---Hesitation---
---Tuun’s perspective---
My fiancé vaults the railing from the walkway above us.
As he and Thran fall through the air, I know I should open fire…
Right now, he can’t be bargained with!
He can’t be reasoned with!
He doesn’t feel pity…
Or fear…
Or remorse…
And he absolutely will not stop until he has carried out the creepy purple woman’s order!
I hesitate…
It’s only for about 0.9 seconds but that’s 0.9 seconds in which there are 12 shot’s I don’t take, 0.9 seconds where he makes it all the way to the ground.
My hesitation isn’t articulated any more coherently than ‘No!’
My mind knows I should be taking advantage of his airtime to take shots that it would be nearly impossible for him to dodge, my trigger fingers just won’t follow the command to do it!
Victor is the love of my life and my every instinct rebels against my conscious mind telling me to hurt him.
This is exactly what Samus meant by ‘pull the trigger when it counts’!
She and Xon have already fired seven shots at Thran between them.
They aren’t having to agonise like this! Like I am!
The instant he touches the ground, I finally get a hold of myself.
My conscious mind takes command and silences all dissent!
Kinetic pulses ripple through the air towards the man I love.
My upper arms target his head, hoping to concuss him, my lowers target his ankles, hoping to lame him.
Now on the ground, he’s able to dodge and weave through my fire in a way that he wouldn’t have been able to while falling.
He’s winged by a few of the shots but none have the solid connection that would be needed to have any chance of breaking a bone or causing brain trauma.
As he accelerates towards me, I back away while continuing to fire all four of my pistols at him.
Every extra metre will mean another three or four shots I can send in his direction.
The pulsepistols are light and plastic but their weight adds just enough inertia to my arms that I’m unable to escape Victor using his two hands to grasp the wrists of my uppers.
I bring up my lowers to try levelling point blank pulses into his diaphragm but his knee shoots between the pistols and flies from one to the other, imparting each with enough lateral momentum that it sends my lower two arms swinging sideways, irresistibly, before using his enormous strength to slam my upper hands’ pistols together over his head.
The flimsy weapons shatter into pieces.
Before he can figure out how to break the lower two as well, I slide from his iron grip using my superior flexibility and Bagua training.
The second I’ve freed myself, I leap backward, attempting to bring up my lower arms to keep firing at him until he has accumulated enough damage to be incapable of continuing to fight me.
He doesn’t miss a beat, closing the distance back up and spinning towards me, aiming a rapidfire series of tornado kicks at exactly the height that denies me the opportunity to put my guns between me and him, for fear of losing them!
My saving grace, as far as this fight goes, is that his strikes are the same limp, weak, halfhearted ones he uses when we spar and don’t have the (to me) deadly power he hits Samus, Xon, Thran and Kas with when he spars with them.
Though, if he succeeds in taking me prisoner for the one holding him in thrall, I may eventually end up wishing she’d just told him to kill me!
Thinking that makes me misjudge an attempt to shoot him and Victor’s left foot smashes through one of my plastic pistols, causing it to knock into the other, breaking both of them to pieces.
All four hands now empty, I instantly leap backwards and whip into a Bagua stance, adjusted for my nonHuman physiology; my lower arms are in a Qi Long Bu, Dragon Riding Guard, and my uppers in the normal Dan Huan Zhang, Single Palm Change.
My legs are in Zhuang Zhang, Circle Walking Posture, but lower, both to minimise the target my legs present to Victor’s kicks and give myself more stability with a lower centre of mass.
He doesn’t give me a moment of respite, launching himself forward in a powerful front kick, aimed at my solar plexus with the intention of knocking the air out of my lungs.
I dart out of the way and begin a rapid Ni Bu, Mud Walking Step, circling around him to keep myself out of the way of his fierce strikes.
I use my long upper arms to attack anywhere on his body that I know to be weak, while staying out of his arms’ reach (though still inside that of his legs).
I strike for his ribs, his liver, his spleen, his armpits, his elbows.
My lower arms parry his every attempt to hit me that I’m not able to simply dodge.
I don’t aim any kicks for his shins, since I’ll definitely not have the strength to break his bones and he won’t feel the pain while he’s enthralled.
I feel a moment of alarm as, in my periphery, I become aware of Thran getting a hold of her girlfriends ankles and literally swinging her into Samus like a club!
It distracts me for less than 0.1 seconds before I refocus on Victor.
Keeping him from joining Thran against the other two is probably the greatest help I can hope to give them right now, so it’s best if I focus!
Though his strikes are ferocious, the lag, both from him processing much slower than I do and having a more massive body with higher inertia, is quite noticeable.
His strikes are fairly simple for me to predict and redirect with Bagua’s 64 Transformations.
That is… until my fast twitch muscle starts to fail!
I know it’s only a matter of around 50 to 55 seconds before I’ve got nothing left to run or fight with, whereas Victor, being an incredibly well trained and fit Sapiens Human, will be able to keep going and going and going.
I don’t agonise like I did over shooting him.
What I’m about to do is dangerous but, given how badly Samus and Xon’s fight with Thran seems to be going, this is the least of all the evils open to me at the moment!
I take advantage of an instant where his momentum carries him a little away from me.
Inside of a ¼ of a second, all four of my hands dart to my hips and come away holding razor sharp daggers.
Their fusion cores have been deactivated but, for my purposes, that’s perfect!
I don’t want to decapitate or dismember Victor… or stab through his ribcage to boil the blood out of his heart!
I want to employ knowledge I was taught by Mamma Kat…
‘People think that Norse Arts and other European Arts are clumsy, slow, brutish. That the battlefields of historical Europe were strewn with severed heads and parted limbs(!)… Not so, Tunie!’ I remember her saying when I was maybe 8 or 9 ‘Look at this sverð. You see how thin the blade is? What do you imagine would happen if you spent hours hacking into Terran bones with it? It would dent, chip, fracture! No, the primary objective of historical European warriors was not to part their opponent with their limbs but to part them with their blood! Terran bodies have and need to have a lot of blood under a lot of pressure to fight against our high gravity! You slice a hole in their flesh and all that blood comes out… and fast! A drop in bloodpressure will very quickly cause a Human to lose consciousness! Best part is; so long as you’re careful not to cut your opponent too deeply, they don’t even need to die! If your side is able to bandage them up after you’ve achieved victory, then you might have a valuable prisoner!… Not quite the hack and slash image most people probably picture when they think of a pregunpowder European battlefield, is it?’
Ultimately, Baguazhang was a better fit for making the most of my abilities than RNMA or HEMA but it was Mamma Kat, not Shīfu Xiù, who taught me that lesson!
With my knives drawn, it’s Victor who’s now on the back foot, dodging, parrying and retreating towards the purple woman as I go on the offensive, aiming a whirlwind of vicious slashes at his arms and legs, hoping to cut his basilic and saphenous veins.
I score a hit on the inside of his left forearm.
Though I see the telltale scarlet-crimson glint of Human blood, just a tiny bit darker than mine, I know it’s not enough.
That cut was too shallow!
He’s not going to lose enough blood from just that one before I’ve run out of stamina.
I keep pushing him backwards, past Samus and Xon’s fight with Thran, to just below where he initially dropped down from.
The thrallmaker is just metres away to my top right but I can’t focus on her!
Now that Victor has his back to the wall, I’m able to get several more cuts against his bare arms and upper legs.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
I’m just allowing myself a little feeling of triumph when he takes advantage of my complacency.
He pushes off of the wall and straight through my knives into my chest.
He cuts himself on the left side of his head and right shoulder but, the next instant, my back hits the ground.
My grip loosens on the knives in my right hands and they skid away from my grasp from the force of the fall.
I’m about to swing for him with my left hands but his right arm comes down on their wrists, shattering the upper’s with his fist and the lower’s with his elbow.
I scream!
I’m disarmed and pinned beneath the enormous mass of the love of my life.
He’s covered in his blood and its ferric tang fills my nostrils.
His skin that I can see is pallid and clammy with cold sweat but it’s not enough.
He’s still conscious… and I’m beaten!
I look over to Thran and see her standing over a defeated Xon and Samus.
Panic that I held at bay during the fight rises in my belly at the knowledge that she’s about to kill them…
They’re about to die and I’m about to be kidnapped and taken across space to a planet of Human slavers, to be made a present of!
I watch as Thran bends down to take off Samus’ helmet.
Half conscious, Samus peers blearily up into the blank face of the strongest Human woman in the galaxy as Thran draws back a punch that I know will be more than 500J of force… closer to the kinetic energy of a 9mm handgun round than a regular Human’s punch!
If Samus isn’t killed by the first, she definitely will be by the second or third!
Then…
“Stop!” shrieks a panicked voice that it takes me a moment to recognise.
Thran stops dead, her fist still raised beside her head and pointed at Samus’ face.
I turn to look past Victor, up at the woman in the purple glamr armour.
She’s looking past us all, down the length of the cargo bay.
I follow her gaze.
---Khr’kowan’s perspective---
I’m well ahead of Varkheth, Whordh, Khwarvhath and Vrokh, the other four women in the Vrakhand delegation.
None of them were able to run here as fast as I could.
As I round the corner of the enormous, roofless room (which the woman in the rectangle that’s strung from my neck tells me is where I need to be), it looks as if it’s fortunate that I did!
I see the three women fighting against the two mind slaves in the back of a beautiful, glossy purple sky ship while a woman who’s surrounded by a ghostly aura watches from above.
I say fighting but, from how it looks, ‘losing to’ might be more accurate.
The pair look as if they’ve just finished defeating the trio.
I tear towards them all and am noticed by the one I’m taking to be the puppet mistress.
“Stob!” she screams, causing Ms Huntress to halt in the middle of the deathblow she was about to strike on Ms Arran.
The controller gawks at me, paralysed, as I thunder across the space between myself and her.
Her freeze doesn’t last long though.
“Biggai! Tosthi keivwumun tuov thi Elvz naiv zand pikap thi uthur tu yurself! NAU!!!” she barks in a tone I can easily recognise as a panicked order.
A blood covered Mr Taylor grasps the two knives by Ms Tuun’s left hands with his right.
He one handedly tosses them both across himself to Ms Huntress who snatches one out of the air with each of her hands.
Mr Taylor then lifts one of his long, flat feet to stand on Ms Tuun’s lower right wrist as he leans over to collect the two knives that were on her right side.
“Keivwumunn! Hould wun naiftu iichov ther throuts! Biggai! Hould wun tuhers and wun tu yur oun!” she orders, just as I’m approaching the bottom of the ramp.
Ms Huntress lays the leading edge of the knives she holds against each of Ms Arran and [Lt] Runner’s necks as Mr Taylor holds one up to Ms Tuun’s and one to his own.
“Anuthur stepand Ai hav mai toiz kil yur frend zand thenthem selvz!” announces the puppet mistress.
“She says; if you come any closer, she’s going to have Thran and Victor kill the other three, then themselves.” translates Ms Twila from the device hanging at my neck.
“If you do that, there will be nothing to stop me from coming onto this ship and killing you for revenge, will there?” I observe, staring unblinkingly at the woman.
Regardless, I stop at the bottom of the ramp, my chest heaving with pants I was able to keep out of my voice.
She doesn’t need to think long before she speaks again.
“Then, Ail tel themtu kil yur frend zand thenpro tect mi!”
“She says; then I’ll order them to kill your friends then defend me.” relays Ms Twila.
“If you know as much about me as it seems as if you must, you surely know I’m a deathworlder… and, I’m not just any deathworlder, I am the [Empress] and most formidable warrior of the most formidable kind of deathworlder yet known to the wider galaxy. I wouldn’t put your faith in these two (armed with only metal knives) being able to stand between myself and you for very long, if I were you. Especially not in such an enclosed space, where their acrobatics will be less useful to them. They might just injure me enough to make me angry and feel like a quick death is too good for you.” I growl.
Complicated emotions play across the cornered woman’s face as Ms Twila speaks for me.
“Sou, hau du yu sujest wi rizolv this littul Meksikan stan dof?” says the purple woman.
“She asks what you suggest.” says Ms Twila.
“Relinquish your control of these two, relinquish any weapons you might have, including whatever you used to enslave them, and come quietly. Do that and I will personally guarantee your safety as [Empress] of the Vrakhand.” I state.
The woman laughs as my words are translated for her. A high, cold, cruel laugh that banishes any hope I might have had for this impasse being resolved as favourably for my side as I suggested.
“Nou diil! Ai mait luuk laik uh pamperd prin sess but yuh kan betyor arss Aid dai bifor Ai surrender!”
“She says, however she looks, she’d die before she surrendered.”
“Hau abaut; yu giv mi yur jiin zand Ai let yu teik thiiz thriy awei?”
“She says she’ll let you take Tuun, Xon and Samus if you give her your genes.”
“Absolutely not!” I answer “I won’t even consider any resolution that doesn’t include all five of these people returned, alive and free of any control!”
The woman’s face twists in consideration as she listens to Ms Twila relaying my demand.
“Wot ashuruns du Ai hav thatyu wount just kil mi thi sekond Ai rilin kwish mai kontrol ovthem?”
“She’s asking how she knows you won’t kill her as soon as she lets them go.” says Ms Twila.
“Are they still capable of removing the devices that were previously their translators by themselves?” I clarify.
“Theiar… If Ai order themtu.”
“She says they can if she orders it.”
“Then… order them off the ship with the other three and to remove your control only after you’ve made your escape. Order that, if I try anything, they kill the other three.” I suggest.
“Kudwerk…” muses the slaver.
“That could work.” translates Ms Twila.
“What assurance do I have that you won’t wait until you’ve got what you want, the ramp is about to close and then order them to kill the hostages and themselves anyway?” I ask.
The woman shrouded in purple smoke sighs “Mai werd izunt guud inuf(?)”
“She asks whether her word is enough.”
“If the word of an [Empress] wasn’t good enough for you, the word of a kidnapping thief isn’t good enough for me.” I answer, coolly.
The woman actually laughs at that before speaking at some length.
“She says; How about if I made them leave the knives and pulseguns on board and hold the others by the throats? You probably wouldn’t have time to kill me and come back to stop them asphyxiating but you could easily stop them if you were right next to them, couldn’t you?” Ms Twila summarises.
I consider whether there’s any possibility of her being able to trick me in any way before conceding “That sounds like it could work.”
“Sou… du wi havei diil?” asks the kidnapper.
“Do we have a deal?” translates the one around my neck.
I hesitate.
Is it really worth giving such people as this access to what, by all accounts, is such a miraculous substance as thanatite is?
Is it worth allowing them to desecrate my people’s most cherished resource?
Not just my people’s… but specifically mine!
To appropriate it and turn it into nothing more than cheap battle armour?
Is it worth knowing that whatever they do in that armour is, at least partly, my fault?
Is it worth five lives to stop them from acquiring it?
Then I look down into the blank faces of the two redheaded Terran warriors, staring placidly back at me, then further to the three defeated women lying on the ground.
I can’t conscience letting five honourable warriors die in such a way as this!
I can’t allow myself to be obliged to kill this woman for retribution before I’ve even made it to the capital to plead my people’s case that we are civilised beings who deserve a seat at the table of [galactic] society!
“We have a deal.” I answer.
“Ekselunt! Weit rait ther!” sparkles the woman, seeming thrilled. Then, to the two she has enslaved “Ifshi muuvs, kil themthen yurselvs.”
“She says to stay here and not to move or they’ll kill everyone.” relays Ms Twila.
I stand stock still as the woman disappears into the door behind her and I wait for her to return.
When she reappears, the blue, shimmering right fist of her ghost armour is closed as if the hand (I presume it contains) is clasping something beneath the purple smoke.
She wheels back with that arm before launching forward.
I don’t see whatever was thrown until it hits the ground and alerts me to it’s location with the sound of its bounce.
The throw was so pathetic that the clear tube (visible to me only by it’s opaque cap and how it bends the light) ends up several [metres] short of where I can reach it.
“You need to order them not to kill anyone if I come to retrieve the phial.” I observe.
“Rait yu ar!” laughs the woman “Dount du enithing azlong az shi duzent kum fertherth anwerit landid, gaiz! Kumand getit andth enbak tu wer yuar.”
“She’s ordered them not to do anything so long as you don’t come closer than where it is. You’re allowed to come and retrieve it but then you have to go back to where you are.”
I slowly walk forward and, careful not to let any part of myself advance closer than the little patch of bent light, I close my right thumb and forefinger around it.
I shuffle rearwards as I draw back up to my full height with it.
“What now?” I ask, directing my words at the hostage taker.
“Spitinit.” she answers with a shrug.
“She wants you to spit in it.” translates Ms Twila before adding “The lid will probably unscrew anticlockwise.”
I grasp the lid, meant for much nimbler hands than mine, between my fingers.
While masticating on nothing, I twist it in the direction instructed and, with a little difficulty, I manage to get it open.
I keep chewing until my lower toothplate is acting as the dam to a little reservoir of saliva.
I bring the mouth of the tube in my hand to touch it to the apex of the thanatite curve.
Tipping my head down and forward, I pour a steady stream of spittle into the container I’ve been given.
When my mouth is empty, I lift the tube to see that it’s (surprisingly) only half full of clear liquid with the slightest tint of blue… It definitely felt like I had more in my mouth than that.
I hold it up and ask “This is enough.”
“Yesyes! Morthan inuf! Nau putthi kap bakon and throwit bakhir!” she says, beckoning for it, transfixed.
“First, order Mr Taylor and Ms Huntress off the ship with Ms Arran, [Lt] Runner and Ms Tuun, leaving their weapons behind and with orders to remove your control as soon as you’re gone!” I answer without waiting for Ms Twila’s translation.
She rolls her eyes as my words are relayed to her and says “Yutu! Dropthi naiv zand geh tof mai shipwith thous gerlz. Handzon ther throut sand, ifshi traiz tudu enithing tumi orwith hould thi saam pull, kilthem then kilichuther!… Wuns Aiv meid mai eskeipwith thah tyuub, drop themand teikof yur tranzleiterz.”
The pair she holds enslaved allow their blades to fall to the floor.
The tall man pulls his betrothed to her feet and keeps a firm (but not crushing) grip on her throat as he frogmarches her off the vessel.
The short woman has to work a lot harder with her (much taller and less conscious) charges.
Eventually, she manages to get both of them in a sort of double headlock, while keeping a hand on each of their necks.
She walks off the ship with four relatively long legs trailing on the ground behind her.
“Nau givit tumi!” she orders, dropping the apparently affected halfwhisper she’s done most of her conversing in so far, as she holds out her hand in my direction.
“Ms Twila, were there any problems with the orders she gave Ms Huntress and Mr Taylor?” I mutter to the woman on the rectangular medallion at my chest.
“None that I heard, Your Majesty.” she answers, matching her volume to mine.
I grunt my understanding before reeling back the arm holding the tube.
I spend a few [fractions of a second] calculating the appropriate force and trajectory of the throw to give the little clear phial the best chance of landing on the walkway with the woman without falling short, bouncing back or hitting the ceiling and being deflected downward.
I fling the tube in her direction.
It flies straight past her hand (for all her readily inferred intelligence, she seems to lack a lot of the rapid reactions and physical coordination I’ve seen from others of her kind) but, thankfully, my throw was good enough that, even without her catching it, it doesn’t bounce off the platform she stands on.
She bends to pick it up.
It slips beneath the blue shimmer of her armour and is obscured by the haze of purple.
She considers for a few [seconds] before turning to me and smirking “Siimz jenyu in… Ei plezhyur duing biznes withyu(!)”
“She says it was a pleasure doing business with you…” says Ms Twila, appearing to share my disdain for that sentiment.
“I can’t say the same! I hope this is the last ‘business’ I ever have to do with you or your organisation!” I spit in answer.
She giggles as the ramp lifts between us.
I see her dispel her ghost armour, exactly at the moment I no longer have time to get to her over the closing ramp, and raises a dainty, pale, five fingered hand, its palm facing me.
She wiggles the fingers in my direction before turning to disappear into the door behind her.
The ramp closes.
I back away as the ship lifts from the ground.
The two mind slaves neither move away nor release their fellow hostages.
With very little noise bar the *whoosh* of disturbed air, the vessel leaves the enormous roofless chamber at great speed.
There are two heavy *thud*s on my right as Ms Huntress unceremoniously drops the two women she was dragging and a gasp of relief as Mr Taylor lets go of his injured betrothed’s neck.
Both of their hands move to their temples without hesitation.