Armor (12 page)

I was already on him, scrambling along his length, lunging forward. His throat was open wide, gasping for air. I wedged the barbed end of the slabpike deep into the passage, felt it lodge tightly. I bounced to my feet and threw my entire weight against the free end of the pike.

The cartilage warped, split, then ripped. The screams peaked, ceased.

Even with what Gii had already eaten, there was still twice as much remaining as I was accustomed to. My eyes blazed crimson through the settling dust cloud.

Those who had come to watch faded quickly out of sight as the glow and my strength increased. Another puryn rage is on, they thought, and nobody wanted to be next.

They were wrong. I was in no puryn fugue, to kill blindly and gorge myself until dead or ruptured inside. I was going out.

The saltbore clamps gave easily to my newfound strength.

But then I had trouble with the treads. Those few moments of futile fumbling drove me into such a rage that I finally grabbed up the saltbore itself, by drill bit and casing respectively, and threw it across the cell against the belt mechanism. I shoved the drill bit deep into the machinery, braced myself with feet and back, and keyed the power. Sparks flew, metal shrieked, grinding against itself. The belt drivers began to buckle as the saltbore tore into its center. The wall shuddered, then the floor. My back felt like it was breaking from the force of the saltbore torquing against it. Something, probably my back, had to give. But I couldn’t let go. I might never have another chance, another day. . . another life.

“My skin is turning gray!” I shouted at the top of my lungs, just as the belt drive and the supporting wall erupted.

The saltbore casing saved me, shielding me from the flying debris. I shoved my way through the wreckage, hot metal and fused Lyn salt, and I was out. The brightness of the sun, of any sun, was a searing blow. It blinded me, staggered me. I almost didn’t see the lumbering guard.

Almost.

Guards were twice human size with shellhides like rhinos’ and looked just like what they were designed to be invincible.

But they had stalks for their eyes. And I leaped up between those trunk sized arms, planted my knees on his chest, and, grabbing a stalk in each grimy fist, yanked backward with all my might. They popped neatly out. The guard swayed, tripped, righted itself. Those arms clamped around my back like falling girders as the third stalk, undismayed by the streaming stumps on either side, swung toward me.

I bit it.

I plunged my teeth into it. I shook my head from side to side. I think I screamed. The eye ripped loose. The guard fell, fortunately, backward. I disengaged myself from underneath his heavy paws and ran.

And ran and ran, tears streaming with relief. I was not only out, I was free.

Ahead, at the port, the ship was there. It was, after all. The sounds I had heard from deep within the mine were not, as I had feared, only the product of desperate fantasies.

I had to stop once. The taste of that bile the guards used for blood made me heave and heave again. But I was up and running again before my stomach had emptied completely out. I was out! I was free! It was a ship!

It was Borglyn’s ship.

At first I thought it was a standard Coyote. Bad for me. Though there weren’t any Fleet warrants out on me, any Captain who was only half bright would know enough to order me held for questioning. Then the whole mess of extradition would begin. Different guards. Different cages.

But that looked pretty good at the time. Behind me the Lyndrill prison had come alive. Alarms, coded sound beacons, shouting. . . all could clearly be heard. They kicked up huge clouds of dirt as they ran. With a last quick glance over my shoulder, I stepped up onto the ramp of the Coyote and prepared to be arrested.

There were two crewmen on ramp duty. A big one with whiteblond hair and walrus mustache and a short one with dark shiny hair and dark shiny eyes. The little one was going to be the problem, as the little ones usually are. Apparently lost in conversation, they hadn’t notice me. As soon as I was on their ramp, though, they perked up. The big one seemed appalled by my putrid coloring. The small one, on the other hand, displayed a grin of amused disgust.

“Good God, who the hell is that?” said the blond.

“You mean ‘what the hell is that? ‘ “ replied the shrimp.

I figured groveling would do it.

“Kind sirs,” I began plaintively, managing to both bow and scurry a few steps closer at the same time. “Help me, I beg you!”

The shrimp didn’t buy it.

“Hold it there,” he said.

“Who are you?” asked the blond.

I thought I caught a touch of sympathy in the blond’s voice. I turned all my attention to him.

“I’m a man of Earth, same as you. I’ve been. . . kept here by these. . ..”

“He’s a damned escapee, Thor,” snapped the short one. “Look at him. He’s covered with their salt. He’s been in the prison mine.”

Thor frowned. “They use a mine for a prison?”

“Of course, Idiot. This is Lyndrill! How’d you break out, ‘earthman’?”

The sneer he gave to “earthman” was his first major mistake.

“There was an explosion in the mine. I found the way open. I simply ran without thinking. Then I saw your ship. Please sir,” I wailed, managing a few more steps toward them, “you must take me aboard. You cannot leave me in this place.”

“Like hell we can’t. Move it, convict. You’re stinking up our ship,” snarled the shrimp, and took a menacing step down toward me. That was his second major mistake. Or the third, if you count his coming that step closer. For that last step gave me a much better view.

This was no Fleet Coyote. Not with a crewman as sloppy as this. His robe was dirty, unwashed. His hair needed a good shower. His tunic was frayed about the collar. No officer, any officer, would let such slovenliness get by. Which left only one answer: There weren’t any officers around to object. Mutiny, most likely. That, or outright theft. Whichever, this was no ship of Fleet. This was a pirate ship!

That changed everything.

Thor eyed me for several moments in silence. Then: “I’m gonna call Borglyn, see if we can take him in.”

The shrimp was furious. “Are you out of your mind? Why do yon want to get involved in this. . .? Uh oh. Look here. I knew we should have kicked him off.”

Both men looked past me at something. I knew what it had to be, but I turned around anyway.

Reinforcements had arrived. An even dozen guards stood in a ragged semicircle at the base of the ramp. I shuddered. I had never seen that many of them altogether at one time. One was enough. Damn, they were big. Monsters.

They made no move for me up the ramp. They knew better. Awesome as they were to an unarmed prisoner, they were nothing against a starship. Almost anything aboard could be a monster eater. They simply stood there, waiting.

Thor took one look at them and stepped toward the interior of the hatch.

“I’m calling,” he said.

“Don’t be stupid,” snapped the shrimp. “Borglyn doesn’t want to be bothered with Lyndrill affairs.”

Thor stopped, gestured at the line of guards. “They can’t do anything to us,” he said calmly.

“Yeah, what about the rest of the planet? Besides, this guy’s not worth the effort.”

“Well,” said Thor slowly, turning back toward the hatch, “I’m not giving him to them.”

“You’re crazy, Thor. What are we gonna do with this gray scum, anyway?”

“Scum,” in my present condition, was too true to be funny and his last major mistake. I took a couple of steps toward him and whispered so that Thor, just inside the hatch, couldn’t hear.

“Listen to me, you slimy little pig,” I croaked. “I know why you don’t want me on board. You’re sick of being the ship shrimp. You’re sick of knowing there isn’t a man on board who couldn’t rip your balls off and shove ‘em up your nose.”

Thor may not have heard, but the shrimp sure did. His eyes all but bugged out, his face got red, his chest expanded. I thought he was going to explode right there.

But he didn’t. He waited ‘till he got his stinger out of its strap. Then he flew at me down the ramp.

The bastard was quick, very quick. Worse than that, he knew how to use a stinger. It may look like a club, but it’s a whole lot more. Instant paralysis at best.

I had to jump sideways to avoid his first lunge. I teetered at the edge of the ramp a moment before regaining balance, and out of the comer of my eye I noticed the line of guards surge forward an eager step. I reminded myself that I’d be theirs on the ground. Not only did I have to win unarmed, but I had to do it only on the ramp.

His second lunge was wild but still too close. I felt the burning tingle as the stinger brushed past my cheek. I had to move. I feinted left, ducked another lunge, and slapped him twice on his left cheek. Slapping is better than fists and usually enrages enemies. The shrimp got so mad that his next swing of the stinger threw him off balance. I stepped in again as he fell to one knee. I blocked a hook at the wrist and slammed the butt of my palm under his chin. He squealed as his teeth cracked together. Then I backhanded him across the throat.

He was tough. Even as he fell he managed to graze my knee with a swipe from the stinger.

The pain seared up and down my thigh. I bellowed like some animal and lost it.

Maybe him personally, maybe the prison nightmare, maybe myself. Whatever it was, it was strong. I saw nothing, heard nothing, cared even less. Hate rode.

I broke his arm, the arm that held the stinger, twice. Once across my knee, once by just stomping on it. He may have screamed, then. He may have screamed all along, but I couldn’t hear. I was too busy pulverizing his face and neck and chest and….

And then it was over and he lay there, half on and half off the ramp, covered with blood and gray Lyn salt. I stood over him, breathing heavily, until
WHAM
, and I was facedown on the sun scorched metal of the ramp.

Thor had driven his foot halfway through my spine. I looked up at him, stunned, my head spinning, my back beginning to throb.

He was looking at what was left of the shrimp. His eyes were wide, aghast; his chest heaved.

“You filthy. . .” he blurted and kicked me again.

He caught me just right, just under my left ear. I spun backward in midair into a full somersault, and crashed onto the other edge.

Dimly, distantly, I saw the guards, now directly beneath me and reaching, up for me. ...

I clawed, scrambled my way onto the ramp. I got a knee up onto the edge. I heaved.

Thor was waiting. I saw the black boot rear back, saw his weight shift, thought it finished.

“Hold it,” shouted an incredibly deep and commanding voice.

Everyone froze. And I mean everyone. Thor, the guards, and me, still clinging to the ramp with two bleeding hands and a knee.

It took me a second to realize that there was no electronic speaker involved. It was simply the unamplified voice of Sar Borglyn, chief mutineer and pirate, commanding.

A few breaths later and all relaxed somewhat. And I, scared of everyone in sight but especially the guards, scrambled all the way onto the (safety) ramp. The guards paused a moment, then resumed their ragged formation at the foot of the ramp.

Borglyn found out what was what in a hurry, a way he had. I told him some smoke about being Benn Lawl, a missionary from the Church of Episcoblue to the heathen Lyndrill. Lawl had been a cellmate of mine, jailed, caged rather, for blasphemy, so I figured it was a pretty good story.

Borglyn didn’t come near buying it. I thought he was going to toss me off right then. He would have, too, I think, but Thor saved me.

Thor didn’t mean to. He meant just the opposite. Started sputtering furiously about poor little busted up Praun, the shrimp, lying there on the ramp. How I must have jumped him, how Praun was only trying to help and this “dirty scum jumped him.”

Seeing the stinger already unstrapped and out as well as knowing Praun as he probably did, made it easy for Borglyn to see the lie in the ambush theory. Also, Borglyn was irritated at Thor for butting in unasked. He didn’t listen long.

Then with a sharp “Shut up,” that made everybody’s mouth close, he walked down and looked at me.

Looking up from the position of a crumpled wretched heap was no way to meet Borglyn. To begin with, he was a real life titan. Well over two meters tall, with long dark-brown hair and a dark-brown beard and a dark-brown star tanned face, he had a bulk to him that was. . . well, ridiculous. He was damn near as big as a Lyndrill guard. In fact, everything about Borglyn was big. His body, his voice, his appetites, his plans.

There was something eerie about him too, his eyes. In the midst of that great flat face of that huge forehead and forest of beard were the two most exquisitely beautiful blue eyes I had ever seen on a human creature.

He was a handful.

He peered at me, bent over with massive hands on muscular thighs, and made a decision.

“Bring him,” he said crisply.

Thor started to speak, thought about it, thought he would shut up and live instead all in the one brief half second glance he got from the boss.

But someone did object. A dry hoarse croak erupted from below. It was the warden from the prison cage, on the scene at last.

It seemed that everyone else was there as well. All the various penal assistants to the warden, most of the major civic officials and quite a few spectators. The clearing at the foot of the ramp was a small field of long green robes fluttering in the breeze.

The warden was Lyndrill eloquent. He began by welcoming Borglyn’s “seeds” and promising prayers of virility. Borglyn was silent.

Only momentarily nonplused, the warden continued. He spoke of the great gulf between stars, the greater gulf between beings. He talked about the further greatness of communication and said he knew that Borglyn would agree. Borglyn was silent.

Now a little nervous, the warden went on about sovereignty, about different cultures and customs being included therein. The warden implied possible disfavor. Lyndrill wise concerning beaches of that authority.