Page 30 of Dax: Gratefully Bonded (Rogue Bonds #2)
Dax
T he protestors were back the following morning. And this time, they’d brought backup. Yesterday, most of them had been humans and Solofs, but today, there were a dozen or more Denzogals in the mix, tall and imposing, and more than willing to stare down the Ranzors, since they were the only Alliance species that could match the fearsome lizard-like creatures in height.
Goroz, of course, wasn’t the slightest bit intimidated. He growled at a handful of the protestors, then called Borl to take over his position at the park gates, coming to give us a report on the previous night.
“There was a small argument between two families over one of them making too much noise,” he stated, as he sharpened his claws on a fist-sized rock he’d picked up from somewhere. “The noise was because one of the children was crying. We told the one that was complaining that they could always go back to Hazharu if they didn’t like it here.” The blunt solution didn’t surprise me, coming from a Ranzor, but I still had to wonder whether it was appropriate.
Apparently, my master was not entirely impressed. “Dax, make a note to get some ear plugs delivered that’ll fit a Halagal’s ears,” he instructed me, and I hastily opened my comm to start taking notes. “Anything else?” he asked Goroz.
“Two humans tried to sneak into the camp. I don’t know what they wanted. Gatik saw them coming and they ran away. There were also a handful of givarids trying to break into the food supplies. We should order sturdier storage containers.”
I made another note to look into that. The givarids weren’t generally dangerous, but they could make a nuisance of themselves, if attracted by the scent of food.
A wave of shouting drifted up towards us, and we looked over towards the protestors. They’d broken off their chanting now to shout insults at the three Ranzors guarding the gate. I noted the way my master tensed and stood up straighter. One of the protestors attempted to break past Borl, who reached out, quick as lightning, and pushed him back. From the looks of it, the mild swipe had cost the huge Ranzor no effort at all, but the man went stumbling backwards. He tripped over, then landed on the ground, a look of shock and outrage on his face.
Goroz bared his teeth, taking a step towards his soldiers. “I’ve told them not to be too rough,” he muttered, but my master interrupted him.
“Don’t bother,” he said sharply. “It’s fine. This is a thing humans do sometimes. He’s just pretending that Borl pushed him harder than he actually did. Playing the victim in the hopes that he can get you into trouble.”
Goroz looked aghast at that news. “There is no honour is such behaviour!” he snarled. “This man is a coward!”
“You’ve got that right,” my master agreed. “Unfortunately, humans are a very mixed bag. A lot of them are very honourable people, but there are always a handful who just take what they can get at everyone else’s expense.”
“Hmph. Ranzors are the same,” Goroz admitted, with a grumble. “Most fight with courage, but a few pretend to have won a fight, when all they did was stumble upon the dead body after the danger was over.”
The fact that both species had members willing to dishonour themselves was intriguing, and I took a moment to wonder whether there was a similar set of behaviours in the dimari. We were trained to be obedient, so did that mean that if our masters behaved in dishonourable ways, we would emulate them? Or was there an equivalent way for a dimari to manipulate those around them?
All of a sudden, my own recent behaviour rushed to mind, and I felt my scales flutter at the realisation that I had been behaving entirely dishonourably. I had lied to my master, in order to push him to make different choices. I had stretched the boundaries of his orders as far as I could, to suit my own purposes – even if my purpose had ultimately been to help him. I had been insolent and stubborn, in the face of his obvious displeasure, because he hadn’t directly banned me from doing so.
My heart sank. Even with all the progress we’d made lately, I was still behaving like a terrible dimari – regardless of the fact that my master seemed to prefer things that way. But if Goroz found out about that, he was likely to tell me very bluntly what he thought of it, and I dreaded the idea of being responsible for the breakdown of the tentative relationship my master was forming with him. But the problem was that if I changed the way I was approaching my tasks, it would be a lot more difficult to provide my master with the care he so obviously needed. So how was I supposed to resolve this?
“Your crew mates are arriving today, is that correct?” Goroz asked, once he’d finished giving his report of the night’s dramas.
My master nodded. “Gasrin will be here about ten o’clock, Ru will be arriving a bit later. She’s catching a transporter from Adavi, which is a whole lot easier now than it used to be, given that we’ve managed to tame the Geshtoch. We were fighting over territory in the desert south of Hon,” he filled Goroz in. “But now we’ve switched tactics. We started sending them regular deliveries of coloured fabric – which they apparently love – and they’ve started terraforming the eastern part of the desert into forest. Now that they know that transporters bring them gifts, they’ve stopped trying to shoot them down.”
“Hm. Geshtoch are odd creatures,” Goroz mused. “We have them on Ronz as well. We find them to be-”
He was cut off by a sudden burst of shouting, exponentially louder than the last wave had been. We all spun around, and then a string of curses flowed from my master’s mouth as we saw the crowd of protestors surge forward, bursting straight through the line of startled Ranzors and into the park.
“What the fuck? Soll! Len! Get over here,” my master shouted, dashing off towards the park entrance. Goroz and I were hot on his heels, but the protestors simply ignored us. They pushed past us, heading straight for the lines of tents and the startled Halagals, and I was shoved multiple times as the crowd surged around me.
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 a screaming 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 in again. 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 over the 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 for their 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.
I peered down at my arm, noting the steady trickle of blood coming from the wound. But a closer inspection revealed that the bullet had only clipped the side of my arm, removing any concern that it was still lodged inside. Though that did make me wonder where it had got to after it hit me.
While we’d been worrying about the gun and my arm, Denny had run off to the office to fetch a first aid kit, and she and Nichols got to work treating the wounded man. My master quickly claimed one of the gauze pads and pressed it to my arm. “Sorry,” he apologised, when I flinched away from him. “We need to stop the bleeding.” I nodded and did my best to stand still. The pain that I’d been so quick to dismiss when my master’s life had been in danger was now throbbing sharp and deep through my arm.
A short distance away, Goroz was organising his team, sending four of them over to the police to help round up the protestors, and another two to go and check on the terrified Halagals. Then he turned to us. He was making that clicking sound in his throat again, that signalled his approval of something, louder and sharper than it had been before. Was he pleased about being able to have a fight? Or about seeing the injured man? I really wasn’t sure what to make of his behaviour.
He regarded the wound on my arm, and then the man lying on the ground. The human was quieter now, and all too willing to cooperate with the two soldiers who were putting pressure on his wound, controlling the bleeding while they waited for the ambulance to arrive.
“You do not have combat training,” Goroz said to me, his tone flat, his eyes bright.
“No, I don’t,” I replied, knowing there was no point in denying it.
The clicking got louder. “You were shot,” he went on, his tail swishing back and forth. “And then you took the man’s gun and shot him.”
“Yes, I did,” I said, feeling even more confused now. What point was he trying to make?
Goroz turned to my master, who was largely ignoring the large Ranzor, his attention focused on my wound. “Your Vangravian saved your life,” he announced. “He has proven himself worthy. So now you can ask your commanding officer for permission to mate him.”
My master’s jaw dropped. He turned bright red, then glanced around at the other soldiers. Denny made a choking noise. Len’s mouth dropped open, and she stuttered out a confused, “What?” Nichols, on the other hand, was grinning from ear to ear.
“I’ll keep it in mind,” my master mumbled. For my own part, I felt my scales ripple, and I ducked my head, the pain in my arm suddenly forgotten at Goroz’s words. The proud, opinionated warrior thought I was worthy . He said I’d saved my master’s life. I felt a smile tugging at my lips as my master shyly met my gaze. Perhaps, on this strange planet, in this unexpected culture, my headstrong disobedience was an asset, rather than a flaw. Perhaps I was a good dimari after all.