“I have papers”, I said in a conspiratorial tone. “I’ve been sent to-“
“Stop speaking in that conspiratorial tone, lad, I can barely hear you!” bellowed the judge, shaking the wig from his head a touch.
“I have papers”, I said, in a louder and less conspiratorial tone. “I have been sent by Captain Space Hardcore. I am his man, Ebenezer Funkworthy, and I am on a secret mission to root out the culprits of whoever inflated your queen so lethally with croutoned champagne.”
He chuckled and looked down his jowls at me. “Oh yes. We know of this Space Hardcore. We’ve been told of you two, all the ruckus you’ve been causing.” The two grinning jackals next to him let out a cruel laugh, as jackals are wont to do. “We know what you’re after and we know what we’ve been told.”
“Well that’s good then”, I said as cheerfully as I could.
“It is good!” replied this magistrate darkly, prompting more jackal laughs
“Shall we proceed then?” I asked after a little pause.
“Oh we shall proceed. Indeed!” The magistrate said with strange relish.
I got the distinct feeling that we were having two very different conversations
I looked expectantly at them. The judge opened a small panel on his desk that contained several large buttons on a control panel. He positioned his finger above the reddest and blinkingest of them. He shot me a smile that could curdle breast milk. He pressed the button.
In an instant three things happened: the blue laser field was shut off, the circle on which I had been standing opened beneath me to reveal a trap chute and the room erupted in shrill laughter.
I fell.
And thought, Oh god, not again.
Damn it all!
That one thought throbbed in the front of my mind with every step I took down the cobbled stairs.
When looking for clues to such a highly orchestrated assassination such as this, it is best to work from the bottom. Rule out everything, starting from the most unlikely first and then continue to the most obvious. It’s just common sense. I had no reason to suspect the Princess, who had struck me as remarkably guileless, busty and comely-a combination that I know from experience spells innocence-so to save myself time I eliminated her from my formidable suspicions straight away.
I didn’t spare too long reflecting on Funkworthy’s fate. He had volunteered for similar dangerous missions several times, I remembered, but there is always a tinge of worry for the man, seeing him go off to perform his duties without the muscular umbrella of my protection. As I watched the overzealous guards pull him away at my request, already putting on a convincing act by roughing him up along the way, I plotted the first and most important part of the investigation: clearing Princess Hydrangea’s name.
Right away, I had sprinted to the Princess’s chambers, ostensibly to search for incriminating evidence I knew would not be there. I needed an ally and I knew she could be it, but not before I had investigated her very thoroughly. Very thoroughly indeed, I thought.
One disadvantage of having Funkworthy sent away was there was nobody to pick up on my innuendos. They were simply left to bob around in my head like deceased goldfish.
I had to focus on the matter at hand. And that matter was a door. The lock would be a complex affair, but I knew ways around weven the most complex security systems.
Kicking in the door, I burst into her room to find that she was not, in fact, lounging about in her laciest of underthings, having a pillow fight with some maids (I have seen several documentaries depicting the lives of princesses and these scenes are not uncommon). In point of fact there was nobody there at all. No matter! I began a thorough search of her bedchambers. I had to leave things undisturbed but still penetrate the room and find any secret compartments that may hide guilt or baguettes. I had to instantly take in every nuance of my surroundings and find the things that could stay hidden from even the most dedicated cleaning staff.
I set about the search in the most professional of ways.
I was only a few minutes into my investigation when I felt a change in the air around me, imperceptible to most-I was being watched.
I wheeled around, my hand shooting to the holster of my sidearm in one fluid movement. There was a figure in the doorway, hidden in silhouette by the sun blaring behind his head. I shaded my eyes and demanded he come in and close the door.
“Come in! Close the door!” I demanded, just as I said.
He hesitated. I unbuttoned my holster. Clack, it went-the sound of me meaning business. He came in and shut the door behind him. The sun’s glare dispelled I could finally lay eyes upon him.
“You!” I exclaimed.
“Sir, may I ask what it is you’re doing rooting around in the Princess’s underwear drawer?” It was that damned butler Carstairs, papering over his interruption with his ‘innocent’ questions.
“Investigating, of course! Now, answer my question!”
“Captain, you asked me no question. If you recall, you simply shouted ‘you!’ That, sir, is not a question”, he answered in a slippery way.
“Slippery one, aren’t you?” I observed cannily. “But answer me this: why is it that the very same fellow present at the assassination is the very same man now interrupting-or monitoring-my sleuthing?”
The man rubbed the bridge of his Aplubian nose in mock weariness. “Sir, I come to change her highness’s sheets every day at this time. Ask anyone. It is part of my duties. If you’ll forgive the question, sir, you are investigating Princess Hydrangea?”
I loomed close to him, bopping the tip of my nose against him in a subtle intimidation tactic. “I investigate everyone, Butler.”
“And has your, um, investigation of Her Royal Highness’s underwear drawer concluded, sir?” he asked, his eyes darting over to the site of my sleuthing.
He was trying to fluster me with filthy intimations. I narrowed my eyes. "For now”, I whispered gruffly.
“And shall I tidy away the garments of evidence scattered on the floor? I shall be discreet, sir.”
“For now”, I repeated.
He made a puzzled face, I headed to the door, since I could clearly go no further with him present. He placed his hand on my chest, stalling me on the way.
“Sir, may I have the lady’s personal items which are currently spilling out of your pocket? Provided they are not important, of course.”
I tossed the pair of undergarments back to him.
“And those in the other pocket, sir?” he pestered.
Damn! I needed time to properly analyse each item of evidence. This butler was a more cunning adversary than I had expected. I would need to plan my next move against him carefully. For now, I tossed the royal panties at his face, making my escape as he extracted himself from underneath them. He seemed to take his time, though. I suspected him of being something of a pervert.
Damn it all!
That one thought throbbed in the front of my mind with every step I took down the stairs as I raced away from the Princess’s bedroom.
I had clearly acquitted myself reasonably enough of the Princess’s chamber to conclude that she was innocent, but the interruption was jarring. I felt like I was the one being watched all of a sudden. This would not do. If I could not snoop safely in the private chambers of the suspects without the prying eye and dusting hand of the servants (operating under the control of this Carstairs character) then I would need to take my investigation in the opposite direction: loud, open and in the collective face of the royalty. I had an idea of how to proceed, and if I say so myself, it was stunningly brilliant. Not for nothing did I have my ‘honorary detective’ certificate. No, to get that honour you needed to collect all ten of the Dreltan Classics series of detective novels and then send away for it with the stickers in the back of each volume-and that was just the kind of experience and tenacity that would serve me well here.
I charged into the banquet hall, flinging the doors open. I spied
a gaggle of investigators poking around at the site of the murder. Were they still hung up on that? I thought to myself, aghast at how glacial they were.
As I marched towards them, I stumbled over a small, squealing obstacle that broke my masculine stride-a pet of some kind. It looked aquatic, with a fat body like a lozenge, big black eyes, whiskers and flippers. Still, the most bizarre aspect of its countenance was the little iron crown strapped to its head. It gave a bizarre yelp of pain and scooted away.
“What is that thing?” I demanded to the room.
“That is the Royal Seal”, called one of the investigators, not bothering to turn to face me. “You really do know nothing of our culture, do you, Captain?”
When the detective turned to me, I saw the indelible mark of my fist’s bruise on his jawline. Vacto Snoopel, chief Aplubian investigator. No wonder he was so bitter that he had to place that animal in my path. I could see he was not over the small matter of the sock to the chops I had given him; he’d be trying to undermine my investigation with his own, inferior one.
I looked him up and down. I spied a notepad full of scribbles in the top pocket of his dirty mac. His glasses were smudged and perched at the end of his nose, a cigarette dangled from his mouth and he was holding a large magnifying glass in one hand. A shabby kind of man to be investigating such a crime, but no matter, he would aid me anyway.
“Snoopley,” I began.
“Snoopel.” He corrected.
“Snoopley,” I said, “I need you to round up all the major suspects of last night’s attacks: the butler, that brutish count, the chef, the lad who brought the wine and anyone else you can muster.”
He nodded and scribbled in his pad, grudgingly. “Anyone else?”
I thought back to my mystery novels.
“Of course. A clergyman with a dark past, a feckless aristocrat, a retired military man, a vampish femme fatale and the gardener who’s having an affair with a lady of means. Got all that?”
He looked at me again, astonished. “How did you know about Father Donnel’up, young Master Hoffenhoff, Brigadier Meinkatt, Lady Izabella and Pip Tinkle? They’re all suspects we have, but how did an outsider like you know about each of them and their dark pasts?”
“These investigations, Inspector, once you have read-um, I mean performed enough of them, all fit within predictable-enough patterns. Round up the suspects and bring them to me in an hour.”
“Where, Captain?”
“In the library, of course. Where else?”
I tutted at the man.
What a rank amateur.
* * *
Chapter Six!!!!!!
Many Meetings and Meaty Matings
In which Funkworthy splashes down, Space enters a library for the first time, and Ebenezer’s trusty hound sniffs out the identity of Funkworthy’s clone.
Aw, shit.
Literally.
Like all the tubes I had been dropped down in my life, this one didn’t lead anywhere good. It bounced me through a series of bends and turns, contracted and expanded, but after what seemed like a long time, I shot out of the metal cylinder at terminal velocity only to find myself landing in a deep, warm and powerfully pungent mound.
I looked up at the tube grudgingly. It had shat me out into a world of deeper misery and danger, where I’d be under constant risk of being shanked or beaten, much like my mother had all those years ago. As far as lessons in self-esteem went, being cannoned a mile down into the ground and into a mountain of poo was not the most uplifting of experiences, but it got the message across. I did a mild backstroke to the edge of the tank and made my way out.
I clambered over the edge and took a leap to the ground below. Time to take in my new, drearier layer of underworld, I thought, digging sewage out of my ears with a loud pop of poop.
The first thing that I saw was an array of huge wooden wheels with handles jutting out horizontally. Six shirtless Aplubians were chained to each of these wheels and were pushing them around and around with a great strain. I saw dozens of these mills dotted around the point of my entry, each manned by enormous Aplubian slaves. What puzzled me was that I couldn’t see what this manpower was driving, since the wheel didn’t seem to be attached to any kind of mechanism or gyro. Was this the kind of pointless and soul-crushing endeavour I could expect down here? There were no guards nearby, so I sidled up to one of the wheel’s workers, a tall and brawny bull of a man, and walked around in a circle next to him.
“Excuse me,” I whispered, “I’m new down here. What’s this for, exactly? Why are you doing with this?”
He looked down at me, a little surprised and befuddled, like an ox that had suddenly been presented with a mathematical problem. “Oh, this?” he motioned to the wheel. “This wheel goes down another level. Down in that level there’s a mill. This powers that mill.”
“And what does that mill make?”
“More wheels like this one”, he said, slapping the wood.
“And they come up and install more of them up here?”
“Mostly no”, he grunted, unused to the strain of this much conversation. “Usually they just replace the wheels here. They wear out easy and we use them an awful lot. Gotta have wheels.”
I nodded at him, as if it made perfect sense and backed slowly away. It was time to get away from the entrance, lose myself in this new and deeper layer of the underworld.
I looked into the vastness of the chamber for the first time, out beyond the rows and rows of the identical wheels with Aplubians lashed to each. The squeal of activity and the twirling of the meaningless wood suddenly sickened me. I started off down the cavern, trying to look inconspicuous while waving away the flies that were buzzing around my head as they tried to suck up the brown piles clinging to my scalp. I was deeper down this hole all right, and there were fewer guards and cameras on this level. The buzzing scan of the cameras, which was a natural layer of noise above the pipe, was absent down here. Replacing the electric observance was the gimlet-eyed ocular groping of the men with the stun rods. They lined the walls of the cavern like malevolent trees. If I was going to find traces of the resistance, it would be here in this less regulated zone, I decided.
Past the wheels was the main industry, where the workers chipped away at the rock edifice of the side of the cavern with cheap pickaxes. Behind each of these miners was another man whipping them with laser-lashes to keep up the work. Behind these men were even larger taskmasters, lashing them if they stopped administering whippings; and behind them, was a guard with a gun who was there to shoot anyone who stopped whipping anyone else. It was an intricately constructed system of mutually-assured whipping and I couldn’t help but marvel at its simplicity, not to mention the sheer amount of whips needed to pull it off.
Further down the line, these dig sites turned into tunnels of deeper and deeper length, with small wheelbarrows coming out of each of them, carrying mounds of rubble that glittered with precious stones. The depth of each tunnel required more and more taskmasters with whips, so some of the queues of flashing lashes resembled a strange and painful conga. I was beginning to wonder at the efficacy of this incentive scheme when I noted that many of the workers in the deeper holes were fitted with automated clockwork back braces that swung a robotic arm holding a cat o’nine lasers in a metronome beat against the back of the bowed worker. Necessity truly is the mother of the invention of torture devices, I thought.
Each barrow filed to a central track of rails that led to a large machine at the extreme end of the chamber. A set of mallets and sifters separated the rock from the stone, and the stone from the precious stone.
Flanking the machine were two enormous shirtless guards who were beating large canvas drums with massive drumsticks. Doom doom doom, went the drums. I wasn’t sure what they were for, but I had to admit that they added to the general ambiance of the place magnificently, since looking back I could think of very few friendly places with pairs of mute, steadily drummin
g giants.
It was while I was admiring the ominous samba rhythm of the drummers that a blow to the back of the legs upended me and sent me crashing to my back. When I opened my eyes, I met the unwelcome sight of a gun muzzle hovering above my forehead. The guard behind it looked, if anything, less than friendly.
“Watchoo doin' outta line?” he demanded.
He fiddled with the sight on his gun, presumably so he could shoot me more accurately, a task he seemed pretty enthusiastic about. I looked around the death-hole above my face and to the man holding it. He looked like a chest of drawers made out of pork that had learned to walk, and in his eyes there shone a dangerous mixture of boredom and hate. I decided it would be best not to push him.
“Nothing, sir. Getting back to work, sir.”
He kicked me hard enough that for a moment I saw my ancestors beckoning to me from in front of a bright light. But that soon passed, and he somehow punched me back on my feet-a curious ability I almost respected in spite of myself.
His primate-like grunts from behind me seemed to indicate that he was either on the verge of attack or dangerously aroused. I didn’t intend on finding out which, so I rushed to a mercifully abandoned cart next to a tunnel entrance and started dashing down it, wheeling the cart before me, keen to shake off my guard and fit into working life.
As Space once assured me after a trip to the Bordello planet Nynphulon 6, ‘it’s amazing how quickly you can get used to being whipped’. I wished I shared his... adaptability. My only small satisfaction came from running with my cart fast enough that the fellow chasing me with the lash became too winded to keep up with me. However, invariably there was someone to lash him onwards, so his brief periods of not beating me were short.
For a long period of toil, I simply put myself to the task, letting the hours tick by as I tested myself against the cart work.
I quickly surmised that I was not cut out for carrying loads of rocks while being whipped. Some are called to a vocation, but this was not mine. My arm muscles screamed, my legs hollered, my lower back grumbled, my wrists yodelled and my head hummed, since it was still largely caked in faeces.
The Court of Crusty Killings: A Captain Space Hardcore Adventure Page 6