By straining, Maddox turned his head. Villars’s hand reached for the knife, his fingers nearing the handle. Maddox hissed between his teeth, and he wriggled, moving his body just enough so the knife remained out of Villars’s reach.
“Yeah,” the hunter said. “I get it now.” He put both palms on the floor and pushed upward.
Maddox convulsed with effort. He wriggled part way out from under Villars. The hunter woke up all the way then, and he dropped, clutching Maddox’s knees.
“No you don’t, boy,” Villars said.
Maddox forced himself to sit up. Villars looked at him. Three times, Maddox hit the man’s face with his fists. They were weak blows, probably helping Villars to wake up faster rather than doing him any harm.
The hunter shoved his face against Maddox’s legs. The fists drummed uselessly against Villars’s skull. Maddox stopped the attack, and Villars chuckled nastily. A second later, the hunter opened his mouth and bit the captain’s left thigh. The teeth tore through fabric and cut into flesh.
Maddox bellowed with pain. He drove his knees up, grabbed the slarn hunter’s head and twisted savagely. Villars rolled with it onto the floor.
Both men struggled to their feet, panting, glaring at each other from a few meters away.
“You’re an animal,” Maddox said.
“I always win,” Villars boasted, “because I’ll do what I have to. You’re making this a memorable event, boy. That makes it fun and exciting.”
“Are you a Methuselah Man that you keep calling me boy?”
Villars laughed. “You’re a freak, a hybrid. I’m going to crush you with my bare hands.”
Maddox jabbed three times, connecting the last time against the nose. The blow sent Villars reeling. The captain didn’t follow the attack. Instead, he picked up the fallen knife. It had a good heft, and he began to advance on Villars.
“No,” Professor Ludendorff said. “This is no good. I need both of you.”
Maddox didn’t pay any attention to Ludendorff. Instead, he accelerated the attack, wondering if he had enough time.
The web field caught Maddox as it had on the bridge. The only consolation was that Villars was also caught in a force field web.
Ludendorff stepped into Maddox’s view. The professor held the flat device. At the older man’s side walked Galyan. Ludendorff made tsking sounds.
“Cesar, you know we need the captain.”
The slarn hunter squirmed as his harsh features twisted with the intensity of his efforts to break free of the force web.
“You must stop that, or you’ll tear tendons,” Ludendorff said.
“Kill him,” Maddox said. “Villars is a madman.”
The professor pretended not to hear the comment.
Maddox repeated it, adding, “You know he’s emotionally unstable.”
Ludendorff finally regarded the captain. “You’re young and full of righteous judgments. Life does not always proceed as one might wish.”
“Meaning you keep a sadist in your company,” Maddox said.
“Cesar has proven invaluable several times,” Ludendorff said. “He doesn’t know the meaning of the word quit. Without him, the New Men would have slain me on two different occasions on Wolf Prime.”
“He wants to torture Meta before he kills her,” Maddox said.
“I suppose I should have foreseen that,” Ludendorff said. “It’s too bad Meta had to interfere as she did. None of this would be happening, otherwise.”
“If you’d come to me and told us the truth,” Maddox said, “it wouldn’t be happening like this either. You’re the one to blame, not Meta.”
“We don’t have the luxury of blaming each other,” Ludendorff said. “Now, I’m going to release both of you. Cesar, I want your word you will shake hands with Captain Maddox.”
“No,” Villars said. “His woman killed Sten. She has to die for that. This boy would try to stop me from enacting justice.”
“I see your point,” Ludendorff told Villars. “But I happen to need Maddox in order to save humanity. Maybe Sten would have understood that.”
“Sten saved my life when the slarn took me down,” Villars said. “I’d be dead if Sten hadn’t waded into battle with the beast. That’s not something you forget, Professor.”
“No, I suppose not,” Ludendorff said.
“So, his bitch gets a wild hair up her—”
“Listen to me,” Maddox said in a calm voice.
“Don’t talk to me, punk,” Villars snarled.
“Oh, my,” Ludendorff said. “This is worse than I thought. Cesar, what am I going to do with you?”
“You’d better kill me, Professor,” Villars said, “because I’m never going to stop going after—”
Ludendorff held up his device and tapped it once. That cut off Villars’s rant before it could get properly started. The web squeezed Villars so hard he gasped for air.
“I don’t appreciate that kind of talk even from you,” Ludendorff told the slarn hunter. “You’re my guard, my final ring of protection. The others are gone, Cesar. Don’t you understand what that means?”
Villars looked at Ludendorff with bulging eyes. It was clear the slarn hunter could no longer breathe.
“You must think long-term,” Ludendorff explained. “Maybe we’ve been on Wolf Prime too long. You’ve picked up some of their wilder customs. That will not do this time around. Don’t you see that?”
Maddox wasn’t sure, but Villars might have nodded the barest fraction.
The professor tapped his device.
Villars inhaled deeply.
“Let us try this again,” Ludendorff said. “Cesar, can you withhold seeking justice until the end of our endeavor?”
“I can,” the slarn hunter said, with his eyes downcast.
“There,” Ludendorff told Maddox. “I’m glad that’s settled.”
“He tried to cut off my feet with monofilament wire,” Maddox said.
“He won’t do that again,” Ludendorff assured the captain.
“That isn’t what he said,” Maddox told the professor. “He agreed to forego his attempts right now.”
Ludendorff shrugged. “Isn’t that good enough?”
Maddox stared at the professor.
“Come now,” Ludendorff chided. “Consider the various possibilities. Cesar might die before we complete our task. You or Meta might perish. Maybe we’ll fail, and we’ll all die together. Then, you will have worried about a future that never existed. It’s true he might kill the two of you later. But then you’ll be dead, and it will no longer be of concern to you. The point is that you’ll have helped save humanity by working together now.”
A fixed grin remained on Maddox’s face. He realized the futility of trying to reason with the man who had the power to imprison him at will. The captain planned to bide his time and kill Villars when an opportunity presented itself now that he knew the hunter’s agenda.
“Are we agreed then?” Ludendorff asked.
“I already said I am,” Villars declared.
“Captain?” the professor asked.
“Certainly,” Maddox said. “Until we have completed the mission, I will shelve the matter.”
Villars laughed harshly. “Do you hear that, Professor? The punk takes you for a fool. He’s lying. He’s going to try to murder me the first chance he gets.”
“This really is too much, Captain,” Ludendorff complained.
“I’ve given you my word,” Maddox said.
“A false word,” Ludendorff said. “It’s clear you have other intentions.”
“I don’t know how you could tell that,” Maddox said.
“With the greatest of ease, boy,” Villars said. “Once you’ve been around the block enough times, it gets easy to see when a punk like you lies through his teeth.”
“Let us see if we can try this again,” Ludendorff said.
“Yes,” Maddox said. “I won’t try to kill your friend.”
“There you go, Cesar. Do you hear that? This time the captain spoke genuinely.”