by Ian Hutson
We were all unstrapped today, which was nice, because the Captain ordered Engineering to switch on the artificial gravitas, or something.
The Royal Mail (Second class and Parcels) finally arrived, via some sort of G.P.O. chemical rocket arrangement that looked awfully like a red Morris Minor van with oxygen tanks welded to the roof. Many thanks for your letter, Mum, although I am fairly sure that most lone parents just rent out their son’s bedroom when he goes into National Service, they don’t sell it outright, even if they are “poor widow-women”. They certainly don’t usually sell it fully-furnished and with a lifetime of possessions including spare civilian clothing and a prized stamp collection. Please ask the new owner if I can at least have my Airfix kits back. I spent a lot of time and effort making those.
To answer your questions Mum, no, I didn’t know that vets will put a healthy but unwanted dog down if you pay them ten shillings and yes, I do have somewhere safe to put Tigger’s ashes jar so thank you for sending it. It’s nice that as you say you can finally put the kitchen plastic swing-bin where his bed used to be in the way, and I appreciate your kindness in spending the extra to have his hind legs embalmed and fitted with wooden handles. They will certainly make talking points in their new role as novelty back-scratchers. Mine arrived safely along with the ashes and, as you say, I’m sure that you’ll get enough to defray the cost of the vet by selling the other one at the car boot sale. No, thank you, I do not want the rest of his pelt to make a hat out of so you can ask Aunt Marjorie to stop the curing process. To be brutally honest, I think that I might be feeling a touch emotional right now, and ex-orbital speeds do so affect one’s tear-ducts. In fact, if you’ll excuse me please, I’ll be back in a moment.
[There follows here a short pause during which Reginald gets lovingly and supportively beaten up by his squad for being a big girlie wuss and a general cry-baby.]
You’re quite right Mum, he would have wanted to be with me on the front lines but I have to say that I’m fairly sure he would have preferred to have not been euthanized, part-butchered, made into household objet and to have his remaining remains cremated first – dogs quite enjoy running around alive. Please excuse the stains on this letter but with the low evening artificial gravity tears just hang around your head like rain-drops frozen in time, and then when the engines cough they fall like a small monsoon making the blue lined A5 Basildon Bond very soggy very quickly.
In other news, I have been assigned to the very important job of keeping the Visualisation Drive well oiled and happy.
The Visualisation Drive is a room full of really older ladies with powerful hormones and psi powers – they are the sort of older ladies who have regular “reserved” seats at bingo where you can’t really reserve seats and nobody argues about it. It’s my job to keep their “tea” flowing. Some of them like their tea neat, some take it with tonic water, all of them take it regularly and often. Most of the time they knit things, tell jokes about willies they have known and pinch my bottom. When the Captain decides that he wants to go anywhere in a hurry he calls down a speaking tube and these ladies visualise the destination really, really hard and imagine us parking there and suddenly there we are. Supposedly, anyway, according to the manual. Sometimes it takes several tries before the Visualisation Drive engines get it right. If too many of them are depressed or thinking about home or killing their lazy good for nothing husbands we end up in the most peculiar places in the blink of an eye. This is why my job is so important. The Chief Engineer told me to “keep them mellow yellow – not so drunk that they drop stitches in their knitting but not so sober that they can still read the pattern”. I’ve based my routine on how you like your tea, so that was easy.
Today was a day for feeding them up and making sure that they had enough wool and enough magazines and things because the day after tomorrow we’ll have cleared the orbit of Pluto (not Michael Mouse’s dog - unlike Tigger, he’s not floating around in space) and we’ll need to be off to the battle zone. The Sergeant says that the job of looking after the “old engines” will make a man’s man of me because some of them will demand a right good seeing-to before they start work proper tomorrow, but they all look as though they are in good working condition to me so I’m not sure what he really means. Some of the lonelier “old engines” need more attention than the others but I don’t mind really – what harm can there be in just sitting in their lap as I hold the skeins of wool and they ball it up? Some of them have lady-moustaches that are a bit tickly when they kiss me. Sometimes they hide my walking sticks so that I can’t get away and about my other duties as quickly as I should.
It’s not a bad job really and I wouldn’t mind being assigned to it permanently if it means that I can avoid being put into one of the front-line initial assault teams. Front-line Initial Assault Teams are the soldiers who are parachuted down to the battlefield first and it’s their job to hold the fort against ridiculous odds so that the rest of the army can sort itself out and get into fighting formation without being bothered by the enemy. I should hate to be in a front-line team, dropped from low orbit with nothing but a rifle, a cricket cup and a packet of Wurther’s Originals for energy. They say that the life expectancy of someone in a front-line team is about three minutes - or nearly four minutes if you survive the landing impact and don’t drop straight into the lap of the enemy. Can you imagine that? Especially if the enemy is one of those ugly over-sized insectoid species that spits acid and throws flames and sucks out human brains through a nose-straw? E-eew! No thank you!
Stardate 21st June 2027, 23:03HRS, give or take. Who cares anymore?
This morning the Sergeant took me off oiling-up the Visualisation Drive and assigned me to a Front-line Initial Assault Team.
After I’d been excused to clean up around myself with Dettol disinfectant we were lined up and issued our kit. Apparently there aren’t enough cricket cups or packets of Wurther’s Originals to go around so I’ll be landing with just my rifle, a knife and half of an Extra Strong Mint.
The enemy is an insectoid species of brain-eaters and apparently these ones shit pure acid but like the extra crunch that comes with eating brains still in the shell without using a straw. Still, no-one’s said anything about flame-throwing, so that’s nice. I’m wondering now whether to take Tigger’s hind leg with me as a backup, something to hit the enemy with if I run out of ammunition. It would be a nice way to let him see some action and get him involved in service to his country.
After hypnosis, deep sensory deprivation and standard army subliminal auto-suggestion my team were all given our medication implant packs. The M.O. says that if we were back on Earth then the cocktail in the IV auto-drips in our buttocks would be called “crystal meth” which is a nice sounding name. It reminds me of those pretty crystal paperweights I used to love buying whenever we went camping in West Runton, Norfolk. It also makes me think of the purple methylated spirits for the little burner in my model steam-engine for some reason.
The M.O. took the torch out while he was down there and put it back into stores. Waste not want not he says. Besides, we might be landing on the dark side of the planet, and he says that I wouldn’t want to float down like a beacon and waving a hairy dog’s hind-leg back-scratcher and stinking of mint. It might give the enemy mixed messages.
Personally, the longer this goes on the more I couldn’t give a shit about the economy of not wasting and not wanting or of farting around with bits of this and bits of that, I just want to get down to the surface and kick some alien teeth in. Quite frankly, I think that I’m beginning to feel a tad aggressive.
Soon after the M.O. had finished with us some chaps came in with those things that they use to catch stray dogs – loops of wire on the end of long poles – and moved us all into a “Mass Deployment Chamber”. Turns out it has nothing to do with the Catholics at all – the “mass” refers to us, which is nice, and at least “deployment” seems to indicate that I’m closer to getting my wish for a bit of a rumble with the
aliens.
Several of the meat-head goons in my squad of ultimate bad-arses got involved in a knife-fight just after we were briefed, not long after second medication increase o’clock in fact. I put a stop to it by laying them all out cold. I’m definitely feeling less than peaceful.
I could eat a hippie without even removing the flowers first.
Not long after the fight the Sergeant used his own rifle on low power through the bars and tattooed a Corporal’s stripes on my forehead. He said it would make you very proud, Mum, but then he’s never met you and can have no idea that you’re too dignified and reserved to express those kinds of deep, lower-class emotions about your children. If I weren’t snarling and growling too much I might have explained that you are English and thus the most emotionally demonstrative you would be likely to be is “quietly less displeased and not so disappointed after all, on the whole, although you still think you should never have had children and wouldn’t if you had your time over again”.
Anyway, once the singed-flesh smell of field promotion had worn off I told the Sergeant that the only way a scrawny little runt like him could stop me jumping out of the spacecraft right then and there and diving down to the surface with my knife between my teeth would be if they gassed us all and locked us into our damned effing individual launch chutes like wild animals. Then I remember he seemed to be looking down to the control console and hitting a large red button that looked to have a skull and crossbones on it and a label reading “Nervous Gas” but written upside down and front to back. There was a hissing and then lights all went out just the way they used to every time a two-bob bit dropped through the meter at Grandma’s bungalow.
Stardate 22nd June 2027. Time? What’s time to a front-line soldier, except maybe a heartbeat?
I woke up chained down in a launch chute this morning. I woke just in time to see the last of the mustard-coloured knock-out gas being sucked out. There was a hunting-knife jammed between the remains of my teeth and I think I’ve bent the blade by biting down on it. Still, a bent blade will just do more damage when I skewer the bastard enemy.
They showed us the naturist re-make of The Sound of Music on the little screens in our launch chutes, the version with the lovely Esma Cannon playing Maria, Eric Morecambe playing Captain Von Trapp and the amateur junior-ensemble trad-jazz all-brass soundtrack. Then they replaced all of the air with a mixture of lighter fluid, aerosol propellant and the fumes from a whole tin of Carnation Evaporated Glue. I quite liked the lighter fluid.
I feel a bit odd really – now that the torch has gone, instead of having illuminated buttocks I found myself alone in the dark with just the ticklish buzzing of the clockwork crystal-meth dispenser clicking away. Tick-tick squirt, tick-tick squirt. It has a disconcertingly appealing rhythm.
Although I don’t remember learning how at school somehow I now know fifty-seven completely different ways to kill all sorts of things and I’m absolutely certain that I could live off the land – any land – without being detected, just long enough to locate and slaughter the contents of an insect enemy’s egg depository or larvae nursery. Isn’t it odd what you pick up as a child and that only comes back to you later in quiet, reflective moments? I suppose that it must have been one of Miss Clarkson’s lessons; it sounds like the sort of thing she’d be likely to teach. My favourite kill is using the edge of my old pension book to crush an enemy’s windpipe but I’m also quite fond of cutting the enemy spinal cord with my plastic bus pass too.
Better yet, if I am injured or – most unlikely – captured alive by the enemy then I now also know how to internally cease all respiration and stop my brain activity, so I’m unlikely to embarrass you Mum by giving away any military secrets or plans. The army guru-san, a twenty-three year old Zen Ninth Dan Pillock from Essex, says that one of the best things about us old folk is that there’s so little cerebral and respiratory activity to stop in an emergency in the first place.
I wish those bitches in the Visualisation Drive would get their freakin’ act together and get us to where we’re needed – alien HQ. The guys and I have already begun our battle cry – we all bang our walking sticks on the inside of our launch tubes to the drum beat of “We will rock you” by Her Majesty, The Queens. We will, we will, thump thump bang, thump thump bang, kill you. We will, we will, thump thump bang, thump thump bang, kill you... After a bit of synchronisation we can drown out the base beat from the ship’s speakers, we’re that good at it now. My hands are a bit tired though from clenching and unclenching without a thorax in them to crush. Those alien bugs are going down. My buttocks won’t stop twitching, it must be some sort of allergic reaction the crystal meth so I’m probably going to end up with a nasty rash down there. Twitch-twitch-squirt, twitch-twitch-squirt.
This National Service isn’t so bad I suppose – if I twist my arms just so then I can scratch at the inside of the launch tube with my fingernails and maybe get out faster and get to the business of killing the enemy bugs. It’s all of these little delays that get to a chap in the Army. They teach a chap to kill and then tell him to wait quietly in his orbital launching tube. Thump thump bang. Thump thump bang.
There’s someone or some thing else in this tube with me though, I’m sure of it. I can hear someone screaming and screaming like a completely demented animal but I just can’t twist around fast enough to catch them behind me. I’m going to keep trying until I do catch them – and then I’m going to kill them, this is my launch tube and no-one said anything about having to share it.
Why are they keeping me waiting like this? I don’t need all of this fancy launching and orbital trajectory and re-entry mode shit, I just need to know one thing about the enemy and that’s where – they - are. Just throw me out of a porthole and I’ll start killing the bastards as soon as I land.
It’s me against all of the insects, and I know who’s going to come out of this with the most scalps to his name. Someone seems to have sprayed crazy-foam or something all around my mouth, and I think that I’ve got the old dribbling problem back but a million times worse, but do you know what? I. Don’t. Care. These new army-supplied Tena-Chap panties can cope. My walking-frame has deployed inside my tube, so I know it’s going to be soon and I know that I’ll get a fast start and be able to hit the battleground shuffling quickly. The trick is to go in low, go in fast, so I’ve started getting my knees to bend already.
Yee-ess! Finally! I just felt the locking clamps on my launch tube release – so it’s to be just me and the enemy then, right here, right now. I don’t care if they’re not sending the rest of my team down, I don’t need them! Yee-hah! Put your heads down between all six legs you alien bastards and kiss your yard-long wasp-stings goodbye – I’m coming to get you! Die you alien bastards, die! I’m going to crush you under the rubber feet of this zimmer, all you have to do is stay still long enough for me to get to you!
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrggghhh! Thump thump bang. Thump thump bang. I will, I will kill you. Thump thump bang.
Stardate 26th June 2027, duh-huh-huh! Time? Well, there’s a Magic Roundabout wall-clock in here and if Dougal’s willy is his big hand and Zebedee is upside down ... huh-huh – I said “willy”! Huh-huh!
I woke up this morning in the ship’s infirmary, under a Magic Roundabout wall-clock. If facing that the moment your eyes open isn’t guaranteed to ensure that a chap easily reclaims his sanity then I don’t know what is. The Ermintrude figure gives a big, toothy cow-grin on every quarter-hour and Dylan strums his guitar once each second.
My clipboard medical notes read “Parachute failed to open, found still in launch tube, lodged head-first in the belly of the dead alien queen. Stasis field appears not to have engaged fully although seat-belts held. Note to armoury: remind all front-line teams that cricket boxes are recommended for a reason. Removed damaged testicles, removed plasma-burn damaged penis tissue and tidied up the stump, replaced flattened cranium with lower-ranks quality prosthesis, pinned and screwed multiple fractures. Re-animated r
emaining brain tissue using standard fifty-amp current and paddles dipped in cider-vinegar. Do not tell patient that he is now eight inches shorter than he already was. Recommend de-tox and return to appropriate light duty, possibly as a doorstop tending a reasonably quiet doorway.”
A nurse came along and squirted cold scrambled egg down my throat for breakfast and gave my bed a bath. She says that when I get used to my new jaw and dentures I can have “sausages” for breakfast. Apparently, after the recent successful counter-attack on the insectoid egg depositories and larvae nurseries we have lots of fresh eggs and fresh sausage-meat in ship’s stores. Waste not want not seems to be the ship’s motto for everything here in outer outer-space. Yum-yum, pig’s bum eh? There’s nothing like home cooking and this is nothing like home cooking.
The Sergeant says that my nickname is now “Gimli” but that it’s in regard to my new-found convenient combat-tossability, not my new-found lack of even more height. He says that they can’t give me a medal for killing the alien queen because according to the launch-tube logs I wasn’t conscious at the time. He says that if I had been conscious then I would have been decorated with medals and Generals’ hand-shakes and sent home to work in PR or something doing chat-shows and doing chat-show groupies for the rest of my life until someone ghost-wrote my memoirs for millions. He says that they’ll find me some light duties for a while, once both of my eyes team up and go back to looking in the same direction again. Duh-huh uhuh! Dougal’s got a willy! Dougal’s got a willy!
I just hope that they don’t assign me to some mindless task where I’m in a room with no port-holes all day and night, working on my own or getting messy or anything. Duh-huh.
Stardate 24th June 2027, just before we had to call in at a service station for repairs.
My new job is a bit odd, but I suppose that it is about half-way between an icky combat role and the desk job that I told them I wanted when I signed on. I’m a temporary valve-actuator on the port-side diesel engine. Once I get a rhythm going it’s not a bad job really and the engines are so big that they only do thirty or forty revolutions a minute so a twelve-hour shift just flies by. I lift the handle up to raise the valve and when the broken camshaft spins back around I lower the handle to close the valve. In my free time I have to be sure to squirt in some Reddex. I don’t know if I’m an exhaust valve or an intake valve though. If we get out of step the Sergeant gets very upset and the engine is none too happy either. It backfires a lot but they say it’ll get us to the next service area for a refit.