Heh, thanks you two. Just knowing one or two people bother reading it makes all the difference.
-----
Jan glanced back at Keff – the glukkon looked severely out of breath, slumped against the wall and sucking in great laboured draughts of air, his eyes dulled and half-lidded. It didn’t surprise him – glukkons weren’t exactly known for being prime examples of fitness at the best of times, cigarettes and alcohol and exotic food and lack of exercise all taking their toll on their health.
“You all right?” Jan asked, in a whisper, although to his shame it was more out of concern the tall creature would slow them down than out of any particular concern for his health.
Keff nodded, once, a single convulsive jerk of his almond-shaped head. “…gimme a second…” he wheezed. “…just gotta catch… my breath…”
Lar glanced irritably at the two still talking, then hefted his rifle and shouldered the door open. There was a squeak of alarm from inside, an odd clicking chirp that Jan recognised as a slig contact call, but then there was the sharp retort of a single gunshot and a ripple of voices – one reedy and scared, a high mudokon voice, the other Lar’s rough drawl.
“Oh for Odd’s sake…” Keff whispered. “I didn’ realise he was going to go
shooting-… go on, get in there, we won’t have much time.” He gave Jan a light shove with one handfoot. “He’ll wake the whole Odd-damned place up.”
There was one corpse on the floor inside the doorway, the pathetic pale olive shape of a young slig that lay twisted where it had fallen, and a sharply potent mixed metallic scent of blood and gunpowder. Aura didn’t react as they came in – perhaps hadn’t even noticed them, she looked fairly… dazed. She lay on her side on the over-laundered off-white sheets, unresponsive, and Jan felt a momentary clutch of fear she was already dead – but as he watched he noticed her chest still rose and fell, and her fingertips trembled, so in spite of her begrimed, bruised condition she was at least still alive. He wanted to go closer, but didn’t fancy getting in the way of Lar’s rifle.
The one remaining previous occupant of the room – a yellowish-skinned mudokon – had retreated against the wall, whining excuses. Jan felt himself visibly blanch; it was a youngster, certainly no older than himself and probably younger, if truth be told. He swallowed, thickly, and tried not to feel too nauseated at the thought.
Lar advanced on the youngster, a dark expression souring his features. In the low lighting he made a hideous vision, draped in carbon armour, his cybernetics hissing softly like a nest of serpents each time he moved.
“Don’ hurt me, oh please don’ hurt me, I never done anythin’ wrong…” the mudokon stammered, looking like he was trying to push his back through the bricks, he was pressed so hard up against it. “You mistaken me for someone else, I ain’t never hurt no-one important…!”
“Done nothing wrong?” Lar asked, darkly. “’cept that, huh?” he gestured behind himself.
“That…” a frown flickered across the mudokon’s features, one that suggested he didn’t know what Lar was talking about. “But… it’s just… that’s nothing, it’s just a sli-”
Lar scowled, and put a single bullet through the mudokon’s skull before he could say anything further; the youth jerked horribly at the impact, then gave a soft exhalation and slithered down the wall, leaving an unpleasant sanguine smear all the way down.
“Was that really necessary?” Jan demanded, bitterly, as Lar turned away and went over to Aura.
“Loose end,” the slig replied, callously. “He’d have squeaked the instant we was out.”
“You don’t know that…!” Jan chased, angrily.
“Not worth the risk,” Lar disagreed. “He might
not have, sure, but then there’s the risk he
might have, too. He don’ tell no-one, this way.”
“That’s unf-” Jan started to protest, but the slig interrupted.
“Listen, kid, don’t you go an’ rag on at me about unfair,” Lar hissed, waving his rifle. “There ain’t nothing in this world what’s fair, not no more. I don’ know if you still look at your cosy little world through yer rose-tinted fluffy-Native specs, but he ain’t been brung up in the wild like what you were,” he gestured to the mudokon corpse on the floor behind. “He was Industrial through an’ through, oil in his veins and smoke addlin’ his brain. If you think for
jus’ one minute he’d have kept his word an’ kept hushie while we was making a run for it, instead of rattin’ on us to the Boss and snaggin’ a little extra moolah in his pay-packet for catchin’ runaways, then you gotta grow up and grow up
fast, fer fcuk’s sake.”
Jan didn’t argue; he glared hatefully at the harsh words but knew they were bitterly close to the truth. It just… hurt. To see his brothers – to see
mudokons – behaving like sligs. To see them do exactly what the hell they wanted to do, and laugh about it. It wasn’t right – certainly not coming from his spiritual and essentially good family! At least… what he had once considered a spiritual and good family. So much was wrong here, it made both his head and his heart hurt.
“This world is cold, hard, an’ cruel,” Lar said, more softly, settling next to Aura and briefly casting his eyes over her, checking if she was well enough to be moved. “You may think you got it hard, you muds, but a fair world wouldn’ see
my brothers sold off like livestock soon as we was old enough to hold a gun neither. We ain’t so different. You’d do well to remember it.”