Day of the Dogs

by Andrew Cartmel

  Surely such antiquated weapons couldn't do any harm to a sleek, super-fast, modern craft like the drop ship?

  These thoughts raced through Middenface's mind in a kind of instantaneous collage of cognition, interacting and overlapping to form an impression, a result and a conclusion. They were safe. Everything was going to be all right. Middenface just had time to realise this, and to begin to smile with relief, when the port wing fell off the drop ship, neatly sheared away by a cannon ball.

  "Hang on!" roared Johnny. His voice was lost in the screaming turmoil of the craft as it began to tumble from the sky. The remaining starboard wing created a fatal imbalance for the drop ship, both in terms of stability and aerodynamics. What, seconds earlier, had been an airworthy shape suddenly turned into an ungainly crippled chunk of metal weighing several hundred tonnes.

  What was left of the drop ship was essentially a central tube with one wing jutting from it. This surviving wing caused it to spin as it fell like a deformed sycamore seed, whirling chaotically. Inside the ship, the Strontium Dogs were held tight in the gelatinous embrace of their contour couches, spinning wildly with the blood rushing in and out of their brains, alternately starving their senses and gorging them with a blinding wave of red darkness. Beside Middenface, HMK began to vomit violently, an acid spray of half-digested food that whipped around the sealed compartment in a yellowish cloud. Stella Dysh was screaming with undisguised terror, Slim Drago was chattering a childish prayer in a ululating voice, Ray and Bel were silent and Granny Haxer and Johnny Alpha were vying to see who could utter the most vicious curse.

  Middenface was busy trying to stay alive.

  He was coated with a thin layer of vomit that clung wetly to his face and the front of his shirt. The violent whipping G-forces of the tumbling ship clouded his brain and threatened to black him out. He had been in tight situations before, but on those occasions it had always seemed that there was something he could do. Now he couldn't lift a finger if he wanted to. Between the embrace of the contour couch and the demonic acceleration of the cartwheeling drop ship, he was pinned in place. Even if he could move, there was still nothing he could do. If he released himself from the couch he would start to tumble around in the ship like a mouse in a spin dryer, and probably with about as much chance of survival.

  Middenface stared at the holo screen, hoping to get some clue as to their fate, but the screen just offered a sickening, high speed spin of images. Ground, mountain, sky, distant desert, ground, mountain, sky.

  It seemed that Johnny had got the same idea, and that he had a better plan for implementing it. "Compensate for spin," he yelled, and the screen responded. Clearly the control systems of the craft were still intact. Its onboard computers obediently compensated for the wheeling motion of the drop ship and the screen suddenly offered a constant view - of the rocky desert terrain rushing up to meet them, like a great red fist of rock.

  Middenface braced himself for a cataclysmic terminal impact. The view on the screen was misleading. It offered an artificially stable view, as though they were sliding down a smooth slope towards the ground below, whereas of course they were still rotating on their remaining wing with maniacal speed.

  It was the wing which hit first, snapping off as cleanly as its counterpart, and sending the surviving midsection of the drop ship catapulting towards the distant desert floor. Middenface watched with detached fascination as the screen showed their shadow growing on the ground as they fell towards it. The loss of the wing arrested their spin and the remains of the ship began a slowing roll as it descended.

  It had almost stabilised by the time they hit.

  The drop ship was state of the art. It might have lost a wing to an iron ball from an ancient cannon, but it knew how to deal with a crash landing. It had been built to survive just such a scenario. The onboard computers had begun to order litres of crash foam pumped up from the deep wells of the ship even before the second wing had broken off. With the final wing gone and the ultimate impact point of the craft becoming evident at last, the cushioning foam was forced into the jet nozzles distributed over the hull and was blasted out.

  The foam hardened into a gelid mass as soon as it hit the air and, although it couldn't entirely negate the massive velocity the ship had picked up in the wild course of its terminal, plunging fall, it did manage to reduce it enough to keep the outer hull largely intact. Inside the ship, more foam was being sprayed, to seal any cracks and to cushion any spaces inside that might otherwise be vulnerable to collapse.

  The passenger compartment, luckily, was not sprayed full of foam because its occupants might well have suffocated. Instead, the contour couches clung to them with a grip like a giant hand as the ship came to a standstill. Even when it stopped, Middenface's couch continued exerting such pressure on him that he found it hard to breathe and he felt like his ribs were going to start popping.

  There was eerie silence in the passenger compartment, and complete darkness. At first, Middenface thought that the lights had failed, but then the bunched pressure in the muscles of his cheeks alerted him that his eyes were shut, squeezed tight shut since the moment of impact. He opened them and saw Ray and Bel, sitting opposite him, slowly emerging from their contour couches, twisting and rising and leaning forward at an odd angle.

  "How did you manage that?" said Middenface. Ray and Bel stared up at him, puzzled. "Get out of your couches," he said. "How did you do it?"

  "Just say 'release'," said Bel.

  Her next words were drowned out by a thunderous noise from outside the drop ship. It sounded to Middenface like a building collapsing nearby, but there were no buildings nearby. The sound was followed by a shockwave that shook the earth and caused the ruined drop ship to tremble all around them. "Oh, Christ," said HMK. "What's happening now?"

  "Shit," said Johnny Alpha, who had a pretty fair idea.

  The posse emerged from the wreckage of their vessel one at a time, blinking in the bright daylight of Santo Segrelle. The drop ship had crashed tail first, collapsing and telescoping the rear of the hull, with the vessel's nose pointing upright towards the Sol-type sun glowing in the clear sky above. The ship's attitude meant that the access hatch was suspended about five metres above the ground and each of the survivors had to cling to the edge of the opening, lower themselves as much as they could in this fashion, and then let themselves drop the rest of the way to the ground. Only Stella Dysh had come to any harm, apparently twisting her ankle as a result of a clumsy landing.

  As soon as it was clear that their party was complete and safe, Johnny went around the wreck of the drop ship and stood on the far side. Middenface and HMK followed him. He was staring off into the distance where about three kilometres of smoke was rising into the clear desert sky.

  "What's that?" said HMK.

  "That's what made the sound you heard a little while ago," said Johnny. "The sound of a spacecraft crashing."

  HMK blanched. "You mean it's the other drop ship? The one with all our equipment on it?" Johnny said nothing. He just nodded.

  HMK shook her head and gave an odd little animal snarl. "Well, isn't that just dandy?" she said. "It looks like we're just shit out of luck today, doesn't it?"

  Middenface looked at Johnny. "Do you think any of our gear survived the crash?"

  "There's one way to find out," said Johnny.

  Johnny, Middenface and Hari Mata Karma left the others at the wreck of their drop ship and set off to investigate the other crash site. As they left, Stella Dysh was sitting in the shade of the wreckage, nursing an injured ankle, while Granny Haxer was industriously gathering fragments of wood from the surrounding area with a view to making a fire. "It may be hot now, but there's a definite tendency for it to get cold in the desert at night," she said. Slim Drago was giving her a hand with the larger pieces of wood, including entire tree trunks which he obediently dragged back to their improvised encampment. Meanwhile Bel and Ray had scrambled back into the ship through the open hatch, as nimble as monkeys,
to see if there was anything that could be salvaged from the wreck.

  It turned out that the other drop ship was farther away than it looked and it took Johnny and his party the best part of an hour to walk to the crash site. "If the damned thing was going to smash itself to pieces, why couldn't it at least do it more conveniently nearby?" said HMK.

  "Just be glad it didn't land right on top of us," said Johnny.

  "Good point," said HMK. "Looked at that way, I suppose one could regard it as luck."

  "That's something we could do with a wee bit more of," said Middenface. "Good luck."

  "Well here's another piece for you," said HMK. "Our weapons."

  Middenface squinted at the smoking wreckage in the distance. "What about them?" he said. "They're probably all melted or crushed, or burned by now."

  "She means the ones we concealed before takeoff," said Johnny.

  "Oh those! I'd forgotten all about them." Middenface paused for a moment, crouching to feel inside his boot. The familiar cool shape of the T-rifle was still there. He smiled at the others. "Now, isn't that a comforting thought."

  "If we hadn't brought those with us, we would be down here on a barren planet facing a well equipped hostile, totally unarmed," said HMK.

  "It was a good idea bringing them," said Johnny, tapping the canteen strapped to his belt. The canteen made a muffled sound that indicated that it contained gun parts instead of water. Middenface squinted upwards for a moment at the unyielding glare of the sun in the sky, and wondered if there would come a time when they'd wish that Johnny had water in his canteen, instead of a handgun.

  They reached the wreck of the second drop ship about ten minutes later, and it was even worse than they feared. The smoke, which had been pouring into the sky in an oily black column, was just about spent by the time they arrived. But it had only ceased because there was nothing left to burn.

  The remains of the ship lay in a scorched and blackened crater in the sand. It was a twisted, carbonised mess that looked like an esoteric example of abstract sculpture. The heat from the fire that had consumed it was still so intense that they couldn't get very close. But they didn't need to. It was clear that the vessel was a complete write-off. "The fuel tanks must have blown," said Johnny.

  "Makes you think how lucky we were," said Middenface. "Do you suppose there was any crew on board?"

  Johnny shook his head. "Nope. Just the robot pilot."

  "And all of our lovely equipment and supplies," said HMK.

  They spent the next hour making a thorough search of the area, just in case anything useful had been thrown clear of the explosion. All they found was some smouldering seat padding and the mangled remains of what had once been a self-inflating pup tent. "That's a shame," said HMK, examining the half-melted mess. "I could do with a nice, self-inflating pup tent just about now." She spoke for all of them. They were feeling footsore and weary and by the time they got back to the first drop ship, with the swift desert night falling around them, Middenface was tired, dry-mouthed and hungry.

  "Welcome back, intrepid travellers," said Granny Haxer. "We were waiting for your return before we did the honours."

  "What honours?" said Middenface grumpily.

  "Come and see," said Granny, grinning. She led them around the side of the ship, which provided the most shelter from the prevailing wind and there they saw a large mound of dried branches and dead wood. "Instant camp fire," said Granny. "We were just waiting until you got back before we lit it. I don't suppose any of you have got a light?"

  The three shook their heads. Granny peered at them, bright-eyed. "That's funny," she said. "I could have sworn you had a lighter, HMK. Well never mind. A good, old fashioned kitchen match will do. Slim! Fetch the matches, there's a good boy." As Slim brought the matches, the other members of the posse drifted towards the pile of wood. They all looked as exhausted and bedraggled as Johnny's trio. Stella Dysh was still ostentatiously limping on her injured foot. Middenface wondered how badly damaged it really was, and resolved to keep an eye on her. If he caught her forgetting herself and favouring the wrong ankle, he'd give her a boot up the arse.

  Granny Haxer took the waterproof aluminium box of matches that Slim brought her, extracted one and struck it on the abraded strip on the side of the box. The tiny flame flared in the gathering dusk and Granny cupped her hands around it to protect it, as if it was something precious. Middenface supposed that it was. She bent over the pile of wood, inserting the match at its base and silence fell over the small group. It was as though the Strontium Dogs had gathered together for a solemn ceremony, here in the desert night of this alien world. A moment later there was a crackling sound and big yellow flames began to lick upwards from the mound. The posse gathered around the expanding core of heat.

  "Now if we just had something to cook on it," said Middenface.

  "We do," cackled Granny.

  "But I thought all our supplies were on the other ship."

  "They were," said Granny. "But this boy here smuggled a bit of food on board our vessel with him." She slapped Slim Drago on his broad back. "Seems he's fond of his food, all right."

  "Is that right, Slim?" said Middenface. "You brought some food with you?"

  "Uh, yeah," said Slim. His big, bland face was flushed. "I guess I did smuggle some stuff on board. I'm sorry."

  "Don't be sorry," said HMK. "We're delighted. What have you got? Some protein bars or something?"

  "Uh, five steaks, some pork chops, some lamb chops, a dozen sausages, two hamburgers and two and a half roast chickens."

  "What?" HMK whooped with delight. "Slim, you're a gem. Where did you hide all that?"

  "I, uh, removed one of the cushions on my contour couch before take-off when nobody was looking and replaced it with a chiller chest. It was really cold to sit on."

  Everybody burst into laughter. "Just two hamburgers?" said Middenface.

  "I'm trying to give up the junk food," said Slim.

  Slim Drago's cashe of smuggled food proved sufficient to feed the entire party - except perhaps Slim himself - to their wolfish satisfaction. "Seems like crashing in a spaceship gives a person a healthy appetite," said Granny Haxer, licking the grease from a pork chop off her fingers.

  The flames of the campfire gradually subsided to a blue flicker above a bed of orange embers. The posse drew in close and disposed themselves on the ground around the fire, using spare clothes and seat covers from the drop ship as makeshift blankets. Johnny arranged a system of sentries, nominating various members of the posse to keep watch through the night while the others slept. Johnny took the first watch, Middenface the second. Hari Mata Karma relieved Middenface a few hours before dawn and he crawled gratefully under the covers of his improvised bedding and fell deeply asleep.

  He awoke to Johnny roughly shaking his shoulder. The light of the desert dawn was creeping over the mountains in the distance, and the air was cold, clean and fragrant with the last lingering woodsmoke from the dying campfire. "What is it, Johnny?" said Middenface, blinking up at his friend.

  "Trouble," said Johnny. HMK hurried over to join them. She had a worried expression on her face. Middenface found that he was suddenly fully awake.

  "What's the matter?" he said.

  "Someone took our weapons," whispered HMK.

  "What?"

  "My canteen's gone," said Johnny. "And somebody got her vibrosaw lighter. They took them while we were asleep."

  "Well, I've still got my telescoping rifle," said Middenface, fumbling for the boots that he had carefully stashed under his covers while he slept. He pulled out one boot, then the other, shaking them, then peering inside them with increasing desperation. He looked up at HMK and Johnny. He didn't need to say anything.

  "We don't have any weapons," said Johnny tersely.

  "It's worse than that," said HMK. "We've got a traitor in our midst."

  CHAPTER NINE

  FLINT KNIVES

  Charlie Yuletide stood beside the cactus where his hors
e was tethered. He was saddling up. He tied his banjo onto his bedroll then made some final checks to make sure that his saddle was tied on tight. He kneed the horse in the belly and the animal snorted and stirred. "Sorry boy," said Charlie. "But I know you horses have a trick of bloating out your bellies and then sucking them in after a saddle's been tied on. It makes it more comfortable for you, but it means a fella is likely to slip off his mount. Which is kinda embarrassing as well as painful."

  He stroked the animal comfortingly on its side, then rolled up his sleeve and presented his bare wrist to the horse. "Go on boy, lick some salt off me."

  The horse bent its big head down diffidently, and suddenly snapped its teeth down on the man's wrist. Charlie Yuletide shrieked and snatched his hand back. "That damn horse!" he yelled. "It bit me."

  "A traitor," said Middenface. "Are you sure?"

  He was speaking in a low voice, so none of the others could hear. Slim Drago had dragged in enough wood to renew the campfire and a cheerful efficient blaze was already flaring over the old ashes. Granny Haxer was busy frying up the sausages and the rest of the leftovers from the previous night's feast, using a reflector panel from the hull of the drop ship as an improvised frying pan. Ray, Bel and Stella Dysh sat on the ground nearby, watching alertly, like baby birds waiting to be fed.

  Johnny, Middenface and HMK stood some distance away, in the lee of the wrecked drop ship, watching the breakfast preparations. "There isn't any other explanation," said HMK.

  "She's right," said Johnny. "Somebody took our weapons last night, and it has to be one of us."

  "Why couldn't it be Preacher Tarkettle?" said Middenface.