“Bah! You waste your time ‘remembering’ and I’ll spend my time doing! Looking back’s for sissies and people without rear-view mirrors. I’m looking ahead. I’m looking at these fantastic ‘royal investigators’ you put so much trust in. And I don’t like what I see.”
I looked at the trio of dowdy men who had just oozed in to the room. Trench coats and thick glasses. Where was their style? This was a royal explosion! At least I had the sense to be wearing a cape. No, these men were clearly inept. They were scrutinising the site and poking around with their little instruments, examining the tiny details with no thought of the big picture. My god, if rumour was to be believed, these men couldn’t even fart. Yet they thought themselves capable of investigating a travesty that had befallen the gentle queen who had, in her life, had such a fine appreciation of anecdotes. The oiliest among them, who I naturally took to be the leader, was even at that moment approaching the princess. Looking at her with beady eyes. Asking her questions with his mouth. As if such a sweet, innocent, sensual, lithe young woman could have any hand in a yeast-based assassination. Up with this, I would not put.
I strode manfully up to him and yanked on his shoulder. As he spun round, I introduced his face to the business end of my arm, which happened to be my fist.
“POW”, I said, for effect. I noticed Funkworthy standing agape in the corner. The fool was probably ‘remembering’ something else. The two other detectives were approaching me, hands going toward their weapons.
I pointed at the unconscious lech. “HE DID IT!” I declared.
That stopped them. They looked from me to the freshly fisted man and back to me. One of the detectives spoke up, incredulous. “What?! No, he didn’t. He just got here. You saw him come in! Everyone did.”
“AHA! You are correct, sir! But you still approach me as if I were a criminal and not a superior investigator.”
“You just knocked out the highest ranking detective on the planet.”
“That’s right! But look around. Everyone’s off balance. Nobody knows what to do. The killer’s here and he just saw someone else blamed for his crime. That elicits a reaction-a sign of guilt. You have to take in every detail. If you were looking out for the killer while I was punching your boss, we’d already have this case solved. As it is, I’ve eliminated a couple of suspects. Him”, I pointed to the prostrate police, “and you”, I said, prodding the young investigator in the chest. “You told me the truth, son, when things were going a mile a minute and people were getting punched left, right and centre. You kept your cool and laid out the facts for me. And now I trust you.” He still looked at me as though I was a madman. He had shifty eyes. I didn’t trust him an inch.
I turned with a swish of my cape to the lovely princess, who was looking at me with open-mouthed, obvious lust. I let her have a long look. It took a while, so I struck a pose and let her drink me in. It was a helluva drink and not one to be rushed-rather sipped coolly from a hammock. I made a mental note to sex her in a hammock some time in the future.
“And that’s how I’m going to investigate your mother’s assassination! POW!”
“Your Majesty, I beg you, let us escort this lunatic out of here”, said one of the investigators, aghast.
I ignored his jibe, looked her up and down and restated my case.
“Pow.”
She fanned herself and finished her inspection.
“I don’t believe we’ve been introduced…?” she questioned.
In response, I took one of my business cards out of my pocket, presented it to her and watched her read it. I had had it designed to be as explanatory as it needed to be while retaining all the pertinent information. It read:
The Princess looked up at me, suitably impressed. However, one of the more ostentatiously dressed and moustached soldiers looked over her shoulder suspiciously at the card and then at me.
“This explains nothing!” he cried, leaving me to wonder if he was an illiterate. I looked haughtily at the man, who responded by laying his hand on the handle of his sword.
“Still your hand, Eduardo!” the Princess cried at the foppish cove who doubted me. I was growing to like the cut of this princess’s jib more by the second. She turned back to me and explained, “Eduardo is a senior Royal Guard here and, I must say, rather protective. But what he lacks in patience he makes up for in loyalty. Would you-for his sake and for those of the inspectors-mind… expanding on your credentials at all?”
“Not at all. I was a captain in the Central Organization of Allied Races. You may have heard of us?”
“Certainly. Few people could be ignorant of COAR. Even on a technologically shy orb such as ours. Your main jurisdiction was the defence and policing of Core planet systems, if I’m not mistaken.
“Astutely put. COAR defended and policed the Core with might and insight in equal measure and I was a high ranking Captain in the esteemed corps.”
“You speak in the past tense. What happened? They kick you out?” sneered Eduardo over his princess’s shoulder.
I ignored him. “I was high up in the Core’s COAR corps. I suppose you could say I was integral, right in the middle of things, as it were, but-”
“But?” the Princess probed.
“They’re a stuffy bureaucratic organization at heart. The only thing they love more than rules and paperwork is court martialling me for breaking rules and ignoring paperwork. Also, I sometimes blew up things they didn’t want blown up. They were holding me back, in short. Now I travel the universe with my trusty sidekick Ebenezer Funkworthy, sorting out problems the old fashioned way.” I demonstrated this by throwing out some jabs and uppercuts into the air while making explosion noises.
The investigator, who had rudely regained consciousness sometime during my speech, stumbled to his feet and stood next to this Eduardo chap, forming a chorus of dissent.
“You can’t be serious about this man!” protested the detective, nursing his jaw.
The Princess looked at me for a long and sexy moment before she turned her head to the investigator. “I don’t know this dashing captain”, she announced to the crowds, “and his ways are a mystery to me; all I know is that my mother was taken with him in her… terminal minutes. If he believes he can discover the culprit, I want no one to stand in his way.”
“Your Majesty, I beg of you-“ protested Eduardo.
She cut him off. “'Your Majesty’ is right. With my mother …Exploded, I am the rightful heir of her throne and her command. And when I put this man at the head of the investigation, that order shall stand!”
The detective bowed his head. “As you desire, Your Majesty.” He replied, meekly.
She turned back to me, head swimming with erotic dreams, probably. “Now, sir, you have my favour in your unusual practices. Tell me what you require and you may have it posthaste.”
“Your Majesty,” I said to this fartless princess, “I require little of you, bar the freedom of your planet, and your word that no person shall be unreachable to me or my man, Ebenezer Funkworthy-he’s the pallid fellow weeping over there. I require some little payment, enough for food and shelter, a guide. What else? Oh yes. This is very important: I’m going to need a hammock.”
* * *
Chapter Four!!!!
The Game is Afoot
In which the investigation leads to a breakdown of Aplubian society and a parting of the ways. Space worries for Ebenezer and Funkworthy considers the fate of his evil doppelganger.
Funkworthy and I were escorted by a punch-cautious couple of royal guard to a guest chamber situated in one of the palace’s higher and more luxurious turrets. The palace city was rich in these turrets and towers, its skyline being a dizzy porcupine-inspired architecture of competing heights and spires as far as I could see. We were shown to a room situated on the edge of a vast drop-where I was told that the edge of the northern province fell away into the great valley. I couldn’t help but see our location as an overt message: we
were on the fringe, near the abyss, living on the edge. After all, our room overlooked the misty plunge that fell thousands of feet down to the unpopulated Aplubian terra firma and over the foggy expanse across to the lights of the southern province a few miles over the gorge. There, another set of spiky buildings glittered in the night. Turning from the window, I looked around the satin walls, the implausibly deep shag carpets and the ceilings that positively overflowed with chandeliers and decided this was absolutely the second nicest turret I had ever been given.
The Princess had, with a wave of her delicate and gratifyingly small hand, granted me all of the indulgences I could ask for. I was glad to see that my potential mate showed such good judgement. Funkworthy often chided me that my ladies were seldom in possession of this virtue, but I knew that this could not logically be true since they had seen fit to submit to my wooing. Ebenezer and I had exited the banquet hall very reluctantly, knowing that the perpetrator was likely still within, but also because the place still smelled so nice-like hot crossed buns, with just a hint of black pudding.
Soon after settling in, an officious little chap came in carrying boxes of files that we would need in order to have even a Frenchman’s chance of solving the case. I conveyed these to Funkworthy who, I assume, enjoys paperwork more than myself, and he sat down with them gloomily. For companionship’s sake, I pulled up some important files of my own and we set to our separate researches. Somewhere out there I could almost feel crime cowering away in the night as I set about the arduous and taxing business of investigation.
I don’t know how long we were at it, but a gaggle of this world’s suns were peeking cheekily up over the horizon when I finally tired of this cowardly interminable reading and demanded answers from Ebenezer.
“Have you finished yet?”
“Finished reading the entire history of the Aplubian people, you mean?” he asked, with a hint of pique.
“Yes, yes. Are you done?”
“As a matter of fact” he began brightly, “… no.” He finished with gloomy finality. The man was a living testament to dashed hopes.
“You remain a disappointment to me and your family”, I remonstrated.
“My family are dead, sir”, he gasped.
“Well, thank God for that! Can you imagine them living to see what a disappointment you became to me? It’d break their hearts. Your people DO have hearts, don’t they?”
“We have a series of lymphatic regulating pumps that-”
“It’d break your mother’s ooze pump, Funkworthy.”
“Humph”, he said as a brief silence fell between us. Honestly, though, it wasn’t my fault that his people’s anatomy was so evolutionarily daft or that his failures would obviously embarrass his ancestral ghosts. He finally looked up and asked, “Can I enquire what you’ve gleaned from your investigation, sir? You seem to have spent quite a lot of time with that one file... The one with about the Princess.”
“Quite! She’s a fascinating lady, wouldn’t you say? I’d suspect she would even make your… lymph nozzle beat a little faster.”
“Is it quite necessary to have spent so much time investigating her?”
“Invaluable.”
“It seems to be mostly pictures”, he continued.
“Illuminating pictures!”
“Most of which you’ve attached cut outs of yourself to.” He was referring jealously, of course, to the handsome images of me and the Princess that I had spliced together using only a fine blade, glue and some of the pictures of myself I keep in my wallet for autographing purposes.
“We do make a fetching pair, she and I”, I admitted. “Still, she can’t fart, Funkworthy. Still don’t know how I feel about that. Is it a turn off? A turn on? Which one’s more wrong? Do I want to be right? Ah, but I’m thinking out loud. She’s cast a spell over me, my friend; ever since I caught her eye over her mother’s burst cadaver, I knew I had to have her. Maybe it was the excitement, or her beauty, or the enticing bakery smell coming from the remains of the Queen. Whatever it is, I can’t take my mind off her.”
“So it seems”, he muttered bitterly. I fancied he thought himself lumbered with the heaviest wedge of research. I’d have to be more delicate and not flout my new love in his frankly asexual slab of a face.
I punched his arm softly. “Oh, come now. Don’t sulk. I’ll take the hint. I know you’re keen to get to the bottom of this-”
“I wanted to leave, sir!”
“I don’t believe that you did. As I recall, you piloted us down here and demanded I regale the royal audience and then try to pick up a princess.”
Funkworthy carefully set down his files and fiddled with his belt. I sighed, knowing where this was going as the sound of tape spooling backwards filled the room. A few seconds later I heard our voices issuing from the small but powerful speakers hidden within it.
“That one over there, Ebenezer.” The recorded voice yelled. My recorded voice. “Yes absolutely.” It continued, “That’s the one. Best socks I ever bought. Stop giving me that look Ebenezer. Nothing bad will happen, when’s the last time I steered you wrong? Just set us down. Say, do you remember that time I blew up that Gammonshark?” With that, Funkworthy thumbed a button to stop the sound from his belt.
The recording of the voice of my past self seemed to somehow contradict the voice of my present self, which was a logical paradox when you think about it.
“Funkworthy, why did I give you the present of that discreet but fashionable belt-dictaphone?” I asked patiently.
“So that I could record your many wise sayings, rollicking stories and philosophically engaging limericks, as I recall, sir.”
“Precisely. But you have spent all of your time with it doctoring my voice to make these crude facsimiles.”
“It is merely a record of what was said. I find it helpful.”
“Well, if you’re not careful, I’ll take that off you. Then what’ll you do? Dictaphone-less and with your trousers around your ankles? You’ll be quite the laughing stock”, I warned, with a wag of my finger.
“I’m sorry, sir”, he said, taking his fingers from the controls of the recorder hidden in the buckle. “As you were saying?”
“I know you want to get to the bottom of this....” I glared at him and his tricksy belt for a long second. Both stayed gratifyingly silent so I continued, “So come on, let’s smash our legendary brains together…You first. I’m listening.”
He sighed and shifted in his chair, readying his exhaustive report.
“Well it seems that Aplubian royalty’s pretty straightforward. A family affair-a huge extended family. Advancement through the ranks is predicated on the passing of one’s progenitors. When one royal snuffs it, it has a knock-on effect and everyone else further down the line gets further up in line for power.”
“So our suspects are the entire royal line?!” I asked.
“For starters, sir. Assassination’s no stranger to the palace, it seems. It’s rumoured that almost all of the higher-ups have at one point or another at least conspired in the deaths of whoever’s on the throne. Seems like sitting on that throne’s about as bloody deadly as sitting on the throne of Omicron 7, the planet of the carnivorous chairs!”
“Any enemies outside the gene pool?”
“Plenty and then some! Aplubia has the biggest underclass of any planet I’ve ever seen. A full ninety-eight percent of the population is in the underclass. Below the palace city is a huge network of mines that they toil in, overseen by an enormous contingent of guards and foremen. Looks like the underclass mainly works in there, digging up precious stones for a pittance. Everyone else is… let’s see, either in the royal family or working for the royal family… or Chester Lakeland."
“Chester Lakeland?”
“Yes, according to the figures, he’s the middle class here.”
“Just him?”
“Looks like it. He’s the only one. Lives in a bungalow in the southern hemis
phere. Sales consultant. Quiet fellow. But apart from him, everyone is either a part of the royalty or a part of the underclass.”
“Blimey, that’s a big underclass!”
“Isn’t it, though? Seems that when the royal family rose to power, they subjugated the rest of the population and put forward the royal decree that they’d have to start paying rent for the land they occupied, which is everything that’s not the castle. Here’s the rub though: they’d have to pay back taxes.”
“From what point?”
Funkworthy leafed through the papers. “Since they evolved opposable thumbs, sir.”
“That’s some hefty rent… Makes you wonder how this Lakeland fellow managed to sidestep it all.”
Funkworthy consulted some notes. “Sensible investing, it seems. But he’s hardly the issue. The underclass is revolting. At last estimation by the royal accountant, the underclass owed thirty-two space credits short of infinity. Seems like that’s beyond their wallet since they mostly get paid in beatings and chalk.”
“Wait a second. They can’t eat bread but they can eat chalk?!”
“Well, in fairness, I don’t think these blighters have much of a choice. They either eat chalk or eat nothing! Anyway, word round the rumour pole is that a resistance group has tired of eating chalk stew and toiling to mine gold and jewels for the jewel and gold engines, and they’re behind several terrifying and escalating acts of terrorism.”
“Like what, pray?”
“Last month a stack of pancakes was left in a public square. An anonymous note, written in syrup, read ‘soon’-or it might have. Syrup’s fairly runny, sir, and never a suitable medium for written threats. A month before that, a golden public fountain, built to commemorate the members of the underclass that had died mining the gold that went into its construction, was filled with dumplings. And a month before that, a royal peasant hunt was interrupted when someone in some kind of hot air balloon dropped muffins all over the killing field. Had anyone been yawning and looking up, they could have gotten a faceful of blueberry murder! Sadly after a fast-paced balloon pursuit, the assailants got away.”
The Court of Crusty Killings: A Captain Space Hardcore Adventure Page 4
