Private Pak picked his nose.
“Step to it lads,” Stort shouted as he marched into the area.
At once the Sentry sprang to their feet, backs as straight as a spirit level. Private Pak was noticeably slower than the rest.
“Anything happened?” Stort asked Thinker as his sergeant approached.
“None sir,” said the Lampan truthfully. “This great big thing has just been sitting there sir. Hovering... like a helium balloon. Some of the civilians have been complaining that the sunlight reflecting from its hull is giving them third degree burns. I think it’s probably a slight exaggeration.”
“Very good Thinker,” said Stort as he stared upwards, considering what the next move should be.
“Sir,” the sergeant asked slowly, “you do realise that the Dwarf is no longer in his cell don’t you?”
“Unfortunately yes. Yes I do.”
Giblet stepped up and examined the huge ship way above his head, even further above his than anyone else’s. This was the ship of his rivals. So they had arrived had they? Giblet smiled smugly in the knowledge that he had beaten them here. For all the fancy technology they had, he still got here the quickest in his tatty little ship. Surely, this time, the Dwarves would be victorious in the tournament. He just had to make sure that dragon was his!
“Time to… you know… do your thing,” said the Governor as he ushered the Dwarf towards the mobile control station.
Private Pak growled at the Dwarf as he grabbed the instrument. If Giblet was any less of a man he would have been intimidated, but of course nothing could intimidate a Dwarf. Especially not a Dwarf like Giblet.
“Just press the respond button,” said the Governor, realising that Giblet did not have a clue what he was doing.
The Dwarf scoffed, as though he knew precisely what he was doing. He pressed the respond button. It took a moment for anything to happen. The silence within that moment was deafening. At least it would have been if a high pitched gurgle hadn’t erupted from private Forlus’ throat completely spoiling the mood. In different circumstances, they would have stopped and done it all over again, this time without the gurgle, just to keep the moment.
“This is High Delta Lemor’all. You have the location of the dragon?”
Giblet leaned closer, listening intently to the voice, smooth and silk-like, transmitting from the mobile control system. He knew that voice. Giblet hated that voice!
He looked back at the Governor who gave him an encouraged nod.
Giblet shrugged his shoulders. ‘Oh well,’ he thought, ‘if this is what the man wants me to do.’ He cleared his throat and spoke clearly into the microphone.
“This is Giblet, son of Goblet, of the Dwarf Union,” he said proudly, “now piss off!”
If the Governor, or anyone else for that matter, had hoped that those three words would have worked, then they were shockingly mistaken. A loud booming rumble burst out across the sky forcing birds to fall from trees totally forgetting they had wings, making fine china cups and crystal champagne glasses shatter instantly, collapsing a second attempt at the house of cards galactic record.
Everyone slapped their hands to their ears, even those who seemingly had none. The city seemed to vibrate so fast that everything appeared to be in a hundred places at once.
A thin yet incredibly bright point of light fired down from the ship with deadly accuracy. It moved slowly and maliciously destroying everything it touched!
Explosions rocked the city. Fire roared. Smoke bellowed. And then, almost as quickly as it had begun, it stopped.
Superintendent Stort raised his square head from behind his arms and jumped to his feet, pulling his men up with him. He stared at a burning building. Not just one burning building but five. For there, in the distance, the castle of commerce and the surrounding buildings of lesser commerce were on fire!
An extreme yet very powerful warning that the occupiers of that great ship were not too happy to have just heard Giblet's voice.
Giblet!
Stort turned to the mobile control station. The Dwarf was gone! The Governor had also noticed the small missing man and was cursing under his breath.
“Sergeant,” Stort shouted to Thinker, “get a message out to the fire brigade. Tell officer Rudley to get off his fat arse and do some work! Forlus, Axtin, take the rest of the men to the castle of commerce. There will be a lot of dead accountants, traders and businessmen down there. You never know, we might be unlucky and find some living ones as well.”
“You mean lucky sir?” corrected Forlus in hast.
“I’m sure that’s what I said private.”
“Very good sir.”
At once the Sentry rushed off to go about their work. It was times like these that they really got put into action. Really proved their worth. Really made a difference.
Of course a few hours later they would all be sitting, sipping tea miserably as they failed to save a single person from the burning buildings and had once again become known as the most useless group of law enforcers in the galaxy.
“A note superintendent,” said the Governor flapping a piece of paper wildly before his eyes, “from your Dwarf friend!”
Stort took the note and read it to himself. “So he’s gone then?” he said.
“No thanks to you,” the Governor disciplined. “I’ll see this fault of yours is etched eternally on your service record.”
“Very good,” Stort muttered uninterested as the Governor stomped away back to his lodgings.
Stort looked at the note once again and shook his head. He had to give it to the little fellow, he was determined in this quest of his. Still, Stort couldn’t help wondering what the bloody hell a dragon was.
Governor, I will keep my promise to you and get rid of that ship. All I need to do is complete my quest and slay the dragon.
Giblet the Dwarf
P.s. – If that box-headed Superintendent gets in my way again I'll get rid of him too!
Chapter 22
The looming church of Saint Intingus III sat like a giant black cat, lying down with its tail sticking up in the air, at the end of Devil’s Alley (originally called Devilled Egg Alley but renamed after a serious bout of salmonella). The main bulk of the building was a large, cube shape with a thick wooden door and various stained glass windows that made the front look very much like a large mouth, nose and two eyes. On top of the main building stood a tall tower (the cat’s tail) rising straight upwards above the rooftops.
An old and rusty bell at the top of the tower rang out for all in the city to hear.
To Charlie Pinwright, the tune the bell played sounded very much like something by M.C. Hammer. He was pretty sure it was just coincidence.
He stared up at the large, black bricked building and shuddered. There was something very creepy about this church. The fact that it was down Devil Alley really didn’t help.
He stepped over to a large statue, cut out from the churches brick, just next to the door. It was a tall, muscular male. Other than a pair of large eyes no features were on his face, yet a mass of flowing hair ran down his back. One hand held onto a large book, the other pointed outwards and upwards, towards the stars.
“Saint Intingus,” said Greebol smiling as he stepped to Charlie’s side. “Funny looking fellow is he not?”
Charlie reached out to touch the statue's pointed finger but his hand was quickly slapped away by Greebol.
“Never touch the statue,” he warned. “Ancient belief is that the statue was carved by Intingus himself, big headed bugger too by the size of this statues muscles, and that a curse would fall upon anyone who broke, scratched or indeed left their mucky fingerprints on its surface.”
“My hands aren’t that mucky,” Charlie protested.
“Really?” Greebol asked, non-existent eyebrow raised. “I did not see you wash your hands after using the toilet. Hmm. Perhaps I was wrong.”
Greebol went on to explain more about Saint Intingus and his followers, the T
rue Believers. The True Believers worshipped Beff, who they claimed to be the one true god. Beff created all things, the ground, the sky, the water and the stars. Everything. Except for the colour purple. Beff hated the colour purple.
Beff was supposedly a good god who wanted peace throughout the galaxy. Saint Intingus sat at Beff’s right hand. Intingus was the deliverer of peace and numerous Believers have dedicated their lives to worshipping, respecting and remembering the saint, making sure his task of peace was fulfilled.
“Sounds like most other religions to me,” said Charlie. He was not a fan of religion. It wasn’t that he was a disbeliever (especially now after all the other weird crap he’d seen), it was more that there were so many of them it was hard to choose what to believe.
He supposed he’d figure it all out when he died.
Greebol on the other hand believed in nothing. Well, not nothing. He believed in hard, solid cash. And a job well done. His lack of faith never really bothered him. If a god did exist, he was unsure if He would agree with his form of work anyway.
“Are we going to go in?” Charlie asked.
“Not just yet,” came the response as Greebol sat down on a rock outside. “We will give it a couple of minutes.”
“Why?”
“Because in a couple of minutes we will be disturbing them from deep meditation!”
And he grinned.
Fifty pale foreheads rested on the hard wooden floor, one hundred hands resting next to them. Of course in this position it also meant that fifty backsides stuck up into the air, which would have been a comical sight should anyone in the room have seen it and not had their forehead resting firmly on the floor. A position that, not only was a little uncomfortable after a short while, but also caused many a forehead splinter.
The prayer room, near the top of the tower, was made completely of the wood from the blessing trees on the godly planet of Shaparooth, which, according to the True Believers, was the first ever world that the mighty Beff created. And according to the Bible of Beff all structures where He was to be worshipped had to be lined with the blessing tree wood.
This did of course mean that the wood had to be transported all the way from Shaparooth to the twenty-two different planets the True Believers inhabited. Carting blessing tree wood, which was at least ten times as heavy as a lesser wood like, say, oak, was a difficult task. Little did many of the Believers know that at least one person on every cargo ship would be crushed to death by the wood, eaten by flesh munching termites within the wood, or splintered to death (a particularly nasty way to die, totally overshadowed by more popular death forms such as heart attack, stabbing or brutally savaged by a dog/alligator). There was even one case were some poor tree-hugger was caught actually making love to the wood. Fair enough, it wasn’t the wood that killed him, but his ship’s captain throwing him out of an airlock into space for being such a rotten weirdo.
Another thing that most Believers had absolutely no knowledge of was where all the money they gave at collection went. The high priests would always say it was charity for Beff, but some did wonder what a god would need with money anyway. These few would suddenly wake one morning to find themselves in the actual presence of Beff at the amethyst gates in the afterlife. It was due to this that the majority of Believers chose not to question too much and simply get on with it.
A deep, tuneless chant rang out from the fifty mouths in the prayer room. It was a chant of respect, of worship, of understanding, of belief. It was a chant that defied the laws of tune. A singer songwriter would literally drop down dead hearing it.
The Believers chanted towards the altar of Beff and the side altar of Saint Intingus who was understandably overshadowed slightly by the lord, but still just as important to this group.
On top of the altar sat a white rose, to symbolise purity, a bottle of beer, to symbolise the devil, and a sacrificial egg. Many years ago it would have been a chicken but in recent times that was deemed cruel. An egg seemed the next most logical thing to take its place.
The chanting continued. The chanting would continue for five solid hours. It helped them to meditate and meditation was the second entrance to the afterlife. The first of course being death. Stopping meditation early, unless for divine reasons, was considered a great sin.
It should also be noted that anyone who tried to knowingly interrupt the meditation was considered the greatest of sinners.
The doorbell to the church rang.
An eye opened, its owner glancing to the spiral staircase. It shut again quickly.
Once again the bell rang, followed by the thumping of the door-knocker.
The eye opened again, followed closely by the other in annoyance. They looked towards the man kneeling at the altar. He too had opened his eyes. He gave an understanding nod.
The first, apologising greatly to Beff under his breath, stood and hurried down the staircase.
Greebol, bored of waiting, had entered the church and was beginning to rummage around for that nice wine they drank at the offering.
Charlie tried to make several protests, stating that creeping around in a church felt kind of wrong, to which Greebol retaliated by saying that Charlie was a bit of a creep anyway so it didn’t really matter.
The church, to Charlie, was like any other church he had ever been in. Although this one was completely lined with wood. Also there was a giant bust of Saint Intingus strapped with thick leather straps to the ceiling, the large eyes seeming to glare down at him, the mass of hair flowing outwards like a grand lion.
Charlie's own hair didn’t flow. It was more of a trickle. He wished he could have hair like a mane. He always got the impression that people with good hair got more respect. They deserved more respect. It’s not as if Charlie hadn’t tried to do something with his hair. He had tried every product on the market, even a couple of other things that were probably highly flammable, extremely toxic and had the potential to stick better than the strongest of glue. Still, Charlie’s hair was a complete mess.
His mother had told him, on one of the few times she had ever spoken to him, that he got his terrible hair from his father. She told him his father’s hair was so messy that it was often mistaken for a bowl of spaghetti and on regular occurrences people would attempt to twirl it around on their fork.
Other instances regarding his messy mop would be the time a black bird began nesting inside it and the time his head was used to clean a bathroom floor.
Of course in later years, upon finding an old photograph of him, Charlie learned that his father actually had very nice hair, always washed, always brushed and always shiny and styled. In fact his father’s appearance was always very smart. Therefore Charlie was not entirely sure why he was such a mess, although, he noted one early morning, that the milkman was a particularly shabby person.
“No one’s here,” he said in a hushed voice to Greebol. “We should probably go.” To Charlie it wasn’t very clear why people always used hushed voices when inside a church. It’s not like there was a written rule. It wasn’t like at a library. There wasn’t a large sign saying ‘quiet please’ or a stern looking lady in the corner who would ‘hush’ everyone if they spoke too loud.
Keeping your voice down in a church was just an unwritten rule. Like not to run in flower beds in parks or urinate on the toilet floor. Admittedly there would be some people out there who did indeed run through flower beds or urinate on the toilet floor, but those people were generally not very nice, vulgar, a terrible shot, or a mixture of all three.
“I told you, they are in meditation,” Greebol said in a voice that Charlie was sure was louder than usual. “Let us just wait for them down here shall we?” Greebol was one of those people who would run through flower beds or urinate on the toilet floor.
“Do you have no respect for anything?” Charlie asked.
Greebol considered this then presented a question of his own. “Do you worship Beff? Are you a True Believer?”
“No.”
�
��Then what is your problem?” Greebol smiled that stupid, huge smile that was beginning to irk Charlie. It was also annoying him that Greebol was wearing that stupid Lampan mask. He had almost forgotten what he actually looked like.
They both failed to notice the hooded, robed figure stepping carefully down the spiral staircase, a solid lead symbol of Beff in his hand (which was a sphere with a twisting line coming from the bottom, looking a little like an orange on a spring).
“Can I help you?” he said in a small, jittery voice.
They turned to the hooded man. Greebol smiled again.
“I have come to see the exalted reverend Horta Kimfin,” said Greebol, arms outstretched.
The man sniffed inside his large hood. “We are in the middle of extreme meditation. You will have to return later.”
“Believe me,” Greebol continued, “reverend Kimfin will want to see me.”
“Only divine interference can stop the meditation!”
Greebol chuckled. “In that case… I must be god!”
Chapter 23
The docking bay was quiet. It was always quiet. The only time there was ever any noise was when a new ship arrived or departed.
Greebol’s electrical sat in silence, ignored by the other ships around it. Perhaps the other ships were being rude, or perhaps they all felt intimidated by the huge silver ship high above them.
Greebol’s electrical was not intimidated. It was intimidated by nothing. This could have been because it was a strong willed, courageous electrical but it was more likely because it was an inanimate object and could not feel intimidation.
Something moved. In one of the dark corners of the bay, something moved. And it was large. Very large. It crept slowly along, constantly keeping to the shadows, watching. Constantly watching.
And sniffing. Deep, cavernous nostrils taking in powerful breaths, almost sucking the ships in the bay inside them.
It was searching. Searching for food. For living, moving, hot blooded food. Anything worth chomping on.
Intergalactic Terrorist (New Dimension Book 1) Page 16
