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Stories from the Verse
A Dozen Verses
Chapter 26: Slade 259
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Kondor 264
Following the walking path deeper into Throne World, he found the gravity increasing. The clothes became a little more uniform, and he saw more of certain races than he was used to. The walkway was a slidewalk, so for every step he took, he found himself lurching forward a hundred paces. Without its supporting fields this could be disastrous in the high G. Soon he took another and then another walkway down, finding the gravity doubling again. Now only the sturdiest of the races were able to live here, and the poorest.
The Throne World Empire was wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. They used diamonds as building material for their flying cars. They had cities that floated on balloons. The imperial arena was covered with platinum. So he did not find true poverty, but he began to see the edges of it–a piece of uncollected trash, an unidentifiable chunk of something-or-other over in the corner of the wall of the fifty-meter wide walkway.
He took a smaller path, and another smaller path, and saw a descent down deeper. If he understood right, anyone down that path would be working or, Odin forbid, living in four-and-a-half gravities. Thankfully he was only on this level, with its three gravities which was enough to make him take his steps carefully as the walkway vanished. Even as he put his feet down, he felt that if he tilted things just slightly wrong, he might, just might, break his ankle. Whatever he did, leaping and diving was out of the question in this environment.
Approaching the front door of the warehouse, he saw two guards with open ranged weapons sitting in full support chairs that were bracing the door. He loosened his sword and blaster, but one of them called out.
“Slade?”
“Um, yeah, how did you know?” He walked up to them until he was twenty feet away. The metalloid alien, who might be like the musician Derek had met at a party, a ‘Iorg, snorted. Perhaps this was not so bad for them, if this was indeed the same type, as they were supposed to be ambush predators who spent most of their lives not moving.
“Our bosses put out a contract on Slade-Human. There are only two Humans on the planet, and you look like the male one.”
“Fair enough. I’m going through that door.”
“Not if we kill you first,” said the other alien, a Chlorophyte in some sort of support suit. “Fifty thousand factory seconds for your head.”
“Hard to spend that if you’re dead,” Slade said quietly.
“True.”
Slade walked forward, and at nine feet range the metalloid alien suddenly lurched forward, and Slade cut the slender central pole of his body in half. The alien fell dead, and Slade turned to the other who was unmoving.
“He thought he was fast.”
“He was,” Slade said.
“I’m not as fast, so if you don’t mind, I’m just going to sit here, and try to breathe.”
Keeping eyes on each other, Slade walked past the sitting Chlorophyte, and opened the door beyond him. Entering he saw a large warehouse full of boxes of black material that somehow set his nerves on edge just looking at them. Not all of the piles were of equal size. Beyond them he saw faces peering out from behind thick glass on the far side of the warehouse.
As he walked across the area, he began to feel something. It was almost like he was being versed out. But then another black box of something just appeared above another pile. Acting on instinct, he sensed for scriff, and for the briefest instance, he felt the scriff sense from the box. Despite that, this was not what was agitating him. But whatever it was, he walked through it, and to the other side.
A strange alien in a glittery golden foil suit walked out of the room behind the glass windows. There was a cocky arrogance to his walk that got Slade irritated and at the same time puzzled him. He had seen some of the Dracorex who almost, but no, they did not have the same level of pride. Who was this? The being pulled out a one sided axe with a black handle. The whole thing was two feet in length, and almost like a toy in the large alien’s hands.
“I’ve never killed a Human before,” he said in a strange accent not at all like everyone else Slade had heard on the Throne World.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
