“All right, ladies” I ordered. “This is it. Are we all ready?”
Heads nodded solemnly.
I fingered my own chair-leg, then gave the order. “Open it, Trixie!”
We burst in screaming like banshees, and I was the first to count coup. Just in front of me a young man in a Lagrange Environmental Controls coverall was slowly and dopily pounding a coworker into submission with his fists. In an instant I was on him, snapping one end of a pair of handcuffs over the wrist of his upraised hand and the other to a light fixture. He seemed more puzzled by what I’d done than angry, and never even tried to fight back.
The next john wasn’t nearly so easy. He was a miner, judging by his black uniform, and in the process of raping an unconscious colleague. When I snapped one end of the cuffs onto him he turned angrily on me and ripped the other end of the cuffs out of my grip. I didn’t mess around at all; my chair leg impacted his skull with a crack heard round the room, and his eyes glazed over immediately. Then the Dragon darted in from the side and neatly finished the cuffing job.
It wasn’t nearly as difficult to secure the saloon as we’d all feared; the johns had already beaten each other to a near-pulp, and with only three or four exceptions most of those still conscious were far too interested in sexual stimulation to break their concentration over something relatively unimportant, such as being stuffed into a bag or chained to a stanchion. We only had enough restraints to safely accommodate perhaps fifty determined individuals, but even this proved to be more than enough. The vast majority were either already unconscious or else had wandered so far from reality that they merely floated docilely wherever we chose to place them. Once we had successfully raised the siege at the bar, the fight was all but over.
“Where is Commodore Tottson?” I demanded over and over again as I picked my way through the disgusting debris floating everywhere. “Commodore Tottson? Has anyone seen Commodore Tottson?”
“Here,” he replied at last, his rich baritone voice unmistakable in the chaos. “Over here!”
“Commodore!” I exclaimed, making my way back through the expensive private chambers that were the prerogative of the rich and famous, like my hero. “Commodore! Thank God! I need your help, sir!”
“Marvin?” he answered. “Marvin, is that you?”
I rounded the last corner, guessed right the first time as to which door to open, and came face to face with Tottson, sitting calmly at his personal table. “Thank God, sir!” I repeated. “Sir, I need you to go EVA for me. We only have one good suit, and--”
“I see,” the Commodore replied, interrupting me. “Certainly, I can go EVA for you. But what will you do for me in return?”
My beak dropped open; something was wrong here, terribly, terribly wrong. And somehow, I’d forgotten just how big and strong Tottson was. He’d easily make two of me. Or more.
“You know,” the Commodore continued, smiling gently. “I’m not normally attracted to men. Nor am I especially attracted to chickens. But I’ve sensed something very special about you since the moment we first met.” His smile widened. “I think it’s the feathers. They make you absolutely irresistible. Did you know that?”
Slowly Tottson reached into his private refrigerator and took out a beer. Expertly he twisted it open, immediately placing his thumb over the opening so the contents could not come gushing out. Then he shook it once, just so, and held the bottle’s mouth up to his own, allowing a single pressurized squirt of beer to pass his lips. Clearly, he’d drunk beer in zero-gee many times before, and knew exactly what he was doing. There were few more experienced free-fall hands to be found anywhere. “Sit down next to me, Marvin” he urged, patting the empty chair. “Sit down nice and close, so that we can talk this EVA business over like real spacemen.”
I gulped, suddenly totally lost. “Sir…”
The Commodore’s smile widened, and then he reached under the table, producing a very wicked-looking steak knife. There was blood on it, I realized suddenly.
A lot of blood.
Then there was disturbance behind me. “Alexander!” the Dragon cried out in her harshest tones. “What on Earth do you think you’re doing, slave?”
The Commodore’s eyes went wide. “Mistress!” he said softly. “I didn’t mean…”
“I don’t care what you meant, you stinking piece of shit!” she shrieked. “Drop that knife, and do it now! Now, now, now, now!”
“Yes, Mistress” the Commodore said softly, releasing the blade. It hung motionless in the air for a moment, and then the Dragon was past me and brandishing it in her own gloved hand.
“You are not to play with knives!” she screamed brutally. “You are not to say or do anything! You are to be quiet, and stay still! You do not deserve to speak or move! You are not worthy of me!”
“Yes, Mistress” Tottson replied, staring placidly down at the floor.
The Dragon glared at me for a long moment, then cocked her head impatiently. “You!” she demanded. “Lock this slithering worm up. Now! He deserves no better!”
I didn’t argue for even a second; the effect of the Dragon’s whipcord voice was such that I didn’t even consider arguing. In a trice it was done, and then Georgia was hauling him off to join the rest, whimpering and crying something terrible. “I’m sorry, Mistress!” he blubbered over and over. “So very sorry!”
For a long moment the Dragon and I stood side by side in the little private compartment, staring at the Commodore’s bloody knife. “He did hold out better than most of them,” I whispered. “In a way. I guess.”
The Dragon closed her eyes and sighed. “He’s as helpless as all the rest,” she declared, though in a voice much softer than usual. “Completely helpless and hopeless deep down inside.” Then her eyes opened once more, and quite suddenly they were hard and flashing once more. “Now,” she demanded. “Now you will cease chasing little-boy-hero dreams and figure out how to save our lives, once and for all!”
VII
Real, honest-to-God terror has a very distinctive taste, I learned as I stared into the Dragon’s remorseless eyes. It’s sort of metallic, laced with bitterness. For a seeming eternity I stood there, beak agape, wanting desperately to gibber and run amok. We were going to die, I knew then with absolute certainty. Tottson couldn’t save us, Lagrange couldn’t save us, and we certainly couldn’t save ourselves. We were all going to die, one by one, and I was going to have to helplessly watch it happen, knowing that somehow it was all my fault. I looked around the Saloon helplessly, until my eyes fixed on a fifth of gin that was floating just a few feet away. I was immune to the drug powders, yes. But good old alcohol, however…
“What should we be doing?” the Dragon snapped angrily, grabbing a handful of my coveralls and pulling me to her. “We do not have time for this useless woolgathering!”
For a long moment, I could not meet her gaze; the bottle of gin was a far more appealing object of attention. Then I sighed aloud and turned to face her hard, hard eyes. “We’ve got a real problem,” I admitted. “And I’m not sure how to solve it. In fact, I don’t think that it can be solved.”
“Tell me the problem,” she rasped. “I will find a solution.”
My God, but the Dragon was overweening and arrogant! “It’s no big deal,” I said after a moment. “Surely a qualified spacer of your education and experience will be able to handle it for me.”
Suddenly the hard eyes were inches from my own, narrow and flashing. “Explain the problem to me!” she demanded again. Then the side of my face exploded in pain as she struck me, hard! “Explain!”