Page 61 of Dax: Gratefully Bonded
The rest of my master’s team dropped what they were doing and raced over, while the Ranzors scrambled to try to stop the crowd. But somehow, the protestors seemed to have decided to simply ignore any threat the large creatures presented. Borl and Garik managed to grab a couple of people by their arms, but dragging two or three people back out of the park would make no difference to the hundred or so who were rushing past them.
“Get back,” Nichols shouted at a group of protestors who had started dismantling one of the tents. He had his gun out… but the trouble makers simply ignored it.
“You’re not going to shoot unarmed civilians,” one of the younger men called back, as he yanked the support poles out of one tent. “So you all can just fuck off.”
As galling as the situation was, I realised that they were right; the military could not shoot civilians. And the Ranzors, as powerful as they were, couldn’t use excessive force either. Their claws and tails were designed for delivering lethal blows, not for dealing with angry parents and office workers.
A handful of the Halagals were attempting to defend themselves, swinging tent poles or cooking pots at the protestors, while the ones with children simply grabbed their families and ran, trying to prevent the kids from getting injured. But given that the Halagals were generally only half the size of a human or a Solof, they stood little chance of doing any good. And when faced with a Denzogal, they had even less chance.
The team turned to my master with shocked and fearful expressions. “He’s right, we can’t actually shoot them,” Nichols blurted out, as he gaped wide-eyed at the crowd.
My heart was thudding in my chest, and only half of my alarm was due to the protestors. I spun around to look at my master, concerned that he would be overwhelmed by the near-riot. Having a panic attack in the midst of all these shouting, running people would be a disaster.
But to my surprise, my master was regarding the crowd with a cool, calculating expression. He didn’t move immediately, seconds ticking past as he stood there. But I could see from his face and his body language that he wasn’t just staring helplessly at the chaos. His mind was working rapidly as he sorted through potential strategies… and then he abruptly marched over to one of the civilians – a Solof man of roughly the same height and build as my master – and punched him squarely in the face. “You get the fuck away from these people. You think you can harm innocent children?” he yelled, as another woman shoved ascreaming child away from his mother. The kid could only have been about three or four years old. He shoved the woman back, hard enough that she stumbled and landed hard on the ground.
A moment later, the rest of the team caught onto his strategy, and it galvanised them into motion. No, we couldn’t do any serious damage to the crowd. But if they were going to fight with fists and boots, we could do the same.
The military team holstered their guns and waded into the thick of things, swinging fists and shoving people back from the tents. The Ranzors put their muscles to good use, picking people up by their collars and simply moving them, or using their powerful hind legs to block people’s access to tents or storage crates.
I jumped in, right alongside the rest of them, choosing my targets more carefully, as I was smaller than most of the soldiers, and far less experienced. But nonetheless, I found I was making good progress, defending a Halagal family huddled inside their tent, and fending off a looter trying to steal food supplies by battering him with a frying pan. Off in the distance, I heard sirens, and I suspected that my master had thought to call for the police. Extra bodies would certain help us gain control of this, since we were seriously outnumbered, but until help arrived, our priority would be to minimise the damage and prevent too many Halagals from being injured.
I saw Goroz pick up a Wasop woman and toss her into the lake. I experienced a moment’s serious concern – Wasops were not generally known for their ability to swim – but a moment later, Goroz waded into the lake and plucked the woman out again. He didn’t seem the slightest bit upset about getting wet, and I wasn’t surprised – Ranzors universally loved the water.
Rather than surrendering, the woman decided to scream at Goroz and launch a hail of punches and kicks over his shoulders as he held her out of the water… so he calmly dunked her inagain. This time, when he fished her out, she was far more cooperative.
A new scream from over to my right caught my attention, and I dashed over, seeing a large human man threatening a Halagal woman. She had a young child huddling behind her, and an older child – perhaps a teenager – attempting to fend off the human. The human man struck the teenager with a piece of wood, slicing a nasty gash across his face, but before I could get close enough to intervene, my master came charging around the corner, rage on his face and blood on his knuckles. He shoved the man back and planted himself in front of the woman, snarling something at the human that I couldn’t quite hear over the din. The man took a few steps back, a look of disgust on his face. Then I felt my blood turn to ice as he dropped the piece of wood on the ground and pulled a pistol out of his jacket instead. Where the hell had he got a gun from? Civilians on Rendol 4 were not permitted to carry firearms…
He lifted the gun, aiming it straight at my master, and something on the man’s face lit a sudden and jarring instinct in me. He was going to pull the trigger. I was absolutely certain of it.
I moved without thinking. My master didn’t see me coming, too focused on the man and the Halagal family behind him. I slammed straight into the side of him, a dim voice in the back of my head reminding me how horribly disobedient it was to strike my master, regardless of the danger he was in, and a split second later, a gunshot cracked over the park, the noise of it deafening. I felt a sharp pain in my left arm, and spared half a second to consider whether the wound was serious or not.
It was not, I decided. However painful it might be, an arm was not a vital organ. The ongoing risk to my master’s life, on the other hand, was a cataclysmic disaster.
But the question was what to do next? How were we to defend ourselves against a man with a pistol when neither of us was armed?
The man seemed rather stunned, perhaps shocked by his own actions in firing at a military officer. He looked down at the gun in his hand, and I took the opportunity. I rushed forward and punched him in the face as hard as I could manage. I succeeded in stunning him, mostly because he hadn’t seen it coming, rather than because I had any particular skills at fighting. He staggered backwards, and I considered what to do next. Time seemed to slow down as I noted a number of details; the gun was dangling from his fingers, his grip loose; my master was kneeling on the ground, slowly climbing to his feet from where I’d knocked him over; my master had been strictly forbidden from having a gun in his possession, but that same prohibition did not apply to me.
I bounded forward, taking a firm hold of the man’s wrist, first and foremost. Once that part of him was under control, I took hold of the gun, having to wrestle it out of his fingers as he realised what I was doing. But I still had the benefit of surprise on my side, and I got it out of his grasp. I shoved him with my shoulder, sending him staggering back. Then I weighed up my options for one final moment… before I turned the gun on him and shot him, point blank, straight through his thigh.
The gunshot and the man’s scream both deafened me once again. I darted backwards, putting a small amount of distance between the man and myself, the gun still pointed his way. But he’d collapsed to the ground, clutching his leg and writhing in pain, so I quickly decided he was no longer a threat.
It was only then that I realised the complete mayhem that had taken hold all around us, ignited by the sound of the first gunshot. Halagals and protestors were screaming and stampeding away from us. Nichols and Denny had both taken shelter behind storage crates and were cautiously peering overthe top, while the Ranzors had abandoned their own battles and were charging in our direction, eyes wide and tails held aloft, their wicked spines ready to take down whatever this threat happened to be.
I glanced back at the man on the ground. He wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry. Though he would probably need some urgent first aid for his bleeding leg.
“Dax?” My master was back on his feet now, looking entirely poleaxed as he stared at the gun in my hand and the bleeding man on the ground. He held out his hand. “Give me the gun, Dax.”
I turned to him with wide eyes, torn between obeying two entirely contradictory orders. Henderson had forbidden any of us from giving my master a gun, and my master had ordered me to obey Henderson. But now, he was telling me to give him the gun? “I can’t, sir…” I stuttered, glancing around at the others desperately, as if they could solve this conundrum for me.
But praise the stars, Nichols darted forward and held out his hand. “Give it to me,” he said, and that seemed like a far better option, so I did, handing it to him butt first. Once more skirting the very edge of obedience, I was making the brazen assumption that what my master really wanted was for me not to have a gun anymore, rather than for me to specifically give it to him. Or perhaps that wasn’t disobedience, but just good sense?
Nichols flipped the safety on and stepped away from me, keeping the gun pointed at the ground. “All good, sir?” he asked my master, who nodded.
“Good call. Thank you.”
Most of the protestors were making a run for it now, but as they reached the gates to the park, half a dozen police cars pulled up, their wailing sirens cut off as the officers poured out of the cars. Those at the front of the crowd skidded to a stop, having now lost their confidence that they would not be harmed fortheir illicit activities. With more urgent problems to deal with on our end of things, I decided to leave the fleeing protestors to the police.
“You’re bleeding,” my master said, dashing over to me now that the immediate crisis was more under control. The protestors had abandoned their attempts to demolish the camp, and the Halagals were in no immediate danger, though a lot of them were clustered over on the playing field, watching the chaos with varying degrees of fear and outrage.