Copyright J.B. Norman
Watching the rest of the Kraken Special Squad be overwhelmed by the superior numbers and firepower of the Ledu Security Forces, Lieutenant Crem, decides to salvage to mission. As long as she gets the Princess to Corona Regis, the mission will be a success, even if every other Kraken operative ends up stunned and hauled off to jail on Ledu.
Besides, the Kraken Special Squad doesn’t just have the best mercenaries in the galaxy. Their Legal department is one of the best, too. The captured operatives will be out on bail by the end of the next Galactic Standard Day.
Taking a moment to honour the sacrifice of the other operatives, Lieutenant Crem, ejects the spent battery of her stun rifle, inserts a new one, and activates her jetpack to chase after Kathryn, Amarantha, and Dunstella, jetting off down the passage and around the corner.
“Is that a jetpack?” Kathryn groans as she hears the roaring of the thrusters drawing nearer.
“I want one,” Dunstella declares.
Meanwhile, the Ledu Security Forces are methodically clearing out the Crystal Labyrinth of the Kraken Special Squad in a barrage of stun bolts, the occasional snowball, and even the odd flipper-slap.
Even Private Parker, Praetor Pendleton P. Palumbo notes proudly, is conducting himself admirably. He decides there and then that he’s going to recommend the Private for a medal.
He then promptly wheels towards one of the Kraken operatives and with a flipper-slap, the Praetor knocks the stun rifle out of the hands of one of the Kraken Operatives, before bowling him over and looming triumphantly over him.
“Quack-honk-quack,” the Praetor asks the Kraken Special Squad, pinning him to the ice with a webbed foot.
“Huh?” the Kraken operative asks, not being fluent in Penguinian.
The Praetor’s robotic assistant appears at the Praetor’s shoulder.
“Hrenk,” the Praetor says, nodding towards the Kraken operative.
“Praetor Palumbo,” the Praetor’s assistant robot tells the operative. “Is wondering if you would currently consider yourself lucky.”
“Hrenk-honk quack-quack,” the Praetor continues.
“For, you see,” the robot continues. “He has lost track of the number of stun shots he fired.
“Honk-quack-hrenk,” he says, levelling his stun rifle.
“As you are no doubt well aware, the standard capacity of a stun rifle’s battery is six shots. And you are currently trying to remember if he hired five stun shots or the full six.”
The Praetor narrows his eyes down at the Kraken Operative.
“Honk.”
“Unfortunately,” the robot says. “The Praetor cannot remember, either.”
“Quack-Hrenk. Honk.”
“Therefore,” the robot continues, “the Praetor requests that you ask yourself how lucky you feel right at this very moment. Also, he thinks you’re a punk.”
“You don’t have the guts, bird,” the Kraken operative growls defiantly up at the Praetor.
“Quack,” the Praetor says with a shrug.
“The Praetor would like to remind you that he did warn you. Also, he still thinks you’re a punk,” the robot explains.
The Praetor pulls the trigger of his stun rifle, firing one last stun bolt that leaves the Kraken operative groaning and senseless. He ejects the spent battery from his stun rifle.
“Honk,” he notes.
“No, Praetor Palumbo,” the robot agrees. “He clearly wasn’t very lucky today.”
So, I’m noticing that it’s easier to write non-lethal violence in Sci Fi than in Fantasy, because you can have everybody shooting everyone with laser guns, but then you can just add that they’re clearly non-lethal stun lasers than don’t actually hurt that much.
You can kinda-sorta do that in Fantasy with magic, but there’s no real way to non-lethally subdue somebody with a sword…
Also, yes, that was a big penguin doing the “Do I Feel Lucky?” scene from Dirty Harry.
If you’ve enjoyed my content, please consider supporting me through Ko-fi or Patreon, or through Paypal by scanning the QR code below:
Follow Realmgard and other publications of Emona Literary Services™ below:
Subscribe to the Emona Literary Services™ Substack newsletter here.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The author prohibits the use of content published on this website for the purposes of training Artificial Intelligence technologies, including but not limited to Large Language Models, without express written permission.
All stories published on this website are works of fiction. Characters are products of the author’s imagination and do not represent any individual, living or dead.
The realmgard.com Privacy Policy can be viewed here.
Realmgard is published by Emona Literary ServicesTM
