Space’s smile dropped as I looked serious and resisted any urge to say ‘I told you so’ which I didn’t have anyway.
“Enemy,” Space said to me in sotto voce.
“Enemy,” I agreed.
“Anyone I know?”
I cast another look. “No bells are ringing, sir.”
Space spun dramatically to him “So who the blazes are you then?”
“My Name? It’s Professor Tempus. Maybe you caught my little signal earlier on? I am the master of time and soon enough I will become the master of Space….Hardcore! You could say I’m a student of Captain Space Hardcore. I’ve been following your adventures, your triumphs. Do you know what I would like? I’d like to relive some of those tonight. It only seems appropriate for your celebration of your own deeds does it not?” He laughed.
History. The giant ticking clock display behind Tempus. The time buffer. The huge clock the man kept on a chain round his neck. The name ‘Tempus’. I chewed it over for a second and whispered urgently to Space.
“I think this chap’s the fellow behind that time wave that hit us.”
He looked a little worried at that, reassessing the slight man who could manipulate time.”You think so?”
“Perhaps,” I said judiciously, “but I can’t imagine his plan. If he truly hates you and has access to time technology surely he could have wiped your existence out of history. You’d already be dead.”
Space seemed mollified by my reasoning and we turned back to Tempus who was really quite polite considering all the conferring we were doing.
“Oh yes, this I have a whole set of surprises lined up for you this evening, for your special day. And then, I am going to do what should have been done a long time ago: I am going to wipe your existence from history!”
Chapter Four
The Day Long/Minute Long Orchestra Fight
* * *
There are two warriors you can never fight, my son.
The first is Time, for he can wait forever, sees mountains rise and fall like waves and will outlive this good earth
The second is Robocop.
Jethro Fandragon
Oh But my Hammer Weeps Metal Tears!
Ѻ
I was surprised it had taken Space this long, to be honest. He unlatched his holster, drew out his gun and pointed it at Tempus.
“Well,” he said warmly, “I must thank you for making this easy for me. Most of my Nemisis…es. Nemesisis? Nemisii? Nemisodi? …Most of my worst enemies usually are so cowardly that they make a habit of staying out of the same room as me. Because they probably think I’ll just do this.”
He thumbed back the safety and pointed the muzzle at Tempus’ leg. He pulled the trigger and-
Nothing happened.
Well, to be fair two things happened- a dull click issued from the gun and a sad electronic noise parped out of it to indicate its lack of ammunition. Space frowned down at it, checked the safety, pulled the trigger seven more times, checked the magazine was in, looked down the barrel, pulled the trigger ten more times and frowned some more. Tempus merely smiled condescendingly at him.
“Oh dear. Out of ammunition?” he sneered.
Space pulled the trigger eight more times, pointing it randomly around the room as though that might help (it did not). Finally he looked sadly at the weapon and slid it back into its holster. “It can’t be. This is always loaded”
Tempus took a confident step toward us and gestured to the useless gun. “Oh, it’s pretty simple stuff really, Captain, you see, the first time we had this conversation you pulled that gun out to rudely interrupt me just as you did now. I couldn’t have that, so I zipped back in time using my temporal transportation device here” he tapped a control panel that sat on his belt buckle, “and zapped back in time and into your ship morning and unloaded your gun for you.”
“You were on the ship?” Space asked.
“I would think the more impressive part would be the time travel.” Tempus noted, irritated.
“Well no….I think the most impressive part,” Space said, stretching the words out as his hand slid to the small of his back, “is-THIS!” he cried. He yanked out a small pistol from a holster there. He pointed at Tempus’ head this time.
Tempus didn’t even move.
“Ah. That one. Of course, the second time we did this you produced that gun so I took another trip back in time to remove the trigger pin from that one too. It’s quite useless.” He held up an imploring hand. Space obliged, pulling the trigger rapidly but again, there was nothing but dull clicks. Tempus raised an amused eyebrow.
Space grimaced and threw the pistol aside. Suddenly he shot a hand to the inside of his boots and-
“Looking for your TX-35 matter disruptor? Oh yes, you pulled that little beauty out the third time round. I simply travelled back in time and replaced it.”
Space deflated as he brought out the child’s plastic water gun from his ankle holster. But then inspiration seemed to strike. His hand snaked down to his other boot lightning fast. But his face fell again when he fished out what must have been an icing gun for cakes. He tossed the thing aside after extracting a quick blast of frosting into his mouth. By this point smugness was oozing out of every pore in Tempus’ being. His eyebrows were as cocked as I’d ever seen something cocked.
“Did you miss the part where I said I mastered time travel? I’ve done this dozens of times with you. Every weapon you’ve thrown at me, I’ve just hit a little switch here and I shoot back to your room while you were showering and I remove it from your arsenal.”
Space nodded seriously let out a defeated sigh. “Yes, it seems like you’ve taken all of my weapons. I wish I’d thought of something ELSE!” He yelled this last word as he leapt over to me, shot a hand down the back of my trousers and produced a compact laser pistol, levelled it at Tempus and rapidly squeezed the trigger. It made a small electronic noise we now knew too well.
“You keep guns in my underwear?!” I yelled at him, clutching myself back there.
“Someone has to!”
“No, they do not!”
“Oh relax, all Captains do this.”
“Is there anything else you keep on my person I should know about?”
“Funkworthy, I’m in the middle of a firefight, now is not the time to tell you what I keep stored on or in your person.”
“In?!”
But Space changed the subject with more rummaging. He pulled out a toothbrush from a vest pocket.
“That used to be a throwing knife,” Tempus explained to me.
He pulled out some holodiscs from a hidden pouch, a fountain pen and a pair of earphones.
“Shuriken, blowpipe, garrotte.”
Frustrated and huffing Space patted himself down for more hidden weapons. He pulled out another toy gun, a plastic knife and, from his trousers, a large cucumber wrapped in cling film.
“I didn’t put that there,” Tempus and Space said at the same time.
Space stood there, looking bewildered and surrounded by toy guns and fresh fruit and veg. All of his pockets (of which it seems there were many) were now empty. He looked at Tempus warily now, cast an eye down to his belt buckle to where the control to his time travel device lay and I saw him tense up. Tempus was enjoying himself too much to notice.
“You still don’t understand do you? I’ve unarmed you. Not just your ridiculous guns but everything. Every move, every punch, every ridiculous quip. I’ve seen every move you could possibly do. You have nothing to bring. I wanted you to see how ineffectual you are. Time- yes TIME, I think- for my move.”
Space pounced at that. He was a few short steps away when he lunged.
Tempus had already dropped his hand to the belt of his trousers, twisted a dial-
-and was no more.
Space crashed down on the piece of carpet he stood in a second before.
There was a moment of an impression of the fellow being swallowed up from the inside, folding at an indiscernible geometr
ical point and falling into himself like a flower blooming in reverse but this image was transitory, stolen away in a shattered shard of a second. All that remained was the unmistakable aroma of used hourglass sand.
I spun around in a futile circle, attempting to trace where he may have gone. Nothing, the room lay tauntingly empty. I spun again, in an equally futile circle. Still nothing. No trap had sprung, no goons were streaming in from doors as is customary in these situations. The man had just vanished. I furrowed my brows again and prepared to spin in another futile circle but noticed I was getting dizzy so stood still.
“Terrible move, if you ask me,” noted Space, looking around in disappointment.
“What do you think he’s doing?”
“Who knows? Probably fishing guns out of my socks a few hours ago. Not much of an attack, though, was it?”
“I think the attack is coming. We have to be prepared.”
“I would at least expect a- GAH!” Space staggered backwards as a french horn twatted off of his head with the force and velocity of a saxophone. He dropped to his knee from the brass assault as blood sprung from his head wound. I wheeled round and traced the arc of the throw- it was Tempus, standing in a previously un-stood-upon section of floor, having materialized from nowhere.
Space was on his feet in an instant, bounding quickly to the orchestral dias.
“If it’s a horning you’re after,” I heard him mutter as he picked up an identical horn from a music stand, “then you’ve come to the right place” He hefted the instrument in his horn-throwing arm and pitched it in a deadly whistling arc at Tempus. As it glittered in the air before me, I thought for a strange moment of clarity, it really is an identical french horn.
But it never met Tempus.
A split second before the instrument was set to hit the man, a few presses of the buttons in Tempus’ crotch control panel sprung a halo of energy around him which expanded, then swallowed both him and the incoming horn. The portal, the man and the speeding brass instrument blinked out of existence, leaving only silence.
“What the very blue bloody HELL?!” thundered Space. “Where is this bugger always blinking away to?”
Silence filled the hall again, a leaden, angry silence, a silence full of the noise of Space swearing at the top of his lungs and tripping over a xylophone while farting.
He clutched his thoroughly french horned head and freed himself from the trappings of the xylophone and shot me an angry look.
“This is a shoddy bloody party you’ve arranged, Ebenezer,” he accused.
“To be fair, sir, this was not the entertainment I had lined up”
Space snorted and calmed himself, puffed out his chest and scowled around the hall determinedly. “Listen, right, what we need to do...Listen, okay, here’s what we do- right, here’s the plan. Here’s what we do...Right. Listen.” He pointed his finger decidedly toward the door. “What the hell’s going on Funkworthy?”
I thought out loud. “I believe, sir, that he is manipulating the space time continuum and turning your attacks back on themselves.”
He nodded. “I agree. That’s what I was thinking. Excellent deduction. Good we’re on the same page. Good stuff. What do you mean?”
“I mean, I think that he took that french horn you threw at him,and redirected it back through time with his portal back at your head, instigating the throwing of the french horn and creating a loop of causality.”
“Right. Capital. So to beat this loop of cause and effect all we need to do is-MYAH! MY HEAD” He clutched his head as a glockenspiel crashed into it at great speed.
I looked around to find Tempus standing next to a pillar, smiling at his handiwork as Space picked himself up from the floor, looking dazed and profoundly confused.
“Space-” I cried, trying to stay his hand but it was too late. He was already lurching out of the wreckage of the spiel toward the dais muttering darkly about a ‘glockenspeil war’.True to his word he hefted an atomically identical glockenspiel and, running a few steps toward Tempus threw it in a titanic overhead arc.
Where it met nothing but a fizzing time portal.
Where it then blinked back out of existence.
The noise of frustration which issued from Space was a pure distillation of emotion, yelled loud enough to almost cover up the sound of his tootling flatulence. He wiped the blood from around his head, threw a flute at a pillar out of sheer spite and trudged over to me, swearing with every footfall.
“Damn, bloody, damn, bloody bloody damn buggering TIME TRAVEL,” he announced, arriving back at me. “Ebenezer! I’m feeling a little cous coussed-”
“Concussed, sir?”
“Yes!” he yelled and grabbed my lapels,”order twelve pairs at quarter past and don’t tell the cook.” He shook his head and his eyes cleared little. “This time travelling teleporting, orchestra flinging nonsense is getting right on my wick, and if I’m not mistaken my cranium is suffering from rather severe damage. Why can’t they stand and fight? Why can’t he stay still? Where is his honour? Where is his pride? Why is this so confusing?”
“Sir, I think I have it. Like I say, he’s gathering ammunition from what you hurl at him and travelling back in time and hitting you on the head with it. It only SEEMS like a continuous string of events because of where we stand in time.” I looked at his slack expression, to his home-made medals to his several musical headwounds and decided to slow down my speech. “Stop. Throwing. Things. At. Him.”
“All very well to say, but even if I do that we’re no closer to apprehending this scum, are we? What do you propose? Retreat? Surrender? Rescheduling this event for some time later in the month? With the possibility of losing our booking fee? You know these people don’t give refunds. Besides, if we really want to BLAH, MY SPINE!” he cried as tuba rocketed into the small of his back like a piece of debris from an exploding tuba depot. As he slumped down at my feet clutching the site of the impact he revealed the now predictable sight of Tempus smiling impishly.
The man was whittling the Captain down. At this rate, Space could well be bludgeoned to death by instruments inside of two hours.
“Space, for the love of god, don’t throw a tuba at him! If you stop, it’ll nullify the time loop!”
“Oh, I’ll nullify his loop all right!” Space muttered nonsensically as he got to his feet. “Two can play at that game”
“Don’t play at this game. He’s counting on it. You’re giving him ammunition!” I yelled.
Space waved a dismissive hand. “In a second, Funkworthy. I’ve got this fellow’s number”
With numbing inevitability I saw him make his way over to a nearby tuba, pick it up, and throw it at Tempus. Who disappeared. In a portal. With the tuba.
“Space, don’t you see a pattern developing here?” I yelled as he hurled the tuba at the already disappearing figure. My words bounced off of him making no impact, like beef thrown at a submarine..
And they continued to do so, as he was assaulted in this identical manner by a time displaced clarinet, a handful of woodblocks, a viciously pointy oboe, a microphone lead wrapped around cymbal that formed a makeshift flail, a theremin (the flight and impact of which made such a spooky noise that it still haunts my dreams) and a cello full of castanets.
Each fresh assault battered Space’s frame and drove him further down an unthinking alley of rage, removing a further piece of jigsaw of reason. Neither my shouted advice, nor my basic lessons on temporal causality, nor Tempus’ own (possibly derisory) shouted declarations about the nature of what he was at present doing seemed to get through to the Captain. I admit I became so frustrated that I considered throwing a nearby maraca at the man myself.
After fourteen minutes of this circular assault I finally intervened directly. As Space was summoning the strength to throw an alto saxophone at Tempus (and thus back through time and at himself) I positioned myself near where the romantic sounding horn would fall. As he hefted it I sprang into its path, curling my arms around it and
rolling off to the side.
I watched as Tempus’ portal sat there, still open and waiting for a sax flickered for a few seconds, then finally, mercifully fizzed closed leaving Tempus standing there by himself, smiling serenely.
“What are you doing?!” demanded a slightly wavering Space as he weaved forward, navigating around the haphazard orchestra pit that was assembled before him, “I had him on the ropes.”
“What am I doing? Stopping the slowest and silliest suicide in recorded history.”
“What?”
“I’ll explain it to you later. Time stuff.”
He looked set to argue but his cluster concussion and the piccolo shrapnel in his ear must have dissuaded him as he simply made a harrumphing noise and made his way next to me.
I looked around to Tempus, who simply watched us, oozing the amused superiority of a man wearing a time machine over his Y-fronts. He watched Space gathering himself together with barely veiled contempt, his eyes flickering over to an alluring accordion he was no doubt dreaming of bouncing off of his face.
“Was this your plan then?” I yelled to gain his attention, “clear a space station, bend time and space to your trousers’ will and then... What? Fling instruments at us? Collect some guns? Come now. You’ve made your point. You’ve had your fun. What do you want?”
“I’ve had my fun? Oh no, I’d say my fun has only just begun. As I said I came here for one simple reason; to glory in the accomplishments of Captain Space Hardcore. I was not being flippant, that's exactly what we’re going to do. We’re going to take a tour of some important moments in your history and play a few little games. Now, if you would indulge me, would you meet me in the upper deck control room in one minute? I’ll have been waiting for you there for five minutes. Ta-ta.”
He dropped his hands to his crotch again and was gone.
Chapter Five
The Game, The Bomb, The Pant Portals
The Time Trousers of Professor Tempus: A Captain Space Hardcore Adventure Page 5