Limitless Evolution As a Snake

Horass looked from the cracked beam to my face and asked whether I planned to kill him before the room flooded, which was considerate enough to make the question feel slightly rude.

I had an answer ready until he added that drowning would be an embarrassing end after surviving the Seven-Hour Marmalade Offensive. Then I started laughing, hurt my jaw, and became angry with him for making survival funnier than murder.

”You were a complete pain in the arse, and I hadn’t decided what that was worth yet, so stop trying to improve your position with breakfast history.”

[System: Fair warning, mate, if you bring him home with the teeth dog, Bridget’s entitled to make you sleep in the bloody shed.]

I wasn’t adopting him, although I admitted the distinction had become difficult to explain from where everyone was standing.

The cable held him against the beam, but his free hand still reached a small pouch at his side. I told him to move it away slowly and watched until his palm rested flat against the floor.

He could have tested me. Instead, he named the pouch’s contents and let me pull it clear with a tendril, revealing spare ammunition and a folding blade that joined the launcher beyond his reach.

I wanted him alive because he had nearly beaten me, because his stories were terrible, and because an interesting bastard seemed harder to replace than a dead one. None of that made trusting him sensible.

”The attack ended here. You didn’t get another free swing while I helped you, and you didn’t mistake this for me hiring you to stand near my girlfriends.”

”I could agree to stop this fight,” he said. ”You were not purchasing every future decision I might make, and I preferred being asked before anyone discussed my employment.”

”Good, because the last employee I hired wanted a locker large enough for a rocket launcher, and I was trying to pretend that was a dancing reference.”

He studied me for a moment, then gave a tired laugh that made the injured part of his body shake. We both stopped laughing quickly, united by the discovery that winning and losing had become equally uncomfortable.

[System: Immediate attack ended, mate. Seven thousand EXP and thirty IP, which puts you at twelve thousand five hundred out of a hundred thousand, with two hundred eighty IP still burning a hole in your judgment.]

I would spend it responsibly the next time the shop offered something that made responsible behavior sound like a medical condition.

The reward didn’t loosen the cable or stop the water. I called Bridget and told her Horass was alive, injured and willing to stop fighting, which earned a silence long enough for Old Mate to inspect his bottle.

”You wanted the response crew ready for two patients, then,” she said, with the careful patience of someone putting a very sharp thought somewhere it couldn’t interrupt the rescue.

”That was the practical version, sweetheart. I had a much worse version involving a new friend, but I suspected you would prefer the patient count.”

She asked whether he was restrained and disarmed. I gave her the exact answer, including the damaged beam and the fact that I couldn’t safely release the load without help.

The launch crew contacted the ship’s surviving engine staff. A mechanic answered through the wall speaker, shouting that the cargo system needed its load secured before anyone touched the brake again.

I did not guess at the controls. I described the room and held my phone where the speaker could be heard, letting people who knew their machinery argue about the safest way to stop it eating somebody.

Horass watched the phone’s position near my head and finally asked where the device was. I told him it was inside me, which made him consider the answer longer than I liked.

”That must have made losing it inconvenient,” he said. ”I once served with a courier who kept a radio in a hollow horn and accidentally joined a wedding from inside a prison cell.”

[System: Ask him one normal question, and out comes another bloody documentary nobody commissioned. I miss when he was just firing explosives at us.]

You were the one worried about his koala collection, so I thought conversation represented healthy progress.

Horass pointed toward his coat pocket with the hand I could see. He asked whether I could save the small koala charm before the water reached it, explaining that it had been hand-painted by a child at a market.

I checked the pocket before lifting the harmless charm out with a tendril. Its painted face looked cheerful enough to offend Old Mate on a spiritual level, and I placed it on a dry shelf within Horass’s view.

He thanked me without a joke. That tiny normal moment made the room stranger than any of his wars, because the bastard who had tried to kill me apparently cared whether a cheap souvenir drowned.

I wasn’t forgetting the fight. I was learning that keeping him alive meant dealing with a person afterward, including all the inconvenient pieces that didn’t fit the label I wanted to use.

I pushed his ammunition farther from the water and told him a guard would take custody of the weapons when help arrived. He agreed without pretending the arrangement made us partners, and I appreciated having one conversation tonight where nobody tried selling me a friendship as part of the service. The launcher stayed on the floor, well beyond his reach, while we waited.

The mechanic reached the far hatch and checked the cables from a safe distance. He called for another crew member, then swore when a fresh surge of water pushed through the damaged passage behind him.

The ship tilted hard enough to knock the koala charm from its shelf. I caught it against my coils while Horass braced his free hand against the floor, and the mechanic shouted that the lower compartment door had finally failed.