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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Bloodytearsofrage on 2024-10-02 11:38:39+00:00.

(Synopsis: Mercenary spacer Ophelia ‘Opie’ Walczak is in a bad mood and just wants to be left alone for a while. She meets a little girl on the run in a town with a dark secret. Opie’s bad mood is about to become everybody’s problem.)

(Note: this story is part of the Captain Hargrenn series, but can be read on its own.)

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Fuck it. I had to move. Had to. And if I was going to move, it would only be by scooting on my ass. So that’s what I did, sliding on my butt by pushing with my functional leg, trying to get a field of fire on the other windows. I was moving like a baby that hasn’t quite learned to crawl. Another of those fuzzy, half-shocked thoughts crossed my mind: I’d better watch out, moving around like a toddler. This was a planet run by pedos. They might get turned-on by the sight. It made me choke out a nasty laugh.

I caught a glimpse of a stalk-eyed head passing the side window furthest from the bar and fired at it, causing it to duck out of sight again. Then there was a jangle of shattering glass from the window behind me, near the bar, followed by the sounds of someone climbing through it. On my ass and crippled, I couldn’t turn fast enough to take proper aim before they could start shooting at me. I started to try and roll aside, my broken hip screaming thunderbolts of pain in protest at the move.

“Yah!” Harmony let out a high, birdlike cry that was followed by a crunch of glass breaking, then a whoosh of heat. Someone cursed loudly in a Gonhir accent.

I finally got turned far enough to see.

The Gonhir cop was on fire, orange flames licking at his side and pants. His carbine was dangling from its retractor-sling as he swatted frantically at himself to put the fire out, cursing and flailing, all three eyes wide with fear. And as I watched, Harmony took another of the improvised molotovs I’d left sitting on the bar and heaved it at him. This one she didn’t bother to light first as – smart girl! – the cop was already on fire. That one didn’t break against his body, but bounced off and shattered on the floor, leaving a puddle at his feet that soon caught. Harmony grabbed another and flung that one at him as well, with better result. It broke on his armor and the fire spread across his back.

The flames weren’t big enough or intense enough to actually kill the guy anytime soon, though I’m sure it hurt like hell. The smart thing would have been to deal with us, the greater dangers, first and then put the fire out. But very few people can be rational and dispassionate when they’re on fire. The natural sapient response to being set on fire is to immediately make not being on fire their number-one priority.

Natural, and understandable, but a mistake. I think he realized it, too, because he started to lift his weapon again, but by that time it was too late for him. I had him in my sights and I dropped him with a shot through the neck. Blew apart the spinal cord at the base of the skull. That’s lights out for basically every sapient.

I was actually aiming for his head, not his neck, but whatever.

That left the one cop at the opposite window. I turned – awkwardly – back there, spotting another peeping eyestalk and shooting at it to no effect.

“Officers down!” the voice attached to that eyestalk cried, presumably into his communicator. “Requesting urgent backup and med support! I’m pinned down! Churgaz is trapped on the roof with a leg wound! I think the lieutenant and the others are dead!”

Since that cop sounded like he was inclined to stay where he was, I put a few shots into window and wall in his general area to hopefully encourage that idea.

Harmony was staring at the dead officer a few feet away from her, whose clothes were still on fire. As was the puddle around his body. But the floor was tile and concrete, so there wasn’t much concern about the building going up from it.

“I killed him. I killed him,” Harmony was repeating to herself. “I killed him. Oh dear, I killed him. I’ve killed somebody. Oh dear.”

“Kid!” I croaked, making her look over at me. “You didn’t kill anybody.”

“I did,” she insisted. “I didn’t want to, but I did. I had to. I set him on fire and–”

“And he didn’t die from that.” I stared as hard at her as I could manage through the haze of pain and shock and booze. “I killed him. You set him on fire. I shot him. That’s why he’s dead, okay? Because I shot his ass. You have nothing to feel guilty about.” It felt important that she understand that. That I was the one who was tasked with bringing evil fates to evil people. That my psyche and soul would be no worse off for having some new bloodstains on them, unlike an innocent little girl’s. That’s what I was here for, dammit. As far as I could tell, it’s why God let a rotten bitch like me exist. “You just set him on fire as a distraction, right? And a damn good one. Well done, kid.”

Either my words or the sight of me seemed to jolt Harmony out of the state she was sliding into. Her eyes went huge and she pointed at me. “Your hand!” she cried. “Your fingers!”

“Yeah. My… hip and my everything else, too. Oh, fuck! I can’t…” I stopped and gathered myself through the jagged stabs of pain. “I can’t get up. Sorry, but… I think… I think we’re close to the end, here, kid.” I started scooting myself with my good leg again, trying to get my back up against the bar. The movement left a smear of fresh blood like a snail trail behind me. I was lucky, if you want to call it that, that there wasn’t a lot more of it. Human tissue tends to cauterize from blaster wounds. With how much tissue it felt like I was missing, I’d be at the point of bleeding out already if not for that. Can’t tourniquet a hip, after all. I could tie off my mangled hand, I supposed, but I doubted that the blood loss from that would be enough to make a difference, all things considered. It wasn’t like I had a long day ahead of me, or anything.

Harmony looked out the front window. I was too low to be able see down the street anymore, but she still could. “There are police coming up the street now, around that car you shot,” she reported. “They’re in little groups, ducking behind things and into buildings. They move like they’re scared. But they’re still coming.”

The Gonhir cop’s eyestalk poked above the windowsill again and I took another shot at the nosy bastard. Missed again, but heard him yelp as half-melted glass fragments sprayed into his eye.

Harmony had come around the bar to stand beside me. I heard her pick something up off the bartop. “Miss Opie?” she asked, voice quiet and a little unfocused-sounding, like her mind was on other things. “Do you want me to throw a firebomb at that guy?”

“I thought you didn’t want to?”

“I don’t want to,” she agreed. “But the universe doesn’t seem to care what I want. So if I need to do it, I’ll do it.”

I nodded. “Then, please.”

Harmony lit the paper mat I’d tied around a bottle of some off-brand Jixavan methanol moonshine and heaved the bottle through the shattered window. It was a pretty good throw, landing not far from where the cop had ducked away. And the little ‘yah’ sound she made as she threw it was kind of adorable, too. A weird thing to think, given the circumstances, but there you go. It hit me that if I’d had a kid and they had turned out like Harmony, that I would have been pretty okay with that.

There was a whoosh of fire and high-pitched Gonhir curses from the other side of the window. I caught movement, the curve of a back and a single eyestalk as the cop made a break for it, hunched over. I fired at what I could see, but missed as he slipped out of view again. He fired off a couple of shots as he ran, missing well high and by some miracle not blowing out the last of the front windows.

“He ran behind that police car,” Harmony reported, referring to the one in the parking lot. “I don’t think I can throw that far.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I told her. “He’ll keep.”

She nodded. “The rest of the police stopped moving while you were shooting, but now they’re coming on again.”

Yeah, I expected that. Like I told Harmony, we were getting close to the end, now.

There was a chirp from the bartop, the sound of a holocomm being activated. But it wasn’t Chief Stamvra this time, who I assumed had no more to say to me. “Do you have any idea,” a shrill, frustrated voice demanded, “how much trouble and expense you have caused? I’m out a hundred thousand standards out of my own pocket just to keep this shit-show running!” It was our old friend Melusine Doucet, the Boss Bitch. I couldn’t see her image from where I was sitting, but Harmony turned to look at it, expression closed and unreadable. Not afraid. Not anything. Just watching.

“I’ve had to pay Chief Stamvra fifty thousand extra and call in multiple favors just to keep him from ordering you blasted out of existence!” Boss Bitch went on. I could just imagine the sneer on her smug face and felt a pang of regret that I wouldn’t live long enough to wipe it off. "I’ve had to offer another fifty as a reward to see that you get brought to me alive and unharmed, Harmony. My own money! Do you hear me? My own! But, oh, you will pay for it later, trust me! Mr. Stejni will take great pleasure in breaking you to his will. And …

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