STARLINER by David Drake

“I hope you have enjoyed your trip through Betaniche,” Rawsl said, placing his hands behind his neck in the Szgranian gesture of submission.

“Yes, thank you,” Ran said as he got out of the vehicle. He ached in unfamiliar places. He was pretty sure that every one of Lady Scour’s fingertips had left a bruise on his back as she climaxed the third time.

Rossignol from Commander Kneale’s watch was on gangway duty. He straightened with a bored man’s interest in any change.

“May we tell our mistress that you are fully satisfied with the way we carried out her instructions to bring you back to your ship, then?” Rawsl asked, still in his formal posture.

“Yes, certainly,” Ran said. Rawsl was acting like a concierge prodding his guest for a tip.

“Let no one leave the vessel,” the Szgranian aide snarled in his own language.

A dozen of the escorting warriors, including those with plasma weapons, rushed toward the Empress. Rossignol bolted backward. Hatches began to shut across all three gangways. A klaxon within the starliner began to honk.

“Since we have satisfied our mistress’s instructions,” Rawsl said, “now we can satisfy the demands of honor.” He drew both his long swords.

Ran bent, grasped a palanquin pole, and jerked. The smoothly finished hardwood was screwed and pinned into its socket. The vehicle skidded a few centimeters when Ran put his back into the effort, but as a weapon it was as useless as the bedrock.

Rawsl gave a high-pitched chirp. He thrust. His swordblades were slightly curved, but if Ran hadn’t ducked behind the palanquin, the point would have crunched in and out through the bone and gristle of his rib cage.

“Prod him to me,” ordered Rawsl. “This animal must not be allowed to hold back in the slaughter chute.”

The main hatch had shuddered, then reopened fully again. Szgranians facing the starliner aimed modern weapons up the gangways from which human help might come. The other warriors had drawn their swords. They formed a rough circle with Ran, the palanquin, and Rawsl as the hub. Lower ranking Szgranians, male and female both, squatted beyond the ring of warriors and called encouragement to Rawsl.

Two warriors on Ran’s side of the palanquin shuffled toward him, their swords raised like crab pincers. They’d drawn daggers in their central pairs of hands. Ran had as much chance of grabbing a weapon from one of them as he did of surviving a bath in battery acid.

Commander Kneale in his white uniform appeared at the main gangway. A Szgranian fired a machine-pistol in the commander’s direction. The burst may have been aimed to miss, but several of the little bullets whanged and howled off the bulkheads of the Embarkation Hall.

This was going to be an international incident—particularly if some of the Empress’s crewmen got into a gunfight with the Szgranian escort. Rawsl and his confederates didn’t care in the least.

If Ran had thought it would do him any good, he might not have cared about an open firefight either. All it would do was get good people killed, though. The Empress of Earth wasn’t a warship with external weapons. The Szgranian warriors outgunned anything available from the starliner’s arsenal. If there was enough ordnance flying around, Ran wouldn’t survive long enough for Rawsl to cut him into collops.

How Lady Scour would react to the event was an open question. Ran’s bet was that she wouldn’t deign to notice it. As mistress of Clan Scour, she had the right to do anything she pleased; but her evening of bestiality was no matter for pride, even to her overmastering will.

Anyway, Rawsl and his confederates wouldn’t care if their mistress had them flayed alive. They would have served their honor and their clan’s.

A warrior poked his sword a calculated distance toward Ran’s buttocks. The Szgranian didn’t want to kill Ran—that was Rawsl’s perquisite. But if the human wouldn’t go to his death willingly, then he would be thrust to it in a welter of his own blood.

Instead of waiting for the pricking blade, Ran leaped on top of the palanquin. Spectators cackled with delight. Rawsl stepped back and spread his swords wide. If Ran tried to overleap the Szgranian, the blades would come up and cross through his body, cutting the human into three segments while he was still in the air.