AN: I still haven't had time to read any newer stories on this site, so my apologies for any coincidental similarities.
P.A.W.07: Thanks for your review, glad you've liked the story. :-) Yes, my writing tends to progress slowly, which may have been influenced by my strong liking of brick-sized, long-winded fantasy epics. However, I feel it also helps to get better inside the minds of the characters. Furthermore, the idea I have is quite complex and thus requires some explaining and time to unravel. ;-) The story will contain darker chapters, even though it is humor-oriented (or sarcasm-oriented) in a fashion.
CHAPTER V
In her mind, Mira cursed at her sluggishness to react. She gave a cry of warning, and reached out for her laser-equipped gauntlet lying on the floor. At this point, the lurker abandoned all stealth, kicked the door wide open, and reached out for two, long guns holstered at its hips. Unfortunately, their mercilessly gaping barrels were already pointing straight at the team, even as the three remaining Rangers blinked groggily in the half-light, stirring in their seat-beds. A second's murmur of whats and whys washed through the previously dozy cockpit, before the situation could be fully assessed.
Pallid, bluish light now glowed in the doorway, mingling with the sallow green of the emergency lantern. Deep, dancing shadows wove their webs in every nook and cranny even slightly out of the reach of the sickly pool of illumination, creating an atmosphere all too reminiscent of the notorious, sordidly lit back alleys of Trade World, where any patch of darkness might turn out to be a delirious dopefiend ready to slit any person's throat for the sake of a couple of coins.
The figure towering by the threshold, however, certainly did not appear like any shaky-fisted junkie muttering incoherently about plumbers that discovered magical mushrooms inside lengths of solid brick wall. One ghastly instant Mira believed beholding Zurg himself, as the top of the creature's head brushed the same heights as the horns of the imperial helmet, while a voluminous, billowing garment of some quality draped its body. No matter how much of a barmy old codger he might be, the emperor still wielded formidable hand-combat skills and agility rivaling that of Buzz, not to mention his great arsenal of nanotech weapons.
On closer inspection, the alien turned out to sport a far more sinewy frame, and not precisely the kinds of shoulders over which one might easily sling two stunned cows. An odd assortment of clothing and instruments ready to sow death covered its body: A deplorably antiquated space suit patched and repaired many times over with more modern parts that clashed peculiarly with the rather garish, over-ornamented original design; several wide belts pregnant with spare bullets, bulging pouches, and an assortment of knives; a mirror helmet which, shape-wise, would have been more at home in the goldfish section of a pet shop, and high boots complete with spurs. An ankle-length trench coat overlaid all this, and a wide-brimmed stetson had been rammed on top of the helmet. Add a bucketful of huge, tawdry buckles, straps, bandanas, and other gimcracks ripped straight off from cheap post-nuclear space operas, and one had quite well nailed down the intruder's appearance.
A certain shade of ludicrousness might have caked the moment, had this one-man army not so vociferously bristled with guns. Now, a frequency-scrambled voice snapped somewhere from behind the visor, demanding Mira and anyone else around to drop their weapons and reach for the skies.
Buzz, again aglow with his usual Ranger stamina, snorted, "You won't get away with this, no matter what your diabolical intent, space buccaneer! Threatening a member of the Universe Protection Unit with a-"
"Scrap th' pomp an' drama, buster. I ne'er thought anyone'd actually say summat like ye ain't gonna ge' away wi' dis in real life; such a beef-headed cliché, that is. Besides, I can agnise a Space Ranger star cruiser whe' I spot un," the stranger spat with a thick, twangy accent, jabbing the general direction of Lightyear with one of his pistols. "Yer colors o' office are as unnoticeable as a peacock sittin' among piglets, ain't 'ey? Speakin' o' which, wha' in holy tarnation is to guarantee ye jus' haven't hijacked this star-wagon fro' sum hapless sods an' kicked out th' lot to die somewhere inne Kuiper Belt?"
Buzz and Mira glanced at one another, arms still in the air. This did not sound like the typical nefarious villain talk, but then again, one never knew about homicidal madmen. One moment they might be jabbering away about the graceful beauty of night-moths waltzing beneath the silver kisses of the full moon with Shakespearian poetic finesse, and the following second tear out a person's intestines with the gutting hook they had hidden behind their back all this while.
The captain clearly took this disbelief of his Ranger-ness as a personal offence, but refrained from tossing back an angry retort. One spark of hope had glimmered in the intruder's words: the mentioning of a place name. This clinking collection of appurtenance probably looted from some museum of space traveling clearly knew where they were.
However, they would have to overpower this fellow somehow... Buzz's eyes narrowed slightly in concentration. Perhaps he could concoct some crafty artifice ex tempore, here and now. The experience of many decades told that allowing the menacing party to gloat or blather away at its leisure usually bought the necessary time for a successful counter-action. Hmm...the alien obviously acted solo—a daring but stupid act. Mira's aid was out of the question, but if he could signal XR about that certain maneuver that allowed fast disarming...
The stranger, nonetheless, cut his attempt short with a sharp gesture.
"Ye, astro-shortie! Yeah, ye wi' th' over-swollen dimple-chin; stop hatchin' whate'er scurvy tricks ye ha' in mind. I savvy tha' look; yer tryin' to make this Wall-E over yere do summat other than sit nice an' quiet like a pine snag. Un budgin', an' I can pledge it'll soon resemble un o' those compressed cubes o' trash they spit oot."
The robot snorted audibly. "Hey, I'm a sentient, sensitive being, and certainly-"
"Well, well, it talks. Fancy tha'. What'll 'em clever industrials think o' next, wastepaper baskets tha' sing yeh a-merry happy Yuletide? Potties tha' make amusin' sounds while yer umpf'ing out yer doodah? Now, shut yer trap."
Mira, who had followed the pointless-sounding argument together with her irritating headache, had had quite enough. "What is it exactly that you want? You're busy pointing guns at us, but precisely why?"
She glared up at the doubled bulk of the foe. Bloody craters, no wonder she had mistaken it for Zurg for a twinkling, as it must have stood eight feet tall. From where did all these weirdly attired, gigantic interlopers suddenly crop up? Of course, apart from the humanoid shape, this specimen resembled the creatures of her nightmare just as much as aardvarks did apricots, but even so.
The stranger gave a mirthless chuckle, the visor glinting menacingly in the bloodless light. "Wha' do I want? Well, tha' depends onne outcome o' our next step, wonnit?"
Buzz was about to protest, when another figure swam into view from beyond the doorway. This abrupt emergence of extra forces regrettably shattered the teeny-tiny idea about a ruse involving an enemy-squishing Booster. On top of that arrived the realization that he was not dealing with some common, toffee-brained thugs here, but individuals clever enough to recognize stealthy defense strategies.
The second intruder, quite clearly a female, loped into the cockpit. Similarly clad as her companion, she posed almost a foot taller than Lightyear, no hint of a face visible beyond the bronze-hued mirror visor. Twin pistols, of the same insanely hefty, gaudily patterned make, stood firmly also in the grasp of her hands.
"See whatcha can dig outta tha' ground," the first stranger noted with a hint of boredom in its voice, and leaned casually against the doorframe. The grip on the guns never relaxed, though; constant vigilance hid somewhere underneath that post-nuclear Christmas tree of a space suit.
Sans so much as a single syllable, the female sheathed her pistols, strode to the nearest team member—Booster—and began extracting the contents of his utility belt. A rain of chocolate bars, keys, coins, and other miscellaneous pocket dwellers fell into one vast heap onto the floor.
"Scummy, sleazy marauders; that's what you are! You're in no luck if you think we carry prized treasures about our persons," Buzz harrumphed.
"Callin' us all 'em high-falutin' names won't help yer situation no-how," the stranger answered with a bored tone, and addressed its companion again. "Does th' great big stumblebum carry anyfin' o' interest?"
The female dropped down a pair of pillowcase-sized spare socks that exhaled a cloud of interestingly smelling vapors, and unfolded an accordion of ID cards. From her belt, she pulled out a brazen gimcrack reminiscent of an old-fashioned hairdryer, pressed the button jutting on the top, and started scanning the cards. The device clicked and snapped, while figures teemed across the little screen embedded near the handle. After a moment, she nodded, seemingly satisfied with the results.
"Hmh. Still ain't fully convinced," the first intruder yawned. "Check Sir Lightbeer an' his nobbish captain's livery o'er yon."
"Hah, so you do know me!" Buzz barked stiffly. "Now look who's mocking whom! For your information, it's-"
"Shut it, snapperhead. Nope; ne'er hearn o' ye afore, leastways can't remember doin' so. An' I ain't sure I'll give a blazin' tarnation either. Just read yer nametag, albeit migh' be a tad o' a hard row to hoe in this measly light."
Buzz's next angry retort shriveled up on his palate, as the female reached him with two or three leaps of her long legs, and slid a hand into his pocket. In less than a second, his face had flushed redder than a bushel of rubies swimming in ketchup.
"Ah-uh...um...a little...privacy, ma'am?" he spluttered, cheeks shimmering, as deft fingers excavated various items from his belt pouches and the immediate surroundings.
The offender of his intimacy let out an impish snort-giggle through her nose, and chuckled with the same, thick, rather nasal accent that the doorway-skulker used, "Sweet mother o' Abraham Lincoln, this un's such a li'l unsalted tenderfoot, innit?" Cackling some more, she actually patted Buzz on the top of his hooded head. "I ain't reckonin' this lot'd be one o' ol' Dalton's, though. Ne'er met such a blushing boy among 'is rowdy-dow gringos. Haha."
Somewhere approximately a foot below her lofty height, the purple-jowled Captain wished he could borrow Mira's handy ghosting skills in order to sink through the floor and further into the nearest black hole. For his utmost horror, the prankish woman still didn't cease, but inspected his space suit with annoying, deliberate slowness, and eventually started pulling off some of the outermost parts. Only after when she had scanned his irises and the soles of his feet, compared the results to the data holoprinted on his deck of ID cards, and even dug out the microchip that granted intelligence to his wristcom and scrutinized the serials thereon with nerve-rending meticulousness, did she appear to be content.
"Well, 'ey are what they say: Space Rangers; lock, stock, and barrel. Ne'er would've thought I'd see such a raft o'em ridin' the prairies o' th' skies yereabouts." Shrugging, the woman turned back to Buzz, arms teasingly akimbo. A devilish grin very likely frolicked somewhere behind the visor. "Well, li'l feller, don't look so looed; ye just played th' handful o' aces ye had tucked up yer sleeve all this time! Now, blow yer nose an' put yer big ranny boots back on."
Next to the pilot seat, the person addressed stood statuesquely—that is, if some half-baked sculptor had, for some inexplicable reason, wanted to portray a partially undressed space hero wielding an expression reminiscent of that of a pimply, buck-toothed nerd who had just failed to get a partner to the prom for the fifteenth time in row—not daring lift his gaze from his bare toes. One could have fried a delicious bacon breakfast upon his shimmering forehead.
"Figures, ye can ne'er be too careful, lest ye wanna try breathin' through a windpipe wi' more holes tha' a broken sieve... A heap o' pardons 'bout this, but 'twas th' only road to certainty," the stranger in the doorway intoned with evident disappointment in its voice, as if it truly had preferred pulverizing the whole bridge. Then, for Team Lightyear's utmost surprise, the pistol duo was lowered. "Well, fetch th' huge lubber yere back his IDs. Reckon we oughta keep a li'l pow-wow afore we take our leave an' try re-trackin' th' ion trails."
"Ahem..." The robotic ranger waved a hand, fixing the woman with a wide and rather lecherous grin. "Aren't you going to search the rest of us? I assure you, I don't mind at all if you rummage around in my-"
"Be silent, XR," Buzz snapped, slowly regaining his composure as he strapped and zipped on various space suit articles. "Would you mind justifying the reasons for this hostile assault on a team of Universe Protection Unit officers stranded in a patch of possibly uncharted space and in a severe state of distress? By all means, we ought to place you under arrest! Furthermore, you should remain cognizant that depraving an officer of his uniform represents a serious breach of-"
"Drop th' legal prattle, pardner," the stranger responded irritably. "Ain't got no time fer pleasantries. As I said, we oughta talk, an' keep yer lasers down. I still ain't cocksure 'bout all th'...details. Wha' business does such a swad of yer kind ha' in this Ol' Nick's arse anyhow? Usually un o' ye's a bloody crowd!"
With that, the intruder pushed a button on his helmet, and the visor slid up with a faint clickety-rattle. The long, narrow visage brooding beyond bore a prominent nose, a pair of sharp, calculating eyes, an outmoded handlebar moustache, and a grim expression. This, together with his oddly long limbs, emphasized the likeness to something suffering from random bouts of elasticity. He also clearly shared a species link with the captain: that particular skin tone combined with the body type had only ever been recorded among human beings or the very close genetic relatives of thereof. Only the height teetered near unnatural magnitudes—but then again, mutations did occur and Nature had a habit of resorting to peculiar tricks in isolated places.
Buzz was somewhat taken aback. Fine, his kin did inhabit many unusual corners of the galaxy, but to slam straight into one in the nucleus of sheer nothingness, a void that apparently even all common signaling systems circumvented...
He was just about to remark upon the very matter, when he was crudely interrupted by a jolt that knocked him over and slammed him heavily into the floor. A few sharp yells tore the air, followed by an ear-splitting BANG-BLAM, and a brief, acrid pong of smoke. Then, a medley of clatter, more shouts, and a ferocious SLAM. The next thing Buzz knew, he was regarding the cockpit from the perspective of a squashed cricket. A long-shanked, feminine shape loomed over him, and slightly further beyond, a brace of pistols glinting ominously in the lantern light, their barrels well over half a meter long pointing towards the open exit.
"Blazes, sum slinks must've followed us in; jus' caught a glimpse o' un past yon door! 'Twas tinkerin' wi' a bloody blunderbuss, an' about to blast us into smithereens!" She bounced away from over Lightyear, veered about, and then accosted the team with an incisive, commanding note utterly devoid of the erstwhile playfulness. "Don't just hifer 'bout, we shoul' skedaddle a' once! We ain't safe yere!"
"Hey, it's forbidden to utilize firearms inside the ship! You could severely damage...and, craters, did you just kill- Hey, are you even listening?" Lightyear demanded, springing up from the non-heroic position of sprawling flat on the floor. The whiskered man had already snapped his visor shut, and was leaping over the threshold, the long trench coat flying behind him.
"No time! Ge' a wiggle on, ye dough-legs, or else we'll be food fer th' worms! Giddy-up!"
The captain took his word for it. In spite of his anger over the whole hubbub, it had dawned to him that the unflattering push had probably saved his patootie. Deuced desperados or not, the strangers probably shared the same tactical side with Team Lightyear, at least momentarily. Furthermore, thanks to a streak of luck, he had managed to gather up the bits and particulars of his uniform during the brief interval of calm just after the embarrassing inspection. Inwardly, he yet cursed at how dreadfully their guard had slackened merely because of a simple case of temporary isolation. Every officer ought to have reacted promptly to the attacks, not only the injured member and now this...uh...pants-breaching femme fatale.
He, nevertheless, uttered none of this aloud, but proceeded with evacuation orders. "Team; code 5-9-2, empty the ship, NOW! Booster, grab Mira; XR, be ready to cover us! We don't know what's out there!"
Helter-skelter, the small host tumbled out of the cockpit. Indeed, just behind the entrance, a black-mantled figure prostrated inert on the carpeting, dark fluid slowly pooling beneath it. With a groan, Buzz recognized the object dropped near the ex-person's lifeless hand: a bundle of wires and tubing, topped with a tiny screen crowded by rolling numbers. The built-in clock had probably enjoyed a bit too much Time during its many past lives, though, as the seconds hobbled down irregularly, often leaping over full decades without any warning whatsoever.
"Blast, we've got a bomb! Hurry, hurry; it might go off any moment now!"
The space cowboys had obviously sneaked in somehow through the airlock. Presently the inner gateway sat firmly sealed, but when the Captain attempted egress, the huge hatch would not budge.
"Jumping blazars; don't start acting up now..." he gritted his teeth, wrenching with all his might at the bull-headed lock wheel. And, behind the now profusely nervous Rangers, the besotted clock hiccupped down towards zero; down, down, down...
"This feller ha' an accomplice or two, leastways th' un who planted th' 'splosives," the girl snarled. "Must've tampered wi' th' mechanism, or just got it plain stuck afta 'e got gaited. Tha' other piece o' buzzard food's past questionin' now."
"Stand back; we'll have to cut it open! XR, tackle the other end! Prepare for air suction, in case the outer hatch isn't closed!"
Lightyear was about to strike an imposing door-sawing pose, when the male stranger pushed him firmly aside. From one of the pouches at his belt, he unearthed a lumpy cylinder, which he briskly attached to the ludicrously long rifle formerly slung across his back. It was hard to determine which person prided more over his impressive battle gear: Captain Lightyear or this malapert newcomer. No matter how many millennia's worth of sand trickled through the cosmic hourglass, the male members of certain species never grew bored to the testosterone-laden game of comparing the size and vehemence of their weapons with one another. With the help of a millimeter ruler and scales, if necessary.
With that, he pulled the trigger. Something bright green and faintly smoking gushed out of the barrel, splashed across the hatch, and in an instant began eating away the thick layer of metal. In a few moments, a raggedy, XR-sized hole glared in the middle, still widening as the acid sizzled away.
Moreover, the outer airlock indeed yawned wide open. Briefly, the air suction became too forceful for the escapers to remain on their feet any longer. A frantic scrabbling for handhold and jetpack activation began, and yet, yet the opening did not seem large enough. Besides, what if someone accidentally hit the edge, the band of acid that surely would drill through the toughest of space suits, not to mention the tender flesh beneath...
"Get out, NOW! NOW!" someone screamed.
Time seemed to slow down.
Then, suddenly, the bomb's clock hippity-hopped past zero to minus two seconds, spotted its error, and embarrassedly looped back to feasible time units. A spark ignited the explosive somewhere inside its casing, and the world turned into a red blossom of extreme heat and flying debris.
A plain of alternately colored squares, stretching far, far into the horizon. Purple, and green so bright it shone almost luminous, the hues clashing dreadfully with one another. Statuesque shapes reached out towards the heavens, where two pairs of vast eyes shone, the other crimson and vehement, the other a placid, fathomless blue. The gods of the game, regarding intently at the slow progress of the scheme...
Emperor Zurg picked up a Brain Pod -shaped playing piece between thumb and forefinger, a rascally grin of the utmost glee spreading on his helmet-visage.
"Ha! A-ha! Hahahaha-haah-aaa! Now, smash that! Ha-ha! Jim-crackin'-dandy, break out of that cul-de-sac! Uhuhuhuh, endeavor eluding that entanglement-"
The insane grin, however, slid off his countenance like Peevean slug guano down a steep hillside, when another piece, carved into the likeness of a rather poppy-eyed Commander Nebula, was lifted up into the air, soared Zurgwards the length of the board, and landed neatly upon a green square, next to a tall piece capturing the semblance of the monarch himself. With an additional hop, it moved to the imperial rectangle, and capsized the hapless figurine, sending it rolling towards a cluster of diminutive grubs.
The real Zurg's clawed hand snatched it up midway through the journey. One could almost see thick, black smoke rising from the joint between the helmet and the neck guard of his space armor, as he, with clenched fists and stiff shoulders, labored to stifle the fiery tantrum roiling around his inners.
Finally, after few minutes, the adrenaline surge had considerably receded. He glared down at the impassive face of the opponent, shaking the fist where he still clutched at the piece, its tiny velvet cloak now utterly rumpled. When he spoke, his voice was surprisingly level, even if his chest still heaved with annoyance.
"Mark my words, Bölþornsson!I shall yet beat thee in the very end; during the past fifteen years, I have over and over again claimed the title of the Zhess Grandmaster of Zeta Quadrant, and I shall not be thwarted in this clash of brainpowers by some nugatory non-entity from the pits of-"
The burning, unblinking gaze of the wight flashed warningly. Very uncharacteristically, Zurg reeled again, a stupid simper replacing the surly grimace.
"Eaah...I mean, when and if some nugatory non-entity ever dared challenge the mighty Evil Emperor Zurg! But obviously I see none such person in this room, so it was...merely...an example...umhumhum... Now, pardon me for my leave-taking, but I have other matters to attend to."
With that, he twirled about, his cloak billowing out in a boastful arch, and stomped away. When the windowless door to the gloomy cell of the well-guardian had slid securely shut, Zurg let all the cooped-up rage unravel silently. The sudden heat ray burst from his lenses vaporized a couple of pointless corridor ornaments before he was able to calm fractionally down.
That...that...GRARH! That outrageously insufferable fee-faw-fum, how dared it beat him in his favorite pastime over and over and over...ROH! Had he not, with his immeasurable intelligence, invented the whole blasted game? Therefore, the right to win as often as he craved ought to have been a plain axiom! Now this...this lame n00b pwned him every time, concurrently demanding courtesy and...and...
Hissing, he strode down one of Dreadnaught's many echoing corridors towards his throne room.
This was not the first occasion the thought about the mission's dangerousness and even impending futility had surfaced in his mind. Perhaps it might have been more sensible to chuck the arrogant wight into the nearest sun and dart back to cozy ol' Planet Z. As much as one was able to dart, that is, as even the quickest route thence required leastwise a fortnight and several hops between various hyperspace tunnels...
Thence...thence? Since when, when had his brain begun composing sentences peppered with such obsoleteisms? Well, that was trivial to answer; the doggoned ghost's vainglorious verses were saturating his vocabulary with archaic odds and ends, words like whale-road, and mead-hall, and whatever blatherskite only the geeky Brain Pod in control of the Old Horse...Old Norse translations properly understood, and yet, yet the blasted phantom himself never bothered to speak properly! Always those cryptic snatches of poetry, no matter how trifling the matter. He'd probably concoct a fifteen-page lay full of þ's, and ð's—and ungraspable vowels like Ö with those stupid puny dots balanced precariously on top of them, ready to roll off and make one's tongue trip—only about the blowing of his nose.
"Ö" just about summarized his feelings right now. A supplementary grievance also pestered him: the wight had begun demanding more attention. Even if it preferred the shelter of shadows, it did not wish to sleep any longer, but requested company, challenges, and...riddles. Which was exactly why Zurg had suggested Zhess, among others, a game requiring true wits and unerring strategies.
That had lead to a third problem. His captive had suddenly showed aptitude in levitating objects, wherewith he moved the pieces about, hinting about yet somnolent, unsung powers. This might prove a precarious turn of events, not to mention that he seemed to...well...just as abruptly cognize miscellanies nobody had ever entrusted him, like the partial layout of the ship, and, more hair-risingly, details about Zurg's identity not a single person in this universe ought to have known. The emperor suspected high-level telepathic capabilities, which was just as well, as he had himself studied the arts of shielding one's mind against external penetration. Somehow, somehow the wight had yet succeeded in bypassing his defenses without a warning of any kind.
...Which brought the matter back to the wight's actual treasure troves of data. Oh the knowledge, the knowledge! Uuhhh...it made the brain cells of even the greatest evil genius—a.k.a. him—purr with pleasure, even if it might be quite outdated. If only, if only one did not have to dig in so deep during every single bloody questioning! The wight, nonetheless, infrequently granted a straight answer, and one was forced to cling to itty bitty nitty soupcons of minutiae, often rephrase the query more than thrice, and...graargh, only to be inundated beneath an avalanche of more of that pestiferous, polysemous poetry! Well, didn't that just pickle one's eggplants; the lexiphanic lout.
He snorted, while the entrance leading to the obscured space behind his throne slid open. Now...if that other lout had decided to grace the zurgarrific throne room with his absence yet again... Grarrh, the manners of that conceited little twit these days! Of course...the concept of etiquette did not automatically belong to the repertoire of a person treading the paths of the dark side. Yet, that still did not grant him rights to act like the second-in-command of Zeta Quadrant, failing to follow schedules, losing memos on purpose, and as often as not, faking sick days, while in truth having a horizontal tango with yet another flibbertigibbet with cold custard for brains.
Craters, that last excuse...an inflammation of the distal hoof ganglion... Well, this time Zurg had looked it up, and it only ever affected the fifth foot of the carnivorous arachnosheep found on a single island on Karn, besides being a genetic disease carried in the female chromosomes and thus non-transmittable. One'd need to perform some quite fascinating splicing on themselves in order to catch that.
The emperor almost collided with an assiduous grub vacuuming dust off from a set of glossy, velvet curtains hanging beyond the imperial keister-rest.
"Huh! Watch it, you sniveling stooge! Is Darkmatter here, or has he perchance failed yet again to appear due to some pish-posh like a snowstorm in hyperspace?" Zurg huffed, trying to kick away the nozzle of the vacuum cleaner now sucking on the hem of his robe.
"Ah-eh...yes, my Evil Emperor! I mean, he's here and not absent! Uh...let me take care of that..."
Sweating slightly, the minion shut down the apparatus, and started pulling the garment out of the long tube. Due to some pesky obstruction, the fabric, however, would not come free. Not even when the now rather profusely perspiring grub dismantled the nozzle and tried to see whether he might be able to pull it out, now that bits of robe peeked out of the tube's other end. Luck, nonetheless, had decided to give the whole affair a rude hand gesture.
"Grarrh, I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS IDIOCY!" Zurg roared now, similarly unable to unstick the piece of device from his costume. "Always something foils my evil entrees, ruins the sinister suspense! Now matter how arduously I plan and double-check particulars, there's always a malfunctioning red carpet bot, or somesuch nuisance, present when I gloriously land down before the dread-struck natives to claim the ownership of a planet I've decided to conquer, et cetera, et cetera! Don't even get me started on the case when a flock of local birds thought I was a nice resting place for the arriving night... NO, leave it! I reiterate: I DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR THIS!" he bellowed down to the luckless insect who still wrestled with the nozzle. "Now, scurry off to tell the pilots to prepare the ship for a hyperspace jump this instant! We're already behind the bloody docket."
So, with half a meter of vacuum cleaner nozzle hanging from the side of his trailing robe, he stomped over to his throne, the unwanted companion making a discordant clattering sound every time a step was taken.
The master of shoddy excuses indeed stood—or more like lounged—near the dais, staring nonchalantly into space. Everything in him radiated a kind of casual arrogance these days; the leisurely pose, the haughty little smirk on his face, even the angle of the glass of violet crystal, out of which he was occasionally sipping some smoking beverage—as if Zurg had given orders to serve refreshments. He had let his hair grow considerably, and not just that upon his head. The once clean-cut short crop had exploded into a wild, slightly dreadlocky bush, and a nigh-on constant stubble or even longer hairs shaded the sides of his jaw outside the goatee. The emperor had seen more elegance in the backside of a bedraggled crow, but perhaps that truly was the purpose. Some kind of insufferable bout of fashion no doubt; soigné sophistication ostensibly so belonged to the last century now.
Phth, whatever. He definitely wouldn't sink so low as to appear akin to some Tradeworldian gutter-cockroach and moreover indulge in pride over it.
The clankety-clonkety of Zurg's arrival finally attracted Warp's attention. He turned away from the space view still offering fantastically twinkling constellations and nebulae, instead of the deadpan stripes of hyperspace, and raised his brows so high they were in danger of disappearing into his flyaway hair.
"Uhh...whassup with th' new style?" he commented. "The...ah...eye patch, I assume, belongs to some new space pirate fad, but what's wi' th' dress ornament? Looks like a vacuum-"
"Silence!" Zurg snarled, sitting down and attempting to conceal the embarrassing accessory underneath a corner of the cloak. "I daresay I have my own temporary reasons for the temporary covering of my eye, which will be temporary. Redundant, but gets the idea across to contumelious vulgarists like certain present company. Now..." He tapped an irritated finger against the armrest, glaring down at Darkmatter. "Where in the seventeen cratery damnations have you been loitering? I've tried summoning you for who knows how many times, and always, always you somehow worm your way out of duty! This accursed spinelessness shall end RIGHT NOW, or would you mayhaps prefer to discover yourself that a spine indeed still resides somewhere beneath those layers of chesty laxness and self-indulgence? HMMM?"
At this, Darkmatter flinched horribly, the smug grin fading from his face.
Zurg leaned back in his seat in evident gratification. "Now, now, o my mean, misbehaving myrmidon... As you've noticed, we've just jumped, and shall nay...not be returning into the waiting arms of our dear, oh-so-convenient-to-grab-an-escape-pod-and-slink-away space for a couple of days. Hence, there shall be plenty of time to reflect on matters such as why and how you're going to accomplish your upcoming assignment exactly as planned, and on schedule. Presently, I shan't waste more of my precious jiffies on further lectures that merely bounce off your thick skull, Darkmatter. I'll leave rest of the brainwork to you, kenning...knowing that some quite slickly spinning cogwheels do lurk beneath that surface sometimes harder than terillium carbonic alloy. Hereafter, we shall proceed to our...quest. Did you read my memo, or was it devoured by invisible gerbils again?"
Before the throne, the now quite nervous mercenary racked his memory, not presuming to meet the emperor's gaze. "Uuh...I was...ah...supposed to...fetch some sort o' key from some dingy hillbilly rock? Yes? I...uh...recall that the description of the assignment itself consisted only o' a few lines, and ya hadn't given any...coordinates."
"Glad to see that your memory isn't affected by this inflammation of the distal hoof ganglion any longer," Zurg snorted. "But, basically, yes. I kept it succinct, because communication channels outside my realm can never be fully trusted these days. Variously shaped hearing organs and encryption-cracking computers tippytoe-prowling everywhere, Star Command spies sleuthing on whispered conversations exchanged in heretofore safe pubs... Anyhoo...we're sleigh-riding towards a place simply known as Solar System, quite near Proxima Centauri. Alas, most uninventive and plebeian, but there you are. Also infuriatingly iterative, as I barely arrived back thence. Could've saved a precious month or two, had I known our following target would lay concealed there also. Ah well, it's futile to snivel over spilled prune juice right now."
Then, he steepled his hands according to the fashion of guileful overlords all around the multiverse, and, oddly enough, grinned knavishly. "I might venture to guess that you're so utterly fed up with these ludicrous plot bunnies of late that you're purposefully shilly-shallying and skiving off, hmm? Perhaps deeming that I've grown too old and daft to hatch up a reasonable world domination scheme outside ridiculous bibble-babble about five-dimensional reverse bees and alike? Maybe even considering your supreme lord too infirm and senile to fight back, should Star Command finally launch a full assault on Zeta Quadrant? Eh?"
Darkmatter appeared dumbstruck. It was almost as if Zurg had just opened a large window straight into his mental imagery and glimpsed him naked as his name-day, in the middle of something too embarrassing to string into words. Awkwardly, he raised one hand to fiddle with the blue-black hairs of his overgrown goatee.
"Eh...so those bees...uh...but ya appointed me to install th' time-traveling hives an' everything, an'... But now you're claiming tha'..."
"Ahahah huaahhahahahah gruaaah, ahahaha, it worked, it worked!" the emperor shrieked with mirth, suddenly rolling in his seat, and pointing at the even more perplexed Warp with a shaking finger. "Uuhhuhuhh, huahhaahahHAAHAHUUH HIIHAA RUHAHAHAHAH, oh, I'll wet myself! Even YOU were so utterly fooled! What a hoot! This is priceless! HAHAHAHAHAH! Ahhahaahaah, I so love it when Lightwit and his consortium of morons are chasing false leads, but that even you thought I was dead serious! Uuuhuhuhuuh...ahem..." Zurg braced himself, turning soberer again, even if the corners of the helmet grille still twitched. "You may have guessed during the lapsed two seconds that you've been a pawn in a grand game of stratagems, Darkmatter. Unfortunate, but necessary. Behold, for Star Command now suspects the very same as you: that I have entered the dusk of my heydays, that the ol' bucket-head verily is too old and bucket-headed to pose a grim threat to the safety of the Galactic Alliance. I do have my sources, and even some of Lightyear's closest underlings think along these very lines. Hrrhmhh...in very sooth, perhaps ol' Buzzy Boy has swallowed the lies also; I heard his team headed off to inspect some piddling Star Command office on the other side of the galaxy. Ah, so typical of that low-browed apeling; no creativity whatsoever. If it isn't about fighting eeeevil, then he's getting his kicks from the most boring routines the universe can muster."
Warp hardly heard the last few lines. Instead, he mouthed for a few seconds like a fish on dry land, shaking his head with disbelief and anger, before being able to speak coherently again.
"WHAT? WHAT? I'm...I'm your right-hand man an'...an'...WHAT? Cratery blazars, now you're tellin' me I've been just some bloody plaything, tossed about by-"
"Oh, shush, you nitwit." Zurg waved an idle hand. "Where's your sense of humor? I haven't had so much nefarious fun for years and years and years! I was able to dump all the most harebrained plots the lads down in the Department of Evil Scheming had ever come up with upon the Alliance idiots and watch them run amok! Hmh...let's see..." Highly amused, he began counting with his fingers. "Among others, flesh-eating cauliflowers; turning water into marshmallow, so that nations would die of thirst; mind-controlled lab rats that spy on the Alliance scientists; harnessing the power of static electricity from cats into a deathly ray by kidnapping thousands of yowling furballs, with the added bonus of beholding all those sad, tear-streaked faces of the former owners crying over their lost pets...and that mothball dissolvent flop—so utterly bananas it's probably my favorite. In the meanwhile, I have managed to pursue objectives of true importance without the constant hindrance of Lightyear buzzing about. Rwahahahah, it's been like the most thrilling Reality TV show ever, far more entertaining than The Amazing Raisin or Surfeiter or whatever other rubbish they're airing these days... However, as Nana Zurg used to say, too much sugar is never good for one's tummy. Hence the merriment cannot last, say, to infinity and beyond. Ah well...might as well fill you in on what you've missed during the past three years, as I require all the help I can get in this weighty endeavor..."
"Three years? THREE YEARS? I mean..."
The emperor stood up and silenced the thunderstruck alien with a gesture. Therewith, he ordered the nearest grub to fetch some grub and more drinks, completely forgetting his quondam sourness over refreshments offered without his knowledge. Cloak swinging, he descended the little stairway connecting the dais and the bridge, and motioned towards one of the doors leading to, among others, one of the vessel's briefing rooms.
"Now, don't be such a dour little spoilsport, Darkmatter. It's been so much fun for the whole evil family! Beyond and above everything, I'm still riding the summit of my vigor, and, if all the right pieces fit snugly together in this great jigsaw puzzle of mysteries, shall linger in this exuberance of power perhaps for centuries yet, naturally not forgetting my loyal minions."
Somewhere in the folds of his voluminous robes, Zurg held his fingers crossed. Furthermore, beneath all the sinister jolliness and the jubilant grin, a nerve ticked in the side of his neck, while nervous sweat glued his hair to the helmet's insulator padding. Well, he could hardly step back now, could he?
While the emperor had promised to keep the tale pithy and strictly to the point, the men still found that the numbers on the clock display had leaped ominous quantities, every time either one managed to steal a glimpse at it. On the other hand, someone of Zurg's ilk could never truly reflect on anything without miles and miles of analytical detours, gloating, and miscellaneous rambling spiced with cackling and the bashing of notable Alliance figures.
It all had apparently started when Zurg had been but a wee evil genius, listening to the bedtime stories of Nana Zurg, his imagination spinning with fascinating vistas of all those realms he could conquer when he grew up. Darkmatter could not fathom whether this grandmother figure existed as a mere figment in the monarch's mind, or not. Even if the latter held true, the decades must have quite heavily gilded or otherwise altered the memory of the alleged person in that bottomless bog of twisted, tangled, chaotic designs that perverted more or less every idea unfortunate enough to sink in. Present Emperor Zurg with any mundane, ever-so-slightly boring subject like the methods of accounting, and the following week he'd likely hand you a new, shiny tablet 'puter studded with little horns and claws, complete with an accounting application that gave the user tips on how to fake records with the impressive array of pre-programmed faulty equations.
While the emperor blathered on, a holographic projector upon the table displayed maps, images of scrolls scribbled with spidery writing, and what appeared to be weathered and partially cracked stone reliefs.
"...And then sometimes she, as I lay thrilled beneath the blankets, hugging my ickly tiny purple zombie bunny plushie, spun spooky stories about the frost-bound, winter-dark home world of her far-off ancestors, their names and likenesses now sunken into the gray mists of oblivion. Well...in normal circumstances I wouldn't care a flying rhinoceros's tail about such hocus-pocus jiggery-pokery concocted to lure squalling brats into bed, but..." Zurg gazed into the shadows of the ceiling, absently twiddling with a corndog and trying to stuff it into his mouth through the grille, succeeding in only smearing a part of his helmet with fat. "Well...later, as I trudged through the academy years, I kept bumping into certain character and place names over and over again, and gradually grew convinced that these silly, childish tales might actually stand on the shoulders of a truth of some kind..."
Mentally, Darkmatter rolled his eyes. The image of Emperor Zurg—swishing robes and an ion blaster and all—wandering about the dingy corridors of some university, a stack of books tucked under one arm, seemed quite as plausible as a frying pan made of ice. On the other hand, who knew whether he'd precisely been an emperor somewhere back in the dawn of dinosaurs? Didn't he often, during his endless monologuing, blab something about overlording the Zeta Quadrant as a self-proclaimed sovereign? Well, Warp did know from experience that the half-mad ol' coot was not the deranged experiment of some artificial intelligence lab, so perhaps he indeed had spent a couple of years as an academical rat. Even so, hard to believe...
"Anyhow...a couple of years back I bumped into a hoard of some quite remarkable evidence, evidence that ultimately drove my curiosity to seek out for more details about these...powerful entities those la-di-da, grandiose legends narrated about. Obviously I deemed they'd still wade deep in undiluted exaggeration, but...well. The more some of my minions and I delved into these old manuscripts and suchlike, the more I became assured of their...how should I put it...authenticity."
At this, a sour taste filled Warp's mouth. There was something about the word entities that hurtled a wriggly chill down his spine. Robot vampires more sinister and intelligent than their creator? Fine. Carnivorous eggplants, crazy aliens with a dissection mania, gas that sent one back to the golden era of protruding brows and ook ook hurrh durrh talk? Been there, seen that. No problemo. But something called an entity when one had a perfectly fine storage of synonyms and specieistic slurs for various types of alien...
Tentatively, he asked, "We're not...talking about th' likes o' tha' bloody Natron again? Because if we are, I'm n-"
Zurg's face split into a nasty leer, and suddenly the clawed fingertips of his gauntlets seemed to shine sharper and deadlier than ever.
"Warpy, Warpy-Schmarpy, it's not for you to decide what kinds of enterprises your master orders you to engage in. Do I need to remind you again that hereabouts infidelity means death or worse? Hmm? Thought so. Likewise...we're not precisely dealing with undead space mummies here. Nay...I mean no. However, we are en route to harness the powers of an eminent entity, another such in truth, as the fact that they can be controlled has become quite pellucid..."
Perhaps unwittingly, Zurg raised a hand to his temple and started fidgeting with the strap of his eye patch. It might have been a mere coincidence, but in Warp's opinion, muttering concurrently about the unleashing of formidable beings of an unknown character sounded very ominous.
"What's exactly going on? What are these beings you're talking about?" Darkmatter exhaled through his teeth, leaning back in his purple-padded chair, arms folded across his chest. "Ya haven't been...whatchamacallit...meddling in th' affairs of wizards, have ya? 'Cause ya shoul' well know tha' mutterin' mystic gobbledygook in pentacles an' suchlike's really dangerous! Which is exactly why most power-hungerers avoid reachin' out to the...uh...Other Side; usually such contacts turn against their summoners an' wreak more havoc than help achieve any actual gain. Besides, what do ya know about this magickcK, or whatever those black-clad, raccoon-faced, twiggy wannabe-witches call it these days?"
Zurg suddenly looked uncomfortable, his fingers starting to play a restless tattoo against the tabletop. "Well...uh...so what if I have? But I'm not so damn bonkers as to ruin my well-burnished floors with chalk marks and ugly chicken-scratches! That's a definite nada! Moreover, I'm not referring to spirits, but...uh...well, craters, I'm not sure what the bloody buggers are. But, rest assured they aren't puffs of floating gas, or the intelligent shades of some color, or anything like that. As for containing them, I have one such being graciously accompanying me on this very journey!"
"O rly?" Darkmatter nodded sagely. "So that's the reason you're wearing that patch, eh? Cotcha in th' eye before ya were able to control it?"
A deep, oppressive hush fell in the briefing room. And yes, there it was, a fleeting twitch of panic upon that ridiculous-looking upside-down bucket. Warp's lip curled. He'd flung the comment at Zurg only as a jibe, but apparently had stabbed a nerve instead.
"Cease that eyeballing, Darkmatter; my eyeball's none of your confounded business! And it's working fine, thank you very much."
Even though Warp's stomach still grumbled, he had lost his appetite. So...the head honcho had decided to dabble in the eldritch arts. He was not sure whether to believe in the outcome, though; so far he'd for the most part heard nasty rumors about a handful of anonymous tyrants who'd perished in mysterious ways after squinting at too many battered books laden with weird symbols, perhaps leaving behind a pair of gently smoking boots. Nameless and far away, except...well.
Unwittingly, he shuddered at the thought. Never, ever had he revealed what precisely had happened during those few moments alone with Natron, deep within his ghastly temple. Oh, some kind of retro-ish, ancient-Egyptian-mixed-with-sci-fi tech had been involved, but this loony, life-sucking pile of wrappings had clearly shared a few drinks and maybe an ornate scroll signed in blood with something from the realms the saner overlords only timidly whispered about.
Ugh, he had to stop brooding over that stupid memory! The more his mind played table tennis with the disgusting experience, the more frequently it popped up to pester the small hairs on the back of his neck. It was past, only past! Gone, bye-bye, sayonara! He sincerely hoped this Past was not going to rise out of the ground before him, leering, arms wide open in greeting.
Now, a deep frown darkened the few age lines etched between his brows. "Oh, an' this whole matter o' keys...I think I geddit now. Ya want me t' fetch some bloody keys so tha' ya can unlock some creature o' pure, dripping vileness from its ancient prison an'...holy damn." He placed one palm over his forehead, and hissed with frustration. "It's so unbelievably, indescribably cliché! Egads, ya can't be serious. Ya really can't. It's so trite it simply can't be happenin' in real life! It can't! No, really, I'm starting to reckon ya were better off wi' those fanged cabbages or whatever-"
Then, half-snorting, half-groaning, Warp caught Zurg's aspect. The old emperor was sitting rigidly opposite to him, not a glint of twisted amusement in the redness of his eyes. Or one eye, in this case. When he spoke, his voice resembled liquid silk.
"Do not trifle with me, Darkmatter; this is my last warning. I'm not referring to any puny, pathetic imps some amateur conjurer might attempt to ensnare, but to true, great beings of frost, fire, air...to ancient entities that once roamed the many dimensions of this universe, or as those archaic legends name them, the Nine Worlds. Moreover, I indeed know how to force them to bow before me, for I have procured perhaps the greatest source of wisdom and knowledge that the ancient realms ever witted, and now it is mine, mine alone! HAHAHAHAHAH! Soon, all those puling, mewling peoples shall kneel maudlin in the ashes of their former glory, lamenting the-"
Zurg blinked, and coughed.
"Alas, I tell myself to forsake this galling habit of gloating ere aught...hrhmmh...before anything much has happened, but...well. Back to the business." He stood up with a jerk and flung the corner of his cloak over one arm. "Indeed, this depthless well of wisdom is now bound to my command, and mine only, and this rare mead of lore I shall enjoy unto the gloaming of the hereafter! Don't believe me? Perhaps you ought to meet him yourself!"
"Uh...meet what? I..." Warp stammered. Nevertheless, the spell of mania had overwhelmed the emperor, who grabbed the shorter man's arm with a pincer-like grip, and started dragging him out of the room.
"He's an Ettin, or at least was...not sure exactly what one should call him now. Yet heed your slippery tongue whilst having an audience. He's one heckuva picky little fancypants when it comes to a morsel of perfectly normal, friendly sarcasm; the puffed-up popinjay."
Well, well, finally someone made you the underdog in the endless rally of insults, Darkmatter thought grimly. This detail hardly relieved the situation: someone able to boss Evil Emperor Zurg around didn't sound promising at all. Moreover, the impression that Zurg was distinctly afraid of his captive only strengthened. Of course, the purple prima donna would try his best to conceal this, but...over the years, Warp had learned to read certain, subtle signs correctly.
Still grasping the mercenary's arm painfully, the emperor swept down a maze of corridors, the loose vacuum cleaner nozzle clanking along as he did so. He stomped over to a sturdy door, punched in the access code, and consequently shoved Warp into the semi-gloom.
"We have a guest, Bölþornsson, albeit he seems a wee bit reluctant to enter."
Darkmatter froze on the threshold. As he stared at the handsome face beneath the burning eyes, the mass of fair hair sneaking and winding to and fro on its own accord, and the stump of a severed neck ending to mere nothingness, he realized this was Natron all over again. Or, perhaps even something worse.
Please let me know what you think about the story so far. :-)