Prophet Margin
Page 1
STRONTIUM DOG
PROPHET MARGIN
"Shut up!" Wulf roared. "You be shutting up or I be shutting you up!" Already inhabiting a profoundly paranoid state of mind, Cheez squealed like a pig and ran from Wulf as fast as his shaking limbs would take him.
"You got der two choices," he said, voice cold. "And both of them will be making you shutting up."
"N-nakkarak?" Cheez dribbled.
"One," Wulf said slowly. "You can be letting me strangle you till you are deaded."
Cheez appeared to have stopped breathing.
"Two," Wulf continued. "You can be opening der mouth und letting me be making you silent. It not kill you, but is not very nice."
He raised his fist and revealed its bundled contents.
"This," he said, "is der Sternhammer silencer. Is worser than death."
In his hand lay a crumpled, shaggy sock - coiled like a cobra and emanating an aura of unrepentant evil.
STRONTIUM DOG
#1: BAD TIMING - Rebecca Levene
#2: PROPHET MARGIN - Simon Spurrier
#3: RUTHLESS - Jonathan Clements
#4: DAY OF THE DOGS - Andrew Cartmel
#5: A FISTFUL OF STRONTIUM - Jaspre Bark and Steve Lyons
DURHAM RED
-Peter J Evans-
#1: THE UNQUIET GRAVE
#2: THE OMEGA SOLUTION
#3: THE ENCODED HEART
#4: MANTICORE REBORN
#5: BLACK DAWN
MORE 2000 AD ACTION
THE ABC WARRIORS
#1: THE MEDUSA WAR - Pat Mills & Alan Mitchell
#2: RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINES - Mike Wild
ROGUE TROOPER
#1: CRUCIBLE - Gordon Rennie
JUDGE DREDD FROM 2000 AD BOOKS
#1: DREDD VS DEATH
Gordon Rennie
#2: BAD MOON RISING
David Bishop
#3: BLACK ATLANTIC
Simon Jowett & Peter J Evans
#4: ECLIPSE
James Swallow
#5: KINGDOM OF THE BLIND
David Bishop
#6: THE FINAL CUT
Matthew Smith
#7: SWINE FEVER
Andrew Cartmel
#8: WHITEOUT
James Swallow
#9: PSYKOGEDDON
Dave Stone
JUDGE ANDERSON
#1: FEAR THE DARKNESS - Mitchel Scanlon
#2: RED SHADOWS - Mitchel Scanlon
#3: SINS OF THE FATHER - Mitchel Scanlon
CABALLISTICS, INC
-Mike Wild-
#1: HELL ON EARTH
#2: BETTER THE DEVIL
FIENDS OF THE EASTERN FRONT - David Bishop
#1: OPERATION VAMPYR
#2: THE BLOOD RED ARMY
#3: TWILIGHT OF THE DEAD
With thanks to Andrew Wilson: for aerial photographs, essay techniques and immunising scores of fragile minds against the Insidious Horror that is The Commercial Break. I'm still looking down, sir. Oh - and to Douglas Adams, who I never met. We apologise for the inconvenience.
Strontium Dog and Wulf created by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra.
A 2000 AD Publication
www.abaddonbooks.com
www.2000adonline.com
1098 7 65 4321
Cover illustration by Dylan Teague.
Copyright © 2004 Rebellion A/S. All rights reserved.
All 2000 AD characters and logos © and TM Rebellion A/S."Strontium Dog" is a registered trade mark in the United States and other jurisdictions."2000 AD" is a registered trade mark in certain jurisdictions. All rights reserved. Used under licence.
ISBN(.epub): 978-1-84997-080-8
ISBN(.mobi): 978-1-84997-121-8
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
STRONTIUM DOG
PROPHET MARGIN
SIMON SPURRIER
INTRODUCTION
Reader: there are few things in the galaxy that can be described as totally, unforgivably stupid.
Ignorance, accident, misinformation, biological deficiency: these things are scribbled with depressing regularity in the margins of the Big Book Of Thick. Most can be, if not excused, then at least understood and would seem to support the theory that nobody is ever deliberately stupid.
In 2150 this theory was forced to undergo radical revision. On an unimpressive little planet - roughly thirty thousand light years from the galactic hub - a few rival political factions started to get, for want of a better word, uppity. Their exact ideologies have - thankfully - long since been lost to the ravages of time, but whatever mundane nothings they squabbled over, what is eminently clear is this:
Someone, some stupid, stupid, stupid person - and I use the term in its true, unforgivable sense - started a war.
This was not an act of idiocy caused by ignorance or accident, or even a hot-headed temper tantrum. This was an event that would have ramifications that Mr Thicko knew about. He knew what pressing the Big Red Button meant. He knew what would happen to his world. For the sake of winning the argument, he went ahead and did it anyway.
The war lasted eight minutes. Seventy per cent of the population of this planet - Earth - died.
Alongside the fires and plagues and droughts, the most profound effect, from a historical perspective, was the introduction of tonnes of radioactive dust into the Earth's atmosphere. Cue polluted water, soaring cancer levels, radiation sickness and, within months, mutants. You should see the photos.
Children born with two heads, or none at all.
Kids with multiple arms.
Babies with insect eyes and slimy slug-feet.
Lumpy, hairy, spiky - youths of all kinds grew up surrounded by hatred and prejudice because their genes, not to labour the point, fell victim to the effects of someone else's gross stupidity.
Various social reforms came and went. Right wing dictators had their day, then fell to spirited mutant revolution. By 2168, government-sanctioned discrimination was publicly outlawed, whilst beyond the cameras the mutants were quietly packed away to ghettos where they couldn't offend good, hardworking "norms" with their eclectic biologies. Worse, facing unsympathetic attitudes from employers, many were forced into unpleasant or dangerous jobs, the most notorious being the offworld "Search/Destroy" agency - a bounty hunting organisation dedicated to capturing criminals too deadly for conventional police; and to earning a fat profit in the process. "A scummy job for scummy folks", as popular opinion had it.
At about this time, a young mutant named John Alpha arose to prominence amongst these "Strontium Dogs"; so named for the Strontium-90 isotope responsible for so many of their mutations. In 2170 he met and befriended Wulf Sternhammer - a Norseman from the past - during a particularly messy time-travel incident (the likes of which seem to have been an irresponsible staple of twenty-second century crimefighting). The pair returned to the present as partners (in the professional sense) and pursued bounties across countless alien worlds. The following tale, occurring as it does at the close of the "crime famine" of 2177, is but a tiny part of the veritable library of myths, fables and apocryphal tales comprising the legend of Johnny Alpha. I present it, reader, as a faithful composition constructed from the fragments of existing accounts and it is my hope that you find as much fascination in this most bizarre and brutal of eras as have I. I offer just a single piece of
advice to temper your digestion of what follows:
Never, ever, ever underestimate the capacity for stupidity in intelligent beings.
Mayhew Sharpe. Author, "My Species And Other Animals" (Pub: 2722)
"If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call to make, who would you call and what would you say?
"And why are you waiting?"
Stephen Levine
"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome."
Isaac Asimov
ONE
At the crux of a forking nutrient-river, beneath a sky so purple it was positively imperial, on the edge of a crystal forest where zephyrpods farted their spores every morning into the air, there stood a town.
Current Munteppian fashion tended towards conical architecture, and at all five compass points of the citadel, elaborate buildings coiled and peaked. The sound of Muntepp kids hurling themselves from top storey windows to splatter artistically across the street - coalescing to flash encouraging pigmentones up at the next jumper in line - was typically the only noise to break the silence.
Today, however, there was a new sound. It went something like:
"Sneckingbastardblobsofsnottakeyoudownandpaintyourbastardgutsacrossthestreet."
And so on, interspersed only occasionally with the distinctive rumble of heavy weapons fire.
The Munteppians, lacking ears, remained unaware of this new state of affairs until dark knots of smoke began corkscrewing upwards from the central plaza, underlit by bright patches of red light. Most of them merely wobbled their jellylike klpsklelds in a shrug, doubting the possibility of anything existing in the universe which could seriously hope to ruin the idyllic Muntepp existence.
Bless.
Those few who had been enjoying the quasinoon sun in the central promenade, who had watched with interest as a shiny lump of metal the size of a gethkik-house touched down in the middle of the plaza, were rapidly acquainting themselves with the realities of the situation.
For most, this was a very terminal process.
The Man Without Eyes - who did have ears - followed the sounds of devastation with an alert efficiency, losing himself in the thick soup of dust that was quickly banking across the town. Being unable to see didn't appear to slow him.
To those Munteppians he passed - to whom colour was so important in the expression of thoughts and feelings - his grass green uniform, bisected by straps and armour plates of acid yellow, could hardly present a clearer message:
Deadly.
They slugged their way aside, perplexed by the figure's ambulatory appendages and lack of transparent organs. One or two civic minded specimens attempted to issue a challenge, flashing complex auroras of purples at the interloper, but his colouration remained unchanged and he barely paused to acknowledge their presence.
At one junction, when the rasp of thermoplasmic weaponry grew perilously close, he paused and squinted, the white orbs in the sockets of his skull shimmering like silver. This focused attention, had anyone been watching, might have appeared redundant: where was the sense in such close scrutiny of a solid wall, after all? But the Man Without Eyes merely cocked his head, as if the very material of the wall could describe to him the details of the spectacle occurring beyond it, and stepped onwards.
The mark had found himself a neat little killing-platform halfway along the central promenade: the blastmelted remains of a Munteppian vehicle, dribbling molten slag like a toothless geriatric. Judging by the expression of out-of-control mentalism lighting the mark's face like a NeoVegas Christmas tree, appealing to his sense of reason was out of the question.
The Man Without Eyes lurked behind cover and watched the lunatic rain fiery death on blobby Munteppian heads, cackling and shouting out unlikely threats. Most of them seemed to involve his mother.
Somewhere to the east, the hunter's partner was (he hoped) drawing close. He'd dropped him off at the town's opposite outskirts before finding a secluded parking spot for their rental skivver in the crystalline forests beside the river. The two-pronged attack was hardly original, but in a contest involving a deranged criminal with a Thermoplasma StormCannon, anything that might balance the odds was worthwhile.
"Blobbygreenandredandblueandorangesneck!" the mark shouted. A couple of terrified Munteppians took the opportunity to quit their smoking cover, blobbing hurriedly towards sturdier ground. The Man Without Eyes shook his head. Mugs.
Leaning back on his heels to balance the cannon, the mark grinned and let rip. One hurrying creature detonated with a particularly satisfying slurp, mucal slime splattering. The droplets flickered and changed colour with a sort of spastic desperation, clearly beyond their ability to coalesce.
The Man Without Eyes wiped a kaleidoscopic dollop from one bright shoulder-guard. This was getting boring.
He briefly toyed with the settings on his blaster, wondering whether to risk a standard execution round or to live a little and use a number "four" cartridge, the favoured tool of the "blow everything to bollocks first, ask questions later" school of wholesale destruction.
The dilemma rapidly became a moot point as an arc of superheated plasma punched a smoking "o" into the hunter's cover, collapsing the metal sheet and leaving it bubbling. The Man Without Eyes had vanished.
He reappeared behind the mark in a cute sparkle of glittering energy. This effect was entirely unnecessary, but at the very least prevented potentially expensive lawsuits as a result of fatal coronaries. Finchleycorp[tm], the arms-manufacturers who had developed the personal short-range teleporter, was nothing if not safety conscious.
The mark hadn't even noticed the hunter's presence, too absorbed in demolishing a coachful of Munteppians which had clearly offended him. The Man Without Eyes considered shooting him in the back, then discarded the idea in the name of fairness. As ever, it felt an awful lot like hypocrisy.
"Hey," he said.
The mark turned around. The Man Without Eyes shot him. All fair and square.
WORDS FOR THE DEAD
#1 Algernon MacGregor Durant (AKA: "Standing" Algie)
Lava lamps.
I snecking hate lava lamps. They're so completely beyond the realms of the merely "uncool" that, you ask me, an admission of ownership is right up there with ethnic genocide and geo-orbital bombardment on the evil-o-meter.
I'm sounding a little irrational, perhaps. Allow me to explain:
My mother collected lava lamps.
She owned, in fact, the largest collection in the Aggrethian sector. She had them all: temperature reactive ripploids, oscillating nanite fountains, holorific culograms with globule enhancers, semi-sentient liquipets in conical tanks. She even had an antique lamp that used - get this - convection currents to make the blobs of coloured snot go round and round. Must have been worth a fortune, that.
My mother and I didn't get along.
When I was eight, the year after dad eloped with his AI filofax, my mother paid to have the skin of her right hand surgically reinforced. She'd complained that her children were so disobedient that, in dishing out all the clips, slaps, smacks and spanks required to enforce her dominance, her skin was in danger of wearing away. For about a year my school nickname was "BlisterArse". I still can't sit down without wincing. I sneck ye not.
My mother's dead now, thank the Boddah.
The problem with having a paranoid obsession with lava lamps in a multi-species galaxy - when there are more cultures mooching around than you can shake a Nibullian counting-stick at - is that you never know where one might turn up. Say you're on Madaxxus 9, you're safe in the knowledge that kitsch lighting is number one on the fashion police's list of crimes. But head across to the Zahin'r satellite worlds, just next door in galactic terms, and bang. Guess what's at the top of every infant's pile of sporeday presents?
Lava lamps catch you by surprise. They creep up on you, right when you least expect it. Take my current situation, for example.
Two days ago I'm out in the Zang sector,
fleeing for my life from the security agents of the TookerTec[tm] research-world I'd just robbed blind, when I get this warning transmission from a couple of Stronts. They reckon they're on my tail and it'll save me a whole load of trouble if I just give it up and come in quietly.
Kiss, as I put it, my heavily-scarred arse.
Strontium Dogs. Search and Destroy agents. Bounty Hunters. Snecking muties, for Boddah's sake.
So up pops this little o-class planetoid on the scanner, nice and out of the way, and I think, yep. That's for me.
Only nobody told me - no snecking snecker of an information file thought it might be clever to let me know - that the indigenous life consists of six foot smart-arsed snecking lava lamps! I'm not even kidding. These things communicate by changing the colour and rotational direction of their innards. You can't tell me that's right!