Author’s Note: This is the first chapter of a novel following three previous short stories. Although this story stands alone, you would understand more if you read the short stories beforehand. They are called “The Shadow,” “Ayos” and “Space Travelers”.

P.S. Do you think I should put the three short stories in as chapters in front of the novel, or leave it the way it is now?

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"Some cats don’t need to be large to cause a great deal of damage."

                                                ~ Aishi, of Val Mora’sInhuman Slayer

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            Sarel sat down despairingly on a cold metal bench inside “The Endless Star,” the roughest – but cheapest – tavern on Tion.

            It turned out she had hitchhiked her way into a financial quagmire. Tion was an ore-mining planet, and that meant the only people here who had jobs were cargo pilots and those who catered to them. There were almost no openings for a hitchhiker hoping to earn enough to buy herself a ship, especially when there were many much more qualified than her living in the street.

            There were almost no rides off Tion either. Most of the ore was exported off one of Tion’s moons, where there was no atmosphere. The only ships that came down to Tion were those with perishable goods, like the pilot who had brought Sarel here. But most of those pilots never even spent a night on Tion before picking up an ore contract and returning to their shipping. Apparently they had all heard how horrible it was to be stranded on Tion.

            Sarel sighed and pressed the button on the tiny metal box on her table. Each table at the tavern had one, in an effort to imitate the higher-class restaurants where you could merely speak your order into the box and have a waiter or waitress come out and serve you. At more expensive restaurants the result was efficiency; at The Endless Star, the result was orders going to the wrong table and missing food.

            The tiny red button glowed for a second, then went out. Sarel cursed and hit the button again, but it remained off. She would much have preferred to eat at any tavern but this one, with its grungy tables, disgusting food and irritable waiters, but she needed to make her money last as long as possible. She walked across the crowded tavern, trying not to bump anyone who looked dangerous, and placed her hand on the panel that opened the doors to the kitchen.

            The kitchen was even worse than the exterior. It looked as though it had not been given a through cleaning in months, and the chefs themselves looked the same. Sarel tried not to watch as they prepared the food; after all, she was probably going to have to eat it afterwards.

            A burly man in an apron waving a huge spoon appeared to be in charge. Sarel walked calmly over to him and tapped him on shoulder.

            The chef whirled around and looked down at her. “What do ya want, girlie?” he yelled above the noise of the cooking chefs. “You ain’t allowed in here.”

            “My receiver’s broken,” she tried to yell back, “I can’t order my food.”

            “Jus’ move to another table!” he said, taking her by the shoulder and guiding her to the exit.

            Sarel tried to explain how there were no tables, but the chef just growled and pushed her out of the kitchen doors, slamming them shut behind her.

            Sarel would have liked nothing better than to pull out her tenra, but she knew it was useless. She turned on her heel – and walked straight into a waitress.

            The meal the woman was carrying dropped onto the person seated behind her as she and Sarel tripped and fell. The man leapt into the air with a howl as the Soup of the Day poured down his pants, and glared down at the waitress. His tablemates howled with laughter.

            “You!” he snarled at the waitress, “What in the world do you think you’re doing?”

            The waitress swallowed. “I apologize, sir, it was an accident-”

            “An accident! Do you have any idea who I am?” he asked, reaching for his weapon.

            The woman cowered. Obviously, he had a reputation. “I swear, sir, it wasn’t my fault!”

            “Then whose was it?” the man asked, his laser halfway out of its holder. His tablemates’ laughter rung in his ears.

            “Mine,” Sarel answered for the waitress, picking herself up from where she had fallen under a table. “It was my fault.”

            The man looked her up and down, then snickered. “You’re a little small to make such a mistake, aren’t you?”

            Sarel felt a little bit of anger flare inside her. Was he insulting her fighting ability? “I think I that I could easily take someone of your size,” she told him proudly, then smirked. “You don’t look like you could move too fast.”

            The man turned slightly redder in the face from her reference to his rather large stomach, but it looked like she had made his friends angry as well. Three of them stood up and walked next to the man. “Listen, you don’t want to fight, do you?” said a smooth black-haired one, calm as a snake. “Just pay the 20 Issaics for the meal you destroyed, and we’ll let you off the hook.”

            Sarel flushed red, anger burning inside her. A meal like that would not have even cost three Issaics; there was no way she was going to pay them twenty. Not that she had the money to give, anyway. “No,” she told them flatly, trying to be fair without being taken advantage of. “I will only pay you what it was worth.”

            The black-haired one looked at her with innocence she could see straight through. “That was what it was worth, wasn’t it, miss?” he asked the waitress, who was still too afraid to pick herself up off the floor.

            The woman froze, and glanced back and forth between the slender Sarel and the four, heavily armed men. She glanced up at the black-haired one and nodded weakly.

            Anger boiled inside Sarel. Anger at the waitress who would compromise her morals because of fear, anger at the men who thought it was okay to rough up innocent people, and anger at a world that fostered these kinds of people. That anger turned into a boiling ball just below her heart.

            The first man watched the fiery-haired girl in surprise. Was it just him or did she seem . . . bigger, larger, fiercer than before? He gripped his laser uncomfortably. Perhaps they had picked on the wrong person . . .

            Suddenly Sarel launched herself forward, huge claws that had not been there before tearing rents in the metal table. She hung vertically on the wall, then turned her head towards the scattering thugs and hissed, baring her long fangs. Someone screamed, and her vision pierced easily through the darkness to where two bouncers were moving quickly out of the shadows, keeping their distance and firing their lasers. It was the dumbest thing they could have done; Sarel heard cries as their lasers did more damage to the tavern’s patrons than she had. One shot hit her in the chest, but fizzled quickly as it hit the lintheil she wore over her clothes.

            For a second she stood there, crouched vertically on the wall, as a tiny bit of Sarel seeped through her anger and she realized what she had done. Then she was off at a blinding speed, her tail helping her keep her balance as she fled the pandemonium she had created through a small door used by the tavern’s chefs to dispose of garbage.

            The alleyway outside was dark and shadowy, but much to her panic her eyes cut straight through the darkness as if it were lit by a light only she could see. She ran a short distance down and leaned against the wall, breathing hard as her tail protested being crushed against the wall. She closed her eyes and tried to calm down, trying to catch the fragments of herself that were still bent on the destruction of the four thugs inside the tavern. Her own breathing filled her ears.

            After a moment she took a deep breath and glanced down at herself. No claws. No tail. No fangs. She breathed a sigh of relief. It was as if it had never happened.

            Suddenly there was a commotion at the end of the alleyway as one of the chefs poked his head out of the doorway. “There she is!” he cried, pointing down the alleyway at Sarel. The roar of a mob answered him.

            Sarel ran as she felt her tail swish behind her.