to the left, high to the right, swung her staff. The guard doubled over with a shot to the flank. She finished him with an upward crusher to the head and he dropped down.

  … four guards either moaning and writhing, or unconscious altogether.

  Ona’Oona was impressed, much to his own chagrin.

  Tawny threw the staff violently to the floor facing the dais and hissed, “Who else do I need to fight? You—” she pointed out one of the council members. “Do I need to fight you?” The member’s eyes became like moons. She looked to the next, said, “You?”

  “She is a crazy woman!” one of them cried.

  Tawny pointed to the next member. “You—do you want to fight me?”

  He shook his head, sank down.

  Tawny opened her arms in an invitation. “General, perhaps you?”

  Ona’Oona gave her a dazzled grin.

  The king said, calmly, “I would not suggest that.”

  “Then who do I need to fight?”

  “We do not understand your request.”

  She said clearly, succinctly, “Who. Do I need. To fight?”

  The king gave her a confused face. “What do you mean?”

  She roared, her words banging off the walls and reverberating through the chamber—“YOU WILL NOT TAKE ME FROM MY HUSBAND!”

  The panel members leaned back from her blast, each going rigid, looking on. The room quieted.

  She asked again, “So who do I need to fight?”

  The Orbinii looked at each other as if trying to conjure a response. King Oto finally said in his calming, clear way, “You come to us with a proposition, and yet leave us with no choice.”

  She stepped forward collecting her breath. “You do have a choice, your Highness. Do you want my husband and me to deliver the payload to Menuit-B, or not? Do you want to obliterate the ones who kidnapped your heiress, or not? These are choices. They’re your choices.”

  He said with open hands, “And you are willing to fight the entire palace to prove your integrity.”

  She said, “Yes,” with a head nod.

  “You would only fight us all,” he said.

  “Then you first. You and me. Let’s go.” She licked her thumbs, put her dukes up, ready.

  He blinked surprised.

  One of the council members said, “He is the king! That is ridiculous!”

  “Why?” Tawny asked. “Why is that so ridiculous? He is the king of a world at war. Let him fight in his own chamber.”

  “We have palace guards,” the council member said.

  “Where are they? I’ll fight them, then,” she said.

  “We have royal guards!”

  “I’ll fight them, too.”

  The guy twitched and asked in surprise, “Common guard?”

  “And them.”

  They all looked at each other more intrigued than offended. One of them murmured, “Congress and senate?”

  Tawny said, still with her dukes up, poised on her feet, “Them too. Bring them on.”

  King Oto put his hands up. No more words from the panel. He took a breath and asked, “What do you want us to do?”

  Tawny’s shoulders relaxed, she stepped forward, made a fist of determination and snarled, “I want you to fight W
ITH me.” A moment shuddered through them.

  Ona’Oona said nothing. He only looked at her with burning eyes. Far be it from him to admit anything … he was starting to like this putrid Raylon. She’d uncovered a potential conspiracy within the very palace—one that could soon see Olan executed if proven right—now she wanted to fight everybody. How impressive.

  Tawny said, “I’m offering you exactly what you said you wanted. Take down the crew that kidnapped the heiress. Deliver the payload to Menuit-B. Done! Why are you waiting? Grab a column and follow me to Mortus. Seven hours at top speed. Easy as that.”

  “And then you deliver the payload to the moon Menuit-B?” the king clarified.

  Tawny slapped herself in the forehead—what about my proposition don’t they understand?

  She said loudly, “Yesss!” Then, “It’ll be a piece of cake.”

  “A what?”

  “An easy job. By this time tomorrow, it’s done.”

  After a long pause in which each council member stared at Tawny, some of them curious, others with scrutiny, the king said, “Council!” They got up and shuffled off into a rear antechamber. Tawny was left in the room alone with four guards laying around like rugs, one of them slowly getting to his feet, keeping his distance.

  They each stood before the king in their respective positions. One said, “Our words, our protocol, our very laws mean nothing to her.”

  Another, “She is impetuous.”

  “She is insulting.”

  “How dare she!”

  “I like her.”

  All eyes went to Madam Administer O’ah demanding more. She said, “The woman has purpose.”

  Another member taking her side, said, “We have leverage. She needs us.”

  Another said, “For Menuit-B, she makes a solid bargain.”

  The king took a breath, his eyes hawking across his council members. “Suggestions?”

  “Play it out.”

  “Yes, let us see.”

  “She is Cabal!” Viceroy Olan sneered.

  Madam O’ah said, “She is a married woman. And she is in love.”