by Wayne Hill
“Hey boys! He doesn’t like being molestified!” shouts the barman from behind the bar.
With a huge black hand, Titan pulls back the cape from Splinter’s right side. A shimmering blue and silver metal arm, with a golden hammer-like fist, clunks down onto the planked, sawdust-strewn floor.
‘Wow,’ mouths one soldier, and they all look appreciatively at the arm, shaking their heads.
Intricate carvings cover the metal arm, constructing a bizarre story. There was a beautiful woman’s face lovingly inscribed on Splinter’s shoulder. A girl’s name is etched repeatedly into the arm: Marie-Ann O’Shea. There is one graphic scene where a skinny kid — clearly Splinter — is getting his arm chopped off. There is also a long list of names with lines through them. The only names not ruled out are: Splinter, Jonesy, Enslin, Frobel, Hector, Gert, Bowdon, Pug and Lemon.
On the forearm, a red neon light starts to flash. It glows brightly, casting a red light on Titan’s face. The red-light changes to a bright yellow, still flashing. With a beep, a row of fluorescent green lights replaces the flashing yellow light. A recording of applause and whistling comes from the arm. Titan stoops to pull back Splinter’s cowl, revealing his scarred face. His unconscious mouth seems to be forming the words: ‘Thank you, thank you.’
Titan expels a deep bass laugh at this, and the other soldiers follow suit.
“Come on, soldiers,” Levy snaps, “collect yourselves! We all knew about his mechanical arm. It was in the data briefing.”
With all the soldiers, except for Titan, now stood with a limb in hand, the huge man nods to his superior officer and grabs the metal arm.
Splinter’s mech arm vents oily steam, burning Ray ‘Titan’ Cooper’s large hands, causing him to let go. The golden fist of Splinter Salem slams down, with unexpected force, into Titan’s foot with a sickening squelch. The bar floor shakes violently, and the wood beneath Titan’s ruined foot splinters upwards.
The agonised man rolls backwards clutching the remains of his foot and roars like a lion. The bellow is so loud it silences the whole pub. Titan’s dark features contort, as he tries to shut out the pain, and he collapses into a mewling ball.
Now the golden fist, pointing at the shocked soldier holding his right arm with both hands, shoots off with a bang. The golden projectile smashes into the soldier’s testicles, eliciting a pained grimace from most of the conscious men in the room; not least from the one now possessing shattered testes.
troubled soldiers, still holding Splinter’s legs, go for their sidearms. The still unconscious Splinter — blowing blue spit bubbles and, somehow, snoring — grabs the cold metal of his right arm, which is now levelled at the left soldier. He pulls his metal biceps back and it recoils making a satisfying chuck-chuck sound.
BOOM!
The soldier, previously holding Splinter’s left leg, is now flying. A laughing Jonesy ducks as the soldier — in strict accordance with the cosmic convention of every bar fight, in every universe — smashes into the bottled optics on the wall and flops unconscious behind the bar.
The remaining soldier manages to free his laser pistol. He swings his arm up ...
Chuck-chuck... BOOM!
The other soldier is picked up off his feet by a jet of compressed air and is blasted half-through a nearby plank wall. He hangs, unconscious, four feet off the floor, looking like some sort of high-speed skiing accident involving a wooden chalet.
Splinter flips onto his feet. His patchwork leather cloak swirls behind him as he lunges for Levy. He lifts the USA Captain by his throat. Levy grabs at Splinter’s fingers in a futile struggle. He feels the coursing of electricity. Unnatural power radiates from Splinter. His grip is powered by something, some mysterious force. Captain Levy’s back crunches into the wooden wall, next to his soldier. Levy’s head inches upward towards a light fitting.
“I tried to tell you ...hic... he doesn’t like being man-handled, Captain,” smirks Jonesy, the quintessence of multiverse barmen, polishing a dirty glass with a dirty rag. “He ain’t too good at hearing things, either, so you better ...hic...speak up. Oh, and ...hic... speak quickly before he ...hic ...loses his fuckin’ temper.”
Jonesy is impressed with tonight’s show. It is parsecs better than yesterday’s effort. The only mildly amusing thing that occurred during yesterday’s matinee was that Lemon shat himself. And that was hardly box office stuff — people shat themselves around here all the time.
Cooling his fevered brow using the cold metal of his forearm, the now conscious Splinter blows a dreadlock out of his view, both arms being otherwise engaged.
“Don’t you, or any of your fucking toads, put your slimy flippers on me again! Do you understand me, cunty-nuts?”
Levy studies Tommy’s face, as one Captain squeezes the breath from another.
He is the devil! thinks Levy. Splinter’s face is a palimpsest of shifting black swirls, like Celtic knot-work tattoos given life. His eyes burn a dirty amber colour, his gritted teeth are stained a blue-black and his face is littered with scars. Maybe one for every soul he’s taken? thinks Levy. Everything about him is spiky and loud, evil, wretched, devilish and drunk. He is covered in small, painful reminders — the memento mori of his mercilessness.
“Please,” croaks Levy. “You’re killing me ... Please.”
Splinter has heard all these ‘Please, don’t kill me’ lines before. And, previously, he had given people the benefit of the doubt, only for them to try and kill him again a week or two later. He got the feeling that this man was yet another Sneaky Fucker.
PROBABLY BEST TO KILL this guy and get back to drinking, Splinter thinks.
Splinter’s hand automatically obliges and starts to tighten around the captain’s blemish-free neck. He watches the Captain’s pupils narrow and then, as the oxygen in his bloodstream becomes scarcer, grow big and wide, almost devouring the irises — as if the brain is trying to take in as much detail of the world as it can before it ends. Before the light fades. He looks into Levy’s eyes waiting for the electricity to fade — waiting for that fleeting moment when the wonder that is animated life stops, leaving the same thing that is hung up in abattoirs all over this agreed reality. For the briefest of moments, Splinter thinks he sees Talon. He thinks he sees Talon’s face smiling back from those dying eyes...
This is too much, he thinks.
Splinter releases Levy, who drops limply to the floor. Fireflies of pain swarm in Levy’s head. Pins and needles prickle all over his face, as he gasps for air, clutching at his throat.
Splinter stumbles over to the bar with a strange expression painted on his weathered face. Jonesy thinks he overhears the cloaked man muttering something about black squirrels.
“Jonesy,” sighs Splinter, wearily. “The Oban.”
Jonesy notes the sigh has the same world-weary tone that Levy had used earlier when Splinter was lying unconscious on the floor. Jonesy removes his hand from the well-worn grip of the blaster he keeps under the counter and moves to get Splinter a bottle of Oban.
Jonesy hands over the ancient bottle of scotch to Splinter and sets a grotty glass down next to the whisky — it was the same glass he had conscientiously been rubbing dirt into earlier. Splinter regards the glass with a moue of distaste. From his metallic arm, a gush of steam — the same steam that distracted Titan — sterilises the inside of the glass. The glass dances around on the bar pushed by the pencil-thin jet of super-heated water. Splinter’s eyes narrow as he concentrates on keeping the gyrating glass on the counter, as he had smashed many glasses in the past using this elaborate cleaning exercise. He stops the steam, and the glass gyrates to a standstill.
Twisting the band on the wrist of his mechanical arm until the selection arrow lands on the etched word PICASSHOLE, Splinter shoots cubes of ice and a trickle of icy water from his arm into the tumbler. He bites out the cork and places the bottle of Oban into an appropriately sized hollow that has suddenly appeared in his robotic arm. Twisting the golden wrist band again to sele
ct an icon with a crude engraving of a bottle and the word NO etched underneath it, there was a glugging sound, and the amber nectar burbled into a hidden receptacle somewhere within Splinter’s wonderous arm. The empty bottle still sitting in its recess in his metal arm, Splinter dribbles a perfect double shot out of the same hole that had steam-cleaned the glass.
Savouring a luxuriant mouthful of the vintage whisky, Splinter rolls the ice-cold tumbler across his brow. He needs to cool down. The subdermal black swirls that had started pulsing so angrily these last few months were gradually getting worse.
Still rolling the fine scotch around in his mouth, he notices a moving reflection in the empty bottle still lodged in his arm. It is a man. A big man. A big, black man. A big, black, angry, man. The huge, reflected man limps closer and levels a laser pistol at Splinter.
Why does this sort of thing always keep happening to me? thinks Splinter vaguely, his mind drifting through cottony mind-webs. Oh, yeah, the space pirate thing. Bugger.
Titan has Splinter centred in his crosshairs and he starts ranting, shouting for Salem to get on the floor.
Splinter relaxes. Great, I’m not going to die just yet, he thinks. This fucker’s one of those chatter-box types.
So engrossed in his harangue is Titan that he does not notice a leather square on Splinter’s patchwork cloak winching up. Splinter, without obviously moving, has angled his arm-cannon under his left armpit and aimed it out from the mechanically raised square of leather.
There is a loud bang swiftly followed by the sound of shattering glass.
For Titan, there is a large amount of pain. It is the blinding kind of pain that an empty scotch bottle can inflict when it smashes into a man’s forehead at speed.
Titan falls over, unconscious, blood streaming down his face.
O’Shea’s once more erupts with drunken cheering.
(Lemon — who is rapidly losing consciousness on Pug’s shoulder, in a corner of the pub — shakes his head petulantly at this ovation. And that’s funny is it? he muses indignantly. Some clean guy getting shot in the face with an empty bottle? There’s no way that is as funny as me shitting myself the other day. The timing was impeccable. I’m a wasted comedy genius, I am.)
Splinter, out of the corner of his eye, notices the captain in his stupidly tight grey uniform reaching for something from behind his lapel.
The light fixture above Levy’s head explodes, and glass showers the man, cutting his cheek and forehead.
Splinter is losing his patience with this strange man. In two spring-legged paces he was over to the blinking man. As he points his arm cannon at Levy’s crotch, the USA Captain mutters something. Splinter does not hear what it is. He does not care what the man has to say.
“SPLINTER!” shouts Jonesy from the bar. “He says he has a memory plate for you!”
Splinter stares daggers at Jonesy. How the fuck does that old Irish bastard still hear so well? thinks Splinter irritably.
Knocking Levy out with a blow from his metallic forearm, Splinter pats the man down. There was a memory plate stashed below the man’s lapel. Splinter had thought in his paranoia that the captain had been reaching for a weapon. Oh well, he thinks, ‘just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that the universe still isn’t out to get you!’ An oldy but a goldy. Besides, paranoia has kept me alive so far. I’m not changing what isn’t broken. Sayings are sayings because they hold a grain of truth. The universe is out to get me. But I’m ready for the fucker!
He strokes the memory plate and stares at it in the somewhat dimmed light. On it was a spinning hologram of a younger, more windswept and handsome, Splinter Salem.
Splinter laughs a racking laugh and punches the air a few times, calling the pub to order with air-shots from his arm-cannon.
“Haha!” Splinter announces to the blearily attentive bar, brandishing the memory plate. “Film night’s here, fuck-nuts! Three-hundred million metres a second! Haha!”
10
For the smallest amount of time possible, Captain Levy believes he is back in the luxury of his dome, safe and content. His home ‘dome’ consists of a palatial series of large, interconnected domes, situated on Mimas — the most opulent dome community in the galaxy — overlooking the majestic rings of Saturn.
His delusion, like all delusions, is intoxicating —
The bed is clean and soft, his wife’s faint scent of mint and jasmine fills his senses, and soothing jazz music plays in the background. He turns over and his wife’s sensual outline is illuminated from some dream lighting, which has no exact source. In this lighting, he watches her small, but perfectly formed, breasts move gently up and down as she sleeps. He reaches out towards her...
In a flash of white light, she is gone. The dream changes. Levy and his wife are facing one another, floating in space, beyond the dome’s protective walls. Her eyes are twin dark pools of pain. She screams and grabs the sides of her head —
The piercing female scream morphs into a male cry. Her scream becomes his. Levy’s wife no longer clutches the side of her head; he does. She disintegrates. The illusory dream realm crumbles quickly. Levy plummets down, down, down ...
A shock like electricity hits instantly, snapping him back into this unwanted but unfortunately agreed reality. He feels like something has injured his head, but he is unable to touch it as his hands are bound. As grim reality reasserts itself, Levy finds himself tied to an old cinema seat in Splinter Salem’s third floor Holo-cinema. All his comrades are looking dishevelled, but alive. There is popcorn in their hair and they are looking worried, making muffled noises into the ball-gags some had in their mouths. The pirates are drunk and loud, and the cacophony is hurting Levy’s cracked skull. He feels his brain throbbing, as if it is going to escape through the top of his head at any moment.
The lights and noise suddenly die down following a few pops of compressed air from Splinter’s arm-cannon. His arm-cannon held aloft; Splinter uses his other hand to shovel popcorn into his mouth as the memory plate plays.
The USA’s logo spins in 3D in front of them all. It is accompanied by an annoying chiming sound that was just barely audible to Splinter. It might not have been loud, but it was just loud enough to piss him off.
“Stupid fucking symbol,” Splinter says, spraying popcorn and kicking the back of Levy’s chair.
“Spin on, Frog,” says Splinter to Toad maliciously.
The bloated space pirate chef operating the 3D projection unit is squatting on a tall stool behind it, drooling on it in his soused concentration.
The annoying symbol vanishes and is immediately replaced by a flashing image of a much younger Splinter Salem. Drunken cheers fill the auditorium as a bored-sounding female voice starts to narrate the 3D recorded scenes of space piracy. Many of the pirates cheer whenever they see themselves, or whenever Splinter is mentioned. There are a lot of cheers. To Levy’s throbbing head this is torture.
“Splinter Salem,” narrates the woman. “Real name: Tommy Salem. Other names include: The Hock-Filled Harlequin of Delta 593; The Patchwork Primark; The Hellfire of Hool; The Pick-Firing Pirate of Pluto; The Dome-Raiding Lord of Double-Yolks; The Pirate King of Prison Planet Earth, and The Dirty Wasp of Warp Speed — although this list is by no means exhaustive.”
LEVY THINKS SOME OF Splinter’s AKAs are a bit silly. The Dirty Wasp of Warp Speed? The USA captain thinks that perhaps Splinter has had more than a little hand in the coining of these nicknames.
The 3D screen goes blank for a moment before the image of Commander Patrick McCrea of the United Space Association appears.
Boos, sneers, and expletives fill the room. A few beer bottles fly through the projected image to smash against the planked walls behind it.
Splinter calms the room with a quick energy show from his arm-cannon. Bubbles of raw energy burst from it, and they whir and fizz and pop, lighting up the lowly-lit room with their luminescent magnificence.
(This stronger light suddenly illuminates some escapades not pr
eviously obvious to an observer: some pirates had balanced apples on the elite soldier’s heads and were doing their best impersonations of drunken Robin Hoods with real bows and arrows; Bowdon had poured his beer down the back of one of the prisoner’s necks, and Gert was using Titan’s head as a footrest. Meanwhile, Jonesy had opted to stand at the back of the room and take pot shots at the prisoners with a handful of barroom darts, just to see who would scream the loudest. One of Jonesy’s darts was currently dangling from the side of Captain Levy’s head.)
“Silence!” booms Splinter. “Let’s see what the old, rotten-bellied bastard wants!”
The auditorium quietens, like rebuked schoolkids, and Commander McCrea continues in his droning, overly nasal tones.
“Tommy ‘Splinter’ Salem, you have been a major problem for The United Space Association, and I disagree with all your career (and life) choices. However, I shall pause a moment to consider all the people on prison planet Earth who have died, and will die, at the hands of the terrible virus that is decimating populations on every colony in the known universe...”
The holographic projection of the old Commander pauses solemnly, his long, greying moustache aquiver, and bows his balding pate.
“Do we really have to watch this shite, Splinter?” A large, heavily scarred pirate asks, clapping his dirty hand on Splinter’s shoulder. Without taking his narrowing eyes off the sable-moustached man’s projection, Splinter blasts the handsy pirate against a wall. As the groaning pirate stares up at him from the floor, Splinter mumbles “Don’t,” pointing out the warning tattoo on his left biceps muscle.
The 3D Commander McCrea continues: “It’s with great sadness and trepidation that I must report to you that it is the United Space Association’s intention to cull several prison planets that are swarming with the deadly virus. These plans have been checked and cleared with the Believers’ court. We may save many more innocent lives as a result of these actions. Prison planet Earth has, regrettably, been listed as a highly contaminated area and therefore is a contamination priority. It fulfils all the criteria required to execute a full-scale extermination of the remaining prisoners serving there.
