“This thing usually this slow?” I asked, wiping blood from my mouth.
“Rasputin,” Delroy muttered as he cast an eye up at the blinking elevator display
The lift was descending like a glacier made of snails being piloted by a sloth. The Russian was up there in the control room making sure of that; having it stop at every possible point on the way down, holding the doors open as long as possible, stalling in any way he could. By the time it finally got down on the deck it might well be collecting five corpses, I thought.
We had closed ranks around the elevator door, each pointing fists and feet, knees, elbows and all other pointy and vaguely aggressive parts of our bodies outwards like weapons. Outside our small circle the hordes were massed. A thousand skeletons leered at us over the shoulders of a dozen mutated simulacrums of heavy metal bands, but that shifting sea of skull faces mangled and collided as we looked at them, smashing together to form individual members of AC/DC.
And they were coming in waves now.
If they all rushed us, I thought, they’d overwhelm us in seconds. Except they couldn’t. The masses were now an ever-shifting ocean of body parts that were melding into each other at the whims of Grace and their own code-based DNA. And for every complex, processor-taxing change, a handful of skeletons glitched into nothing or became subsumed into a bassist. I watched a rank of skeletons, glitch, freeze then pop out of existence. I saw one of a handful of Vlad the Impalers break ranks and start towards us, but as soon as he had taken two steps that green glowing rash of binary had seized him, running through him like a neon disease and he hurled backwards into a similarly convulsing bushel of Vladimir Putins. Smushing together the Vlads formed one enormous howling entity; an eleven foot tall James Hetfield, but one with a curiously blank face. He held up a malformed hand that was only pinkie and pointer finger and howled in dumb fury as he waggled his accidental devil horns at us; a terrifying sight but incredibly metal nonetheless. Hetfield retreated into the pack, his limbs pulsing and shifting as the hologram tried to figure out, in vain, what it possibly could be. Half a bar of ‘Enter Sandman’ howled from its mouth, a grotesque and confused warcry that was joined by the bridge of ‘Crazy Train’ that poured out of the screaming mouth of Abraham Lincoln. Things were getting confusing.
“Damn,” Delroy grunted again. “She’s tiring out.”
“Who?” Q’uinc’y, asked, panting heavily from his head gill.
“Grace. The holos are merging,” Delroy nodded his chin to a clump of what appeared to be Rob Halfords from Judas Priest. They looked like low resolution pictures, blurred at the edges and with smudged features “Those ones are pretty sloppy,” he noted, “the texture mapping on the face isn’t properly loaded. That guy next to him is missing whole limbs.”
“That’s the drummer from Def Leppard.”
“Regardless, she’s tiring out. Not surprising with all this pressure. Probably got a few skeletons headed her way too.”
“Gulp,” said Flex.
“Yeah.” Delroy took a grim moment, interrupted only by the need to kick away a rampaging Slash from Guns ‘n Roses who skittered away, hissing like a copper shower. “Damn. I’ve got to make a command decision here.”
“You know, I could-” I began.
Delroy spoke on. He motioned to Flex, Brecon and Q’uinc’y. “I gotta send you guys back for her. If her end breaks down we’re done for. This is the last push. We gotta take that control room but we need Grace in one piece too.” He patted Q’uinc’y and Brecon on the shoulders. “Me and Captain Galaxy will take the elevator here. You got to go back for her.”
“Captain Space,” I said.
Delroy nodded curtly in my direction. “Yeah. That. Me and the Cap here will go up to the deck. Lift’s almost here. You too Flex.”
The turbolift behind us finally opened with a reluctant ding and the three men in front of me and Delroy wavered for a second. They looked reluctant, concerned. More so for Delroy than for the sea of skeletons and Panteras that they’d have to wade back through.
“Go Damnit!” he yelled.
“Sir,” started Brecon, a waver crackling his voice, “however this thing shakes out, it’s been an honour.” He snapped off a messy salute.
A queasy feeling of déjà vu hit me. I remembered him saying the same thing to me the first time round.
“We’ll get it done sir,” said Q’uinc’y, straightening out as if filled with newly acquired purpose and self-respect. I remembered him saying that to me too. Delroy surveyed the men with pride.
“Gulp,” said Flex, swallowing emotion and teary eyed.
Delroy allowed himself a wry and manly smile. “Alright, you damn sissies. Enough blubbering. Go get Grace. And….Watch out for yourselves too. NOW GO!”
He shoved them outwards and the three of them dashed back into the hard rock melee, clearing a path through a gaggle of malformed and confused Ronnie James Dios in seconds. They operated like one entity, bonded in the heat of battle into a being of single purpose. Delroy grimaced back a swell of emotion and closed a hand around my shoulder and dragged me back into the turbolift and pounded the button. The doors swished closed a second before a maelstrom of thuds hit it.
The elevator thrummed into life and ascended toward the control deck, to where Rasputin, Hitler, Stalin and Stephen Premmel lay in wait. We rose toward our fate.
“Why me?” I asked finally, to fill the tense silence. I suspected I knew the answer. He had, I admitted, taken the LA from my LAPAW in leading our survivors this far, but I still knew he’d want the best fighter with him when he faced the Russian menace.
He looked me up and down. “You were COAR, right? Military?”
I puffed my chest out. Of course, even without my medals he could tell. Maybe he had waited this long to ask advice from me, to save face. “Yes.”
“Same here. Me and Flex. Andusian War. Battle of the shapeshifters.”
“I remember it well.”
He sighed raggedly as his voice got heavy and low. “Well, it just seems right, us two old warhorses going to finish this. If we don’t make it through…well, it’s not so bad for the likes of you or I, is it? A warrior’s death.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh, punch the man or do both. ‘Old’? ‘War’? ‘Horse’? Those words could hardly be applied to me. I wasn’t old, I wasn’t a war and despite my well documented love of sugar cubes and having my mane brushed I wasn’t even near to being a horse. This was why he wanted me? Because I may as well be put out of my misery, be boiled down, be turned into glue or hot dogs? I quivered with rage, stomped my feet in protest and whinnied at the indignity.
I pushed the thoughts aside. I was still PAW. And a big part of PAW was Punching. All of a sudden I felt like taking my frustrations out on something. Something Mad. Some kind of Monk.
“I don’t feel like dying quite yet, sir,” I said. I barely even noticed calling him ‘sir’.
Delroy nodded grimly and clenched his fists to match mine. The turbolift’s drone cycled lower as we approached the control deck. He spoke in a gruff whisper, pushing his words through a mist of testosterone.
“No words, Captain. No treaties. We get out and we get to that control panel and turn. It. Off. A hard reset and all these damn holos are wiped out. One of us needs to do that, the other needs to keeps the dictators busy. How do you want to do this?”
“PAW,” I said, mostly to myself. My vision got red at the corners.
“What?”
“PAW,” I growled, raising my fists to the door as they cracked open.
“Take that to mean you’ll do the fighting?”
I nodded and made my fists- ‘Gyro’ and ‘The Tenderizer’- ready.
“Alright then.”
The elevator motors hummed to a stop
The doors opened.
“PAAAAAAAAAAW,” I yelled.
I charged.
---=◈◆⬤◆??◆⬤◆◈=---
Paaaawww
I flicked the bel
l lightly and felt it reverberate ever so slightly, giving out a dull warm sound. I took slow deliberate steps around it in one direction as Humsworthy took the other route. We rounded on him and he was stuck there- cornered. Below us London glowed amber with a thousand gaslight lanterns, a picturesque sight from the rarefied air up here. As I surveyed the city I could still see in the distance a plume of fat smoke still belched out of Baker Street.
There was nothing like a climb up a flight of stairs and a good view (after a three mile sprint) to clear one’s head of the effect of a lungful of cocaine. I felt far more even now, though a little low, to be honest. Terribly more-ish stuff, that cocaine/morphine/amphetamine dust. I tried to focus.
“A little on the nose, this, isn’t it?” I motioned around us.
He affected nonchalance. He was facing away from us, his hands folded behind him- his favourite stance. “Did you know that Big Ben is the name of the bell, not the tower? I believe this is called the Victoria Tower.”
“Fascinating. Are you going to come quietly now or are we going to ring the changes with your head? It’s three on one.”
“Two on one.”
I glanced over and Humsworthy shrugged apologetically at me and motioned back to the top of the stairwell. “He’s...uh, assessing the structure for any escape routes” he said in voice almost loud enough to cover up the echoing sound of panting from beneath. “Shouldn’t be half a tick.” I turned back to Tempus and took another step.
“Two on one is still a lousy wager, Tempus, especially when your only alternative is a quick trip down to the Nile.”
“Thames.”
“Earthen geography was never my strong suit.” From the corner of my eye I saw that this drew a look from Humsworthy so I blustered on. “Regardless, it’ll hurt just the same. Give yourself up.”
“Ah, but you’re forgetting the ace up my sleeve.” Tempus dropped his hand to his trouser control panel like a gunslinger hovering over his pistol butt.
“Takes a second though, doesn’t it? And a second’s all I need to reach you.”
Tempus’ eyes darted between the good doctor and myself, his tongue flicking out of his mouth spasmodically. We both took another measured step.
“And even if you do manage it, you know my trousers can latch onto your pants.” Another look from Humsworthy. I ignored it. “What’s the use? We both end this in another time and place?”
“After all this is over, I have quite a few questions for you.” Humsworthy said from across the belltower. My eyes darted to him but he was still approaching steadily and warily, keeping his eyes on the matter at hand.
I kept my words aimed at the professor. “Give it up, Tempus. If you’re as smart as I think you are, or half as smart as you think you are, you’ll see you‘re cornered.”
“You should be careful what you put in a corner. Some creatures become dangerous.”
I nodded. “Sure. Some. But I think you’re not quite the beast you may believe yourself to be. You strike me more as a man of science and I don’t think that that has changed. With someone of that stripe I think that a rational discussion is more fruitful than violence.”
He eyed me warily but his breathing lost a little of its ragged edge, his hovering hand stilled.
“What do you want?”
I gave a tight smile and looked out through the clockface over the city. “I’d like to go back to a more civilized time, for starters, professor. I’d like to take off these gaudy and inflexible trousers for pudding. But right now, I think I’d like to ask you why?”
“‘Why’?”
“Why.”
“‘Why’?!”
“Yes-’Why’?.”
As we kept saying ‘why’ to each other I looked him over- ragged and teetering on the edge for sure, driven by some deep hatred, but there was still a man underneath it all. His eyes shone intelligent and guarded.
“Why what?”
“Why are you going after the Captain?”
He scoffed at that, then harrumphed, laughed outright then spat.
“Neither of you even truly know who I am, do you? Not even a flicker of recognition back on Kronis. That’s why I’m doing this; because we little folks don’t even register to the likes of him.”
“What should we have recognized you from?”
He looked genuinely wounded by that. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“As a matter of fact-”
“As a matter of fact it IS.”
I turned. Huffing, ruddy faced and with at least one of his layers of tweed clothing unfasted Detective Hardcolmes stood at the top of the stairs sweating impressively. “It’s as plain as the nose on my face. AND! Speaking of noses look at the nose on his face, gentlemen. Now, if you’ve studied the science of phrenology as much as I have you’ll be able to discern fourteen fascinating and incriminating things from the architecture of his nose ridge and several secrets apparent through the study of his nostrils alone. Allow me to expound. At length!”
A glance at Tempus showed what I had feared- his face had hardened once again into an insensible snarl of hate, his eyes were black and flinty once more.
“Detective Hardcolmes, can I request a minute alone with the suspect?” I asked urgently from the corner of my mouth.
“Nonsense! This is the best part- you’re about to learn the motive behind his senseless attack-”
“I was. Just before-”
“Now, I know what you’re thinking- cannons! The suspect is obviously a man of the navy, some flavour of seaman without a doubt, but if we were to study his calves, his hairline and how far he is from shore then we would jump to a much more ominous- though undeniably logical conclusion. Now, before I get to that I must remind you that the Chinese circus is in town, that Londinium has been troubled recently by a gang of Romany gypsies and that it was cloudy-suspiciously cloudy- last Sunday. This brings me to my third of fourteen possible clues and will involve my impressive knowledge of horticulture-”
Tempus, fidgeted with anger at the sound of the man’s voice as he strode around the bell confidently. I saw his hand drop toward his crotch again. No. Not again.
“Detective! A minute’s silence, I beseech you. Tempus- what were you saying?”
“I was about to say you could remember me from the dis-”
“Disguise! Precisely!” Hardcolmes broke in, waving a finger in the air. I saw Tempus glance down at the control panel of his garment and I edged closer to him. Damn. “Now, I’ve been fooled by disguises before, on cases, in relationships, during that most confounding pagan festival of Halloween, and once for several minutes by a particularly attractive mannequin, but I now know a disguise when I see one and I certainly know a disguise when I am in one. Now, you may be asking yourself why I’m talking about disguises. Well, I have deduced that this man is NOT wearing one! And that, in itself tells us more about him than anything else. Who- I ask thee- would feel no need to hide their identity? A stranger! And as the saying goes- ‘truth is stranger than fiction’. Truth. Stranger. Fiction. Don’t you see? We’re looking for an author. A writer. A right-er. A right-er of wrongs. Who rights wrongs? Why, a policeman of course. We’re looking for a policeman, who is also a writer. Or are we? Who polices man?”
“Is this just word association?” I asked.
“Hardly! You see I’ve deduced-”
“Can we just skip to the end?”
I kept glancing back to Tempus. Every word out of the detective’s mouth seemed to increase his anger and he fidgeted in his corner, worrying his hands down towards his tricky trousers. He could flee at any second, I knew. Presently Hardcolmes was talking about anagrams. I had to shut him up, get Tempus’ attention back on me.
“God’s Bones, man, who have you decided that he is!” I yelled.
“None other than the allegedly dead husband of our own blessed Queen Victoria, the Royal consort and piercing enthusiast Prince Albert of the House Saxe Coburg and Gotha!”
A kind of embarrassed silence f
ell as Hardcolmes took a deep bow. Even Tempus made a puzzled face at him. Presently he finished bowing and straightened with a flourish
“And that’s who he is. As the Latin say ‘ in vino veritas’; the truth is in the pudding.’”
“You have a pretty loose grasp of Latin, Detective,” Tempus sneered.
“Ha! I think that this ad hominem,” he pointed to himself, “is pretty well versed in Latin. Oh oui, I truly am.”
Tempus winced and then straightened up. “Well tell me, what does this mean: Tempus fugit.”
Hell.
I lunged towards him but he was already in motion.
He kicked the glass clockface outwards and hurled himself out of the tower. As I skidded toward where Tempus had been I only dimly heard Hardcolmes say “time for fudge” and regrettably, I knew that those would have to be the last words I heard in this time period or possibly any. I threw myself out of the window after Tempus and the chill night air tore into me immediately. The wind greeted me, but only half as cheerfully as gravity did, who embraced me like a long lost son, tearing me close to her bosom with alarming strength. Cold and cocaine-less, I fell.
Through the driving sleet and the lights of London I saw him before me- ten feet below if that. Curled up in a foetal ball he was working at the control panel. I considered using mine, attuning my frequency to his once again. No time. The ground was rushing towards us like a train, only bigger and faster and covered in buildings. No time to do anything except-
I flattened my body out and tucked my arms to my sides, hands like blades at my thighs and the air rushed past quicker, biting into my face. I ignored the ground and Tempus’ body swam closer to me in the night air. Close, almost close enough.
The ground was getting too close to ignore but I couldn’t afford to panic. Carriages and pedestrians were clear enough in my vision I felt I could reach out and touch them. A few more seconds and I would, or at least parts of me would. Tempus’ body was picked out in the dim evening air by an unreal light that seemed to shimmer across his body. I reached out a hand. Fingers brushed a shoelace. The wind howled in my ears. The ground swam closer. Had to get a grip. The shimmer round his body turned to a frying glow and he finally looked up from his computations. I couldn’t help it. I looked past him. A carriage, a horse and hard ground flying at me at terminal velocity. I grabbed. My hand brushed shoe leather and it kicked away. I flailed, reached. I found an ankle with one hand as my other one involuntarily flew to my face and I let out a scream.
The Time Trousers of Professor Tempus: A Captain Space Hardcore Adventure Page 21