Relying upon his intimate knowledge of the starship's construction, Trell led the Bloody Deckers through the vapor filled corridors. The street gang trailing along behind him, keeping close, like brilliantly colored ghosts on parade. The purple gas was getting thicker as they progressed deeper into the ship, and it was getting more and more difficult to see the man in front of you.
“Turn here?” Hammer asked, inclining his helmet at a right passageway of a branching corridor.
“No, this way,” Trell corrected, and the Deckers went to the left, vanishing in a billowing eddy of the purple war gas.
* * * *
Seconds later from the corridor they had not entered, there glided a dark behemoth. The armored treads of the robot's tank-like base rolling on the floor with the sound of distant thunder. In iron obedience the machine scanned the hallway ahead, ready to kill anything that moved, especially Trell, as the warobot prowled the ship on a Seek-and-Destroy order. The deadly Omega Gas flowed unnoticed over its metal body and the battle droid faded from sight as it relentlessly moved towards airlock #4, and certain confrontation.
* * * *
Acting casual, Crowbar saddled up alongside Hammer in the misty passageway. “So what's the plan, boss man?” he asked in a rhyming cant.
“Find the bridge, blow the door and kill everybody we see."
“Good plan,” Crowbar said, dropping back in line. Let Hammerhead take the lead in this, he thought smugly. People often get accidentally shot dead in battles. Like seriously dead.
Swapping positions with the biker, Drill scuttled in close to his chief. “Yo,” he said in a warning tone.
“Yeah, I know,” Hammer growled. “But we need him at present. Afterwards, he's dead weight."
“Check,” Drill said, pausing to skillfully catch a pink squirt on his face. Ah!
After what seemed like endlessly trudging through foggy miles of spirals, corridors, tunnels and ramps, Trell stopped his human caravan apparently in the middle of nowhere.
“This is the place you requested,” Trell squeaked, the Technician expansively waving a hand at the corridor they were standing in.
In puzzlement, the gang looked at their surroundings. True, this passageway was different the others in the ship. Instead of featureless white walls, this corridor was lined with a multitude of pipes, tubes, wires, cables and flat square boxes. All white of course. But there was no sign of a door, or any other type of entrance. Just the damn purple mist, and his orange gang.
“You jiving me?” Hammer inquired, grabbing the little alien by the collar of his spacesuit and lifting him into the air.
Although revving to full power, Trell's translator failed totally to understand the cryptic remark, but the meaning of the action was clear enough. “No, no, I swear!” his belt babbled in fear while he wiggled helplessly in Hammer's grip. “This is the bridge thing that you wanted. It is not a wall, but a door. There is a phony-trick-illusion."
“Camouflage, eh?” Hammer deduced, the street tough remembering an old war movie he had seen once on the late, late show. Trell bobbled his head yes. “Well, okay then."
None too gently, the ganglord planted the alien on the floor and motioned to his men. They gathered round, and on command, twisted the energy boosters on their museum pieces. The quietly humming lasers began to throb with power, and Trell's translator stuttered incoherently.
“Anywhere?” Hammer questioned, raising the crystal rifle to his shoulder. “Or is there someplace special?"
“Shoot!” Trell screamed in terror. “Security monitors will soon sense your weapons.” The alien pointed at a plain cream color box on the wall. “There! It is the locking mechanism. Now shoot! SHOOT!"
* * * *
As a beige light began to flash on his console, Gasterphaz stiffened at the control board. “Idow, someone is in the immediate vicinity of the control room with energy weapons."
The blue being frowned, “You don't suppose it's the Dirtlings, do you?"
As if in reply, the security door exploded. Burning metal embers filled the air as the street gang in their spacesuits invaded the control room, firing their weapons willy-nilly. Scurrying for cover, the alien crew dove from their chairs, but the scintillating energy beams caught each of them in mid-step and the control room filled with the light of a rainbow gone mad as the personal defense fields of the aliens battled it out with the Deckers stolen weapons. The antique rifles had been set on maximum discharge, and the field generators raced frantically to compensate. Flickering on the point of extinction, the sparkling auras around the aliens shrank, and then triumphantly expanded as the forcefields tapped directly into the starship's reactor for additional power. Their own beams fed back to them, the lasers shut off rather than explode and the street gang found themselves holding futuristic paperweights.
Using both mouths, Idow barked an unintelligible command and a mountain of stone rose from the floor.
The street gang bawked at the sight. Christ! The damn thing was bigger than the whole gang put together! Hammer grabbed his Army .45 from the fumbling hands of Chisel and fired the man-stopper point blank at the rocky giant. The steel jacketed bullets musically twanging off Gasterphaz's rocky chest. Even though knowing they were doomed, the street gang bravely raised their rifles like clubs, determined to go down swinging!
Then the first smoky tendrils of Omega Gas drifted into the room, passed unchecked through the energy fields of the alien crew and touched their living flesh.
With high-pitched screams, Idow and Squee faded into the purple mist, rapidly disappearing in a nauseating series of stages: hair, eyes, skin, muscle, organs, bones and then their deserted uniforms limply collapsed into empty boots. The rocky casing of Gasterphaz broke into pieces and avalanched down as his carbon based internal bracings dissolved away. Spinning out of control, Boztwank's electronic pot circled around the room, then with a click it settled to the floor, only a foul smelling hole left in the dark soil to show where the crazed mushroom had once stood.
Confused for a few moments, the Bloody Deckers found themselves alone in the control room of the starship, with just Trell and Omega Gas as company. As fierce as the battle had been, it took the gang a while to realize what had happened and that the battle was over.
“Well, sonofabitch,” Drill smiled, leaning against a white wall in relief. “Son-of-a-bitch, we won!"
TEN
Twelve seconds of arc above the orbit of Pluto, remaining equidistant from the planet Dirt and its sun, there floated in the starry blackness of space a small golden cube; in essence, a globe that had been squared off to the aforementioned refrigerator shape. To the uninformed, it was quite innocent appearing. But its color alone would have been enough to identify the mighty starship to any sentient being in the Milky Way. Due to the direct relationship between color and speed in Hyperspace, that superfast hue belonged exclusively to the Great Golden Ones, Guardians of the Galaxy.
Regular as prime numbers, the sleek patrol ship swept the solar system with its powerful sensors, searching for any unauthorized intrusion, its vast array of weapons held ready for instantaneous use: the Hyper Drive nuffifier, which could bring a fleeing planet to a screeching halt (presupposing anybody got one hot wired and in first gear); the omnipotent force shield dampers, which could crush a fortress like an egg, or, an egg like a fortress, depending upon the circumstances; and the telepathic STOP THAT cannon, which had brought legions of hardened space scum to their knees (if they had any), begging and pleading not to be sent to the ice mines of Galopticon 7, (a fictitious planet of horrible environment and ravenous life forms that the Great Golden Ones had the whole galaxy believing actually existed). When the criminals sentenced to Galopticon 7 instead found themselves being stuffed into a nuclear furnace, they figured their lawyers had managed a last minute miracle of plea bargaining, and that they were sure getting off easy this time.
It was on the strength of this myth, and their known devices, that the Great Golden Ones patrolled t
he starlanes keeping the galactic peace.
However, secreted in dark asteroids hidden throughout the galaxy were their PlanetBuster Bombs and NovaLasers. The dire weapons had never been used, but were all perfectly capable of annihilating an entire solar system faster than you could say, “Just kidding!” It was on the strength of these legitimate weapons that the Galactic League recognized the Great Golden Ones authority.
This particular starship, X-47-D, had been assigned to protect the planet Dirt and its indigenous population from unwarranted intervention. The two members of the crew of the interstellar craft believed that this was a punishment for laxness in their duties (it was), that there was nothing they could about it (there wasn't), and that they were merely marking time since everything on Dirt was as quiet as ever (no comment necessary).
The crew of the vessel was also bored to tears, having little else to do than search for illegal aliens. But because of their hypno-training, their subconscious forced them to keep busy by polishing and cleaning the ship until it shone like a surgical instrument. As a result of this hypno-training, the crewmen who retired from the Great Golden fleet made extraordinarily good domestics.
In the kitchen of the golden cube (level five—section three—down the hall and make a left at the armory), amid spotless golden cabinets and racks of gleaming yellow utensils, Avantor, the ship's avantor, paused in her task of distilling the evening meal and lowered the flame under the complex maze of spiraling tubing, retorts and beakers that was their equivalent of a toaster oven. Possessing a remarkably humanoid body, the female stood a good two meters tall, her muscular figure proudly announced the excellent state of her heath and mammalian heritage. Her skin and the long flaxen hair that she wore loose about her shoulders were the exact same shade of her jumpsuit style uniform, and in fact it was difficult to tell where one stopped and the other began. Only Avantor's eyes proclaimed her unearthliness, as they were abnormally large, solid black and had no discernible pupils.
Drying her hands on a lemon colored dishtowel, the avantor turned to the chiming communicator on the wall behind her and touched the speakplate beneath the tiny video monitor.
“You'll have to wait a bit more for dinner, 17,” she said in a pleasantly husky voice. “I'm not nearly the proficient cook that you are."
With a rainbow swirl, the stiff face of her primary assistant, The 17, appeared on the screen. In military formality, the short golden male gave her a hard salute and the Avantor promptly lost her bantering air.
“Report,” she commanded sternly.
“My liege, we have received a priority message beam from our orbital sentry about the planet Dirt. A functional stardrive has appeared on the planet's surface. Wave form analysis tentatively identifies it as the All That Glitters."
“Idow's ship,” the avantor whispered, turning buttery in color. “How in the Prime Builder's name did they get past us? Aren't our scanners working? How sure are you it's them?"
Efficiently, The 17 answered the questions in order. “I don't know, yes, and the computer gave it a probability factor of 99.99%."
Her golden face grim, the female warrior nodded. Good enough. “What's our power status?"
“Nine over nine and steady, my liege."
“Insufficient. Bring us up to 20/20 and start drive mode. Punch up the file on Glitters and feed it to me on my way to the control room."
Formally, The 17 saluted. “Affirmative, my liege."
With a deep breath, Avantor braced herself and added, “Plus, prepare for a short jump."
“What? Ah, I mean, affirmative, my liege.” With another salute, The 17 clicked off.
Avantor allowed herself a smile. She appreciated his concern, but the inconvenience would be well worth the trouble if they could catch Idow and his villainous crew in the act. Swiftly, the female warrior left the kitchen and made her way through the twisting golden corridors of the X-47-D towards the control room. On route, the computer implant in her brain began to receive the data of that most infamous of starships, All That Glitters.
* * * *
Computer ready.
BEGIN TRANSMISSION, Avantor sent.
Data flow commencing. access which Idow file?
Full technical history: running time—184,000 seconds.
Military analysis: running time—1 second.
Theories and wild guesses: running time—994,000 seconds.
Synopsis: running time—300 seconds.
SYNOPSIS, PLEASE.
“Once, a long time ago, there was a very nasty boojum named Leader Idow. Oh, he was so scary!"
ADULT VERSION
“...and it was interesting to note that Idow and his gang in their various incarnations had wreaked more havoc on the galaxy than a supernova gone wild. They were perverts, sexual degenerates who got their jollies by watching sentient beings die violent deaths and by causing the downfall of civilizations on a regular basis. Their fitness test for the Galactic League was a curse on the lips of many an anthropological teams who had linked them to the demise of yet another outwardly reaching young planet.
While from time to time, his latest collection of degenerates had been captured or killed, Idow himself had always somehow managed to escape and find a new ship and crew. The Great Golden Ones estimated his age at 2,000 planetary rotations, but didn't know for sure. The file room of his home town had been destroyed by a chemical stick explosion."
COINCIDENCE?
“Probability factor zero."
CONTINUE.
“A cruel and vicious race by nature, Idow's people, the Sazins, reveled in torture and suffering to a degree that left most races ill. Their music was the modulated screams of the slowly dying, and the less said about their mating habits the better. The only reason they were tolerated was that the Sazins usually practiced their sick pain games on members of their own race, and had the uncanny ability to design really great music systems. Although everybody threw the demo disc into the garbage.
To his blue brethren, Idow was revered as a minor god, his glorious infamy only trumped by the inventor of the rack.
In one of their more highly laudable acts, the Great Golden Ones had stripped the Sazins of every space worthy vehicle, because, as staggering as it was to contemplate, Leader Idow was personally responsible for all three of the worst incidents of First Contact gone bad.
Case history #1—The Koolgoolagans were a peaceful, leafy race of intelligent mobile plants. They had developed into an incredibly noble, non-violent race who didn't even have words for murder, lie, or income tax. The treeoids seemed destined to become the greatest race of doctors in the history of the universe as their sap-like blood appeared to be a near universal antidote/antibiotic, and their branching limbs, slimmed from strong, broad tentacles down to hair thin manipulators of fantastic delicacy that enabled them to perform the most difficult types of surgery without the need of cumbersome masks, microscopes, or even instruments. (see medical text #474)
Unfortunately, the gentle race was discovered by the crew of All That Glitters and after several of the innocent doctors were tortured to death in the usual manner, the Koolgoolagans were horrified to discover that they had been pronounced too violent for galactic society. The resulting wave of shock and shame that swept through the populous caused them to wilt, turn colors, lose their leaves and die in droves. The fall of the Koolgoolagans was as pretty as it was tragic. (see botanical text #1,259: The Greatest Disaster, and literary text #138: Idow Is A Fink, an anonymous epic poem.)
The Great Golden Ones arrived days after the fact. A valiant attempt was made to revive the race, or to locate any surviving sprouts. But it was to no avail.
Medical note: During the massive raking, it was accidentally discovered that if you smoked a cigar rolled from Koolgoolagan leaves, years would be added to your life and many minor ills cured.
Law enforcement note: Nowadays, it cost a fortune to smoke a Koolgoolagan cigar and many confidence tricksters had become millionaires by selling p
hony Koolgoolagan seedlings.
Case history #2—The RporRians are a rather unpleasant race of evolved cockroaches, who nevertheless, had developed a high level of biotechnology when Idow and his crew dropped in to say hello. As did everybody else, the hive dwellers failed the tests. But instead of meekly waiting for doomsday in the form of a vast non-existent war fleet, or foolishly committing mass suicide, or ruining their ecology forever by building a planetary GO AWAY! sign like the Feppathorgans; the terrified insectoids hastily constructed organic starships and skittered out into the vastness of space, in a crazed attempt to hide between the stars. When they were finally contacted by the Great Golden Ones and told the true story of their predicament, the bugs went nuts, vowing vengeance on the race that had so cruelly tricked them. But since they had no precise idea just who in particular had done it, they decided that everyone was to be held accountable and declared economic warfare on the galaxy.
Financial note: The RporRians have no constraints when it came to turning a buck: they would finish breakfast, seize control of a corporation, milk it dry, put millions of sentient beings out of work and shatter a world's economy by lunch. Afterwards, they would have a dummy corporation buy the now worthless business before pouring billions of credits back into the company to save it, thus reaping a truly staggering profit with which to spring for dinner.
Psychological note: These sort of amoral antics were extremely confusing to most sentient races, but highly effective. The age old concept of de-bugging your business computers soon took on a new, and horrifying relevance.
'If it makes money, do it!’ was the RporRian credo; from selling primitive worlds non-working versions of their hyperspace drive, to running Three Card Monty games. The RporRians cut an economic swath through the normally prosperous galaxy that made the sad event of business executives leaping from their office windows a daily occurrence.
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