I was nervous. I genuinely didn’t know how this would go. I scanned my mind for something to say.
“There’s an old earth saying I looked up earlier. Want to hear it?”
“A saying? Is that it? You best run back to your trough, reliable old nag, There’s about to be a shoot-out here.”
“It just seemed appropriate. And nobody else here seems to understand Earth English. Seems I learned it for nothing.”
He didn’t say anything but he did pause, the air and time hovered still at his command. I suspected he was as nervous about the shootout as I was. I spoke from memory.
“‘Now, now, now, now,” I began, my voice rang out in the queer quavering bubble of time, “once upon a time in the west a Mad man lost his damn mind in the west/ Loveless, givin up a dime, nothin' less/Now I must put his behind to the test/Then through the shadows, in the saddle, ready for battle/ Bring all your boys in, here come the poison/Behind my back, all the riffin' ya did/Front and center, now where your lip at kid?/Who dat is? A mean brotha, bad for your health/Lookin damn good though, if I could say it myself-”
“Are you finished?!” he screamed suddenly. The gun twitched nervously in his hands. Time waited with baited breath to resume, the sheriff was almost through blowing a kiss and farting. I locked eyes with Tempus.
“We goin straight to the wild wild west,” I said with emphasis.
He sneered at that. I climbed back into the trough and time resumed.
Ready for the final shootout.
“Wild. Wild. West,” I said.
Chapter Twenty Six
A Distress Call/ Bullets for All
* * *
I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks but the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.
I also fear the man who has practiced 10 kicks 1000 times but not quite as much as the man who has practiced 2 kicks about 5,000 times who I fear about 3 times as much. The man who has practiced no kicks hold no fear for me. I shall find him and kick him into the next life. And that is the meaning of fear.
Bruce Lee
A Thousand Things I love about Kicking people
Ѻ
Pew!
The ship banked left then thrust itself suddenly to the right but the hull kept taking a merciless hammering. The black was filled with beams of energy and we just twirled through it, trying to postpone the inevitable.
The engine compartment in the back of the humble shuttle ship was small, economical and almost entirely on fire. A war was being fought between the warning lights which strobed the place into a panicked disco and the fat clouds of smoke bellowing from the machinery which wanted to hide everything from my sight. I choked on the smoke and stumbled as I felt another energy bolt wallop into us and rend metal from metal. But that was nothing compared to the screaming that was being done by the head I was lugging around. But that would be over soon.
I found a likely seeming panel and yanked it back. Of all the things in the ship, it was the only damn thing that was intact and it seemed to be stubbornly trying to stay that way on general principle. The metal edges of the compartment bit into my un-gloved hands. Hell, I didn’t even have a tunic or dress shirt on to wrap around my digits so I just strained against it and let the metal lip bite into the flesh of my hands. The compartment finally gave and I was rewarded by the sight of the inner workings of the sensor array. I wrapped a bloody hand around two large nodules and tried to yank them free, though their vine-like cabling resisted. I was aided as the ship’s ‘evasive manoeuvres’ program failed spectacularly in its job and the ship was rocked by a fresh barrage of impacts which sent me sprawling on my rump. Luckily two things happened- Erdinger’s head broke my fall (which he seemed pretty unhappy about) and the comms transmitter and distress beacon both snapped off in my hand with a healthy tangle of wiring.
It was all screaming then. The screaming of metal against metal, the screaming of sirens trying to make me deaf before death and the screaming of one insane mercenary cyborg who was plainly unhappy to have been used as a temporary stool. But I had an answer for his screaming, and it involved making him fulfil the role of stool again, though in a slightly altered meaning of the word.
“What the hell are you doing, Hardcore?”
“Me? Oh nothing. I just have to head to the loo for a second.”
His eyes grew large at that and my special grin- the one I reserve exclusively to taunt the grim reaper- grew a little wider in answer.
“You…You wouldn’t...”
I climbed up the floor which was twirling round at an impossible angle and threw myself at a doorway just in time to be met by a gust of fire which swallowed me whole briefly. I shut my eyes against it. No worries- oxygen was leaking out of the ship too fast to support a prolonged fire. I wrenched the door shut behind me and braced myself against the walls. This wasn’t too hard, after all this was the already small ship’s smallest room. I took Erdinger’s head in my hands and began to wrap the wiring around his forehead. My fingers tied solid and tight knots as I started to feel the room become cold and airless.
“What are you doing?” He knew. I didn’t answer. The comms transmitter was held fast to his right ear. I started on the distress beacon.
“You can’t. You need me. You need-”
“What’s in my head,” I finished for him. “’What’s in my head, what’s in my head’. What’s in your head is a nest of shabby thoughts, the memory of a thousand dishonourable deeds and some secrets that, this time round, I don’t feel like preserving. I didn’t like saving you the first time and this time I just plain refuse. It’s the wisdom of hindsight, Erdinger.”
I finished tying off the fires on the beacon and flicked switches on the sides of both devices. On the bare skin of my back the metal door grew freezing cold
“Right now I don’t want what’s in your head, I care about what’s on your head. Two very loud pieces of equipment set to transmit as hard as they can. They’re the first thing that a sensor array-or a turret for that matter can lock onto and they’re also quite probably the last pieces of equipment on this boat that aren’t completely fried. So, Belson Erdinger- “ I stuffed the beacon deep in his mouth where it absorbed half a profanity aimed at my mother, “It’s with a heavy heart that I commit thy head to space.”
I crammed his head into the toilet pan and set the toilet to ‘hangover mode’ to accommodate the largest load.
“Ashes to ashes.” His eyes bulged at me, veins stood out like cables on his head. “Flush to flush.” I kicked the flusher with my foot, in the manner of all cool people, and watched the toilet aperture open and suck him down, a tiny waterfall sploshing around his head. The portal closed over his head like a grave and two seconds later, after the outer lock had closed I heard the outer airlock dispel the waste. He would be out there now, electronics sending out ‘come hither’ signals to every gun Tempus had strapped to the Manhole, gnashing at the wires around his head. It was a fun image but one that I couldn’t afford to dwell upon.
With a blood slick hand I worked the toilet door open and felt all of the air leave the room and my lungs. Every piece of loose debris floated in zero gravity and the cold of space leaked in through about three fist sized holes I could see immediately. The cold gripped me like an amorous yeti and I regretted my nudity for the first time in my life. I pushed the pain and the cold aside and kept my last breath clamped in my lungs. I braced against the wall and pushed off toward the captain’s chair, firing myself toward the control panel like a flesh torpedo. In two more jumps I was gripping the seat but the air was being ripped out of me and I could feel my own heartbeat in my ears like a death toll. Still, I knew that if I couldn’t turn off all of the ship’s systems there was a chance that some of the prison defences could still pick up on our signature. And that clearly would not do. I raked a numb hand down One side of the control panel and it felt like a balloon filled with cold water (my arm, not the panel). Still, the lights went out accordingly. Blood sang in my
ears, deafening now. I swept my hand down the other side and assumed the job was done.
Last job. In accordance with all galactic bylaws and health and safety guidelines an emergency Hazard Suit was to be stashed in every cabin. I reached up towards the emergency hatch with arms that I felt like I was remote controlling. Nerveless fingers stubbed against the release hatch and refused to grip. My lungs burned hot inside me- the only thing I could feel. Finally, achingly the hatch opened in the frustrating slow motion of zero gravity and I thought of Tempus’ smiling face. Would he have had the foresight to remove this? I felt my heart sink as I felt sure that he had.
But the suit, that flimsy onesie and the fishbowl helmet unfurled and floated down upon me.
A normal human body can do amazing things when under extreme pressure. They can accomplish great feats. Imagine then, how good mine would be. This was evidenced by the fact that about five seconds later I had somehow clad myself in the suit, latched all the latches and taken the first sweet, deep breath of canned oxygen. I gulped at it hungrily, drank it like soup, gurgled it, let it go to my head, luxuriated in the stuff.
And for a minute I let myself hang there, suspended in nothing, inside the tatters of a ship, drinking air like wine as my screaming body calmed down.
The shockwaves had subsided. No new thuds of impact. I looked up at the captain’s chair and saw all the ship’s systems were shut down; I was silent and invisible to all eyes. Out of the front window I saw some red beams dwindle in the distance. The last shots had been fired and I let myself imagine Erdinger’s final moments for a few delicious moments.
After what felt like a long time I strapped myself to the captain’s chair and took inventory.
The ship was a ruin. Life support was long gone, shields were in the distant history and the hull itself was sporting more holes than Erdinger’s cranium at this point. The only thing I was sure worked on this thing was the toilet and that would be of little use to me. Experimentally I switched systems to the backup generators. The first was dead, the second, doubly so, but the last one- the smallest- pinged back signs of life. Slowly and cautiously I piped a small amount of energy to the engines. I was left with was the in-atmosphere engines. I had to laugh. I’d be pushing this thing to the nearest planet with little burst of the landing engines- it would be like sailing a boat entirely by farting into the sails.
I let out a burst of power into the tiny engines and felt the ship lurch forward then keep drifting as the engine fart subsided. In the blackness of space, the nearest orb hung out there. So near I felt like I could reach out and touch it. But whether the ship had enough energy to get there was another matter. My gut told me we’d make it and the only other choice was to go back to prison, and they don’t take jailbreaks too kindly, I believe, so I tapped in a command on the ship’s fizzing and moribund console and told her to keep on farting our way there.
Finally I lay back in the seat and the past day’s- no, the decades’ – worth of events settled into me and a deep bottomless tiredness gripped me. My eyes, already half lidded’ drooped lower as my body hummed with my freshest injuries. My breath in the helmet was slow and the engine’s next fart rocked the ship gently on the course, as it rocked me to sleep.
Erdinger was dead. The mission was a failure. I tried to care as my head nodded down into my chest but found I couldn’t. I didn’t care what the ramifications were. I just needed rest. No CALAPAW, no victory, no more Tempus, just rest.
I drifted in that cruising ruin and my wish came true.
Blackness took me.
Then, naturally, a deeper darkness took me.
Took me out of that seat, out of my sleep and back to the future.
---=◈◆⬤◆??◆⬤◆◈=---
Holliday thumbed back his hat and squinted over the bullet hump.
“Well now. Where’d you come from, fella?”
“Long story,” Tempus breathed. He looked ragged and haggard. And ready.
He was drowned out, almost, as a fresh tinkling avalanche of bullets fell musically from the wall. Holliday smiled thinly at that and looked at the revolver dangling limply from Tempus’ hand.
“I hope you’re good with that thing, son.” he said. He cast an eye theatrically over the bullet riddled street. “No false modesty, but I ain’t in too bad of a shape today. Not too shabby at all. Tried to tell Raoul that, but it seemed I needed t’prove mysel’ ‘fore he took off. Poor soul.”
Tempus’ eyes flickered over to me for the briefest moment then returned to Holliday.
“I should’ve just done this from the start,” he muttered and squared his shoulders.
Holliday shrugged over to me and once more set himself into his gunfighting stance; the one I was by now pretty thoroughly sick of.
“Alright. I would advise following suit of your friends there, but the way I see it, every man has the god given right to plant his feet, grip his gun and set out the means of his own demise.” He hovered his hand over the butt of his pistol once more. Strange to see him moving in normal speed for so long. It was almost dizzying. Holliday started the usual countdown and I gripped the edge of my trough looking over at them. Surely this would end it. On one end was a man who I was pretty sure could shoot, at least by his wardrobe. On the other was a hate fuelled monster from another time.
“Three,” Holliday called. Tempus scowled and gripped his gun tighter.
“Two.” Tempus’ lips quivered as he stared him down.
“One.” Tempus dipped his arm, went to raise the gun.
“Draw!”
I winced away from the inevitable boom.
Then I opened my eyes as nothing happened.
Another time bubble? Had Tempus lied? I peered over the wooden lip out into the street.
I had gotten so used to the sound of a dozen pistols going off a hundred consecutive times that the sound of silence was almost as stunning to me as all the noise. The street was silent but for one unfamiliar sound. Fumbling. I looked out over the trough as it continued stubbornly.
What I saw, especially after the display of fancy shooting that myself and Tempus’ posse had been putting on, well, it was...not quite as impressive.
Holliday simply stood there, a smirk frozen on his face as he looked down at his own gun dumbly. It simply sat there in his hand, as guns tend to do, not up to much. As for Tempus, he was struggling to aim and cock the antique cannon he was holding, looking like a child with his father’s gun. Holliday returned his gun to its holster then whipped it out quickly again and shot a smug look at Tempus as the gun once again sat quietly in his hand. A second later he looked quizzically down at the thing, shook it, then gave it a scolding look as though it had just insulted him (it hadn’t).
When a shot finally did go off it was from Tempus’ side. A window at the other end of town shattered as his shot went wide of the mark. I looked over to him as he staggered back under the enormous recoil and tried to bring the gun to bear again, struggling to thumb back the hammer as he brought it up.
Holliday whipped the gun out again, a look of dumb hope on his face, but the gun just sat in his hand, limp and useless as a dead otter. With dawning dread I realized what was happening. I had been pulling the trigger for the man for so damn long now that he didn’t expect to have to exert any effort at all. All of today, he had simply let the guns lay in his hands and they would aim and fire himself. With his agency suddenly returned he was keeping up this ace tactic of unholstering his gun, looking cool and doing little else save from the occasional involuntary toot.
And as for Tempus? Well, the man was a scientist, not a gunfighter. He had gotten used to steering the hands of hardened and leathery men, not handling the absurd ancient gunpowder contraptions himself. It was his first time laying his own hand on the outdated weapon. Hate or no hate he was handling the gun like a mormon handling a shot of tequila.
It was a battle of pitched ineptitude.
I, of course was rooting for the Sheriff to realize that he had to
go back to pulling the trigger of the gun himself, in the traditional way, but it didn’t look too likely as he stood there, drawing his lefthand pistol, pointing it, frowning, then swapping it for his right. It must be hard when the magic disappears so suddenly.
“Shoot, damnit, shoot!” I called to him. But the wrong person heeded my advice. Squinting and holding the heavy iron in shaking hands Tempus’ second shot went wide of Holliday by a meter or so, shattering a batwing door. He staggered back a step due to the recoil then held the thing in two hands between his legs and began laboriously pulling back the hammer. I looked between the two, suspense and...well, frankly annoyance, gripping my rapidly beating hearts.
Well this was just going to take all day.
“To hell with this,” I muttered, climbing out of the trough.” There was a perfectly serviceable jail in this town and I had, some measure of time ago, been made an unofficial deputy before the sheriff shoved me into a drinking receptacle. I could end this before either man learned how to shoot.
“Clear the street!” Holliday hollered and I wished he hadn’t.
I leapt over the bullet mound as Tempus looked up from his gun, his eyes widening in fright.
I ran dead at him then, shaking the horse saliva off of myself as I ploughed toward him. If I could get him to the ground and pin his hands to his sides while he tried to figure out the gun, Holliday could help me restrain him, that is, if he ever tired of unholstering his guns them smiling optimistically down at them. But it was my best chance. I ran dead at the time traveller.
The Sheriff’s shout alerted him and as he saw me cross our unofficial halfway line he dropped his heavy ancient pistol altogether. That’s when the real quick-draw began. He dropped his hands to his trouser controls in a movement I had come to dread, as I closed the distance between the two of us. I scythed my hands through the air as I sprinted at him, but already a shimmering energy outlined his body before the chapel steps. Damn but this sumbitch was fast. I closed the gap and leapt toward him. The dry desert air behind him parted, as his trousers tore it in twain and above us the chapel gears wheezed and wound up, readying to toll the time.
The Time Trousers of Professor Tempus: A Captain Space Hardcore Adventure Page 31