-SALOON AT THE EDGE OF EVERYWHERE-

Chapter Sixteen

Like most humans, Candybar was not knowledgeable when it came to the reproductive processes of the Xxo. Her joy at seeing the Warlord was immediately replaced by an overpowering jealousy because she believed, for a moment at least, that her beloved Warlord was wrapped in the amorous embrace of a Xxo female. She thought she had caught him in the act. And indeed she had, but it was not the act of love but rather the act of giving birth, if in fact that was the correct term for a Xxo creating a new life.

Then, for another moment, before the truth sprang to her mind, she thought perhaps he was fighting for his life against another Xxo nearly as large as he was. You will, I’m sure, admit that at a brief glance, the lovemaking of many species does appear to be a struggle of some sort, but be that as it may, she at last reached the correct conclusion to the puzzling scene before her eyes.

It was both beautiful and disgusting, the way so many births are. A new life being delivered unto the universe, combined with all the gruesomeness of a traumatic amputation. Candybar could only stand and stare, overcome by the moment. It seemed to her that the Warlord was ripping away a significant part of himself, and in fact he was. The only part of the one being who was becoming two beings that was still attached to itself, or still attached to each other, and I am in no position to say which is the truer wording, was a last middle section of the torso. Or torsos, whichever. It was like two Siamese twins conjoined at the lower ribcage, only you do not often see one Siamese twin trying to rip the other twin off of himself.

The Warlord had some of his top tentacles wrapped in the tentacles of the other half of himself, and was gently tearing it off, pushing back and down as his twin/child peeled off like a large band aid.

Both Xxos, the new and the old, emerged from this ordeal with only a deep purple scar where the last separation had occurred. These wounds were like two pairs of wet lips that had just broken apart from a kiss, but even as Candybar watched, the vertical scars began to close and heal themselves.

Candybar was so disoriented that she now felt as if she were watching the Warlord as he looked at himself in a large mirror. She had just never seen anything like it, but then again neither had any other human.

“Xoo,” she began, using his real name, but she didn’t know what to say.

The Warlord turned around. To him, Warlord was his only real name, even though it was more meaningless than most names. “Candybar, I,” he began, but he didn’t know what to say either. It was almost as if he were embarrassed. As if he had been caught doing something wrong.

Candybar ran to the big alien and threw her arms around his trunk. She then released the Xxo to pull back and stare into his closest eye. She winked and she smiled, and then she asked, “So, are you going to introduce me?”

Rufus and his combined recon teams, a new unit which Rufus was wracking his brain trying to come up with a cool name for, had reached the door leading to the lounge which was adjacent to the hijacked star liner.

The plan was a simple one. No more sneaking around. It was time to show these kids who was really running this universe. Rufus was going to walk in there and lay down some ground rules. Kids needed guidelines. You can’t just kick them out of the house, or off of the planet, whatever, when they started to get on your nerves. It was time for some tough love! Besides, he had a gun and a prisoner now. That should put him in a much better bargaining position. That was Rufus’s theory, and he was sticking with it. He felt very grown up all of a sudden, just like a real adult. Oh yeah, he thought as adrenaline coursed through his system, somebody was about due for a little reality check.

He once again directed Asa to open the door and get out of the way. As soon as the door slid open, Rufus, with his band of brothers surrounding him, marched into the lounge. He was hoping they appeared to be authoritative and in charge, but that fact that they were huddled behind their prisoner, peeking out as they thrust him forward like a magic shield, may have undermined this effort to a degree.

Their authority was also not helped by the fact that as soon as his group of intrepid warriors came to a halt, Rufus’s phone ran. Phones always ring at such inconvenient times, have you ever noticed? Technically it played this silly little tune that sounded vaguely Mideastern that Rufus had chosen as his ringtone, but you get the idea. Rufus had no choice, being human, but to see who it was, bad timing or not. I mean, it might be something important.

Of course it was Ned on the line. Before Ned could begin to speak, Rufus cut in, saying, “This is really not a good time, Ned.”

Rufus peered around Ox’s back as he spoke, taking in the scene in the lounge before him. The room was large, and full of rows of seats, mostly designed for humans, but of many other types as well. Seated, more or less in some cases, were a crowd of beings numbering at least 500, again predominantly human, but not always. Mixed into the crowd of tourists and a smattering of Hub-dwellers, Rufus saw some beings wearing white uniforms, undoubtedly crew members from the ship.

It was the Wasp Whips to whom his eyes were drawn. That was the immediate threat that occupied his thoughts. The pirates were standing in a circle around their hostages, so due to the size of the room and the general confusion of the situation, Rufus could not tell if there were in fact nine of them present.

It was to the three pirates closest to him that he turned his attention next. The three had gathered together and turned their eyes and their weapons towards the strange procession that had interrupted their pirating.

“Hold on a sec, Ned,” Rufus said into the phone, cutting his boss off once again. He could hear Ned talking even as he took the phone away from his ear.

The three pirates were coming towards them, and Rufus appraised them as they did. The first thing he noticed was that two of them had the same kind of gun he was holding. Not good! Then it was the clothing and ornaments that adorned two of the three individuals that forced his notice.

The pirate on the right was the gaudily dressed fellow with the samurai sword whom Mof and Recon 2 had already met, so to speak.

The pirate on the left may or may not have been the Wasp Whip that had accompanied the flashy felon to the saloon earlier, but nonetheless he was similarly non-attired. That is to say that he seemed to own or wear nothing but the gun in one arm.

At last the pirate in the center was the one to whom Rufus’s eyes were pulled. Where the rest of the Wasp Whips stood about ten feet tall, this one was nearly four or five feet taller. He was also thicker and more heavily muscled than any that Rufus had yet seen. There was a bright red sash around his waist, and a bright red scarf around his head. Tucked into the waist sash there was a very large knife that to Rufus looked suspiciously like one of Mof’s expensive kitchen cutlery set. In the alien’s hand, or coiled in the end of his right arm at least, there was yet another of the needle guns, as Rufus had labeled them. Rufus smiled inadvertently when he recalled Ned’s description of the weapons as ‘some kind of dart guns’.

Ned, that reminded him, Ned was on the phone. As his eyes traveled up the torso of the pirate Captain, as Rufus could only assume he must be, to search out his eyes, their gaze paused briefly, captured by sparkling, reflected light. Around the Captain’s neck were hung 30 or 40 very expensive looking women’s necklaces, whose combinations of precious gems and jewels were eye-catching in the extreme.

At last Rufus tore his gaze from the diamond encrusted tangle, and he met the alien’s eyes. Rufus did what politeness dictated, and raising a finger in a hold-on-a-sec gesture, told the Captain, “Hold on a sec. I really have to take this call.” And he proceeded to do exactly that.

He had no way of knowing, but this evident nonchalance, coupled with the casual politeness actually impressed the pirate Captain immensely. And he couldn’t very well fail to miss the fact that these humans had captured not only a member of his crew, but one of their few guns as well.

“Ned, make it snappy. I’m kind of in the middle of something here,” Rufus said calmly into the phone. As he spoke he nodded and smiled at the enemy commander. Ned talked and Rufus listened, occasionally saying, “uh huh,” and “ok” while the entire room stood or sat in frozen silence, waiting for the conclusion of this presumably very important call. Rufus listened to Ned with only a small portion of his brain. The rest of his brain was racing like a runaway freight train as he desperately tried to figure out what to do next. He really hadn’t expected there to be so many hostages, though he wasn’t sure why it should surprise him. All the hostages were looking at him and his band of would-be rescuers hopefully, as if they might have some solution to this dilemma that wasn’t apparent to the rest of them yet.

Ned was saying something about a comm room, and where it was located, and suggesting that maybe Rufus could call these punk’s parents, and how that ought to straighten this whole situation out. Rufus was having a hard time hearing Ned and he realized all of a sudden that it was not just because he hadn’t really been listening. It was more due to the fact that the pirate Captain was speaking to Rufus’s prisoner in a harsh, guttural language that sounded vaguely German, with lots of coughing, throaty, phlegmy sounds.

“Hold on again, Ned, I’m having a hard time hearing you,” Rufus said as he again pulled the phone from his ear. “Hey, do you two mind keeping it down? I’m on the phone,” he said, addressing the two pirates.

Beeltee, the pirate Captain, was once again taken by surprise by the behavior of this strange human who was evidently in charge of this group of armed intruders. Who was this guy, he thought to himself? He didn’t seem to be taking this situation seriously at all, as if the whole thing were just some minor inconvenience. All the other humans he had so far encountered, and in fact all the alien races he had so far encountered, when confronted by a group of armed and obviously desperate pirates, had submitted meekly, and been in fact terrified. They had been more than willing to do whatever the pirates told them to do. Now this guy came strolling in, holding one of Beeltee’s crew, and holding one of Beeltee’s guns, and couldn’t even be bothered to get off the phone. It was all very confusing and just a little bit disconcerting.

Rufus put the phone back to his ear and said, “Ed-nay, I’m in the ounge-lay, and I’m alking-tay to the irate-pay aptain-Cay. Can you please get to the point?” Rufus was more than a little amused by the fact that the pig-latin he had learned as a child was now coming in quite handy as a form of code that was as indecipherable to the Wasp Whips as was the Navajo language used by the Windtalkers against the Japanese in World War Two.

“Okay, okay,” said Ned, “Well I got one of the comm tech guys here. He was having an after dinner drink in the saloon. I’m going to send him and maybe one or two others to the comm room. That way, if your idea doesn’t work out, we have a backup plan. If you can get to the comm room he can show you how to work the equipment. You got that?”

“Ok, yeah, Ned. Thanks a lot. I’ll talk to you later. Bye.” Rufus closed his phone and stuck it on his belt. Then he returned his attention to the pirate Captain. Rufus had finally decided that cowering behind Winnse and Ox was just making him look foolish and perhaps cowardly as well. So putting on his calmest face and holding the gun carefully at his side and pointed down at the floor, he stepped out in the open, looked the pirate Captain directly in the eye, and said, “Ok, Beeltee, talk to me. Just what the hell is your problem?”