by Jay Key
She responded only with an enigmatic smile—equal parts playful banter and genuine offense—and effortlessly tossed her rag to an approaching armor-shelled Glyptodian barkeep named Earl.
“I’ll let you know by tonight,” Duke replied as the Queen locked up the Earth whisky, “even though this little venture could come at a hefty cost!”
“Anything without a cost isn’t worth having.”
She disappeared into the rapidly burgeoning crowd of Cyborg Joe’s.
Chapter 2
Three-Headed Ice Wombats
THE BOUNTY HUNTER SAT STARING at eight feet of hulking Glyptodian.
“Hey Earl.”
“Greetings, Mr. LaGrange. Welcome back to Cyborg Joe’s. Can I be of any assistance in relation to your alcohol consumption or culinary desires?”
Earl was very capable behind the bar and had been employed at Joe’s for as long as Duke could remember. Earl’s coat carried only a trace of its once brown hue; now it shone mostly silver—in fact, Duke couldn’t recall a time when the large biped appeared “young.” The Queen once told him that she felt Earl added much-needed sophistication and class to her operation. Duke was aligned with that statement—though, in his travels, manners were never high on the list of requirements when choosing a place to knock back a few refreshments. Duke liked Earl but found him overly formal and a substantial downgrade in appearance from the Queen, so he decided it was the perfect time to go fetch Ishiro’shea.
“I’m okay right now, Earl. Just a little ninja retrieval on the to-do list.”
“Sounds exhilarating, Mr. LaGrange. If you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask. And give my regards to Mr. Ishiro’shea. When he awakens from his rest, that is.”
Duke spun around on the stool, which gave a shrieking whine produced by a lifetime sans upkeep. As he headed over to his passed-out sidekick his attention was diverted by the high-pitched giggles of two young female humanoids. They appeared uninterested in the advances of two heavy-set humanoids adorned in tactical gear and looking very serious. Military attempts to take over the universe must be in season. When will they ever learn? Almost involuntarily, Duke performed a lightning-quick scan of the two female targets to make sure that they had at least two limbs and no more than three eyes. He wasn’t picky but did have some standards. The pair possessed figures that Duke found instantly appealing. He particularly appreciated, at least aesthetically, the airtight polymerized chloroprene body suits that both females wore—jet black and with no discernible markings of any kind. His imagination was aroused by the question of where certain parts of their anatomy began and ended. How did they get those damn things on, he thought to himself, and how do I get them off? I have a few minutes before the Robots go on—I’m sure Ishiro will be fine. Anyways, I need to test drive this whisky before I get back to the Queen with an answer about her little opportunity.
“Ladies. Can I buy you both a drink?”
His line was met with more giggles and the batting of electric violet eyelashes—or at least, they were close enough to eyelashes. Any new adventure—especially one involving unknown dimensional tears—could wait a bit longer. Tonight is saved.
“If you don’t know already, I happen to be Duke LaGrange...”
He waited for a sign of recognition. When it didn’t come, he continued, “Adventurer. Trailblazer. Poet. A true man of the universe.”
“Is that so, handsome?” retorted one of the females, followed by even more giggles. Her voice was surprisingly confident and possessed an almost soothing quality. However, she let the last syllable of each word dangle until she started the next. And that damn giggling never stopped. “This is my best girlfriend and fourth cousin on my quasi-aunt’s side, Arlut. You can call me Turla, sugar. On Hilteria, it means ‘very generous.’”
The corners of Duke’s mouth shot upward in a sly grin. His voice, already deeper than most upright humanoids, lowered even further to become the velvety tones of an experienced seducer. “There is nothing I love more than a charitable soul.”
After the third round of especially fiery Glyptodian Summer Ale, Duke launched into his adventurous tales of capturing the scum of the cosmos with nothing more than his wits and bare hands. His overly embellished accounts of danger and heroism were interrupted only by the thunderous explosions of the Trampling Death Robots that echoed through the cavernous dimensions of the bar—its ceilings as tall as a Quibbian erecto-varmint.
“So there I was on Tardasio 7 staring down a rabid, blood-sucking, three-headed ice wombat. He had just killed the entire staff of Sol’s Bail Bonds-O-Rama and was headed for a local petting zoo,” Duke said.
The two magenta-skinned females oohed and aahed in tandem at every exaggerated piece of the chronicle. They never missed an opportunity to bat those purple eyelash things.
“Now remember, ladies, I had just captured an entire gang of speed cycle assassins before lunch and was quite the worse for wear—but there was no way that I was going to let this demon beast get away with eating my benefactors.” A bit of honesty somehow managed to slip through his defenses.
“What’d you say, hun? Benefactors?” asked Arlut.
Luckily, the Trampling Death Robots hit the crescendo of “I Want to Smash You, My Binary Baby” and Duke’s delicate game of romance was preserved.
“I’m sorry, my beautiful belles,” he replied with faux annoyance. “I was saying... there was no way that I was going to let this raging, maniacal demon beast get away with eating the poor, innocent, sweet, young orphans visiting the local children’s petting farm.” Emphasis on orphans.
Flawless recovery. He was also proud of his ability to augment his description with even more adjectives that were neither necessary nor true. The whisky must be working.
“Duke, honey, you’re simply amazing.”
The bounty hunter did not shy away from the praise.
“And utterly gorgeous. Are you sure you aren’t lawfully bound to something?”
Turla’s flirtations overwhelmed her companion’s attempts. She was the alpha flirter.
Duke’s chin raised triumphantly.
“My beautiful Turla, I am now and have always been lawfully bound to my oath of protecting the innocent, defending the peace, fighting for the freedom of all that deserve it, and honoring my home—the proud colony of Nova Texas. But maybe, just maybe, I have been waiting for someone equally as amazing to stroll into my life.”
Duke thought he might have overstepped the bounds into the realm of low-budget romance films; luckily, the Hilterian ate it up, as so many had before her.
This was the all-too-familiar homestretch. Duke was a hunter and his prey was wounded. He extended his hefty and calloused—yet comforting—hand and gently covered Turla’s delicate digits that dangled from a perfectly circular palm that resembled glowing porcelain. He tilted his well-worn stone-colored Stetson so that his glare could pierce her defenses. Kill time. The intoxicated laughter morphed abruptly into a longing gaze that immobilized Turla. Even though his brown eyes were locked into the deep smoky obsidian of his conquest’s, Duke could sense that Arlut—or as Duke christened her in his head, “Option B”—was growing increasingly jealous. Being his second choice would pierce her inebriation with a jolt of sobriety and Duke knew it. Can’t have that—not when the finish line is in sight. Duke was well aware, from combing the vast unknown of the universe as the most infamous bounty hunter playboy of the last fifteen cycles, how to guarantee that a night of spoils would not be sabotaged by a really pissed off best friend. He decided to pick up the pace.
“Babe, how about we get outta—”
“Turla, I’m tired,” interjected Arlut in a pouty tenor.
“I want to hear more stories from Duke,” Turla snapped back emphatically. There was an implied “go away.”
The purple visors attached to her eyelids fluttered rapidly and the back of her cranium pulsated, showcasing that she was ready for some mature recreation.
“Turla!” shrieked
Duke’s newest archenemy.
His autopilot set in. Unfortunately.
“Have you ever seen someone cut off their own head?” he directed at Arlut.
One of the more reliable lines in the world of misdirection.
“My friend would like to show you...”
Both females looked perplexed as Duke’s words seemed to fade into the dense stagnant air of the bar. His eyes peered around, hoping to land on his emerald-clad sword-wielding Irish-Japanese cohort, who had a mastery of warding away potential killjoys like Arlut. Duke recalled the hundreds of instances in which he had used that asinine phrase and how he never needed to wait for Ishiro’shea to leap into action. It was the split-second sleight of hand that had allowed Duke to leave with “Option A” on countless occasions. By the time the victim typically collected themselves enough to respond to the bounty hunter’s answerless riddle and fully take in the fact that a stout martial artist decked out in a bright green shinobi shozoku appeared seemingly out of nowhere, Duke had escaped with the top prize. When the victim had discovered she had been hoodwinked and turned back to address Ishiro’shea, the ninja would vanish. He was a ninja, after all. However, at this moment, Duke was ninja-less.
The Trampling Death Robots cacophonous guitar solo filled every pocket of breathable air at Cyborg Joe’s—and triggered Duke’s cognitive functions instantaneously.
Holy hedgehogs! Ishiro’shea! Damn this whisky.
Duke shouted to himself in a fit of sudden awareness, “Trampling Death Robots!”
A vision crept into his head of a messy puddle of squashed ninja. And for what? A night of bright pink ecstasy with the faint undertones of average beer? Ishiro’shea probably wouldn’t consider that a good enough reason.
The bounty hunter started for the stage but was quickly halted by Turla’s tight grip.
“Duke, honey, your friend would like to show us what?”
“What friend?” interjected Arlut. “I don’t see any friend. I told you, Turla! I knew he was a lying sack of...”
“Shut up, Arlut!”
The Beta Hilterian cowered.
“Duke, now what were you saying?”
“Sorry ladies, I must attend to something kinda important.”
Duke felt Turla’s grip tightening.
“More important than me, sweetie?”
He writhed his hand out of the slightly moistened clutch of the Hilterian and tried to think of a clever, if not a bit flirtatious, response. He dug deep—but came up empty.
“I’ll call you.”
The next sensations that Duke felt were the simultaneous four-digit slap across his right cheek and the showering of Glyptodian Summer Ale all over his face. He cleared the booze from his eyes just in time for one last glance at the polymerized chloroprene-clad package of sensuality that he was letting slip through his fingers.
Okay, focus. Find Ishiro. But damn, those bodies. Focus. Yeah, those bodies.
Chapter 3
The Wrath of Sprinkles
THE BOUNTY HUNTER RACED TO the stage floor where the Trampling Death Robots were about to begin their opus—a power ballad trilogy known as “Moonlight Over the Squashed Bones of Puny Beings, Parts I–III in E Flat”—and he hurled himself onto a table of animated Jungafallowians who were each clanking their two heads together with reckless aggression. The Trampling Death Robots were huge on Jungafallow III though, oddly enough, on Jungafallow IV they topped the planet’s most wanted criminals list. Either way, they were in demand.
Upon his clean landing, Duke studied the performance area, his eyes darting with the speed and accuracy of lasers. He saw the Trampling Death Robots. He saw their devotees gathered around them, attempting to make the loudest sounds that their individual anatomies would permit. He did not see any flattened remains of an intoxicated assassin. Is he really that good a ninja that he could have vanished postmortem? Duke hated to admit it, but he was actually considering that hypothesis. Moments after he had come to terms with Ishiro’shea as a zombie magician, he caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a lime green comet. As his focus steadied in on the speedy Ishiro’shea—now stationary—he noticed that his musical instrument of choice was an ancient Earth katana. In the known universe, there were many types of swords, daggers, rapiers, blades, sabers, cutlasses, scimitars, and knives— but none of them doubled as a guitar.
He seems to be having fun and no one seems to mind; no reason to interject, I guess. If anything, this should be entertaining, Duke thought.
As Duke watched his partner in crime—well, his partner in stopping crime (in most cases)—wail away alongside the Trampling Death Robots, he took a seat next to a pair of two-headed Jungafallowians and an anthropomorphic musk ox.
“Hello there,” the musk ox bellowed quite formally, “my name is Lilly and I come from one of the moons of Gartosh.”
Duke did not reciprocate the niceties. Lilly seemed accustomed to being ignored.
The bounty hunter didn’t really care for the explosion-centric rhythms of what constituted popular music in this area of the galaxy; however, even he couldn’t deny the energy that the band generated. In fact, he even caught himself tapping the soles of his boots to the melodic tones of plasma grenades being detonated. There was no debate that the band had a really, really good percussion section.
As the sentient mechanical rock stars crushed both the stage and the occasional security guard, it became apparent to Duke that they were, in fact, not aware of the sword-wielding assassin dashing feverishly amongst them. As they smashed and crushed and kaboomed, Ishiro’shea added to each pounding roar a circular whip of his arm across the invisible strings of his katana-guitar. Duke hoped that the Trampling Death Robots would just play on without noticing his enigmatic green sidekick but, as in so many cases, the alcohol outpointed the ninja. Ishiro’shea, who had perfected not only agility and nimbleness but also the ability to remain unseen in broad daylight, stumbled like a toddler trying to navigate through a field of tripwire in a rainforest. He crashed violently into the frontman of the Robots. Duke, while not knowledgeable in the realm of music, recognized the mechanical goliath immediately—mostly from wanted posters and the best cosmic gossip rags available. It was the infamous Sprinkles. Damn. Ishiro’shea managed to fall sword-first into the thigh plate of the raging lead singer and detonation specialist, who was known more for his destruction of hotel properties than for his lyrical genius.
The music screeched to a sudden halt. With Ishiro’shea still gripping his katana, Sprinkles grabbed the ninja’s shoulder with his well-constructed human-like left hand. Duke didn’t know the true origins of the Trampling Death Robots or which assembly-line conveyor belt they had fallen off—but he did not doubt the craftsmanship of their mysterious creators. Neither did Ishiro’shea’s right shoulder, the bounty hunter concluded. Ishiro’shea was paralyzed in the restrictive grasp. Sprinkles’ right arm possessed less of a hand and more of a blunt instrument of obliteration. Extending from a thick silver gauntlet was a 900-pound (give or take) hammer that would make Thor embarrassed for toting a mere plexor in comparison. The robot slowly lifted his right arm upwards and into kill position. Ishiro’shea’s bloodshot eyes remained half closed. It has to be a pretty good night on the sauce to fail to react to your impending death by an extremely heavy hammer. Nonetheless, Ishiro’shea—now held immobile by Sprinkles’ hand—drifted into an alcohol-induced sleep. Sprinkles didn’t seem to notice his adversary’s narcolepsy and was more focused on the continued extension of his right arm. Sprinkles was a showman.
Duke’s right hand fell to his hip and to the handle of his laser revolver. Even after a night of flirting, Earth whisky, and Glyptodian brew, he could place a shot from his laser revolver between the eyes of a pygmy hamster, blindfolded (not that blindfolding the hamster makes the shot anymore difficult). Sprinkles will be a dead robot before he has a chance to drop that hammer on the skull of my inebriated lil’ buddy, thought Duke. And if a blast from his trusted pulse pistol—fab
ricated to appear like a vintage laser revolver for that more romantic feel—wasn’t enough to take down the behemoth, there was always Ol’ Betsy. Betsy was an out-of-date, out-of-production Widowmaker sonic shotgun that had been used during the settlement of the colony planet of Nova Texas. It had been the first firearm to harness the power of hydroxy re-gen explosion technology, now used in the majority of handheld weaponry in the galaxy, including Duke’s pulse pistol. If hydrogen and oxygen particles were within a light year from the gun, it could generate the proper combination to create exploding projectiles. There was never a need to reload or, more importantly, worry about what color ammunition strap clashes with the user’s favorite warmongering ensemble. Newer models sported elegant ammo—Betsy, not so much. What she lacked in sophistication and design, she made up for in pure noise. When Betsy sang, people listened. As much as Ishiro’shea was his sidekick and most trusted confidant, it was hard to tell if Duke LaGrange ever cared for anything more than he did Ol’ Betsy.
It was known by all travelers in this part of the universe, Duke included, that Cyborg Joe’s had really great drink specials and a better-than-average karaoke night, but even more so, it was known for its criminally loose firearm policy. This made it a hot spot for the criminally loose of mind. It was also why Ol’ Betsy was resting nicely in Duke’s custom-made Ootrelian tanned leather back holster without drawing even the faintest of regard from the other patrons. The one-sided staring match between Sprinkles and Ishiro’shea seemed to last for eons as Duke awaited the next move. His fingers twitched ever so slightly across the titanium butt of his revolver. His eyes fixated on the optical visor of the angered musician—in a situation such as this he always anticipated the next move by reading eyes (or a well-crafted mechanical vision apparatus). A less experienced man would have been nervous, but this was not a new position for Duke and his Irish-Japanese companion.