The Human Division 0.5 - After the Coup Read Online Free

tear the human a new one . Harry didn’t mind.
    The Korban approached and wheeled back to deliver a mighty blow, either to Harry’s midsection or genital region, whichever was closer. Harry responded by holding steady until the last second and then shot out his arm. The Korban’s forward motion smacked to standstill as Harry’s left palm met the little alien’s forehead. It was like stopping a particularly aggressive eight year old. Harry smirked.
    The Korban was not amused at what it registered as a condescending defense maneuver on Harry’s part; it burp-snarled its rage and prepared to shred Harry’s forearm. Harry reared back his right arm to slug the Korban, distracting it, and then quickly retracted his left palm, made a loose fist, and popped the Korban in the face. The Korban snorted in alarm; Harry took that moment to bring his right hook square into the Korban’s snout.
    The scales and plates of the Korban’s face puffed out as if the alien’s head was a flower traumatized into blossom; they settled back as the Korban collapsed onto the ground. Harry kept him on the ground by kicking it viciously every time it so much as puffed a plate. Eventually the judges got bored with this and blew their horn. Harry walked off the floor; the Korban’s second came and dragged him off.
    “I think you might have overdone the kicking,” Schmidt said, handing Harry his refilled water bottle.
    “You’re not the one whose kidneys were mashed into pâté in the first round,” Harry said. “I was just giving him what he gave me. He was still breathing at the end of the round. He’s fine. And now the contest is closer, which is what you wanted.” He drank.
    A door opened on the side of the gymnasium and a forklift-like contraption drove in, carrying what appeared to be a large kiddie pool full of water. The pool was set down near Harry; the forklift then retreated, to reappear a minute later with another pool, which it set down near Harry’s Korban competitor.
    Harry looked over at Schmidt, who shrugged. “For the water combat round?” He ventured.
    “What are we going to do, splash each other?” Harry asked.
    “Look,” Schmidt said, and pointed. The Korban competitor, now somewhat recovered, had stepped into his pool. The judge, standing again in the middle of the gym, motioned at Harry to step into his pool. Harry looked at Schmidt, who shrugged again. “Don’t ask me,” he said.
    Harry sighed and stepped into his own pool; the water, very warm, came up to his mid-thigh. Harry fought back the temptation to sit down in it and have a nice soak. He looked over again to Schmidt. “Now what do I do?” he asked.
    Schmidt didn’t respond. Harry waved his hand in front of Schmidt. “Hart. Hello?” he said.
    Schmidt looked over to Harry. “You’re going to want to turn around, Harry,” he said.
    Harry turned around, and looked at his Korban competitor, who was suddenly about a foot taller than he had been, and growing.
    What the hell? Harry thought. And then he saw it. The level of the water in the Korban’s pool was almost slowly falling; as it did, the scales and plates on the Korban were shifting, sliding against each other and separating out. Harry watched as the scales on the Korban’s midsection appeared to stretch apart and the join, as the plates that used to be underneath locked into place with the plates that used to be above, expanded by the water flooding into the Korban’s body from the pool. Harry eyes shifted from the Korban’s midsection to its hands, where its digits were expanding by rotating the overlapping scales, locking them together into a previously unknown dance of Fibonacci sequences.
    Harry’s mind thought of several things at once.
    First, he marveled at the absolutely stunning physiology of the Korbans on display here; the scales and plates covering their bodies were not simply integumentary but had to be structural as well, holding the shape of the Korban body in both