“Incapacitate?” 427 rumbled. The Syshin language was considerably more specific that human Galactic when it came to terms of violence. The kind of ambiguity that a word like eliminate, or take out, might engender in Galactic wasn’t possible in Syshi, a poignant comment on humanity's more cavalier attitude towards violence. 

“You do not wish to kill them?” 138 asked, his face clearly conveying confusion at this unexpected mercy.

“My friends and I prefer not to kill when it can be avoided,” Solae explained, profoundly underscoring the difference between herself and the minions of Alayla Thorne.

“Do you have weapons?” 138 asked glancing about the room with quick reptilian glances, though he must have known from the sweep the guards had performed that she did not. Solae drew out the injector unit she had prepared with Sopor IV.

“In a manner of speaking,” she said in a voice that was cold with the effort to inject calm. This was the most dangerous part of the plan, and with the exception of the two Syshin she was utterly on her own.

“Solae,” Rene’s voice sounded in her ear.

“There will probably be two outside the door and one at the end of the hallway,” he informed her, the fact that he was at least within communication range giving her some degree of comfort. She took a deep breath and opened the door. As Rene had predicted both of the guards that had swept the room stood lounging against the far wall, set off at about sixty degrees so their positions made an equilateral triangle with the door that they were negligently covering with heavy needle stunners. They tensed when the door opened but relaxed visibly when it was clear Solae wasn’t in any kind of distress.

“I forgot to ask,” she said in a deliberately embarrassed voice that meshed well with her identity as a rich woman out for a night of exotic passion. She lifted the drug injector so both men could see it.

“Do human drugs work with Syshin?” The question was a reasonable one, though the answer was far more complicated than any thug for hire could be expected to answer. The nearest guard, a slightly plump man with a receding opened his mouth to respond, probably with some variation of ‘how the hell should I know’, but before he had the chance Solae raised the injector and thumbled the activation stud. There was a hiss of compressed air and a jet of white powder that sprayed across the mans face. In a smooth motion she twisted the jet to the other stunned guard raking it across his head and neck for a second before the injector clicked dry. The guards coughed and one raised his stunner towards the noblewoman who slammed the door closed again a heart beat before a shower of needles hammer into it with a sound like hail on a tin roof. There was an angry shout and then the sound of first one body, then another hitting the floor. Gasping with fear but aware that to freeze up know would mean death or worse than death, Solae dropped to the ground and shoved the door open once more. Both guards lay in supine heaps on the cheap carpet, their eyes rolled back into their heads. The door struck against the body of the second guard but Solae grabbed the heavy stunner and yanked it inside before closing the door again. The weapon was unfamiliar to her and heavier than she imagined. Rene was saying something in her ear but she couldn’t make it out over the hammering of her own heart and the surging adrenaline in her system.

“I take,” 427 said in accented Galactic, forgetting in the excitement of the moment that his rescuer spoke his own tongue. He plucked the stunner from her hand and reached for the door. The Syshin pushed it open only to be greeted with the high pitched scream of stunner needles from the other end of the hall.

“... need back up… escape…” came a shouted call from the end of the hall as the thug called for back-up, wisely refusing to leave his position to rush to the door.

“We cant get out if he can pin us down,” Solae gasped, coming to her feet.

“We will come in and get you,” Rene was saying in her ear, his voice tight with concern and the compression that the small earpiece required.

“You can’t there is already going to be a panic,” she responded, rationalizing away a course of action that might cause her beau to injure himself, perhaps critically. The screams of other guests gave truth to her assertion as the sound of gunfire registered on the other denizens of the hotel. If Rene and Ten tried to storm the building they would have to fight against a tide of fleeing civilians, many of whom might be armed and inclined to open fire on strangers rushing towards them with firearms.

“We take care of it mistress,” 138 hissed, his voice hissing silabantly and his eyes slitting in a Syshin reaction to their own biological equivalent of adrenaline. He took two bounding steps to the center of the room and seized a large wooden coffee table that looked to be made out of some kind of polished timber, but was more likely a synthetic. He grabbed it by the edge and wrenched it upright, scattering ornaments and bricker brac in a clattering shower of plastic and steel. Without a word he hoisted it like a vast shield and kicked the door open, stepping out into the hallway with the table between him and the gunman. Splinters blasted from the table top as the Syshin rushed towards the gunman in a shuffling run that kept his hunched body behind the improvised shield. Solae and 427 followed close behind, the latter trying without success  to line  up a shot over his fellow slave’s improvised barricade. A door opened unexpectedly and a pinch faced woman in a revealing costume stepped into the hallway, catching the full brunt of the charging Syshin as well as another hundred pounds of table, she flew off her feet with an audible crack and 138 staggered  for an instant, nearly dropping the table. For a split second there was nothing but empty air between Solae and the gunman and she had time to feel a sting in her calf before the arcing charges of the stunner contracted her muscles spastically, dropping the noblewoman to the floor in a quivering heap, the pulsing half second shocks keeping her down in agonized incapacity. 138 straightened, lifting the table to shield the trio and let out a weird warbling war cry and charged. Needles slashed into the table until the very last moment when the guard threw down his weapon and turned to flee. He was too late. The Syshin caught him between the table and the reinforced wall that supported the elevator shaft at a dead run, driving the table into the thug with the force of a moderate aircar accident. There was a sharp sound of cracking bone and a wet crunch as the guard died beneath the smashing impact. 138 bounced back from the collision losing his feet and sprawling to the floor, the toppling table, its top slicked with blood and studded with hundreds of sparking stunner needles, toppled back over him, landing on its legs as though it were some strange scuttling porcupine.

“I have you,” 427 said, kneeling beside Solae, his voice very loud in the sudden quiet now that the chatter of the stunner was quieted. His calloused fingers grasped the needle in her thigh and yanked it free, his body arching with the stuttering current for the moment it took him to throw the dart clear, smoke rising from between his burned fingers. The air was hazy and smelled of burning plastics mixed with blood and the sharp smell of high power capacitor discharge. Solae’s legs felt like flaming jelly and she certainly wasn’t able to stand, she could feel the carpet burn on the portions of her hip the dress had not protected during her fall. She certainly couldn’t stand and her jaw was clenched from the shock making it difficult to speak. 427, evidently having seen stunner injuries too often, seemed to understand that without words. He tossed the captured stunner to 138 and then hoisted Solae over his shoulder like a child.

“..fff...front… entrance,” Solae managed to groan and the two Syshin bounded down the stairs, leaving the bloody corpse and the two drugged guards in the hazy hallway.

_______________________________________

“... front … entrance,” Rene heard over the comm unit. 

“Looks like they are in the stair shaft,” Calden said calmly. Rene wondered if the man had once worked for the Fleet, he was calm under pressure and seemed to know his business. He was using the distortion in the comm signal to track the movement of Solae’s transmitter, the computer console he was using interpreting the various radio waves to give rough position, a matter made easier by the faraday cage like interference of a metal shaft. Rene’s hand ached and he realised that he had been holding the grip of his rifle in a death grip for the last few minutes, a fact he hadn’t even been aware of until Solae’s transmission made it clear that she was passed the guards and on her way out. Ten let out a breath that he hadn’t realised he had been holding and then looked a little embarassed to be caught showing any kind of tension.

In the courtyard below  a half dozen guests were emerging from the hotel, half running half walking and looking a little confused now that the sound of shooting had stopped. The driver of the heavy truck that had bought the Syshin stepped down out of the cab of his vehicle, his hand going to a weapon concealed beneath his loose gray garments. Rene swung his rifle onto the man, the holographic sight on the back of his neck but Ten reached out and grabbed the barrel, shaking his head. Rene opened his  mouth to object but as he did so a non-descript man stepped from the alley and walked briskly towards the driver, drawing a small stunner from his pocket. He paused, aimed and shot the man twice in the back, sending the driver convulsing to the ground.

“Trust us Rene,” Ten admonished, “We have done this sort of thing before.” Rene cocked an eyebrow at the criminal.

“You have been responsible for a Sector Duchess while she freed Syshin slaves from blood thirsty crime lord on a planet filled with gunmen and mercenaries before?” Rene asked. Ten grinned toothily.

“Well when you put it like that…” Further discussion was interrupted by the sudden roar of an approaching aircar.  Rene looked down the street to see a black vehicle with tinted windows dive out of the sky into a bobbling ground effect, at the same moment the pair of fur clad Syshin, one with Solae slung over his shoulder, burst from the front doors of the hotel. The surrounding people screamed in panic and then bolted as the Syshin carrying the stunner fired a burst into the air.

“Shit,” Calden snapped, his hands flying over his controls, “That car is carrying Thorne’s goons, she must have had them on alert with the…” but Rene was no longer listening. He swung his rifle towards the oncoming vehicle and fired. The muzzle blast scattering papers into the air like artificial snow and all but deafening the occupants of the small office. The window blew out into the street in a shower of glass as the shock wave hit it a moment after the bullet punched through it staring it to opacity. The aircar fishtailed as the shot blasted its rear stabilizer to scrap. The aircar was in ground effect so the torque of its fans didn’t send it into a spin immediately, but the driver had to haul on the controls to correct the tendency to roll to the right. Rene reffeded back the charging handle and chambered another round, firing a second round a heart beat after the first. The road beneath the car sparked with a ricochet and then the rear of the car tapped the concrete sending up a shower of orange sparks. It bucked for a moment and then there was a scream of grinding metal and then an explosion beneath the rear that flipped the car end over end like a tiddly wink battering it to scrap with its own considerable velocity. It landed on its rough thirty meters before the hotel, crashing into the short wall that encircled it in a spray of dust and grit. The pall of dust was lit with bluish white electrical shorts for a second and then went dark.

“How did you do that?” Calden demanded wide eyed. Rene shrugged coming to his feet and slinging the rifle. Ten touched the release stud of the rifle’s sling dropping the weapon to the ground. Rene glared at him but the kingpin was obviously taking Criestia’s orders not to let him over exert himself seriously. He didn’t suppose that Ten would have trouble finding another such weapon. 

“I took out the stabilizer and then bounced a shot off the street into the fan housing,” he explained as Ten took him by the elbow, helping him to walk as they headed down the stairs to the ground floor. 

“Stars,” Calden commented somewhat sourly.

“Are all Marine’s that good?” he asked. Rene shook his head, a little sadly, remembering the bodies lined up against the berm at the Rat-Trap.

“No, some are better,” he admitted.

The reached the ground floor just as the two Syshin carrying Solae reached the truck that had bought them to the hotel. The one with the stunner kept the weapon leveled at Ten and Rene as they hurried across the courtyard, splashing through the ankle deep fountain rather than running around it, sending ripples of light across the surface of the pool.

“We are friends!” Rene called, his eyes on Solae who seemed conscious but barely. The Syshin with the stunner sniffed at the air skeptically for a moment and then seemed to relax.

“You are her mate?” the lead Syshin asked. It was hard to make out his words, both because of his accent and the whine of alarms that the destruction of the aircar had set off. 

“Her what?” Rene asked before realisation dawned on him and he nodded. Shyshin had a considerably better sense of smell than humans did and they tended to prioritize the sense somewhat as a result.

“Yes I am her mate,” he said, gesturing urgently to the truck.

“We need to go, can you…” but the Syshin was already laying Solae across one of the passenger couches. The man who had shot the driver climbed into the cab and bought the engine to life with a roar. Ten and the Syshin climbed into the back opposite to Solae and Rene. The passenger compartment was tight for all of them, but by unspoken agreement no one rode in the rear most compartment which contained the shackles which had been used to keep the Syshin prisoner. Rene ignored the others and leaned over Solae, checking her over for wounds before kissing her on the lips and whispering a prayer of thanks to the Stars. Blood ran from the center of an ugly bruise where a stunner needle had punctured her leg but it was just a trickle and not life threatening.  

“You are ok,” he told her, wrapping her up in his arms. As he spoke the truck lifted from the ground and slid forward for a hundred meters before climbing into the busy night time traffic.

“Thank you,” he called the Syshin over the rumble of the fans. Both aliens looked perplexed, clearly unused to being thanked. He gave them what he hoped was an encouraging smile before turning back to Solae.

“You did it my love.”