The horn music cut through the air like a sad elephant singing the blues. As I rounded the corner, I saw the whole sad tableau: a threadbare busker playing an odd Aplubian horn in the circle of amber lamplight and the Butler standing before him taking in the honking tune. Carstairs gave a brief bow to the youth with the instrument, dug in his pockets and tossed a couple of coins in the shoe that served as the change receptacle. He walked off, ducking into a small nearby shack I assumed to be his home. Untrained eyes would have seen an act of charity but I’d been around and I knew that there was no such thing as charity- my own personal bank statements were a testament to that fact.
I rushed up to the shoe and turned it over. Pennies and crumpled notes spilled out of its briny interior. I raked through them, but couldn’t find which of them contained the clandestine communication that was no doubt contained within one of them.
“Hey, man! What do you think you’re doing?” The horn player unplugged himself from the nozzle of his pipe and wafted the wine-soaked demand at me.
I had no time for him, and besides, the noise could easily stir the Butler from his den. I raised my head long enough to sock him directly in the neck. It was a mighty blow and he fell, gargling to the floor, his horn falling into a nearby gutter. I felt momentarily bad for the man. Middlemen often don’t know what they’re mixed up in, but I could take no chances. I scooped up all the coins and put them in a sodden pocket to be examined and picked through later. If there was a secret message for the resistance in any of them, I would find it.
I shuffled over to the shack I had seen Carstairs duck inside and, squatting under a window, peered over the mantle into his home. The scene was bathed in amber from a modest open fire, in front of which the Butler slumbered in a beat-up old chair under a thick woollen blanket. Tired out from crime, no doubt.
I decided there was no more sleuthing left to do on him tonight. I stood, flicked up my collar, producing a fan of cold rain spray. I needed warmth; I needed to think. I fingered the matchbook in my pocket again and took it out. There was a bar name on it. ‘The Pig and the Fiddle’. Good enough.
The place was sleazy, but at least it had the sense of shame to be dark.
I pounded back the shot. It sizzled down into my gut and spots danced before my eyes as I went blind for a second. I was glad I’d paid extra for the smooth hooch. The bored waitress sauntered over, missing a step as she came into my booth. It was clear she was as much patron as employee. I told her to leave the bottle and gave her a handful of currency.
The coins had given no signs. I had examined each one, looked for secret messages, dipped them in water: nothing. Sick of the games, I simply spent them, keen to get rid of another dead end. I exhaled smoke on the letter that was now an intricate series of scribbles and notes. I had tried every cypher I could think of to try to crack the thing, and now the paper was covered in ink and I couldn’t make out the original message. As metaphors for the case went, it was pretty blunt; but when the verse is cruel, it’s cruel with the subtlety of a hammer blow to the cranium of a widow in a coffin factory.
If the Butler was guilty, he had left no traces. I had told myself that I knew it was him; but even that certainty had faded.
It had all seemed so clear: a queen erupts, a princess needs her mother’s killer found and the hero comes to the rescue. Nice story, I thought, as I pounded back another shot of drain unclogger. Shame it wasn’t working out that way.
The royals had years on me, weaving their lines of deceit and lining up their power plays. Stumbling into the middle of that and trying to separate one deception from another was like trying to solve a jigsaw in an earthquake while on a trampoline. They had been impenetrable. They had looked on my investigations with bewilderment.
Now the leads were leading nowhere and my last straw was napping by a fire.
I got up from the bar. Stewing in defeat was getting me nowhere.
Stepping out from the warm dark into the cold black, I jammed down my hat like a shield and walked right into the wind. There was a light on to the left of me in a palace entrance, calling out to me like a beacon. I pointed my feet toward it and made my way back to the scene of the crimes.
Stepping in through the door, I was greeted with the sight of a full-length mirror. In it, I saw a schmoe in a dirty mac with no leads.
“Sir, your coat?” A hand entered the frame. It was a servant, keen to stop me dripping on the marbled floor, who offered a hand to my wet clothes.
I shrugged it off and let the man have it. I proffered my hat too and he took the thing.
And then I saw it.
Out of the shabby husk of Snoopel’s coat emerged the frame of one Captain Space Hardcore. It was a glorious sight, like seeing a caterpillar's cocoon birth a wonderful intergalactic adventurer.
I had worn the skin of another investigator in the subconscious hope that seeing the puzzle through different eyes would bring me some kind of epiphany, but now I saw that in doing so I had forgotten who I was. I was Captain Space Hardcore.
My mind can contain multitudes. I had tried to be the kind of dick that Snoopel was, trying to fit into this labyrinthine Aplubian puzzle. But I saw a man in the mirror that did not and never would fit: a man too good for that. I saw Captain Space Hardcore.
Sure, the investigation had hit a snag. Granted, I had no more leads, but that granite-jawed hero looking back at me with sparkling blue eyes would brook no such pessimism. The previous hour of self-loathing melted away in the light of this overwhelming truth.
I would overcome this mystery. I would come up with a way.
I grabbed the servant by the hand and shook it with vigour.
“Sir, you may have just aided the apprehension of a regicidal maniac!”
“Very good, sir”, he moaned wearily, as though he heard that all the time.
I ran my hand through my hair, making it perfect, and marched down the hall.
I needed to put all of the pieces together.
But now that I was myself again, anything was possible.
Because I was Captain Space Hardcore.
* * *
Chapter Thirteen!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Clandestine Liberations and Personal Revelations
In which an ancient AI powers up at the behest of the Prince and Funkworthy finds out the true nature of his prison-a jail that fluctuates through both time and space.
“Look at zese pig-dogs. Zey feed zem nothing but gruel and beat zem wiz rubber hammers when zey are bored. Rumour has it zat they feed a few of them crusts of old stale bloomer. But not for long, am I right, comrade?”
“These swine won’t know what hit them”, I agreed readily.
Jacques and I had ducked into a small alcove near the detention centre on the lowest floor, surveying the pen where the detained revolutionaries were kept. It was a squat and secure looking building, with brown brick covered in barbed wire and broken glass. The smaller detention cages would be outside it to the rear. It was swarming with guards, cameras and roving cyborg canine attack hounds. It looked like a suicide mission, but if I was to win Jacques’ trust, then I would need to free his sister.
I had looked at the layouts in one of the shacks in the underground and drawn up a plan of attack. It was a moxie-heavy plan, with a reliance on serendipity and derring-do, but it was the only way I could see.
I had drawn circles around the key areas, with a small gaggle of undernourished militia around me.
“One, we need to cut off the power to the building. That’ll buy us a minute before the backup generator kicks in. Two, we need to handle the cyborg hounds around the perimeter-”
“I have ze answer to them”, announced Jacques, breezily confident.
“Fair enough, but that still leaves us the guards inside and the escape.”
“Ah have faith in you, my friend. We will free our brozers and sisters in arms!”
But now that I was about to spring the attack, Jacques’ enthusiasm
seemed misplaced. Not for the first time, I wanted Space with me; his heedless and unflappable self-belief was a potent fuel in these kind of dangerous shenanigans. I could not, in all honesty, see myself coming through this without him.
I looked at my watch. It was synchronized as all hell. I looked at Jacques and shot him the thumbs-up, as I had dubbed the gesture. Almost time now.
We watched as the first part of the plan started to unfurl, like a clockwork diagram of a Rube Goldberg machine. As the klaxon sounded, one of our number, a petite little brunette called Flum, exited the line of dreary bodies shuffling by the detention centre.
“If you want a distraction, my friend, a pretty leetle lady in distress is invaluable”, Jacques whispered in my ear. Teetering away from the line, Flum made a show of her feigned illness: a fever that was causing her to shed her overalls and make loud moaning noises. I looked and saw the heads of the guards swivelling toward her theatrics. In the distance, I saw another revolting worker position himself next to the main power relay, spade in hand. The board was set. No going back.
“While zese pigs are busy caring for little Flum and her delicate lady illnesses, we snatch away zere power. Then ve strike.” Jacques whispered in my ear.
Flum had taken to a kneel before the detention centre, laying the back of her hand against her brow and wailing like a gutted wolf. As Jacques had forecast, the guards were closing in on her, abandoning their posts and coming toward the diminutive revolutionary.
“Zat’s right, take care of the preety leetle girl....” Jacques coaxed.
A small semi circle formed around Flum, who had been instructed to keep up the façade until the klaxon had died. When that noise ceased, the power could be cut without drawing unnecessary attention. The man next to the circuit breaker looked uneasy, casting furtive glances at the still-sounding loudspeaker.
We watched Flum. The guards had attempted to ask her what was wrong, but she had only moaned and writhed all the more. The guards looked amongst one another, raised their eyebrows and seemed to come to an unspoken agreement.
“Well, that’s a surprise”, I said to Jacques.
“Most ungentlemanly”, he agreed.
The circle of guards, truncheons in hand, were engaging in a thorough thrashing of Flum, whose loud protestations of pain now sounded far more realistic. She didn’t endure for long though. The klaxon wound down, we looked at the comrade with the spade who, flashing the special sign, raised his spade and hammered the absolute shit out of the circuit box. Time for us to move now. We took off toward the detention centre in a flat run as the lights inside it died and the cameras on the walls drooped like sick flowers.
As we ran, we saw the gaggle of guards swivel toward us, taking a brief moment to stop beating our bait. We didn’t break stride though, as Flum produced a small, dirty jar of industrial mining chemicals and dashed it on a rock next to her as she clamped a rag over her mouth. The abrasive concentrated vapours of the stolen goo affected the tightly knit group of guards as one, and their looks of alarm turned cross eyed and dizzy before they slumped one over the other in a large unconscious pile. Unfortunately for Flum, the guards fell down on her in a big, sleeping heap. It really was a bad day for her.
“Ah had expected zat to have happened in ze medical room. Zese guards are a perverse bunch of sadists”, Jacques hollered as we ran towards the ajar security door that had been disabled by the blackout.
“Never mind Flum! We’ve got bigger dogs to fry right now. You said you had ‘ze answer’ to these dratted cyborg security dogs!”
Right on time, the automated attack hounds had emerged from their steel kennels and were closing in on our position, titanium legs pistoning toward us with laser-guided accuracy. I tried not to look at their hydraulic jaws.
“Trust me, T-Bone!” he called as he reached into his shirt for what I hoped was a powerful secret weapon: an EMP generator maybe, or an encrypted override transmitter. He threw something behind him and seconds later I heard the pursuing steel paws trail away. Fair enough, Jacques, I thought, sorry to have doubted you.
With seconds to spare before the backup generator kicked in and locked us out, we crashed into the security door and jammed it open with a pry bar. Jacques slipped inside and I followed suit, pausing only to cast a glance back at the pack of cy-dogs who, I noted, were frenziedly fighting over a long string of fat brown sausages.
“You wily bastard”, I marvelled aloud.
“Zat was a month’s meat allotment, Ah’ll have you know, now come on!”
We were in.
The building’s heavy official door slammed shut behind us and I glanced at my watch. Right on schedule.
As we waited for the lights to flicker on just inside the entrance, I ran my hands along the walls, looking for weapons or any means of orientation. I grasped onto the handle of what felt like a taser rod. Excellent, but it seemed to be caught on something. I tugged at it, eager to have a weapon to rely on, should things go south but it was stuck in some kind of mechanism. The lights came on inside the centre and I went to unlatch the stun baton from its holder. Curious, I thought, that they keep these in belts and not in a case. Odder still that they keep them attached to the uniforms.
“What are you doing, filth?”
I looked up at the face of a seemingly very unimpressed guard and looked back down to his taser, which I was attempting to wrestle from his belt.
“I’m... the... cleaning lady?” I ventured.
His backhand propelled me through a glass partition and onto the surface of a table, which groaned a little under my weight and then, after a second’s deliberation, collapsed under me, seemingly just to be a bastard. I moaned but looked at my hand. It had miraculously gripped on the handle of the taser and pulled it free. A small victory.
“Jacques! Go! I will handle this fool!” I called as I crawled to my knees, but looking around I could see he had foreseen my words and scarpered to the holding cell early. I looked at my opponent; it was just the two of us now, me with my taser and him looking like a tractor made of angry beef. He looked entirely nonplussed about being called a fool. I sighed and wished I had a string of sausages.
Jacques darted off without a moment’s hesitation, eager to free the hostages, leaving me with a fight on my hands. I took a reluctant step forward and made a mean face.
I closed in on him, sizing the man up. I’d have to think it out, outmanoeuvre the bulky twat. A man of his size would move more slowly, I reasoned; he would be prone to using intimidation and would thus be a little more sluggish. I danced around in front of him, preparing to parry and duck his assaults. Stamina would also be a factor, so if I could keep the brute moving long enough then I might be able to wear him do-
His backhand propelled me through the already broken glass partition and onto the collapsed table. Spots danced before my eyes. Hm. He had outflanked me once more. Then I remembered what Space had always insisted should be the go-to opening move in any confrontation (where I was involved).
Balling myself up in a heap, I let fly my most girlish and squeaking of sobs.
“Pleeease, no more! I’m a haemophiliac! I’m an asthmatic! I need my insulin! Please! I give in, don’t hurt me!”
I heard him close in on me, chortling darkly and crackling his knuckles with a sound like timber splitting. Time to spring the trap. I unfurled myself quickly and took aim in a second, releasing the taser from my hand and watching it tumble end-over-end in the air. It flew straight, it flew true, it flew directly into his scrotum. Passing a jolting stream of electricity into the man by way of his chap, the taser stuck itself to his trouser, fusing with the metal spaver of the jigging newly-minted eunuch all over in a mad genital dance.
I stood over him as he collapsed. “Well, nuts to... I guess you could say your... penis.... No more... chestnuts roasting by a... ach”, I looked around. Nobody to see that, at least. I never knew how Space came up with all of those quips for after he defeated an
enemy. It really was harder than it looked.
Taking no chances, I leapt over a desk and picked up a couple of freshly-charged batons and tucked them into the back of my belt and made for the door at the back.
Skidding outside and past two thrashed guards, I came to the holding cells and found Jacques working at the sturdy lock with his delicate little tools. He shushed me with a gesture, so I stood warily by the door as he worked on the cages, striking poses with my batons and swishing them about a little.
The detention cages were rudely constructed, rusted enclosures that threatened their captives with a heady mix of constriction and tetanus. Limbs poked out of the bars from every conceivable angle; even the roof boasted some flailing legs poking out from it as the captives jostled for space.
Jacques jimmied the lock finally, and with a cranking rusted clack, the door gave way and the revolutionary was swept away in a sea of brittle limbs and moaning. When he untangled himself from the wave of boney flesh, he was clutching his sister. I noticed that despite the entanglement, his clove cigarette was still perched on his lower lip somehow. I had to admit, the man had style.
Jacques rushed over to me, clutching his doe-eyed sister as if afraid to lose her again, standing on a puddle of groaning convicts he slapped me happily on the shoulder.
“Mah friend, you have been instrumental in ze liberation of mah family. Zere were doubts, but I see in you a true revolutionary, a true brozer!” He offered me his hand and I pumped it once and held it there, for a moment overcome in the warm acceptance I had with these unbowed and brave people.
“It is my pleasure, Jacques. But, and I hate to rain on this parade, how are we meant to get out of here now? We can’t go back out there-we’d be spotted instantly!”
I looked around. We were at the back of a smnall secure enclosure. In front of it were a bunch of dozing guards and sated cyber dogs but it could hardly be a fit escape route.
He smiled at me dazzlingly, ready to pull one last surprise out of the bag. “What do we do down here, my brozer? We dig, we mine, we pick at rock and dirt.” He sauntered over to the wall that was pinning us in and gave it a kick. A drift of dirt tumbled out from it, forming a hole that expanded... and expanded. Jacques checked his watch and hollered into the dark passage that was unearthing itself before my eyes, “You are late, you worthless dogs!”
The Court of Crusty Killings: A Captain Space Hardcore Adventure Page 14