Author: Majoki

Typically, the killing began around this time. Staff would be silently cleaning up, clearing the tables, floors, walls and rafters of the celebration’s detritus. Then you’d hear excited chitter, then the hum of lancers charging, more chittering, and then skittering as tell-tale bolts of orange flared and the screaming began.

Just another night at the Tom-Tom. Why the Chatra liked it here, I’ll probably never know, but they did. And as the club’s manager, my job was clear: What the Chatra liked, they got. And the Chatra liked to party.

Every night, dozens of the waspish creatures would come in to celebrate another day of domination. Who knows what part of my planet they’d subdued and subsumed that day, but it was always worth a victory lap. As in lapping up copious quantities of the potent swill we’d been trained to provide them.

Tonight would be no different. That’s the thing you learn about being a subjugated species. You’re on the periphery, just a twitch away from becoming a target. It was a hard, hard lesson to learn, and I want so badly to share that lesson with my staff.

They are new to this. So very new to this. But I can’t tell them what I know is coming at this late hour, even as the Chatra start chittering excitedly, even as their lancers begin to hum. I can’t tell my staff because I’ve already locked myself in my fortified office.

The Tom-Tom has always been a club known for its festive nightlife. Maybe that’s what makes it so easy to hire an entirely new staff every day. Even as a subjugated species, we like the idea of throwing a good party.

Problem is: the Chatra have a conqueror’s sense of merry-making, and after the party, we’re always the evening’s real entertainment.