The Time Trousers of Professor Tempus: A Captain Space Hardcore Adventure

by Michael Ronson

  “Don’t just look at that thing, Beretta, bloody well use it!” Erdinger shouted at me killably.

  The last of the bay doors stood in front of us- leading to an hangar bay, a waiting shuttle and escape. I wedged the blade in the door and threw my weight against the pry bar. Erdinger, now actively courting his own death, hopped up upon a crate and critiqued my form.

  “Put some bloody muscle behind it, Rex, there’s a good boy.” he said breezily. “We’re almost out of this dump and you know what that means- I make good on my word. You get me out of this place and I let you ride my coattails for a little while longer. What a deal for you, huh?”

  I strained against the pry bar and the hangar door groaned a deep protest and opened an inch.

  “That’s the way, now what was I saying? Ah yes- I’ll take you to all the places I know about. Paramilitaries. Terrorist groups, PMCs, PTAs, NWAs, P-45s, NAACPs. With what I’ve got in my head the verse is your oyster. All the underground connections I know- I’ll make some introductions and you can get back to doing your thing.”

  I pulled tired arms and tried to remember why it was my job to open all the doors. Erdinger smiled down at me, confident in his near-escape and ready to needle me more. He affected confusion.

  “‘Your thing’. What was that again…..? Remind me, Rex. What exactly are you good for?”

  The door opened fractionally more as my face flushed with the exertion.

  “I mean, you said you were great at escaping but...that’s about it, really isn’t it? And today hasn’t exactly been a stellar display. Seems like logically, the thing you’re best at, is getting caught, isn’t it? Rex? Rex? Rexie?”

  I pushed, pushed hard, hernia hard, with all the anger I had and the pry bar finally forced the door open with a high metallic squeal. The hangar bay lay behind it, empty save for our ride out of here.

  “Attaboy Rexie. Look at you go. Just needed a little push from me, eh? A little guidance. Stick with me, son.” He sprang from his seat and mussed my hair as he congratulated me. He walked away, striding confidently into the hangar without a care in the world. But I didn’t follow.

  He mussed my hair.

  My hair. My golden crown. My halo. My hair.

  He strode into the hangar bay happily unaware of the tide of anger rising behind him. Nobody touched my hair. Nobody. My hair was a paradox to drive philosophers mad- strong, yet flexible, groomed to perfection yet wild and untamed as a pegasus, boyishly tousled yet statesmanlike, naturally coloured and without gray yet completely un-dyed. The last barber that had touched it had cut off both of his hands and plucked out his eyes (this was in an unrelated farming accident but the point still stands). My hair. I could put up with a lot, evidently, but a man has a limit. Every time it was cut the sweepings were preserved in a display case in a museum (the one onboard my ship but the point still stands). My hair. It had received medals on its own. I had had four portraits done of it alone.It was an extension of me or perhaps I was an extension of it. He mussed it.

  It was, as the proverb goes, the straw that broke the camel’s toe.

  “Oh to hell with this,” I said firmly and finally turned toward Erdinger.

  “Come on Rex-”

  I don’t often make mistakes. In a way it was an exciting feeling; knowingly making one now.

  “I’m not Rex Beretta,” I yelled, “my name is Captain Space Hardcore and this is bloody overdue.”

  Before he could raise so much as a vile eyebrow at me I whipped my arm out in a strong, whistling arc. The blade of the pry bar bit easily through Erdinger’s neck before his face could even change expression and I cut his head clean off.

  Chapter Twenty Four

  A Headache for Space/ The Old West Arms Race

  * * *

  Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation, their clothing stolen, their credentials are a cunning forgery, their money mere counterfeits. Look at their faces and what do you see? It’s a mask. Underneath are two children in a long trenchcoat playing a prank. That is what most people are.

  Thomas Carruthers Quintingly-Smythe

  The Curious Case of the Triple Mastectomy

  Ѻ

  “You traitor.”

  He was taking it hard, which I suppose was understandable.

  “Will you shut your mouth?”

  “You TRAAAAAAAAAAITOOOOOOOR,” he shouted like some kind of childish alarm bell.

  I threw my arms around him and hunkered down behind the crates, looking about warily to see if anyone had heard. He tried to shout even louder under my arms but he was muffled under my honed muscles to a tiny crushed moan that sounded like nothing so much as a baby dolphin suffocating in a bag.

  If anything I liked Erdinger less as a head than I did as a whole body.

  First came the spitting, then the biting at my fingers as I had to pick him up. When that failed to hurt me he started clearing his nose at me and now he was just yelling expletives. The savage pleasure I had taken in chopping the man’s head off had faded slightly, as he seemed now dead-set on having the two of us caught, which seemed pretty damn spiteful to me. He was still alive after all- his cyborg head had enough power to keep him going for weeks. I hugged his head close to my chest and covered him up with my hand. I felt his teeth gnash furiously underneath looking for some flesh to chomp on but when he could get no purchase on me I felt the upsetting sensation of his moist little tongue prodding at my closed fingers like an aggressive worm. I yanked my hand away involuntarily.

  “Will you belt up?” I hissed at his head. “Do you want to be caught again? I’m trying to get us out of here.”

  He slowly quieted down and regarded me. I could see him weighing his options. Considering that he was a robotic head being carried about a maximum security prison by a magnificently nude man, they were pretty limited.

  “You know, maybe you’re right. I got a little worked up back there. I think that may be on account of the fact that you cut off my bloody HEEEAAAA-” I clamped my hand back over his mouth and almost immediately got a furious tonguing. I looked down at his black eyes and furrowed brow. He really was livid.

  I tried to reason with the head, “Listen, you know you can survive for about a week, what with your backup batteries and internal life support systems.” I paused. “And you’ve been asking for a beheading all day.”

  “When you put it that way it really takes the sting out of being betrayed by Captain Space bloody Hardcore and then decapitaaAAAATED.”

  I muted him again and peered over the crates. Amazingly the docking port was relatively deserted but it would only be a matter of time before they set up some permanent blockades here. A small skiff sat temptingly unguarded on a landing pad about two hundred feet away from us just ready to be stolen. It would be easy. Almost TOO easy.

  “MMMMphhh rmphhh!” Erdinger’s head protested.

  I warily took my hand off of his mouth.

  He composed himself and let some politeness out through gritted teeth. “Hold me little higher. Please.”

  I was confused for a second before remembering that the holographic clothes projectors were now inactive. Erdinger had been getting quite the eyeful from where I had been holding him. I’d charge most people for that kind of a show, but I supposed Erdinger was probably quite unfavourably disposed to both me and my genitalia at that moment.

  I surveyed the port warily. A clear run. Tempus had to have laid a trap for me here.

  “How’s the escape coming along? Great I hope.”

  “This is your escape too,” I whispered.

  “Back to a different kind of captivity. No thanks. I should have known you were bloody COAR this whole time. I’d rather stay in the Manhole, get my body grafted back on and have fond memories of the death of Space Hardcore.”

  “Oh I am so glad I cut off your head off.”

  A silence fell as I re-scanned the bay. The skiff’s door was even open. All it
was missing was the welcome mat.

  “Out of idle curiosity, what is keeping you?”

  “What?” I asked distractedly.

  “This is the easiest part of you-of my plan. This shuttle bay’s the softest part of the place. We were meant to just hijack a transport here. Bish bash bosh. Done.”

  I jumped a little. There was a noise in the distance. Could be a patrol coming in. Could be whatever Tempus was going to spring. I wiped a bead of sweat from my brow and wiped it on Erdinger’s hair. He ignored that so he could chide me more.

  “Lost your nerve, Hardcore?”

  ”I….no. There’s...There’s someone else who’s interfering with things. Playing a bigger game. I...I can’t explain.”

  “I thought I was the one who’d lost their head,” Erdinger muttered.

  I gasped and looked down at him. A chill ran through my body, one that was not connected to my being naked in a spaceport.

  Erdinger had made a pun.

  No; worse- he had made a pun before me. I had been carrying around a cyborg head for upwards of ten minutes and hadn’t said anything about it. No jokes, no wordplay, no slapstick not even a touch of tasteful ventriloquism. I’d said nothing about being headstrong, or getting ahead in life, heading out for the evening, diving headlong into things. No witty rejoinder about him being head and shoulders above the other prisoners or falling head over heels. I hadn’t even dipped into some blue material by saying that I could now give head or even something as basic as calling him a dickhead. Nothing whatsoever. Such an opportunity for my legendary, and if I may say so myself, Kafkaesque wit had been wasted.

  “What’s the matter, Hardcore? You look upset. Almost as if someone had cut your head off,” he noted.

  “Oh grow up! You’re fine, aren’t you. I mean, you’re shorter but you’ll live. Serves you right to keep going on about how valuable ‘what you have in your head’ is.”

  Erdinger made a low harrumphing noise. “How did you know about that anyway? That the drive with the intel is in an internal compartment in my cranium?”

  “I’m….” It seemed pointless and tiring to lie all of a sudden. “Ah, hell. You know what? I’m a future version of myself sent back through time. That’s how I knew. We did all this once before. I’ve come back from the future to do this once more.”

  The head looked evenly at me. “Fine. Make your jokes.”

  He shut up and I returned to my indecision, my crouching. The port was quiet. I had become used to the usual low hum of ambient noise that every station has. Within that noise I was sure I could hear, or maybe vaguely sense a low hubbub of activity somewhere close by, getting closer. Sitting there, naked behind a crate cradling an angry cyborg’s head I felt somehow vulnerable and ludicrous; and those are emotions that I almost never feel, especially while I’m naked. I felt as though as soon as I popped out from behind the pile of boxes a thousand laser sights would pinpoint me, each one screaming the name ‘Tempus’ in that way that lasers don’t. I had to find a way to break that paranoia.

  I looked down at the head in my hands and smiled.

  “What on earth are you grinning at?” Erdinger asked.

  “Want to make yourself useful?”

  Before he answered I grabbed him roughly by an ear and took a crouching half-stand and bowled Belson Erdinger underhand thirty yards towards the next clump of equipment nearest to the shuttle. He rolled unsteadily and I’ll admit that his nose and his relentless gnashing of his jaw threw my aim off slightly but he landed roughly near the spot I intended. I listened. No sounds, no alarms, no cocking guns and no cries from alerted guards. The shuttle bay was silent save for the sound of Erdinger’s head calling me a bastard.

  Emboldened I crouch-jogged my way over to it, all the time ready to dive at the sound of a laser bolt headed my way. Good god, this wasn’t me. To be this paranoid, this cautious and jumpy in combat was something I mocked in lesser men, women, children and animals. Within me I felt the crumbling of a pillar with the word ‘punching’ on it. To use a head as a distraction as I scurried fearfully away from imagined traps was the exact opposite of the way I had completed this mission last time. As I reached Erdinger again I once more took his head in my hands and punted him over to the next area of cover, following only after thirty seconds of silence. The shuttle lay tantalizingly close.

  Two more over-arm throws and one fairly spectacular roundhouse kick to my canary and we were outside the door, me still battling the feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop and he feeling rather bruised probably. The shuttle doors stood no more than five feet away from us, the light on the side blinking a serene and unlocked green. It was practically gift wrapped. I swivelled my head around once more, scanning every inch that I could see of the hangar bay. God damn you, Tempus, where was your patented nasty surprise?

  Erdinger groaned heavily between my feet, coming out of a dizzy stupor and it was the threat of his resumed yelling that finally pushed me over the edge. I balled up my courage and leapt for the ship’s back door, a scruff of Erdinger’s hair in my hand. A whoosh of open doors, an empty and modestly outfitted supply ship and an empty command chair greeted me. The engines even hummed warmly into life at the press of a button. I winced as I felt the ship’s docking engine lift us into the air. I was on the edge of my seat as I pushed us out toward the bay doors and I barely breathed as those same doors slid obligingly open as they had the first time. Beyond the reinforced plexisteel was the last possible barrier- a curtain of blue light that I knew to be the prison’s scanner- the screening process meant to pick out any errant weapons, lifeforms or other contraband.

  This, I decided would be where Tempus’ snare lay. Oh, it was just like him to leave his nasty surprise, for the last moment when we were feet from freedom. I gritted my teeth and pushed the craft gently through it. The blue light touched the nose of the shuttle and I masochistically kept piloting us through. It would turn red any second. The heavy bay doors would close on us like a casket, or maybe it would wait to tear the ship in two. No, no. there would be warships waiting for us on the other side. Maybe there was a bomb aboard, ready to detonate just as we got out in the black. Perhaps this whole ship was an enormous prison guard robot in ship form and it would turn back into its other shape, locking us in its belly. A bead of sweat ran down my brow as the light passed over me and the nothing that was happening tauntingly continued to not happen.

  ---=◈◆⬤◆??◆⬤◆◈=---

  It was about a foot high now, the wall.

  I would guess that you could call it that. It had its structural similarities. It was about a eleven inches high and about half a foot across and it ran across the street pretty evenly, like a lead speed bump. Every so often gravity would do its thing and a little avalanche would flatten one part out, but I had to say that, all things considered, I was a little impressed at our work.

  Building such a structure out of spent ammunition was no small task.

  Tempus had gotten irritated over the day or so we had been at it (though we had agreed to a brief nap period several hours ago after which we were both a lot less snappy), he had shouted for me to give up, how futile and outmatched I was, but I had just kept steady, kept my head down and gone to work. It was a matter of attrition now. He had tried getting fancy with ricochet shots and such but I obviously had time to react to even those. Presently we had settled back into the groove and despite the fact that we had been at this for an indeterminate amount of time, I was feeling pretty confident.

  Now, I had every right not to feel cocky. After all, I was trapped inside a second picking bullets out of the air with other bullets, but I was keeping track of something that I knew Tempus was not; the human element. And the human element was presently running out of town as quickly as it could. Either that or screaming. Oh yes, there was a lot of screaming happening in Sweet Gulch.

  The wall of mashed twin bullets seemed almost normal to me now, as it would to Tempus since we had built the thing up so gradually. But
through the eyes of Raoul’s men, who were each of them screaming and vomiting in terror as the gunfight continued to play out, I could see how the situation could seem a little...off.

  You see, a regular human will barely notice if one of his shots goes more quickly than average. They won’t bat an eye if they get a couple of shots off with near perfect accuracy. They’ll simply puff out their chests a little and pat themselves on the back. But if you do this three times in a row, you might feel a touch unnerved. Four times is a little weird. And if, as you shoot, your gun moves around in your hands as though you were possessed by a mechanical turret listening to a techno disco rave mix, then you might start to get spooked. And we had built a wall out of bullets, so it was possibly safe to say that we had moved past ‘spooked’ several hours ago.

  I looked at them. Each man was a different tableau of terror. Their demon guns were sniffing Holliday out themselves. Each face bore a mouth distorted by a horrific scream, most out of baffled terror but some probably out of pain too, since almost all of the guns were now glowing red from being fired non-stop. Of course Tempus, ever the driven man of science, was paying them no mind and was simply moving them around as though they were poncho-ed pieces of machinery.

  And those were the ones who were still in town.

  Two of Raoul’s men were firing over their shoulders as they sprinted past the town limits, but that wasn’t stopping Tempus from making sure that the guns in their hands were firing at Holliday even as they ran in the opposite direction. One bandito had been making the sign of the cross for the last four volleys, with his eyes screwed closed but that didn’t mean that the Scofield in his hand wasn’t pumping out lead at a frightening pace as he babbled in Latin.

  But my cowboy? Well that was a different story. I smiled to myself.