Free Connection by Ken Pence Page A

obviously been spending their days practicing intimidating faces in a mirror and not in a practice ring. In addition – these goobers had never worked as a team. They faced me and both came at me at the same time. I moved to the side so both couldn’t get at me at once. I sidestepped at the last minute and openhanded struck one on the side of his neck as he went past. He went down – unconscious because he never even got to put his hands forward to break his fall. He looked like one of those old Airport movies with the plane coming in for an emergency landing and not quite making it.
     
    Mean looking guy two became a little more cautious and moved around like he was going to grapple with me. Not likely – I thrust kick just above the inside of his knee and that broke his stance. He threw his hands up for balance and I quickly jabbed the webbing of my hand into his throat. It wasn’t enough to damage his throat but his hands came back to grab there and I tossed him neatly into the bushes. It looked like I had been lucky and if you didn’t know – it looked like I didn’t do much of anything…that wasn’t the case. LeSlur got pretty angry that his men could be defeated so easily and he ordered five more of his men ‘to teach me a lesson’ according to Cassandra’s instant translation. I got serious as did those five.
     
    One had a knife and two had ‘saps.’ I did a skipping sidekick and broke the knee joint of the guy with the knife. He dropped the knife and started squalling while holding his knee. The two with the saps came at me at the same time and I slapped them alternately with the back of my wrist against their necks – one was knocked unconscious. The second recovered a little so I locked his arm, palm up and snapped it down over my knee. The crack was highly audible and he screamed. I jumped up and did a nice showy spinning backkick to take out number four. Number five pulled a pistol out and I leveraged that out of his hands before he could think, kneeing him in the balls. That worked almost as well here as on Earth and I heard a couple of onlookers groan. I took the liberated pistol and shoved it into number five’s mouth, knocking out several teeth in the process. I turned to face LeSlur. I had one hand behind number five’s collar and the other holding the gun in the thug’s mouth. “You want live?” I asked.
     
    LeSlur had lost his ‘angry as hell’ look and was well on his way to ‘holy shit’. I pulled the gun out of five’s mouth, took a look at it, stripped out its ammunition and tossed it back to ‘five’. LeSlur said we ought to go inside and talk. The five didn’t seem inclined to argue. I agreed with the customary head tilted back that I had learned indicated agreement. We went into a part of the house I had never seen. LeSlur sat down in a comfy chair and poured an amber liquid into a small glass. He indicated if I wanted one. I indicated ‘yes’, raised my glass, and said “Cheers.”
     
    LeSlur smiled and said “Cheer.” We sat sipping the fiery spirit for a few seconds. I swirled it around in my glass and held it up to the light. I put my nose over the glass and inhaled the rich aroma. I said ‘good’ in the local dialect and LeSlur looked pleased. I found out later that he distilled and aged the liquor on this very land. LeSlur looked serious for a moment, and asked if I could answer some of his questions. He knew I couldn’t speak well but thought he could find out some information.
     
    “Where are you from? …not from Xale?” he asked.
     
    “No…Earth. A long way away,” I said.
     
    “How far away?” he asked.
     
    I certainly didn’t want to tell him the exact location but since a sphere without a direction wouldn’t help much. I pointed to the light streaming in from the back window. “What word?” I had learned the question from the tutor.
     
    His brow furrowed and he said “Sunlight.” or its equivalent. Cassandra said it back to me