Refakira Kurosawfly bleakly stirred the air with his four membranous wings, looking deep into his teacup miserably. Even when his waitress rotated her head with interest, as if to take him in with every facet of her compound eyes, he didn't look up, nor appear to notice. She stretched, all the way up her legs, to the ends of all four wings and even the sawlike ovipositors she would one day use to slit open a plant and deposit her eggs, and still Refakira didn't appear to notice her. She smiled, and moved in closer, slipping around behind him. His katana and wakazashi she dared not touch - nor his person - but hanging from his belt there was a slender purse. Perhaps it had once been fatter, but it would hold enough, perhaps, for her to pay for a new frock, to replace the threadbare one she wore. She reached out silently, carefully....
A brilliant arc: Sunlight on steel. The waitress gasped, too shocked to scream: Refakira stood facing her, his katana gleaming in the sun where its arc had intercepted the path of her forelimb: Where he had stopped it, impossibly, in mid-swing. The chitin of her forelimb's exoskeleton, still unharmed, rested against the deadly edge of the blade. She dared not move it; she dared not move at all. Another arc of light flickered, and the katana was back in its sheath, and only then did the waitress dare to breathe once more. Quietly, Refakira warned her, "It were better not to approach a samurai from a blind side - especially when he seems distracted."
Numbly, the waitress nodded, and Refakira looked down to the earthen floor and added with bitterness and misery, "Even if he is a ronin."
Another glinting arc of light, smaller, shimmering, and a rolling clink. A single coin, fair pay for the tea and a not-insubstantial tip, settled against the teacup. The wind of the samurai's passage rippled the threadbare fabric of her frock; the doorway darkened, and then was light again. He was gone. The waitress looked to the floor in shame.
The ronin traveled on across the world of Kholdan, alone in his freedom, his independence of mind and action on a world of colony drones. Yet a time came when he was needed, not by any single colony but by the whole of the Klackon people. So there came a day when he arrived in Starport City, to observe the launch of the first functioning star cruiser ever built in the star system Kholdan.
He was no longer alone. Along with Refakira came the greatest and most self-aware warriors of the planet's diverse cultures and peoples. They were the best of an awfully bad lot, it must be admitted, but at least they were the best. Only seven in all were fit to serve the people of Kholdan - in the sense of "sufficiently capable of independent thought to so much as pilot a scout ship" - including himself.
It would have to be enough. The Klackon people had faced bandits from time to time from among the stars, and the Psilons, Silicoids, Meklar, and Alkari were ready to sweep down again, steal the hard work of their pincers, and slay them all. Once more the Klackons needed a ruler to guide them: Someone independent of their lockstep castes; a warrior without a lord. And so they turned to Refakira Kurosawfly, and named him RBO-30: The 30th Ronin Bug Overseer of Kholdan.
_______________
Next: To the Stars!
