Ritual Combat Read online

  “Coward,” Muur growled.

  He limped towards JaQuan, determined to end this now. JaQuan scrambled to think of what to do. The only decent blow he’d gotten in had been sheer luck. He needed a strategy.

  Before he could come up with one, Muur launched another attack.

  Gwen was impressed with the seat of the Graur government. Not only was Catraal magnificent in its construction – manufactured buildings and byways fused and woven with the natural features of enormous trees – but the capitol itself was astounding. She’d never seen trees this large on Earth, not in any of the places the Marines sent her, and certainly not in her childhood home of Memphis or her adult one of Cleveland. And the one that housed the government towered over all the others.

  As she was led inside by her escorts – the same two who had greeted her at the landing pad – she could not help but be awed. She was on a mission of great importance, and it seemed to pale before the majesty of these mighty trees and the skill and cunning of the Graur to make a thriving civilization among them.

  They had gone only a short distance when the sounds of shouts came to her ears, echoing off the wooden walls. She could only guess that they came from within the tree, but whether ahead, above, or below was impossible to determine.

  A guard with orange, tabby fur and a bright, orange mane stood before a door a few feet in. He saluted Gwen’s escorts.

  “This is the one we told you about,” said Blue Eyes, whose name Gwen had learned was Krischa.

  “The Space Ranger?” the guard said.

  “Yes.”

  “She’ll have to wait,” the guard said. “The Council is currently conducting a Trial by Ritual Combat.”

  “Wow,” said Yellow Eyes, whose name was Rithkan. “I can’t remember the last time there was Trial by Ritual Combat.”

  “Gavekh Naar,” Krischa said.

  “Oh, right!” Rithkan replied. “The guy with two wives!”

  The guard nodded.

  “Who were fighting to see who got to choose the manner of revenge for his betrayal,” he added.

  “Damn,” Gwen said. “Your bigamy laws are tough.”

  She didn’t really understand what was involved in Ritual Combat, but given the name, she could guess. And given that it was the Graur, she was certain it was savage.

  “Who is it this time?” Rithkan asked.

  “Heh,” the guard said. “Kitekh Galesh.”

  Gwen’s heart stopped. JaQuan was already here? The Council was having Galesh fight for her innocence?

  “Oh, my God,” Krischa said. “Are you serious?”

  “Yes,” the guard said. “She claims she didn’t kidnap the Emperor’s daughter, and that it’s all part of a plot to put the Emperor on the throne and wipe out humanity.”

  “Wait, what?” Gwen said.

  “God’s truth,” the guard said, putting up a hand.

  “The Emperor’s daughter,” Gwen said. “Idrib Mol is Emperor now?”

  “Where have you been hiding, Space Ranger?” Rithkan said. “Out on the rim of the galaxy?”

  Gwen ignored her. Things aren’t what they seem, JaQuan had said. Had he been telling the truth all this time? Had they not kidnapped Haneeta Mol?

  “Krischa, I need to see the Tribal Council right now,” she said.

  “Not possible,” the guard replied. “Until the Ritual Combat concludes, all other business is suspended.”

  “You don’t understand,” Gwen said. “This is what I’m here about. I’ve tracked Kitekh Galesh from the Horari Belt to Cecilak to here. The captain of the fleet that’s blockading the planet right now tried to kill me so I couldn’t get here to warn the Council.”

  The guard’s eyes went open wide. He looked on Gwen as though she were some sort of angel descending from Heaven.

  “You’re the Space Ranger Galesh was talking about,” he said.

  “I’m sure I am,” Gwen said. “I’ve got to get in there. The fate of the Empire, let alone Grakur, may hang in the balance.”

  The three Graur looked at each other, trying to decide what to do. Gwen prayed they’d go for her bluff. She didn’t really know what the hell was going on. But the idea of a plot to wipe out humanity scared the hell out her. She needed to talk to JaQuan and Galesh before something else happened.

  “All right,” the guard said. “Follow me.”

  He keyed open the door and led them inside. They strode down a winding tunnel that emptied out into an enormous room. Gwen found herself on a ledge. To her right were thirteen Graur watching the scene below with passive interest.

  Gwen dropped her eyes. In a bowl beneath where she stood were four Graur and a human confined by ropes and guarded by five Graur warriors. She recognized the man immediately. He was the guy who shot her at The Outpost. That meant the black, male Graur was the one she’d spoken to at Sigba. Kitekh Galesh stood next to him with her right arm in a cast and a sling.

  In the center of the room, was an enormous grey-tabby Graur, who was bleeding from a wound on his foot. Across from him was a human, bare-chested and bleeding, with some strange glove on his right hand.

  The two combatants circled each other, both staggering, clearly hurt and exhausted. As they completed the turn, her suspicions were confirmed.

  “Oh, my God,” she said. “JaQuan!”

  JaQuan wiped sweat from his brow. Blood dripped from his forearms. The thick air made it difficult to breathe. The blood-loss and the pain made his head spin.

  How could Muur still be going? He was missing half his foot and bleeding from it. Shouldn’t he be unconscious by now?

  Stop it! he told himself. You’re going internal. Get out of your head. Focus on finishing this motherfucker.

  They circled each other, searching for openings, for some weakness they could exploit to end this before succumbing to their wounds.

  And then a voice rang out through the chamber.

  “Oh, my God. JaQuan!”

  Unable to stop himself, he looked up in its direction. Standing next to the Tribal Council and surrounded by three additional Graur was a black woman in a Space Ranger uniform.

  “Gwen?” he said.

  How could she be here? Was he hallucinating?

  “JaQuan, look out!” Alan shouted.

  He brought his gaze back to the fight to see Muur careening towards him. The clever bastard had taken the opportunity to launch an attack while JaQuan had been distracted.

  JaQuan slipped to his left, ducking under the Graur’s claws. Then he drove a jab into the behemoth’s ribs. When Muur winced and folded over, JaQuan followed with a left hook to the side of his head. He connected with too much skull, and his fingers and knuckles screamed in protest.

  Muur’s head snapped away in response to the blow, knocking him off balance. But he brought up his wounded foot and slammed it into JaQuan’s stomach, driving him backward. The air rushed from his lungs, and he struggled to pull it back in.

  He staggered away from Muur and found himself up against the pen, where his friends were held. He put up his fists in case the giant Graur was launching another attack. But when he saw Muur was trying to stand straight on his damaged foot, he took the moment to catch his breath.

  “JaQuan,” Kitekh murmured to him. “You’re not on Earth. Stop thinking like a boxer. You have the kresch-kinza. Use it.”

  Broken rhythm, Lucky used to teach. Teach him one thing, then do something else. Break the rhythm. Disrupt his expectations.

  Right. He’d already shown Muur how he wanted to fight. Time to surprise him.

  Staying in the classic boxing stance, JaQuan moved in. Muur snarled. He opened his hands, showed JaQuan his claws, daring him to get close.

  JaQuan obliged him. He launched himself at the big Graur and feinted with a left jab.

  Muur took the bait, slashing at JaQuan to try to rip open his arm and expose his centerline to the hulking felinoid’s coup de grâce.

  But JaQuan sensed the attack before the Council’s champion
moved. He saw Muur bring up his claws as if the grey tabby were moving in slow motion. He perceived the downward arc of the strike, anticipated where it would land. He made certain not to be there.

  Flinging himself to the ground, JaQuan dove to his left and triggered the Far-Biter’s whip. The monofilament line snaked out of the glove and, with a quick flick of the wrist, wrapped itself around the ankle of Muur’s already-damaged leg. JaQuan hit the ground and pulled on the whip with every iota of strength he had.

  The sharp cable bit deeply into Muur’s leg. He screamed as he was pulled from his feet and landed roughly on his back.

  JaQuan sat up and pulled the line taut. Muur howled as his leg was further mangled. JaQuan aimed the Far-Biter’s disc launcher at the champion’s head.

  “Give up, or I’ll kill you,” he said.

  All the ferocity was gone from the big Graur’s face. Only anguish and humiliation remained. He refused to surrender, but he didn’t struggle either.

  JaQuan looked up to the platform. The Chieftain grimaced as she looked down on the scene. The remainder of the Council sat stone-faced with their arms crossed.

  Gwen’s jaw hung open. Tears streaked her face. JaQuan had no idea what they meant, and he didn’t have time to worry at the moment.

  “Well?” he said, returning his gaze to the Chieftain.

  She stood and came forward. She scowled down at the scene for several seconds.

  “Release him,” she said at last. “You are victorious.”

  “Yeeaaahh!” Alan crowed. “All right, JaQuan!”

  JaQuan collapsed onto his back. Now that it was over, the only thing he could think about was the searing pain in his arms and side. He tried to find oxygen, but the air was so humid that breathing hurt. At the moment, he wanted to die. Just let the pain go away. He’d saved his friends, vindicated Kitekh. Was more really necessary?

  Darkness crowded at the edge of his vision. Everything slipped from focus.

  “JaQuan,” someone said, but he had no idea whom. “JaQuan, are you okay? JaQuan!”

  The blackness enveloped him. He drifted away to some place between Earth and the Empire, where the police didn’t shoot his friends and the Elohim weren’t trying to eradicate humanity.

  Horay sat in his quarters, madly combing through Graur strategy manuals. Somewhere within the electronic pages was the key to breaking this stalemate. They might have been great warriors, but no one was invincible. Everyone could be broken. There had to be something the Graur hadn’t thought of, some tiny detail he could exploit to force them to kneel before the Emperor, before Horay.

  Twenty more ships had arrived to support him. They now had enough firepower to crush the Graur resistance. If the Tribal Council refused to comply, he could launch an attack that would devastate their overly proud Defense Force. Better still, none of the new ships had Graur commanders. Indeed, they had few Graur officers at all on staff. Somehow, the Imperial High Command had found ships like Horay’s that were dominated by Elohim and Mandra.

  He found it a bit surprising. The Supreme Commander was Graur. Horay would have expected him to send Graur-led vessels to prevent a shooting war. But it seemed either that Commander Kruell was a true loyalist or that his subordinates had made sure to take him out of the picture.

  But Horay still wasn’t happy. Both Zin and Gul had told him being able to win a fight with the Graur wouldn’t matter. Even if the Imperials destroyed the Graur resistance, their own losses would be catastrophic. The best Horay could hope for was a hollow victory – one where he got what he wanted but the loss of life and ships was too large to make it worth it.

  Personally, Horay thought it was worth it at any cost. If other systems believed they could get away with what the Graur were attempting, the new Emperor could be facing a revolution within a year. That wouldn’t do.

  But Zin had pointed out that if he dealt such a severe blow to the Imperial Star Force in what amounted largely to a symbolic gesture, it could inspire rebellion at worst and lawlessness at best.

  So despite the fact that he was now in a position to win, that he could tell the Tribal Council to turn over the fugitives or face his wrath, he was effectively still in a stalemate. He needed some edge, some threat so dire that the savage, prideful cats would tuck their tails and relent.

  He wished there were some way to take control of their vessels. He’d love to see the looks on their faces when their ships turned and fired on their own cities.

  But even if such technology existed, the fantasy could never come to fruition. The damned Graur would have been clever enough to ensure their own ships could not be hacked from afar by Imperial ones. The paranoiacs weren’t as loyal as they claimed.

  A thought stirred in Horay’s brain. It flitted between consciousness and the subconscious, refusing to crystalize. Turn their technology against them. That had been the idea behind taking control of their vessels. He’d read something. He was sure of it.

  His mind raced. Where had it been? Something on the Graur defense grid? Yes, that was it. He was sure of it.

  He tapped commands into the computer, sifting for information on the defense grid. Perhaps he could somehow turn it against them.

  But aside from instructions on the two safe approaches to the system, all he found was an historical document. The grid had been erected before the founding of the Empire. The Graur had feared bombardment from Mandran mass drivers. So they’d made sure you could only approach the system from two directions and stacked their defenses there.

  There was no help there. Horay and his fleet were already surrounding Grakur. The defense grid was useless.

  His heart stopped. The defense grid was useless.

  Yes. They were inside the system, blockading the planet. Horay had enough firepower to wipe out their entire Defense Force.

  But if he could attack them another way, he wouldn’t have to.

  He tapped a query into his board. The answer came up right away. The fleet contained three Mandran Behemoth-class planetary assaulters.

  Horay grinned. He could take the GDF and the Tribal Council without firing a shot. He was sitting on the ability to rain Armageddon on them. They didn’t dare to risk that he wouldn’t do it.

  He stood and prepared to go to the bridge. This stalemate was over.

  But before he reached the door, his intercom chimed. Irritated, he answered it.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Captain,” Comms Officer Los said. “We have received a message from the Emperor.”

  Horay’s blood froze. The Emperor? Not Imperial High Command? Dear God.

  “You are going to like it,” Los said.

  Horay listened. A grin spread up his face.

  Now the terrorists had no chance for escape.

  The first thing JaQuan noticed was how hot it was. He could feel the heat on the air, like August in Ferguson, when the temperatures climbed into the hundreds and the sun baked the moisture of the Mississippi River up into the air.

  Had he gone back home? Jesus, he’d sworn he’d never go back to St. Louis. There were no good memories there. Nothing to draw him back. Everyone he loved was dead, and he didn’t want to be reminded.

  How the hell had he gotten here? For that matter, where had he been?

  The second thing he noticed was that his arms itched – that sort of painful itching, where they hurt, but you wanted to scratch them. They seemed to be sweating worse than the rest of him.

  What the hell was going on?

  Slowly, painfully, he opened his eyes. Everything was blurry. He could see only colors – greens and browns. But he didn’t know what they meant.

  “JaQuan,” a voice said. “Are you awake?”

  It was beautiful, musical. He recognized it, was sure he had heard it before.

  He turned his head in its direction. Orange fuzz highlighted by two green dots filled his vision.

  “I believe, he’s coming around,” the voice said.

  He squeezed his eyes,
forced them to come into focus. The orange fuzz became a familiar tabby face. The green dots became eyes.

  “Welcome back,” Kitekh said.

  “Where am I?” he managed.

  Confusion covered his mind. He obviously wasn’t back home. Not unless Kitekh had somehow made the journey to Earth. But he couldn’t quite recall what the hell was going on.

  “The Tribal Council’s infirmary,” she said. “Your wounds have been treated.”

  Vague flashes of memory danced around his brain but refused to coalesce into anything coherent. There’d been a fight. He could remember that. But with whom?

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “You passed out,” Kitekh said. “Medics figure it was blood-loss and dehydration. We brought you back here, gave you fluids and stitched your wounds. Then they sedated you, so you could recuperate. That probably accounts for the gaps in your memory.”

  He raised his hands. The left arm was bandaged from wrist to elbow. An IV ran into the vein in the top of his hand.

  The right arm, though, was wearing a strange, golden-furred glove. It had three jeweled discs below the knuckles, and claws on the fingertips. Bandages covered his elbow.

  Suddenly, his brain snapped back into order. The glove was a Far-Biter. He’d fought the Council’s champion. And he’d won?

  “Holy shit,” he said. “How’s Muur?”

  Kitekh frowned.

  “They were able to save his leg,” she said. “He’ll walk again. But his career in the Council Guard is over. Medics don’t expect him to fully recover. He’ll be lame.”

  JaQuan looked away from her. He wasn’t sure why, but he felt regret about that. The hulking Graur may been trying to kill him, but he was only doing his job. Beating him was essential. Maiming him was unfortunate.

  “Shit,” he said. “That’s too bad.”

  Kitekh nodded. Then she smiled.

  “There’s someone here who wants to see you,” she said.

  “Who?”

  Kitekh simply looked away with her eyes. JaQuan followed her gaze.