Soul of a Gambler

Part XVI - "Aces Over Kings"

Comes now the showdown. Such a battle was the apotheosis of all showdowns, a final high-noon stand between the remainders of opposing forces. Jax had been here before, and he would be here again. Something about this time, though. Something about standing here in defiance of the Serpent gave this moment more gravity to the outlaw than any other time he had stood in opposition to anything. Be it a member of the Blackwatch, a military tribunal more like a kangaroo-court than anything else, or even the doctor who had to deliver to him the news that his mother had succumbed to her injuries many years ago.

They lined up single file behind the rock beast, who crouched just slightly to expand his form enough that any incoming bullets might be deflected by the hardness of his body. Jax readied his weapon, and Arna slammed a fist onto the rewired keypad. The door screamed with a harsh hiss of air and the hand wheel on the blast door spun wildly as the long locks retracted against their will. 

The doors slid open into a hail of gunfire, savage automatic shots from weapons that sounded more like heavy pistols than the types of weapons the Krazoran soldiers had been toting. Rocky charged in with all the ferocity of a bull wearing red-tinted glasses, and the other two struggled to keep up behind him. 

When Rocky broke left, Jax was able to get a good look at the Krazoran formation he was dealing with. They were evenly matched, two individuals in black motorcycle-style armor and thin blacked-out visors stood at either side of the Shipmaster in his dress uniform that could have been mistaken for Blackwatch had it not been for the deep violet shoulder boards. All three stood in the open around the spherical reactor core, the only cover afforded to them was the heavy shielding around the uniform bundles of wire that transmitted the power from the core to the transformers at the perimeter of the room.

Rocky barreled toward the group, and knocked one of the armored troops into the air with a hammerfist-uppercut to their stomach. They made a noise like the air being squeezed from a broken whoopie cushion into a running fan as they flew, and when they bounced off the metal walkway and into the guardrail Arna prepared to finish them, but it was Jax who took the shot. 

His weapon did less so the type of hole-punching kinetic damage that most firearms are known for, and more so simply made the downed combatant's head into a thing of the past. Shards of bone, rendered plastic, and glass flew into the air like shrapnel, and thick dark red fluid doused the area with a radius of a dinner plate. The projectile went bouncing wildly in the enclosed space, and everyone with a pulse dropped to the floor. 

The Krazorans shouted at one another in their backwards tongue, and Arna got the first syllable of what could certainly have gone on to be an award winning string of curses before Jax tugged her down. Rocky took the hits, barely even cognizant that he was losing chunks of himself in puffs of rust-colored dust from the rapid ricochets of the wild piece of shaped metal. 

Rocky bore down on the downed Krazorans as Four-Arms cried out with a wet screech when the bullet utterly severed his right-lower arm at the elbow before finally coming to rest in the far wall. There would be time for Jax to debate the part he played on reducing his new friend down to Three-Arms. Jax pushed past him as the multi-appendaged alien tried to staunch the profuse bleeding of the turquoise wound. The outlaw took aim, one eye closed, at where was once two vulnerable Krazorans. 

"Rocky? What the hell, where'd they go!?"

No reply, not that he expected one.

"Jax! Jax! Four-Arms is hurt!" Arna shouted, inspecting the mangled flesh that hung loosely from his lower-right stump. 

"Where did they go! They were here, now they aren't Arna, there were two!"

"Shut. Up." Four-Arms managed to choke through heavy breaths.