Trouble Magnet (6 page)

Confronted by the four young humans, the two thranx halted. While the senior female waited, the male advanced. Lifting his foothands off the ground, he held all four forward limbs close in front of him as he raised his upper body. His glistening head now topped out at just over a meter and a half, with the antennae thrusting higher. Fingering the collapsed blade resting in his pant pocket, Subar felt more confident than ever. Even he was taller and heavier than this nascent victim. His nostrils were suffused with the creature’s natural perfume. Their body odors stimulated by exercise, both thranx smelled like ambulatory bouquets of expensive flowers.

The male executed a couple of complex hand gestures that meant nothing to the Alewev-wise but galactically unsophisticated youths. It then addressed them in somewhat rough but perfectly comprehensible terranglo.

“You are blocking the path. Should we around go, or is there some difficulty?”

Taking a step forward, Chaloni unlimbered his gun. Short, stubby, and fashioned of molded, hardened fibers that were a dull ivory in hue, it looked no less lethal for the shortness of its barrel.

“You know what this is, bug?”

The male eyed the gun. At least, Subar thought he eyed it. Given their huge compound eyes, it was difficult to tell sometimes just what a thranx was looking at. “A weapon.”

“Fires shells that penetrate and then explode.” As his companions drew closer and flashed their own weapons, the gang leader made
hand-over
motions with his free hand. “Give us your pouches and packs and nobody loses any lenses. Now!”

The male turned to look at the senior female, who had not spoken. She gestured, he gestured back, she gestured again. Glancing around, Chaloni was not yet nervous—but he was growing impatient.

“Quick-step! And no more hand-talk!” He gestured with the muzzle of the ominous little pistol. “Dirran—maybe if you gave the lady’s right antenna a quick trim?”

Nodding, the grim-faced youth stepped forward, brandishing his own blade. It was bigger than Subar’s, an unfolded arc of sharpened, fine-edged fiber.

“We will give you our possessions,” the male declared hastily. “No violence!”

“That’s better. Hurry it up!” Chaloni nodded tersely at Zezula, who flicked off the stunbar she was holding, pocketed it, and stepped forward. His movements visibly jumpy, the male was unfastening the fabricine pack from the female’s back. Turning, he dropped it, inclined forward to pick it up, dropped it again. Chaloni grinned at his unease while behind the thranx Dirran nudged Missi and shared a whispered joke. Both enjoyed a laugh at the jittery insectoid’s expense. Finally finding a grip on the female’s pack with a truhand, the male transferred it to a stronger foothand and gave it to the impatiently waiting Zezula.

Right in the face.

CHAPTER

4

The unknown contents of the female thranx’s backpack must have included some sturdy gear, because the impact smashed the startled girl’s nose. Blood sprayed. At the same time, the female sprang straight at the startled Chaloni. He got off one shot before his weapon was knocked from his hand. Missing badly, the tiny shell struck the ground right in front of Missi. She let out a scream of pain as shards of shattered pathway pavement were driven through her left shoe and into her foot. Forgetting their purpose, Dirran instinctively went to her aid. A dark stain, not large but unmissable, was spreading along the top and left side of the girl’s footgear. As a result of their combined action, the two thranx had instantly taken half of their attackers out of the fight.

With one hand feeling of her broken nose and blood trickling down her face, Zezula spat redness from her mouth as she fumbled to aim her stunner. Meanwhile the male thranx had fingered a device attached to his thorax pouch. To Subar’s horror, he saw a tiny but bright yellow light spring to life on the instrument. He would have bet every thousand-bar of the cred he didn’t have that the visitor had activated some kind of alarm or communicator. A signal had gone out and it was too late to do anything about it. He and his friends had just been deprived of the luxury of time.

Also of initiative, as the male threw himself at Zezula. She massed more than he did, but the size disparity was a good deal less than that which existed between Chaloni and the female who was clawing at him with all four of her four-fingered hands. As the girl struggled to thumb the stunner she was holding and ward off the thranx with the other, the visitor lashed out in frantic defense. A striking truhand would never have caused Zezula to lose her grip. She might even have been able to hold on to the weapon if hit by a foothand. But four hard-shelled limbs all connecting concurrently with her right forearm stunned nerve and muscle. The backstreet weapon went flying.

Recovering from the surprise of the counterattack, a curse-spewing Chaloni had grabbed the female thranx around the neck with both hands, lifted her off the ground, and was squeezing hard. It didn’t matter that the rigid chitin did not collapse beneath his strong grip, because the air that passed through her throat was utilized for speaking purposes only. An experienced fighter would have yanked off his shirt and tried to wrap it around her thorax, covering her breathing spicules and smothering her. Never having fought a thranx before, the gang leader instinctively fell back on techniques that had been successful in battling other humans. In contrast with his ferocious but improvised efforts, the female was mature—and experienced.

While Chaloni held her suspended, she kicked out with all four feet, striking the gang leader square in the solar plexus. His eyes bugged—an apt simile under the circumstances—the air whooshed out of him, and he let go of her, clutching at his middle. Gathering herself, she jumped again, landing hard on top of him, this time with six feet. Though he was heavier and stronger, having to contend with eight thrashing, stabbing, kicking limbs while lying on his back and trying to catch his breath found Chaloni in more trouble than he would have believed possible.

All this occurred in barely a minute. By that time, Sallow Behdul and Subar had recovered enough from the initial shock to throw themselves into the fight. Rushing to Chaloni’s aid, Behdul wrapped both long arms around the female thranx’s abdomen and strained to pull her off. Holding on to the prone, scratched, and battered gang leader with truhands, foothands, and her front pair of feet, the female kicked backward with the rear pair. She wasn’t strong enough to dislodge Behdul’s grip, but her wild kicks to his middle and more vulnerable lower regions prevented him from concentrating fully on freeing his mentor.

Meanwhile Subar had gone to Zezula’s aid. Seeing that Behdul was having little luck pulling Chaloni’s attacker off him, the younger boy chose to stand off to one side and throw kicks at Zezula’s assailant. He also struck out with his blade. Several slashes that would have opened the ribs of any human, however, only scratched the thranx’s chitin before sliding off.

His repeated kicks had more effect. Slamming one foothand into Zezula’s already injured face, the male stepped off away from her and turned his full attention onto Subar. Possessing nothing in the way of flexible flesh, the meter-and-a-half high insectoid’s face was inherently expressionless. Light flashed from the lenses of his golden, red-banded compound eyes. His four opposing mandibles were spewing forth a steady stream of modulated angry clicks. Unintelligible alien words mixed with whistles of varying pitch and intensity. Doubtless, Subar thought as he crouched and sought an opening for his knife, the visitor was cursing him out in his own language. He would have countered with some colorful phrases of his own, but he was too busy and needed to conserve his wind.

The thranx, on the other hand, seemed to have air to spare. His thorax expanded and contracted as steadily and evenly as a gleaming metallic-blue bellows. Two truhands and two foothands wove patterns in the air in front of him, their combined sixteen digits alternately extending and flexing. Whether these represented words, phrases, or obscene gestures Subar did not know. Four trufeet kept the creature stable and well-balanced. As they confronted each other, it struck Subar that despite being smaller and less muscular, a thranx represented a formidable opponent.

There was something that might help, if only he could recall what it was. As his adversary took a wary step backward, Subar remembered. Charging, he jabbed forward with his knife, aiming for the joint between thorax and b-thorax. All four forward limbs came up to block the deadly thrust.

It was a feint, designed to let Subar slip in beneath the visitor’s defenses. But he didn’t try to stab a second time. Instead, wrapping both arms tightly around the thranx’s lower thorax where it joined to the abdomen, he dug in with his feet and pushed. His knife fell from his fingers as his opponent kicked at it with a hind leg. Subar let it go, having realized that he was not going to penetrate his adversary’s gleaming chitin with anything less than a vibrablade anyway.

Locked together, they stumbled off the path and onto the neatly trimmed russet-hued ground cover. Helped by the slope of the land, Subar continued to use his weight to lean into his opponent and force him backward. All four of the thranx’s hands were striking at him now, the more delicate truhands jabbing at his eyes (he turned his head), the stronger foothands stabbing stiff, hard-shelled fingers into his midsection (he tightened his stomach muscles).

The repeated blows were having an effect, and it was likely that the thranx would soon have dropped him with more of the same. Except something that lay in the direction they were staggering and stumbling caused the thranx to panic.

The lake.

Having their air intakes located on a part of their body instead of on their faces as humans did made all but the most daring thranx extremely uncomfortable around water. The fact that their respiratory systems did not include disproportionately oversized internal air bladders akin to human lungs caused them tend to sink instead of float. Together, these two physical traits inculcated in nearly every thranx a very rational fear of drowning. If he could just force his adversary into the lake, Subar knew, the thranx would abandon any pretext at self-defense in his frantic need to get free. He had no intention of drowning the visitor. The objective had been to rob the visiting pair, not kill them. Preoccupied and even outright corrupt authorities who might be inclined to ignore a simple, straightforward boost tended to become very involved when a crime escalated to murder. Especially if representatives of another, visiting species were involved.

Energized by fear, the thranx had given up trying to injure his assailant with repeated kicks and was now using all six legs in an attempt to halt its backward motion. Only the smaller truhands still jabbed and poked at Subar’s face and body. With six strong feet now clawing at the ground and providing desperate resistance, progress toward the lake slowed. They were very close to the water, Subar saw. Once the thranx felt his rear legs sliding in, his defiance might collapse. A little help, and Subar was sure the fight would come to a rapid and favorable end.

“Zezula!” he shouted without turning his head, needing to keep an eye on his opponent. Despite her broken nose, if she could just lend her weight to the effort, together they would have the thranx half submerged in no time. “Give me a hand! Just—help push! Zezula?”

He decided to risk a look behind him. His jaw dropped.

Zezula was indeed moving fast—in the opposite direction. Blood still streaming from her face, she was hanging on to Chaloni’s right arm as the two of them stumbled toward the cover of the thick native brush from which they had originally emerged. The gang leader held tightly to his recovered weapon but made no attempt to use it. Sallow Behdul was loping along behind them, occasionally glancing backward. Only once did he happen to meet Subar’s gaze. As he fled, the only visible hurt on the bigger boy was to be found in his expression. Of Dirran and the foot-dragging Missi, there was no sign.

They’d left him, every one of them.

Everything that had so shockingly and unexpectedly gone wrong with Chaloni’s carefully planned boost now accelerated. Unable to force the thranx in whose embrace he now found himself into the nearby water, Subar also discovered that he was unable to free himself. Behind him, the female had not only recovered her poise, but had also recovered her strength and was limping determinedly in her companion’s direction. Deep inside Subar, fright began to replace fight. Frantic now, he fought to free himself from the grasp of the thranx whom moments ago he had been gripping as tightly as possible. Truhands would not have held Subar, but seeing his companion intact and coming up behind the young human, the male thranx lifted his foothands off the ground and used them to grab the boy around the waist.

Reaching out with one hand, Subar tried to seize one of his opponent’s sensitive, feathery antennae. Reacting defensively, the thranx slapped them both flat against the top of his head. Subar’s swipe gathered only air. At the same time, a front leg slammed sideways into the boy’s right ankle. Had a human executed the blow, it would have been described as a skillful judo move.

Feeling himself going down, Subar forgot everything he had learned about street fighting. Laboriously acquired techniques were useless against adversaries whose vulnerable parts lay elsewhere on and within their bodies, and whose exterior was composed of a natural armor. Then the female arrived. Together, the two thranx began pummeling and kicking him. Their irate whistling and clicking filled his ears.

Swinging and kicking wildly, he landed a lucky blow when one of his closed fists made contact with the male’s right eye. That at least was both vulnerable and unarmored. Letting out a shrieking whistle, the thranx momentarily drew back. It was enough to allow Subar to regain his feet. But the female was on his back, clinging to him with all eight limbs, refusing to allow her remaining assailant his freedom. An assaulted human would have been relieved to have escaped. Something in thranx nature, or maybe in just these individuals, demanded greater satisfaction.

Swinging and spinning, he was unable to land a solid blow. Though she massed less than he did, her weight was enough to keep him from breaking into a run. Meanwhile the male was recovering from the blow to his eye and was stumbling forward to rejoin the fight.

“All right, all right!” Subar howled. “That’s enough! Let go of me and I’ll go, I’ll go!”

The female alternately whistled, clicked her mandibles, and chattered in his ear. Some of it was nothing more than noise to him, some of it must have been Low Thranx, and despite his exhaustion and fear he thought he also caught some terranglo. Only one word was short and taut enough for him to make out for certain.

“No!”

The park offered a visual respite from the emotional cacophony in which he was drowning, a sore and weary Flinx reflected, but not a mental one. He had spent the entire previous night in a state of emotional overload, wandering the streets of the city—some mean, some accommodating, none particularly attractive—without any destination other than exhaustion in mind. Having reached that, he had stumbled onward, only to find himself on the outskirts of Ballora just prior to sunrise. The park being much closer than his hotel, and no public transportation being within immediate range of his sight or hearing, he had considered using his communicator to call for a vehicle, only to finally pass on the notion with a mental shrug. From the pedestrian walkway he had followed a designated turnoff into the cool, silent confines of the vast public recreational space. Perhaps within its damp depths, he had mused unenthusiastically, he might encounter an emotion or two that would prove uplifting instead of generally depressing.