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His forked tongue flickers out of his mouth for a moment, tasting the air for potential weakness. “It’s worth nothing because you have to get rid of it, which means you need to sell it quickly. You’re lucky I’m offering you ten thousand.”
“I’m not selling it for ten thousand.”
“Then I guess I’m taking it for nothing.”
He’s sized me up, decided I’m a small human female wearing a tinfoil outfit, and figured I’m no threat to him. It’s therefore a real surprise when a hole appears in his midsection. A perfectly round sphere representing a plug of flesh and innards that are no longer there. He dies with a look of shock on his stupid face.
“MURDERER!”
God, why do they always scream that? No matter what the circumstances. No matter how much the guy deserved it. No matter if it was him or me and of course I was going to choose him, they always act so fucking surprised when a bit of him blows away.
“SHE KILLED HIM! SHE KILLED HIM FOR NO REASON!”
Right, no reason. He was going to steal my only means of transport and leave me stranded on a hostile lawless station wearing tinfoil and lace, but he’s the victim in all of this. Not me. Not the woman who just wanted a fair fucking shake for once.
It takes all my self control not to pull the trigger of my weapon again. You’d think, in a universe where Reverse Polarity weapons are a thing, people of all species would be a little more fucking careful about who they mess with. Death is only ever one stupid sentence away, and yet some of these guys run their mouths like I’d have to manually club them to death with a rock to stop them.
They can scream all they like, we all know that there’s no justice to be had on a lawless station. Everybody here seems generally cowardly, which is good. It’s also possible that I’m a monster in the eyes of the onlookers who might very well think that it was nothing more than a financial transaction going slightly sideways.
Every once in a very great while, I wonder if I might be what used to be called a bad guy.
I am a woman, of course, so that makes me immediately not a bad guy, but a bad… woman? Lady? Gal? Bad gal has a pretty good ring to it.
“Get back!” I yell the words even though nobody is actually close. I also wave my hand around in a demented sort of way. I’m making a scene. Felt like a scene was already in progress, though. I’ve been making scenes for a while, I guess. There was a pretty big scene at the diner where the aliens first found me, and there was a pretty decent scene outside Owned Mates.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the wide glassy eyes of a passing alien. I see a woman of average height and average weight dressed like a Victorian child’s doll, wielding a very illegal weapon she found in the weapons array of the scythkin ship. I look like a menace to all kinds of society. Hell. I look like a menace to the very concept of society.
Having cleared the way, I sigh, turn, and walk into the shuttle. I don’t bother rushing. There’s no point. Nobody is coming for me. Nobody is capable of handling me. Anybody stupid enough to try is going to end up in several unique pieces.
I can hear conversation going on behind me. There are some aliens who look like they thought being security might be fun once upon a time and are now absolutely regretting that decision.
“There’s a murderer!”
“There’re a lot of murderers,” says the alien, who is doing his level best to ignore me. He’s a tall, gangly, purple sort of creature with skin like an octopus and eyes like an octopus, and eight pretty squiggly wiggly arms. He’s basically an octopus, but with a face capable of speaking rather than crushing crustaceans with a beak.
The other one is just some guy. Probably. I don’t know. I can’t really be bothered looking. I’m trying to work out if the octopus guy is going to extend one of his tentacles in my direction and make things increasingly interesting. It doesn’t seem like it. He’s got eight arms and absolutely no interest in —
Do I want to fuck an octo-alien?
I might.
I might not.
I don’t know. Everything has been very sexual lately, and there’s nothing more sexual than death. Best not to say that out loud too often. That makes people think you’re very, very strange.
“There’s a recent murderer. Like, an immediate murderer. One we could stop.”
“We can’t stop anything. We’ve got no authority. We’ve got no jurisdiction.”
“Then what do we have these handcuffs and hats for?”
“Because it makes people feel safe. That’s our job. Making people feel safe. Right now, the easiest way to have people feel safe is to let that absolute sociopath get on her stolen scythkin ship and leave.”
Octo-alien has my number, I muse to myself as I board the shuttle.
The other security guard decides to make one last ill-fated attempt at getting control of the situation. He doesn’t move, which is smart, but he does yell after me.
“COME BACK HERE!”
