Jul 1st 2011, 23:45 by E O Hatterpol | 1228 AU FROM SUN
"Nixie, wait up a second! Just hold on one minute & listen to me real quick!"
I grabbed her hand to make her stop. She wrenched it out of my grip & whipped around to face me.
"What do you want?!" she snapped.
I bent over double and braced my hands against my knees, wheezing. I felt light-headed, like I was going to be sick.
"I want to keep you from getting tangled up in something you're not ready for!" I said, gasping.
"How do you know what I'm ready for? You don't even know me!"
"I know enough! You haven't been through what I've been through! You haven't tried to kill a man yet!"
Nixie's hand shot up subconsciously to the giant locket around her neck. Her eyes fogged over & her gaze went straight through the Starbase wall to the deep stars beyond. Then she caught herself & snapped out of it.
"You don't know what I've been through," she said with a scowl, looking at me like I was salty space scum.
I furled my eyebrows. Who the shell did she think she was? A pirateslayer like me? Well, almostslayer.
People passed us by in the circular hallway; some were upset at the commotion we were making, some were interested in our little drama & stopped to watch, & still others just brushed by with their earbuds in, oblivious to everything except their music.
After spending most of my time on the Starship Flybrary alone investigating in the bookstacks or on the BPOD, I was getting tired of there always being people around. There were eyes everywhere - like in a mediæval court. Even though the Starbase was unimaginably large, it felt just like a glass bowl.
"Look, Nixie -- you're right. I don't know you. But I want to."
I searched for the right words.
"I lost friends & fellow crewmen between Earth & Starbase Octopus. We might turn out to be nothing, but I don't want to lose you before I get the chance to find out."
Nixie looked me straight in the face. Her kiwi-brown eyes had gone cold.
"You don't want to lose me?" she asked, glaring daggers at me. "You already have."
And then she whipped her shiny, black hair around & marched straight into the Help & Welcome Department. My shoulders sank; I hadn't been able to do it. Now the entire Starbase would know there had been a murder, and some already thought I was the culprit.
------
... and somewhere on the other side of Starbase Octopus, down one of its less popular tentacles, past a spider's web of construction tape and dusty construction horses blocking further access, down through different rooms and hallways all with doors barely hanging on their hinges if they were even there at all, a dark figure with rounded, padded fists tut-tutted quietly to itself.
It was surrounded by seven or eight young, muscular-looking girls, all with sad, vacant looks in their eyes. More zonbis.
"What did you see?"
One of them spoke up, but when she did, it was with no emotion. She didn't even look the figure in its eyes; she just stared straight ahead at the wall as if she were possessed.
"She told them, Master Bokor. She told them about the one who escaped."
The figure held a single rose in its bulbous fists, slowly twirling it in front of its nose.
"We can't have Master Bokor being tattle-taled on, can we? No, of course we can't, girls. Why don't we pay Miss Nixie a visit tonight, hm? Wouldn't that be nice?"
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