SPACE RATS & REBELS
Episode 1:
Fools Rush In
MIMI RISER
www.mimiriser.com
Space Rats & Rebels is now released as a serial, which means it has been divided into separate parts that are offered individually. This is the first of three episodes.
Serial Copyright © 2014 by Mimi Riser
All rights reserved.
[Disclaimer: This novel is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.]
Chapter 1
Smash Hardn shivered in the recycled air of the dome on the asteroid’s surface. A tough metglass dome, but scant protection against the dead cold of space, and he wore only a szken, the formfitting suit of a fighting man. Still, he didn’t expect to be topside for long. Smash wasn’t the galaxy’s smartest man—not that he was the stupidest either. The most daring and reckless maybe? An unknown craft fast approached, and he’d opted to meet it alone.
He stood relaxed but ready, feet apart and arms akimbo, watching the luminous disc growing larger and larger above him. Once, in peacetime, this asteroid had been a resting and refueling stop for traders. Smash had stopped here often en route to Isis-3. But the good times were long gone, and now Captain Hardn, ex-trader and current raider, used the abandoned asteroid as a hidey-hole for his band of renegade space rats. Rebellion was a rough business, but it beat the alternative. Slavery to the Imperial Federation.
Speaking of which, look at that. The craft now hovered directly over the dome, close enough to see the Federation insignia on its hull. Interesting.
Smash whistled while he unholstered his mazer and set it on stun.
The dome’s double hatch, stuck on automatic, slid open and shut in sequence—first the outer, then the inner—as the small ship floated through and gently touched down. Smash watched the landing with as much envy as alertness. His own ship’s G-pods had been knocked out several skirmishes ago, and he hadn’t known a soft landing since. Talk about a pain in the tailfins. He had bruises all over his—
Never mind. The RATs took what they needed, and he needed a new ship. Real nice of the Feds to send him one, huh? Her hatch opened, and out climbed a huge, hairy humanoid figure. Smash stepped forward to confront him.
“Drop your weapons and identify yourself.” He delivered the order in Galactic-Common (the language all worlds spoke along with their own), and not harshly but with the authority of long leadership, the confidence that comes from knowing you hold all the cards.
Too bad his opponent didn’t know that, too.
“I am Braun of Titan, and I drop my weapons for no one. Now get out of my way, boy. I have no time to play with you.” He started to push past.
“Hek,” Smash cursed, “who’s playing?”—and hit the bearded giant square in the chest with the maximum stunning power of his mazer.
Braun paused in mid-step, as though merely amused by the blow, then brushed Smash aside with the back of his hand, sending him halfway across the landing field in a horizontal position.
Whizz—wham—
Ouch!
Smash was up, snorting steam, almost before his skidding body had come to a halt. Arrgh… With a low growl, he hurled himself full force at the Titan, knocking him off balance. Before Braun could regain his footing, Smash pinned him facedown on the ground.
Hah, that was easier than he’d expected.
Too easy.
A quick roll, a twist of the torso, and Smash was the one examining the field’s scarred surface at close quarters.
“I told you, boy, I have no time for games. And little to lose if I crush you. I’m a wanted outlaw already, and seeking the same to join forces with. Is this the RAT base? Answer quickly! I must find Captain Hardn!”
“You’re looking at him, you stupid overgrown gorlak. I’m Hardn.” The captain’s words sounded remarkably clear considering his nose was squashed flat against his face.
“You?” Braun sounded like he’d just swallowed his tongue. “But…I was expecting a man more my own age. You can’t be much older than my—”
“You must forgive my father, Captain,” came a sultry voice from behind them.
Smash spun about—and found himself gazing into expressive dark eyes fringed by thick lashes.
“He has become accustomed to hitting first and explaining himself later. These days it seems the safest way,” the voice continued.
But Smash didn’t hear the words so much as he watched them being formed by soft feminine lips. He hadn’t been this close to a beautiful girl in way too long.
The dark eyes sparkled, and the lips parted in a mesmerizing smile. “My name is Bresti, but most call me Bres.”
Smash wanted to call her his. But not with a hulk of a father nearby. He could do little but smile in return.
“Well, with the state the galaxy’s in, his action was understandable.” Smash followed the same rule himself—though usually with better success. “Let’s forget all about it.” He re-aimed his smile at Braun, who answered it with a you’re-not-fooling-anyone grin.
The two men locked gazes a calculating moment, then in silent accord, clasped each other’s hands in the intergalactic sign of friendship.
“Very magnanimous of you,” Braun drawled.
“I’m just glad you’re on my side.” Smash flexed his crunched fingers. “Come on, let’s go below and talk.”
Chuckling, he led them into a bubble-chute that whizzed them to the living quarters in the asteroid’s belly where warmth and color waited, a welcome relief after the cold desolation of the surface. They stepped out into the communal hall, a sprawling ellipsoid filled with free floating ’orm chairs and glo-globes, remnants from the asteroid’s days as a rest stop for space-weary traders.
At the far end, an Ahzian midget, six-fingered and bright blue, was playing a fast game of mugwup with a large cylindrical robo sporting retractable limbs, antenna-like sensors, and topped by a chrome sphere of a head. Near them a tall, lanky human lounged against a padded bulkhead and lightly strummed a seven-string Veluvian lutar. All three space rats glanced up at the entrance of the Titans and stared. Smash, they ignored; he was only their leader, after all.
After a long and appreciative look at Bres, the young man with the lutar began playing an ancient love ballad, “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.” Smash grinned and thought, Dael hasn’t seen a girl in a long time either.
The song Dael played was so old no one knew its origin. Some speculated it came from fabled Earth herself, the mythical mother planet of all humanoid lifeforms. Others said bogrop, impossible, no such world had ever existed. Smash didn’t care one way or the other. The galaxy’s future concerned him more than its past. And the future looked bleak, but he’d fight it to the last, go down swinging. Never say die till you’re dead.
He motioned his visitors toward a cluster of ’orms. “Have a seat and tell me why you’re here.”
Their initial curiosity satisfied, the midget and robo returned to their game, but Smash noticed the robo kept one sensor pointed at Braun. “It’s all right, SAM, he’s a friend. You’d better watch Xu-fu or he’ll win all your microchips.”
The robo emitted an electric crackle that sounded strangely like a laugh, but turned all its sensors back to the mugwup board.
“Xuanisumotallytofu never wins anything,” Smash confided to the Titans.
“Xuani…what?” Bres blinked at the blue Ahzian barely
half her height.
“Xuanisumotallytofu. Xu-fu, if you’re in a hurry.” Smash winked at her. “What he lacks in size, he makes up for in syllables. There’s no one better to have next to you in a close fight, though.”
“If you say so.” Braun looked none too convinced.
He and Bres settled into two ’orm chairs that instantly conformed to their body shapes. Or almost. Braun’s ’orm, strained to its obliging limits, quivered beneath him, but heroically held his bulk. Brave ’orm.
Smash leaned against a third ’orm chair, which stretched vertically to support his back, and studied father and daughter while they spoke. He was a tall, muscular man himself, but Braun dwarfed him, made him feel almost as small as Xu-fu. Bres was tall, too, but no taller than Smash, and perfectly formed. And that satiny hair, falling like a dark veil to her waist…
With effort he tore his mind away from her and focused on the tale Braun told. A tale Smash had heard too often recently while the Feds raised tariffs through the roof—and then raised them higher. Those who couldn’t pay lost their lands and liberty. Those who resisted lost their lives. Only a few escaped.
Braun scowled at the memory. “So because I wouldn’t surrender my farm to the Imperial Federation, I was condemned to work the mines of Hades-5’s prison colony, and my daughter was to be sold as a slave to pay my fines.”
A pretty price she’d have fetched, too. A sick, shameful thing that slavery had been reinstated in the galaxy after being abolished for so long. Smash glanced again at the tall brunette and saw red. He quite enjoyed hearing how Braun had rearranged the anatomies of the brute squad who came to collect her, and had then stolen their spacecraft.
“Why not?” Braun shrugged. “They were in no condition to fly it anymore.”
“We did transport them to a med-center. Which is more than they’d have done for us,” Bres said. “Then we came looking for you. Even on Titan we had heard of your fleet—the Rebels Against Tyranny. Through the craft’s ’puter, I was able to access Federation archives and find out the coordinates of your last few raids, and from those I deduced an approximation of the radius in which your base must be.”
She what? Smash’s jaw dropped.
“My daughter is an excellent navigator,” Braun said with obvious pride in her accomplishment and no little amusement at Smash’s expression.
“Oh, but we had been checking other asteroids in this sector,” Bres was quick to add. “It was just luck we found yours so quickly.”
“Luck nothing,” Braun bellowed at her. “If it hadn’t been for your calculations, we’d still be star-hopping around out there.”
He turned to Smash. “Captain Hardn, I have always been a peaceful man with few wants or needs. I have taken care of what is mine and interfered with no others, save when they interfered with me. Under the VORs, this galaxy was a good place to live. With Emperor Kkrypt on the throne”—his hands clenched—“it’s not fit for a microgg. I don’t know what you can hope to accomplish against him, but I wish to join you. To help save even one damned soul from that devil, I’d sacrifice my last drop of blood—and consider the price well worth it.”
Having completed what was probably the longest speech of his life, Braun sank back into his beleaguered ’orm chair and awaited an answer.
Smash surveyed him in silence while searching for words and a voice to say them with. A sudden lump clogged his throat. He choked it down with something between a cough and a chuckle. “Braun of Titan, your strength alone would have made you an asset I couldn’t refuse, and now I find your heart commends you even more than your muscle. I’d be proud to call you comrade.”
He extended his hand.
Braun almost broke it.
These friendship pledges were murder.
“I don’t know what we can accomplish either,” Smash admitted. “Defeating Kkrypt seems too much to hope for. But we can, at least, be a very annoying thorn in his side.” He chuckled in earnest. “All this testimony has made me hungry. Let’s eat.”
“Yesss!” Dael tossed his lutar aside and rushed to join them. One might have thought he’d been watching and waiting for this moment. “My lady”—he bowed low before Bres, then offered her his arm—“fair flower, may I have the honor of escorting you?”
“To where?” Her brow furrowed. “If you’re asking me to eat with you, just say so. But I’m not yours, and I’m no silly little flower. I’m Bresti.”
“I noticed,” Dael rasped, staring at her chest.
Wham! She knocked him flying. His princely manners might have perplexed her, but she knew a common leer when she saw one
“Now it is I who must apologize for my daughter,” Braun said, a suspicious twitching at the corners of his mouth. He hoisted Dael up with one hand and dusted him off with the other.
Frankly, Smash thought the rat had deserved it, but placating Bres gave him an excuse to touch her. He slung a comforting arm around her shoulders. “Please don’t take Dael too seriously. He’s a hopeless romantic, and he hasn’t seen a girl like you in forever. In fact, none of my human crewmembers have. Braun, you and I are going to have our hands full protecting her from them.”
“Hah! You mean protecting them from her. Bres takes after her mother that way. She can be a real Titan shrew when she puts her mind to it.”
Everyone laughed. Except Bres.