I couldn’t go in as myself, obviously. Brass cooked up an ingenious story; I was to be Rex Beretta, a man who was definitely not Captain Space Hardcore and who, in fact, really hated Captain Space Hardcore. If that wasn’t enough they made up a rap sheet for my new identity that was as tantalizing as it was trustworthy. At just nine months Rex Beretta had led a single handed escape from the woman he had been hiding inside to escape the attention of the police, and ever since then he had broken out of every single thing he had ever been trapped in: detention, juvie, prison, a tight pair of jeans, Bristol, straightjackets, loving relationships, a tightly tucked-in bed and four different kinds of room. Rex Beretta was legit. The only thing left to do was walk into the Manhole, befriend this lunatic and then escape with him and his info. The hardest thing was to keep myself from killing the man myself.
I prodded at the puddle that was my lunch tray. There was no time to even finish recapping my own history to myself, I needed to get some info out of Erdinger. The details of the plan were still too damned fuzzy in my mind.
“How long?” I grunted, like a criminal.
“What?”
“How long?” I asked a little more clearly.
“Don’t get your panties in a bunch, sweetheart, it won’t be long now,” he sneered.
I swallowed the urge to punch the man along with some apple porridge and composed myself.
“I just want to be thorough. Go over it one more time before it all kicks off.”
“Losing your nerve, Beretta? Here was me thinking you were an old hand at this. I think someone’s lost his balls.” He aimed a grin around the table his crew hooted as prompted.
“Your interest in my balls is noted, Erdinger,” I said, glad when his grin faltered, “but they’re not the concern right now. You need a clear head. That’s what I do my thinking with. How about you?”
“What’s in my head is what all this is about though, remember? My knowledge,” he tapped his chrome temple meaningfully, “is what’s going to make sure we’re not touched after we get out of here. You’d do well to remember that. What’s in my head is your meal ticket.”
“So let’s make sure it's in one piece, hm?” It was Erdinger’s turn to grunt. “So If we have the requisite chest thumping out of the way, let’s talk about the plan. One more time. Just for me. Just for my nervous balls in my bunched up panties.”
Erdinger leaned back and made a show of indulging me. It was fine. Wonderful, I thought. He had to think he was in charge here. No problem. I truly was not bothered at all. ‘Great’, I thought gladly. I was fine. Happy, even.
“Which part has got you so... scared?” Erdinger smiled sweetly at me.
I couldn’t ask for the whole thing. He’d suspect something was up if I couldn’t recall the plan. I could remember fragments; the part with the laundry chute, the incinerator, the shuttle bay, the control centre-
“All of it?” Erdinger prodded. “I’m sure, if you’ve gotten comfortable here, we could do this without you. Maybe you’ve come to like prison life. Some aspects can appeal to a certain sort of person.”
I saw his eyes flick up to the clock and he patted one of his goons on the arm, who dutifully got up and ambled away toward the dwindling lunch line.
I looked at him coldly then picked out my words carefully. “The most important part is the first part.“ I said with what I hoped was calm authority. “How do you see that going down?”
Erdinger looked around the mess hall, smiled quietly to himself. His goon was now near a wall panel, fiddling with something surreptitiously. It was happening soon. Too soon. Erdinger’s man jimmied open a wall panel and exposed some wiring and slipped something into it, something that was partway between gizmo and doohickey and which clipped onto some exposed wires. I scarcely had time to wonder where the man had hidden the device. Erdinger just aimed that smile at me.
“I see it going down….right…..about….NOW.”
“That’s unhelpful.” I noted, but Erdinger just leaned back in his seat and surveyed the mess hall with satisfaction, lacing his fingers behind his head.
I looked round as the holographic projectors on the wall seemed to hum a slightly higher pitch for a moment, as though processing a heavy load, but as I looked down at my own clothing there was no notable change.
Had to think.I looked over to where his goon had been, but he was no longer there. It was only me standing there now, looking around conspicuously. That was no use. I looked past where I was to see any changes that might have taken place. There had to be some clue. I checked the main exit door out of the mess hall where guards would be situated. Again, no dice, it was just me standing there again, a couple of them, actually. The lunch line? A quick look and I could only see myself again, queued up patiently behind me.
I looked back over the table at myself.
Rex Beretta smiled back at me, as though he’d just pulled off a magic trick.
“Well,” he said to me, “are you going to say it or am I?”
I furrowed my brow for a moment. Something was amiss. But at the same time something felt right for the first time. I actually liked the person sat across from me for some reason I couldn’t place. The room had gotten far more pleasant overall. I felt more comfortable, even mildly aroused.
I muttered offhand. “You can.”
He took a deep breath , theatrically put his hands around my mouth and bellowed as hard as I could. “Escape attempt! Get Rex Berretta!” he pointed directly at me.
“What the devil?” I sat up in my chair at that and looked around. Every me looked round at me. Then at every other me.
Across the room, I could see me suddenly look over at me in shock. I charged, but before I could reach me, another me shoulder charged into me, got me to the ground and started raining blows on me.
“Got him!” I shouted.
But similar shouts were going up across the room. The whole mess hall, it was all me. Two hundred of me, looking around, seeing two hundred of me and deciding to fight me.
I reached across the table and grabbed my arm and yanked me to my feet, punching me in my stomach.
“I got the bastard,” I yelled, in a voice that sounded a lot like Erdinger.
But that sound was lost in the scrum, as a hundred other voices joined in that same chime. The whole mess hall was a pandemonium of Rex Berettas; guards, inmates, lunch servers, even a few vending machines had all taken on my appearance. And each one was started to beat the living hell out of the others.
There was a riot in the Manhole- a one man riot.
The escape had begun.
---=◈◆⬤◆??◆⬤◆◈=---
A plume of coarse sand shot up around me as I was shoved at his feet.
The first thing I saw were the gold spurs. At the tip of each was a rhinestone that glittered in the sun. They were attached to boots- as was the custom at the time- and those were a bold white alligator affair with golden stitching. Trousers came next- white as a cow’s skull in this desert heat and with creases sharp enough to cut through ham. The crotch was a complicated affair. There was a codpiece wherein a serpent was depicted rising out of a fire while vomiting out a bullet, but the codpiece was attached to a huge gunbelt which housed some almost satirically large revolvers. Their ivory handles were inlaid with the initials ‘S’ and ‘H’ and both letters were also made out of serpents. The white waistcoat was almost hidden under the huge white duster which flapped in the wind like a human sail. His face seemed almost grimy in amongst all of this blinding whiteness- tan and lined and squinting off into the middle distance in an affected nonchalance that I had come to recognize and sometimes tolerate. A hat sat on top of it all- some Stetson type affair that- if I had to guess about the volume that could be fit into it- would measure somewhere between nine and eleven gallons and it sported at least five feathers sticking out of the band- each one jauntier than the last.
Well, at least it hadn’t taken long to find him, I thought.
I tried to ri
se but a boot from behind me kicked me back down into the dirt where I caused another miniature duststorm.
‘SH’ kept his gaze to the wild blue yonder but did skip back a little bit to avoid any dirt.
“Weeeelp, fellas…. What did you go and done bring me now?” he kept his gaze fixed far above me.
One of the indistinguishable rabble burbled, “Suspicious lookin’ pipsqueak done wandered out that there desert. Started spoutin’ buncha damn nonsense.”
“Could be a part o’ the posse, y’reckon?”
“Could be.”
“Y’reckon?”
“I reckon.”
Both men spat thoughtfully into the dirt and had a brief reverie about their reckonings. A wind blew through the town, making shutters quiver and batwing doors groan and generally add to the languid drama of the moment. I decided to make myself comfortable.
He finally looked down at me, just for long enough to wince in distaste and spit a gob of brown tobacco near me. “Awfully light on the armaments if they is, I would venture. Not as much as a pig sticker on him, by the looks.”
“Could be injun.”
“Could be.”
“Y’reckon?”
He finally shook his head and kneeled down by me. “No, I surely do not.” Two blue eyes peered into my face and my face peered back at them. “Which raises the question. What is you, son? You some kinda injun? Cherokee? Sioux? Chipewaa? Jumanji? Chipotle?”
“No diggity,” I answered.
“That a tribe? Like the Choctaw?
“Nah, playa.”
“Comanche?”
“Nah beotch.”
We regarded one another, each (I suspect) making about as much sense to the other one. I saw uncertainty dancing at the corner of his eyes, and more importantly his fingers dancing at the corner of his revolver’s trigger. I remembered being shot today by one Space hardcore who I’d confused so decided to ditch this era’s jargon for now.
“No. No. I am not an ‘injun’”
“Cattle rustler?”
Now, I knew what rustling was, and I knew what cattle were but the two together…?
“I have never rustled a cattle,” I said with a high degree of confidence.
“Prospector?”
“No.”
“And you don’t look like you’re one of Ol’ Bess’s new workin’ gals which, in a town like this makes you a mite bit of a suspicious windfall. Now here comes the six thousand dollar question ‘playa’- have you gone and ever done heard of a no-good, two-bit outlaw who likes goin’ by the moniker of Black Raoul?”
My mind raced, trying to parse the grammatical nightmare of his sentence, trying to work through the pleonasms quickly. I decided to fight fire with fire.
“I ...darn well never... done not have never gone and done...that. Siree.” After a second of silence I spat for good measure. He stared at me for a long time. I tried to put on an expression that would most dissuade someone from shooting me.
My face worked. He hauled me to my feet and clapped me roughly round the shoulder in a gesture that was almost a 50/50 split between friendliness and senseless violence.
“Well, hombre. You went and wandered plum into the middle o’ the wrong township. Name’s Holliday, Sheriff round these here parts for my copious sins, but let’s not stand on ceremony, you can just call me Sheriff Holliday like e’rybody else. Or ‘The Sheriff’ or ‘The Generalisimo’ if you’re in the mood. Welcome to the humble township of Sweet Gulch. We’re a modest metropolis, if’n I can call it that but what we lack in buildings and infer-structure we make up for in gunfights and tumbleweeds.”
He walked me around, leading me away from his little posse and sweeping his hand grandly around the town in a motion that sought to willfully ignore the state of the place.
Presently the Sheriff spun me round, clapped me once again violently on the shoulders and brought his face inches away from mine, ignoring it when the brim of his hat poked me in the eyes. “But we’re facing a bit of a crisis in this neck of the woods. That’s why my boys here went and gave you such a toasty welcome. That feller I mentioned earlier-”
“Let me guess. Coming to kill you?”
He took a theatrical step back and put his hands on his hips as he appraised me. “Well, well weeeell. Nothing much to look at- face like a pail of slop and a manlier frame could be found on a desert varmint but you’re a sharp one alright!”
“Thanks. Let’s just say I’ve known men...like you before and they always seem to attract a certain kind of trouble.”
“Men like me? Well when this is all over, pard’ner, you got to tell me where you went and done been. Some promised land where righteous devils with hands faster’n a buzzards fart an’ faces that make the saloon girls drop their fees grow on trees, seems like.”
“Okay.”
He peered at my uncomprehending expression. “You really ain’t from round this ways, is ye?”
“Okay.”
“Should I speak slower?”
I waved his query away. I decided I was ready to be done with this time already. It was too hot and full of spitting and everyone talked like a thesaurus exploded near them. “No, no no. Time is of the essence. You have someone who’s coming to kill you-”
“Well now it’s more like a posse, lookin’ to take over the town. Y’see-”
“Yes. I get the gist. Bad men coming, showdown, impossible odds, shootout. Got it.”
He spat thoughtfully again and peered at me. “Well, I must say, stranger, your tellin’ of it lacks a certain...panache, a certain ‘Frere Jacques’, as the French might say but you about done and gone covered it, I guess.” Suddenly he seemed to appraise me a-fresh, his squinting eyes squinting even harder, enough that they were essentially closed. “How come you come to be so you’re so well informed anyhow?”
His hand had returned to its favourite hovering spot- above his gun. I had to remember how much people on earth liked to shoot things.
“This Raoul character if he’s plotting to kill you then he’ll be travelling with a man- I suspect- that I am seeking to have words with.”
“What kind of words?”
“Lead ones.”
He grinned lazily up at the sky. “I knew I done liked you, hombre. Well, let me put your mind at rest- if Raoul is travelling with any other ne’er-do-wells you needn’t fuss ‘bout it. They’ll end up dead or in the slammer once I’m through with’m. I’m taking the whole rotten posse down. No charge.”
I was already shaking my head. “This man might have...technologies, though. Something to give him the edge.” The Sheriff was already making that ‘talky-talky’ motion with his hands into my face. “It is imperative that we prepare for his arrival.” I insisted from around his flapping fingers.
“Prepare? I done woke up with my guns on, didn’t I? What else do ya need?”
“We must be ready for any eventuality. This man-”
“This eventuality ain’t gonna be so damn eventual, stranger. I’m good and ready now, which is just as well. Lookee here.”
He motioned over and I lookee-d there. We were in the middle of the street now and facing up toward the north end of Sweet Gulch, where the modest white church capped the township. Around the holy building dust flew, kicked up by four dozen hooves on a dozen horses. They swept into the town like a sandstorm- coarse and dangerous, gritty and windy. At the head of them was a black rider, astride a stallion inky black as a shadow, which whinnied darkly and lifted its tail to deposit a pat as pitch as coal onto the pure sand of Sweet Gulch. He pulled its reins and it came to a dead halt outside the church steps where the rider dismounted. His posse did likewise.
“Raoul?” I asked.
“I reckon,” Holliday grunted as he took his place in the street’s dead centre. “Right on time.”
Damnit. Time! And the lack of it! It was all happening too quickly this time round. No time to prepare. Not time to even get my bearings or help out this new buffoo-I mean, this new vers
ion of the Captain. I had only arrived in time to watch the damn shootout and see whatever new plan Tempus had put in place here.
“Sheriff Holliday,” called out this Black Raoul from the shadow of the church, “make your peace with the Lord because I aim to shoot you dead this day.”
“Bring it on,” the Sheriff said in a loud confident voice that almost covered my whimpers.
Chapter Twenty One
A One Man Platoon/ Guns at High Noon
* * *
Every man dies but not every man truly lives- for he never dares to truly be. And though every man lives not every man truly dies- for he is remembered forevermore by his deeds. And though some men live and die, some men neither live NOR die- those men are phantoms and are to be feared and hunted by a special organization that some call FightForceFourteen!
Adrian Nomoly
A Requiem for a Spleen
Ѻ
‘What a sexy riot’, I thought.
But it shouldn’t even be a riot.
In a world where everyone looked exactly like me, you’d think there would be nothing but peace. Not only were all races and creeds and various types of consciousness now united, each one had gotten a significant makeover. It was a world of true equality, where every bun was made of steel, every pack was six in number and every hair is coiffed into a symphony of follicles that would make angels rip their own screaming faces off in wonder.
The Time Trousers of Professor Tempus: A Captain Space Hardcore Adventure Page 25