-SALOON AT THE EDGE OF EVERYWHERE-

Chapter Eighteen

Ned had picked his team. Or, to be exact, the team had picked itself. There were not enough healthy volunteers that Ned felt he could turn anybody down.

The comm tech was a Morlan, from Morla, as may seem obvious. His name was Gup. He was predominantly humanoid in shape, though the proportions were just a little off, and he was a light blue in color. He was four and a half feet tall. He had a boney ridge-plate going sideways across his forehead that gave him a slightly lumpy look, and just had holes for ears. He would, in Ned’s considered opinion, have made an ideal alien guest appearance on an episode of the original Star Trek series. He was just that sort of generic alien.

Ssseeeet insisted, through Mr. Toad, that he be allowed to go along to help provide protection for the comm tech. Ned was skeptical, but Mr. Toad said, “He may just surprise you. He is tougher than you think he is.” Of course that meant that Mr. Toad and Frodo, Ssseeeet’s Helper-Friends, had to go as well. They had to order poor Gollum to stay behind, insisting that he continue to safeguard Molly. Gollum obeyed with obviously mixed feelings.

Then the Baron refused to be left behind. “I am a trained politician and bureaucrat, don’t you know? Bound to be a use for me, oh yes, bound to be,” he announced proudly.

In the end, Ned relented, and once again he stood by as his troops left to risk their lives on a foolhardy but righteous quest. Their only weapons were the small knives that the Baron and Frodo had picked up in Rufus’s room.

Rufus and his little gang had at last reached the door in their undignified backwards retreat from the lounge. Since this was not the same door they had entered by, Rufus consoled himself with the thought that they were not actually retreating, but more like circling around the enemy to try coming at them from another direction.

The Captain was furious, but he still hadn’t figured out a way to stop them without precipitating a shootout in the crowded lounge. And like most bullies, he did not want to put himself into any real danger.

Someone behind Rufus got the door open, and they began moving through, still moving backwards, until at last only Ox and their angry prisoner were standing in the open doorway. Rufus stood directly behind Ox and told him, “Ox, stop here for a bit.” Then he spun around and had a hurried but quiet conversation with the rest of the group. He told them about the comm room and asked if anyone knew where it was. They all showed blank looks. Rufus hadn’t even been paying enough attention to Ned’s phone call to know exactly where it was but he knew it was on the other side of Mainstreet and a little farther along.

Inside the lounge, the Captain and his two henchmen had stopped at this point, not sure what to do, because Ox and their friend Winnse still blocked the doorway. Rufus was trying to figure out what to do also, if he should split his people up and send some of them on ahead to try to find the comm room when Asa, the young purser, said quietly, “Uh, Boss, it looks like we might have another little problem.” As he said this, he nodded with his head back down Mainstreet. They all turned to look.

There, not far away, was the giant, blunt head of the Whalepede. Piled on the floor in front of the Whalepede was the huge, sticky mass of its tongue. He was in the process of sucking it back into his mouth once more. Rufus vividly remembered the story Recon 2 had told about the tongue. “How long do we have, guys, before he shoots that thing off again?”

The members of Recon 2 looked at each other and just shrugged. Things had happened so quickly that they hadn’t had time to gauge how long it had all taken. But it didn’t seem like there was much time at all. Rufus pointed at the closest door across Mainstreet at an angle away from the Whalepede, and shouted, “Everybody run! Get over there, get through the door. Ox, just stay there for now.” Ox was still holding onto their prisoner and blocking the door. He was using the eyes on the lounge side of his torso to watch the Captain and his two minions, and using the eyes on the other side to keep track of what was transpiring in the hallway.

Everyone else scrambled across Mainstreet, opened the door on the other side, and began to pile through. Everyone else but Rufus and Asa, that is. The purser still stood uncertainly beside Rufus. He wanted desperately to help in some way. So far he felt that his contributions to the war effort had been minimal. Rufus glanced at the Whalepede. The tongue was now completely back inside the mouth. “Okay, Ox, get moving,” he shouted.

Ox backed up and began to cross the corridor, but he could not move very quickly holding onto their prisoner the way he was. Rufus and Asa flanked him on either side and they continued their backward retreat.

The Captain and his two cronies came through the door and spread out, keeping their weapons at the ready. Beeltee still didn’t really want to start a gunfight, but he didn’t want to let this obnoxious human get away either. He, with his two crewmen fanning out to either side, continued to advance, matching pace with Rufus’s now smaller group. That was when the Captain’s anger control issues overcame his common sense. In a burst of rage he raised the gun, and taking careful aim, he fired a short burst at Ox. He was shooting high and to the side, hoping not to hit his childhood friend, but either way, this was going to end now.

Once again the click-click-click, whip-whip-whip sounds filled the air. The Captain’s aim was fairly good, or he was just lucky. The small, sharp needles, heated almost red-hot by their rapid passage through the air, tore into Ox’s right side near the base of his top tentacles. Ox lost his grip on their prisoner. Rufus glanced at Winnse, fully expecting him to run back over and rejoin the pirate crew. But he was more than a little surprised when Winnse screamed at the top of his lungs a word that could only be a swear word, followed by “You shot at me! You shot at me! You,” and some other words that were in all probability swear words as well.

“Calm down, calm down,” said the Captain, “I wasn’t aiming at you. I was trying to set you free.”

“You’re not that good of a shot,” yelled Winnse. He seemed to be very angry. “You are a (something), a (something) and a (something else),” screamed Winnse, and suddenly and unexpectedly, he turned and ran through the door following the rest of Rufus’s command. It was hard to tell who in the hallway was more surprised by this, but it did change the situation considerably.

Rufus’s first consideration was his wounded comrade. “Ox, are you all right?” he shouted. Ox’s shoulder, or maybe it was his armpit, Rufus wasn’t quite sure, was shredded, and leaking a pale green liquid. But Ox was more badly annoyed than badly wounded. He let out a deep, menacing growl, and took a step towards the three pirates.

The Captain looked more than a little surprised that his gun hadn’t done a lot more damage to the large green alien, but still he felt that the recent events had put him firmly in control of the situation. It was three against three, but he had twice as many guns, and they no longer had a captive to hide behind.

Ox had stopped and now stood swaying slightly, his tentacles waving in the air in an agitated manner. He looked at the Captain with every eye that was facing him, and said, “I am going to wear you for a belt, you,” followed by something that Rufus was once again forced to assume was a less than complementary form of address.

The three pirates and their weapons were definitely focused on Ox, because Ox at this moment was a rather frightening sight. Rufus couldn’t decide what to do with his gun. He really didn’t want to shoot anybody. He had never killed anybody in his life, as far as he knew. But he also knew that he would kill, if he had to, to protect his friends.

Asa chose that moment to do a rather peculiar thing. He threw his head back and howled. Then he dropped down to the floor and began kicking and writhing as though he were having some sort of fit or seizure. Rufus had no idea what to think, and neither did the three pirates.

“Everybody just calm down,” Rufus shouted, “This could be a real medical emergency. Nobody wants anybody to die here. That would be a bad thing for all of us, so just calm down, okay?” He carefully held the gun down at his side again. “Ox, get the hell out of here,” he yelled at his friend. Ox, who had the advantage of not having to turn around to move in a new direction, hurried through the door used by the others. Then Rufus turned to the captain and said, “Look, you don’t want to hold him as a prisoner right now, not as mad as he is. You can take me and Asa. You have what you want. Let’s just get you on your ship and get you out of here, alright?”

The three pirates and Rufus all went and gathered around the stricken Asa, who was still squirming on the floor, having spasms and blowing bubbles out of his lips, and with his eyes rolling back in his head. Rufus was genuinely concerned. He told Beeltee, “I give up. We just have to get this kid some help.” Rufus knelt down beside Asa and put his hands on his shoulders to try to keep him from bouncing off the floor. “It’ll be okay, Kid, it’ll be okay,” he said reassuringly.

At that moment Mainstreet resounded with a huge, wet, squishy noise. Asa suddenly stopped kicking and thrashing, put his hands up to Rufus’s shoulders, gave him a strong push, and yelled, “Run!”

Rufus took only a split second to realize what Asa’s plan was, and he had no time to protest the danger. He did have time to give Asa a ghost of a smile even as he turned and dashed through the door after his team.

The three stunned pirates had no time to react. They didn’t even know what was happening. They had been so fixated on Rufus and his bunch of misfits, that they hadn’t even noticed the Whalepede standing nearby. Only the Captain, who obviously had a very highly honed sense of self-preservation, realized that some trickery was afoot and backed rapidly up to the door to the lounge. Both he and Rufus managed to get out of the way with only the smallest amount of time remaining.

Even as Rufus bolted through the door, which was being held open by Mof, he risked a quick glance over his shoulder. He was just in time to see the giant pink tongue sail through the air over Asa and the two pirates still standing beside him. It hung there briefly, and then fell on top of them with stately grace and a heavy, moist thud. Rufus knew with a cold, chilling certainty that Asa had most likely just given his life to give him a chance to escape. He wanted desperately to run back out and try to save the kid, but he could see it was already too late. Asa and the two pirates had completely disappeared under the large, sticky mass.

The Captain just stood with his back to the door and stared in amazement at the large, pink pile where his two crewmen had just been standing. The only thing sticking out from under the pile was one, curled armtip, still clutching the samurai sword. The Captain shrugged and bent over to pull the sword from the still-twitching limb. “I guess you won’t be needing this anymore,” he said, and then calmly turned and walked back into the lounge.