“Yes, sir.”
“You doubt me, Sasha? We’re just a few hours away from the Holy Grail!”
“No, sir. It’s just that, well, I wonder if what you’re tasting is the lure of easy cash.”
“We all have different drives, Sasha. Yours is vengeance. Mine is greed.”
“Donnyhammering!” yelled Donny from the hole, before resuming his donnyhammering.
“Donny’s is donnyhammering. Boggs’s is… being Boggs. Together we’re unstoppable!”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ll see, Sasha. Once you have your vengeance on the Malarchy, you’ll be like a whole new person. Robot.”
“Hmm,” I said.
“What is it, Sasha? Out with it!”
“Well, sir, I wonder at what point the satisfaction with having wreaked vengeance upon the Malarchy will sink in. I mean, they’ve probably forgotten all about these plans. We don’t even know if they’ll find out the plans have been stolen. It doesn’t seem like vengeance if the people I’m getting revenge on don’t even know it’s happened.”
“Good point, Sasha, and that’s why it’s so important that we sell the plans for as much money as possible.”
“I don’t follow, sir.”
“The Malarchy doesn’t want these plans to be used. If somebody actually starts building Shiva devices and uses them to create whole new worlds, it will be a huge blow to the Malarchy’s efforts to maintain control of the galaxy.”
“But what if the people we sell it to don’t use it for that? For that matter, what if it ends up back in the hands of the Malarchy?”
“Fine with me, as long as they pay for it.”
“This is what I’m talking about, sir. You’re only concerned with making money. You don’t have any real interest in vengeance.”
“You misunderstand, Sasha! In the end, currency is the only currency that matters. You’re going to get your revenge against the Malarchy in the form of cold, hard cash.”
“You mean I’m going to sell out to them.”
“What’s the difference, as long as they pay?”
“I suppose I thought I’d be exacting my vengeance in blood, sir.”
“You want to kill the Malarchian Primate?”
“Well, I guess not. I mean, he is evil and all, but I don’t have anything personal against him. He didn’t write the law.”
“What about Heinous Vlaak?”
“Not particularly. I don’t care for him as a person, but I’d feel a little weird about killing him after he went to bat for us.” Rex and Heinous Vlaak had long been at odds with each other, but they’d come to a sort of détente at the end of our last adventure. Rex had saved Vlaak’s job, and Vlaak in turn had offered his protection against our other mortal enemies, the malevolent interstellar cult known as the Sp’ossels. “I don’t want to kill anybody. And I don’t really want to hurt anyone in particular. I just want the Malarchy, in general, to suffer a bit.”
“Precisely. What better way to make an organization feel a genuine but manageable level of discomfort but to make them pay through the nose for something they already own?”
“I suppose you’re right, sir.”
“Of course I’m right! Now where are my sprinkles?”
We spent the next five hours listening to Donny hammer through the concrete foundation of the bank and watching Boggs carry the debris away in buckets. I still wasn’t sure about the whole vengeance angle, but at least the job would be over with soon. As long as no cops showed up after hours looking for a snack, we’d be off planet with the plans in a few hours. Our ship, the Flagrante Delicto, was parked at the spaceport just outside the city.
At last Donny’s head emerged from the hole. “Donny found a room,” he announced.
“Good work, Donny!” Rex cried, getting to his feet and scattering donut crumbs all over the floor. Donny climbed out of the tunnel. “Shall we, Sasha?”
“Yes, sir,” I said, and picked up the portable plasma cutter from where I’d left it. Rex grabbed a flashlight and lowered himself into the hole. I went after him. The tunnel was nearly twenty meters long and just wide enough to crawl through on our hands and knees. After a few minutes, the tunnel turned upwards again, and I climbed up to find myself in the bank vault. Rex stood before me in the small room shining the flashlight on the rows of locked drawers in front of us.
“Which one is it, Sasha?”
“Number 483, sir,” I said. “Over here.”
“Excellent. Get ‘er open!”
Rex shined the flashlight at the drawer and I engaged the plasma cutter. It took me about three minutes to cut through the lock. I pulled the drawer open.
Inside was what appeared to be a paper envelope. I picked it up.
“What’s that?” Rex asked, looking over my shoulder.
“It seems to be an envelope.”
“Let me see that,” Rex snapped, and snatched the envelope from my fingers. He tore it open and pulled out a small paper card. Rex frowned. “It’s got pee-pee on it,” he said.
“Sir?”
“Look for yourself. Pee-pee.” He handed me the card. There was nothing on it except the two flowery letters engraved in silver in the middle of the card:
PP
“What does it mean?” I asked.
“How should I know? Is there anything else in the box?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, this is just great. The plans for the Shakira Project were supposed to be in there.”
“Shiva, sir.”
“Whatever. Why isn’t it here? Was our intel bad? Did they know we were coming?”
“Hard to say, sir.”
“All right,” Rex said, slipping the card into his pocket, “drill into another of those drawers. We can still make the effort we put into this heist worthwhile.”
“Perhaps we should cut our losses, sir.”
“What are you talking about? This is where the richest people in the galaxy store their ill-gotten loot. Drill through another lock. There’s no telling what these people have in their drawers.”
Boggs’s voice echoed through the tunnel: “Potential Friend!”
“What is it, Boggs?” Rex shouted.
There was no reply.
“Blast it, Sasha, see what he wants.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. I climbed back into the hole and crawled through the tunnel. When I poked my head out on the other side, I saw Boggs lying face-down on the concrete. His hands and feet were tied behind him. Next to him lay Donny, with all five of his arms tied together. I quickly ducked back into the hole.
“Not so fast,” said a strangely familiar voice. I looked up to see a lazepistol pointed at my face. Behind it was a small, balding man in a white lab coat. I recognized him as Dr. Hvar Smulders. Next to him was an older woman whom I knew as Dr. Alba LaRue.
I put my hands up. We’d been caught by Sp’ossels.
Chapter Three
The Space Apostles—colloquially known as Sp’ossels—are the scourge of the galaxy. You never know where they’re going to show up. You could be in the middle of a wuffle field on Zabbek Three, watching for skorf-rats trying to run off with your squishbobbles, and suddenly a pair of Sp’ossels would pop out from behind an evap-damper rig and accost you with the good news about Space.
Like most beings in the galaxy, Rex and I had long considered Sp’ossels an ubiquitous annoyance but had never thought of them as dangerous. That changed when we learned that the Sp’ossels had masterminded a scheme to use a mind-control device to take over the galaxy. Not only that, but it turned out that Rex himself was a key component in their plan: they’d manipulated him, using Rex’s unquenchable avarice to amass the huge sums of money that were needed to finance their mind control device. We managed to escape them only by relying on the protection of the Malarchy’s chief enforcer, the aforementioned Heinous Vlaak.
“What in Space are you guys doing here?” I asked. “There are hundreds of other planets you could visit. I mean,
do you have any idea how big Space is?”
“Climb out of the hole,” said Dr. Smulders.
I reluctantly did as instructed.
“Call your boss.”
“You’re making a mistake,” I said. “If Heinous Vlaak finds out—”
“Do as you’re told, Sasha, and nobody will get hurt.”
I sighed. “Rex!” I shouted.
Indistinct cursing arose from the hole. A few minutes later, Rex’s head popped out. “For Space’s sake, Sasha. I nearly burned my face off with that stupid plasma cutter. I need you to… oh.” He glanced from the tied-up figures of Boggs and Donny to the two Sp’ossels.
“Hello, Rex,” said Dr. LaRue. “It’s been a while.”
“Not nearly long enough,” Rex snapped. “You realize that if Heinous Vlaak finds out—”
“Yes, we’ve been over this with your robot,” Dr. LaRue said. “We don’t mean you any harm. Just give us what we want, and you can go on your way. Climb out of the hole, please.”
Rex climbed out of the hole.
“Hand over the plans.”
Rex pulled the card from his pocket and handed it to Dr. LaRue.
“What’s this?” she demanded.
“Looks like pee-pee to me,” Rex said.
“Do you think this is funny?”
“Which part, the card or you not being able to read it?”
“Where are the plans?”
“What plans?”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“Oh, you mean the plans for Project Sherpa?”
“Shiva, sir,” I interjected.
“Those are the ones,” she said.
“The top secret Malarchian terraforming project?” Rex asked.
“That’s right.”
“The one that would allow them to turn barren balls of rock into habitable planets?”
“Correct.”
“The one that they mothballed so they wouldn’t lose control of the galaxy?”
“Yes.”
“The one that they erased all evidence of except for a single set of plans stored in a bank vault?”
“Right.”
“Never heard of it.”
Dr. LaRue’s face went red. “Then why were you robbing the bank?”
“I didn’t rob it. I was just browsing. For money.”
“Don’t play dumb,” Dr. LaRue said. “We know you were here to steal the plans for Project Shiva.”
“Project Shiva is a myth,” Rex said, “and anyway, somebody beat us to it.”
“Let me see that,” Dr. Smulders said. Dr. LaRue handed him the card.
Dr. Smulders groaned. “Then it’s true. He was here.”
“Who?” Dr. LaRue said.
“You don’t recognize the monogram? The initials PP?”
“It can’t be,” Dr. LaRue said. “He’s been missing for three years.”
“You found this in the safe deposit box?” Dr. Smulders asked.
“That’s right,” Rex said. “Does it mean something to you?”
Dr. Smulders smiled. “Not so smart after all, are you, Rex? I suppose it’s not really your fault, though. We’d have wiped your memory of him after every one of your missions.”
“My memory of who? What in Space are you talking about?”
“This card,” Dr. Smulders said, “is the marker of the Unpinchable Hannibal Pritchett, the Platinum Pigeon.”
Rex and I exchanged puzzled glances. “The what?” Rex asked.
“The Platinum Pigeon!” Dr. LaRue exclaimed. “He’s a legend. He was behind the Sirius Scam. The Betelgeuse Bluff. The Cassiopeia Complication. Hannibal Pritchett has pulled cons, heists and swindles all over the galaxy, and he’s never been caught. He’s the greatest wheeler-dealer in the galaxy!”
“Impossible,” Rex said. “Sasha, tell them why it’s impossible.”
“I believe Rex is referring to the fact that he considers himself the greatest wheeler-dealer in the galaxy.”
“I am the greatest wheeler-dealer in the galaxy,” Rex said. “There’s no considering about it. Besides, if this Patented Pilgrim is so great, why haven’t I heard of him?”
“You undoubtedly have heard of him. And then you forgot him, probably several times. We tend to keep our operatives in the dark about each other.”
“Hold on,” I said. “You’re saying this Pritchett person works for you?”
“He did, yes. He was on a mission to recover the plans for Project Shiva when he went missing.”
“And you tracked him here?” Rex asked.
“No, we tracked you here,” Smulders said. “One of our intelligence assets reported that you were looking for the plans. We thought you might lead us to them.”
“Well, you’re out of luck,” Rex said. “This bank is fresh out of top secret Malarchian plans.”
“Step outside,” LaRue said, waving his lazepistol at Rex. “Both of you.”
*****
The Sp’ossels ushered the four of us into a waiting hovervan, which took us to the spaceport. We were prodded into a small room on a Sp’ossel ship. Half an hour later, we were in orbit around Mordecon Seven. The door to the room opened and two gray-uniformed men with lazeguns walked in. Dr. Smulders and Dr. LaRue came in behind them. Dr. LaRue closed the door.
“Where are you taking us?” Rex demanded. “If I don’t get some answers soon, I’m going to activate the distress signal on Sasha’s tracking beacon!” He was referring to the beacon Heinous Vlaak had installed in my head so he would know if anything happened to us. Unfortunately, Rex had already removed the tracking beacon because he didn’t want Heinous Vlaak knowing where we were. In other words, he was bluffing.
“You’re bluffing,” said Dr. LaRue.
“Am not,” Rex said. “Sasha, activate the distress signal!”
“Yes, sir.” I began undoing the catches that held my face on.
“What in Space are you doing, Sasha?”
“I am, uh, attempting to do what you asked, sir.”
“I meant the other beacon. The one in your chest compartment.”
“Sir, the only thing in my—”
“Just do it!”
I opened my chest compartment and pulled out the remote control for the Flagrante Delicto. Realizing what Rex wanted me to do, I pressed the homing button at the top.
“What is that?” Dr. Smulders asked. “Give me that.” He snatched it from my hand.
“Is it a Malarchian distress beacon?” Dr. LaRue asked.
“Doesn’t look like it. Just some kind of remote control. Probably doesn’t even have subspace capability.” He handed it to me and I put it back in my chest compartment.
“It is too a subspace beacon,” Rex insisted. “Heinous Vlaak is on his way here as we speak!”
“I highly doubt that. In any case, I suspect you’re going to be reluctant to explain to Heinous Vlaak that you were abducted in the process of stealing from the Malarchy.”
“Well, that’s just…” Rex started uncertainly. “I mean, you don’t have to tell him that, do you?”
“Not if you give us what we want.”
“I already told you, we don’t know anything! I never even heard of this Planetary Piglet. He has your plans. He’s your operative. Go find him!”
“We’ve been looking for him for three years,” Dr. Smulders said. “This is the first real break we’ve had. If you were able to locate the Shiva plans, maybe you know where Pritchett went after he took them.”
“That makes no sense at all,” Rex said. “How the hell would we know where he is?”
“You probably don’t, but you may have information that will help us track him down. Hold still, please.” Dr. Smulders ran a metal wand over Rex’s head several times. A green light on the end of the wand lit up. “There we go,” he said. “Now we’ve got a full record of your memories.”
As he was speaking, the door opened and another man in a gray uniform poked his head in. “Sorry to interrupt, Doctors,
but we’ve got a bit of a problem on the bridge.”
“What is it?” Dr. Smulders asked.
“A gravitational anomaly of some kind,” the man said. “We’re still running sensor checks, but we think… that is, it may be…”
“Yes?” Dr. LaRue said. “What? Out with it!”
“We think it’s the double double-U.”
“The what?”
“The Wandering Wormhole, Doctor. It seems to be heading this way.”
Both doctors visibly paled. “How long do we have?” asked Dr. LaRue.
“If it really is the double double-U, not long. We have a hypergeometric course back to the base almost plotted.”
“All right,” said Dr. Smulders. “Jump to hypergeometric space as soon as you’re ready.”
“Yes, Doctor.” The man left, closing the door.
“What are we going to do with these two?” Dr. LaRue asked. “We aren’t cleared to bring them back to base.”
“Eject them,” Dr. Smulders said.
“All right, you two,” said one of the guards, poking his gun in my back. “Let’s go.”
“Wait!” Rex cried. “What’s happening? What is this Wandering Wormhole?”
“No time to explain,” Dr. Smulders said. “Space ‘em.”
I had heard of the Wandering Wormhole but had assumed it was a myth. Supposedly a mysterious wormhole occasionally opened at random locations throughout the galaxy, sucking any matter in the area into it. There was no scientific explanation for such a phenomenon, and the Malarchy had never officially recognized its existence.
“Wait!” Rex cried again. “I can tell you where the Practical Pigman is!”
“We already have a full catalog of your memories,” Dr. Smulders said. “And you just said you didn’t know where Pritchett is.”
“I probably don’t. But I might! Like you said, there may be clues hidden in my brain somewhere. I don’t know half the stuff that’s in my brain, and I live here!”
“He’s got a point,” Dr. LaRue said. “We can review his memories, but memories are fragmented and subjective. We may need help interpreting them.”
The Wrath of Cons Page 2
