The Fourteenth Adjustment

by Robert Wingfield

  “We have to try to break out of this trap. Target a couple of the drones over there, and force our way through. P17, can you do anything?”

  “I already have done,” said the drone. “I was working for STOP all the time, and gave your position away to them. Hi guys, how’s things?”

  There was a metal clunk. “I hit it with the ship’s crowbar,” said Kara. “What a double-dealer. And I thought it fancied me.”

  “Can anyone work out which one is P96?” said Tom. “Disable that, and the rest of them will be leaderless.”

  “We’re going to die. Good. Glory, Sex and Death!” Groat punched the air. “Does anyone mind if I pop down to the engine room and give Spigot a good skronking before we start? It is Skagan tradition.”

  “Certainly not,” said Tom. “Who’s going to drive if you don’t?”

  “Good point, but supposing we do get destroyed... how am I going to complete the ritual?”

  “Will it matter?”

  “Yes, the thought of impending death is making me well horny.”

  “You’re not going to die,” said Spigot from the engine room.

  “How so?” Groat looked disappointed.

  “Look at your watch, the ones we were given as free samples by Dearheat Enterprises in exchange for access for those camera crews when we were performing the last ritual.”

  “Oh that.” Groat looked at his wrist. “I see what you mean.”

  “What is that you’ve got?” Tom said. “We are in a war situation, you know. There is no time to start counting seconds... unless you set the self-destruct. Tell me you didn’t set the self-destruct?”

  “No,” said Groat slowly. “We got these watches, you see. They don’t tell the time like the original wearables used to do before everyone realised that measuring time was pointless, and it only led to stress and insufficient tea-breaks.”

  “I knew a man who wore one,” said Tom. “I think it might have been broken. Why would you want one?”

  “Knowing your lifespan, you can get that funeral insurance paid at the very last moment.”

  “No, I meant the watch itself. Why would you want to know how much time you had left?”

  “To give you the sense of the importance of life of course. If you can see each period ticking away, then you realise you need to make the most of the time you have left... which reminds me. Are you still there Spiggy or have you used the escape cylinder already?”

  “I am and I haven’t, because Kara, Pete and the Magus have already escaped in her time cylinder and left us behind, but my own watch says we have loads of time left. We’re not going to die here, so I’ll stick with my engines if that’s okay with you.”

  “Not really,” said Groat, “but if you say we aren’t going to die, then I have to believe you, I suppose.”

  “It’s a relief to hear. I should perhaps have got one of those watches,” said Tom. “Can I borrow yours?”

  “No problem, take it.”

  “Are you going to surrender, or do we destroy you?” The mechanical voice came through the communicator again.

  “Yes, we surrender,” said Tom. He switched off the device. “Go on then, Groat. Complete your rituals, and when you’ve finished, we’ll make a break for freedom.”

  “What, you are lying to the drones? Is that ethical?”

  “Is being blown to pieces or tortured to death in a Sapristi open prison ethical?”

  “I never did hold with ethics,” said Groat, “or Suthex for that matter.”

  “Suthex, what’s that?”

  “Skagan abbreviation for ‘sex under the ex’,” said Groat. “You see, we Skagans pair for life, but we will still shag anyone, as often as possible; therefore going back to your ex is confusing for all involved.”

  “If I can interrupt, I can’t believe you would lie to us, after all we’ve been through.” P96 sounded hurt.

  “Botheration, I thought I’d turned off the communicator.”

  “That was the paper shredder,” said Groat. “A man offered to fix it for me remotely, if I gave him access to the software. He didn’t do a very good job I guess. I wondered why I couldn’t get rid of all these incriminating documents before we are boarded. We don’t want the invoices from Dearheat falling into enemy hands.”

  “I thought Rannie was letting us have the equipment for free.”

  “I used your credit card. The printable body-part machine has been useful for patching up our injuries, certainly. This new arm is great.” Groat waved the appropriate member.

  “Oh, it’s an arm, is it? What was wrong with the other two?”

  “Nothing, but I had to try the printer out, didn’t I?”

  “Of course. Come on then, you should start your ritual. Perhaps I’ll come and watch… to make sure the correct protocols are observed.”

  “I would ask no more.”

  “Are you going to surrender?” said P96.

  “Damn, I thought I’d got the communicator control that time. Yes, we’re going to surrender, but you must allow our Skagan pilot to complete his formalities.”

  “We will not wait. You must surrender and prepare to be boarded.”

  “Bigot, racist.”

  “What?” P96 sounded insulted. “We are specifically regulated to be politically correct, and yet you call me a racist. How can I possibly have broken my programming?”

  “By denying the Skagan his rights, you are discriminating against his entire race, which violates the Fourteenth Adjustment to the Statute.”

  “Bugger it, you’re right,” said P96. It gave a computer-generated sigh. “Go on then, Skagan. I have contacted head office for approval. Let me know when you’ve finished. Can I send a video-drone in to record the details... for my leaders you understand, and to make sure you aren’t lying to me again?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Tom. “We will be in touch.” He pressed a button. “Is that the communicator switch?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Groat, as their entire weapons array discharged and shattered the block of drones directly in front of them. “We should go.”

  There was a mad scramble as Tom followed Groat out of the hatch. It closed as the return salvo shattered the cockpit behind them.

  “To the weapons room,” said Groat. “The shunt should have recharged by the time we get there. Spiggy,” he shouted. “Full power to the engines. Our lives depend on it.”

  “But what about the necessary rituals?” Spigot sounded annoyed.

  “Later,” said Groat. “We have to do the ‘glory’ bit first, and that will be the glory of escaping unassailable odds. Go!”

  The ship leapt forward as Spigot dropped the activation whiskers into the doku-hair matrix. Tom and Groat reached the deserted weapons room as further salvos from the drones tore through the structure, rendering various sections of the Fortune permanently inoperative. The drinks cabinet shattered and the multi-religion debating area split away and disappeared towards Tween Space.

  “Are we safe now?” Tom shut the reinforced door behind them.

  Groat nodded. “The Fortune has been designed with all the major functional sections well-protected, deep inside the hull. As long as we keep away from the outer skin, we should be. The latest refit included a double shell, with builders’ rubble between the two. It absorbs the damage of conventional impact weapons. The more we are hit, the thicker the layer becomes. Glory may be ours on this day, despite all the portents.”

  “What omens?” said Tom, as he watched Groat squeeze into the seat by the console, pushing sticky pizza boxes to one side.

  “The usual,” said Groat. “You know, a pink tinge to the sun, the bones from my chicken tikka breakfast falling the wrong way, the images of exploding spacecraft in my teacup and the radio messages saying that the STOP drones had tracked us down and were about to spring a surprise attack.”

  “And you never thought to tell me?”

  “I thought they
were talking about someone else. You said we would be safe hidden here. I can’t disagree with my captain.”

  “Are the weapons recharged?”

  “Yes, of course. This isn’t some stupid craft that, the moment it gets hit by a breath of wind, allows the consoles to burst into flame and all essential services to go offline, needing two days to repair, you know.”

  The ship rocked as another salvo of asteroid fragments fired from the pursuit drones hit it. A console sparked and burst into flame.

  “What’s happened?” said Tom, trying to peer over Groat’s shoulder.

  “Damn, we were hit with a beam of inverted tachyons. I didn’t expect that.”

  “Damage?”

  “I expect so.”

  “No, I mean, what damage?”

  “All essential systems off line, and I really need a coffee. Damn, we’ve been hit again. This is going to take at least two days to repair.”

  The control console sparked and Tom took a step backwards, to prevent Groat running him over with the chair. The spark turned into a blue aura and leaped to the console behind him. It shorted to one of the pizza boxes and then across to a pile of half-eaten copper-sodium-feast thick crust pizzas stacked against his legs. There was a flash as the food ignited and the whole console shorted to earth through Tom. He glowed for a moment and then sank lifeless to the deck.

  “Captain $mith (sic)?” Groat left his seat and threw the main power switch... across the room—it had come loose during the battle. The weapons arrays disconnected and the console shut down. “Come on. This is no time to be dead in such an insignificant way. We have glorious combat to endure, which will be sung about in the Skagan food-halls for many generations. Death by pizza is not glorious.”

  “What’s that?” Spigot’s voice sounded concerned. “Did you say the captain’s dead?”

  “Deader than most Sapristi soap-operas.”

  “That’s not good.”

  “I’ll contact the drones, and negotiate.” He wound a handle at the side of the weapons console and pulled a small microphone on a stalk out of the side. “Attention STOP, we have lost our captain and can now reveal that we were mesmerised by him, and not responsible for any of our actions. We surrender the ship for your consideration and ask to be returned to the Skagan home-world so we may live the life of our forefathers in peace and procreation.”

  “I’ll have to ask,” said P96. There was a click and a short pause. “We accept your surrender, but not your explanation. We will need the body of the renegade, $mith (sic), so that we can take it back to Sapristi and publicly humiliate it by sectioning it, tying weights to its willy and displaying it in preserving fluid as an attraction in the city museum for the rest of time.”

  “Fair enough,” said Groat. “It’s what he would have wanted.”

  The hatch opened and Spigot forced her way in through the discarded cartons. She smacked Groat across the back of his head and cut the wire to the microphone.

  “That is our glorious leader you are talking about,” she said, regarding the lightly-charred body huddled against the back panels. “You are not going to allow him to suffer ridicule and shame, even in death. It will dishearten the Recalcitrance, and there will never be anywhere we can afford to park.”

  “What are you thinking?” said Groat, nursing the wound where Spigot’s standard-issue knuckleduster had drawn blood.

  “We will take his body and launch it into one of those nearby stars in an escape pod; a noble burial. They will never have the pleasure of humiliating such a hero. And then I will spend my days composing sonnets about his bravery and the amount of ale he could drink. Help me. We may have a little time before the manned STOP ship turns up, and we are boarded by traffic enforcement officers.”

  The mother vessel from STOP was many times the size of the Fortune. It clamped itself to the rebel ship, and black-uniformed men spread out along the corridors. They found the two Skagan crew-members wailing death chants in the weapons room.

  “Where is the body? We need proof of the rebel’s death.” The trooper swept his carbine around the room. The brush on the end of the barrel cleared a tidy space near the exploded console.

  Spigot waved a tear-stained t-cloth at the pile of charred pizza remains in the corner. “That’s all we have left of him. You’ve seen the sci-fi TV shows. You know what these exploding consoles can do.”

  The remains were scanned with a transistor radio on a stick. A red light came on. The soldier grunted. “Carbon, water, belly-button cheese, trace minerals... it looks like we’ve found our deviant. You two are under arrest for damaging STOP property, and you, my black-uniformed men, scrape up what you can and stick it in a bin-bag. We will need something to take back to Sapristi. Is that everyone?”

  “There is this.” A man in a shredded uniform arrived. He was bleeding from cuts and scratches. He carried a sack containing a wailing and spitting creature.

  “That will be Cat,” said Groat. “I thought we dropped him off with the rest of that hexacat shipment... which of course we know nothing about. Anyway, the creature would have come quietly if you’d offered him a saucer of milk.”

  “I’m a vehicle storage counsellor, not a bloody vet,” said the man. “We have to clear the ship of all life, and apart from something growing in the doku-dung in the hold, I think we are clear now.”

  “Good,” said the man who appeared to be the leader. “Get them all off the ship, and then you can let the drones finish it off. Never again will this vessel be used as a symbol of rebellion. The car parks will be resurfaced.”

  “The car parks will be resurfaced,” echoed the troops as they marched the unfortunate crew to a holding cell on the STOP ship.

  Groat was staring out of the porthole, and Spigot fussing a purring hexacat with its claws in her knee, as the Black Empress Kara’s Good Fortune took its final pounding and stared to break up. He noticed a tiny spec, the escape capsule containing the body of his leader, detach from the ship and plunge on the set trajectory towards one of the nearby twin suns. He took a sharp breath as one of the drones spotted it and fired a short blast. A shunt fragment hit the capsule and knocked it off course, towards a deep purple glow between the two stars.

  Spigot gave a sob. “What hope is there now?” she said. “We are lost, but never lost enough for poetry... What do you think of this masterpiece I composed?”

  She waited for the wails of protest, but it seemed nobody had the heart to complain, this time, so she carried on.

  “$mith (sic) he's in his capsule and a thousand miles away,

  Two-Dan, art thou sleeping in your lair?

  Slung inside a round ship going where we cannot say,

  And dreaming free parking everywhere.

  Yonder looms the haze, yonder lies the peace,

  With Skagan tribes folk dancin' heel-and-toe,

  Enemy guns a-flashin’, Recalcitrance hopes a-dashin',

  We see it all now as he saw it long ago...”

  “Your best ever,” said Groat. “Now shut the Phoist up.”

  Alliance

  In which Basil gets his nails done

  T

  he Magus threw his hands up. “We’re going to die.”

  “I will protect you, ma’am,” said Luigi, wrapping Rannie completely in his arms.

  “Basil, please stop and reconsider,” said the Magus, grabbing the leader by his arm.

  “Got an alternative plan, have you,” said Basil. “Out with it, man; never let it be said that Basil the Burglar Slayer didn’t listen to his top advisors.”

  “We should talk. We have invaded Blurgar territory. They are naturally going to be a bit difficult.”

  “We charge. It’s what they least expect.”

  “Then why are they levelling their spears at us?”

  “Surprise?”

  The ranks of tribespeople began to advance.

  “They don’t look surprised,” said the Magus. />
  “Keep going.” Basil turned to rally his men. “Oh.” The soldiers had deserted and were wallowing in the border ditch, trying to climb up the Basilopolis side. The steep bank was making things difficult, as was Maurice the Other Bastard, walloping their fingers with a stick, and pushing them back down into the water.

  “They are sensibly trying to save themselves,” said Rannie. “And Maurice is stopping them. What a bastard.”

  “He is only giving the cowards what they deserve,” said Basil. “Are you still with me?”

  “They do have a point,” said the Magus. “Perhaps we should follow them. Too late!”

  The Blurgars had arrived and the quartet were now surrounded by a wall of spear points. Luigi lifted Rannie on to his shoulders. “I will make a break for it,” he said. “Hold tight.”

  “Come out and fight,” shouted Basil, swiping ineffectually at the spears. The end of his sword broke off.

  “Stop it. We surrender.” The Magus shouted at a smirking man in an intricately-carved groin-plate, standing at the back.

  “No, we don’t,” said Basil, wrenching a spear from one of the enemy. He whirled it around his head and drew his arm back to throw. One of the soldiers behind him grabbed the blunt end and politely took it back off him.

  “Move.” A soldier jabbed the Magus as a pathway opened up in the spear wall towards the groin-plate. “As leaders of our enemy, you will make fine hostages, or at least a good hot-pot. The Empire of Out is finished. Long live the domination of the Blurgar hordes.” He jabbed the Magus again, harder this time, and drew blood.

  “Oy, watch it!” The Magus gave a shout and turned angrily.

  There was a sound of wet trampling and angry bellowing. The soldiers around the Magus disappeared under a stampede of enraged doku. The barbarians tried to fight back with their spears, but the thick hair simply deflected or bent them. The enemy army scattered in panic.

  “My beasts!” The Magus clapped his hands as more of the opponents disappeared, trampled under mud and hooves. “I knew they wouldn’t let anyone harm me!”

  “Did you really?” said Rannie disbelievingly, as Luigi jogged through the mud towards the tribe leader.