Tevun-Krus #44 - Sword & Planet

Z for Zorpia Zorr - A Short Story by @JeffreyVonHauger

Z for Zorpia Zorr

By Jeffrey Von Hauger

All Rights Reserved 2017

She finally remembered how she knew him, when he placed a dagger into her hand. The earliest memories of her childhood came flooding back. Her lips began to quiver and tears filled her eyes.

When she was four she was left in the custody of a bizarre collection of teachers from across the galaxy. The lizard man whom seemed so oddly familiar was Uncle Tongue-Tong, her first fencing instructor. Twenty two years had passed since she had seen him. He hadn't aged at all.

"Tongue-Tong?" A tear escaped and ran down her cheek crashing into her big dumbfounded smile.

Qubilah Zorpia Zorr was beautiful, everyone had told her so. She was half human and her brown eyes and dark complexion were considered enviable physical characteristics. Her thick curly hair was naturally dark brown with light sky blue highlights, a recessive trait from her father. She also got his agility and strength.

A smirk of a smile curled in the corner of Mox's snout. He shot his long thin serpentine forked tongue out twice in succession. "You mean you just now remember me."

She threw her arms around the lizard, who was roughly her height with stumpy legs and a slouching curved spine. He was a walking talking green Komodo Dragon in leather pants and a vest. She squeezed him with all her might.

"Uncle Tongue-Tong! I can't believe it's really you!"

Zorpia felt like she was five again. For a moment the recent events melted away, only to come rushing back.

"Wait, did my father send you?" She felt like a little girl in trouble needing to be rescued. This time she was older and the trouble was considerably bigger.

"Actually he didn't, but I called him the second I saw you. He, of course, asked if I would bring you home. I was going to wait until we crossed to the sector to ask, but given the situation, now is as good a time as any. Would you like a lift home?"

She looked around the hall they were standing in. It was covered in bodies. There were fourteen dead Klandar soldiers, eleven dead crewmen, and Bobby. Dear sweet Bobby, all around galactic bad boy and her on again, off again, pseudo boyfriend of the last eight months. She couldn't believe they got him. He was so damn tough.

"That shit, it made him happy to see me cry." Zorpia was talking to herself. "He'd love that I was crying over him, now. I was the only one that called him Bobby. Little Boy Blue."

Bobby Blue was known to the rest of the system as Blue Beard, the scourge of the sector and Captain of the Dead Barge. His twenty deck souped up galactic transport ship could leave most slick racers in its wake. It was famed for being a blood covered thruster machine. The outside was decorated in the corpses of those who stood in the way of whatever treasure the Barge was after. It was covered in gun turrets, painted like a rock-n-roll nightmare, and was half engines for a speedy get away and half storage vault full of plunder.

Bobby was a charismatic charmer and just the kind to attract the renegade daughter of planetary viceroy. It didn't bother her so much that he stole for a living, or that he was a famed smuggler, or even the bodies on the outside of his ship, which in truth were put there by his scumbag of a first mate.

When she met Bobby they instantly connected. She would have matted with him in time. He was the one, he smelled right, and now, he was gone.

Zorpia bent down and closed his crazed and still radiant blue eyes. His long blue beard was soaked with his own blood from the bio-disruptor blasts of the Klandar Police. He hated the fucking pigs. He killed every last one of them before he died.