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“Ah. King Brawn!”
A voice emanates from the screen. It sounds like… I don’t even know what it sounds like. Faintly metallic, but deep. Like a volcano made out of steel. My similes are having to stretch ever further these days as I attempt to make sense of the strangeness of my new world.
I peer around Brawn’s body, and check out the screen to make sure that what I think I saw wasn’t actually what I thought I saw, because there’s no way my first glance was right.
Nope.
What I see makes me immediately pull back and hide, glad for Brawn’s width and height.
The beast on the screen is even more monstrous than King Brawn, if such a thing is possible, which it is. It has a face made of knives. There are harsh jagged serrated brows above glowing red eyes. But it doesn’t look mechanical. It looks distinctly biological. The planes of its face are smooth and harsh. There are high cheekbones and a mouth which is the only thing that doesn’t seem to have been filled with knives. I peer out again, entranced as I watch its face shift and change, the sharp pieces retracting and then extending again. It looks like violent death decanted into a vaguely sentient shape.
I want to know what the fuck it is, but I also don’t want to make a sound in case somehow this terrifying beast reaches through the screen and drags me away. That’s not possible, but seeing what I am seeing makes anything seem possible. Kind of like the way being alone in an old house at night makes you believe in ghosts.
“This is scythkin territory. I am Commander Zenith. State your business!”
The beast on screen speaks harshly and with clipped insistence. I wonder if it is trying to intimidate King Brawn. I know from what the captain said that they are outnumbered. I don’t know how many ships are in a flotilla, but I would comfortably guess more than one.
“We were attempting to refuel at the Zablorp station, which, it would seem, no longer exists.” Brawn’s voice booms with authority and a little bit of sassy sarcasm.
“That was an unintended consequence,” the scythkin replies.
“Was it?”
“The management refused to let us refuel. They said scythkin were violent, vicious, and unpredictable and they were not going to tolerate our presence on the station.”
“So you blew it up.”
“So we blew it up,” the scythkin agrees with no small amount of satisfaction in its voice.
“I thought you had someone to deal with managers now.”
“She wasn’t available.”
I am noticing that Brawn does not appear to be afraid of the scythkin in a typical, predictable way. It’s obvious that these two are strangers to one another, and yet there’s no real hostility aside from the opening gambit. Maybe there’s something Brawn knows that I don’t. Actually, there’s almost certainly something Brawn knows that I don’t. I barely know anything about anything.
“You’re not usually pirates. I thought you usually colonized planets and turned them into brood sites for your matriarchs,” Brawn says.
“Usually we aren’t. But we tried it, and we liked it. So we’ve decided to try it again. So give us everything you have or we’ll detonate you.”
As threats go, that is both cordial and terrifying.
And that’s when Brawn plays the trump card I sensed he had. “You can’t attack our ship. We have a human aboard.”
The scythkin captain draws in a sharp breath. “You do not.”
“Yes, we do. She’s right here.” Brawn reaches for me and pulls me in front of him, gesturing to me with what I would call a flourish if I thought King Brawn was capable of flourishing.
“That does look like a human,” the scythkin admits. “Turn it upside down.”
“Don’t you dare! I don’t want to be upside down.”
“That’s a human,” the scythkin on the screen says. “A rather forthright one.”
“What’s with this asshole?” My old temper makes a resurgence. “You kill thousands because they won’t serve you and then you try to attack us? How dare you!”
“She sounds like Karen from the Interstellar Human Petting Zoo. Maybe she’s related,” the scythkin says over his shoulder. “Get in touch with Tyank. See if she’s escaped.”
“No, that human is blonde. This one is dark haired and dark eyed.”
“Some kind of Karen variant?”
They talk amongst themselves as though I am not here. I do not like the way they are talking about me. I do not like them at all. I do not care for those who kill casually. I met far too many of those assholes back on Earth. They always thought they were so tough, but they were the weakest.
“You know what? I’m fairly certain it’s illegal to go around detonating space stations and murdering thousands in a fit of temper. So maybe you should escape before the authorities arrive.”
The scythkin laughs. And then laughs again. And then laughs louder. And longer. And then the screen goes black, and then another view pops up of a starship either flying away from us or getting really small very quickly.
