Day of the Dogs

by Andrew Cartmel

  "Yes. No. Maybe. Look, I have no precise idea of what is going on, and I won't know until Johnny gets back, so everybody just stop jumping to conclusions until he does get back, and reports."

  "All right, Mr Middenface," said Slim Drago, and he resumed his tuneless humming. Middenface turned down the volume for Slim's feed on his helmet and the humming faded. But then another voice rang in his ear. "I still don't see what Johnny thinks he's doing," said HMK in her familiar lilting sarcastic tone. "What is he going to achieve on his own? You don't seriously believe that he'll be able to take on all these snipers and gun them all down?"

  "Oh yes," said Middenface. "Or take them all prisoner."

  "Take them prisoner?" HMK chuckled. "Oh yes. Get the drop on an entire nest of snipers and take them prisoner. That's very likely to happen. And once having taken them all prisoner, what will he do with them? Rehabilitate them?"

  "No, march them back here to the crawler where we're waiting," said Middenface. And he stood up and moved around the front of the vehicle, past the shattered cockpit. "Come back Mr Middenface!" brayed Slim Drago anxiously. "They'll shoot you."

  "Get down, you fool!" HMK cried simultaneously.

  Middenface was touched by the note of concern in their voices, but he was no fool. He had only stepped out of cover because of what he had seen, through his arrangement of mirrors. "Don't fret yourselves," he said to Slim and Hari Mata Karma. "In fact, why don't you step out here and join me?"

  Slowly and hesitantly HMK and Slim emerged from the cover of the wrecked crawler. They came and stood beside Middenface on a low outcrop of rock near the mangled middle caterpillar tread on the vehicle's elevated offside. They stood on the outcrop and stared towards the settlement. From there they could see a small group of figures in space suits approaching, raising a trail of dust in their wake. The white lunar dust gleamed in the sunlight, giving a ghostly aspect to the marching figures.

  As they grew closer, it became clear that all of the marchers were humanoid. Most of them, however, were unusually small. Only about a metre tall. Johnny, who marched behind the individuals with his gun slung at his side, towered over them.

  "Look!" cried Slim, his voice reduced to a distant bellow in Middenface's helmet. "It's Mr Alpha and he's got a whole bunch of little snipers with him."

  "He took them all prisoner," murmured Hari Mata Karma in wonder.

  "That's what I said," said Middenface proudly. "That's my boy."

  They sealed the huge gash in the side of the crawler using an emergency repair kit that came with the vehicle. It provided spray canisters of plastic sealant that formed a membrane to seal holes. The various small bullet holes were dealt with easily enough, but the manufacturers hadn't planned on dealing with a hole the size of the one torn by the rocket in the crawler's hull.

  In the end, they managed to create several small membranes and join them together, finally filling the hole with a patchwork of sealant. They dealt with the shattered front cockpit by the simple expedient of sealing off the airlock that led through to the driving compartment. Then they activated the reserve oxygen tanks in the crawler to give the newly sealed vehicle a breathable atmosphere so they could take their helmets off.

  "We've got a healthy reserve of air," said Johnny Alpha, "but I don't want anyone wasting it by doing any vigorous physical activity."

  "Not much chance of that," said Hari Mata Karma. "We've barely got room to budge, with all of us crushed in here like this."

  "That's exactly what I mean," said Johnny patiently. "There's so many of us in this confined space we're going to be using up our oxygen reserves damned quick if we're not careful."

  There were eight people jammed into the wreck of the small vehicle: Johnny and his team, and the four dwarfish figures still sealed in their space suits. The miniature humanoids stood around looking sheepish under the gaze of their captors - or at least, as sheepish as it was possible to look with one's face concealed behind the blacked-out visor of a polarised space helmet. "All right, take your helmets off," barked Johnny. "Let's get a proper look at you."

  The dwarfish captives began to unclip their helmets, and Middenface saw that they weren't dwarfs at all. They were children. "Good heavens," said HMK, echoing his astonishment. "They can't be more than eight or nine years old."

  "Ten this week," said a pugnacious, freckled blonde girl. She had a dirty face and long golden hair gathered back into an elaborate braid that curled around the broad inner collar of her space suit like a friendly slumbering serpent. Her brother said, "Me too." He too had his hair twined in a long braid that coiled around his neck. But unlike his sister, the rest of his hair was shaved. The pair were obviously twins. Middenface noticed that they both had pointed ears.

  "This is Greta and Grün," said Johnny, by way of introduction.

  "They've got funny names!" chortled Slim Drago.

  "They're of German derivation," explained Hari Mata Karma. "Grün means green."

  "Really?" said Johnny. "I had a chance to get acquainted with Greta and her green brother on our walk back to this vehicle, after getting the drop on them in their sniper nest on that rooftop."

  "You never would have 'got the drop on us', as you put it, if it hadn't been for your stinky cheating," said the little girl called Greta, who was clearly the ringleader of the group.

  "Cheating?"

  "Yes. Coming at us out of the shadows like that."

  "What did you expect me to do, stand out in the open sunlight and let you shoot at me?"

  "That's what an honourable man would have done," sniffed Greta.

  Johnny ignored her. He indicated the other two children, a boy with Oriental features and a heavy-set black girl. Like the twins, they had smudges of oil and dirt on their faces. "This is Hung Tay and Albertine. They don't say much."

  "Hung Tay can't say much," said Grün helpfully. "He's mute."

  "It's a mutation," said his sister.

  "He's a mute mutant," said Grün, and they both giggled.

  "Mutants?" said HMK in a startled voice. "That's right," said Johnny. "They're muties like the rest of us."

  "What's that smell?" said Slim Drago, pinching his nose and frowning with distaste. He waved his free hand through the stale air. With eight bodies respiring in the small space it hadn't taken long for the air to become warm, damp and less than fresh smelling. "It's the ripe odour of unwashed children," said HMK.

  "You try showering when you have to roll stolen canisters of water fifty kilometres," snarled Greta.

  "Don't anyone get excited or raise their voices," said Johnny, coolly. "It will just use the oxygen up quicker and make it a lot less pleasant in here for all of us. Now, kids, let's have a little talk."

  "Excuse me, Mr Alpha, sir," said Slim. "Why do we have to talk to them in here? Why can't we go back to their settlement and go into one of their houses? I imagine there would be a better air supply in there."

  "I imagine you're right," said Johnny. "I just don't fancy going into any of those dwellings when we don't know how many of the little monsters are lurking in the settlement."

  "Enough of us to crush you," said the little blonde girl.

  "I see what you mean, Johnny," said Middenface. "An attitude like that and another rocket launcher could do a great deal of damage to our wee posse."

  "He's determined to go with the posse word, isn't he?" said HMK. "I kind of like it myself."

  "Are they all just bairns in the settlement?" said Middenface. "Or are there grown-ups too?"

  "Judging by that pile of beer cans, some grown-ups too."

  "Only Miss Dysh," said Albertine suddenly. She seemed to have trouble speaking and she licked her lips nervously between sentences. Middenface saw that her tongue was forked. Another mutation, one that would account for her speech impediment. "She's the one who drinks all the beer," said the girl in her odd, thick voice.

  "Shut up, Albertine," snapped Greta. "Don't let these buffoons get a clear idea of our strength, or the dispositi
on of our forces."

  "Disposition of their forces," said HMK. "Listen to her, the little cutesy."

  "It's kind of cute, isn't it?" said Slim Drago with a dopey grin. He reached out one big clumsy hand to pat Greta on the shoulder of her space suit. The little girl hissed and bared her teeth, Slim jerked his hand back as though menaced by a snake.

  "Nice manners," said HMK. "Where did she learn to talk and behave like that?"

  "Playing battle simulations on the games console," said Grün. He glanced at his sister. "It doesn't matter if they know that Miss Dysh is the only grown-up in Our Town. We kids can fight as good as any grown-ups." He scowled defiantly at the Strontium Dogs.

  "You certainly managed to blow a hole in this crawler, little man," said Middenface, drumming his fingers against the taut plastic membrane sealing the wound in the ruptured hull.

  "Don't try and butter me up," said Grün. His sister and the other kids giggled.

  Johnny turned his piercing eyes on the children and they immediately fell silent. "Now we're going to ask our little friends some questions," he said.

  "We won't answer them," said Greta. "We don't talk to kidnappers."

  "That's fine, because we aren't kidnappers," said Johnny. Middenface thought that this wasn't strictly true, considering some of the rules they'd bent over the years to bring their quarries back to justice. But he elected to remain silent. "First question, how come there's a whole colony of you little kids living with just one grown-up?"

  "Because Stella is our friend," said Grün. "And we aren't going to let you get away with what you did to her."

  "We didn't do anything to her, kid," said Johnny. Hari Mata Karma came up close behind him and peered at the children. "As a matter of fact," she said, "We're eager to find Miss Dysh and talk to her ourselves. We thought she'd be staying in your little settlement. What do you call it... Our Town?"

  "Not your town," said Greta. "Our Town."

  "Fine," said HMK. "We'll discuss the ambiguity of pronouns later. But for now, why don't you accept the possibility that we're who we say we are?"

  "You know, Greta," said Grün. "None of them look like the other one, the one who took Stella."

  "No," said Greta. "You're right. The other one was more professional and better organised. He wouldn't have let us ambush him like this." She stared around at the wrecked vehicle with satisfaction.

  "Hey, kid, watch it," said Middenface with stung pride.

  HMK gestured for him to be quiet. She leaned towards Greta. "In that case, there's no reason for you not to answer Mr Alpha's question. What are a bunch of kids doing living together in the middle of nowhere, on some godforsaken third class moon? It's not some kind of absurd Peter Pan type setup, is it?"

  "Where else did you expect us to go? We didn't have much choice after we escaped!"

  "Escaped from where?" said Johnny.

  "The Big Crater Mining Complex," said Albertine, as if repeating a lesson she had been forced to memorise. "We used to live there and it was a bad place. They were very bad to us and it wasn't a proper home. It was run by an evil monster witch. She had steel teeth."

  "Yes, we know. We met her," said Middenface. "She certainly drives a hard bargain on vehicle rental."

  "You kids used to live at the mine?" said HMK.

  "What do you mean, they were bad to you?" said Johnny.

  "They made us work the seams," said Greta. "They'd send us in with mineral extraction hoses. We had to crawl through the seams to the locations that their computers told them would be rich veins."

  "Crawl through the seams?"

  "Yes, where it was too small for the grown-up miners to go."

  "Why not use wee robots?" said Middenface.

  "Because it's cheaper to use mutant children," said Johnny. His face was flushed with anger. "If they break down, they're easier to replace."

  "You poor things," said HMK. She knelt by the children and peered into their grubby faces. After a moment staring into the depths of her beautiful mismatched eyes, eyes that were brimming with emotion, the children's hostility began to soften. Their mouths began to tremble and tears started to gleam in their own eyes. Hari Mata Karma scooped them all into her arms in a clumsy embrace, made all the more clumsy by the space suits everyone was wearing. "You poor little things."

  "Before everyone bursts into tears, I have a few more questions," said Johnny, dryly. But it was too late. The children dissolved into tears and HMK joined them. They were one sobbing, sodden, embracing mass. Johnny gave Middenface a disgusted look. Middenface, too, observed the weeping women and children with traditional male alarm. Slim Drago watched with a dopey, doting expression on his face. Finally the little blonde girl called Greta freed herself from HMK's embrace and stared defiantly up at Johnny Alpha. She wiped her face and her copiously running nose with the back of one space suit gauntlet and said, "You wanted to talk to us?"

  "Yes," said Johnny impatiently. "Now from what you've been saying, Stella Dysh is gone. She's been gone for some time."

  "Over fourteen cycles."

  "That's about ten days," said HMK.

  "He took her fourteen cycles ago."

  "And what you're saying, little girl," said Middenface, "is that she's been spirited away by a mysterious assailant. You don't know who and you have no idea where he took her."

  "No, stupid lump-headed man," said Greta. "We know exactly where he took her."

  CHAPTER FOUR

  UNDERSEA PRISON

  In the middle of the desert, the wreck of a stagecoach lay on its side punctured by arrows. The stagecoach lay like a dead beast, bristling with the shafts that had killed it.

  One pair of its wheels was trapped on the ground. The other pair of wheels hung high in the air. Charlie Yuletide stood beside the wreck. He reached up and snapped off one of the arrows. He examined it for a moment, then threw it aside, and began to strum his banjo and sing.

  "Just like this stagecoach, Johnny was attacked by some varmints. But then they turned out to be kids under vacuum-proof garments..."

  It turned out that the crawler wasn't as badly damaged as they'd initially believed. Once the holes in the side of the vehicle had been patched, the main problem was getting it upright again. But by judicious use of levers improvised from some lengths of pipe provided by the kids from Our Town, and with the help of Slim Drago's considerable brute strength, they were able to rock the vehicle back off its back and onto its caterpillar tracks, settling in gentle dusty bounces and shudders back onto the lunar surface.

  One set of the crawler's tracks had been savaged beyond repair by the passage of the missile. But that still left five operational sets, and Johnny and the others had been able to drive the crawler back to the mine almost as fast as they'd left it. Once again, Middenface assumed driving duties, although within the shattered cockpit he'd been obliged to wear his spacesuit and keep the airlock sealed behind him, sitting out in a vacuum for the whole journey.

  Once they got back to the Big Crater Mining Complex they parked the damaged crawler and separated. The four Strontium Dogs roamed the mine for almost an hour before meeting up again and going as a group to visit the manager they had done business with earlier. The woman was reclining in her personal quarters, on a circular green sofa in a room padded with matching silk in a moiré pattern. The room was dominated by a wide curved window that gave an impressive view of lunar mountain peaks. An elaborate mirrored drinks cabinet dominated one wall. Another was covered with antique oil paintings. Nothing at all in the room related to the business of mining.

  The woman who lived in this room had a fat, combative face with yellowish eyes. Corkscrews of rust-coloured hair hung down over her forehead, and when she smiled her steel teeth glinted.

  "So, you made it back in one piece."

  "No, as a matter of fact we didn't."

  "Huh?" The woman's yellow eyes clouded with puzzlement. They were such a weird colour that Middenface wondered if she was a mutant herself.

 
"Do you mean something went wrong?" said the woman whom Middenface now thought of as Iron Teeth.

  "Yes," said Johnny.

  "Like what?"

  "Like your moon crawler getting a hole blown in its side by a rocket launcher."

  "The hell you say! You're going to have to pay for the damage."

  "You think so?" said Johnny. His voice was dangerously quiet.

  "It was in our agreement when you rented it. It may not have been stated, but it was implied."

  "Let me tell you what else was implied," said Johnny Alpha. "It was also implied that you should tell us about any hazards or dangers we were likely to encounter when we set out along that route you mapped out for us."

  "Hazards and dangers like what?" said Iron Teeth.

  "Like a colony of mutie kids with a rocket launcher."

  "Those little bastards. You didn't let them kick your ass, did you?" Iron Teeth cackled. "A grown man like you? You ought to be ashamed."

  Hari Mata Karma suddenly pushed past Johnny. "I'll tell you what we're ashamed of," she said. "We're ashamed of a bag of pus like you exploiting little kids and risking their lives in your mining operation."

  "I deny any knowledge of any unethical practices that my junior managers might have implemented without my knowledge or consent," said Iron Teeth in what was obviously a much rehearsed statement.

  HMK pulled out a gun and shoved the barrel of it between the woman's metal teeth with a clinking sound. "Deny all you want," she said in a hot, hissing whisper. "You're all finished in these parts."

  "Figgish?" said the woman, trying to talk around the gun barrel.

  "Finished is right," replied HMK. She pulled the gun out, causing it to rattle noisily off the woman's metal molars. HMK inspected the saliva moistened gun barrel with distaste and wiped it dry on the woman's tunic. "Tell her, Johnny."

  Johnny held out a flat disc of plastic, about thirty centimetres in diameter and five centimetres thick. It had a curved upper surface and a flat base. On the base was a digital readout screen and some controls in a recessed panel. Iron Teeth's eyes widened when she saw it. She obviously recognised the object. "This is a detonation unit," said Johnny. "The kind you use here in your mine for blasting new seams."