Quilrath slithered into the quar on three tentacles, otherwise known as his ba’harzez in his language, which was a language that was difficult for earthlings to speak.
Luckily, I’m not an earthling. I’m from P’tar the golden planet which appears in the middle of the Crab Nebula if you care. Me, I don’t much care. I left P’tar over a thousand Universe-Units ago and haven’t looked back. It was the usual things, lousy home life – my father shot my mother with a spear gun -- bad romance, and the klelar chewing my arm off. Lucky that now in the future we can get things like that replaced. My new arm is better than the old one. I’m not sure that’s true for the man it came off. He was green and I’m not, so if anything I’m more colorful. He’s just dead.
I was watching Quilrath slime his way around the quar for a reason. Supposedly he was a dwart runner, and dwart’s no good. You have to be real Bongolian glib scum to push that stuff. I’ve seen what it does to humanoid life forms. I’ve seen more than one dwart-dek before, and learned quickly that you have to see them fast. Too much dwart – and they always earhole too much – and the fire in their head melts their brains. When you see one dripping brain matter out of their nose they’re too far gone to help. You got to just shoot it before it starts killing.
From what the reports said Quilrath loved to watch people who had too much dwart start to drip their brains, then he’d suck the rest out of their noses. It was nasty, and a bad way to go. He was like that, but what do you expect from a Rovgtia?
Quilrath moved over to the far side of the quar and nudged filia with another Rovgtia. I knew him, too. He was Quilrath’s side slide Knor. He was Quilrath’s krimble man, so to speak, and claimed he’d killed over a thousand life forms. No one knew the actual count, but everyone believed Knor would infuse the krimble if you crossed his trail. No one disturbed his slime more than once.
As I watched I realized something was wrong. Without actually seeing it I understood something had happened and the tension that is always there between two male Rovgtias, was heightened. Knor slipped back a lar or two and rubbed his 3rd tentacle over his flid.
I carefully moved my hand to my belt and waited to activate the force field. I didn’t want to be unprotected when whatever happened happened. Then it happened. And it happened fast. Quilrath shook his mandible in a sign of disgust and Knor pulled his krimble and infused Quilrath.
I had my field up in no time, but I still felt the blast and I fell backwards into a pile of already dead Nofgtes. By the time I got to my feet Quilrath had dissolved and Knor was gone.
I looked at the watch on my green arm and realized it was still yesterday. Who knew what the day before yesterday would bring? The universe would keep on spinning, and I’d spin with it. I smiled. That sounds nice. My smile turned grim. But it wasn’t. Not really. I had to find Knor. And believe me. No one wants to find Knor.
Pieces of Eight, Part III is a collection of eight novellas to complement the eight in Pieces of Eight, Pieces of Eight, Part II and Pieces of Eight, Part IV.
Utterly Fantastic Occurrences is a collection of 20 science fiction short story novellas existing in hardcover, in paperback and in Kindle and Nook e-book formats.
