Gravity on Jutuneim is 35 percent of that on Earth.

If you’re a Titan, that’s slightly more than Archavian standard, but only slightly – just six percent higher than normal. Enough to notice for the first few days you’re on the planet, but nothing you can’t get used to after you’ve been there a while, sort of like visiting Denver when you live at sea level.

But for a human from Avalon or Earth, the difference in gravity is significant. The acceleration downward is not a normal, comfortable 9.8 meters per second per second, but a lazy 3.43 m/s². A nine-meter drop on Earth takes about a bit over a second. A nine-meter drop on Jutuneim takes a bit more than two.

Alex Carey was used to standard Archavian gravity – Tayas Mons was always kept at precisely one g_Ap – and he was used to Earth gravity – Avalon is a comfortable 0.96 g_⊕. And though a fall in Earth gravity hurts more than a fall in Archavian gravity, he was at that moment wishing he could fall a bit faster.

The fall seemed to stretch on forever. He feared that the man he fell toward would snap his head up a second before impact, enough time to jump clear. Enough time for Alex to hit the bed and be an easy kill.

He could accept death. But not before this danger was dispatched. And so he prayed with all the fervor that his general agnosticism could muster that if there was any force in the universe listening, he just needed to live long enough to protect her. And then, if the universe needed a death in payment, he was ready and willing to go.

Perhaps the universe listened, or perhaps Alex, being Alex, just got lucky. But it was not until the split second before impact that the attacker glanced up, and before he could react, Alex had knocked him down.

Nonull might have been able to brace himself better if he hadn’t been so shocked to see Alex Carey, wearing a t-shirt and sleep shorts, falling toward him, eyes blazing. Carey was a literal hero of Avalon, the man they named the main rail station after. Even knowing that he was attacking the man’s wife, it still seemed deeply incongruent.

Nonull crashed to the bed, not seriously injured – gravity, as noted earlier, is low on Jutuneim – but winded. Worse, as he fell, his elbow hit the bed, and his right hand involuntarily opened, causing the injector to bounce free from his grip, and skitter across the bed.

Alex saw it; it was lit up green, the signal that it had not yet been armed, though of course, Alex didn’t know that. He didn’t care, though, for by that dim green light, Alex recognized the shape; it was a gun.

He could already feel the man beneath him trying to right himself, to buck him off. If he was just fighting for himself, the safest move would be to try to get him into a pain hold, to get him to surrender quickly, then find any other weapons and then, and only then, go to secure the weapon.

But that gun was not meant for him. He knew in his bones that it was meant for Rixie. Whatever the charge in it, it was designed to kill the woman he loved.

And he was fighting for her safety.

He weighed these facts quickly, and with years of his wife’s self-defense training to guide him, he used his opponent’s attempt to get back up to help propel him into a sideways roll toward the gun.

Nonull realized his mistake as soon as he’d made it. Carey bounced and rolled to the injector. Nonull bounced to his feet, and said, “Don’t do it. I’ll have to….”

But before he could finish the sentence, Alex had hurled the weapon as far off the bed as he could.

“…kill you,” Nonull said, pausing to pull a knife from his boot. “I’m going to have to climb down and get that now, you frakker.”

Alex tilted his head, catching the accent. “You’re Paletinian?”

“Don’t try to distract me,” he said moving toward Alex. “You’re unarmed. You got the injector, and that’s annoying, but it’s not going to stop me. Your wife, she’d know what I have to do to complete my objective.”

“It’s not gate science,” Alex said, keeping Nonull in view, holding a guard position. “You know that if you go retrieve it, I’ll find a way to wake up Rixie or summon the guards or do something else to end any chance of you hurting her. So you’re going to try to kill me or knock me out, and then you’ll get the gun, come back, and kill Rixie. That the plan?”

Nonull smiled in spite of himself. “Yes, that is the plan. And you’re going to try not to die.”

“Well first, I’m going to try to wake up Rixie!” Alex shouted.

Unfortunately, that merely changed the rhythm of his wife’s snoring; it did not stop it.

“It was worth a try,” Alex said.

“She took sleeping pills, I saw. Bad decision,” Nonull said. “Now, I have no problem with you. If you’ll sit down, I can bind your arms and legs, toss you off the bed. You’ll survive it, we both know how gravity works here. I’ll kill your wife, but I’ll leave you alive. If you fight me, though…I will kill you both.”

Alex shook his head, keeping his eyes forward, his heart beating so hard he could feel it shaking his chest. “If you had ever loved anyone,” he said, “you wouldn’t be stupid enough to bother to make the offer.”

“I didn’t expect you to accept,” Nonull said. “I just needed a second more to identify what form you were using. And I’ve got it.” With that, he slid into an attack position, and engaged.

* * *

Outside the suite, there was a minor standoff going on.

You couldn’t hear it from inside the suite; for one thing, the guards were being quiet, so as not to disturb anyone, and for another, the suites at the hotel were extremely-well-soundproofed, which was to be expected at a hotel of its caliber.

“Look,” Sebb was saying, quietly but directly, “we need to get in to check the sensor. We’re going to try not to wake up the principal, but….”

“I’m waiting on orders,” Aski said. “You’re a security guard, I’m sorry, you don’t get to go in just because you want to.”

“We’re security guards hired by Ms. Carey herself,” Trora said, her voice rising just a little. “Frak’s sake, can’t you call this into your superiors?”

“Guard Errisdat is on that, and….”

One lift door opened with a bing, and Karral walked out of it, steaming mad. “I’ll break down the vwofas door if I have to, we aren’t waiting. Trora thinks something is up.”

Another lift binged, and Thurl Niebal stepped off. “Guard Senkeir, I understand these folks want to go in to do a comms check?”

“Yes, sir,” Aski said, coming to attention. “They’re concerned….”

“Probably fair,” Thurl said. “I hate to wake up the principal over a false alarm, but….”

“Sir, I have the Chief on the line,” Tuva said, rushing out of the room and handing Thurl a communicator.

Thurl sighed, and said, “Chief, I assume Guard Errisdat told you the situation?”

Evwe Brantr’s voice crackled through. “Yes, she did, and we aren’t going to wake up the principal over a false alarm. Tuva says our comms are solid, just because their equipment failed….”

“Sir, given the situation, I think….”

“That’s a direct order, Subcommander. If you don’t want to carry it out….”

Thurl shook his head, but said, “Sir…we’ll give it a bit longer. But if it doesn’t resolve soon…we both looked over the Dronung’s orders, and….”

“If you want to call the palace and wake up the Dronung, be my guest,” Brantr said. “But when you’re told to shut up and listen to your chief…then I’ll expect your resignation.”

Thurl nodded, and said, “Understood. Closing comms. Tuva,” he added, “call to the Palace. Let them know it is urgent, Red-Five.”

“You…heard the Chief, sir.”

“Yes,” Thurl said, “I did. And I’ll put my job on the line. I can’t,” he added, apologetically, “let you in until the Palace confirms it. And they may not.”

Karral nodded. “I understand. Understand though, if this goes on much longer….”

Thurl gave Karral a tight smile, and nodded. “Oh, I know where this is going. And I don’t know whether to hope this shakes out with you arrested, or me fired…or the alternative.”

* * *

Fights in the real world rarely last very long. Especially when one of the fighters is armed, and the other is not.

For the fourth time in under a minute, one of the slashing attacks from Nonull’s knife found part of Alex’s skin, this time on his collarbone. Alex knew that this was very bad; while heroes in movies and books tend to shake off a stab wound like it’s nothing, Alex was right now bleeding from his gut, his left arm, and now his right…neck, maybe.

The first cut had felt like fire, the second like a dull tear. This hadn’t felt like much of anything, and he knew that was a very bad sign for his continued survival. He had been giving ground, buying time, hoping that Rixie would wake up, that she would be able to get herself to safety. But as he backed closer to her enormous behind, he knew that it was increasingly unlikely. As valiantly as Alex had fought, it would not be enough.

Nonull clearly knew it too; he was just maneuvering Alex to set up the coup de grace. If he could be close to her, that would play well; while Carey would certainly have a lot of injuries, there was always the chance that in her death throes she would roll over on him, and if so, his injuries would look like a tragic accident. Indeed, maybe even her cause of death – her realizing what she’d done, and in the horror of it, having a stroke.

There would be some time to arrange it, though. If Carey wasn’t fatally wounded, it was very close; he’d bleed out if he didn’t get attention soon. And Nonull would have let him die like that, but he was on a deadline. Time to hurry this along.

Alex stumbled backward, trying to hold his defense up, despite every instinct telling him just to lie down, that he was so tired, that he had to lie down, with the man in front of him clearly maneuvering backward, toward Rixie’s behind.

And though his mind was foggy, Alex suddenly realized that this was where he wanted to go.

He backed up against her behind, feelng its warmth against him. If this was the last thing he would feel, well…it honestly would have been his first choice.

Alex’s arms fell.

Nonull adjusted his grip, and raised his knife to stab Alex through the heart.

He brought the knife down.

And as it neared Alex’s chest, with every ounce of strength and will that he had left, Alex dropped to the ground, and swept Nonull’s feet, causing him to fall forward, stabbing Rixie’s behind in the process.

The knife sunk in to the hilt, and Nonull grunted in annoyance as he began to try to free it. Had he not been grunting, he might have noticed another sound. Or to be precise…a lack of another sound.

The sound of snoring had stopped.

Alex smiled as he crawled away. His wife, being the wonderful, perfect creature that he knew her to be, reacted just as he had hoped.

Nonull pulled the knife free and took one step back. He turned, and saw Carey crawling toward the small of Rixie’s back. He was suddenly aware that the ground was starting to shift. He looked up, wide-eyed, as Rixie reacted to the slight pinprick in her behind, instinctively rolling to her left, onto him, and waking up, just a bit.

And then fully.

At first, Rixie was not remotely awake. She’d reacted to the sting of the insect – or whatever it was – on instinct, rolling over to crush the annoying thing beneath her. But as she’d done so, she’d registered a sensation altogether too large to be an insect. And it triggered a primal fear, one she’d had since she was young, and had almost drowned Alex by dozing off in a tub on a posh transport ship. It had haunted her ever since, not lessening, but growing in import in the back of her mind, and the back of her mind lit up in alarm, waking her fully.

“Oh God, Alex….” she yelped, continuing to roll left, and off of him. “Lights up!” she said, bringing the room lights to full. She looked to where her ass had been, and her stomach dropped, for there was a figure lying there, crumpled, with far too much blood near him.

But…but there was also another figure, perhaps two hands-widths away. He was up and crawling, though there was far too much blood near him, too. He was crawling toward the figure who she had landed on.

Her brain was still foggy from the sleeping pills and her dreams, and it took her a moment to process what she was seeing, but she soon realized that it was her husband – battered, broken, bloody – crawling toward the person who she’d rolled upon.

He reached the figure, and with all the strength he could muster, Alex punched him in the head.

He was trying to muster strength for another punch, when he suddenly felt himself rising. Perhaps he’d died. But Rixie was awake. She was awake. It would be okay.

Hey, there was Rixie! She was looking at him. He was in her hand. He was so tired.

“Alex? Alex!” she called down to him. He was tired, but he had to explain. There was still the gun. The assassin could get to it and hurt her.

“Assassin,” Alex said. “He had gun. On floor. I…I threw it….”

Rixie’s eyes went wide. Not just at the words Alex had murmured – they were frightening, but they were about her, and she didn’t care about that. What horrified her were the wounds he had clearly suffered. He was bleeding…oh Gods, from his carotid artery.

“Carey to guards, emergency medevac!” she called out. She received no response, and realized that of course, the assassin had to have an accomplice. Alex would have signaled for help otherwise.

She looked down at the human. A human assassin. He was bent backwards – she had likely snapped his spine. She could see the tiny glint of a knife laying not far from him – the knife the assassin had used against her husband.

His chest rose and fell, just enough for her to know that he wasn’t dead yet.

It took all her willpower not to finish the job.

“You’ll be okay….” Alex murmured.

“Don’t go to sleep on me Alex, stay with me. I won’t be okay,” Rixie said, standing and rushing toward the door. “Not without you.”

“You will. You will. I…is okay,” her husband muttered, rubbing his hand against hers.

The door to the suite was flung open, and the Principal stood in the doorway, tears streaming down her face, her left hand covered in blood. “I NEED A GODDAMN MEDEVAC. TWO HUMANS. NOW,” she roared.

Thurl Niebal blinked twice. “Oh, dear Otna,” he said. Then, he shouted, “Senborn! Tarsjad! Crash kits, now!”

Rixie was vaguely aware one of the team medics coming to her, and taking Alex, while the other rushed into her room to recover the assassin. They were gone in an instant, and yet it seemed to take forever. She couldn’t react to it, not in the moment. She had always been able to hold it together, always. But she found she was numb. She stumbled back, and leaned against the wall, trying and failing to awake from the nightmare that had thrust itself upon her. She wanted to throw herself from the window of the suite. She wanted to throw up. She wanted to throw every one of these frakkers through a frakking wall.

She looked down at her left hand, which had cradled Alex. It was covered in blood, his blood. And though it was small, and only partially complete, there was a spot near where he lay where Alex had traced the start of a word, a single word, in Archavian. She knew what he was trying to write.

Aκαπoэ.

Love.

She took a deep, steadying breath. She didn’t know everything that had happened. But she knew enough. He had spotted an assassin. A human assassin. And he had done everything he could to protect her. He had been injured so badly, maybe badly enough to die, and he had done it for her, and so she did not have the luxury of numbness. Not now. Alex Carey had thrown himself between the assassin and her.

He wouldn’t want her to wallow.

He would want her to fight.

And so she wiped her mind clear of the thousand attacks that it had leveled against her, from her anger at herself for taking two sleeping pills to her horrified anger at herself for not planning for a human assailant. She had figured a human would be unable to hurt her, but Alex had said that there was a gun….

“Karral!” she said, pushing herself off the wall, and buttonholing her hired lead. “What the frak happened?”

Karral broke from shouting at one of the guards, and turned to face her. “We had a channel swap, sensors went down. We were trying to gain entry. The Royal Guard was refusing to let us in.”

“Traitor?” Rixie asked, quieter.

“Probably, but no idea who. Only provisional rule-out is Niebal – he was trying to get us access, his boss overruled him.”

Rixie nodded. “All right.” Looking around quickly, she added, softly, “Alex said there was a gun. He threw it on the floor. It would have to be small. Human-sized.”

Karral nodded. “Trora!,” he called, “I need your eyes.”

“Nobody should go in there,” said Tuva. “It’s a crime scene.”

Rixie walked up to the woman, and drew herself up to her full height. Staring down at her, she said, “As an active-duty Magister-Imperator, I’m taking over this investigation,” Rixie said. “It’s an Imperial matter, there was an assassination attempt on a Senator. Karral, I’m deputizing you and your team until members of the Corps can get here; Trora, I want you to go into the room with Karral, you are looking for something specific. He will explain.”

Swallowing hard, and looking up at the woman, Tuva said, “Ma’am, you are a potential victim, you can’t investigate it,” Tuva said.

Rixie turned toward her. “Ms…what is your name?”

“Errisdat,” Tuva said.

“Ms. Errisdat, with all due respect, I understand your team failed to recognize a serious comms issue, and kept my team out of the room while my husband was being attacked. You will frak the frak off with your directives. I want to know how you missed that comms were down.”

“They weren’t!” Tuva said.

“I called for guard assistance. They were,” Rixie said. “Let’s go look at the comms suite. You’re the commander, right?”

Niebal nodded. “Yes, ma’am. And you have my deepest….”

“Stow it, I don’t care,” Rixie said. “I need you to walk me through what happened with comms. Who was monitoring them?”

“Tuva Errisdat, the woman you were talking to,” Niebal said.

Rixie looked her over, and said, “I want you to come with me and look over the comms logs. Sebb, do you have any comms experience?”

“Yes, I do,” Sebb replied.

“Good, come with me.”

“Ma’am,” Tuva said, “I’d be happy to show you….”

“You’ll shut the vwof up and stay right here,” Rixie growled. “Let’s move.”

As Rixie walked with Sebb and Thurl to the comms station, Trora scanned the floor of Rixie’s suite. A few moments later, she called, “I found it.”

Trora’s eyes were the same type of illegal equipment that her arm was, and they’d been installed at the same time, to help her work on the family mine and farm. It annoyed her that her parents had inflicted them upon her, but she had to admit, they came in handy sometimes.

Karral came over to her, and saw the slight glow of the gun, perhaps the size of a large diode, glowing green. He grabbed a glass from by the sink, came back, and sliding the edge under it, he lifted it, letting it slide to the bottom. “Alex was right, this was a weapon. We’ll need a human to go over it to be sure what kind, exactly. Or someone with holos.”

In the room with comms, Rixie looked over Niebal’s shoulder as he brought up the comms logs. They appeared normal, at first blush. But as he tracked them back, he paused, clicking on one sensor, then another.

“They…these were reassigned,” he muttered.

“What?” Rixie said.

“The sensors. It was done on the fly – should have triggered an alert to me, but there appears to be a bypass. Wasn’t perfect, but….”

“They were doing it on the fly because of us,” Sebb said, standing by the desk. “We caught the comms issue. They probably had a better plan in place, but they had to improvise.”

“Even so, this was designed to cover up the problems for a bit. It could be cleaned up after…after I was safely dead,” Rixie said, nodding. “You said Errisdat was in charge of this?”

“Yes. I was monitoring it,” Tuva said from the doorway.

Rixie looked up. “Can you explain this?”

Tuva looked down for a moment. “Yeah, can I come over and show you?”

“No,” Rixie said. “Sebb….”

As Rixie started to say “Sebb,” Tuva Errisdat unholstered her weapon, and with the skill of years of practice, she trained it on Rixie Carey. She had failed at hiding this. She was going down, going to prison for the rest of her life.

She may as well take Carey out on the way.

But at the same time as she pulled the trigger, a figure flashed into view, a figure who had caught on to what she was going to do. Sebb only had a moment, not enough time to close the distance between him and her, but it was enough time for him to do what security did when someone took a shot at the Principal.

He threw himself in front of the shot.

He was not a fool, and so he had his left arm forward, hoping that it might provide some protection, and fortunately for him, it did; it exploded from power overload, spraying shrapnel around the room, much of it into him, but he had been positioned perfectly; the Principal and the guard next to her were uninjured.

Thurl had caught Tuva’s treachery as soon as Sebb had, and he had risen and drawn his weapon. He held his fire just long enough to let Sebb take the phaser blast before returning fire, aiming for Tuva’s right side. He blew her arm off at the shoulder, and Tuva dropped to the ground, howling in pain.

Rixie rose from the desk, calmly walked over to the shouting woman. She put her bare foot behind the injured shoulder and flipped her over. Straddling her in a control position, she pulled her remaining arm back. Tuva howled more.

Rixie smiled. “You,” she said, “need to tell us everything you know about this. Or I will remove this arm by pulling it out of its vwofas socket.”

“Vwof you, I want an attorney!” Tuva said.

“Well-born, you shouldn’t do that,” Thurl Niebal said, quietly.

“Why not?” Rixie asked. “Don’t want me torturing her?”

“No, no, just that’s my job. You have good form, but we can continue it from here. This vwofas traitor screwed my team and hurt your husband. I’m happy to hurt her.”

Rixie smiled tightly. “Karral clocked you as honorable. Glad to see he’s still got it.” She got off of Tuva, and Thurl yanked her up off the ground by her shoulder, then threw her into the wall.

“Senkeir! Restrain Errisdat, she’s a vwofas traitor! Do not be gentle,” he called. “Tie off a tourniquet. We will get her to the hospital when we feel like it.”

As Senkeir did what he was told – in shock the entire time he was doing it – Thurl called in a medevac for Sebb, who was conscious and appeared likely to survive. Karral ducked into the room to check on his injured guard, and said to Rixie, simply, “We got it.” Rixie nodded.

She took a deep breath, surveying the situation. She wanted to rush to Alex’s bedside, and to hell with everything else. But she knew that as gravely wounded as he was, she would not help the situation for several hours.

She picked up her pad. There was work to be done. She had several hours to kill, and many people to punish.