by Adam Roberts
‘There it is again, Luke,’ cried Leper. ‘Get out of there.’
‘It’s OK,’ said Luke. ‘I can’t see anything that might be dangerous to – aaarrghh!’
‘Luke? Luke? Was that you saying “aaarrghh”? Or was that another roar-like noise from the unseen roaring creature?’
‘No,’ replied Luke. ‘The “aaarrghh” was me. Over.’
‘Luke? What’s happening?’
‘A huge shambling yeti-style creature seems to be argh!! Argh! Ow! Ow! Ow!’ The fizz of static was all that could be heard for a full thirty seconds; but finally Luke added ‘over’ in a gaspy, hurt-sounding voice.
‘Luke? Are you alright? Luke?’
But there was no reply. For long minutes, Princess Leper tried raising her friend on the radio link. But in vain.
‘crcrcrzzzz–zak–kak–. . . rly hear you Luke . . . pneeeeee!–zz–you’re breaking up . . .’
Luke had indeed been attacked by a gigantic yeti-style creature, a beast that had batted him from his piggibakka’s saddle with one sweep of its huge hairy paw; and then swiped him again on the head just for the hell of it.
Luckily for Luke the yeti-style creature was not interested in eating him. It lacked the necessary enzymes in its yeti-style gut to digest a creature of Luke’s (to him) alien provenance, a fact which made Luke’s semi-conscious, groaning body about as appetising to it as a plate of sand would be to us. But he devoured Luke’s piggibakka steed, and shambled away, leaving the sorely wounded young man mountless in the middle of the wilderness, and literally freezing to death.
Clouds boiled coldly into being in the sky, and soon it was snowing. A vicious wind gathered, shrieking and yanking rudely at Luke’s clothes. Soon the wind started hurtling the snow around in a blizzard-like manner.
‘Nooo . . .’ Luke groaned. Or perhaps it was ‘ooooh’. It’s difficult to tell, actually, given the high level of ambient noise from the wind and the blizzard and everything. It was clearly a negatively framed utterance. Bearing in mind that he had been recently mauled by gigantic wild beast, left for dead in the middle of a raging snowstorm and everything, it’s unlikely, to say the least, that he would make a positive or affirmational noise, a ‘yes!’ or ‘yee-ha!’ or ‘Dolores!’, or anything along those lines.
The blizzard swirled around his supine form. Then, oddly, the howling of the gale seemed to distort, the sound bubbled and lowed like cattle, and then, as if the very wind were haunted, Luke thought he heard the wind speak.
‘Luke . . .’ it said. And then, ‘Luke Seespotrun . . .’
The voice was that of Old Bony K’nobbli.
But it couldn’t be! Bony had died on the Death Spa, his corpse sucked into a black hole singularity with all the other matter on that doomed construction. It couldn’t be!
‘Bony?’ Luke looked up. ‘Is that you, Bony?’
‘Luke,’ said Bony. Looking up through the snow, Luke could see a spectral shining form that bore a fleeting resemblance to the old dead Jobbi knight.
‘Luke, listen to me,’ said K’nobbli. ‘You must go to Swamp World and seek out Yodella . . .’ warbled the hallucination.
‘Yodella?’ gasped Luke, as frostbite started biting his face.
‘He is a great Jobbi master. He can complete your training in the ways of the Farce. I’m sorry I didn’t mention it before, actually; you know, when I was actually alive. Slipped my mind. Shocking. I can’t apologise enough. Anyway, here I am, better late than never. Late as in the sense of dead.’
‘Bony!’ gasped Luke. ‘Bony!’
‘Go to Swamp World!’ said Bony, putting a fruity low-level vibrato on the words, as if striving for mystic resonance: ‘It is your destiny! Go, Luke! Seek out Yodella! Think positively! Have an aromatherapy bath from time to time! – you deserve it! You can’t put a price on relaxation! Drawing the Death card in tarot is not necessarily a bad thing, it may only mean the death of old and bad habits or negative modes of thinking! Wear Purple! These Crystals are available for only 29.95 Imperial Credits plus interstellar post and packing! Go into the Light! Think Pink! Go to work on an egg!’
‘Bony – I’m losing you! You’re fading out!’
‘Luke!’ Bony K’nobbli said, very faintly. ‘Use the Farce . . .’ But he was gone.
The snow flurried around Luke’s supine form like an impossibly large quantity of soapflakes under the action of a powerful wind machine. And very cold soapflakes – I think we can take that as read. Soapflakes, shall we say, that had previously been stored in a super size plastic container in a walk-in refrigerator. It was very cold indeed, that’s what I’m trying to get at.
Luke passed out.
The blizzard stopped. Sunshine shone on the virgin snowfall.
Hand Someman, riding his own piggibakka, knew that something was wrong. He could almost sense that Luke was in trouble, almost telepathically intuit his situation. He rode over the snow as if guided by some supernatural affinity with the wounded man. It helped, of course, that Luke was carrying a satellite tracking bug, and that his last known position was well established, and that his last communication had been ‘arrgh!’
‘Base,’ said Hand into his radio receiver. ‘I’m approaching Luke’s position now.’
He galloped up the final slope to where Luke’s body was lying. ‘Hold on, kid,’ he called, hopping off his mount and cradling the younger man in his arms, although in a ‘life-saving’ rather than ‘romantically intimate’ manner.
‘Bony . . .’ moaned Luke. ‘Old Bony K’nobbli . . .’
‘It’s me, kid,’ said Hand. ‘Hand Someman. The guy with the two artificial lungs. Your buddy, yeah?’
‘. . . Old Bony . . .’
‘No, no,’ repeated Hand. ‘It’s me. Hand Someman.’
‘. . . K’nobbli . . .’
‘You’re rambling kid, I’m Hand. Not Bony K’nobbli. Hand. Me – it’s me.’
Luke twitched as if in pain, but his incoherent burbling continued: ‘. . . saw vision of . . . Old Bony . . . in the blizzard . . . his spectral form seemed . . . appear to me . . . not addressing Bony K’nobbli right now . . . rather recalling previous vision . . . told me to go to Swamp World . . . meet Yodella . . .’
‘You’re not making any sense, kid.’ Hand shook his head. ‘I’m losing him to the cold,’ he muttered. ‘I’m going to have to take drastic action to warm him up.’ He reached into his rucksack and withdrew an absolutely gigantic Bowie knife, silver all over except for a single red zigzag near the top of the blade.
‘Actually,’ murmured Luke, opening his eyes a little ‘. . . feeling a bit better . . . if you could just . . . get me back to base . . . nice cup of hot sweet tea . . . blanket perhaps made of winceyette . . . around my shoulders . . .’
‘Hold still, kid,’ said Hand, his face grim. With one swift motion, followed up with twelve or fourteen desperate jabbing and stabbing motions, he cut open the belly of the piggibakka, allowing its foul-smelling viscera to tumble and pour all over the snow. The pale green guts steamed as they slopped out, but the fierce iciness of Brathmonki’s climate soon chilled them.
‘So cold . . .’ said Luke.
‘Here you go,’ said Hand, scooping pile after pile of foul slippery intestine over Luke’s body. ‘This’ll warm you up.’
‘So cold . . .’ Luke said again, his brow furrowing. ‘And also, now, smelly. So cold and smelly. Not to mention slimy.’
‘This is no good,’ fretted Hand. ‘These slimy viscera haven’t retained their heat at all in this freezing environment. They’re not going to insulate you at all. You need more effective up-warming than this.’ He rifled around inside the opened stomach of the piggibakka’s corpse for a while, pulling out the rest of the creature’s intestines, and then grabbed Luke by the waist, and heaved with all his might, pushing him head first into the cadaver-cavity.
‘Urh,’ said Luke, his voice now muffled by the fact that his mouth was inside the dead body of a large shag-covered animal. ‘Sooo c
old . . . and also the bad smell much worse now . . . plus face being pressed uncomfortably against the inside of some dead thing’s ribcage . . . very uncomfortable . . . and covered in foul gunk. And still cold.’
Hand stopped trying to heave Luke in with his hands. It wasn’t working: it was as if the gut cavity of a creature the size of a large kangaroo wasn’t large enough to fit a fully-grown human male. Clearly he needed more effective leverage. He stood up, and looked down at his friend, whose head and shoulders were inside the dead creature, but whose body was otherwise very much outside. The sounds Luke was making, although only half-audible, did not suggest a person in a state of comfort or health. This situation called for drastic measures. He hurried to Luke’s feet, and sat himself down. Hand then fitted his own feet to the bottoms of Luke’s feet, and pushed with both legs with all his might. A few more inches of the top of Luke’s torso disappeared into the ragged hole cut in the piggibakka’s gut, but no matter how hard Hand pushed he could not get more of him inside. ‘Mmmbb, Bbbmmm,’ said Luke. ‘MmmmbBBbb! Mm! Mb!’
‘What’s that, kiddo?’ Hand asked, getting back to his feet.
There was a rushing sound in the clear cold air, and a Rebelend hover-transporter swooped down to land a few yards from the scene. The side door slid open and Princess Leper leapt out, running over to Hand’s side.
‘Hand! Thank God you’re alright! And Luke – is Luke OK?’
Hand looked into her beautiful face. Then he looked down at the scene on the snow before him: a dead piggibakka, intestines lying curled and scattered all about, and Luke’s horizontal body lying with its top twenty per cent or so stuffed inside the carcass.
‘Great Thog!’ cried Leper in dismay. ‘What happened here?’
Hand quickly weighed up the possible explanations. ‘He was like this when I found him,’ he said, setting his facial expression to ‘sincere’.
‘You’re kidding?’ said the Princess, aghast. ‘Luke? – what did he do to his mount? I didn’t think him capable of . . .’ She stared in silent surmise at the figure of Luke for long seconds, before shaking her head and announcing: ‘anyway, the Imp-Emp-Imp fleet has arrived. They’ve discovered our base. We have to evacuate. Come on, pull him out of there – we have to get back.’
‘Excellent,’ said Hand, brightly.
‘By the way,’ she added, as Hand clambered aboard the transporter. ‘Where’s your piggibakka?’
‘Ah,’ said Hand. ‘Um. Yes.’
Chapter Two
The Emp-Imp-Emp. Or, no, that’s Imp-Emp-Imp. Or is it the first one? One of the two, certainly
High above the icy planet, a fleet of Imperial destroyers circled relentlessly. Of course, that is in the nature of any orbit, its relentlessness. Unless it’s relentless it’s not really an orbit. A relenting orbit would be what we call ‘a re-entry’ or possibly ‘a crash’. But I am using the word ‘relentless’ to convey not only a literal description of the spaceship’s movement, but a metaphorical sense of their unstopping campaign of terror and oppression. You see.
On the command bridge of the Phagocyte class space destroyer Oppression Through Fear and Terror is the New Freedom, Dark Father stood, legs apart, face unreadable behind his terrifying black skull-shaped mask, staring into the inky blackness and black inkiness of deep space. He had come close to destruction aboard the Death Spa, and had only escaped at the very last minute in some rather implausible circumstances into which we do not, at the moment, have time to go. Suffice to say that he had indeed survived, and that he was not best pleased with the fact that a military facility costing 45,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 million Imperial Credits to build (not to mention the on-going salary of its seventeen million crew, and the various non-renewable statutory recovery overheads, payment vouchers and loss-leader profitability returns) – that such a facility could so easily have been snuffed out of existence in a trice!
After a tense meeting with the Imperial Emperor, during which a new Death Spa had been commissioned, Dark Father was sent out on a Galaxy-wide mission to track down the Rebelend and punish them by Death Absolute.
Now, after many months, the search had produced its result. Below them the Rebelend was concentrated.
Commander Regla Onzedcars approached the Dark Lord of the Psmyth with the trepidation he was finding it harder and harder to disguise. ‘My Lord,’ he said, standing to attention behind the brooding form of the evil Father.
‘COMMANDER,’ boomed Dark Father.
‘We have located the Rebelend’s new base on the ice planet of Brathmonki, below us.’
‘GOOD WORK, COMMANDER,’ boomed Father. ‘ORDER THE FLEET TO ATTACK MODE. DEPLOY THE ONE-LEGGEDY ATTACK CRAFT.’
‘Yes good, my Lord. And . . . my Lord?’
‘YES, COMMANDER?’
‘That renaming order still applies, does it? The one telling all staff to refer to the attack craft as “one leggedy”?’
‘IT IS THE IMPERIAL EMPEROR’S WILL, COMMANDER.’
‘Yes, my Lord. Of course, my Lord. It’s just that . . . some of the men feel that . . . “Monopod Attack Craft” was not only a more accurate name, but one more calculated to inspire the troops with proper battle fury. The problem with “One-Leggedy” is . . .’
‘IT IS THE IMPERIAL EMPEROR’S WILL COMMANDER.’
‘Of course, my Lord.’
There was an awkward, brooding, dark silence. Commander Onzedcars did not dare leave until dismissed.
‘COMMANDER,’ boomed Dark Father. He turned to face his subordinate. ‘I WANT YOU TO READ THIS.’ He held out a jet-black folder, within which Onzedcars found several dozen plastic flimsies’ worth of text.
‘New orders, my Lord? Destruction to be wreaked on some other unsuspecting planet?’
‘NO, NOT THAT. SOMETHING ELSE. ACTUALLY – THE FACT IS I’VE ADDED SOME DIALOGUE TO A DAY AT THE RACES,’ said Dark Father. ‘A FEW IMPROVEMENTS HERE AND THERE, FOR INSTANCE, AT THE BIT WHERE GROUCHO . . . YOU TOLD ME THAT GROUCHO WAS THE FUNNY ONE?’
Onzedcars swallowed nervously. ‘Many people think so, my Lord. I mean . . . well . . .’
‘YES, YES, WELL WHERE GROUCHO SAYS “I COULD DANCE WITH YOU ’TIL THE COWS COME HOME, IN FACT I’D RATHER DANCE WITH THE COWS ’TIL YOU GO HOME” – I’VE REWRITTEN IT SO THAT HE ADDS “YOUR COWS ARE AS NOTHING COMPARED TO THE DARK SIDE OF THE FARCE, I SHALL CRUSH THEM, AFTER WHICH I SHALL REPLACE YOU AS DARK LORD OF THE DANCING, IT IS MY DESTINY”.’
There was a period of silence.
‘Very good, Lord Father,’ said Onzedcars, nervously. ‘Very . . . um. Good. A distinct improvement.’
‘ANYWAY, ANYWAY, HAVE A LOOK AT IT WHEN YOU’VE SOME SPARE TIME. I DO THINK I’VE IMPROVED IT.’
‘I’m sure you have, my Lord.’
‘WELL, AS I SAY, HAVE A READ OF IT. LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK. BE HONEST.’
‘Of course I will,’ said Commander Onzedcars.
‘I MEAN,’ said the Dark Lord of the Psmyth, with a hint of uncertainty about the words, almost as if he were hurt, ‘I MEAN, IF YOU REALLY DIDN’T THINK IT WAS FUNNY . . .’
‘No, my Lord! It was hilarious my Lord – ha! Haha haha!’
‘. . . I’D ACTUALLY VALUE SOME GENUINE FEEDBACK. I REALLY WOULD.’
‘Of course my Lord.’
‘ANYWAY, ANYWAY. WHAT WERE WE DOING?’
‘Launching an attack on the Rebelend base below, my Lord?’
‘AH YES. UNLEASH THE ATTACK FORCES.’
Chapter Three
Attack! Attack! Attack!
All was confusion in the Rebelend base. Rebelend soldiers ran hither and thither, many of them then returning to hither to collect stuff they’d forgotten in their haste to get thither. Panic was in the air. ‘Evacuate!! Evacuate!!’ screamed an automatic siren, resonating in every corridor and hallway. ‘Evacuate!! Evacuate!! Hurry – they’re almost upon us!’
To be frank, it was more counterproductive than pro
ductive.
‘Hand!’ cried Luke, as he limped awkwardly towards his own fighter. ‘I have to go to the Swamp Planet and meet Yodella.’
‘You’re crazy, kid,’ said Hand, heading towards his own Rebelend-allocated spaceship. ‘I wish you luck.’
‘I’ll meet up with you at the Floating City.’
‘Sure thing – and hey kid?’
‘Yes Hand?’
‘It’s a long flight to Swamp Planet. Take an RC Motile Commode unit with you. You’ll need it.’
‘What about you, Hand?’
‘I’m taking Leper to see an old friend of mine; Landrove Afreelanda. She’s got a bee in her bonnet about the Great Secret secreted on board her droid. I figured Landrove can download anything from anything – he’s a computer genius. So we’ll go see if he can finally sort out what this Great Secret is, and whether it can help us defeat the Empire.’
‘Good luck then!’
‘And good luck to you . . .’
The two friends shook hands. Hand raced to his spaceship, and Luke got into his. Both craft zoomed into the sky, and in moments were hyperspacing away from Brathmonki as fast as their engines could propel them.
There was no time to lose: the Imp-Emp-Imp had landed its landers less than a kilometre from the Rebelend base; and now it had loaded thousands of Sterntrooper shock troops into the metal hulls of their Monopod, sorry ‘One-Leggedy’, Attack Craft.
Dozens of these craft were now pogo-ing along the ice-fields towards the Rebelend base. Huge metallic hulls perched atop single spindly hydraulically-operated robot legs, these terrifying engines of war were capable of pole-vaulting over any defensive wall constructed on a level, hard surface such as a salt flat or horizontal grasslands. But they worked poorly in the soggy snow and uneven terrain of Brathmonki. As long as the snow lay on relatively flat fields, they could execute their bone-jarring and hair-raising leaps and jumps, bounding leadenly from spot to spot. But where the terrain shifted topography, slanting either up or down, they tended to topple forwards or backwards, to explode, or crack open, or just lie motionless. And once a one-legged creature without arms has fallen over, it is almost impossible for that creature to get itself back on its single leg.