“I hate a fair fight,” Eva said. “Maybe we should move on. Don’t want to attract unwanted attention from any local cops, anyway.”
“That’s a shame,” Pink said. “I always like taking these fools down a peg.”
A slow smile spread across Eva’s face as she had a wonderful, awful idea.
“Vakar, when is the next shuttle arriving?” she asked.
Vakar’s palps moved as he checked his commlink. “In a few moments, actually.”
As if on cue, a series of blinking lights and chimes announced the shuttle’s arrival. It would still be a couple of minutes before the passengers were able to disembark, especially given decontamination protocols, but a hub like Medoral tended to be quick about that stuff.
Eva walked over to Sue and tapped her on the shoulder. Sue jumped, startled from her rapt viewing of an ad for a particular brand of lubricant.
“Get back to the ship,” Eva said. “Stick to the walls in case the crowds get bad. Don’t run, but don’t stop for anything, and tell Min to prep for a quick takeoff.”
Sue nodded, her expression determined. “Okay, I can do that.” Off she went, leaving Pink, Eva, and Vakar in the otherwise empty corridor.
“Vakar, can you take care of the security cameras?” Eva asked.
“Take care of . . . yes, I understand.” Vakar led Eva over to another storefront, where an extremely bored rani with pink-dyed ears leaned against a wall with the vacant stare of a teenager lost in her commlink. This store was full of sporting equipment, some of which Eva recognized but most of which made little sense to her.
She pointed at a pair of hoverboots. “Maybe I should trade my gravboots for those,” she told Vakar. “Being able to run in midair seems pretty great.”
“The time limitation renders them less useful, in my opinion,” Vakar replied.
((Cameras disengaged,)) he pinged to Eva and Pink.
The trio and the Fridge agents continued studiously ignoring each other while waiting to see who might start something first. Eva left Vakar and casually ambled over to the restaurant adjacent to the luggage store, which had uncomfortable-looking bolted-down seats as well as deactivated floating chairs stacked against one wall. She smiled and waved at the sluglike dytryrc behind the counter, his six spindly robotic arms engaged in a variety of simultaneous food-preparation activities even as his two eyestalks faced in entirely different directions.
“Nice knives,” Eva told him.
“I keeps ’em sharp!” the dytryrc said enthusiastically, then returned his attention to his tasks.
After a long minute in which Eva pretended to be very interested in the restaurant’s menu, the shuttle passengers rushed in like a gaggle of agitated geese. It was a mixed group: black-suited galactic immigration officials with their trademark optical shades, two sets of tiny pizkees covered head to toe in what looked to be different shades of war paint, a dozen kloshians apparently celebrating the signing of a breeding contract by being extremely inebriated, even a trio of white-robed human nuns whose denomination wasn’t entirely clear. They mingled with the usual isolated business travelers and others taking advantage of the relatively low cost of shuttle travel compared to nicer options. The situation between them already seemed tense—long space travel crammed into uncomfortable seats would do that to anyone—and as they got closer to Eva, several strands of argument arose from the various factions.
“—wouldn’t have won if the referee hadn’t botched that call!” one of the pizkees shouted, her normally blue face painted red and white. For a person who didn’t reach the middle of Eva’s shin, she was incredibly loud.
“You’re just mad your team dropped the fink,” another shouted back, his face also painted red, but with a gold symbol near his tiny black eye.
“Peace is the champion of justice,” one of the nuns announced to no one in particular, causing several nearby pizkees to hiss and bare their needlelike teeth.
“I love you all,” a kloshian said, adjusting his holo-tiara. “Like, really, love you all. So much. Thank you for doing this for me.” His friends cooed back at him and he turned a vibrant shade of emerald.
“—keep cutting funding like this, we’re going to be walking from one planet to another,” the kloshian black suit said to his partner.
“Well, maybe if your hoser hadn’t pretended he’d been injured by the scorcher,” a pizkee said, “all dropping down on the patch like a sad little—”
“Don’t think we’re going to find him in Narushe anyway,” the other black suit said, adjusting her shades. “Baldessare prefers flashy places, not ruined planets with crazy clown god-emperors.”
“In rage, the proud cry out for vengeance,” another nun said. “But they shall not be answered.”
“I’m not feeling super great,” a kloshian said, covering her bright-red eyes.
“Don’t disgorge your vapor sac here,” her friend told her soothingly, “wait until we can find a waste receptacle.”
Eva, who was still loitering near the restaurant, picked up one of the deactivated floating chairs and hefted it experimentally.
((Get ready,)) she pinged at Pink and Vakar.
((For what?)) Pink pinged back.
Eva threw the chair in a perfect arc, right into the center of the agitated crowd. It must have hit someone, because cries of pain followed, yielding to momentary silence.
And then, the silence exploded.
Chapter 4
Pulling Mobs
It wasn’t clear who threw the first punch, but the pizkees were definitely ready to go after each other amid battle cries that sounded like references to their respective sports teams. None of them were armed with anything more dangerous than their own bodies, but those were plenty: fists lashed out blindly at anyone in range wearing the wrong colors, which seemed extra challenging because pretty much all of them wore red, but Eva assumed they knew who was who.
The rest of the crowd tried to back away and give the fighters space—difficult given the size of the corridor and the sheer number of people. Then, one of the black suits moved in to break up the fight, at which point a pizkee screamed, “Get boiled, wastehole!” and a half dozen of the face-painted people from both teams scaled pant legs and each other to start attacking. The other black suit intervened, earning her a separate assault. She yelled as needle teeth sank into her unprotected skin, and a head-butt sent her staggering back into one of the nuns, knocking the white-robed woman to the floor.
Another nun helped her sister to her feet. “Faith is our shield, and we shall endure,” she said.
“But do we not also say, ‘Our hands are our swords, to defend against chaos’?” the fallen nun asked.
“We do say that,” the third nun agreed. “Even so—”
Eva carefully sidled back toward the luggage store, where the Fridge agents were watching the unfolding chaos with some concern. Before they could stop her, she grabbed one of the suitcases and lobbed it at the nearest cluster of combatants, then retreated to the sports-equipment store, where Pink and Vakar waited.
“Welcome to Recreation Supremacy,” the bored rani employee intoned, not even glancing at Eva.