Short Fiction: The Story Behind

It wasn't much of a fight, even if that's how I tend to describe it when encouraged by a few stiff drinks or the attention of a pretty girl. There is really only one way a fight between an adult Rattanai and an unarmed human can play out. I threw the first and only punch, then two hundred kilos of heavy-world predator just about crushed my rib-cage in the process of bouncing me off a wall fifteen meters away. It makes a good story because it sounds insane that I would have started a fight like that, and more insane that I survived it.

I usually try to leave the impression that I was extremely drunk at the time, or trying to impress someone, but to say so directly would be a lie. No alcohol or synthetic intoxicant dulled the pain when I struck the painted metal of that bulkhead, and only dumb luck - with a little bit of help and absolutely no technique - saved me from a broken neck and a month in a geltank.

The story usually doesn't go too far beyond my staggering to my feet to continue the fight just in time to be plastered by a spread of web rounds from the station's security system, and if I do tell more, I usually skip ahead to waking up the next morning in the high security brig, right across from the Rattanai I'd provoked. It's enough of an ending for a social retelling - a nice, clean wrap-up for a party tall-tale, easily dismissed as exaggerated.

The story is entirely true, but the way I usually tell it hides far more truth than it imparts. The enemies of my days as a freelance spacer are all long-dead, so I suppose it's finally safe to set the record straight.

As usual for my career, the story really starts with a job, and just as usually, that job had already gone very wrong. By the time I was sitting in the worst bar on the station sipping a truly foul excuse for synthesized beer and wondering if the drink in front of a Rattanai at the next table would do less damage to my liver, it was fairly clear that my situation was, to put it simply, problematic. The shipment I had just handed over to a local Syndicate had, along with its minder, gone missing, and later the minder, sans shipment, had found his way into the station morgue, in several scorched pieces. The Syndicate was in a panic, with several lieutenants convinced I'd double-crossed them, and others certain that the station authority was making a move on their "business."

I'd have bugged out, but the only person that the Authority could actually confirm had seen the victim that day was me, so they'd locked the docking clamps to keep my ship from departing. My continued presence was required, but my safety apparently wasn't - I suspect someone there had realized how much easier it would be to wrap the incident up if the syndicate killed me in retaliation. It was either that, or they were hoping that my death would lead them up the cartel's food chain to someone more significant. 

I knew I was being hunted long before three syndicate thugs ambled into the bar, a poorly concealed arsenal bristling at every seam of their shabby attire in flagrant violation of the weapon-denial scanners in front of the doors. There was no point hiding - they knew I was in there before they had arrived. Their plan, I suspect, was to get me as I tried to leave, drag me into an empty compartment, and then splatter me across as many square meters as bulkhead as their weapons' batteries would allow.

Admittedly, I was thinking fast, and fast thinking is rarely the most sound thinking available. The goons would concoct some excuse to have the proprietor eject me if I didn't flee in a timely manner. I needed to make a stir, scare them off, and get put somewhere the cartel's goons wouldn't be able to get to me for a while - without being put there permanently.

The only idea I had, I put into motion. Faking a drunk stagger, I headed over to the Rattanai's table and, slurring every word, insulted the patriarch of his clan in what I hoped was creative and unrealistic detail.

To my surprise, the xeno didn't take the bait. Perhaps it was a renegade and had opinions of its clan leadership which I was only echoing, or was remarkably levelheaded for its kind. The gorilla-sized predator merely blinked at me and rumbled something I didn't understand - probably that I had consumed one too many and should sit down.

The thugs, afraid perhaps that I was hiring a bodyguard, hurried across the room, shortening the time I had to think of a new plan considerably. I knew it was a bad idea, but being out of options, I hauled off and punched a nine foot tall predator-sapient in the face.

Though it makes for a good story, I don't recommend this course of action. We don't call Rattanai iron-boned for no reason - the result was a bit like punching a hull girder, and it broke several bones in my hand. Even if that weren't the case, most Rattanai would tear your arms off and beat you to death with them for taking an unprovoked swing, fruitless or not.

This particular Rattanai did nothing. It glared at me almost quizzically as I cradled my broken hand, while the thugs, expecting the same response I had, backed off a few steps. Silence spread across the crowded bar, as patrons realized what had just transpired. The big creature’s beady eyes flicked between my self-inflicted agony and the trio of thugs, who it had presumably guessed were involved. I have never been good at reading nonhuman sapients' faces (or lack thereof), but I hoped it understood my desperation. If it thought I was a distraction for three better-armed assailants, I was about to be dead.

I am happy to report that it did seem to understand, or at last it reacted as if it did. Rising from its seat, the Rattanai growled and grabbed me in its massive, double-thumbed hands, spurring the crowd to back away and the proprietor to duck behind the bar. My ribs protested mightily, but I could tell that only a careful faction of its full strength was being exerted. With a snarl of what I can only assume was fake rage, the big xeno hurled me across the room in the opposite direction from the alarmed syndicate henchmen.

Station gravity was one-third earth standard, so I was probably as light as a toy to it, but still the big alien was impressively careful in its throw. I bounced off the bulkhead and collapsed to the floor, but my shoulder had taken the worst of the landing. I still managed to put weight on my broken hand, of course. That I didn't black out with the pain is something of a miracle.

I did get back on my feet, but not nearly as immediately as I tend to imply when telling the story. The only reason I didn't scream in agony was that the impact knocked the breath out of me and cracked two of my ribs. The security system, a chandelier-hung affair studded with sensors and stubby barrels, chugged to life with a grinding of poorly maintained bearings and a wail of one tinny klaxon.

The time it took for me to get to my feet was about the same amount of time the beat-up machine took to come online and acquire targets. Just as I tell it, I staggered to my feet only for the emplacement to knock me down and keep me there with with a spread of web rounds. The Rattanai just stood still - it had plenty of time to get behind cover and plenty of warning from the noisy device mounted to the ceiling, but it didn't. It could have also charged through the crowd and finished me off, but that didn't happen either.

Web rounds won't knock you out, not usually - they mostly just knock you down and restrain you. The security emplacement was aiming for my center of mass, but I took one to the face anyway. I was doubled over cradling my hand, and this put my head into the path of one rather badly-aimed shot from the corroded machine. The impact happened so fast I didn't see it coming - I was out cold by the time I was sprawled on the deck once more. I only know the details of what happened next from the security tapes, which I had a friend copy for me a month or so afterwards.

The Rattanai, still snarling, was hit by a few web rounds at the same time I was, but it stayed upright long enough to send the seedy bar's patrons scurrying for the corners. As it flailed against the web rounds, several more volleys progressively buried it in elastic nano-mesh. The three thugs could have finished me off before the station authority arrived, but the flailing limbs of my understanding victim and the press of the crowd in the opposite direction kept them at a safe distance.

The Rattanai went down only seconds before the Authority's armor-suited peacekeepers stomped into the now half-empty compartment. I suspect they were waiting outside for the big sapient to lose its struggle with a growing weight of nano-mesh, and were I in that position, I would have done the same. They dragged me out first, then went back for the artificially cocooned sapient which had saved my life. It took four of them to move the big xeno, even aided by powered armor joints and low gravity.

Just as I usually tell the story, I woke up in the brig a few hours later. My head throbbed, my face was a swollen mass of bruises, and my shattered hand screamed in pain at every move. I had obviously received no medical attention whatsoever from the security personnel who had placed me in custody.

I might have been amused to find myself in the high security section usually reserved for particularly dangerous inmates, if not been for my sorry state. The cell across the narrow corridor held the Rattanai I'd "brawled" with, standing impassively behind the single block of corundum shielding which served as a cell door. It watched as I stirred, but made no move or sound.

I felt like I owed the huge alien an explanation, but I couldn't give one without admitting my association with the syndicates on authority security recordings. Struggling into a seated position, I offered an exaggerated shrug, hoping the gesture would be understood to mean that I was sorry for the trouble I'd gotten us both into.

They released the Rattanai a few hours later, hours spent in mutual silence. My battered fingers remained untreated until, perhaps mid-morning the next day by local reckoning, the station authority found someone else to cleanly pin the murder on. I rather a doubt it was the actual culprit - more likely, it was one of the goons the syndicate sent after me, or another of similar connection to the cartel who just happened to wind up dead in the intervening hours.

The moment I was no longer a candidate scapegoat to clean up a messy situation, the station staff treated me quite reasonably. A comely woman in a peacekeeper uniform even escorted me to the infirmary to have my hand seen to after I was released. Sadly, despite my best efforts to talk her into it, she stopped short of paying for the medics to put all the pieces of my carpals back where they belonged.

As soon as I could get departure clearance, and with my hand still not quite healed, I put a lot of fresh space between myself and the station. There were no ships in the hangar with Rattanai livery when I lifted off, so I can only assume that my unlikely savior had already departed. After paying for fuel and medical expenses, my profits from that stop were definitely less than stellar - but I suppose if I factor in all the social mileage I've gotten out of telling the story, I didn't do all that bad.

I have always wondered whether the Rattanai, when fortified by a few intoxicating drinks or the attention at a comely specimen of its opposite sex, tells the story of the pathetic human which punched it in the face in a dingy station bar for no apparent reason. I suppose it would make quite the humorous story. There is, after all, really only one way a fight between an adult Rattanai and an unarmed human can play out....