Chapta Five:Arrival At Octavius Three
Say of Da Day: "Ev'ry fetish beginz ere!"– Pub Gretchin.
The meeting with sergeant Barthees had been a slap in the face for Marco Fezz. He had imagined that the head of the incredible expedition would have been someone who was highly esteemed and honourable. All he saw was a paranoid, self-preserving, pessimistic, cigar-smoking, disrespectful creep with three stripes on his shoulders; he wasn't even an officer.
Marco spent the last hour of his time left on Oblivious convincing himself he didn't just volunteer to jump into hell head first. He had learned that their base of operations on the planet Octavius Three would be underground, hidden from view and well fortified. Supplies would be shipped in every three months, and they had a means with which to make contact with Oblivious. And why would they be given three sentinels if someone wanted them dead? He concluded that the Sergeant must have been smoking very special cigars to think they were all doomed.
At 1850hrs, the research team boarded the ship and strapped themselves in, ready for takeoff. Marco and Sam sat either side of the sergeant, each drowned in their own thoughts.
One of these idiots better know how to cook. Sam thought.
Heh heh heh, they never found the whisky I smuggled on board. Barthees smirked in his head.
I need to go to the toilet… Marco sighed inwardly. He'd have to hold it in until they landed.
Nobody spoke until the engines spooled up, sending a faint pulsating vibration through the hull, when Marco finally decided to confront the sergeant. "Sarge…"
"That's sergeant Barthees to you, asshole." The sergeant said, looking straight ahead.
"Yes Sergeant... Sergeant Barthees, if somebody wanted to kill you, why would they go to so much effort with all the equipment and facilities?" Marco asked.
Barthees pointed to a screen not far from them. "See that TV there?" he said imitating a gypsy a fortune teller, "Just watch it carefully, and everything will become clear to you, my child."
Curious, Marco and Sam watched the screen intensely. All they could see was the tarmac behind the ship, where a man in a red coat and a peak hat stood at attention.
Sam squinted her eyes. "Is that a Commissar?" she asked.
"This must be a really important mission if a Commissar has come to see us off!" Marco said excitedly. He suddenly felt very elated to going to Octavius Three.
The ship began to rise; the turbulence from the engines caused the Commissar's coat flutter, but he still stood rigid. He began to rise a white gloved hand.
Marco was left so stunned he lost momentary control of his muscles. "I'm sorry, but I just f-farted." He stammered, still staring at the screen in shock.
As the ship rose the Commissar became smaller and smaller on the view screen; he was still giving the ship the finger when he was no longer visible.
Sam, who was almost completely stoic in her expressions until now, had a look of astonishment on her face. "Okay, I knew this was going a troublesome adventure, but I didn't know just how troublesome until now."
"What the heck did you do to aggravate one of the highest ranking officers in the Imperial Guard!?" Marco shouted at Barthees, coming back to reality.
With a shrug, he replied, "I don't know why he found it so offensive that I slept with his daughter. It's not like she was a virgin, or anything."
"Somebody turn this ship around!" Marco screamed, "Cats might have nine lives but I don't!"
A calm female voice spoke over the speaker ships, "Could the passengers please refrain from using excessive vocals. Thank you."
In no less than an hour the ship had entered the planet's atmosphere and was preparing to land. They had travelled far above the land and sea passing over a great desert, then tundra, and then finally a mountainous region which was covered in forest and patches of snow. The ship landed in the eastern foot of the mountains, the side closest to the coast.
Everyone exited the ship once the all-clear was given. Barthees, Sam and Marco stood to one side as a bunch of low ranking guardsmen quickly unloaded the cargo. They took the supplies over to a bare patch of ground; the pilot walked over with a small controller and pressed a button. The ground opened before them, revealing a wide ramp which descended below ground. Lights lit the concrete tunnel up, and the guardsmen took the cargo down the ramp like ants. The last of the cargo to disappear into the tunnel was the three sentinels.
Once all the guardsmen had finished their duties, the squad entered the ship again. The pilot with the control walked over to Barthees and handed the device and a thick manual over to the sergeant.
"This is your key to the base, and that's the manual that tells you about everything in the base," the pilot spoke frankly, "don't lose either of them. There are three entrances for the base – cargo and vehicle port, man-hole starboard side, and man-hole port side. I'm sure you can figure our how to use this."
"But there's four buttons," Barthees observed. "What's the last one for?"
"Read the manual." The pilot replied. He turned around and walked back to his ship.
"Damn it's cold out here," Marco shivered. "Why'd they have to put the base here? Why couldn't we have been on the coast or something?"
"Like humans," Sam spoke, bracing herself so she didn't quiver from the cold like Marco, "Orks prosper the most in fertile lands. So putting the base near the coast is a giant no-no."
"But that contradicts the Commissar's plan to kill Barthees," Marco argued. "If I'm gonna die too, I might as well spend my last moments getting a sun tan and building sand castles."
"Why build sandcastles when you can build snowmen?" Barthees spoke heartily, "Besides, I always wanted to have a winter holiday."
Sam was becoming impatient of waiting in the cold. "Who cares, let's just get inside."
"Oh, I gotta pee! Be right back." Marco ran towards the closest cover: a large rock jutting out of the ground.
Barthees pressed the button to open the port side manhole.
The rock Marco was urinating behind began to slide away revealing the manhole. "The rock!" Marco screeched in surprise. He side-stepped - following the rock as he peed.
"You go first Marco," Barthees ordered. "Let us know if there's any death traps down there."
Grumbling Marco did up his pants when he finished. He walked over, and climbed down the manhole. He didn't think there would be any traps, but the mere mention of them made him nervous despite his beliefs.
The hole was quite deep and took Marco a few minutes to reach the bottom of a dimly lit passage. "No death traps! Just a boring looking tunnel." He called back up.
Sam climbed down, followed closely by Barthees. Once the three were all inside, the sergeant pressed a button on the wall near the ladder, and closed the manhole.
"I want to go have a look around," Marco said looking up and down the tunnel.
Barthees flipped open the manual to find a map of the base. "You do that. Just don't break anything – and don't eat anything."
As Marco started to run down the tunnel, Sam called out, "Make sure you have your headset turned on in case you get lost or something."
"Don't tell him that, that's what I was praying for." Barthees whispered.
Ignoring Barthees, Sam walked down the tunnel in the opposite direction to Marco. "See you later, Sergeant."
Marco had been walking through tunnels for the past half an hour. He found many rooms - including the laundry, mess hall and kitchen, a toilet, living quarters, and many empty rooms. He turned the corner and saw that at the end of the short tunnel was a door not like any of the others he had seen; it was a large double-sliding door with two red crosses painted on them.
Maybe that's the hospital wing, Marco thought. I wonder what sort of stuff they gave us? I hope they remembered to give us plenty of anti-inflammatory drugs, I'm allergic to so many things!
Marco approached the doors. They slid open automatically, and he walked in. It was dark until the lights sensed someone and turned on.
What are all those things hanging in plastic bags? He wondered and walked over to a shelf supporting multitudes of semi-transparent plastic bags. Marco looked closer, and read the label:
BIO MATERIAL – UNAUTHORISED PERSONNEL DO NOT OPEN.
CONTAINS LAB GROWN HUMAN ORGAN.
KIDNEYS – B TYPE.
"Oh my God! That's gross!" Marco ripped his hand away from the plastic bag as if he had burnt himself and stumbled backwards. The colour in his face had drained completely away.
"I think I'm gonna spew!"
The whole room was filled with organs, blood synthesising machines, skin cultures, and other spare parts for humans.
"What's wrong with you?" A voice asked.
Marco jumped with fright, nearly crashing into a blood synthesiser. "It's Dr. Frankenstein!"
"Relax, it's just me." Sam looked at the bagged organs with interest. "I can't believe they went to all this effort with the hospital wing. Barthees must have been right, they want him to live in hell, not die."
Marco was crawling feebly towards the exit. "I hate this place…"
Sam picked a bagged liver off the shelf. "Hey Marco," she said smiling deviously, "catch." She tossed the liver under-arm style towards Marco.
Instinctively, Marco looked over his shoulder; only to have a bagged liver slap into his face.
The bagged liver fell to the floor, and Marco sprinted out of the doors and down the hall. "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahh! Aaaaaaaaaaah! Aaaaaah!" He screamed.
After inspecting the equipment and ammunition store, Barthees walked down the tunnel towards where the living quarters were located. At the other end of the tunnel he saw Marco run around the corner screaming. Marco zigzagged his way towards the sergeant.
"What the hell is your problem?" Barthees yelled. He suddenly took an offensive stance, whipping out a pistol and aiming it down the tunnel. "Are there Orks down there?" He asked serious but worried.
Private Fezz ran behind the sergeant and cowered. "N-n-no… w-w-worse than that, serge…" he stammered.
"Then what? Holy mother of the raisin-skinned emperor!" Barthees shifted his pistol left and right, his eyes glued where the tunnel turned ninety degrees towards the hospital wing. "It's not the Tyrannids is it?"
Marco replied feebly, "No… Sam threw a liver in my face…" And proceeded to spew all over the floor.
The sergeant lowered his pistol. "That's it?" He said astounded. "You came screaming down the hall, because Sam threw a liver in your face? Grow some balls, you pussy! And clean that filthy mess up!" Disgusted and irritated, Barthees walked off.
Pressing a button on the panel located on the wall, the door to the living quarters slid open. Barthees walked in; one side of the room was lined with bunks, and the other was lined with shelves and built-in closets.
"This just won't do," Barthees thought aloud.
He exited and walked to the next door down. Inside the room was almost bare except for two two-seater couches and a dinky coffee table in the centre. "Looks promising…as a bedroom for moi."
Again, Barthees walked out and down to the next door. To his delight, there was a single pool table. "Am I seeing things?" He said and ran over to the green and brown luxury. "Wait a minute… where are the balls and cues?" He looked around the room and inside the table. There were no pool balls, or cues with which to hit them. Instead, he found a hand-written note which read the following:
Don't PANIC. I'm sure the Orks will be more entertaining than a game of pool, anyway.
Signed: Commissar Lindel.
"You're a sick bastard, Commissar!" Barthees yelled out in frustration, scrunching up the note. "Where the hell did you put the balls and cues!"
Marco was just mopping up his spew, when Barthees slowly stomped out of the door fatherest from him. The sergeant had a look of fire in his eyes. "Oh dear…" Marco whimpered, and quickly shuffled back to the laundry with his mop and bucket.
Barthees contacted the two privates over radio. "Sam, Marco, meet me at the mechanic shop. Right. Now."
Sam was the last to arrive. When she walked into the mechanic shop, Marco was sitting on a crate and Barthees was inspecting a sentinel.
"Private Sam reporting, sergeant." The latest arrival announced. "Are we heading out?"
Barthees jumped down from the sentinel. "We have a mission," he said. "Can either of you make perfect spheres?"
Sam rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I learned how to make those at the academy." She replied sarcastically.
Barthees looked to Marco for an answer.
"Uh…" Marco looked at his feet. "I can make a cube…"
"I don't want a bloody cube!" The sergeant snapped, "If I wanted anything except a sphere, I would have mentioned it!"
"If you don't mind me asking, sergeant," Sam asked, "why do you need spheres?"
Barthees pulled out a scrunched piece of paper from his pocket. "In our living quarters is a pool table," he explained. "But there's no balls or cues." He tossed the scrunched note to Sam.
"I wish the Commissar wouldn't do stuff that punishes all of us…" Sam complained. "Maybe we can find something spherical in the supplies?"
Marco got off his crate and walked over to Sam asking, "Can I read that?"
"No!" Barthees barked. "We've wasted enough time. Sam's suggestion wasn't such a bad one, so let's get to work. We are going to scour this death pit from top to bottom, looking for anything that could be used as pool balls. Cues are not a problem; I can make some new ones out of almost anything. Also, while you're at it, keep your eyes open for smokes, cigars, alcohol and cake. I'm going to catch up on some sleep. I'll help later."
The sergeant left the room, leaving Marco and Sam behind. Marco looked around; the mechanic shop was quite large. "Boy, there sure are a lot of crates here considering there are only three of us."
"What a hide!" Sam whinged. "He's leaving us to do all the work while he sleeps!"
"This sucks…" Marco sulked. "Guess we'd better start, or we'll never get this finished."
Sam walked over to a pile of crates; she jumped on top, and lay down. "Screw that," she said. "I'm going to have a nap too."
Marco was tired as well, but the thought of what the sergeant might do to him if he slept on the job stopped him from following in Sam's steps. "Uh… I'm still feeling energetic so I'll start going through the crates."
"Okay," Sam replied, "but keep it down."
Back at the living quarters Barthees was kicking off his boots and he took off his helmet, revealing his greying blonde hair. Ha sat down on a bunk with a sigh of relief; it had been a long time since he had been able to take a decent nap.
He lay down and rolled over so he was facing the wall. He undid his left breast pocket and took out a small black and yellow teddy bear.
"It's been a while since we slept on a bunk, aye, Kev?" Kissing the bear, he put it back into his breast pocket and went to sleep.
Hours had passed; Marco found a few useful things that were not spherical, but which he pocketed. He was onto his thirty-second crate. "Radio equipment," he read off the next crate. "I doubt anything spherical will be in there, but I better check anyway."
Sure enough, the crate was full of bland radio equipment. Marco closed the lid; he was bored, and sick of sifting through crates. He decided to take a look at the sentinels - he had never seen one up close before.
The sentinel was a walking machine with two legs and a rectangular metal-composite hull perched on top of the legs. The three sentinels were all turned off though, and their legs were folded elegantly beneath the hull like a hen sitting on eggs.
Marco walked around and inspected the machines; the cockpit had rectangular slits for view on the front, and either side. The engine was at the back, with large mufflers sticking vertically up as if they were llama ears. There was a rotating turret gun mounted on the top of the hull, and one of the three sentinels had a large laser cannon attached to the starboard side of the hull. Marco noticed that the two without the laser cannons had a pair of arms with vice grips, which made them look like a very out of proportion tyrannosaurus-rex. The hatch to the cockpit was on the port side of the hull, and mounted to the back of the machines - behind the engine - were lock-up cargo compartments. They were relatively small, but large enough to fit all of the pilot's camping gear.
"I bet I know which one the sergeant's gonna claim," Sam said jumping down from the crates and walking over to the sentinels.
Marco looked right at the sentinel with the laser cannon. "Yeah, so do I. Oh well, that kind of suits me anyway. I wouldn't know how to use one of these things. I haven't even got a driver's licence."
"Really?" Sam asked sounding surprised. "Oh well, don't worry, I'm sure there's plenty of time for you to learn how to drive these things."
The radio crackled to life, interrupting Sam and Marco conversation. "You two," Barthees voice said out of their headphones, "What's your status on the search? Found anything?"
"Nothing spherical, alcoholic, or carcinogenic sergeant…" Marco replied quietly smirking. He pulled a pair of pocket knives, and handed one to Sam.
Sam gave Marco the thumbs up and hid the pocket knife in her boot. "I approximate that searching this base from top to bottom will take a week, sergeant. And I doubt we will find anything today."
With a yawn, the sergeant gave his orders. "There's three levels to this base, each of us can search one level. Marco, you do level one. I will search level two, and Sam you can search level three."
"Can I search a different level?" Marco complained, "I don't want to have to search the hospital wing…"
"If you're lucky, Marco, maybe you'll find a spare pair of balls amongst the other organs while you're in there." Barthees replied sardonically. "Now, I'm coming to the mechanic shop to hand you maps. Assuming, that is, that the computer lab has a photocopier of course."