Must be this Tall to Ride, Part Three

Artino looked up at the Altairian with the gun and realized that he was tall for one of his kind. Maybe even three and a half feet even without the head scarf. He'd noticed so little about him before but now he, like everyone on the bus, was very interested in what might be going on inside the shooter's mind.

Even the man who he'd shot was looking up at him, his eyes glazed over with the pain of his wound but with his brow furrowed in confusion. The idea that a Stump might have shot him, might have hurt him, seemed to confuse him as much as anything.

For a moment Artino wondered if the tears running down the human's face were as much to do with that quandary as with the spreading pool of blood. He pushed that thought away though. The only thing to worry about now was trying to salvage the situation and possibly save his own life, as well as those of his family back home.

“My name is Artino.”

The words felt flat and stilted, even in the deep baritone of his kind, but he armed them with every bit of friendliness he could. The other Altairian looked at him again then and said, “I cannot tell you my name but you may call me Fighter.”

“Fighter.” Artino let the word roll off of his tongue and hoped that his nervousness was well hidden. He had never seen the blood of a human in person and the stench was overwhelming to his sensitive nostrils. “Why is today going to be a glorious day?”

He immediately regretted the words as he saw the face of the Fighter light up in enthusiasm.

“Today will be a glorious day for many reasons.” He paused and Artino could see his eyes narrowing in a fit of rage as his four shoulders arched backward. “Today will be the day that the Freedom Fighters of Altair show how strong we are and how strong we will be.”

And suddenly every person on the bus, human and alien, locked eyes on the one calling himself Fighter, searching in his eyes for a vague hope that the day might not end with all of their deaths.

“Listen well, Whistles.” The derogatory word for humans came out with such violence from the Fighter's face that Artino started. He'd never heard anyone use the word in the presence of one from Earth, though he imagined they all knew what the word meant. “You have taken everything we have and given nothing back. Our technology, which we offered in peace, and our culture. You mix our homeland's music with the horrible noises you call entertainment and you have fattened yourselves off the plant altering techniques we brought, but what have we gotten in return?”

He paused for effect and waved the gun in air above him before noticing that the bus was slowing down and that the driver was looking back at him as well. The barrel of the pistol came across the side of her head then and the pierce of her scream followed the small spray of blood to the back of her seat. The Fighter though, seemed to have calculated the pressure of his strike and she continued to drive, though whimpering all the while.

“We scrub your toilets and we build your terrible junk products which are too dangerous for your own weak bodies. We work for you for nothing and always under the fear that we might offend. You have turned us into slaves, but no more.”

Artino noticed the blue and red lights then, circling the bus. It seemed the driver had pushed the emergency alarm after all, though the Fighter seemed to ignore it.

“But now, now we shall--”

The man on the floor interrupted him then, his words falling from his lips as gasps of breath but loud enough to stop the Altairian.

“You won't do shit. You're just a bunch of weak willed little piss ants.” The man took a deep breath and tried to lift himself against one of the seats, only to fall back into the puddle of blood beneath him with a grunt.

“You dumb little fucks couldn't do anything with that tech anyway, dying fast as you do. We've done you a favor and if any of these assholes in the back of the bus had any balls they'd take you down now. What's the world coming to that we're letting goddamn Stumps talk to us like this. . .”

The Fighter lifted the pistol then and pointed it toward the forehead of the man, barely three feet away. The man's eyes were not on it though; he examined his knee, seemingly for the first time as he trailed off and the tall Antairian tensed.

Between his gun and the body of the human suddenly stood the body of Artino, as surprising to himself as to any other on the bus.

“No. This is not the way to do it.”