Chapter Three: Pile it Higher and Deeper
Boyd looked about himself nervously, but his anxious scans found nothing that was out of the ordinary. Or at least /seemed/ out of the ordinary. He cautiously walked forward, but the sound of his footsteps resonating on the hard metal deck echoed in his head like thundering drumbeats, so he stopped. His heart pounded so hard that he wondered if anyone else could hear it.
Again, moving quietly he dashed across an open corridor, glancing to both sides as he did so to see if his pursuer was anywhere to be found. Relieved that the coast was clear, he continued down the new corridor, walking down a sloping ramp until he reached a closed blastdoor.
Jonathan looked about for a control panel, but found none. While he was looking, he heard a slight clink coming from behind, and spun about rapidly, looking back up the corridor. Somehow, a gear had come loose from something and had rolled down the corridor. He was relieved that it was only a gear, but even that put him more on edge. /Something/ had to have dislodged that gear, although after a few moments he concluded that it could have easily been a droid.
Feeling with his hands, he finally located the hidden control panel for the blastdoor, and pressed ever so gently. The panel clicked softly and slid aside, revealing the door controls. It was obvious that the designers didn't want anyone to find it easily. Boyd pressed several buttons in sequence as he had for some other blastdoors, but it didn't seem to work for this one. He felt like sighing, but didn't want to make any sound that would alert his attacker to his presence. Instead, he tried another sequence on the control panel, and was finally rewarded as the heavy door began to open.
Boyd jumped through before it had finished opening, and was all too aware of the sound his boots made as they landed on the metallic deck. But he had to continue. So he walked softly (or as softly as possible with the hard-soled military-issue boots) to the side where he suspected another control panel was hidden. He felt around, finally feeling an area where the wall yielded to his touch, and pressed firmly. The panel popped open, and he quickly re-entered the same sequence he'd used to open the blastdoor. With a slight groan of metal on metal, the door began to slide closed.
He wanted to breathe a sigh of relief, but the realization that his enemy could be anywhere prevented him from doing so. Anxiously, he looked about himself to see if there were hidden cameras, but his inquisitive gaze turned up nothing. It didn't really surprise him, of course. If the designers had put cameras in, they would have hidden them so well that it would take a dedicated scanning crew extra time to find them. But he did notice the targeting sensors for the automatic shootback systems, and inwardly sighed. That meant that the tiny holdout blaster he carried was useless, as he couldn't fire it without alerting the computer systems, and that in turn would mean that his enemy could find him.
As stealthily as he thought possible, he continued down the corridor in search of something that might help him. Certainly, Boyd didn't like being trapped aboard the station; he didn't even know where he was by now. To make a bad situation worse, he had some insane homicidal maniac chasing after him with an Improbability Cannon. That by itself was enough to drive most people insane, but he was Boyd. A Boyd would overcome, no matter the odds.
Over fifty kilometers away, another person was in a similar situation, except that he was trying to find Boyd. For those concerned with names and appearances, his name was Liet. He stood about 5'11", fairly average for humans in this galaxy, and wasn't much to look at. Well, to be specific he was something to look at, if only because of his strange hair and the way he dressed. It was like a flat-top cut except that it had a strange protrusion of hair at the front. Liet had asked for it that way because of someone he'd seen on an old Terran broadcast. Carrey, he thought the person's name was. Damn, but that guy had been such a sex machine to all the chicks!
Liet couldn't figure out why the chicks didn't seem to like him, though. He had tried everything so far. First there was the Jim Carrey hairdo, which he'd gotten at a Supercuts on some planet whose name he'd forgotten. On the advice of a gypsy, he'd found some Winchell's donut cologne, the byproduct of an endeavour to get more police officers to frequent Winchell's. The gypsy had said that it would make him immensely more popular, but so far the only increase in his popularity he'd noticed was among the ants. Oh well. He still had five complementary bottles of the stuff, and he sure wasn't going to waste it.
That wasn't all he had, though. (Liet wasn't a nudist.) When he had attended the University of Agamar, a man by the name of Winston Ashford Gonzalez had suggested some dress tips, which he'd taken. The first thing had been an old-fashioned tobacco pipe, which he never used for its intended purpose. The second thing that Winston had suggested for him to do was to get rid of his old brown robes and get a new, hip jacket. The only problem was that the suit shop nearest the university was out of leather jackets, so he'd been forced to settle for a grey tweed jacket with leather elbow patches. The jacket itself was one size too small, which looked a little funny. Liet didn't mind, though, because it made his arm muscles look larger, and biceps always turned the chicks on.
Then there was the one final bit of advice that Winston had given him: Trojan. Ah, the Trojans. He never went anywhere without them; they were more useful than an American Express card (which he also had). Unlike the Viagra that he carried in case of emergencies, the Trojans had so many uses, including balloon, makeshift water bottle, helium container (so that he could speak in an unnaturally high voice), and disease/pregnancy shield. Liet considered them more useful than a Swiss army knife, and he kept one of those as well.
Liet didn't wear any hat. He said that it would mess up his hairdo. He spent nearly three hours every morning getting it just right, and hats only messed that up by matting the hair down and building up copious quantities of sweat. To steal a line from the Borg, "hats are irrelevant."
At the moment, he was sitting in a large room whose function he was unsure of. He removed the tobacco pipe from his mouth (he didn't actually smoke; it was for purely ornamental purposes) and stuffed it in his inner shirt pocket. Then he reached beside his chair and, with both arms, hefted a vaguely phallic-looking object. Liet liked to say that he'd created it himself, although that wasn't really accurate. He had purchased the rights to the device from someone named Douglas Adams, and then had some factory in Bangladesh produce it. To him, it was a work of art, complete with zoom night-vision scope, ivory-inlaid handlegrip, and a bunch of other options that he hadn't bothered to learn. The best thing about it was that it never needed to be recharged, and didn't use any ammo.
Seeing an errant bat fly across the other side of the room, Liet hefted the phallic object, aimed it in the general direction of the bat, and pulled the trigger. A spot on the wall beside the bat suddenly glowed with purple polka-dots, and a fountain of port began to spurt out of the wall. Ignoring the fine wine, Liet aimed again, more carefully this time, and struck the bat with the invisible beam. The bat turned into a giant toaster and crashed into the ground.
Liet grinned, lowering the phallic weapon and picking up a wineglass. He walked over to the port fountain and filled his glass, then walked back and sat down again.
He would get Boyd, eventually. But he had more pressing matters to attend to first. He pulled the pipe out of his pocket again, filled it from the wineglass, and began to sip out of it. My, this is excellent port, Liet decided as he continued sipping from the pipe. Boyd could certainly wait.
Jonathan ducked under a convenient protrusion as a squad of stormtroopers walked past. He quickly thanked George Lucas that all stormtroopers had tunnel-vision before getting back up. Looking at the departing troopers, though, Jonathan decided that it would be better if he looked like a stormtrooper. He quietly walked up behind the last of the troopers, then suddenly grabbed him, throwing him to the floor. The trooper struggled vainly as Boyd pulled his helmet off, then punched him quite hard in the face. It didn't take long for Jonathan to remove the rest of the trooper's clothing. When he had finished, he dragged the trooper to a garbage chute, kicked the grating in, and shoved the trooper down it. He felt a momentary pang for the stormtrooper-after all, Federation doctrines said that one was not to harm the enemy if at all possible-but dismissed it. After all, it would be the /Imperial/ garbage compactor that would harm the trooper, not him.
Quickly, Boyd put on the trooper's armor suit, then continued down the corridor. Mercifully, nobody else was walking in it, which Jonathan found surprising considering that the Death Star was purported by the evil Warsie trolls to have several billion troopers. Ah, well. Another victory for Star Trek.
After consuming his wine, Liet looked about himself. Nothing had really changed in the room, save for the growing pool of wine on the floor. Noticing that the pool was getting closer to his chair, he decided that it was a good time to leave. Picking up his phallic weapon and wineglass, Liet set out again in search of his quarry.
The first thing he did was to step into the Disco Star's central control room. As he stepped inside, the troops came to attention instantly (one standing so fast that he accidentally hit the firing button, obliterating a random planet) and saluted. Liet ignored them. They were only clones, after all, and not really deserving of his attention. Instead, he walked to the security terminal and checked the day's logs. Nothing noteworthy was displayed... hmm...
Ah, there it was. A garbage compactor on level 5183 had a grate destroyed. Liet instantly assumed that Boyd was responsible, even though the grate could have been destroyed for any number of reasons (but the author's wish to keep the quantity of overly descriptive text down may have had something to do with Liet's decision). So Liet struck a very strange pose, one hand over his willy, and spoke into the Disco Star's PA system.
"Ah!" The goggles of a technician shattered from the intense sound pressure. Liet always liked to have it set to maximum, just for effect. "Boyd, I have you at last. Prepare to die." He twisted the gain knob slightly, resulting in an intense whine that shattered almost every display in the control room. Liet loved the gain control. It was great for unnerving those who dared to oppose him. He cackled wildly.
Boyd briefly shuddered as he heard the Disco Star's PA system come to life. There was but one thing that could mean, so he dove for the nearest airlock, not caring if he was nearly a hundred kilometers from the outer shell of the massive battlestation. If he'd heard Liet's insane rantings once, he'd heard them a hundred times. Never mind the sheer volume of his announcements.
Once Jonathan figured that enough time had elapsed to allow Liet to finish his announcement, he crawled back out of the airlock.
"Oh, you thought you could outsmart me, Boyd. But fear not: I will be coming after you shortly! Muhahaha."
Boyd shook his head. He hated Liet, although nobody would ever know why. Another secret of the Boyd.
After several minutes of aimless walking, Jonathan thought for a second that he smelled donuts. His mouth began to drool, although once he realized that there was only one person on the battlestation with donut cologne, the saliva instantly vanished.
He quickly looked in all directions, but didn't see anything. As he doubled his pace, Boyd couldn't help but hear his feet clanking loudly against the metal deck. That was a definite downside to the stormtrooper armor, and he kind of wished that he was still wearing his Federation uniform. It was a lot quieter in this kind of situation.
For no reason whatsoever, Boyd jumped out of the way. He liked to think that he had Jedi powers, but Luke Skywalker had disagreed with him so many times that he'd lost count. Eventually Boyd had given up on trying to enter the Jedi Academy (the prosthetic leg that he now had might have been a consideration-he'd received it after challenging a nine-year-old Jedi trainee and getting his real leg removed).
Still, jumping randomly did have its benefits, as an improbability beam missed him narrowly, turning a stormtrooper down the hallway into a giant cream puff. Boyd knelt for a moment to pray. The random number generator must have been smiling on him.
Another improbability beam disturbed him from his reverie, and his armor somehow turned into a ballet dress. Boyd ignored it; it could still deflect fifty-pound rocks thrown by Ewoks as good as stormtrooper armor, so it wasn't like it made much difference. He pirouetted across the corridor, narrowly avoiding more improbability beams as he did so.
Jonathan quickly exited into a turbolift, and was mildly alarmed when the durasteel door turned into a sheet of candy glass. He stabbed at a random button on the control panel, and was rewarded as the computer gave him a perfectly random effect. In this case, nothing. He threw himself through the candy glass door, which shattered spectacularly, and rolled across the corridor, only to bump into the legs of an elephant. The elephant roared, and at that point Boyd decided that it would be a good idea to get away from there.
Another beam narrowly missed him, and so it was that Boyd was somewhat shocked as the elephant stood up on its two hind legs and began singing Elvis-style. He ignored it, however, and started running.
After several minutes, though, Boyd noticed that he really wasn't running anywhere. Looking down, he saw that the floor beneath him had been turned into a treadmill. That wasn't good. He spun about quickly, only to see Liet lining up for the perfect shot.
He dropped to the floor.
Liet fired.
The blast whizzed over his head (it might have had to do with the fact that Boyd was carrying the Blarney stone with him) and hit a wall. Jonathan blinked. It seemed like nothing had happened to the wall.
At least, before a Mack semi came barreling through it.
Boyd pressed himself against the wall of the corridor to avoid getting hit by the speeding tractor. Then, realizing that if something had come through it...
He ran for the wall as fast as he could, jumping a pace before he would hit it, and sailed straight through.