Chapter Six
The shit hits the fan…
His tentacles wiggling happily, Jaxor held up his empty bottle.
“All done?”
His tentacles wrapped around my wrist. “My momma.”
“Yes, I am.” I slid the bottle in a side pocket and burped him. “ We are going to do a little recon, and I need you to be my lookout, so no bad men can sneak up on us. Okay?”
His little face scrunched up in a fierce frown. “Me. Watch.”
“You’re such a smart baby.” I kissed his forehead.
He smiled at me. “Me. Smart.”
“And cute as a button.” With a few taps on my communications bracelet, I closed Jaxor’s helmet and managed to link my heads-up display with his. “That yellow figure is a bad guy. He likes to take things that don’t belong to him. It’s our job to arrest him.”
An excited squeal broke from Jaxor, and he bounced up and down on my shoulder.
“Shhh. We have to be very quiet. I think there are more bad men inside the hangar, and we don’t want them to catch us. Okay?”
“Kay.”
I quickly refastened the baby carrier to my armor and eyed the lookout. The ass was taking a piss. God, what a drunken moron. While he had his back turned, I simply walked up and stunned him.
The mercenary dropped to the ground with a moan.
Yuck. I grimaced as his spasming arms and legs sent pee flying in every direction. Thank God for self-cleaning armor.
“I. Will. Gut. You,” he spat.
Jaxor growled menacingly.
“Who are you working for?” I kicked his leg when he didn’t answer. “Who?”
“I. Will. Sell. Child. Tai-Kok.”
A cold rage filled me as I stunned him again. “Wrong answer.”
Hatred burned in his eyes. “I. Will. Kill. You.”
“Don’t think so.” It looked like the Shadow Thieves Guild was working for the Tai-Kok, and hiring the Bjarke was their first mistake.
“Gut. You,” the mercenary gasped, trying to get to his feet.
“Uh-huh.” I hit him with my telekinetic TKO punch and smiled as his eyes rolled back in his head.
“I’m seriously considering feeding you to Qa’a.
It’s what you deserve, but even a lowlife like you gets his day in court.
” I cuffed him and yanked his hood back.
The Bjarke mercenary had a nasty scar on his forehead and reeked of cheap liquor.
“Him. Stink.”
“Him does.” I tried the backdoor to the hangar and shook my head in disbelief. It was unlocked. Not only were the Bjarke mercenaries dumb as a rock, but they were also careless.
Opening the door a few inches, I stuck my bracelet inside. On my heads-up display I counted two mercenaries dismantling the control console on the starfighter. Well, I’ll be damned. Thanks to my merge with Kaelen, I could understand them.
“I can jury-rig anything.” A mercenary wearing an eyepatch held up a computer motherboard. “Once I integrate this with our processor, we’ll be able to cloak our ship.”
I snickered. The motherboard was for weapons control not a cloaking device.
A mercenary with his hair in a man bun demanded, “When is Vokai arriving?
“Soon,” Eyepatch answered.
Manbun hacked up a wad and spat it on the floor. “I don’t trust him. He is betraying his own people and could easily fly off and sell the starfighter to a Hrungnir trader.”
“Not with my knife at his throat,” Eyepatch replied.
Hmmm. Was this Vokai an Alliance pilot? If so, he was a dead man walking.
I scanned the rest of the hanger. Fifteen mercenaries were sitting at a long table drinking some sort of beer and playing cards.
They seemed oblivious to the fact that there were more than a hundred Alliance soldiers swarming the spaceport.
Nor had they noticed the Executioners floating about.
“Bad man!” Jaxor cried.
Before I could react, I was shoved violently through the door. I stumbled and hit the floor hard.
Something heavy landed on my back, pinning me down and knocking the wind out of me. Damn. Couldn’t breathe.
“Prepare to die,” a harsh voice said.
“No. Hurt. Momma.”
Ten seconds later, the man started screaming blue bloody murder and the weight on my back vanished.
Rolling over, I scrabbled backward and my jaw dropped. Jaxor had latched onto the man’s groin and was growling like a rabid pit bull. How had he managed to retract his helmet? Yeow! His sharp little teeth were cutting right through the man’s armor. Blood spurted in every direction.
A guttural scream tore from the man as his desperate attempts to free himself failed. The instant the man’s hand closed around the hilt of his sword; I unleashed my TKO punch. His head snapped back and he slumped to the floor.
Jaxor’s tentacles repeatedly stung the man’s groin.
“Leave him Jaxor. Leave him.”
Grrr. Grrr. Grrr.
Dammit! My little warrior was totally ignoring me.
Gasping like I was a six-pack-a-day smoker, I managed to get upright, staggering backwards as I took multiple laser hits.
Shit! Shit! Shit! I darted behind a crate.
“ Found the starfighter and I need some backup, like now,” I yelled psychically as I returned fire.
God, I loved this armor. Without it, I’d be very dead.
Kaelen’s energy flowed into me as he demanded, “They are jamming our scanners. Where are you?”
Using my telekinesis, I hurled a mercenary through a window. “Here! I’m here!” To be on the safe side, I tossed another Bjarke out of a window on the opposite side of the hangar.
“Hokahey!” The Bjarke mercenaries shouted as they charged toward me firing wildly. Gaping holes appeared in the hangar’s walls.
The crates I was hiding behind suddenly disintegrated into a thousand fireflies. Shit! Shit! Shit!
Dad and Kaelen abruptly appeared in the hangar. Bellowing war cries, they drew their swords and attacked the Bjarke soldiers.
A mercenary doing a weird hippity-hop dance circled me. “Prepare to die!”
“You first.” I copied his weird hippity-hop dance. “Is this some kind of ritual? Cause, it’s really stupid and I have to say, you are piss poor warriors.”
“We are Bjarke!” His sword flashed out.
“And?” I ducked under the blade and kicked him in the groin.
Letting out a high-pitched squeak, the mercenary dropped to the floor and cradled his man parts.
“Who hired you?”
He pulled his knife. “I will gut you.”
I knocked it out of his hand. “If you don’t tell me, I’m going to feed you to Qa’a. You know, the Katanic Supreme Leader. You have heard of him, haven’t you?”
His horrified gaze locked on Qa’a who had slithered over to us in his true form. “Vokai. It was Vokai.” He tried to crawl away.
A tentacle shot out, grabbed his right leg and dragged him back. Qa’a ran his long, sticky tongue over the mercenary’s face. “ Vokai, the Alliance Minister of War?”
“Yes. Yes. Please do not eat me. Please.”
Qa’a stuffed the screaming Bjarke down his maw. “I will interrogate him later.”
“Okey-dokey.” I suppressed a shudder. I wanted to be nowhere near him when that happened. “ Captain Zan is gonna freak when he finds out who the traitor is.”
A terrifying smile curved Qa’a’s mouth. “I look forward to his reaction.
A black blur zipped around the hangar, slicing and dicing the mercenaries.
Dang! I knew Askole had the ability to go to hyper speed, but Xyler did a great imitation of The Flash.
Jaxor’s growls got louder and he shook his head violently.
Damn. It looked like his teeth were stuck in the man’s armor. I did a doubletake. Oh, my, God. Jaxor was eating the man’s private parts. “Bad baby. Spit!”
“Duck,” Kaelen commanded.
I did and a war-hammer impaled a Bjarke sneaking up on me. Guess it did come in handy.
Captain Zan and his men rushed in.
Did the Bjarke surrender? Hell, no. The few still standing kept fighting to the bitter end.
Dad walked over to me. “You hurt?”
“Nope. I left a cuffed mercenary by the back door,” I replied.
“An Executioner snagged him.” Dad frowned. “Is that blood all over Jaxor’s face?”
Shit! Too much blood. I hurried over to him.
He stuffed a lump of flesh in his mouth.
“No! Do not eat that man’s nasty dick. Spit.
Jaxor chewed faster.
Spit! Now! I picked him up and stuck my fingers in his mouth and managed to pull out the mangled man parts. “Ewww.”
Xyler snatched Jaxor out of my arms and held him up. “My son has drawn first blood!”
Huh. Guess that was a big deal. I eyed Xyler's armor. It bore a startling resemblance to a medieval knight from old England. Complete with a horned helmet, and black plated armor. "Have Askole warriors ever been to Earth?"
"Unknown," Kaelen replied.
I gingerly held up the disgusting man parts. “Do I put these in evidence?”
“Probably a good idea,” Dad held up an evidence bag and I dropped them inside.
Xyler zipped up and took the evidence bag. “I claim these as spoils of war.”
“They’re evidence,” I countered.
Xylar retorted, “They are my son’s first war trophy.”
“Let him keep them,” Kaelen interjected. “First blood is an important rite of passage for an Askole warrior.”
“He’s a baby, not a warrior, but whatever.” I pointed at the badly bleeding man lying on the floor. “Should we call for a medic? He’s gonna bleed out.”
“I can’t believe the kid actually bit his balls off,” Dad said proudly .
I grimaced. “And your grandson ate most of the guy’s penis too.”
“Seriously? Maybe he was just hungry,” Dad said.
“He just had a bottle.”
Kaelen leaned down and retracted the man’s helmet.
Huh? He wasn’t a Bjarke. “Do you know him?”
“I do,” Captain Zan announced, sheathing his sword. “That is Klython, a thief and spy I have been hunting for the last six months.” He motioned at two of his soldiers. “Take him to sick bay and I want a guard on him at all times.”
Without saying a word, the soldiers flipped Klython over, cuffed him and hauled him off.
A tall man in a spiffy red uniform covered in so many metals he clinked when he walked strutted into the hangar. His arrogant expression was at odds with the sweat rolling down his face.
“Let me guess. That’s Vokai, the Alliance Minister of War?”
Kaelen nodded. “And he is a pilot.”
Vokai carefully examined the starfighter with a handheld scanner.
“It’s what? Sixty degrees outside and he’s sweating like it’s a hundred and twenty,” Dad commented.
Kaelen glanced at his communications bracelet. “His pulse rate is up too.”
“You think Vokai knows the gig is up?” Call me curious.
Dad fingered his pistol. “He does and he’s gonna try to place the blame for this fiasco on someone else.”
Vokai’s cold gaze fixed on me. “What is a female doing here, Captain Zan?” Before the captain could answer, he snapped, “I also want an explanation, on how you allowed the starfighter to be stolen and damaged.”
Qa’a transformed into his humanoid form and strolled over to the Minister of War. “Allow me to answer those questions.”
The color drained from Vokai’s face. “This is an Alliance matter. You have no place here. Leave immediately!”
“Your ruling council gave me the authority to be here. Let me introduce you to my enforcers who located and recovered the starfighter.”
I gave the Minister of War my Debbie Sunshine smile. “And gee, we already know who did it. You. In the future you might want to hire better henchmen.”
“Lies!” Anger twisted Vokai’s mouth. “This is unacceptable.” He typed away on his communications bracelet. “I will have the Council revoke your credentials and ban you from Alliance space.”
Kaelen interjected, “We have proof that you hired the Bjarke to steal the starfighter and that you were planning on selling it to the Tai-Kok. What did they promise you? Wealth? Power?”
“We are placing you under arrest for treason and theft,” Dad added, pulling out his cuffs.
Vokai’s hostile gaze rolled over us and he sneered. “The battle is not yet won.”
I glanced around at the bodies littering the floor. “I kinda think it is.” Me and my big mouth. Vokai grabbed me and seconds later a glittering blue light engulfed us.
Kaelen's roar of fury reverberated around my skull. “I will find you.”