Free Fiction: Cultured and Clawed (a Star Kingdom short story)

I’ve been writing some fun background stories to go with my Star Kingdom science fiction series, and this is the second of at least three that I’m planning to do this summer.

The first story, “Robots and Roommates,” is a free bonus to my newsletter subscribers (sign up here), but I thought I would put the second one up here for anyone who is interested. This is how the genetically engineered cat-woman warrior, Qin, and my grumpy and jaded bounty hunter, Bonita (ahem, Laser), first met. I hope you enjoy it!

Cultured and Clawed

Captain Bonita “Laser” Lopez stood at the base of the Stellar Dragon’s ramp as robot loaders rolled crates out of her cargo hold, across the busy space station docks, and to one of the warehouses where a bored android supervisor checked them off.

Her knees ached, a byproduct of nearly seventy years of life and far too many injury-producing skirmishes as a bounty hunter, but she made herself stand with her arms crossed, her hands inches from the twin DEW-Tek pistols holstered at her waist. Twin Suns Station, which was run by corporations with varying degrees of disinterest in law enforcement wasn’t a good place to appear weak.

“Hey, Grandma,” a man with a bag slung over his shoulder said with a wink. “How about a quickie?”

“That all you have the stamina for, peewee?”

“I got plenty of stamina, but I wouldn’t want to hurt you with my undying vigor.”

“With lines like that, hijito, you’ll never get close enough to any woman to take your vigor out of your pants.”

He curled a lip, eyeing her pistols and the crates being wheeled off with calculation. He either decided there was nothing small enough to easily steal or that she was too formidable to mess with.

Alas, the latter was unlikely. With a pistol, rifle, dagger, or hefty rock in her hand, Bonita could still knock the cojones off a flea at a hundred meters, but people didn’t seem to sense that at a glance anymore. It was the gray hair, no doubt. She had the money to dye it, even if she couldn’t afford knee surgeries or anti-aging treatments, but she made herself put vanity aside. It was better to be underestimated than the other way around.

The man walked off, but the long assessing look he cast over his shoulder reminded Bonita that she should put her payment in the vault sooner rather than later. On this station, payment involved physical currency rather than bank transfers, so she had a roll of Miners’ Union dollars in her pocket, courtesy of the android warehouse manager.

Captain Bonita? Viggo, the sentience linked to the ship’s computer, asked. He sent the message to her embedded chip instead of using the ship’s comm system, even though she was close enough to hear the speakers in the cargo hold.

Yes? she replied in kind.

There’s a girl in the cargo hold.

Trying to steal something? Bonita bristled at the idea. Or stowing away?

She appears to be hiding.

So, a stowaway who wanted a ride off the station. If Bonita lived here, she would want to escape, too, but she couldn’t afford to feed passengers who didn’t pay. I’ll get rid of her.

Bonita made sure her male admirer had moved on before striding up the ramp, doing her best to hide her limp. When she’d been a bounty hunter, she’d made more money and could have paid for the knee surgery she needed. If not for the ex-husband who’d made off with everything in her savings account, she still could have paid for it.

Back corner near the engine room, Viggo prompted.

Got it.

Though she didn’t expect much trouble from a “girl,” Bonita drew one of her pistols as she walked around crates that hadn’t yet been unloaded. She peered into a shadowy nook between the cargo and the bulkhead.

“Come out of there,” she said.

The shadows stirred. With the crates blocking the overhead lights, Bonita couldn’t make out the person in the shadows, but the girl appeared bigger than she’d expected. The movement stopped, and nobody stepped out.

Bonita frowned and pointed her weapon into the shadows. “Come out now. This is my ship, and it runs freight, not stowaways.”

The shadows stirred again, and this time, someone walked slowly out. Someone huge.

Bonita skittered back, startled by the six-foot-plus woman-thing that stepped into the light.

Her knee twinged as she caught her foot, but she barely noticed. She was too busy staring at the broad-shouldered, muscular, furry, and fanged cat-woman warrior. Cat-woman something. She carried three firearms on straps hanging from her shoulders, including a huge Brockinger anti-tank gun, and she gripped the strap with hands with long claws.

“Viggo,” Bonita squeaked, “that’s not a girl.”

The female warrior had a thick black mane of hair, with pointed ears that stuck up through the locks. Her face was mostly human—even attractive, with more skin than fur, full lips, a straight nose, and dark, solemn eyes with slitted cat’s pupils—but the rest of her had been designed to kill. No doubt.

The pointed ears drooped. “I am female.”

“Sorry,” Bonita said, reacting to the chagrined expression. “I just meant I was expecting someone…” Someone with pigtails and far fewer claws and fangs, she thought. “Shorter.”

Viggo snorted over the speaker.

The warrior frowned and looked around, sniffing the air. Checking for another person?

“That’s the ship,” Bonita said.

“It has intelligence?”

Her voice sounded normal, if a little deep for a woman, the accent muddled like that of most other spacers who traveled throughout the Twelve Systems, the tics of their origins rubbing off over the years.

“He certainly thinks so.” Bonita rubbed her face and lowered the pistol pointed at her stowaway. If she was half the warrior she looked to be, she could probably dodge energy bolts and knock Bonita twenty feet before she could get a second shot off. “What are you doing on my ship?”

The woman looked toward the open hatch as a robot rolled up the ramp to pick up another crate.

“Hiding,” she said softly.

“Don’t take this the wrong way—” Bonita waved at the guns, but she meant to include the whole package, “—but you look like the kind of person that other people hide from.”

The woman’s face fell. She was younger than Bonita had guessed at first, a teenager maybe.

“I’m looking for a job. Is there any chance you’re hiring? I’m prepared to demonstrate my qualifications as a guard—I’m proficient in dozens of weapons and firearms and unarmed combat. Uhm, I don’t have a résumé.” She said the last word slowly and carefully, as if it was new to her.

Bonita imagined some ship’s captain asking her to send over a résumé and snorted. The three guns and muscles hinted strongly at her capabilities.

“Look, kid, what’s your name?” Bonita asked.

“They called me Three, but I would prefer Liangyu. Or Qin is fine if that’s a mouthful. Just not… Three.”

“Uh, right. Qin. I’m sorry, but I can’t afford an…” Bonita waved at her and her weapons. “All that. You have to go.”

“Room and board would be sufficient.” Qin raised hopeful eyebrows. “Until I’ve proven myself worthy of pay.”

While she groped for a way to convince her large guest that she wasn’t hiring, Bonita shifted so that her back wasn’t to the open cargo hatch. Even though Viggo would warn her if trouble were coming, her shoulder blades were itching. She used her chip to look up Qin Liangyu Three on the system’s network. She didn’t find an instance that included the number, but thousands of years earlier, Qin Liangyu had been some folk hero from Asia on Old Earth.

“You pick your name?” Bonita suspected this Qin had been engineered in some geneticist’s laboratory, probably in System Cerberus, where buying all manner of modified animals and human beings was commonplace, and nobody batted an eye at the idea of one person owning another.

“No. They gave it to us. I’ve looked it up before, but I don’t know if any of my DNA comes from that part of Old Earth. I don’t really know where it comes from—or what I am.” Her ears drooped again. For a hardened warrior, she was easy to read. “They didn’t teach us about our ancestry or culture or anything like that. Just about group and solo battle tactics and how to stay in top shape in the lower gravities of space.”

“Those are important things.”

Whistling drifted up from the ramp.

“The new owner of the cargo is coming,” Viggo said.

“Thank you.” Bonita started for the ramp but paused to shoo Qin behind the crates.

It was possible she had only meant to hide from Bonita, but she might also be hiding from this nebulous they she had mentioned.

The whistling grew louder, and a rotund woman with jowls that flapped as she walked came into view. Two towering bodyguards in combat armor flanked her.

Bonita kept her grimace to herself and walked forward with her chin up. The energy bolts of her DEW-Tek pistol would bounce right off that armor, so she hoped the woman hadn’t come for a fight.

“Deirdre.” Bonita forced a smile. “Your android paid me already, so I wasn’t expecting a personal visit. Have you come to give me a tip?”

“A tip? I’m afraid not, my dear Laser. I’ve inspected the cargo, and it’s damaged. I’m going to have to ask for half of my money back.”

“Your android already inspected it and said nothing.”

“He only opened a couple of crates, as you know.”

“There’s no reason why any of it would be damaged. It was strapped down for the whole trip. As you can see, the crates all look fine.” Bonita waved as robots hefted a couple more of the big crates, leaving only two remaining, the two that Qin was hiding behind.

“Might have happened before you got ʼem.” Deirdre shrugged, hooking her thumbs into her belt. “That’s the business. Sometimes people try to take advantage. You’ve got to be wary, inspect a cargo before you take it on.”

“I did inspect it. I know everything is fine.” Bonita clenched her jaw. Even if she hadn’t been hauling freight for that long, she was no neophyte to being an independent operator.

She crouched slightly, ready to spring if her visitor ordered her men to attack. They were armored, but Deirdre wasn’t.

“I guess they got something by on you then. It’s a shame.” Deirdre clucked her tongue. “Boys, search her for the money. We don’t pay for damaged goods.”

Damaged goods that they’d mostly off-loaded and stuffed into their warehouse…

The armored men strode forward.

Bonita scooted away and turned, as if she meant to run for the ladder well to the upper decks. But she twisted, her knee jolting her with pain for the sudden move, and dove between the men.

Even though the armor gave them extra speed and strength, her move surprised them, and Bonita got by, rolling to come up right in front of Deirdre. The men shouted, but Bonita focused on her target, lunging forward as Deirdre reached for a pistol.

Her own pistol already out, Bonita smashed into her foe, then darted behind her and grabbed her. Using the woman as a shield, she whirled and pressed her pistol to Dierdre’s temple .

“Don’t even…” Bonita started but trailed off, her mouth dropping open.

She’d expected to find the men charging at her, but they dangled several inches above the deck, Qin’s big strong fingers wrapped around their armored necks. Their weapons had been torn out of their hands and lay on the deck behind her.

The men struggled, and one twisted, almost landing a kick on Qin’s thigh. She growled and slammed their helmets together, as if each of the big guards weighed ten pounds instead of two hundred. The Glasnax faceplates on those helmets were strong and impervious to almost anything, but that couldn’t have felt good.

Qin spun with her arms out, the men’s legs lifting into the air as if they were discuses in an old-fashioned Olympics, and she hurled them over Bonita’s head—Bonita yanked Deirdre down with her to duck—and out into the busy docking area. They bounced three times, armor clanking and startling passersby, and skidded into a kiosk where a robot offered them refreshments for a “very agreeable price.”

Qin picked up the men’s fallen rifles and added them to the armory she already wore.

Bonita rose, pulling Deirdre up with her, the pistol still pressed to her temple.

“About that cargo,” Bonita said calmly, as if this was exactly what she’d expected to happen, “I believe you were mistaken in your inspection.”

Deirdre swallowed, her jowls trembling. “It’s possible I was, yes.”

“Maybe you better go re-inspect it, eh?”

Bonita turned, pointing Deirdre down the ramp and releasing her, though she kept the pistol aimed at her back. Out in the docking area, the armored men had climbed to their feet, but neither rushed back to the ship. Deirdre looked over her shoulder, not at Bonita, but at Qin, who’d come to stand beside Bonita at the top of the ramp.

“That’s something you can put on your résumé,” Bonita remarked. “Experience hurling armored men.”

“Is it?” Qin asked. “Good. They said I had to fill up a whole piece of paper.”

The loader robots returned for the last two crates. Deirdre shook her head and strode away, waving for her men to join her. They walked quickly and didn’t look back.

“I hope that’s settled.” Bonita eyed Qin. She definitely would be handy to have around. “Thank you for the help.”

Qin bowed her head. “Can I reapply for a job now?”

“Freight haulers don’t make enough money to hire crews.”

Qin’s big shoulders slumped. “I see.”

“I used to be a bounty hunter. I’ve been semiretired since my partner—my sniveling excuse of an ex-husband—screwed me over and ran off. It’s gotten…” Bonita shifted her weight onto the knee that was hurting less at the moment. “It’s gotten more difficult of late, all by myself. But maybe if I had some young strong help, I could get back into it. Bounty hunters can make more money than freight haulers.”

Qin brightened. “I could help with that. I even know of some guys on this station with bounties on their heads.”

“They wouldn’t be the guys you were hiding in my ship from, would they?”

“Uhm. Possibly.” Qin looked uneasily toward the passersby, as if reminded of this, and slunk back into the cargo hold. “They work for one of the pirate families. They’re just little minions sent off on an errand, but I know they’re both wanted on this station. On lots of stations. I looked them up because I thought maybe I could turn them in myself, but I wasn’t sure if… the law would side with me.” She shrugged. “They believe I belong to their boss. I object. I’m about to turn nineteen. In many systems, I would be considered a free adult, allowed to go where I wish and do as I please.” Qin’s eyes grew wistful as she gazed out at the station.

Bonita wagered Qin wasn’t from one of the systems where slavery was illegal, but since she perfectly understood the need to be free and control one’s destiny, she was inclined to side with Qin.

“What are their names?” Bonita glanced toward engineering as four circular robot vacuums whirred into the cargo hold and started sucking up lint and slivers left behind from the crates. “Viggo will look them up on the bounty-hunter job board we’re still subscribed to. He’s not busy.”

“Not busy?” Viggo’s voice came over the speaker. “Really, Bonita. Do you see the mess that cargo left? Not to mention what those odious oversized robots did to my deck. They left grease spots all over.”

“Or I’ll look them up.” Bonita shook her head as more vacuums appeared from the various compartments around the ship. Truly, this was an emergency to be dealt with immediately.

“Sledgehammer Syler and Boom-Boom Barbato.”

“Whatever business could they be in? Dentistry? Upholstery?” Bonita used her chip to access the bounty-hunter job board.

Qin smiled bleakly. “They’re not that tough. I could take them in a fair fight. But they know me, and they know their bosses will be angry if they don’t recover me, so they won’t let it be a fair fight.”

“No, we won’t let it be a fair fight.” As Bonita prodded a thumb to her chest, a robot bumped her ankle as it tried to vacuum between her legs. “Viggo.”

“My apologies, Bonita. You’re on their route.”

“How rude of me.”

“I wasn’t going to mention it, but yes.”

Bonita widened her stance so the robot could get through, wondering if other captains had to deal with entities like this. Most ships just got a programmed AI. But she’d ended up with a ship that had once belonged to a human being, who had, just before he died, had his consciousness uploaded into the computer.

Qin perked her eyebrows. “You’re going to help me?”

“If by help, you mean provide a distraction while you beat them up and then turn in their battered unconscious bodies for the bounty, then yes.”

“That’s perfect.” Qin grinned and gripped Bonita’s shoulder.

It didn’t hurt, but her wicked claws did flash alarmingly in the ship’s light, the razor edges on several ragged, as if they had broken off.

Bonita had to fight the urge not to spring away. “Those are… noticeable.”

“Sorry.” Qin’s grin turned to a grimace, and she tucked her hands behind her back.

“You don’t have to apologize, but if this works out, maybe we can tidy them up a bit.”

“Like a manicure? I’ve never had a manicure, but I’ve read about them.” Qin drew a hand to examine the claws, extending them to their full length, like five deadly switchblades built into her fingers and thumb.

“Yes, a manicure. I have nail polish.” Bonita almost choked at the idea of filing and polishing claws, but if she couldn’t afford to pay the kid, she could at least do her nails.

Assuming this worked. As the bounties and pictures came up for the two hulking toughs—both looked to have been modded to have more muscle mass than normally possible—Bonita worried she might have agreed to far more than was wise.

* * *

“Are you sure I should be walking in the open like this?” Qin eyed the station goers who were eyeing her right back.

Genetically modified people, animals, and people-animals weren’t that uncommon in System Stymphalia, but Qin’s impressive build her made noticeable. Even though her eyes and ears were expressive and without malevolence, and she’d left all but her anti-tank weapon behind in the ship, she looked like someone’s tough on a mission to kill. The glances were probably less because she was an oddity and more because people were concerned that she was after them.

“That’s the point. You’re the bait. We want someone to see you and report to those two thugs.”

“Sledgehammer and Boom-Boom probably aren’t far behind me. I spotted them across the concourse yesterday, and I think they spotted me back.”

They were moving out of the docking area and into that concourse now, with all manner of restaurants, pubs, and storefronts to either side of the wide boulevard, along with occasional gates for commercial transport to different parts of the system.

“The hope is that they’ll focus on you and not notice me—or think I can give them any trouble.” Bonita had donned a leather jacket over her galaxy suit, even if it was a dubious fashion statement. It allowed her to carry an under-jacket pistol holster that nobody could see, along with an eight-pack of compact smoke grenades. She exaggerated her limp, so she would appear like even less a threat, though she expected the thugs to dismiss her at the first glimpse of her gray hair.

“And, uhm, the vacuums?” Qin peered over her shoulder at the four whirring discs pretending to vacuum while trailing after them. They blended in with the various station robots emptying trash bins, cleaning storefront windows, and picking up food wrappers.

“A further distraction. That’s all.” Bonita resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

Viggo had said he wanted to help, and she hadn’t seen the harm in it, but if they got more than a half mile from the ship, he would lose the signal and his ability to control the robots. Then Bonita would be stuck carrying them back.

An older woman with a shopping bag walked too close and bumped Bonita. She wrinkled her nose at the scent of some loathsome fermented vegetables on the woman’s breath and checked her pistols and knife to make sure that hadn’t been an attempt at pickpocketing. She’d left her freshly earned Union dollars in the vault on the ship with the hatch locked. If someone tried to break in to steal it, Viggo could sic the rest of his robot cadre on him or her.

“I see one of them,” Qin whispered, her gaze pointed ahead and to the right, toward a kiosk serving exotic vat sausages, as the sign said. Sort of. Alterations had been graffitied on with red paint, changing it to erotic rat sausages.

An eight-foot-tall man with shoulders half as wide was stuffing his face with a massive sausage on a stick. Bonita recognized him from the bounty pictures. Boom-Boom.

He bristled with weapons: daggers and pistols at his hips, a DEW-Tek Starkiller rifle on a chest strap, and something that looked like a giant axe across his back. He wore a galaxy suit, which would protect him from a few shots, especially if he put the helmet up, but not the harder to penetrate combat armor. That was something, at least.

Bonita assumed his buddy wasn’t far off. Her nerves jangled in anticipation of a fight. No matter how many times she’d hunted down a man—or woman—she still got nervous before the moment.

“He sees me.” Qin faced straight ahead, pretending she hadn’t seen the man looking.

“Let’s step into that bookstore.” Bonita waved at a storefront, tall aisles of shelves visible through the Glasnax window. They were filled with maps and scrolls for art, desk and office accoutrements, and rows and rows of books. Even the giant Boom-Boom would have a hard time seeing targets around everything.

“We’re going to start a fight in a bookstore?” Qin asked. “I don’t want to get trapped. Or blow up a bunch of expensive books.”

“I’ve been to this station before. There are doors in the backs of the shops that lead to maintenance corridors. We can set up an ambush there.” The last time Bonita had hunted someone here, she had ended up chasing him through those exact corridors. Her knees had been better then. She hoped this didn’t devolve into a chase.

Qin looked dubious, but she followed Bonita inside.

A chime tinkled, and a robot clerk announced the specials and that they would be incinerated by the security system if they attempted to shoplift. It sounded like a bluff, though Bonita did see a couple of cameras on the walls.

She and Qin found a spot in the rear where they could keep their backs to a wall and see the entrance.

“Keep an eye out,” Bonita whispered, then trotted to the back to make sure she had been right about the corridor—and that that door wasn’t locked.

She almost tripped over one of the robot vacuums and grumbled. The door was not locked. She poked her head into the corridor outside and found the lights out, a broken ceiling panel dangling. There were a few garbage bins and crates stacked against a wall a few yards away. She almost ran over to make sure nobody was hiding behind them—she’d only seen one of the toughs so far—but a quick check revealed that the bookstore door was locked from the corridor side. She grabbed one of the robots, tipped it on its edge, and leaned it in the gap so the door couldn’t close. It whirred indignantly.

There wasn’t anyone behind the crates.

“Just being paranoid,” she muttered to herself but also checked around the nearest corner before letting herself believe the corridor was empty. For now. She would use those crates for her ambush.

When she returned to the bookstore, she tipped the vacuum robot back onto its rollers and rejoined Qin.

“He hasn’t come in yet,” she reported, her claws gently tracing the spine of a book on Old Earth cultures. “I was sure he saw me.”

“He’s probably telling his buddy to join him. Or to go around back.” Bonita hoped the thugs didn’t know about the corridor access, but she couldn’t count on it.

“Hide behind me if any fighting starts,” Qin said.

“I’ll hide behind anything I can for cover.”

“I miss my combat armor. I was only able to get away with my guns. They have trackers on the armor suits.”

Bonita didn’t ask who they were. Whoever had hired Boom-Boom and Sledgehammer, presumably, but it wasn’t her business to pry. In truth, she didn’t want to know who was after Qin, because then she might decide it was very foolish to risk making enemies of them. And she would rather help Qin than abandon her.

“If this works, we’ll buy you a suit with the bounty money.”

Qin smiled sadly. “Their bounties aren’t that large. Combat armor is expensive.”

“I know. I have a set. And their bounties aren’t that large if we turn them in here, but they’re wanted in four systems. Tiamat Station is offering the most.”

“You’d travel all that way and risk having them on your ship for weeks to collect those bounties?”

“For an extra thirty thousand Union dollars? Hell, yes. That’s more than I would make running freight in those weeks. A lot more. Though we could probably pick up a cargo to take too. And I have a brig cell—sort of. It’s secure. And you’d be around in case they tried to break out, right?”

Qin lifted her chin. “Yes, I would.”

Bonita peered over the bookcase, expecting the sausage-sucking slug to stalk into the bookstore any second. But minutes ambled past. He was definitely waiting for backup.

The robot clerk came down their aisle to check on them, and Bonita pulled out the culture book, pretending she was considering a purchase.

“Take your vacuuming outside,” the clerk said, stopping in front of two of Viggo’s robots. “There is no filth in my store.”

The vacuums whirred away, disappearing under tables and into nooks. The robot huffed and followed them.

Qin laid a claw on the page Bonita had opened the book to, an old legend of a dragon and a monk back on Old Earth.

“I don’t know anything about my culture or heritage,” she murmured.

“You said that before. Does it matter to you?”

Qin shrugged. “It just seems like having a culture and sharing it with people is part of the human experience. If all you are is intelligent and self-aware, are you still human?”

Bonita thought it was the fur and the pointy ears that would make Qin’s claim of humanity more dubious, rather than any absence of culture, but she kept the notion to herself. “Yes. And I’m sure that’s not all you are.”

“But culture is important. I’m sure you came from a family with a religion, and songs, and stories, and a language that isn’t System Trade. And it shaped you and made you who you are. A human being, not a mishmash of hacked-up DNA strands jammed together in a test tube and thrown in an artificial womb for nine months.”

Bonita checked the front door again, afraid the toughs would stride into the bookshop in the middle of her new assistant’s existential crisis. “I had a father who liked to hit us, a mother who slept around, and a bunch of brothers who ran with the habitat gangs. The only culture that’s left an impact on me decades later was learning to cook our traditional meals at my grandmother’s side.”

That wasn’t quite true, because Qin’s mention of songs had brought one from her childhood to mind, and even if her family had been dysfunctional, she remembered celebrating Christmases with them, at least when she’d been little. The traditional had fallen off after her father had been shot and her eldest brother had been sentenced to life on a penal asteroid mine.

“Cooking sounds nice,” Qin murmured.

“I’ll make my husband-winning posole rojo for you once we take care of your problem and leave this station. Though I have to admit it only wins loser husbands that leave you after five years. Technically, I left one of them.” Bonita shrugged, wondering how she’d gotten into this discussion with a kid she’d just met. “Never mind. I—”

She stopped. Boom-Boom strode through the door, his rifle in both hands.

The robot clerk squawked a protest. Boom-Boom blew him away, shards of metal tinkling against bookcases and the ceiling.

Qin and Bonita ducked.

“Lure him out the back,” Bonita whispered, not wanting to shoot up the bookstore.

Qin nodded once, her wistful expression gone, replaced by a warrior’s grim determination. She sprang over the bookcase, leaped over three more, and even as the tough whipped his rifle toward her, she crashed into him. They smashed to the floor, a whirl of punching fists and thrusting knees.

“That’s not luring,” Bonita groaned, but she rushed to the back door, prepared to do her part.

Either Qin would lead the tough into the corridor, or Bonita would run into the second one, trying to sneak up on them. Or both.

When she reached the door, one of the robot vacuums waited, like a dog hoping to be let out.

“Yeah,” Bonita whispered, as thuds and clunks echoed from the walls of the bookstore. “You go out first. Good idea.”

She pushed the door open enough to let the vacuum whir out. A boom sounded in the corridor, and a round blew the little robot to pieces. Smoke billowed, filling the corridor.

Bonita ordered her galaxy suit’s helmet to unfold from its slot below the back of her neck and leaned out with a pistol in each hand. She spotted movement right away, a man in combat armor, standing beside the crates but not bothering to take cover behind them. He didn’t need cover, not with the armor. He held a gas-operated X10 Drumfire with a bandolier of explosive rounds he could load into it.

Cursing, she fired at his seams, hoping the armor of some criminal wasn’t in the best repair and that she would find a weakness. He’d been glaring through his helmet at the destroyed robot, but he whipped the Drumfire toward her as she fired. Her shots were accurate, but the crimson energy bolts bounced off the seams. She ducked her head back inside just before he blew the door off its hinges.

Bonita pulled out one of her smoke grenades and threw it down the corridor without looking. Another boom sounded. Had he fired at the grenade? Good.

She risked leaning out one more time, certain her galaxy suit could take a hit, and spotted him engulfed in smoke, but he was already striding out of it, toward her doorway. She aimed a pistol, not at his seams this time, but at his weapon’s gas cartridge.

As he strode out of the smoke and saw her waiting for him, his scarred face lit up. An instant before he pulled his trigger to fire again, the cartridge blew up. The weapon followed.

Startled, he dropped the pieces, but he wasn’t discombobulated for long. He snarled and sprang for her.

Bonita jumped back from the doorway as someone else blurred past and into the corridor. Qin.

She roared, crashing into the thug like a wrecking ball.

Bonita spun, worried Boom-Boom would be on her heels. But the bookstore had fallen silent. Boom-Boom lay unmoving in the front doorway, two of Viggo’s vacuums ramming against his boots, as if they could push him to the nearest trash incinerator. On a more civilized station, security would be arriving by now, sirens wailing. But only a handful of the passersby even glanced at the fallen thug. A boy ran up and stole his big axe.

Crashes and thuds and a male cry of pain came from the corridor. Bonita inched toward the doorway, prepared to help, but the noise stopped.

She leaned out and found the armored man on the floor, his helmet torn off, his armor dented like a tin can that had been run over by a street cleaner—repeatedly—and his eyes lolled back in his head. Qin stood next to him, a foot on his chest, her huge anti-tank gun in hand, though she had never fired it.

“Thank you for your help, Bonita,” Qin said gravely.

“I didn’t do much.” Bonita glanced at the robot vacuum shards and realized she would have to use some of the bounty money to replace that, or she could never hear the end of it from Viggo.

“You and the vacuums distracted them. It would have been difficult if they’d both come at me at once.”

Bonita looked at all the dents in the unconscious man’s armor. “I’m not sure I believe that.”

Qin flashed a grin, fangs glinting in the light flowing out of the bookstore.

“Why don’t you pick up a couple of books before we tote these guys to my brig?” Bonita waved into the store. “I’ll pay for them. I think we owe the owners a purchase since we got their door blown up. And their robot cashier. Uhm, maybe we better make a few purchases.”

Bonita now regretted choosing the book shop for their ambush. She should have chosen one of the more disreputable stores, like the place that rented sex robots by the hour and had the robots programmed to pickpocket the drunker clients.

“Books? I love books.” Qin lowered her gun and clasped her hands together in front of her chest. “I never had money or was allowed to own anything before.”

“Well, you can now. You can have a cabin of your own.”

“Does this mean I’m hired?”

“At no pay besides room and board and nail polishing? You got it, kid.” Bonita smiled, though if nothing went wrong with turning in the thugs for their bounties, she would be able to afford to pay her new assistant, who, bless her, didn’t look at all perturbed by these stipulations. “Why don’t you get that book on culture stuff? And then pick a culture that sounds interesting and claim it for yourself.”

One of Qin’s pointed ears rotated uncertainly. “I don’t think it works that way. You have to be born into a culture.”

“Says who? The culture police? Look, most of human history is the story of people getting conquered by other people and having some new culture forced on them. Just find one you want to learn about, and we’ll make it yours. I’ll help you celebrate the holidays.”

“I’ve never celebrated a holiday before.”

“Then you better find a culture that has a good one coming up pronto.”

Qin grinned shyly and walked into the bookstore.

THE END

If you haven’t checked out my Star Kingdom series yet, Book 1 is still 99 cents for a couple more weeks: https://books2read.com/StarKingdom1