by S E Zbasnik
The Snake paused, her black eyes darting to Brena then to the captain. “If you wish her, then take her.” And, without throwing a fuss, she tossed the girl at Variel. Brena stumbled a bit, but Variel caught her hand, steadying her. Guiding the taller elf behind her, Variel re-aimed her gun.
“You have what you came for, and yet you do not leave. I believe you wish to hear more,” the Snake said as if this were the start of negotiations for a timeshare on a swamp planet. “We are on the brink.”
“The brink of what?” Variel asked, her eyes wandering across the consoles. A few buttons flashed as something happened. She wished she could turn around to see the march of the Corps across the screens, prayed that’s what the blinking was and not the idiots in blue floating out in space.
“Of destiny,” the Snake continued. “It is time humanity wiped the scourge clean of the galaxy. The NCs are dangerous. To our children and their children. Too much exposure to one will alter your cells, drain your soul, transform you into one of them!”
This was the point when sarcastic Variel would say ‘Suurre, right. This is me stepping away slowly from the mad lady.’ Instead, she tried reason, “So you kidnap and try to kill dwarves and elves, perfectly corporeal beings who have been nothing but allies to humanity.”
“Dwarves,” the Snake actually spat on the floor, “they hoard upon their laurels and watch the galaxy burn.”
“Well, yeah…”
“And elves…They push everything to the void for a couple centuries and wait until those begging them for help die before bothering to decide. They did not offer assistance when we fought against the orcs!” the Snake railed, jabbing her finger into the air as if she attacked with a gotcha answer.
Variel shifted, she must have seen her scar. Her obviously orc caused scar. But that wound healed long ago. “So?”
“How can you say ‘so?’”
The captain snorted, “You think humanity would rush to the aid of dwarves, or elves, or goblins, or trolls if the orcs came a knocking on their door? We’d do the exact same shit they do; wait it out and see what happens.”
“We would fight!” Snake slammed her gauntleted fist upon the desk, cracking something that was probably worth more than her.
Variel stepped back at that, their menial discourse shattered as the emotion crashed through the veneer. Crazy bubbled under the sheen of sanity like a kraken in the indigo deep. If she wasn’t careful, the woman might do something incredibly stupid, like explode the office.
The Snake’s eyes shifted and the bargaining returned, “You were a Crest once.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“When I first saw your work in the whorehouse I was afraid we’d blundered into someone on leave, or perhaps a few soldiers in the middle of assignment, but you never spoke to another human. Never acknowledged one. You work with dwarves and elves and orcs. Oh yes, I know all about your little friend down in the ducts, scurrying about as the rats do. To befriend an enemy like that,” the head shake caused Variel to stiffen, her gun aiming for the mad woman’s exposed head.
“But,” the Snake continued, as if she were offering the greatest deal of a lifetime, “all of that can be overlooked, forgotten, forgiven. Even your personal indiscretions if you join with us. We may be willing to secure a few subjects for your private time if you’d prefer.”
Variel’s eyes widened at the implication and her brain, filling with the nectar of rage, tried to find a question that didn’t ignite a shooting match. “Why me?”
The Snake gestured to the flashing lights around her as if they meant anything, “You tear through half my numbers…”
“Of past their prime bitter soldiers and kids pissed they didn’t get the moon when they barely graduated school. Those numbers?”
“It requires a strategic mind, a mind we can use.”
“For your utopia,” Variel said, her eyes flicking over to Brena. The elf kept her hands folded behind her as she inched slowly to the door. Every once in a while she’d turn to the screens and something would cross her face. Variel prayed it was hope, because that was what they needed now more than anything.
“Yes! You see now, you understand!” Snake approached her as if Variel didn’t still have the gun with her finger on the trigger.
“Oh yeah, I see plenty.”
Now the Snake laughed, her ragged voice more like a dying gasp as she said, “You believe you can still escape this? That I have not surrounded this office with my best men? That you can take me out as easily as, what, popping off my gas tubes?”
Variel didn’t move her eyes towards the woman’s left shoulder. She knew the minute she entered, “It takes a special kind of leader to save the only non-exploding armor for herself.”
“What was the old adage? Cut off the head and the snake dies? This snake will never die,” her black eyes glittered in the shifting scenes behind her. She could see all, see that her empire was crumbling before it even began. Yet, still she gloated as if she won everything.
“Funny thing you remembering all about the flaw in that old Amco armor, because you forgot one thing.”
“I don’t care,” the Snake said, her fingers gripping around the barrel of the gun, daring Variel to waste the bullets on the impenetrable shield around her. “Will you join us, or will you die here a forgotten corpse?”
“No, see,” Variel said as her PALM hand pushed upon the battery pack, wedging it deeper into the gun, “There’s a trick with the old NP-35s. An important one you had to tell all the young recruits over and over. Even then, we still threw every single one into a smelter because they never listened.”
“Join us or you die. It’s that simple. Answer now or I gut you, then your elf,” she said, gesturing towards Brena. The elf didn’t react beyond the slow blink of her eyes.
“See this battery pack? If you were to say, jam it so far in that you hear a click, a grinding noise starts inside the gun,” Variel continued as if she didn’t hear the Snake’s threat. She raised the butt of the gun to her ear and then held it out for the Snake to hear. Curiosity mixed with a level of stupidity pulled the woman’s head closer.
Yanking her arm back, Variel smashed the butt into her crazy head. She staggered back as Variel ran full bore at her. The two slid across the console, the Snake staggering to grip Variel, but her fingers could only get ahold of the gun. Believing she had the upper hand, the Snake wrenched it away from the woman trying to shove her over the edge. Variel let go when the Snake kicked her in the stomach.
The captain tumbled back on shaky legs, doubled over as her guts protested. She rose to face down the end of her own borrowed gun. “I gave you a choice, and you chose wrong,” the Snake said as she sat upon the console, her back dangerously close to the open hole.
“But,” Variel wheezed, “the battery pack I was telling you about.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, would you shut up?!” the Snake roared. She aimed for the captain’s exposed head and pulled the trigger. A blast ricocheted not from the barrel of the gun but out of the battery. “What the…” was as far as she got before she moved her finger off the trigger. Variel threw herself back, taking Brena down with her as the gun exploded, shrapnel shattering the screens hanging over their heads. The force of gravity reached its greedy fingers aroung the Snake and slammed her down. There wasn’t much of a scream as she struggled with what went wrong in her great utopian plans. Her body thudded into the man she’d tossed out earlier, scattering his guts further across the floor.
“If you jam the battery in too far, fire the gun, and remove your finger off the trigger, the whole thing explodes,” Variel quipped as she stood, stretching her back. Brena seemed a bit dazed from the turn of events, “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” the elf said as she rose to her own feet and then extracted the knife the woman held to her neck from out of a sleeve.
“I guess you didn’t need me,” Variel said, gesturing to the knife.
“It is…good
to know you care enough to come.”
“Well,” Variel said, trying to shake shattered screen plastic out of her hair, “you’re paid up to the end of the month.”
As something of a smile crested through those frozen features, a burst of fire sparked through the closed door. Variel yanked Brena behind her, but the elf was the only one of them armed. She waved the knife as if she could really butter the hell out of whoever was about to come through the door. The carved section fell away and a blue uniform poked through. “Thank the gods,” Variel muttered, “the Corps are here.”
“You! On the ground! Now!” the head shouted as if it could get anything else through the tiny hole to arrest her.
“Good old Corps,” Variel said even as she dropped to her knees and raised her hands behind her head, “they never change.”
“And put your hands behind your head!”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Let’s go over this one more time,” the dwarf drummed his fingers against the table. This was a man Taliesin was introduced to about three hours ago. He probably should have retained the name, but it didn’t appear vital. The goblin operating the recording device hadn’t said a word, only wiped an oily palm down her uniform pants with every new question. If they were attempting the good corps/bad corps routine they needed much practice.
“If you wish,” the elf sighed, leaning back in the plastic chair far too small for his kind. He was going to need a lot of stretching to feel his backside again. “But it will not change the outcome.”
The dwarf gestured to the goblin, and the screen in the middle of the table lit up with some black and white footage. It twitched and the overlay feature lit up any NCs hiding in the frame. It also gave all corporeal skin a disturbing blue glow. Taliesin looked like a depressed quicksilver himself, as the recorded version looped across the screen, mid-take down. It was partially disturbing to watch his victim rise and fall endlessly, as if they were caught in limbo.
“This was recorded at the…Pistil & Stamen,” the dwarf said as he flipped through his sheets, feigning an inability to remember the name of the pleasure house.
“Yes.”
“And you claim that you took down four of the humans on your own.”
Taliesin blinked slowly, “Yes.”
“And that a dryad, Madame…” the data files flipped again, the sound effects like dry toast rubbed together.
“Madame Pollen,” Taliesin interrupted, wanting to move this along.
“That she finished off the rest.”
“She was within her rights to dispatch as many as she felt endangered her or her tree’s existence,” Taliesin repeated the law and massaged his shoulder.
“Of course. At this time you had your little helper.”
“My assistant,” he said, daring the dwarf to call the bluff.
“Right, ‘your assistant.’ And she was there to pass ammo or stay the fuck out of the way.”
“I did not employ such colorful terms, but that is the base, yes.”
The dwarf let his PALM files scatter onto the table. The projection, an expensive one, was probably designed to inflict psychological afflictions on whoever sat in the interrogation chair. Taliesin leaned back as another bit of video data queued up, this time of the promenade as he gripped onto the turret. The bandages the medics left with him before the Corps escorted him away were already peeling off.
“Now, here we got someone clearly fighting with the Party-23 members…”
“The terrorists,” Taliesin corrected.
“Right, the humans will love that one. The terrorists, and that one what’s dressed in their same armor you claim is your sister.”
“It is,” he said, blinking slowly.
“Yet, if we skip forward to…Gael, jump to the security office. 9.87 at night, we find what you say is a human in the armor swarmed by the Corps.”
Taliesin leaned forward and folded his hands in front of him. He wasn’t under suspicion and there were no restraints involved, but the other two still flinched. They knew what he was. “Captain, if you have a theory you wish to float, now would be preferable to my endless retread of replaying the events. My assistant donned the armor to infiltrate and distract, while I used my skills to remove the terrorist threatening my sister’s life. You have proof of that, yes?”
“That your sister was taken and held at knife point? Yeah, we have that. Though the cameras seems to cut for a bit, only popping back in when the terrorist’s body is blown…”
“Or yanked.”
“Or yanked out the window. Then it’s hours of footage.”
“Perhaps you should discuss this with your security chief. I mean, your new security chief.”
The dwarf smiled, “It’s just…it seems a bit curious that someone focused enough to try and take a station would, rather than kill a non-human outright, take her as hostage.”
“She was upset that I disrupted so many of her plans. She intended to dispose of me herself but from within her fortress. And, if you recall, she did not show signs of being well balanced,” he flexed the fingers of his right hand and a queasy turn crossed the goblin’s face. They’d all seen the macabre necklace dangling off Variel. It took a lot of convincing that it hadn’t been some war trophy, and then a lot more DNA testing to prove it was a human hand — as the assassin insisted.
“Ah, yes, that,” the dwarf yanked upon his collar as if the pressing material was adding to a rise in his gorge. “There is no doubt that their entire operation hinged upon fear and intimidation.”
“Something they bred within their organization, no doubt,” Taliesin said as straight as a ruler. Still the dwarf glared even as the moans of hordes of ‘possible suspects’ out in the waiting room broke through the silence. It’d been a long night for the corps mopping up their own failure behind a curtain of blaming someone else. It was going to be an even longer day.
The solid door clicked open and a head poked inside. A sliver of grey hair and the end of a greyer nose was all the banshee risked as she pointed to the dwarf, “Sir.” She gestured he come closer. Sighing, the dwarf approached, leaving his oily goblin alone with the assassin. Even over her whispers, Taliesin’s elven hearing could pick out each word.
“His story checks out.”
“If that’s true then I have a planet to sell you at the galactic core.”
“He is a registered assassin. Full clearance. We cannot hold him,” the banshee held up her hand and the familiar seal glittered across the palm.
“And the sister?”
“Assassin-adjunct. If she’d killed someone, maybe we could hold her for a day, but there’s no proof.”
“Shit. All right, get out there and start prepping the goblin that handled their docking procedure. And use twice the dose this time, I need him talking!” The dwarf shouted as the banshee vanished out the slit of door. “Well,” he said as he gestured to the goblin to cut off the camera, “it seems I should thank you.”
“Oh?” Taliesin asked as if he had no idea what was coming.
“You’ve saved me about five hours worth of paperwork.”
“And given me ten,” the assassin grumbled, already aware of the constant pings upon his private channels. He’d be filling out questionnaires for days. How many ways can one explain “and then I shot some human in black armor who was more or less demanding it?”
“You’re free to go,” the dwarf said, flipping off the screen in the middle of the table.
Taliesin rose from the chair and shook his crossed leg as he tried to get blood back into it. The dwarf returned to the door. With a wave of his hand, it unlocked. He pulled upon the handle and then paused, “It’s just a shame.” The elf wrapped his fingers around the handle, not wanting to play this charade anymore. “If it turned out the savior of Whisper had been human, imagine how much better this would play out for the galaxy. Now there’s talk of serious actions, embargoes, and maybe war.”
The assassin did not glance down at the dwarf beside his
midsection, he only sighed lightly and said, “I am sorry I could not be of greater assistance.”
A pained smile crossed the dwarf’s face and he let go of the door. Stepping away, he let Taliesin leave. A pair of corps, still in bloody uniforms, scampered past. Out of the interrogation room, the wail of the forlorn overpowered the senses. He could almost taste the despair as he rounded out of the back partition, life gasping from exhausted lungs. The secretary that tried to process him waved off a goblin complaining about the damage to his store.
He tapped his pencil at Taliesin and gestured to get the elf’s attention. The centaur skittered about as the elf’s yellow eyes turned upon him, but a smile filled that long face and the secretary pointed to a far bench, “Sir, your assistant’s waiting for you.”
“My assistant?” Taliesin tried to peer through the throngs clogging up the tiny waiting room.
“She’s been sitting there since they escorted you back.”
“Ah, thank you,” he said. Bowing to the centaur, he tried to ignore the small squeal. It was the guild. It imbued a power and mystique he never felt he deserved. Dodging around a trio of gnomes, a full sized troll, and a gargoyle youth, he spotted the woman alone at the bench. She seemed to blend into the wall, the stolen armor long donated to the evidence locker. Her clothes were askew and exhaustion painted her face, but it was the dull coating across her eyes that threw him off. As if her mind rested ten feet outside her body and had no intention of returning.
But when Variel’s head lifted, it all melted away. She rose as if she hadn’t spent the past twelve hours fighting through a platoon of terrorists, then the rest of the night sitting on a cheap police bench waiting for word. “Assistant,” he said, tipping his head towards hers.
“Boss,” she said, a ghost of a smile twitching up a split lip. He didn’t remember when she got it, and he suspected she didn’t either. “You have a full schedule ahead of you,” Variel gestured to the revolving door cramming more people into the station.
