The Fifth Correction

by Robert Wingfield

  “We have a technical issue with the sprinkles machine; I don’t want to offer you a Cappuccino without sprinkles; that would be bad etiquette.”

  “Yes it would, Captain Wang,” said Neckbeard. “Let us know when you are back on line and we can board safely for a decent drink, and don’t try to fob us off with those little aluminium percolators either; I like a good helping of coffee, and one that isn’t so thick you could trot a rat across it.”

  “I will. Sorry, got to break the link now as my Number Two seems to be choking.” He muted the pionio and stared across at his mate. The man was making desperate cutting movements across his throat. “You have a problem, Number Two?”

  “I was trying to let you know I need a little more time, to keep him talking and not to cut the link.”

  “How are we getting on then?”

  “The reboot has finished and now it is telling me that some of the updates were unsuccessful and we should redo the download.”

  “Abort it, Number Two and send a message to Macrosquat to tell them that if they fuck around with my systems again, I’ll personally come and shove a…”

  “I’m pressing the sodding button sir.”

  A glowing envelope of energy eased its way around the outer hull of the ship.

  “What are they doing now?” Wang peered curiously at the display.

  “There was a flash, sir, and… shit!”

  The vessel rocked as a mass of small objects punched through shield and superstructure.

  “Are we really hit?” The captain ran his fingers through his hair. “How can that happen? Have the shields failed?”

  “Not that I can see,” said Number Two. “They still work fine. Somehow they didn’t stop that salvo.”

  “Damage report?”

  “We’ve lost the gym, sir.”

  “Bugger, where will we exercise the cargo now? They’ll turn up all lardy and won’t fetch such a good price.” He flicked the communication switch. “This is Captain Wang here.”

  “I know, Captain Wang. Do you want more,” Neckbeard’s voice came through the connection, “or are you going to let us board?”

  “Cut the link,” said the captain. Number Two nodded. “Let’s show them what our weapons are about. Take them out!”

  “What, like invite them to a show with dinner afterwards? I suppose it might stop them firing at us.”

  “Don’t be obtuse, Number Two. Get those armaments on line.” He connected to the pirate ship again. “Er, Captain Wang here; one moment, Neckbeard, we are having a bit of trouble with the systems. Can you give us a few militots?”

  “Only a few, Captain Wang,” replied Neckbeard’s voice tiredly. “We are getting thirsty.”

  “Understood,” said the captain and broke the connection again. “Right, how are those lasers coming along?”

  “Charged and ready, Captain. Do we give them a warning shot and hope they back off?”

  “I don’t think they will,” said the Captain, “them being ruthless and all that. Death or glory I expect, if they really are pirates. You have my permission to provide the former option for them.”

  “Death? Yes sir, locked on and ready to deliver.”

  “Make it so… yes! I always wanted to say that.”

  “I’m pressing the button that fires the weapons,” said Number Two.

  The lasers discharged, aimed towards the tiny pirate ship.

  * * *

  “T

  hat’s not very sporting,” said Ruth as she saw the flash from the freighter.

  “Are they firing at us?” Neckbeard twisted the wheel and the Pig-Ugly bucked out of the way.

  “If they are, by the time we see the laser, we’ll already be hit; that’s the trouble with light; too bloody slow. It was a waste of time doing any evasive manoeuvre. Oh…”

  An asteroid behind them shattered into tiny pieces. “Ah, ammunition,” said Neckbeard, and set the on-board collectors sucking up part of the resulting shower of diamond and iron fragments. “Lucky it was an ‘S’ type structure.”

  “Compared with?”

  “The ‘W’ type, which are composed mainly of ice and jelly. No good for making projectiles.”

  “Good for life though if I understand it,” said Ruth. “Theory is that the ‘W’ asteroids carry micro-organisms across the cosmos and create life where they find an accommodating planet.”

  “You been reading ‘Phoist’ again haven’t you?”

  “You’d better reload, in case they need another demonstration of our firepower. Target the theatre next; show them we mean show business.”

  * * *

  “We missed, sir.” Number Two scratched his head.

  “How can that be? You said you had a lock on the target.”

  “I was mistaken sir. They are too small for our targeting systems to get a fix. They locked on to that asteroid behind them.”

  “And blew it up?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “There will be hell to pay if the Consortium find out. They have all the mining rights out here.”

  “I think we’d better not tell them sir. Anyway, what do we do about this Neckbeard character?”

  “I suppose we will have to let him come aboard. A ship that small can’t have a large crew; we should be able to overpower them.”

  “Unless they are very small themselves sir, and there are thousands of them. We could be overrun.”

  “True. We shouldn’t assume that every other life-form is the same size as us.” The captain nodded. “So, what other choices do we have?”

  “We could ask them what they want?”

  “Good idea.” He reopened the pionio link. “Captain Wang here…”

  “Did you just fire at us, Captain Wang?” Neckbeard’s voice expressed a mixture of disbelief, effrontery and sadness.

  “Sorry about that,” said the captain. “An accident; a major download from Macrosquat must have cross-wired the lasers and the toilet flush, and then I knocked over my coffee cup. Still, no harm done…”

  “Until the Consortium catch up with you,” said Ruth.

  “Ah, you know about that then. You don’t work for them do you?”

  “Does anyone anymore? I heard they had been wiped out by a bunch of psycho godlike creatures.”

  “No idea.” Wang cleared his throat. “What do you want from us?”

  “Your cargo?”

  “What all of it?”

  “No,” Ruth let out a sigh. “I want to know what your cargo is.”

  “Only that?” The captain took a breath and picked up a clipboard. “According to our official flight documents, we are transporting horny tarts, Vegemite, sheep-shears, steak knives, knitting needles and Viagra for Glenforbis, and essential food and medicines for the other industrial planets in that system.”

  “I like a horny tart,” said Neckbeard. “Chewy but they go nicely with custard or ice-cream.”

  “I think he’s lying,” said Ruth. “Sheep-shears? They don’t have sheep on Glenforbis, only doku.”

  “If I may butt in.”

  “What?”

  “This is Captain Wang here. The shears are for the farmers. We also carry a good supply of razorblades.”

  “Don’t do it, Captain Wang,” said Neckbeard. “Life isn’t that bad; think of kittens and babies’ smiles and reruns of Top Gear.”

  “The razorblades are for the farmers, too,” said Wang tiredly.

  “I knew that,” said Neckbeard. “I haven’t had Vegemite in years. We’ll take 20 bottles, and a selection of the foodstuffs. I’ll send a couple of shopping bags over for you to fill up.”

  “Is that all?” Wang flopped into his chair.”

  “What else would a ship this size be able to carry?”

  “I did wonder. Can we let you have anything else in return for your silence about the asteroid we blew up?”

  “Already forgotten,” said Neckbeard. “It was
made up of diamond you know: worth a fortune. We’ve got all we can carry; you might like to take the rest in payment for the goods.”

  “Payment? Are you really a pirate?”

  “Definitely. I’ve got the shirt and everything.”

  “And a parrot?”

  “A hexacat, but it’s much the same thing, although I’m having difficulty teaching it to speak.”

  “But I thought pirates were supposed to murder and pillage…”

  “This is the modern age you know. We pay for what we take and take what we can’t pay for.”

  “Sounds good,” added Ruth. “I think that will be our new motto.”

  “I’ll load the stuff up and send it over,” said the Captain. “Do you want any used comics?”

  “Love some,” said Neckbeard.

  * * *

  “That was easy,” said the pirate, closing the boot on the cargo sent over from the freighter. “Who’d have thought we would be invisible to weapon locks?”

  “Useful,” said the gorgeous blonde in the red shirt beside him. “Nice of him to send us over a three-cornered hat each; now we really look the part.”

  “I suppose we had better find a safe harbour to dock while we enjoy our spoils. What about the planet down there? What’s it called?”

  “Fukedds.”

  “No need to be rude.”

  “No, sorry, that’s its name. The locals call it something different but people who have visited unannounced nicknamed it that; something to do with the residents and the laws I believe.”

  “Fukedds it is then. Shall we look for somewhere safe to land?”

  “I can see a nice little island. Millipedia says that it is owned by the SCT Corporation and has a Skagan reservation on it. Will that do?”

  “I like Skagans.” Neckbeard licked his lips, remembering their traditional greeting rituals19. He wound out the drive actuator and the ship slowed as they entered the atmosphere. “Starting descent.”

  “I can see that,” said Ruth. “Why do you have to tell me? There’s nobody on board wearing blindfolds, and as far as I know, we’re not being filmed.”

  “Sorry, habit I guess. Shall I tell you I’m engaging landing thrusters?”

  “No.” Ruth tapped her foot on the scootboard. “I really don’t need to know that either.”

  “In that case, I won’t tell you about the two nasty-looking missiles that have been launched from the island and appear to be heading directly for us. I also won’t tell you that I’ve disengaged the main drive and have no chance of restarting it before they hit us.”

  “Probably best not to,” said Ruth. She pulled her hat over her eyes and stuck her fingers in her ears.

  The Argon-nauts

  Bott takes a Shot

  The Coffee Improves

  B

  ott looked worried and called to his partner, who was rummaging in the wood-chippings under the sink. “Are those missiles on the scanner?” The arthropod joined him at the wheel.

  “Alas,” said Scaly.

  “That’s a relief,” replied Bott. “Simply Miss Vendiola then; I thought we were in trouble.”

  “No, not ‘a lass’, my friend, but alas, I think we are in trouble. The way those things are approaching, altitude and trajectory…” He scribbled on his slate and Bott blocked his ears. “…they will strike in less than 400 milidougals.”

  “And how long is that?”

  (More scribbling.) “Three minutes.”

  “Shit.”

  “If it will help, but you’d better be quick.” Bott disappeared forward towards the ‘head’, which is what shy sailors call the toilet when they don’t want people to know they are having a crap.

  “I didn’t mean that… Oh leave it to me then.” Scaly grabbed the wheel and spun it hard to port. He had a quick slug of the Port from the bottle wedged under the seat and then opened the accelerator. Nothing happened. He noted the internal workings and then closed the accelerator and pulled the control lever instead. The cruiser veered away from the impact point. Scaly checked the screen again. He clicked his forcipules in irritation as the missiles adjusted target and continued to plunge towards them. He whirled the wheel in the opposite direction.

  Directly ahead Scaly saw three ships. He checked the calendar. It was not Christmas day20. He checked the chart; they were nowhere near Bethlehem, which, he noted, is landlocked.

  “Must be a different three ships.”

  He dismissed any coincidences to regard them more closely. His long-range ocelli picked out that they were all flying signal flags; one was a white flag with two red squares (or it could have been a red flag with two white squares), another had a red flag with a notch cut out of one side, and the third had a blue flag with a horizontal white bar. “I haven’t time to look up what they mean in the manual,” he muttered. “I’m sure we’ll be safer beside them though.”

  * * *

  On the civilised island, some exquisitely beautiful people wearing not very much in the way of clothing were desperately punching switches and flicking controls.

  “We’ve got to stop the missiles,” said a heart-stoppingly beautiful girl.

  “Yes, we must; we didn’t send them the correct warning first,” replied the astonishingly handsome man beside her as he checked the Process Manual. “It says here that we should not fire unless they have responded to our warning and told us to go and screw ourselves.”

  “They think of everything,” said the girl, “but we are not to leave our posts. Why won’t anything happen with this console?”

  The man checked the Manual again. “We should try flicking switches and punching controls instead,” he said. “It says here the big red mushroom is the abort switch.”

  “I’ve already eaten it,” said the girl dreamily.

  “No, that one there.” He waved vaguely in the general direction. “Oh, let’s assume they’ve already told us to go and screw ourselves, and do it.”

  “I thought you’d never ask,” said the girl, undoing the bow on her halter to reveal the most perfect breasts ever imagined, even in a Pre-Raphaelite painter’s, wildest dreams.

  “I was thinking about it,” said the man, dropping his cycle shorts.

  “I could see that already,” replied the girl, stepping out of her mini-skirt. “Shall I keep the boots on?”

  “No, take them off; I wish you wouldn’t wear them on your ears.” He advanced on her with an erection that would have made Michelangelo, wish he’d taken more notice in the changing rooms.

  The girl jumped up on to the control console and raised her legs. The man thrust deeply inside her, forcing her backwards, where her perfect and delightfully firm backside made contact with a large red mushroom-push button (type 91T in the Process Manual), and two deadly missiles exploded harmlessly a safe distance above three ships, one bearing a white flag with two white squares (or it could have been a red flag with two white squares) meaning ‘You are running into danger’, another bearing a blue flag with a white bar, meaning ‘I am leaking dangerous cargo’ and a third with a red flag meaning ‘I am discharging dangerous goods.’

  “That was a close one,” said Scaly as Bott returned from the ‘head’. “Lucky that these ships sheltered us from the danger; the people who shot at us must have realised they were going to destroy friendly vessels.”

  “Good, can we get on to the island now?” said Bott. “And why is our boat’s hull glowing?”

  * * *

  The rest of their approach was largely uneventful, apart from a few glowing fish lazily swimming in circles near the surface of the water. Bott scooped them out and set to cooking on the small stove in the galley. He served up dinner as they approached a golden sandy beach. Scaly dropped the anchor, cursed and then attached a chain and threw it overboard. The cruiser came to a halt in a fathom of water as they sat down to eat.

  “Food will sustain us for the rest of the mission,” said Bott.

  �
�And a can of WD40,” replied Scaly, eyeing Bott’s mechanical implants.

  “And keep us fresh and alert,” said Bott, biting into one of the fish.

  “An army marches on its stomach,” added Scaly.

  “Especially quadrillipods,” said Bott, regarding his partner’s segmented body.

  “Especially quadrillipods,” agreed Scaly. “Is the meal supposed to spark like this?”

  “You’ve heard of ‘flying’ fish?” said Bott. “I think these are ‘lighting’ fish.”

  “Fair enough; can I have seconds?”

  * * *

  On the civilised island itself, some exquisitely beautiful people wearing nothing at all apart from footgear themed earrings were lying entwined on top of an expensive and delicate control console. Various bodily fluids were finding their way into places where they should not have done. The odd flash came from the controls from time to time, making the lovers giggle.

  “I suppose we should call out the guard,” said a heart-stoppingly beautiful girl.

  “Yes, we should,” replied the awesomely handsome man beside her as he removed his hand from her breast and checked the Process Manual again. “It says here that if our defences are breached, we should alert the militia and get them to apprehend the insurgents.”

  “Right,” said the girl, relaxing her grip on his already hardening… wallpaper paste. “Should we finish the decorating first?”

  “It won’t finish itself,” said the man, “and I’d hate to have to mix a new batch of glue.”

  * * *

  “I would have expected more resistance,” said Scaly as he floated ashore on a patch of luminous jellyfish. “They seemed rather keen to kill us earlier.”

  “Perhaps they think they have,” replied Bott. “Shame, I was looking forward to trying out my new blaster on their defence forces. Which way do we go?”

  “Over there. We have to work our way through the jungle, and according to our intel there should be a good vantage point opposite his office. You can shoot him from there.”

  “Aren’t we supposed to read the ‘Caution’ to him first? You know, ‘You have the need to remain dead…’”