Am’^ktt exited a decrepit electric bus and looked around nervously.
While poor himself, even he didn’t live in places like this.
Clutching his tattered robe around himself, he warily walked through the run-down buildings, many of which still showed damage from the ruinous civil war that had recently gripped his nation just before they were “saved” by the Federation, and the shanties built from the rubble.
He expected to be robbed at any moment.
However, the locals paid him little notice save for the prostitutes, some of which were disturbingly young, and dealers of any of a wide range of intoxicants.
Ignoring their offers of temporary bliss, he pressed onward.
He wasn’t here for pleasure, quite the contrary, in fact.
He pulled out a scrap of pasteboard box he had in his pocket. On it was a scrawled map.
“There’s the old fountain,” he muttered. “Take a right...”
He paused.“Take a right” sent him down a dark alley he did not want to go down.
Steeling himself, he stepped into the shadows expecting trouble at any moment.
It didn’t take many moments.
“Whatchoo doin’ here milk-breath?” a lean and vicious Burtl hissed as a knife gleamed in the dim light.
“I… I’m looking for D^kv’th Salvage?” he stammered.
“What for?”
“I...”
He looked down.
“I want to spend a hundred credits...”
“Do ya now?” the thug grinned, revealing jagged and broken teeth, some completely rotted away from kt’ha.
He pulled out a beat-up military radio handset.
“Got a customer fer ya,” he barked.
“Scan him,” a gruff voice replied.
With a scarred arm bearing a military tattoo, the thug pulled out a new scanner and swept Am’^ktt with it.
“He’s clean,” the thug said into the radio, “No weapons, no wires.”
“Send him back.”
The thug pointed at a neon sign down the alley.
“In there,” he said.
***
Am’^ktt blinked in the harsh light of naked florescent tubes as he stood in a surprisingly clean and well-ordered workshop.
Inside were several nasty-looking males and females, all holding strange weapons consisting of two tubes, one larger with one smaller inside it.
Sitting on a barber’s throne placed behind a desk was a muscular Burtl with most of the fur missing from his tattooed arms.
Am’^ktt tried not to stare at the skull and blades on his shoulder, signifying that he was a former death squad member.
A chill ran down his spine and all the way down his tail as he realized that everyone else in that room were probably members too.
“What do you want, milky?” their leader asked.
“I… I heard that I… that I could ‘spend a hundred credits’ here.”
The Burtl pulled out a Kv^gar’a, the signature blade of the enforcers of the old regime.
Am’^ktt let out a little whine of fear.
“An’ just where did you hear that?”
“I… I was told to say that V^sh’ka sent me?”
The Burtl shrugged.
“So, do you have the credits?”
“I… I have two hundred, all that I have.”
“I don’t give a shit. Put them on the desk.”
His hands shaking, Am’^ktt put a prepaid card on the table. The Burtl took the card and inserted it into a transactor.
He shrugged and nodded.
One of his squad walked into the back and returned a moment later with a box.
“You know how to use ‘em?” the Burtl asked.
Am’^ktt, still shaking, shook his head.
The Burtl pulled out two pieces of pipe and a spent shotshell from his desk.
“You take the smaller pipe and put the shell in it like this,” he said as he slid in the empty shell. “Then you put the small pipe in the bigger one.”
He slid the two pipes together.
“Then all you have to do is,” he said as he slammed the two pipes together, “that. It’s going to kick like a mother’s twitch, so be ready for that.”
“A… and it will… you know...”
“Oh yeah,” the Burtl grinned. “I wish we had these mother twitchers in the war.”
The squad chuckled and hissed darkly.
“Now take your box and get lost.”
Am’^ktt grabbed the box and rushed from the room.
***
The next morning Am’^ktt knelt at a small shrine in his sparsely furnished apartment and lit a single stick of incense.
“I might not be returning, darling,” he said to a picture surrounded by a woven grass wreath. “I love you.”
After saying a short prayer, he rose and left.
***
Later, a well-dressed Burtl looked up from her desk as a thin-looking fellow walked into her office.
She smiled a predatory little smile.
“Welcome,” she said cheerfully, “Are you interested in a labor contract? We have multiple offerings across the entire Federation!”
“Sh^ev’al,” he said quietly, “Do you remember her?”
“I’m sorry?” the Burtl replied.
“She came here looking for work, and you ‘helped’ her.”
“Oh!” she said brightly as she reached for her fancy expensive tablet, “Do you want me to check to see if there is a contract with the same company?”
“She was only sixteen,” he said, his voice choking with emotion, “sixteen...”
“Oh, I see,” the Burtl said icily, “It is clearly stated in the… AAA—“
Am’^ktt whipped out one set of pipes from underneath his robes, thrust them towards the woman, and viciously slammed them together.
BANG
She fell from her seat, shredded, and partially disemboweled by explosive buckshot.
He dropped the pipes and pulled out the other set as he kicked open the doorway leading to the back office…
***
Am’^ktt sat chained to a railing set into the wall of an interrogation chamber as two uniformed Burtl walked in.
One of them set a crude slam-fire shotgun on the table in front of him.
“Where did you get this?”
Am’^ktt simply smiled and said nothing.
“Perhaps you do not realize the situation you are in,” the officer said firmly. “You committed two counts of premeditated violence with the intent to kill WITH successful completion. You also used a class ultimate prohibited destructive device each time. You will hang for this.”
Am’^ktt smiled and said nothing.
“Who gave you the shot shells?” his partner demanded as he slammed his paws on the desk.
“A saint,” Am’^ktt replied. “A kind deliverer of justice.”
He leaned back in the chair.
“And feel free to hang me,” he smiled, “I died the same time my daughter did, and I have laid down my life to ensure that the people responsible will never hurt another parent’s child ever again.”
He smiled once more.
“It’s a fair trade and one you had better get used to,” he said calmly. “It’s only a hundred credits, after all. When one is no longer concerned about future expenses, it’s quite the bargain.”
One of the officers glared at him…
The other one, however, gave him a little smile.
***
“There has been another incidence of Terran gun violence,” the anchorburtl said that evening, “This time, the uptown office of Gk^los’to Labor Solutions was attacked, resulting in the deaths of Hel^k’sa, the manager of the location, and her Federation associate, a Kaarst named Lagu.”
A slightly blurred image of the crime scene appeared on the screen behind her.
“One Am’^ktt has claimed responsibility for the killings stating that they were retribution for the inhumane treatment and death of his sixteen-year-old daughter.”
Am’^ktt’s peacefully smiling face appeared.
“Documents found on his person that he claims were copied from the computers at that location strongly imply intentional misrepresentation of the conditions and full terms of the labor agreements issued by Gk^los’to Labor Solutions, in particular those issued on behalf of the Kaarst. The network has reached out to Gk^los’to, but they have not responded to a request for a statement or interview. The Burtl department of labor has stated that they are initiating an investigation concerning Am’^ktt’s claims. However, they wish to stress that his actions were deplorable and that he will face the fullest extent of the law.”
The reporter smirked.
“They also state that his actions were completely unnecessary and that they take all complaints seriously and will investigate any and all possible violations.”
The image changed to a shipping container absolutely packed with ammunition and weapons.
“In a related story, a shipping container with several hundred Terran firearms and thousands of rounds of ammunition was seized by the Agency of Arms, Intoxicants, and Luxuries. The intended recipient of the shipment is, at this time, unknown. This state-run network would like to congratulate the brave agents involved in the interdiction of a completely unguarded shipping container and have every confidence that this will stop the flow of weapons into our peaceful and just society...”
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