by Adam Clark
“Avast! There be something coming!” An anonymous, un-named and nondescript pirate shouted down from the crow’s nest to the deck below.
Running up to the prow of the boat and pulling out a telescope Grigor scanned the vast nothingness of space in front of him. Far away he could see the green circle of Lazarus b10, about the size of a large coin in his vision, between them and the planet were 6 streaks of colour. These streaks made up a sort of space rainbow, only broken by a line of fire in the middle.
Looking closer he could see that there were five dragons flanking what appeared to be a man riding a flaming motorcycle. Could it be the Flaming Motorbike of the Great Bear? Grigor thought to himself, if it was, then he was truly lucky. Chainsaw-boy came up behind Grigor.
“What is it? Let me have a look.” Grigor passed Chainsaw-boy the telescope, he held it awkwardly between the ends of his chainsaw arms and put it up to his eye. “Looks like someone riding a flaming motorcycle, isn’t that what we’re looking for?”
“Yeah it is, hopefully it’s someone friendly, get the men ready anyway, just in case they’re not.”
Chainsaw-boy went back down and onto the deck, Illana caught his eye and they both blushed, looking away quickly. They hadn’t really spoken since the events of two days ago. Napalm was busy rolling around on the floor with the wolf, those two were becoming the best of friends.
Standing on the deck Chainsaw-boy called out to the crew. “Alright ye scurvy dogs, man the stations, someone’s coming towards the ship.”
Napalm stopped playing with the wolf,
picked him up and put him in the breast of his pirate coat. The wolf sat panting with both paws hanging out the front of the dark jacket.
“You’re really becoming a good second mate, mate, I’m impressed. Any idea who’s coming towards us?”
“Nope, it looks like one of them is riding the flaming motorbike though.”
“It’d be just like it was walking right into our hands, I hope we’re that lucky. When this is over I’m taking Maximus here back to Tarth to stay, so the sooner this is over, the better.”
“Yeah, I’ve got my own plans for when this is over.” Chainsaw-boy stole a glance over at Illana. At that moment Grigor called down from the prow.
“It’s definitely the flaming motorbike, but I swear I can see the two guys we saw outside Volkangs castle.” Chainsaw-boy and Napalm both came up onto the prow, and shared turns looking at the now more discernible flying objects.
“I think you’re right, the other people look like barbarians though, so they’re most probably on our side.” Napalm observed
“I’m still holding my doubts, those two were in cohorts with Herstaff, the main cause of all this.”
“We can’t be certain that they’re that bad” Chainsaw-boy added.
“Well, we’ll find out soon.” Shutting the telescope Grigor picked up his battle-axe, sat down and started sharpening it with a wet stone from his pocket, his eyes glued to the point in the space where these mystery people were coming from.
It took only another 20 minutes before the group had reached the ship, in purely a co-incidental fashion, Lazarus b10’s moon was just coming into sight from behind the planet as well, not that anyone noticed.
“Hey!” Magnus called out to the ship from atop the flaming motorcycle. “Grigor! We got the message, and we’ve helped you by getting the flaming motorcycle.”
Grigor eyed them warily from the deck and called back. “I can see that, how can I trust you? And who are you?”
“I’m Magnus, leader of a ranger band, I was two years below you in the academy.”
“Ah, I think I recognise you! But what about these two? Last time we saw them they were with Herstaff!”
“These two humans? We picked them up back on the barbarian homeworld. They’ve fought well with us, I trust them.”
“Ok, well, I’ll take your word as a fellow barbarian. Leash those dragons up to prow and come aboard, but I’ll be keeping my eyes on you two.” Grigor pointed at his own eyes, then at Harvey and Indy in turn.
A few minutes later and the dragons were all tied up to the prow, floating serenely in space, the bike was parked on the deck, surrounded by oohing and aahing and Magnus and Grigor were recapping their stories of the previous few days events. This surmounted with Grigor, Napalm and Magnus standing round a barrel, which they were using as a makeshift war table.
“And then I jumped the chasm of doom, it was crazy, we had nuclear snakes in it, and some land sharks, I could’ve died so easily, but you don’t become leader without being brave. The bear then lent us the bike, we found your signal and came up here to meet you, that pretty much sums up everything.”
“Ah, well, I’m very grateful for you risking your life like that. It sounds truly like a feat that shan’t go unrewarded. Now, all we need is the Rainbow Horn of the Interstellar Unicorn, does anyone know where or how we can get it?”
Napalm ran his hands through his great beard and adjusted his eye patch. “Well, legend has it that the unicorn is very elusive, I don’t think we find him, he finds us.” Grigor looked in disdain.
“That’s not good enough, we need that last piece or everything else has been in vain, the Dragon Heart is still more powerful than the three pieces of awesome we have.” He looked at Magnus, “I’m going to need your team track down this ‘Rainbow Unicorn’ find the horn and bring it back.”
Magnus suddenly froze, and slowly opened his mouth. “I think it might be too late for that.” Turning around and following his gaze Grigor looked at the moon of Lazarus b10. One by one the rest of the crew also noticed this event and the deck was punctuated by lots of sharp intakes of breath. Apart from Chainsaw-Boy, who was now fearless, and as such, wasn’t particularly bothered.
Having creeped out from behind the moon while no one was looking, a great spherical spaceship hung in space. Only slightly smaller than the original moon, it was disc-like in appearance and far too far away to make out any details. Apart from the blood red light they could faintly make out at the center.
A random pirate on the deck shouted. “It’s a trap!” As a read beam of light left the evil spaceship, collided with Lazarus b10 and exploded the whole planet, rather spectacularly. Illana gasped, then stopped and watched the exploding debris with a puzzled look.
“I’ve got a really odd feeling of deja-vu.”
“Me too.” Came a call from a midships.
“Me three” replied chainsaw-boy “do you reckon something has changed in the matrix?” The rest of the crew looked at him.
“Wrong film idiot! Like, how can you mess that up, have you even seen Return of the Jedi, or Empire Strikes back?” Illana chastised him.
“Those are the Star Wars films right?”
“Yeah, no shit Sherlock.”
“Well, I’ve only seen the first three.” Illana put her face into her palm.
“When this is over, and me and you are a romantic couple, we’re watching the original three films.”
“I can live with that. Currently more important however is that massive evil spaceship up there. What are we going to do about that?” Magnus had now climbed about 10 ft above them up the mast, and was pointing to the spaceship with the broadsword in his free hand.
“Ramming Speed!” He called out in his loudest voice. “For Argennon!”
