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Stories from the Verse
A Dozen Verses
Chapter 6: Cooper 74
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Slade 252
The line of melted metal in the shape of a door in the inner hull of the spaceship met itself. A second later with a very loud THUMP the door flew in to bounce off the far wall in microgravity. A giant purple skinned bipedal with only one usable eye, a knife in his teeth, an axe in his right hand, and a prosthetic harpoon attached to where his left hand had been flew into the space. A crowd of several dozen of varicolored shades and evil looks boiled out of the new doorway into Brian’s spaceship. All of them were armed with knives, axes, swords, and such.
One of them bare-handedly grabbed the hot metal edge of the impromptu door, and put it down where it floated out of the way. Everyone looked at the green skinned manling, and he smiled back with half his teeth and all his nose missing. Brian was pretty sure that was a cut, and not a normal alien feature of not having a nose.
“I like pain.” He roared in laughter, and the pirate crew did as well. It was frankly one of the more intimidating displays Brian had ever seen because he could smell the cooked meat of the alien’s palm.
“Why don’tch yeh stab yourself then. Show us how you really like pain? Make it easy for us to kill the lot of you?” The Second Mate sneered, and with that the battle was on. The pirates swarmed the crew who fought back with sword versus ax, or dagger versus hand. A pirate, a full red, similar to the pink Kark in size and features, came over his way. Not wanting to set the cargo net that served as home base for the crew ablaze, Brian pulled out his dart pistol and shot. The dart flew, trailing blue propellant, and five inches from the alien just stalled in midair. The alien laughed at him. Brian responded by just stabbing out, but without flaming the sword. He dearly wanted to know why his dart had not worked, but that was a question for later.
The pirate tried to sweep aside the blade with his ax, but he was too slow. The Sword pierced his chest, and suddenly the pirate dropped into a docile stupor. The now drifting pirate floated into the way of another, and got shoved back.
Brian saw the same thing happening to others. In combat on Earth, the dead or wounded would fall to the ground, to the mud, to the earth made wet by their blood. Here they floated about and spurts went this way and that. In less than a pair of minutes the spaceship bay resembled the shock horror of blood gushing and blood-spattered walls and aliens leaking blood of various colors so that it got in eyes. It was a madhouse.
A jet of orange blood hit him in the face, in the eyes, and he sensed someone coming up on him, but he knew it could be an ally. This was proved when he felt a cloth wipe his face. It was Kark.
“Always keep a wipe cloth in a space fight, Terri. You got one, get another.” With that, Kark shoved him back toward the net; he had floated away because he had forgotten to hang on to the bracket in the midst of it all.
He grabbed the net, slick with not just blood, with one hand, and stabbed through it into the mass of pirates on the far side. In and out like a sewing needle he stabbed, and his first stab hit bone and muscle unpleasantly, but his second and third left their target dulled in spirit. His fourth hit the flat side of an axe, splitting it in two without dulling his tip.
“Good blade,” the pirate said with a grin, as if he were enjoying being drenched in blood, and shoved his way between two larger pirates, and facing Brian’s sword. “I’ll take it off your dead body.” Brian stabbed again, and the pirate sagged as stupor took him. But he kept moving a bit, and so Brian tried to stab him again, but by that time he had been pushed away by the mass of fighters moving and shoving and shouting and screaming and dying. Instead a blade came toward his face, and Brian dove backwards in a flip that had him hit the deck with his feet and spring back up toward the net to stab a fat bodied brown alien.
This time it did not cause stupor; instead it wedged into the being’s body, and the alien tumbled away and out of sight in one bounce. Desperate to get his sword back, Brian felt for the location of his gear. He felt something forward and to the left a bit, which would be his sword. To his surprise, Also, he felt something to his right, which must be his computer, with his Bible on it. He needed that. So without more ado, he dove through the net, aided by bodily fluids of slimy consistency making the squirm more easily accomplished. Now out in the midst of the pirates, he flew to the next bracket.
Stick and move. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, he remembered having heard Muhammad Ali say. Good advice. He ducked a sword swing at his head, and launched again, and again, and came down near the dead body with his sword in it. Reaching out to grab it, he felt his nose deform. And he remembered another famed boxer’s words. Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the nose--Mike Tyson. Too true, he realized, as he tumbled over and over in a wrestling hold with a blue man with a half dozen rings on each hand for his twelve fingers. If not for his armor, he might have already been stunned, but it turned a stunning punch into a painful one.
The two of them traded punches, but Brian could see he was losing. The alien was used to zero g combat, which had a mix of wrestling holds, pinning the enemy to keep him from moving away while locking down your own feet, and punches. You never let your enemy go.
He remembered the supervillain mercenary General Jovian who had been falling to his possible death until Brian had prayed, and a sudden breeze had blown the alien into a landing on a bush. Brian spoke.
“I am in Sovereign Hands, and I would like the wind.”
“My hands are soverei--” The alien began, and a sudden focused gust of wind hit the two of them and slammed the alien head first into the wall. He sagged bonelessly, and Cooper used his body to pull himself around. Spotting his blade, he checked first for possible ambushers. Remember Gideon’s elite, he reminded himself, and dove to the dead brown fat being, and the sword sticking out of his extended chest. Arriving, he braced both feet and pulled it loose.
Flipping over, he went backwards toward the impromptu doorway. A single alien guarded it, and suddenly a mad scheme worthy of Doctor Mordenslice re-invaded Brian’s brain. He needed his Bible. It was probably on the pirate ship. He had considered this, but right now he was at the go-or-no-go point. He went, leaping at the shocked alien pirate door guard with the Sword leading the way.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #524: Twisting Worlds. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
