The East Anglian Bombardiers And Grenadiers

by Stephen Jennison-Smith

  “GUNBY,” shouted the colonel as he chided the half giant into action.

  Having no time to hip his Hotchkiss cannon Gunby picked up a fallen mast and started to use it like a baseball/rounders bat to swat the metal men away like giant flies.

  “Let me have a couple of ‘em,” said Sid as he tried to get into the action.

  The Talent started to sway from side to side as first a metal man landed on the deck then Both Gunby and Sid ran to get him. Chatteris found it quite difficult to keep her upright, “Can’t you just shoot them before they get aboard? I’m having trouble keeping her steady.” But as he said this the Talent turned onto its side and the whole crew and the two metal men who were still aboard grabbed onto railings and anything else that was attached to the ship.

  A couple more metal men leapt onto the sideways airship which pulled it upright again however they were unable to keep their balance and fell into the sea.

  “How many of these things are there?” cried Arthur as he tried to shoot them with his electric pistol, but to no avail.

  “I am determined to prove a villain...” quoted the kingly android.

  “I never understood that quote,” mumbled Arthur as he re-loaded the pin chamber, “especially out of context. Does he mean I’m the villain or he is?”

  “Well you obviously,” said Sid as his blaster rifle melted a hole in the head of another metal man.

  “Harrumph!” harrumphed Arthur as he shot another metal man in the back of the neck. The wires there frazzled and it fell inert.

  “Come ye unvalued jewels, let us take flight, they are too hard for us,” ordered Richard III.

  The two metal men that were harrying Plattington and Tresham looked back at their master then leapt back onto the enemy ship.

  “Whew!” whewed Sid, “I thought we were goners there,” the dwarf rested his rifle on the deck of the airship to take stock of things.

  “I bet we’ll see them again before this adventure is written,” rued the colonel.

  “That’s six metal men, one broken rail and a cut over Tresham’s eye.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Taking stock like the Author said.”

  Arthur shook his head then put his hand up to his eyes to see the departing enemy airship more clearly.

  “I bet that’ll make a good level in the computer game,” said Sid as he came nearer.

  “Yeas, I can see it now, hoards of metal men leaping upon the deck and us nine fighting them off.”

  “Nine?”

  “Yes, you, me, Robo Sid and Arthur, Tresham, Gunby, Plattington, Chatteris and...” he looked for Ruhtra, “where’s that sainted shapechanger?”

  “Here,” screed Ruhtra as he stopped taking the form of a seagull.

  “You are supposed to be part of this team you know, not a raving coward.”

  “I wasn’t a raven, I was a seagull actually. I just thought you had it all in hand,” said the shapechanger as he morphed into his Arthurish form.

  Scubbins moaned, “It is confusing having two of you to contend with. Can’t you wear a Baldrick or something Arthur.”

  “You mean a small lifelike model of Tony Robinson in Blackadder?”

  “No, I mean... Yes, go on then, a small lifelike model of Tony Robinson sounds funnier.” He thought for a second, “I think the Tony Robinson from the fourth series would be more apt.”

  “But that one’s from the future, surely Baldrick from Blackadder III would be better?”

  “Are they really discussing this?” Tresham asked Gunby quietly as the half giant tended to his friend’s eye.

  “They’re not as good as the real Sid and Arthur are they?” Gunby said quietly, so he would not upset the colonel or colour sergeant.

  (Now the normal Sid and Arthur would either hear my thoughts or read what I was writing, but these two seemed oblivious to my ways.)

  “Well, I suppose I’ll have to order Chatteris to get under way,” thought Arthur. He waddled up to the bridge.

  “What are you waddling for Colonel?” asked Plattington, who was trying to detach a metal man’s arm from the railing around the airship.

  “Er, I’m not waddling, I’m careening,” Arthur tried to straighten his gait but still seemed to waddle.

  “He’s suffering from cognitive dissonance,” observed Tresham.

  “?” ?ed Gunby.

  “He’s lying to himself, he’s waddling like a drunken emperor penguin on a tossing ship with an egg between its legs.”

  “That’s a lot of waddling, maybe his trousers are coming down - you know a bit like Bert in Mary Poppins.”

  “His belt was damaged when that metal man grabbed it.”

  “I didn’t see that?”

  “Well I didn’t really, but I just had the urge to say it, like the Author had just thought of it to fill in a plot hole.”

  “Ahh!” ahhed Gunby.

  They both nodded in agreement.

  They were underway again and getting closer to their objective. On the outskirts of Tarrelo they were greeted with the view of millions of house and streetlights twinkling away.

  “It’s a good job it’s not foggy,” thought Chatteris to Plattington, “it would be difficult to navigate in the dark and in the fog.”

  As if somebody had heard him and thought it might be a good twist, a pea souper fell.

  “What was that?” inquired Sid, “it sounded like a bowl of pea soup falling somewhere.”

  “No, I don’t think so Sid,” imparted Robo Sid, “I think the Author was describing the appearance of the sudden fog that has just manifested.”

  “I don’t have to check the manifest now do I? I only did a stock taking check a few paragraphs back.”

  “You don’t really seem to have this 4th wall listening to the Author thing down to pat yet do you? Not like the real Sid.”

  “No, I suppose I don’t. Do you think it’s because I’m a clone?”

  “You should’ve been a clown instead, you might have been funnier.”

  Robo Arthur came up to them, “How are they going to get there in this pea souper?”

  “Compass and landmarks?” suggested Robo Sid.

  “I wonder which landmarks I can see?” wondered the sergeant as he tried to look out over the railings.

  (So now I have to describe an alien city, in the dark, in the fog. Well at least a bit of it.)

  Plattington also looked over the edge of the airship and saw a … gargoyle! “Yaargh!” he exclaimed, then shouted to Chatteris, “We’re too close, er, to a church of some kind.”

  Robo Arthur commented as the airship came to a stop, “They don’t have churches in Andacia, only underground ones.”

  “You mean to say we’re underground?”

  The good metal man looked at the corporal, “I will give you a little leeway with that one, seeing as we are supposed to be developing your character’s back story.”

  “So what is it then if it’s not a church?”

  “Mansion house, factory, who knows?”

  “The Author,” inputted Robo Sid.

  “Well you ask him then.”

  So Robo Sid asked me, “Where are we Author?”

  “The Lord Mayor’s mansion,” I replied, then left them to get on with it.

  “Told you,” told Robo Sid.

  “We can’t really fly in this fog,” thought Plattington, “we might have to go straight up above the clouds.”

  “How are we going to see anything then?” wondered Robo Sid, “We’ll just see clouds.”

  “We could do what the aircrew do to airfields when it’s foggy,” began to suggest Robo Arthur, “fill pipes up with hot fuel and make the fog rise.”

  “With you talking all that hot air it should have risen long ago,” quipped his robo friend.

  “In this smog things would only be made worse by hot air,” the king of the robo men folded his arms to show his displeasure.

  Then Colonel Pendragon came back, “Right, it’s been d
ecided. Seeing as we can’t see our hands before our faces…”

  “I can,” beamed Colour Sergeant Sid as he held his hand before his face.

  “It’s a saying Colour Sergeant, meaning it’s too difficult to navigate through the city at night in a thick fog/smog.”

  “Oh.”

  He turned back to address the others on the deck, “So it’s been decided we’ll to a quick reccie in the mansion below. It seems to be the Lord Mayor’s mansion.”

  “It is,” agreed Robo Sid quietly.

  “Who agreed to do a reccie?” asked Robo Arthur.

  “Well, me actually,” explained Arthur, pointing to himself.

  “Were you talking to yourself, or Ruhtra, or something? You know, to agree with yourself?”

  “Never mind about that now, Chatteris is going to take us down very slowly to land on a lower roof. Then we’ll go in by some windows.”

  So Chatteris chittered a little while he set the Talent down on a flattish portion of the roof.

  “Why do we want to look round the Mayor’s mansion again?” asked Sid.

  “Again?” queried Arthur, “we haven’t looked round it once yet.”

  “I didn’t mean again, I meant again, again.”

  “A bit like Tattoo on Fantasy Island?”

  “That’s an antiquated reference isn’t it?”

  “Seeing as we’re in 1885, then no, it’s a futurist reference.”

  “If you say so. But tell me, really, why are we doing a reccie on the Mayor’s mansion?”

  “I think the Author thought it might break the tension.”

  “What tension?”

  “Erm, I don’t know. Let’s just do it until the fog lifts?” So Arthur led the way, as a good battle chieftain would. The others followed behind in a kind of bemused bumbling state. Bumbling up to an open window they all looked in and saw a passageway with doors leading off it. “It seems to be a passageway with doors leading off of it,” noted the colonel.

  “Very observant,” said Sid, “what else can you see by just using your eyes?”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “Well anyone can look at something and tell me what it is.”

  “I don’t get your point?”

  “You looked in the window and told us it was a passageway with doors leading off of it.”

  “And?”

  Sid shook his head, “Never mind, let’s just send the shapechanger in first. He can pretend to be anything, so if he encounters someone then he can turn into a vase or something.”

  “It’s me who gives the orders.”

  “Well give ‘em then!”

  “Er,” Arthur scanned the area for Ruhtra, “Ruhtra dear chep…”

  Ruhtra, looking like Arthur, looked nonchalantly at Arthur, “Wassap?”

  “Can you slink in ahead of us and make sure there’s no one around?”

  “I spose so,” the shape changer made himself into a liquid and poured through a small hole in the lattice window and puddled on the floor. He then slimed down the whole length of the passageway and finally took his Arthurish shape at the other end. He waved them to come in.

  Arthur pushed the window open and climbed in first. Sid and the others followed, well, all except Robo Sid and Robo Arthur, they were too bulky to get through the window.

  “You two will have to guard the airship. Call us back if you get into trouble.”

  Robo Arthur looked at Robo Sid and tried to express a little hurt, but nodded and complied.

  Ruhtra glanced back at them all then slimed under the end door.

  “Where’s he going now?” Arthur asked rhetorically.

  “Do you want to know,” asked Sid, “or are you just asking rhetorically?”

  “Do you know?”

  “No.”

  “Well of course it was rhetorical. As if I was asking you. If I needed to know I could look at the Author’s notes.”

  “He hasn’t made that bit up yet.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve already looked, there’s no notes. It’s all in his head.”

  “He sounds like the lecturer from Perception or that fellow from A Beautiful Mind.”

  “So we don’t know what’s behind the doors then?”

  “Well on that scrap of paper the Author wrote on at Waitrose it’s either a) each room leads to a different dimension. A bit like a Devidian door in The Next Generation.”

  “But that leads to different planets not dimensions.”

  “Yeah, anyway the next idea was b) different famous rooms as described in Victorian fiction. The sitting room of 221b Baker Street, the lab at Frankenstein Castle etc.”

  “Right, what else?”

  “Well, each room could lead to a different place on this planet, sort of a transportation portal.”

  “So… has he decided any of this yet of is he just running it by us first?”

  “Probably running by us.”

  “It?”

  “No, I meant he’s literally running by us.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know, I just thought I’d say it in case it was funny.”

  They both looked at each other with raised eyebrows, a bit like I did when I imagined them in this situation.

  “So are we going to look behind the first door then or the one Ruhtra slimed underneath?” asked Colour Sergeant Sid.

  “I don’t know, I don’t think the Author’s going to let us look, I think he wants us to end on a cliffhanger.”

  “Like the ones talked about in The Dead Robots Society podcasts?”

  “That’s right, ‘I open the door and…’”

  Sid opened the door, there was a brick wall behind it, “Thought so,” he thought, “we’re not at the word count for chapter two yet. I bet there’s a brick wall behind each door until we get to the one Ruhtra slimed under.”

  “Well let’s try that one next,” nodded Gunby who had just managed to get his huge frame through the window.

  They all started to walk towards the last door on the left. But they seemed to get no nearer.

  “I can’t seem to even reach the next door on the left,” groaned Pendragon who was leading the party.

  Plattington stood still, gently went backwards and bumped against the wall, “we’re on a treadmill,” he called as he realised what was happening.

  They all started to run as fast as they could but the treadmill increased speed as they did.

  “This is completely useless,” puffed Arthur.

  Unshouldering his energy weapon Gunby shot at the floor. A large hole appeared in it. This made the situation worse because they were now running towards the dangerous, uncovered and still working gears.

  Arthur stopped but the others behind bumped into him. He nearly fell into the gears. Sid pulled him back. “That was close,” whewed the colonel.

  As the treadmill had snapped the still attached end wound its way around and mangled into the gears. There was a whining and a clanking then the gears grated to a stop.

  “Just in time,” panted Arthur, still holding onto Sid’s arm.

  “Now we need to pick our way over those gearing mechanisms,” said the sergeant.

  So they did, it took them a long time to all get through the garden of smashed gears, too long to describe so near the end of this chapter.

  When they finally got to the end Arthur opened the door to find...

  CHAPTER THREE

  Arthur turned the handle and pushed open the door. (I know I’ve repeated myself but hey, it’s a new chapter.) There was a small bathroom and a bath filled with bubbles. Sitting in it, with bubbles on his head, was Ruhtra, “Ow do.”

  “What are you doing?” exasperated Arthur.

  “Having a bath?” replied the shapechanger, who also had a bubble beard and moustache.

  “Is this where we’re supposed to do the bath puns now?” asked Sid.

  “Well, I suppose so,” grumped the colonel.

  “But no toilet humour
,” warned Tresham.

  Sid looked at them, “No toilette humour either.”

  “Bubbles!” bubbled Plattington.

  “Are we each doing some kind of pun?” wondered Pendragon.

  “As long as I get the best punch line,” warned Sid.

  “I thought you had been genetically altered not to expect the best punch line?”

  “My selfishness and giant ego overcame that. I can easily get a better punch line than you shower anyway.”

  This stunned Arthur when he realised Sid had made quite a good and relevant bathroom pun, “Er?”

  Sid was on a roll, a toilet roll. “You’re looking hot and flushed,” he said to Ruhtra. A bottle of shampoo nearly fell on the shapechanger’s head and he caught it just before it did, “That was a close shave.”

  “You’re a fool ah!” splashed Ruhtra who was getting quite angry at so many people looking at him in the bath.

  “Did you mean to do an anagram of loofah there?”

  “Are we going to get going?” asked Arthur.

  “Pass me a towel,” said Ruhtra. He also switched off the tap. Sid looked round for a towel.

  Then Robo Arthur shouted down to them from the window at the end of the passageway, “The fog is clearing!

  Sid looked a bit quizzical, he turned the tap back on.

  “What are you doing?” grumped Arthur.

  “Just wait,” replied the dwarf.

  Then, again, Robo Arthur called, “It’s started drawing in again.”

  So Sid turned the tap off a second time.

  “I don’t believe it!” shouted Robo Arthur, “it’s going again.”

  “Thought so,” thought Sid, “the steam from the bath is causing the fog.”

  “That’s a bit surreal isn’t it?” mused Arthur.

  “What do you expect with the Author?” replied the colour sergeant.

  They waited for Ruhtra, who turned himself into a tube and shimmied the towel from top to tail. He then turned back into his Arthurian form, “shall we go?”

  They all went.

  Once they had all got back aboard the Talent again Plattington asked Sid, “So what was that interlude for?”

  “I’m guessing, based on the Author’s notes on the back of that envelope, that the Lord Mayor is part of a nefarious conspiracy against the people of Tarrelo.”

  “You know it is a pity,” mused the corporal as he sat upon a box of ammunition, “Andacia was supposed to be our ally against the giants. Now they’ve been infiltrated by the giantish kingdoms…”