Target Rich Environment 2

by Larry Correia

  Jimmy followed all the fingers, and there, in the middle of the table, past the organic kale gold-leaf truffles, was Wendell T. Manatee, frozen just like Han Solo in carbonite, serving as the decorative centerpiece.

  “Friggin’ sweet!” He’d done it! Boom. Evaluate this performance, Muffy! “Alright, anybody here know how to safely thaw a manatee?” But nobody did, because they were politicians, which meant they were basically useless.

  “Some suspicious caterers left that there. We all just assumed the frozen sea cow was an artistic statement about the catastrophic dangers of man-made climate change.”

  “Okay, I got to ask, is that like actually a real thing or just something you guys made up to mess with people?”

  The world leaders all had a good laugh.

  There were a few golfers near the impact zone. The mech had plowed a giant crater in the green. Munitions were cooking off, creating a chain of secondary explosions. Fire leapt hundreds of feet into the sky.

  “You all saw that. That thing fell right on my ball.”

  “Yes, Mr. Defense Secretary Mad Dog, sir,” said the Secret Service agent serving as the caddy. “You get a mulligan.”

  “Damned right I do,” the SecDef muttered as fiery debris rained down around him.

  The President of the United States was sitting in the golf cart, tweeting: Giant robots falling out of sky. SAD. Probably made in China. BUY AMERICAN!

  Tom Stranger walked out of the pillar of fire, carrying his Doomsday Briefcase, and dusting off his suit. “Pardon my interruption, gentle clients, but there are shenanigans afoot.”

  The SecDef gave him a polite nod. “Tom.”

  Tom returned the nod. “Chaos.”

  “Freeze, scumbag!” shouted the Secret Service agent as he pulled his pistol and aimed it at Tom.

  “Damn, you kids are high strung. Relax, Carl. This is just our Interdimensional Insurance Agent.” SecDef pointed his golf club at Tom’s chest. “I’m assuming this has something to do with that big grey spaceship up there ruining my view.”

  “Correct. Did you not receive the manatees’ list of demands?”

  “That’s what that was?” The Secretary of Defense shrugged. “Nobody speaks manatee on this planet.”

  Carl the Secret Service Agent was putting away his gun. “We ran floo through Google Translate for a threat assessment. It came back saying it was about how they wanted to ravish our porcupines.”

  “Sadly, you typed it incorrectly. The message was floooooo with six o’s. It is a very nuanced language.”

  “So majestic,” agreed the SecDef.

  The President had not looked up from his phone and was still busy tweeting: Sea Cows come here. Should learn to speak English. Bigly good like we do! BAD.

  “Their message actually said you must turn over their leader or they would declare war.”

  The Secret Service agent didn’t seem impressed. “They’re just gassy herbivores. Who cares?”

  But SecDef just shook his head. “You know how manatees get all those scars, Carl?”

  “Sure, they just float along until they get wacked by speed boats.”

  “That’s what they want you to think. The scarred-up ones are really veterans of the Deep War. You ever been menaced by Fish Men, Carl?”

  “No.”

  “Then thank a manatee . . . and read a friggin’ history book once in a while.” SecDef turned back to Tom. “I didn’t realize that was a manatee vessel. I thought it was just more of those damned obnoxious Space Vegans. But all right, I could use a good fight. Golf is dumb.” He chucked his nine iron into the fire. “Waste of a good rifle range. I just snuck out here with the boss because we were sick of listening to those namby-pamby Euro-weenies. How do we best proceed, Tom?”

  “They gave you a one-hour ultimatum.” A laser beam lanced out of the sky and blasted a nearby tree into splinters. “And it would appear that was about an hour ago . . . Run!”

  Explosions rocked the golf course as the manatees began their bombardment. The three of them piled into the golf cart next to the President, who was still tweeting: They say manatees don’t ruin golf. FAKE NEWS. BUILD A WALL!

  The golf cart took off with a fierce electric hum.

  Tom looked up to see that a swarm of fighters had launched from the battleship and were headed their way. “We have incoming.”

  “Put the hammer down, Carl!” SecDef ordered.

  “I’m going as fast as I can, sir!” he cried as they bounced wildly across the green.

  The targeting implant in Tom’s eye zeroed in on the fighters’ weak spots. He drew his Combat Wombat. “Aim for the intakes.”

  “Roger that.” Surprisingly, SecDef had hidden a Stinger missile in his golf bag. “What? I told you I hate this sport. I only ever used the one club for everything. Might as well put something useful in this stupid bag.”

  “Personally, I find golf to be rather relaxing,” Tom said as he began to rapidly blast the oncoming fighters out of the sky, forcing the pilots to eject. Even floating toward the ground, suspended beneath parachutes, the manatees still managed to appear relaxed about the whole thing. As Jimmy would say, they were pretty chill.

  There were explosions all around them. Tom threw down smoke bombs and nanite swarms for cover. Carl managed to get some serious air by jumping the golf cart over a sand trap. Fighters flashed by, billowing smoke. Chaos downed another fighter with a shrieking surface-to-air missile as tracers zipped back and forth. The President continued tweeting furiously.

  Tom activated his communications uplink. “Come in, Junior Associates. Does anyone have eyes on Wendell?”

  “I found him, Mr. Stranger!”

  “Jimmy?” That was certainly improbable, but the intern had a gift, like an idiot savant of insurance. “Well done. We are on the way. Everyone converge on Jimmy’s position.”

  “I’m just getting him thawed out and . . . Hey. What’s that? Oh, crap—”

  Then there was a thud noise over the line and Jimmy was suddenly silenced.

  “Jimmy? Come in, Jimmy.”

  But Tom received a bone-chilling answer instead. “insert dolphin noise here”

  The line went dead.

  “To the clubhouse! And hurry, Agent Carl. Dolphin assassins have assaulted my intern.”

  “I am so confused right now!”

  “Serpentine! Serpentine!” bellowed Chaos.

  The golf cart zipped wildly across the blasted golf course, narrowly dodging explosions, until they smashed through the convention center’s fence and up the stairs. The wild jostling caused the President to make a typo: Despite the constant negative press covfefe

  But it was too late. He’s already hit submit. POTUS narrowed his eyes dangerously and scowled at Carl. The poor Secret Service agent gulped in fear.

  “Don’t worry. This should all be covered. I’ll be back with the claim paperwork shortly.” Tom Stranger bailed out of the golf cart and ran into Mar-a-Lago.

  Inside, the resort was pandemonium. Desperate now that their plot had been exposed, the remaining dolphins had attacked to keep Jimmy from thawing Wendell. Most of the world leaders had run away or were hiding under tables, except for Bibi Netanyahu who had gleefully Krav Maga’d one dolphin unconscious. Unfortunately, Jimmy had been taken hostage by one of the others. It was hiding behind him, one flipper around Jimmy’s neck, while the other flipper held a gun to Jimmy’s head.

  “Sorry, Mr. Stranger. I tried my best but this stupid fish got the drop on me.”

  Jimmy’s use of species slurs were the least of their problems at this point. “Remain calm, Jimmy.”

  “Don’t worry. Do what you’ve got to do. I’ve moved way up on the Grylls Survivability Scale since I started. I could probably survive getting shot in the brain. The GSS says I’m as tough as a ficus now.”

  “Hmmm . . . that comparison would imply you are still vulnerable to things like low humidity, drafts, and overwatering.”

  “So not even a teensy bit bulle
tproof?”

  Tom shook his head in the negative. “Not even a little bit.”

  “Well, crap.” Jimmy suddenly looked a lot less confident. “Never mind then.”

  Two more dolphins uncloaked next to the buffet table and leveled their weapons at Tom. He would be able to take them easily, but not in time to save Jimmy. The lead dolphin was gibbering threats about how if Tom didn’t surrender, it would blow Jimmy’s head off. Tom slowly placed his Combat Wombat and Doomsday Briefcase on the carpet and then raised his hands to show he was now unarmed.

  “You might as well surrender. I figured out your scheme. The only thing I do not know is who hired you mercenary scum to start this war.”

  The dolphin activated its infolink, and a hologram appeared between them. It was the head of a wild-haired, grinning, fat man—sort of like a low-rent Guy Fieri only with blue hair. Tom groaned when he saw his rival Interdimensional Insurance Agent, nemesis, and all around jerk face, Jeff Conundrum, appear. “Not you again.”

  “Heya, Stranger Things.”

  “You can’t be behind this. I left you trapped in Hell.”

  “Yeah, and that place really sucked! Thanks a lot for ditching me there, by the way. It was all nightmare suffering, grumpy torture demons, and it’s really humid so everybody always has swamp butt. Only Hell couldn’t hold me, Tommy boy. I escaped! But while I was there, in between painful fiery pitchfork pokings, I came up with this nefarious master plan. Pretty cool, huh?”

  “Why would you do all this, Jeff?”

  “Easy. Conundrum and Company insures a bunch of those evil companies. If the merger went through, they’d fall under your Premium Platinum Plan and I’d lose all that business. Wendell the financial wizard had to go. So I hired these fanatical dolphin separatists to do my dirty work, knowing you’d be too PC to risk hurting their feelings after your last snafu. Then I started dropping clues that the bums on this loser planet were the guilty party. That’s what they get for dumping my coverage and switching to you!”

  “But why go through all the effort to rile up the manatees and frame this universe for the crime?”

  “That was the best part, Strange Brew. Revenge! No matter how it turned out, one of your clients was going to be dissatisfied. You’ve won Number One in Customer Satisfaction for three years running. I was going to break your winning streak!” Jeff laughed maniacally.

  “You would cause an interdimensional war just to keep me from being voted Number One in Customer Service for a fourth year in a row?” Tom whistled. Jeff Conundrum hadn’t been quite right in the head for a long time, and apparently a stay in Hell hadn’t improved him any. “That’s evil even by your standards, Jeff.”

  “Yeah, psycho,” Jimmy chimed in. “That’s all sorts of messed up.” But then the dolphin thumped Jimmy over the head with the pistol so he quit talking.

  “Well, I for one thought it sounded like a perfectly clever plan,” squeaked one of the world leaders from beneath a table.

  “Shut up, Trudeau! Nobody ever cares what Canada thinks about anything!” Jeff Conundrum roared. “Any second now, Tom, manatee commandos will kick in the door, and when they see their hero looking like a big freeze pop next to the hors d’oeuvres, they’ll be so mad they’ll bust a cap on this whole planet. I’ll keep my business. You’ll not win Number One in Customer Satisfaction and you’ll be dead. So I win! I win big this time, Tom!”

  But Tom’s keenly-honed Insurance Agent instincts had noticed something the dolphins had not. Before they had appeared, Jimmy had been chipping away at Wendell’s block of ice, and a crack had formed. The crack had continued spreading while Jeff had been monologing. Villains never learn.

  “You’ll never get away with this, Jeff.”

  “What’re you going to do, Tom? Make a move and your intern gets it!”

  “I personally do not need to do anything. Company policy says that a Level Ten claim requires a team of agents in order to render maximum customer service . . . Face-Punch, are you in position?”

  “I’m only five thousand meters away, sir,” the Junior Associate answered over their comlink. “Piece of cake.”

  “What does cake have to do with anything?”

  Jeff Conundrum was confused, but he was only hearing half the conversation. “Who is getting punched with cake now, huh?”

  “Sorry, Mr. Stranger. Jimmy’s use of slang is contagious. I meant I am ready to dispense this claim with extreme prejudice.”

  “Then let us earn those one-star dolphin reviews. Fire.”

  BOOM!

  A bullet hole appeared in the wall. The shot was so close that it cut off Jimmy’s man bun before striking its intended target. The hostage-taking dolphin was sent hurtling across the buffet.

  “Oh, man!” Jimmy had been drenched in dolphin puree. “Right in the blowhole!”

  The other dolphins reacted, but not quickly enough.

  Tom had known the sonic crack of the Junior Associate’s Sniper Wombat would further weaken the block of ice. It shattered and Wendell T. Manatee fell out. The dolphins looked up in terror as they were engulfed in shadow, but it was too late. “HOOOOON!” And they were crushed beneath Wendell’s sleek blubber.

  The smoke was clearing. The dolphin terrorists were down. “Are you unharmed, Wendell and Jimmy?”

  Wendell, always calm under pressure, nodded at Tom in the affirmative, but he was already busy contacting his people on his comlink to call off their armada.

  “Kinda.” Jimmy held up the sad ball of hair that had once been his glorious hipster topknot.

  “I’m okay, too!”

  “No one asked you, Justin Trudeau.” Tom’s home world hadn’t even had a Canada. They’d just had North Idaho and French Idaho. He turned his attention back to the hologram of Jeff, who was looking rather flustered at the sudden carnage.

  “Okay, I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting you to mulch my dolphins that hard-core.”

  “That is the difference between us, Jeff. I understand that being a good agent isn’t about the customer satisfaction surveys or the awards. It’s about doing what you know in your hearts is the best thing for your clients.” He turned toward Jimmy and gave him a nod of approval. “And sometimes superior customer service requires following your instincts, no matter how stunningly bad those instincts may seem.”

  “Thanks, I think?” Jimmy said.

  “That’s touching, Walker, Texas Stranger.”

  “That one doesn’t even make sense, Jeff.”

  “I’m running out of things with Strange in the title. So sue me! You may have foiled my plans this time, Tom and Jimmy, but I’ll be back. You’ve not seen the last of Jeff Conundrum!”

  “Not this time. The Multiverse has had enough of your bad attitude and lackluster customer service.” Tom reached down and picked up his Doomsday Briefcase. “You have gone too far and must be stopped for good.”

  “What’re you going to do about it, smart guy? Huh? You’re talking to a hologram of my big awesome head. I’m safely like a billion miles and ten realities away in an armored bunker riding a comet made of Kryptonite.”

  Tom opened the briefcase. An eerie green glow and a banshee wail gushed out.

  “Oooh, scary,” Jeff mocked.

  “Is this going to be like that part in Indiana Jones where ghosts come out and melt our faces off?” Jimmy asked nervously.

  “Possible, but unlikely. I had the Ark of the Covenant stacked way in the back.” Tom reached inside the briefcase and rummaged around for a bit. He stuck his arm in all the way up to his shoulder, revealing that the briefcase was far bigger on the inside than on the outside. It was also very cluttered with various powerful technologies and artifacts, so it took him a moment to find what he was looking for. Luckily Tom didn’t have to use this thing very often. “Ah, here we go.” He pulled out a tiny, struggling man, dressed all in green, with a four-leaf clover in his hat.

  “Is that a friggin’ leprechaun?” Jimmy asked.

  “Oh no,” squeaked
the hologram of Jeff Conundrum, suddenly afraid.

  “Which feckin’ gobshites dare summon me! Oh, heya, Tom. Ye got two wishes left, then I’m free. Back to me cereal empire!”

  “I am aware, Fergus.” Leprechauns were a cross-dimensional menace and all-around pain in the butt, but sometimes agents had to make sacrifices.

  “Who do ye want me to implode now? I still feel a wee bit badly about what I did to yer carpet and yer HR department from last time.”

  Wendell covered his eyes with his flippers.

  “No implosions. I merely wish for you to bring Jeff Conundrum here.”

  “I know that Conudrum, the sap. I called his help line once. Spent two hours getting the runaround from a See ’n Say. Dog goes woof, me arse. This wish is on the house.”

  “Whoa, Tom, buddy, let’s talk this out like reasonable insurance—”

  The leprechaun snapped his tiny fingers and the real Jeff magically appeared in the room with them. “—professionals.” Jeff looked around. “Oh, crap.”

  The president of China clapped his hands in delight. “It works! I did not even have to sing the song this time!”

  “Now, Tom, boyo, let me tell ye of me magically delicious Lucky Charms. Ye skip the milk and soak ’em direct in whiskey—” Tom shoved the leprechaun roughly back into the briefcase. He had better things to do than listen to the crazed ramblings of a cereal-addicted marshmallow junkie.

  Some manatee commandos hovered into the resort in their power armor, led by Muffy “Sparkles” Wappler, who was chewing her bubble gum in a loud and most satisfied manner. “Just like I told you guys, here’s your culprit.” She gestured at Jeff Conundrum. “He’s all yours.”

  “No! Not manatee justice. Please, send me back to Hell instead.”

  Wendell’s roughnecks grabbed Conundrum by his neon glowing suspenders and dragged him away as he kicked and struggled. “You’ll still lose, Tom! Nobody’s customer service is good enough to fix this mess! Mu-wha-ha-ha-ha—” but manatees have no patience for gloating super villain laughs, so they “accidentally” banged Jeff’s head against the door frame on the way out.

  Tom looked around. Past the cowering world leaders and flattened dolphins, through the broken window, the golf course still burned. The President had wandered in and was composing a snarky tweet. It would be all over social media. Sadly, Jeff was right. This claim was a big mess, and it would take a lot of work to satisfy these customers.