Galaxy's End: Book One by LeRoy Clary (popular ebook readers txt) 📗

the room and now you can either walk with us to your cabin or die here.”

Fang twitched, then said in his throaty voice, “I will do as you say. After all, we are friends, right?”

He kept a single eye centered on me, never wavering. The stalk with it rotated, twisted, and turned to always keep me in his sight. We followed him to a cabin door along the same passageway as ours, almost directly across the passage from our cabins. Inside the small room were his things spread on the bed like it was a horizontal closet, along with a plastic ring-like bathtub. Knee-high walls covered the entire floor space. It was filled with pungent, stagnant water. Small, dark creatures zipped around and splashed as they leaped into the air and fell back with tiny eruptions of water. Probably food for Fang.

He paused at the door, turned to us, and motioned to the water. “Join me?”

“We will sit on the bed,” Stone told him.

“Suit yourselves.”

We sat on the narrow bed and waited until Fang had submersed himself and come up for air. He spat a stream playfully in our direction and said, “Are you sure you won’t join me?”

Captain Stone’s demeanor changed from that of a tourist to a military commander, as did her voice. She snapped, “I might consider it if I didn’t think that water is going to turn red, or whatever color your blood happens to be.”

“No need to talk like that,” he mumbled and spread his flippers again in a gesture that was conciliatory and seemed he used repeatedly.

“A short while ago, you were trying to sedate me and hold me as your prisoner before you made a deal with the Roman police for the reward.”

“Just business, I assure you. Nothing personal, and it was only for you, not the Kat person.” Fang spread his forward flippers again in a motion intended to soothe us. Or soothe me.

“And it is just business that we repay your actions in kind. Hand me your tablet, unlocked, of course.” Captain Stone held out her hand.

“I am but a poor swamp creature.”

“The computer tablet. Give it. No more threats, Fang.”

While they were going back and forth, I was thinking of the oddity of calling the frog “Fang” when it had no teeth, and that it sat in foul-smelling water while we conversed as if that were normal. Just as I was coming to terms with those ideas, one of the little swimmers in the water leaped into the air in front of his face. A greenish tongue lashed out and snared the swimmer in some manner, and the tongue carried it into the wide mouth.

Fang may have smiled. Perhaps it was simply how its race reacted to a sudden, unexpected treat leaping in front of its face. I’d prefer a surprise of an imitation chockalott drop, if not real chocolate, which I’d never tasted. But who could afford the real thing? I was used to the imitation and might not like chocolate.

Fang and Stone seemed old hands at what was transpiring between them. Fang had probably snared his share of wanted criminals. Stone was a captain on a trader-ship and had encountered endless buyers and shippers who wanted to take advantage of her in their business transactions.

Fang turned two of his eyestalks to me, while still looking at Stone with the others. “I want to see that vibro-knife.”

I placed a hand on my hip where it might be stored and asked in a voice that I tried to make sound surprised, “Really? You heard Stone call me Balaclavas. Right?”

He shifted two more eyestalks uneasily in my direction. “So?”

“A religious sect, as she said. If an enemy sees weapons in my hands, it must die. Nothing personal. Just business, as you say.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw Stone put her fist to her mouth trying to prevent the laughter from escaping.

Fang said quickly, “Perhaps I’ll see the knife another time. Where did you say you purchased it?”

“It was a gift from my father a moment before I used it to kill him. He was a good man, and I sincerely regret that he didn’t wait another decade or two before sending me to make my first twenty-kills so I can be elevated to the grade of Ellar warrior.”

My voice had been flat, unemotional. If it was possible for a green frog-creature to turn white, Fang tried. Stone went into a coughing fit that looked and sounded suspiciously like repressed laughter.

Fang held his tablet out to Stone. When she had control of herself, she accepted it. “Not bad,” she said as she eyed his money balances.

“It is all I have. Please do not take all of it. And if you do, leave me a little something for food. It’s only right.”

Stone shifted her position to look at me. She said as if speaking to a child, “It’s my time to tell you a story. The account visible on my tablet is enough to pay for a few tickets to travel well, personal needs, and a little more. You’ve seen the balance, of course.”

I nodded, not understanding her point.

She kicked off her shoe and picked it up. Her fingers explored the inside near her toe and retrieved a small data chip. She held it up for me to examine as she said, “A hundred times that amount is stored in the account on this data chip. If anyone ever forced me to give them what is on my tablet, I’d wail and cry and beg for them to leave me a little something to buy a meal. That would convince them it was all I had.”

Fang looked ready to sink under the slimy water and disappear in disgrace.

Stone held out her hand, palm up, and silently waited.

After a momentary