Jade Darcy and the Zen Pirates
Chapter 1: A Minor Disturbance

It wasn't until the Phelphum threw the mantisoid arbiter Cyclad Arik into the Purrchrps that Jade Darcy thought there was any real problem.

Cyclad Arik, Jade's coworker, could usually handle anything up to and including a Commancor colonial army. But even the nearly two-meter tall praying mantis was an insignificant burden to a Phelphum's large, strong arms--and since arbiters at Rix's weren't supposed to injure even violent customers if they could help it, Cyclad quickly found herself flying into the celebrating Purrchrps three tables over from the original little fight between the two Phelphums.

Jade leaped into action even before she saw that the Purrchrps were going to catch Cyclad safely. She had two full sectors to travel, but the outbreak of fighting had put her on alert, and the launching of Cyclad set her in motion.

Her own sector was quiet, giving her the freedom to intervene on her comrade's behalf. Bounding across the floor of the ingesterie, weaving her way around and between the occupied tables, she headed toward the battling behemoths. Each Phelphum was the size of a small Quonset hut, but Jade had no intention of fighting them hand-to-hand. As she neared the battle scene, she bent over and picked up a chairback they'd broken off earlier. With a speed and accuracy seldom seen in humans, she threw it with full force onto the nearest Phelphum's foot.

The creature let loose a scream that rattled the crockery, and began running toward the door with a slithery limp. The other turned toward Jade and raised its arms to club her; Jade, who had continued running after her throw, leaped and landed with both boots on one of the wide, rootlike feet of the Phelphum. She slid off the rounded appendage and somersaulted quickly away to avoid the massive arms that could have turned her to pinkish jelly on the floor. She rolled to her feet as smoothly as though on strings, braced for the next attack.

Facing her was a weeping customer--or at least the Phelphum equivalent, which was a bent and swaying one. Putting all her willpower into controlling her heart rate and temper, Jade asked for and received the creature's parole.

"You don't fight fair," the u-trans interpreted the Phelphum's whimper. "You attacked my...my...appendage! Such dastardly conduct should be condemned by all civilized beings."

Jade turned to look at the devastation around her. For all its fancy decor and high prices, Rix Kaf-Amur's ingesterie was, in actuality, little more than a glorified bar and grill. Open around the clock and catering to all known races, it was the preferred place for public meetings and meals. Usually at this hour it was half full or better with every kind of walking, flying, slithering and hopping alien to be found in the settled galaxy. Everyone, as the saying went, came to Rix's. Right now, thanks to this fight, nearly a third of the patrons had fled, and the rest were clustered at the far side of the hall, squawking, whistling, and otherwise commenting on the brawl that had broken tables as far as twenty meters away. Three patrons, besides the combatants, were claiming injuries, and the physical damage to the place would have cost months of Jade's salary. It would take an hour to get everything back to normal, if they were lucky… and Jade was supposed to feel ashamed. She opened her mouth to give the alien a piece of her mind, and diplomacy be damned, when the other Phelphum re-entered the area.

The Phelphum whose feet Jade had leaped on turned to the other one it had been intent on killing just seconds earlier. "Darling, it hurt my foot. It really did!" was how Jade's u-trans conveyed the creature's howl.

"Dearest, how dare it! I'll make it right, I'll do something, I'll--"

"May I be of assistance?" A Daimeitroo approached the Phelphum, holding out the little computer--the equivalent of a business card--that would feed its information into the Phelphum's implanted computer. The Phelphum straightened up to its full height--a sign of self-confidence in its race--and held out one of its club-like hands to receive the information.

Jade groaned at the sight of the two-meter-tall beaver with the six limbs. A race of lawyers, the Daimeitroo never fought--they just sued people. Lots of people. All the time. Muttering about venues, contingency fees, and liabilities, the beaver swept her new clients from the hall.

Jade looked up toward her boss. Rix Kaf-Amur, the big blue tree who owned and ran this establishment, was watching as he always did from the glass-walled booth high in the center of the southern wall. Jade spread her arms in an apologetic gesture and bowed deeply. When she looked up again, Rix was making the scissor motion with two of his tentacles, signaling all was fine. Then he returned the tentacles to his control board, directing the robots and automatic systems to help clean up the mess.

"Jade, it was most enlightening to view the expedient manner in which you disabled my opponents," said Cyclad Arik as she came back from the Purrchrps' table to stand next to Jade. "Such gracious and skilled professionalism is your hallmark."

"Thanks. It was no more than you do for me."

The two arbiters--or, as Jade privately thought of herself and her colleagues, bouncers--set about making the place presentable again. They reassured customers, helped them return to their tables, and felt the evening was finally under control when they heard the crackle of an energy gun being fired. They both hit the floor simultaneously.

"What the fuck is that?" hollered Jade, rolling to look at Rix. The ingesterie's owner pointed with one tentacle toward the first quadrant.

The ingesterie was divided into four sections around the central dumbwaiter system that brought food up from the basement kitchens. Sector One held the special environment tanks to accommodate those patrons who needed atmospheres, temperatures, gravities, and so forth that differed from the standard. In some ways, Sector One was easiest to patrol; beings who knew how fragile their life-preserving environment was seldom made much trouble. On the other hand, when trouble did break out there, it was much harder to diagnose and handle.

Such was the case now. A large number of tanks were scattered about the floor of Sector One, obscuring events from Jade's view. Even Rix, from his high vantage point, had trouble seeing exactly what was going on. There was a new trainee handling the arbiter assignment for the sector, and the other three were supposed to be backing her up--but with the excitement caused by the Phelphums, Jade and Cyclad had neglected that region. Even so, Kokoti should have been in place to help the newcomer. Where was he?

Jade and Cyclad Arik had worked together long enough to develop an instinctive partnership. Without a word spoken, they split up, Cyclad going left and Jade right. They would circle around the tanks, coming to the disturbance from opposite directions. With any luck, the trainee would handle it and it would all be over by the time they got there. But Jade had long ago given up believing in luck--at least in the good variety.

Crouching low to reduce her target area, she raced between the tables, where patrons who had just been reseated were beginning to panic again. In other circumstances, Jade would have plotted a straighter course through some empty dining areas, but with guns involved, she preferred to use the cover and take just a few seconds longer.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Kokoti still rooted in Sector Three, and she suddenly remembered why he wasn't moving to help the trainee. The Overlady of Memdisen was dining in his sector, and right now his prime responsibility was to keep her safe. That was why he hadn't come to Jade's aid with the Phelphums, either. A fight somewhere else could merely be a diversion to leave the Overlady unprotected. Knowing Kokoti and his sensitivities, he probably felt guilty that he wasn't helping his comrades--but he was doing exactly what he had to do. Orders were orders.

After some darting from table to table, Jade finally arrived in a position to see the back area of Sector One. The fight was not coming from one of the tanks, but from a mixed group that had been seated behind them. Sector One was not exclusively for those with specialized environments. Sometimes Rix assigned people there when the rest of the house was full, and sometimes people requested seating there--usually the gawkers, hoping to catch a glimpse of something exotic in one of the tanks.

Whatever the reason, a group of three Bissahks, two Fallintu, and two Murzhaw had been seated there today, and they had started to fight among themselves. Jade didn't know whether the three races were all at peace with one another or whether this fight had some personal basis to it, and there was no time to ask the ingesterie's computer for background information. She had to wade in and hope for the best.

The Bissahks were the most imposing, well over two meters tall, four-limbed, and green from a symbiotic moss that grew all over their skins. They tended to be slow and ungainly, and Jade had never seen one who could fight worth a damn. She dismissed them as being but a small part of the problem confronting her. The day she couldn't handle three Bissahks was the day she'd better get out of this business, fast.

The Fallintu were another matter entirely. They were just slightly taller than Jade, but theirs was a race of warriors, and most of them learned to fight before they learned to walk. Unlike the Commancors, however, they had no talent for colonial administration; that was perhaps the one thing that kept them from becoming the scourge of the galaxy. They captured and then lost worlds with such astonishing regularity that humans were calling them the new Germans. That did not stop individuals, however, from being dangerous.

The Murzhaw were tiny creatures smaller even than human dwarves. A Murzhaw's head comprised almost half his height, and he had a thick, stocky body to support the head. The average Murzhaw was not fast, not strong, not agile, and not a trained fighter.

But one of these Murzhaw was wielding a Lebbin 520. A Murzhaw with a pistol was as dangerous as anyone else.

Jade looked quickly for any signs of B'k'rol, the trainee who was supposed to be watching this section. After a moment she spotted her lying prone beneath a busted bench. At first Jade thought the rookie might be dead, but then she saw her move slightly. Alive or dead, though, she was obviously in no shape to help Jade and Cyclad.

Cyclad's route to the trouble spot was shorter, and she could take larger strides than Jade, so she made it to the fracas several seconds earlier. The sight of Cyclad bearing down must have intimidated the Murzhaw, which Jade could well understand, for the creature aimed the Lebbin and fired, but slowly enough that Cyclad had a chance to leap aside and take cover behind a table. The maneuver allowed Jade to get a few meters closer to the Murzhaw without being spotted. Every step was an advantage.

Jade's attention was focused, had to be focused, on the barrel of the Lebbin. She couldn't let it be pointed either at her or at any of the special environment tanks--although Rix was even now raising the airtight isolation walls around the squares containing the tanks. Still, her peripheral vision caught a motion coming from her right, and the special computer in her spine analyzed the threat and took action even before her conscious mind could interpret it.

The Bissahk who'd been about to step in front of her and deliver a clumsy roundhouse punch found himself yanked off his feet as Jade grabbed the arm he'd started to swing. She took advantage of her opponent's momentum and tossed him out of her way. The alien went crashing into an empty table to the left, and lay dazed on the floor, no longer much of a threat.

This brief action caught the Murzhaw's eye, and he turned in the direction of his Bissahk tablemate--but did not instinctively fire, a good sign. Jade saw that he was holding the Lebbin awkwardly; the pistol had not been made with a Murzhaw's tiny hands in mind. Things might not be quite so hopeless after all.

Jade spun on her right foot to use up the added momentum she'd gotten from the Bissahk, only to come face to face with one of the Fallintu in a crouched battle stance, snarling and ready for a fight. Jade feinted to her left, and the alien was just intoxicated enough to be fooled. As the Fallinton lunged toward where it thought Jade would be, Jade's right arm lashed out and grabbed its leg, yanking it off balance. The Fallinton's arms flailed wildly and it fell to the ground. Jade leaped over it--then had to dive for cover once again as the Murzhaw whirled to point the Lebbin at her again.

But the pistol wasn't pointed at her for long. On the Murzhaw's other side, Cyclad Arik had gotten back to her feet and was advancing once more, only to confront the remaining two Bissahks and the other Fallinton. Individually, she could have disposed of either threat quickly--but both simultaneously took a bit of her concentration.

The instant the Murzhaw with the gun turned in Cyclad's direction, Jade vaulted over the table she'd hidden behind. There was now nothing but open ground between herself and her objective--but as she started her run across no man's land, her peripheral vision again caught the blur of the other Murzhaw moving to intercept her. At the same time, the Murzhaw with the gun realized that Cyclad was otherwise occupied for a second and whirled back in Jade's direction.

Instinctively, Jade grabbed the other Murzhaw and held it in front of her. The creature struggled, but even a small human like Jade was stronger than it was--and as soon as it saw the Lebbin pointed straight at it, the Murzhaw held very still indeed.

"You can kill me if you want," Jade said, "but you'll have to kill your friend, too."

Jade stared at the Murzhaw, her heart banging full speed in her chest. People who weren't trained killers normally had a psychological barrier against random killing of their own race. Of course, there was always the chance that the Murzhaw she held was the sworn blood enemy of the one with the gun, who would be only too happy to kill them both. Jade had the spring-loaded knives, as usual, up her sleeves; if the Murzhaw did shoot, and his aim wasn't perfect, he would be dead an instant later.

But, as she'd hoped, the Murzhaw didn't shoot. His gun hand was shaking as he said, "I don't want to kill you. I don't want to kill anyone. But they were ganging up on me, and I had to defend myself."

"‘They'?"

"The Fallintu and the Bissahks. They said I wouldn't pay off my bet, and wouldn't give me time to transfer assets."

Gamblers! Jade thought with disgust. I never saw one yet worth his weight in Debanigan scrip. But her voice was carefully controlled as she said, "No one's ganging up on you now. The fight's over. If you shoot now, it's murder, not self-defense."

"But what can I do?"

"Well, if you keep on the way you're going, one or the other of us will end up dead. I don't find that appealing. If you drop the gun, we'll both live. I don't promise more than that, but it's a hell of a lot better than the alternative."

The Murzhaw paused to consider that for one long, heart-stopping moment, then said suddenly, "You're right." He dropped the Lebbin, and it was caught just before it reached the ground by Cyclad Arik, who'd been cautiously approaching the Murzhaw from behind while Jade was talking to him. Jade pushed away the Murzhaw she'd been holding, and just as quickly as that, the crisis was over.

Jade and Cyclad rounded up the miscreants and got their ID codes so they could be charged for the damages they'd caused. Then Cyclad went to tend to the trainee, B'k'rol, while Jade escorted the offending parties out of the ingesterie.

Now that the heat of the moment had cooled, the combatants were a little embarrassed about the fuss they'd caused. "In truth, Jade Darcy," said one contrite Bissahk as they walked to the door, "you were partly to blame for starting the fight."

"Me?" Jade exclaimed. "I've never seen or spoken to any of you in my life, and I was clear across the room--"

"When the Phelphum fight broke out, we made a bet. Knowing Phelphums, the Murzhaw thought you could not quell the disturbance in under five minutes. The rest of us, who have seen you fight at Galentor's and work here, knew you would settle the matter in less time."

Jade stopped dead, dumbfounded. "Of all the shitheaded, fartbrained things I ever heard of, that is by far the lamest. Look, don't you have anything better to do with your money than gamble it on me?"

"You never objected to people gambling on you when you fought at Galentor's."

"But that's different, that's… that's an event, not a riot."

"Isn't a riot also an event?"

"Just get the fuck out of my sight," Jade said, shooing them the rest of the way out the door.

She stood watching the door close behind them, her fists clenched in rage. "I hate all gamblers," she muttered.

Bab-ankh, the fluffy ball of blue feathers on stiltlike legs who served as the ingesterie's greeter, came up behind her. "But when you held that Murzhaw up in front of you, weren't you gambling that the other one wouldn't shoot?"

"That wasn't gambling, that was a calculated risk," Jade said. Then, turning to Bab-ankh, she continued, "And speaking of that, why the hell didn't you warn us they were armed? You're supposed to let us know--"

"They had no gun when they came in. I scanned them thoroughly."

"Then where the fuck did the Lebbin come from? I know it's not on the menu."

"The gun was mine, Jade Darcy."

Jade whirled to face B'k'rol, who was leaning shakily against Cyclad Arik. The trainee was taller than Jade, but so were all the other arbiters except Hiss!arr. B'k'rol was a Lotht; her massive barrel chest sported two pairs of strong arms and rested on surprisingly slender hips and legs.

"What were you doing on the floor with a gun?" Jade demanded.

"I thought I might need it."

Jade's temper hit the explosion point. "If you don't fucking trust yourself, at least you should trust us. I won't work with anyone who has no faith in herself or me." She turned and stomped off the floor.

Jade practically flew down the steps to the security briefing room. She waited impatiently for the door to slide, wishing she could slam it open dramatically, and the instant the gap was wide enough she stormed inside to confront Disson Peng-Amur, head of the ingesterie's security and pod-brother to its owner.

The big blue tree trunk spotted Jade with its multiple eyes and waved some of its tentacles in acknowledgment. "Rix has told me about the difficulty upstairs--"

"Did he also tell you B'k'rol supplied the almost murder weapon?"

"That is news to me--"

"I'm glad to hear it, because if you'd known about the gun and hadn't told us, I'd be out that door before you could photosynthesize."

"You are a valued employee, Jade Darcy," Disson said, waving his tentacles in some agitation. "We don't wish to lose you."

"Well, I'm not working a shift with that punk again. She brought a gun out on the floor, which is stupid. She didn't tell her colleagues, which is criminally stupid. And she let a customer take it away from her, which is… is… " She waved her arms in exasperation, giving an unintended parody of Disson's tentacles. "There are no words for how stupid that is. Even the sergeant couldn't have described how stupid that is."

And Jade left the room before Disson could reply.

Still furious, Jade entered the locker room and headed toward the med cabinet to bandage herself as quickly as possible. That was when she spied Rortig, her relief. A quick glance at the back of her hand showed that not only was her shift over, it had been for half an hour.

Shit, I've even been doing this on my own time, she thought. She opened the channel to Disson. "I'm heading straight home. I'll fix the log later."

"Of course, Miss Darcy. Don't concern yourself with the log. You can handle that from home. Enjoy your time away from here."

Jade stomped back up the steps. Though normally she left by the back door, tonight she was in a black, perverse mood and decided to leave through the front.

"How couldn't I enjoy it?" she muttered as she walked. "I only wish I had more than one day off before I had to face this madhouse."

"Is there anything I can help with?" asked Bab-ankh, still apologetic even though the appearance of the gun had not been his fault.

"Never mind, just talking to myself," said Jade as she hailed a cab, a rare indulgence for her.

"Why do that? Don't you know what you are going to say?"

Jade tried to make her mind work well enough to answer the question, but pain and fatigue had taken their toll. She just climbed in the cab, programmed it for home, and tried not to think of the job.

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