Standard Fanfic Disclaimer that wouldn't last ten seconds in a court of law. These aren't my characters, other than the Masonites and the bad guys. Based on characters and situations from Captain Simian and the Space Monkeys. I've borrowed them for, um, typing practice. Yeah, that's it, typing practice. I will return them to their original copyright holders relatively unharmed (or at least suitably bandaged). years. This story was originally published in the fanzine Diamonds and Dynamite #3, published by Agent with Style Press.
Captain Simian and the Space Pirates
Based on characters and situations from Captain Simian and the Space Monkeys
Written by Susan M. M.
dedicated to Mason R. Gavin
Long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away …
(Oops, wrong story.)
Light-years from a small blue-green planet named Earth, Captain Charlie Simian commanded the Primate Avenger and his crew of space monkeys and apes on their never-ending quest for truth, justice, and the search for bananas.
Charlie swung hand over hand along the pipes hanging from the ship's ceiling. (Captain Simian never walked if he could swing.) When he reached the bridge, he jumped down, turned a double-somersault, and landed in the command chair. "Heads up, crew. I just got the word on sub-space radio that there are pirates in the area."
"Sheesh! Ain't Two-Brain enough?" Spydor , the mercenary flim-flam artist monkey, complained in a thick New York accent.
"No one said being a galactic hero was easy," Charlie pointed out.
"Personally, I would like to be a little less heroic and a lot better paid," Spydor muttered.
"Captain, we are picking up a distress signal," Shao-Lin announced.
Charlie turned to face his first officer. "What is it, Goddess?"
Shao-Lin frowned. Although it was true she had been raised as a sacred temple monkey in Asia, revered as a living goddess by the human priests who waited on her hand and foot, she disliked it when Captain Simian used her title as a nickname. Charlie's tone was usually … disrespectful.
Dr. Splitz, the orang-utan engineer, explained, "Our scanners have picked up a lifepod. The distress signal is emitting from it."
"We must try to rescue them," Gor spoke slowly, as always, with enough room between his words for Spydor to recite a dirty limerick or for Dr. Splitz to relate one of Stephen Hawking's theorems.
"Wait a sec! Didn't the captain just say there were pirates 'round here? What if it's a trap?" Spydor demanded.
"To fail to succor life in danger would be detrimental to our karma," Shao-Lin pointed out.
"Could be a decoy," Charlie admitted. "What do the sensors say? Any life-forms on board, or is it just an automatic signal?"
"There are two life-readings aboard the pod," Dr. Splitz said, after checking his instruments.
"Get a tractor beam on them," Charlie ordered. "Bring them on board."
Dr. Splitz bounced once. His hair frizzed, and his voice changed from the erudite accent of a European scholar to the twang of a good ole boy as he shifted into his alter ego, Splitzey. "Can do, Cap. We'll reel 'em in like a catfish."
The tractor beam seized the lifepod and gently pulled it toward the Primate Avenger. Ten minutes later, Charlie was helping two green-skinned aliens out of the pod.
"Thank you," the woman said. She was humanoid, with six fingers, green skin, and carrot-orange hair. She was accompanied by a boy of the same species with yellow-green hair.
"I'm Captain Simian, of the Primate Avenger. Who are you?" Charlie demanded. He tried not to cringe at the blue plaid pantsuit she was wearing. Either her species' eyes saw the colors on a different spectrum than Terran eyes, or else she had no fashion sense whatsoever.
"I am Dame Makdonn. This is my," she hesitated a moment, "my nephew, Gavin. We were attacked by pirates and forced to abandon ship."
Gavin gazed wide-eyed. "Wow, an alien ship. You're not Wookiees or Klingons or Shi'ar. What are you? What planet are you from?"
Charlie relaxed slightly. The boy's enthusiasm was too real for a decoy. "I'm a chimp, son, from Earth."
Makdonn stiffened.
"Earth? I don't remember that world from my astronomy lessons," Gavin said.
"We're a long way from home," Charlie admitted. "You're tired, you're hungry. Gor, take our guests to a cabin where they can rest and wash up. And see if you can rustle them up some grub."
"Grubs? OK, Captain." The gorilla led the two alien castaways down the corridor.
Charlie shook his head. "You'd better go give him a hand. He's likely to offer them real grubs."
"Captain, I do not wish to accuse our guests of mendacity, but I fear they are deliberately refraining from full disclosure of the facts," Shao-Lin said.
"Come again? In English, this time," Charlie requested.
"They're not telling us the whole truth," she rephrased her sentence.
"So you got that impression, too?"
The monkey first officer nodded.
"Did you notice how she hesitated when she introduced the boy?" Charlie asked. "And how she reacted when I told them we were from Earth?"
"I do not think that was so much what you said as how you said it," Shao-Lin mused. "Perhaps I am not the only one who finds your manner overly familiar."
Charlie just stared at her, trying to decipher what she said, and whether or not she'd insulted him.
"Perhaps," Shao-Lin continued, "Dame Makdonn would be more comfortable with another female. I will see if I can elicit any further information from her."
"Good, you do that," Charlie agreed. "And make sure Gor doesn't give them real grubs." As she swung off down the corridor, he muttered to himself, "No sense wasting good grubs on aliens."
The next two days passed quietly. Too quietly, which made Charlie Simian worry. They kept an eye out for pirates, or for other lifepods from Makdonn and Gavin's ship. They saw neither. Despite his protests, Makdonn tutored Gavin in his times tables and galactic history. In his free time, Spydor taught the boy how to play checkers. Dr. Splitz discussed the superiority of the Spenserian sonnet over the Petrarchan and Shakespearean variations with Makdonn, quoting several examples from memory. Splitzey sang Johnny Cash songs (off-key) to Gavin. Shao-Lin sipped tea with Makdonn, and traded "girl-talk" over mah-jongg, but she failed to gather any more data about their two guests. However, frequent giggles were heard to come from the first officer's cabin, which worried Charlie as much as the overwhelming quietness. Shao-Lin never giggled. Even the Orbitron malfunctioned less than usual. When the attack came, it was almost a relief.
Red lights flashed. Sirens blared. The ship rocked as a photon torpedo exploded nearby, sending shock waves through space.
"Warning! Warning! We are under attack," Orbitron announced. The small glowing ball was the repository of the ancient wisdom and science of an advanced alien race, the powerful beings that had raised a NASA test chimp to full sentience, a race so puissant that their name could not be spoken, only thought. Unfortunately, Gor had damaged it months ago, so its ancient wisdom wasn't easily accessible.
"Brilliant deduction, Sherlock. What tipped you off ?" Charlie growled sarcastically. He was not at his best when woken out of a sound sleep.
"Don't they know it's the middle of the night?" Spydor complained. Yawning, he dragged himself out of his cabin and into the corridor.
"Stow it, mister. Everybody to the bridge on the double," Charlie ordered.
Shao-Lin merely giggled.
"What's so funny, Goddess?"
"I think it's your PJs, Cap," Splitzey suggested, as he tried to smother a chuckle himself.
Awake enough now to focus his eyes, Spydor stared at the captain's pink pajamas, decorated with little purple dinosaurs, and laughed out loud. "Barney pajamas?"
A laser bolt rocked the ship. Everyone stumbled. Shao-Lin fell into Charlie's arms. Her silk and lace negligee didn't make him want to giggle. The feel of the soft silk against her body, the feel of her body against his …. Charlie manfully suppressed such thoughts. Someone was attacking his ship; that took priority … for now.
"The ship's under attack, or had you forgotten? Everybody to the bridge," Charlie ordered. "We can discuss sleepwear later."
Some running through the corridors, some swinging hand over hand along the pipes, all crew members rushed to the bridge. They fired blasters, proton cannons, everything but rocks. Nonetheless, they were outgunned. The situation looked desperate.
"Our attackers are hailing us, Captain," Shao-Lin announced.
"Let's hear 'em. And, Goddess, audio only. No visual," Charlie ordered.
Shao-Lin nodded, agreeing with her commanding officer for once.
The alien ship broadcast: "We want him back. Give him to us, and the rest of you will be permitted to live."
"I would not believe them, Captain," Dr. Splitz advised. "It would hardly be in their best interests to leave witnesses behind. And altruism is atypical of pirates."
"Roger that." Charlie spoke into the communicator. "Him who?"
"Don't play games with us, alien. We want him back, now!" Another laser bolt rocked the ship, underlining the severity of the marauder's intentions.
"Hey, Cap, didja notice? They're not trying to kill us. Just bang us up a little," Spydor said.
Charlie Simian nodded. That meant their attackers wanted 'him' back alive. And somehow, he didn't think they were after any Earth apes or monkeys. But once they had 'him' back, he didn't think they'd care about keeping his crew alive.
"We can't beat them. Evasive maneuvers," he ordered. The Primate Avenger ran like a rabbit on the first day of hunting season, forward, back, deosil, widdershins, until they were able to duck into a nebula. The space cloud of dust particles and gases hid them from the enemy's sensors.
Charlie declared, "It's time we had a word with our passengers. But first," he looked around, seeing Spydor in a pair of boxer shorts, Dr. Splitz in a flour-sack nightshirt that Splitzey must've picked out, Shao-Lin's pale-green silk negligee, trimmed with emerald-green lace, and Gor wearing only the fur he'd been born with, "let's go get dressed."
"All right, sister, you owe me some explanations," Charlie demanded. "Who are you really, and what are you up to? And why were the pirates after the boy in particular? They didn't care about you, or us, just him. Start talking, and try the truth this time."
"I am Dame Makdonn. That is my name. But I am not Gavin's aunt. I am his governess and bodyguard," the orange-haired, green-skinned alien explained.
"Gollee, what's a nice kid like him need with a bodyguard?" Splitzey asked.
"Because," the boy spoke up for the first time that night, "I am Prince Gavin of Mason's Planet."
"What?!"
"He is Prince Gavin. Those weren't really pirates. They're Aldebaran terrorists disguised as pirates. Years ago, Aldebaran and Mason's Planet were at war. The terrorists are trying to end the peace and conquer our world," Makdonn explained, brushing a wisp of orange hair out of her eye. "If they held our crown prince as hostage, the queen would have no choice but to surrender the planet to save his life. I couldn't tell you who we really were before. I didn't know whether or not we could trust you."
"The prince must be taken alive," Commander Ma'ovf ordered. "The rest are expendable. But take the female alive, if you can. She can tend the boy, and if he refuses to cooperate, slit her throat as he watches. It may make him … more cooperative."
The boarding party nodded, eagerly, bloodthirstily.
"Cap! We got company!" Splitzy yelled.
"What? How?" Charlie demanded.
"That dog-gone space cloud, it blocks our sensors as much as it blocks theirs. We got us a boarding party," Splitzey explained.
"If I knew you were coming, I'd have baked a cake," Charlie muttered to himself. "All hands, prepare to repel boarders. This is not a drill! Repeat, this is not a drill."
The monkeys and apes knew the ship like the back of their paw. But the Aldebaran terrorists had the best scanners and sensors money could buy, and there were only two Masonites aboard. It took them mere minutes to locate the prince.
"You shall not touch him while I live," Makdonn declared.
"The child is under our protection." Shao-Lin took a martial arts pose beside the royal bodyguard.
Martial arts are a wonderful discipline. They tone the mind and the body; they permit self-defense or attack with resorting to the vulgarity of weapons. However, martial arts are no match for a good blaster. The marauders' stun pistols knocked out Makdonn, Shao-Lin, and the prince.
"The commander said to take the female. Which female?" the terrorist asked.
His partner shrugged. "Take both to be on the safe side." He called for help in carrying the unconscious bodies. Minutes later, the boarding party was gone as quickly as it had come, and Orbitron was whimpering and panicking as Dr. Splitz tried to defuse the bomb the terrorists had left behind as a little souvenir.
The orang-utan bounced between personalities three times before he – uh, they – no, he – succeeded in defusing the bomb. "Shee-oot, that's trickier than whistling 'Dixie' with your mouth full of peanut butter."
"Computer, casualty report," Charlie ordered.
"Battered, bruised, and the ship's hull is scarred where they broke in," Orbitron complained.
"Can we fly?" Charlie asked. "Is the ship spaceworthy?"
"The ship can fly, but I won't enjoy it," Orbitron whined.
"What about the crew?" Charlie asked impatiently.
"They probably won't enjoy it, either," Orbitron replied petulantly.
"Are any of the crew hurt?" Charlie asked slowly, just barely containing his frustration.
"No, I don't think so," the floating metallic ball said after a second's hesitation. "Of course, First Officer Shao-Lin was unconscious when she was abducted, but she didn't appear hurt."
"What?" Charlie added a few words he'd picked up from the astronauts at NASA, words they never used in front of the press corps. "Is everyone else still aboard and alive?"
"All the crew are, yes. The prince and his governess were also abducted."
Not for the first time, the notion of reprogramming Orbitron with a very large axe crossed Charlie's mind. When he was calm enough to speak, he ordered, "Follow them. No one kidnaps my first officer and gets away with it. Or my passengers."
"But, Cap, them terrorists got us outgunned like an ant facing an Uzi," Splitzey protested.
"We'll worry about that later," Charlie said. "First we find our Goddess."
"You'll cooperate, Masonite scum, or the females die," Commander Ma'ovf warned the prince.
As soon as he left the cabin, Shao-Lin began picking the locks that bound Dame Makdonn. "This is too easy," she complained. "Do they underestimate us because we are female, or is it a deliberate trap?"
"I think," Makdonn repressed a smile, "that our foes did not anticipate a prisoner with a prehensile tail." Her manacles clicked open. "My thanks, Shao-Lin."
"Now we get out of here?" Prince Gavin asked as the monkey picked his locks.
Makdonn shook her head. "Not yet. We wait for them to relax their guard, then we make our break. We'll need to steal a lifepod or a shuttlecraft. Are your shipmates likely to be looking for us?"
Shao-Lin nodded. "If they yet live, then they most assuredly are following our trail. Captain Simian can be most determined when he sets his mind to it."
Leaving a trail of unconscious bodies behind them, Shao-Lin, Makdonn, and Prince Gavin made their way to the docking bay. "Can you fly this model of fighter shuttle?" the monkey asked.
Makdonn nodded.
"Then there is no need to delay our departure," Shao-Lin replied.
"A moment," the governess/bodyguard disagreed. "I shall disable these other fighter craft to hinder their pursuit of us."
Shao-Lin nodded. Such a precaution would avoid bloodshed and increase their chances of escape. "How will Captain Simian find us?" Prince Gavin asked.
"The captain has regrettably low taste in music. We shall use that to our advantage," she said.
"It's been six hours," Spydor complained. "How long is it going to take to look for 'em?"
"Six hours, six days, six months – we look as long as it takes," Charlie retorted. The determined expression on his furry visage boded ill for anyone who got in his way.
"Have you devised a rescue plan yet, Captain?" Dr. Splitz asked after a moment's hesitation. "Their armament was more puissant than ours previously. It would be illogical to assume the situation has changed."
"We'll climb that tree when we get to it," Charlie replied. "First we gotta find 'em."
An uncomfortable silence enveloped the bridge. No one spoke for hours until Spydor announced, "Hey, Cap, we're getting a signal."
"The terrorists or …" Charlie didn't dare finish the sentence, didn't dare hope.
"It's weird, Cap. Almost sounds like 'Shave and a Haircut'," a confused Spydor reported.
"Put it on the loudspeaker," Charlie ordered.
Da da da da.
Charlie brightened. Only an Earthling would know that ditty. "Send 'em 'Two Bits'."
Puzzled but obedient, Spydor broadcast back Dum dum.
"Open hailing frequencies. Hey, there, do you need a ride?"
"Transportation would be appreciated," Shao-Lin's voice came over the communicator, as calm and serene as always.
The crew of the Primate Avenger broke into joyous howls and screams.
"Thou hast done us a great service, Captain Simian, in returning our son and our handmaiden to us," Queen Tanjanae said. "We are grateful."
"Shucks, Your Majesty, 'tweren't nothing any red-blooded American chimp wouldn't've done."
Shao-Lin cringed at Charlie's grammar. The movement, slight as it was, made the golden medal on her chest jingle. It was an eight-pointed star, with a different-colored gem in each point of the star. Her crewmates each had similar, but smaller, medals.
"We wish we could do more to thank thee," the queen continued. "These paltry baubles seem a poor token of the debt we owe thee."
Under his breath, Spydor repeated, "Paltry baubles? These things are worth a fortune. And the cargo hold full of bananas didn't hurt, either."
Shao-Lin silenced him with a dirty look.
Charlie shook his head. Their fuel tanks were full. The queen had insisted on fully restocking their provisions, above and beyond the hold full of bananas. And Makdonn had made them a gift of several computer discs – books of philosophy and theology for Shao-Lin, astrophysics and poetry for Dr. Splitz, music and astromechanical engineering for Splitzey, the Masonite equivalent of picture books for Gor, games for Spydor, even some adventure fiction and military history for him.
"You've got a nice kid, Your Majesty; it was a pleasure to help him. You don't owe us a thing. We're in the hero business; this is what we do," Charlie assured her. "But if you'll excuse us, we have bad guys to chase and other innocent victims to save. We'd like to find Two-Brain before he finds us."
Queen Tanjanae nodded. "Thou hast our leave to go. And whether thou desirest it or not, our thanks. Thy ship shall always find a safe harbor on Mason's Planet."
And so the Primate Avenger soared back into space, to boldly go where no ape (nor monkey) had gone before.