“Thank you Sergeant,” he said as he accepted the megaphone. He raised it to his mouth and pressed the button. A loud ear aching blurt of feedback sounded from the end of the megaphone forcing all nearby to squirm.
“My fault,” Stort acknowledged to the crowd, “held it too close to my mouth.” He pressed the button again. “Pilot please exit your ship with your hands above your head. I will not ask you a second time. If you do not cooperate I will be forced to send in my men. They will be carrying extremely painful charged batons, which I will give them authority to use.”
His words rang out loud and clear through the megaphone.
“Think he heard you that time sir,” said Thinker smiling.
“Yup… that should have got through the metal,” put in Forlus.
The hatch on the cube-shaped ship flung open and slowly the pilot began to emerge. The Sentry gripped their charged batons and licensed laser dischargers tightly.
Stort carefully rolled one of his homemade liquorish cigars and popped it in his mouth.
“I thought I told the son of a bitch to put his hands above his head,” he growled.
The Sentry and the crowd of civilians behind, stared at the small figure that had emerged from the battered ship with confusion.
“What is it?” Forlus asked Axtin, although something told him he already knew.
“What is it?” Axtin repeated. “Well it’s… you know… it’s one of those guys.”
In truth, no one in the market place could quite put a finger on what it was. They all seemed to know but couldn’t for their lives remember.
“Who are you?” Stort asked the newcomer.
“I am Giblet, son of Goblet,” said the Dwarf proudly. “And I am on the most important of quests so if you all wouldn’t mind stepping aside that would be dandy!”
To Stort’s eternal horror, the people did begin to move for him! Even his own bloody men began to move!
“Stay right where you are Sentry,” he shouted, cigar still in his mouth, smoke rising from him as though he were some sort of mad bull. “That goes for you as well.”
Giblet looked disgruntled. “Did you not hear me?” he asked.
“Oh I heard you. Something about a quest. Well I’m on a quest of my own. My quest is to arrest the bloody idiot who just squashed a hundred Baggus civilians.”
“And a band sir,” said Forlus.
“Indeed. And a band. Do you know how hard it is for me to order one of my men to inform the deceased families of their untimely deaths?”
“Yes,” Giblet said slowly, “that was unfortunate. Don’t really know what happened. I steered my vessel away from the market. Thought there’d be less mess if I only crashed into the bandstand. Don’t blame me for everyone standing underneath it.”
There was guilty cough from behind the stall once again. Still, it was ignored.
“Never-the-less you failed to acknowledge your presence to the orbital sentry,” Stort continued, “thus failing to alert us of your identity, thus ignoring one of our most important laws. You also failed to land your ship in the docking bay and you are carrying a weapon when that is strictly forbidden in this city!”
Giblet looked at his axe. The crowd of civilians behind Superintendent Stort quickly shuffled their collection of knives, guns, daggers and long pointy things they made in woodwork class into the insides of their jackets.
“Crashing was an accident,” Giblet admitted. “I tried to land in your docking bay but my sensors have gone offline since I had the clash with the dragon you see.”
Stort did not see. “And ignoring our hails?”
“Well… I… didn’t feel like talking,” Giblet also admitted.
“And carrying your weapon?”
“Erm… I like the feel of it in my hand. Makes me more of a man,” Giblet admitted some more.
“Thinker, arrest that man,” Stort ordered with a snarl.
“Right you are sir.”
“Arrest me?” the Dwarf laughed. “Don’t you people know who I am? I am the champion! I have a quest to complete! The dragon… it is somewhere in this city.”
And he was right. Giblet had located the dragon, before his opponents had even arrived in the Baggus’Regious system. The beast had been hiding behind an old asteroid orbiting the fat planet. Giblet had battled the dragon, attempting to shoot it with the missile cannons on his vessel but it had retaliated. After a brief attack, the Dwarf had lost control of the vessel and spiralled out of control towards the planet’s surface.
He did however, amongst all the spinning, crossing of eyes and gulping down of gallons worth of Dwarf vomit to stop it splashing all over his control systems, see the dragon descend swiftly and gracefully down with him.
“If you do not let me finish my quest,” Giblet continued, “then the people of this city will be burnt. Or eaten. Or burnt and eaten! Dragons are not fussy eaters. Personally I do not like eating burnt food. Or cooked for that matter. I like it raw and juicy. Sometimes still wriggling! I enjoy the feeling of it squirming as it slides down my throat!”
Stort grimaced. This was a vile creature. Stort liked his food cooked to perfection. He fancied himself as quite a good chef. In fact he wanted to be one in his younger years. Sometimes he wished he had kept that idea. Actually most of the time he did. This was one of them.
“Enough talk,” he said. “Thinker, slap the cuffs on him.”
The sergeant stepped forwards, handcuffs at the ready. But Giblet was prepared for his advances.
“Not today officers,” he shouted and lashed out at Edious Thinker with his fist, connecting with the Lampan’s lack of nose.
Thinker fell backwards, unprepared for the force of the attack.
Stort smiled. “I hoped you were going to do something that,” he chuckled without actually chuckling. He raised an eyebrow. “Boys… take him down!”
Instantly the Sentry officers raised their licensed laser dischargers, stun setting only, and opened fire at the Dwarf. Giblet sprang forwards, reaching for his shield and bringing it in front of his body, blocking the oncoming laser attacks. The dark blue flashes of laser bounced off the shield, flying back towards their firers. Three Sentries were hit in the chest and fell down, stunned on the floor.
Axtin growled, raised his charged baton and ruffled his wiry hair, forcing it to stick outwards making him appear like some sort of mutated hedgehog. He leaped at the Dwarf, bringing the charged baton down as fast as he could, sparks flying from the end. It was met with the blade of Giblet's axe.
In a battle of strength between a charged baton and an axe, the axe would win every time. It was something that Stort had made the Governor aware of many, many times. Of course the Governor had never listened. He liked to get things done on the cheap. The charged batons were made on the cheap. For just a few more knobs they could have been made from a much stronger material. Anything stronger then polystyrene would have done.
Axtin’s charged baton split in two, the charges backfiring, sending Axtin flying across the market place covered in flashing sparks and gibbering in tongues for the next few hours.
Forlus, who had been about to make his own move on Giblet changed his mind and took a step back, allowing a number of the new starters to take his place.
Stort had to give some credit to the new starters. They were willing to work. Enthusiasm and excitement seemed to fill their minds when on duty. Feelings that Stort had completely forgotten ever existed.
Foolishly they confronted Giblet. The Dwarf, now becoming annoyed by the fools, swung wildly yet with extreme accuracy towards them.
Stort closed his eyes as the axe connected with several of the new starters. When he opened his eyes again most of his men were cowering behind him. Four of the new starters lay on the ground. Two of them had arms missing, one had a leg missing and one poor sod was missing a head.
“Shit,” Stort muttered. He knew he would have to sort this out. Somehow, even though in his position he should have an office job, so
rting out the paperwork, he seemed to be the one who had to get into the thick of things and solve the problems.
He approached the Dwarf who was laughing and thrusting his axe into the air in victory, unaware of the tall, pale man now standing next to him.
“Excuse me,” said Stort. The Dwarf turned to look up at him and was met by a hard fist in the face. It was a punch that sent a loud crack out across the city, scaring pigeons five miles away, waking a sleeping baby ten miles away, collapsing a house of cards and seriously annoying the maker of it who was just about to beat the galactic record twenty miles away.
Giblet staggered for a second. He whistled a tune his mother used to sing to him as a baby and blew a raspberry. “Down I go,” he spat mid raspberry and fell, face first to the floor.
Superintendent Stort prodded the Dwarf with his boot, that was in no way scuffed, to check he was definitely out cold. “Silly little man. Does he not know how much harder it is for me to get one of my men to inform a sentry officers family of their death?”
The crowd cheered and began chanting Stort’s name over and over. Rexan Stort blushed. At least he would have done if he could get any sort of colour to those pale cheeks. He slowly waved a hand in the air, more to stop the crowd from chanting then to acknowledge them.
“Thinker,” he whispered to his best officer, eyes still meeting the crowds, a fake smile plastered on his face.
“Yes sir?” Thinker said, still rubbing his lack of nose.
“Get the little man to the cells,” Stort continued, “and clear this bloody crowd before I shoot the lot of them.”
“Already on it sir!”
Stort nodded, waved some more to the crowd then turned his back on them. The smile instantly dropped from his face and he sighed. Grumbling he lit another liquorish cigar and began puffing on it. He hated this job.
Behind the stall, Charlie looked on with admiration. Greebol did not look so impressed.
“That Stort is good,” Charlie said. “Did you see the way he punched that man in the face? Whack! And he was out like a light!”
“Yes,” Greebol replied, “they call him iron fist.”
“Why?”
“Because his first is like iron. Obviously.”
Charlie and Greebol watched as the small man was handcuffed and dragged away from the market place. Charlie was confused. The little man looked very much like a… but it couldn’t be… could it?
“You know what species that fellow is?” asked Greebol.
“He’s not from my dimension,” admitted Charlie truthfully, “he’s not from yours?”
“Never seen one before in my life. But notice how the Sentry and the crowd did seem to know even though it is obvious he is from another dimension. How very confusing.”
“Can we go now?” Charlie asked. “I still really need a pee.”
“Then let us go! Onwards! I know the perfect place!”
Greebol jumped up from behind the market stall and rushed off. Charlie rushed to keep up with him, more excited that he would get to urinate then he ever thought possible.
He just hoped that this ‘perfect place’ was an actual toilet.
Chapter 19
An expression commonly used is that one knows something like the back of their hand. Charlie Pinwright often disputed this. He was sure that he didn’t actually know the backs of his hands very well. He, of course knew the vague colour of his skin and that his left hand had a weird mole shaped a bit like a spring onion. And of course he knew the obvious, that each hand had four fingers and a thumb, each sporting a nail on the end, which at the moment were a little dirty. But put in a ‘pick out the back of your hands in a hand line up’ Charlie was not sure if he would be able to.
Greebol on the other hand (no pun intended) seemed to know the backs of his hands like he knew the streets of Baggus. He could walk these streets and pick out the backs of his hands with his eyes closed. Even with the fake blue Lampan gloves covering them.
From the market place they had taken a left down Big Swede Street, a right onto Cabbage Lane, another right onto Rotten Meat Avenue, down a number of smaller alleyways that also seemed to have food references in the title and finally a left onto Soggy Biscuit Road.
It was in Soggy Biscuit that Charlie had finally been allowed to visit the toilets!
It wasn’t the café that Greebol had mentioned. Apparently the toilets in there shouldn’t be entered unless you were really, really desperate or immune to catching a number of skin popping diseases. Instead they had entered public toilets that smelt like a rotten fish and looked a bit like one too. Two knobs to enter, which, Charlie noted, Greebol didn’t pay. Instead he used a coin shaped like two knobs on a string so he could pull it back out of the slot again afterwards.
Now, stood in the toilets, Charlie was not entirely sure he wanted to pee any more.
“What are these?” he asked with uncertainty, pointing towards a number of strange looking holed objects on the walls that had some vague similarity to urinals.
“Urinals,” Greebol responded, stepping over to one. Charlie stared at these alien urinals. Some were extremely wide, some were very small. One was so high up you’d have to have a ladder to reach it.
“That one would be for the Mush-Kin,” Greebol pointed out upon seeing Charlie’s confused expression. “You would be surprised at the lengths of some of species penises. Surprised at the location of many too.”
Charlie reluctantly stepped over to one that he believed he could reach and peered inside.
A little curly black hair stared back at him.
Charlie sighed.
Even out here in the far reaches of space, he could still not get away from urinals with little black hairs in them. Charlie didn’t even know how those hairs got into the urinals. Personally he never did anything when going to the toilet that would result in one of his ‘personal’ hairs ending up inside.
Still, it made him feel a little more like being at home.
Relief.
Oh the relief!
It is too hard to put into words the relief that Charlie felt at that exact moment. We’ve all been there. We know the feeling. There is no real need to go on about it.
Now, Charlie had no interest in looking at another man whilst they used the urinal, but for some reason unknown to him, he always took a sideways glance. It was one of those things that could never be fully understood. There was no reason for it and he in no way received any pleasure from it. Still, he did it.
This was no exception.
He quickly turned away and cursed himself for doing what he always did but never wanted to. He wasn’t entirely sure but Greebol seemed to be holding two things in his hand. There were definitely two streams.
Very disturbing. Very, very disturbing.
As Charlie shook and then went to wash his hands, the room drew noticeably darker.
“What time is it?” Greebol asked, seeming a little confused.
Charlie looked at his watch. It was an old digital watch, popular in the eighties that not only told the time but also the date, the temperature and your heart rate. It in no way told you the time on an alien world far, far away from Earth.
“Well it’s four thirty in England,” he said.
“Hmm,” said Greebol looking at the watch, “we will have to get that thing updated with galactic time.”
Charlie disagreed. If numerous dimensions had collided then Greebol’s ‘galactic time’ would surely now be obsolete. Surely all time-types should be taken into consideration. Including Earth’s.
“It is too dark outside,” said Greebol. “Something must be going on.” He rushed out of the toilets and back out onto Soggy Biscuit.
Charlie sighed and followed. It seemed something was always going on.
Soggy Biscuit Road was long and wide. It was the largest street in Baggus. Numerous shops, bars and banks could be found here. It was also one of the ‘posher’ areas of the city. In the eastern side of the street, the wealthier civi
lians lived. Lesser folk who wandered into the street were treated with mistrust and suspicion. Needless to say that Charlie and the ‘fake’ Lampan were classed as ‘lesser folk’.
But at the moment, no one seemed to be bothered by the scruffy man and his somewhat plastic looking blue friend. They were all staring upwards.
Charlie and Greebol followed suit.
They gasped.
Above them, high up in the sky, was the largest, scariest, shiniest, most impressive spaceship that Charlie had ever seen. And from the look on Greebol’s face, he too was thinking the same thing.
The ship was silver in colour and smooth. In fact smooth was a poor way to describe it. This ship was beyond smooth. Not a single line, scratch, dint or dent could be seen in its hull. No windows, no doors, no insignia of any kind. It was just one long stretch of silver. Long was also a poor way to describe it.
Charlie and Greebol had no idea what shape this ship was as it stretched the entire sky, blotting out the sun. It was like a giant silver sheet had been cast over the housetops. A vast difference between the run down, ramshackle buildings and the uber-smooth, uber-sexy ship.
Charlie was worried. Yet even as the panic began to set in, he noticed the people of Soggy Biscuit looking back down to the ground and continuing their business as though nothing was out of the ordinary.
“This is out of the ordinary,” said Greebol, still staring upwards.
“Come on then mister spaceship spotter,” Charlie laughed nervously, “what type of ship is that?”
“Again, I have no idea. It must be from another dimension. Notice how the people seem to be ignoring it. As though they have just accepted it is here. Similar to the way they just accepted that small little fellow back at the market place.”
“I don’t follow,” Charlie admitted.
“It is as if they believe they already know what that spaceship is,” Greebol clarified, “yet they cannot. Somehow… when the dimensions collided… not only did it change space but also the people living in it. No one here seems to realise that anything is wrong.”
Intergalactic Terrorist (New Dimension Book 1) Page 14
