“You don’t believe this, do you?” he asked.
She smiled at him.
“Xenophon, I’ve known you and your father for years. I cannot see either of you doing anything other than what you might think is best for Attica. As for this trouble, and the death of your father, it is rubbish. But that’s not really the issue, is it?”
Xenophon nodded in agreement.
“Yes, you’re right. With the change of government, and this lie being told, we’re essentially outcasts from Attica. If we travel anywhere near there, we’ll be arrested and returned for a trial.”
And when I say trial, I actually mean a show trial where we all get strung up and left to rot. There’s no chance in hell we’d get a fair deal back home, not yet anyway.
Roxana turned the virtual display around so that it displayed correctly for the two men. The detail was impressive, and the quality good enough to read from where they sat.
“No, it is much worse than that. In the last hour, envoys have been sent to the old worlds of the Alliance. It looks like they are trying to draw up a new treaty arrangement.”
“Treaty?” asked Glaucon.
“The Alliance, they are going to try and rebuild it, and then make all the same mistakes they made last time. I warned them about this. Actually, Crixus and his people warned us as well. The only reason they stayed as long as they did was to try and persuade us to not go down this road again. You realise that the Laconians won’t let us off so lightly next time? I wouldn’t be surprised if they flattened Attica so as to make an example.”
A loud noise erupted from the right of the bar as a group of three people entered. They were all dressed in long flowing robes, and each was of a different colour and pattern. They moved with an elegance and grace that Xenophon assumed they were women. A number of the men in the bar were quite vulgar in their language towards them, yet they slipped past and made their way to a table. One by one, they removed their hoods to reveal their slender, smooth faces. Each was longhaired, with flowing locks that ran down past their shoulders. He almost forgot to swallow at the sight of such perfection.
“Ahem...” muttered Roxana, noticing the enthralled Xenophon and Glaucon, both busily watching the new party. Xenophon turned back sheepishly.
“Don’t you have better things to do right now?”
He said nothing but looked over to Glaucon who grinned, the tension of their conversation already starting to fade.
“Have you ever seen anything like them? You don’t see women on Attica like that now, do you?”
Roxana shook her head.
“You know I am still here?” she asked, feigning being insulted.
Glaucon looked back, but Xenophon continued to watch them. Roxana was about to speak again but noticed his body language. Something was up. She leaned towards him and whispered in his ear.
“What is it?”
“There’s something going on over there, near the doorway.” he replied quietly.
Roxana started to turn, but he grabbed her arm and held her still.
“Slowly, don’t draw any attention, something is about to happen.”
She tried to relax and looked past the group of women and to the bar. From the corner of her peripheral vision, she picked out the shadows Xenophon had been referring to.
“I see them. Who are they?” she whispered.
Xenophon watched them and managed to isolate two men in the shadows plus another two who looked like they were watching the entrance.
An ambush, it has to be
.
He turned to Glaucon and Roxana and spoke as quietly as he could, yet still loud enough for them to hear him over the music.
“There’s going to be trouble. Four men, two at the side and two more at the entrance.”
Roxana nodded and waved her hand to control the computer display in front of her. She moved a number of news stories about to hide as much of the communication screen and log as possible before contacting the security desk on the ground floor of the mercenary recruitment centre.
“Yeah?” said the man on the display. He wore a dark uniform and armoured shoulder pads. He gave a rather poor impression of the security, but it was his job to help keep the place secure.
“There’s trouble in the high level bar, four intruders, possibly armed.”
“Armed?” answered the man. There was something about the word that forced him upright. He looked to his right and waved at somebody out of view. A moment later another man appeared. This one looked much more competent and wore the insignia of the station security on his chest.
“A team is on the way, but what is happening up there?”
Roxana tried to speak, but the display and a dozen similar ones instantly deactivated. It must have been one of the men that had just arrived. She looked to Xenophon and Glaucon who were already bracing themselves for trouble. The music cut abruptly, and in the brief moment of quiet, she whispered to them both.
“Stall for time, security is on the way.”
The lights flashed brightly and turned the bar from a dark and drab space to a bright place where nobody could hide. It was as though a great floodlight had been activated, causing instantaneous discomfort. As they tried to adjust their eyes, the group of men moved in. All wore civilian clothing and carried a rough looking firearm. It was larger than a pistol but looked crude and unsophisticated. One turned it towards Xenophon’s table and flicked it, indicating for them to move.
“Hands on the table,” he then moved into the centre of the room and raised his weapon to the ceiling. “Everybody cooperates and nobody gets hurt!” shouted the man.
From behind the bar emerged a tough, tattooed man brandishing a metal bat. It wasn’t the most sophisticated of weapons, and probably all he was allowed to carry in case of emergencies. One of the men threw back his hood to reveal the face of a Median civilian. He had the normal slender body and soft skin of his race, but his face was scarred; one of his eyes looked different, perhaps mechanical.
“Old man. Get back and drop your bat. We won’t tell you again,” he snapped.
He then clicked a button on his firearm and pointed it directly at the face of the barman. Even then he refused to drop it.
“What the hell is a Median mercenary doing making trouble in my bar? You know the penalty, right?”
Without a moment’s hesitation the man pulled the trigger. The blast was nothing like the pulse weapons used by the military. In fact, Xenophon was certain it was a simple projectile weapon, powered by a chemical process. It hurled a cloud of shot that slammed the man back two metres and into a stack of glasses and bottles. He crumpled to the floor, presumably dead. Several women at the fringe of the bar started to scream, but by simply pointing their weapons at them, the criminals soon quietened them down.
The largest of the group also threw back his hood, revealing a rough, almost reptilian face. He was of a similar build to a human but with a broader chest and substantially greater muscle mass. He wore some kind of respirator device built into a crude metal facemask.
“Mulacs,” whispered Xenophon.
The creature heard the sound but could not work out who had spoken.
“No more mistakes. Keep your hands where we can...see them,” he said, a slight pause mid-sentence at he hissed through his respirator.
Mulacs? What are they doing here? They’re nothing but petty criminals and slavers,
thought Xenophon.
The creature moved to the group of newly arrived women. He seemed interested in them alone. The closer he moved the more they recoiled, as if they had been expecting trouble. From his position it was impossible to hear what he was saying, but it was clearly aggressive in tone. One of the women stood up, only to be struck in the face by the Mulac.
“Bastards!” swore Glaucon, his control starting to waver. Xenophon glanced towards his friend and tried to dissuade him from action. It was to no avail, the young man’s blood pressure seemed about to boil. One of the thugs spotted him and moved closer, his weapon aimed squarely at Glaucon’s chest.
“Don’t try and be a hero, Alliance boy,” he laughed.
Xenophon watched what was happening and could only pray that Glaucon didn’t do something stupid. Although they had much in common, there was a big difference when it came to situations like this. Where Xenophon was calm and also dispassionate, Glaucon was easily excited and prone to rushing in without thinking. When Xenophon had been reading or translating old texts, Glaucon had been playing at sports or hosting yet more parties. It was incredible they had become such good friends with them being so far apart.
“Hey!” shouted one of the men as he spotted a young woman entering the bar. She must have been in a side room as she stumbled in, half drunk and almost crashed into the bar. She wore old-fashioned denim trousers with a light blue top. Over the top was a rough but sturdy black leather jacket. Her hair was dyed a vivid blue colour.
“Uh, what’s going on?” she muttered and then flipped down onto the bar. One of the guards started to move towards her but stopped when it was clear she was either unconscious or asleep. Roxana tilted her head slightly and looked to the girl’s left leg. Xenophon followed her glance and spotted the item on her thigh. It looked like a black holster, and the young woman’s hand was moving towards it.
“That’s enough surprises, everybody show us those hands. You three are coming with us!” snarled the Median. One of his henchmen approached the three women and lifted them up, one at a time. He carried sets of manacles that he expertly placed on their forearms. One started to move, and in a flash the Mulac henchman struck her across the face, knocking her down but not hard enough to hurt her. It was then that Xenophon spotted her skin and face. He realised they weren’t women, not by the standards of the Terrans anyway. They were the androgynous automatons, the manufactured slaves of the Empire, and almost certainly from one of the many pleasure ships that ploughed the shipping lanes.
Incredible. They are supposed to be as beautiful and attractive to any man or woman that looks on them. I wonder if that is true.
Almost as soon as they had arrived, the group of criminals were making their way slowly to the door with their prize of imprisoned automatons. Glaucon turned to Xenophon and Roxana, a look of pleading and anger about his face.
“Wait for it...” whispered Xenophon, for he knew something explosive was about to happen. It was pointless jumping forward into the sights of a group of desperate criminals. He spotted a flick of movement from the blue-haired girl as she pulled an object from the holster. Without even checking around her, she slid back and tumbled out into the open. The criminal thugs watched open-mouthed as she raised a snub barrelled pistol and pointed it at the Mulac’s forehead. With a single flash, the back of the creature’s head exploded in a cloud of blood. He staggered back and dropped to the floor, killed instantly by the explosive power of the low velocity slug. The other three surged towards her with their weapons at the ready.
“Now!” cried Xenophon.
Both he and Glaucon were out from behind their table and lurched across the open space to tackle the Median thug. He was much stronger than he looked, but the impact caught him by surprise and threw him roughly to the ground. His firearm clattered away uselessly. For a second Xenophon thought they had him under control, but no sooner had they hit the ground, and he was rolling away. With a flick of his leg, he caught Glaucon hard in the stomach. He jumped ahead to Xenophon, but another blast from a different weapon struck him in the torso. The impact knocked him back to the floor, and a gaping wound on the front, the obvious sign of a violent blast wound. He rolled to the right and spotted Roxana on one knee, aiming the firearm that she must have taken from the fallen enemy. She took careful aim and loosed off another shot. Xenophon spun around and spotted a third of the gang drop down clutching at his leg. The girl with the blue hair slid along the floor and struck her weapon at the man’s head, knocking him out cold before he could respond. The bar was now completely silent as the fourth and final man stood and waited. He carried a larger weapon in his hands. It was multi-barrelled and looked like a heavily modified carbine. Roxana and the blue-haired woman aimed their weapon at him, but Xenophon and Glaucon were still unarmed. They stood and waited like the rest.
“Put down the weapon, Tamor!” shouted the girl.
The man laughed, evidently refusing to comply.
“We should have killed you when you first came to us,” he said bitterly.
It was a standoff, each waiting for the other to move first. The man wore crude looking armour, the kind a lot of mercs and freelancers used to get the rougher types of work. But no one needed to make a move as the reinforcements had arrived. The main doors burst open, and in walked a great hulk of a man. He was taller than any of those stood in the bar and almost as broad across the chest. He pointed his right hand at the man and spoke slowly but firmly.