“It’s simple”, said Space loudly in my ear. “We can’t reach her in time to stop her and our weapon array is no match for hers, but we do have one thing that she doesn’t have: Captain Space Hardcore!” He pointed a thumb to himself. The rebels stirred and muttered around him, looking to me for explanation. I gritted my teeth.
He continued, unabashed, “You get behind her, and I take one of the pulley ropes and swing onto her craft. After some derring-do and feats of heroics, I’ll invade her craft, shut off the flour dispersal and absolutely wreck her bedroom. All you have to do is put me in position. There we go.”
The muttering around him grew as we ascended through the flashing and discoloured sky.
“So we’re agreed?” he asked, since nobody had spoken clearly.
He was met with silence.
“Funkworthy, you’re in agreement with the plan, right? It’s frankly a bit textbook but still, it’ll work.”
I pulled at a lever to pump more fuel to the engines and stayed silent.
“Funkworthy?”
“NO!” I snarled, whipping my head around at him. He fell back, shocked at the anger in my voice.
“Wh-what is this?” he asked quietly after a beat.
“This is me telling you to grow up, Space!” I yelled, suddenly furious with him. “This isn’t a game! This isn’t a lark! I just watched a good man die trying to free his people and your answer to that is what?! More show-offy heroic nonsense. Well guess what, this isn’t about your reputation for adventure or feeding your legend, this is about the people I worked and suffered with, and I won’t see their future jeopardized for a hare-brained scheme in which the great Captain Hardcore rides to the rescue again!”
I was shouting at the top of my voice, but not just to be heard above the wind. The last few days crystallised and poured out of me as I looked at Space. How could he not see? I thought.
“I don’t have to listen to this”, he said, stepping back.
“You don’t listen to anything”, I fired back, anger giving way to exhaustion. “You were meant to be investigating this thing with me, but what did you learn, what progress did you make? Who did you talk to? From what I’ve heard, you made a fool of yourself and then tried to bed the villain of the piece. And now you want to be the hero? You’re a buffoon, Space.” I said it again sadly and softly, seeing the hurt on his face but unable to stop, “I’m sorry, but you’re a buffoon.”
He reeled back physically and I saw him with his defences down, ashen faced, hurt and betrayed, and standing in a crowd that did not want to hear him. I felt my heart sink, but I looked up in the now yellow sky and focused on the ship that was drawing nearer. I saw how close it was to the city.
“And we need a real plan”, I said with finality as I turned my face from him.
The rebels closed around me, making a circle that excluded Space, each member proposing plans of attack. We had ascended to the same altitude as her zeppelin, so I levelled the ship out and started the chase, trying to sort through the cocophany of ideas.
They closed around me and I tried to shut off the din of emotion in me as I listened to suggestions
“You’re right”, a voice said.
I leaned back in my chair and tried to weigh up my options. Attack, flank, it all seemed-
“You’re right”, came the call above all the other voices. I turned.
It was Space, though the flatness of his voice was a tone I had never heard before.
“What?” I asked, having heard those words from him so seldom before.
“I said, you’re right. I am a buffoon. I bungled the case. I tried to question people, but it didn’t work and I learned nothing. You did, though. In a few short days you helped a whole rebellion to rise up, made friends, got answers-you even took down the Baker single-handedly. I just insulted some fat ladies, punched some fellows and filled a cup full of soapy pee. I didn’t even bed the Princess. And that was my whole reason for sticking around after the Queen exploded; that’s the truth. That’s why we didn’t just leave-because I wanted to show off. So once again: you are right.” He shook his head sadly and looked down.
“We do not have time for this”, said Felipe as our ship closed the gap between the two balloons and the sky coloured with lights as rocks burst in the atmosphere above.
I nodded at Space apologetically. “He’s right, we don’t.”
“I know, and if you want, I'll stay silent after this, but just hear me out.” He looked at me beseechingly and I nodded for him to proceed. “You’ve proven yourself the better investigator. You are the smarter half of our partnership, without question. You listen and you can work things out. I don’t have that. Never have. And deep down, I think I always knew that. But I do have something… I have an ego”, he said with a flourish.
“What?” Felipe asked incredulously.
“I have an ego!” he said again, this time regaining some of the old Space swagger. “And it is as massive as I am handsome. But do you know the great thing about having an ego as big as mine? I think I can do anything! I dive into firefights, wielding nothing but a wet towel. Remember that? I take on armies because I know I can win. I romance alien babes who are, realistically, far more evolutionarily evolved than me. But dammit man, you of all people know that I get results. I did bed that being that was made from pure thought energy-you saw her leave in the morning. I am an idiot, because no rational person would even try to quell the war between the Alaxians and the Racchno with a smooth saxophone solo-if I thought about it for a second I would falter! But did I falter?”
I couldn’t repress a smile at the recollection. “You did not falter”, I admitted.
He took my head in his hands.
“You solved the case with your intelligence but now it’s time for some brash stupidity and you know it. We’re in a damn balloon fight, man! How are we going to solve this in a sensible way? There’s no way. I can do this. I can dive on that bastard and do something crazy. Do you know why?” There was a fire in his eyes: a fire I recognized.
“I do”, I said quietly.
“Well, tell these people”, he implored, waving an outstretched hand.
“Because you’re Captain Spa-”
“BECAUSE I’M CAPTAIN SPACE HARDCORE!” he bellowed, interrupting me.
He puffed out his chest, stuck out his chin and planted his fists on his hips, letting everyone take him in. He looked ridiculous. He looked magnificent. Even without his cape, I could still see it.
“Trust me”, he implored. “Trust what I am. Please.”
All eyes turned to me.
I looked up at the sky-it was brightening as the first gaseous rocks plummeted through the atmosphere, releasing their rainbow-coloured energies as the heat ate them up.
I looked below us at the grey ground of the southern city that had suddenly appeared beneath us, the homes of thousands and the potential site of a massacre, if we didn’t stop it.
I looked at the balloon and imagined Hydrangea within it, who had outmanoeuvred us at every turn and in every sense-always a few steps ahead, always having thought every move through.
I looked at Hardcore, my old friend, who was straining to keep his stomach sucked in as he held his heroic pose still.
I smiled.
She’ll never see this coming.
I pulled the ship up above her balloon with a sudden yank at the wheel and turned to the crew.
“Goddamn it, give this man a damned rope to swing off already!” I shouted.
* * *
Chapter Twenty-One!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A Daring Balloon Assault
In which our duo make toward the underground AI, and the King’s robot army gear up for slaughter.
Funkworthy walked with me to the edge of the ship. He had the confident air of a man who had come into his own, and his eyes shone with that most essential of things: faith in me, Captain Space Hardcore.
I couldn’t blame the man. I had been ou
t of sorts recently. Self-doubt was a demon I thought I had annihilated in the Mind Wars of ‘82, but it had apparently been lurking in me all this time. But with the rope in my hand and the enemy in my sights, I knew that I was back to being who I really was.
“Tell me you have even the ghost of a plan”, Funkworthy mumbled to me in an undertone as we walked. One of the rebels was nervously minding the captain’s chair until he returned.
“Nope”, I announced happily. “Just go over there, do some things that will be massively ill-advised, then... I dunno, win somehow?” I offered.
Funkworthy seemed about to sigh but laughed instead. “It’s good to have you back, Captain.”
“It’s good to be back... T-Bone.” He coloured slightly at the mention of his new name.
We looked out to the ship that lay slightly below and in front of us. Spired buildings and towers leaned in from all sides, but we stayed on her. We were in the city proper now, and I could almost see the green expanse of the park that would serve as the viewing platform. Overhead, a celestial fireworks display played out, but I had no chance to look and go ‘oooh’ as I would have liked. It was business time. Funkworthy faced me once more, now with a sombre expression.
“Too much blood has been shed today, Space.” He glanced at the crumpled form of Jacques, who was still embedded in the ship despite many attempts to lever him out with planks and pry-bars. Those cannonballs really were heavy. “Take this power hungry Aplubian pillock down for them. Do it hard, and if you can, do it twice.”
I nodded at him, and it was so serious a moment that I didn’t even voice the innuendo. We exchanged a manly handshake, and he left me on the edge, hurrying back to the pilot’s chair. He nodded at me as he settled in the seat and eased a few of the levers. Our ship dipped slowly, closing the gap.
This was it.
The rope gave me a lot of slack. It hung from the top of our balloon at the front, and I held it where I stood at the very rear of the craft. I was no maths wizard, but the angle of descent and the shape of the swing’s parabola would, I knew, ensure that the jump from this height and at this speed would be bloody thrilling. The Queen’s blimp turned a slight corner and, as if magnetised to her, we followed. I could see the pavilion and hear distant music. The Queen’s thrusters fired as her craft dipped, so I knew she was on her final approach-but just how final it would be was up to me.
I took a breath and held it for a second. I loved this moment: the little lull of inaction before my world was consumed in explosions, speedboat chases and zero-g gunfights. I let the breath out slowly and gave the signal to Funkworthy-an odd little sign he had showed me where you made a fist but popped your thumb out. I liked it.
He nodded and eased on the air brakes, and the Queen’s ship jumped forward. It seemed counter-intuitive, but he had to wring every piece of momentum out of the jump as possible. He fired on the engines after a second and the nose of our craft torpedoed down towards her on a deadly ramming trajectory.
“Now, Space, now!” I heard him yell.
I smiled, gripped the rope...
And jumped.
When he leaped, I pulled the craft’s nose suddenly upward while keeping a downward vector, feeling a dull impact run through us as the belly of our boat sprang against the top of the Queen’s balloon and bumped it in the air.
“Godspeed, you crazy bastard”, I muttered through gritted teeth as I wrestled the controls upward.
I had to keep close on her tail, but she was flying too near to the ground.
“I see them!” came a shout from the head of the ship, where a few of the rebels had posted themselves. We were in the southern city proper now. Our balloons were starting to have to navigate between palatial buildings .The festive smells from the Aplubian festivities reached my sensitive nose as the low din of music wafted through the air. So close. They would be lined up, paying respect to the departed Queen, and engaging in frivolities as the new monarch piloted herself at them.
But I knew that eyes would be elsewhere.
A burst of otherworldly colour lit the sky, shifting from brilliant white to a throbbing pink like a rave from beyond the stars. The meteor shower was in full effect. It didn’t even occur to me to look up at it. I steered us down and set my nose against the posterior of the Queen’s blimp.
For wherever it would go, I would surely follow.
My old friend rope burn greeted me as I swung like a dashing pendulum onto the side of the balloon.
I let go of the smoking rope and grabbed on to the rigging on the side of the large balloon. The inflatable was covered in netting that almost invited climbing on it, and I had landed in the exact middle of the thing, my face burying deep into the soft canvas for a second.
Now came the hard part: thinking.
I took it slow and made one decision at a time. First thing: up or down?
Up would have been the easier climb, but I remembered the hoovering apparatus that had taken the baker’s payload into the ship-the baked goods would be to the bottom of the craft. Wincing at the prospect, I started down, my legs groping and scraping blindly for footholds as the zeppelin zoomed down the wide-set streets. I descended a good few rungs before the angle of the balloon receded into the cabin of the zeppelin too steeply and I could no longer swing my legs to find a rope to hold on to. I set my jaw and simply hung by one arm, my legs dangling in the breeze. I grabbed desperately out for a lower rung with my other arm. I then gripped onto it with both arms as my stomach jumped in protest. I looked down, and then cursed my eyes for their lack of blindness. I swung my arms another rung down. Only a few more of these lurching swings to go, I promised myself.
Above me came a groaning sound as the balloon rubbed against a large sandstone tower, sending drifts of crumbling masonry into the breeze. I looked to the ground again. The park was close to us. I could make out the figures frolicking and celebrating how utterly alive and unexploded they were. If only they knew. I picked up the pace, and in a few ape-like lurches my body came into contact with the gratifyingly flat vertical wall of the zeppelin’s cabin. Still dangling from my arms like laundry hung to dry, I looked around for a place I could grab onto. I glanced under me and winced. I let go of the netting and spread my legs.
I aimed true and hated myself for it. Fwam. The cold column of the cannon took the brunt of my crotch as I landed on it. There was no time to yell out in pain or see if I really was going to sing in a higher register from now on, since falling bodily onto the thing dragged its aim down and I slid slowly off its end. Tears in my eyes, I grabbed at the cannon as it drooped, but as I slid I finally managed to take hold of it by the muzzle.
“Is that you?” A shout from inside the cabin, then laughter. Hydrangea peeked out of a porthole and mocked me with a look. I could end this now, I thought, and reached for the pistol in my holster, but when my hand dipped to retrieve it I found nothing but air. I looked around frantically and then glanced upward. A glint caught my eye further up the surface of the balloon. My pistol was tangled in a knot of rigging further up. It must have come loose when I had hit the side. Damn.
She was seemingly amused by my confusion and precarious position. “Well, my love, enjoy your fall!”
I heard a sizzle above me....
“Oh god”, I muttered to myself.
When the cannon I was hanging from fired, three things happened at once: my hands burned as the metal heated, a building wall behind me exploded with a cannonball and showered me with debris, and I screamed in agony. It was actually an octave higher, I noted.
I heard a cackling coming from inside the cabin and the cannon exploded again, a fresh plume of smoke and atomized brick surrounding me. By the second explosion, my hands felt like they were glowing red from the heat. I searched madly through the smoke for something, anything to grab on to. Hanging from the bottom of the cannon, I could see the underside of the zeppelin and below that, the blurry streets of Aplubia. There had to be a way....
&nbs
p; I swung my feet back and forth, gaining momentum with every pass, until I was swinging almost in front of the firing cannon. I kicked my legs out and gathered speed. I would be going into it blind, but my blistering fingers were coming off the copper surface of the cannon second by second. I swung backward and a hot gust of air blew down my back as the cannon fired once more. I swung back under it as my fingers involuntarily released and each one of my appendages shot out around me as I hurled forward and tumbled, madly searching for something to grab hold of.
When I peeked out of one eye, I saw the ground still rushing under me instead of a white tunnel with my mother at the end smiling at me. So I could assume that I was still alive, but how? I looked up at my right hand-burned numb as it was-and found that it had attached itself to the handle of the bay doors on the underside of the zeppelin. I let out a long whoop and gave thanks to my right hand-which had always been my favourite anyway. Seeing a second handle on the double bay door, I dutifully grabbed it with my left hand.
My hands blurred as they worked the ship. The levers had become an extension of me, and I gripped the wheel with straining arms to keep us on our path.
We were skimming too close to the ground, I knew, but I had to see.
I had watched Space’s perilous clamber down and his flailing jump from the cannon, and now I saw him pinned to the bottom of the ship, hanging on the doors that would open to deposit the payload all over the ground.
“They’re dead ahead, sir”, a crewman shouted at me.
I didn’t need the reminder. As he said it, the streets below us gave way to a grassy expanse. We were gliding above the royal gardens now, the festivities spread below us and the throbbing, fire-tinged sky above us. I ignored them both and fixed my eyes on the Captain.
I heard the bay door groan to life, and as he hung there, pinned between them, his arms stretched out as though he meant to hold back the deluge with his own body.
The Court of Crusty Killings: A Captain Space Hardcore Adventure Page 22
