Pew! Pew! - Bite My Shiny Metal Pew!

by M. D. Cooper

  “Sweet thought, but I think we can make a bigger statement this time...”

  From a crouching start, I leaped into the air, and came down with both feet on top of the drone’s chassis. It bobbed a little as it adjusted its thrusters to compensate for my added weight, but it stabilised quickly.

  I’d already begun to suspect Puff and Grizabella had made additional adjustments to my body when they reconstructed me in the matter transporter, and the height of that leap proved it.

  A shout sounded from below, a solitary guard left peering at the cannons still spewing energy into the sky. He’d spotted the weirdly robed intruder crouching on a remote starfighter drone on his roof.

  I blinked at another icon. “Take us back. Quick.”

  Blinky launched into a circular flight, slightly jerky at first as it continued to adjust for my weight, but by the time we’d made one loop of the school roof, we were hovering smoothly.

  Pew! Pew! The guard fired a blind volley of energy bolts into the air around us, possibly a warning shot.

  I took a deep breath, and blinked a third time. We shot down towards the guard at a stomach-churning pace, and he blasted away the whole time.

  It was with a sense of sheer disbelief that I found time slowing to a crawl around me as liquid light flowed all around. The guard’s knuckles were white around the trigger of his rifle, and a new bolt of energy was zapping from the barrel.

  With no conscious thought at all, my hands moved to swat his wild shots out of the air as though they were windscreen wipers clearing raindrops.

  Energy beams splashed against my arms, setting the cassock ablaze but bouncing harmlessly from my synthskin-coated flesh. As the drone ate up the distance between us, I saw the guard gulp, shoulder his rifle and fire one last bolt straight at my face before he dived out of the way.

  I stood in one fluid motion, surfing Blinky as I stuck my hand out to block his final shot.

  My right hand.

  The bolt struck me right through the palm where Grizabella had stubbed out countless cigarettes during our abortive training.

  A fine mist of blood and sizzling flesh sprayed from the back of my hand as plasma drilled straight through the limb and out into the night sky.

  I screwed up my eyes against the savage, blinding, excruciating pain of it. And then forced them open again as the drone reacted to the eye movement by hurling us up several hundred feet. Into the cannons’ field of fire.

  “Cheers, mate,” I hissed as car-sized energy bolts flashed around us.

  Blinky lurched hard to the left to dodge one blast, and I took back control, blinking away tears from the throbbing pain in my hand.

  I shifted my footing and leaned forward, sending us into a steep corkscrew dive around the nearest cannon.

  It was probably suicidal, but I was guessing these artillery pieces were automated and none too bright.

  Sure enough, their angle of fire tracked lower and lower as we descended towards our target cannon, barely keeping ahead of the barrage.

  There was a terrifying moment as we circled the cannon’s muzzle, and it pulsed a blast so close to us that Blinky’s final weapons pod dropped off with a shower of sparks. Then we were down on top of the tower, sheltered from the other three cannons by perching behind the fourth.

  “One elephant, two elephant, go!” I blinked and we blasted off in a perfect parabolic arc as all three cannons concentrated their fire on the fourth, which exploded in an angry blossom of fire.

  Shrieking sirens and warnings followed our progress as we hurtled up, over and down towards our goal, laser bolts streaked the sky, and I stood up straight on top of the robot, threw back my head and laughed.

  I surfed Blinky all the way down to the ground, and kept my footing as it skimmed down a residential street which I hoped was just round the corner from the parliament building.

  Finally I hopped off the drone, which coasted to a final halt a few yards away.

  “Go home,” I told it, peeling off the sweat-sodden goggles and dangling them around my neck.

  As I watched Blinky streak back into the sky, dodging significantly fewer energy bolts, I checked my hand. It was still agonising, but the laser or whatever had at least cauterised the wound it had drilled in my limb. It had also left a neat hole I could poke my little finger through.

  I paused, considering the implications if I ever fancied diversifying as a stage magician, and then raised my uninjured hand and flexed my fingers. A chunky memory wafer ejected from the slit in my hand, and I tucked it into the one costume detail Friar Lawrence had been permitted. A small leather pouch had been fixed to my cassock’s cord belt, so I could give Juliet her potion, and it was also lead-lined so I could hide my findings in case I was stopped and scanned on the way back into the venue.

  I rounded the corner, and sure enough, there was the Jargroth parliament building. Result! I prepared to brush off questions about my smouldering robes, blood-stained hand and generally dishevelled state. I’d just pretend it was part of the show, Verona’s bloody backdrop to the lovers’ tale.

  That’s when I spotted the crowds of soldiers spilling from the building, slapping each other’s shoulders, wiping their eyes, and blinking in the cold night air.

  I’d missed the show.

  Chapter 5: Space Jam!

  It didn’t take much effort to find the STI, I just asked the nearest solitary soldier where the nearest pub was. He clapped me on my shoulder and told me I’d performed a ‘well safe, innit’ Prologue, so I obligingly signed his rifle. It was genuinely the nicest fan moment I’d ever experienced, and I was just glad he was too pissed to see how beaten up I was.

  The bar was a pleasantly dingy basement, with a firepit in the middle, and scuttling children refilling tankards from casks around the walls. It stank of exhausted actors, and victory. Each of the low benches around the firepit bore a reclining thespian, and at least half a dozen admiring soldiers, who were all trying not to look too starstruck after one smitten young corporal had tried on Grizabella’s spectacular hat, only to find two grim-faced military policemen marching him off to the punishment block, under the scandalised gaze of an adjutant. Guess there was no room for sharp hats in this glorious revolution. Probably a decadent frippery of the degenerate elite, or something.

  I did my best not to swagger as I wandered in. I made my way over to Puff’s bench, and tossed the leather pouch into the old ham’s lap.

  “I found that old prop you were looking for,” I said, and followed it up with a roguish wink, as I was fairly sure everyone would be too pissed to notice.

  Puff looked up with a sharpness that belied the array of empty glasses arranged over the table that lay more or less before him.

  “That’s the only detail saving your wretched mumming hide, you febrile fustilarian. How dare you miss your cue? You forced poor Kraal to extemporise at length when it came to meeting with Romeo’s trusty old confessor.”

  I was rocked back on my feet under the force of the old luvvie’s withering scorn, but I mugged happily for the soldiers’ benefit anyway. “Gosh, dear old thing, I lost track of time. I rather thought some desperate young understudy might pounce on the chance to jump in and do the piece for me. I do like to cultivate fresh talent.”

  There was a brief pause while Puff’s nostrils flared, which took just long enough for me to register that I was in serious trouble.

  “It just so happens that I carved out a modest name for myself with the part earlier in my own career, and reluctantly trod the boards to deliver the speech one last time, ending with a devilishly subtle final rhetorical flourish.”

  A few of the others were glowering at me now, but I decided my best option was simply to style this out. “Well, I’m delighted I gave you the chance to recapture past glories. Now can I talk to you about… this new play I’m writing?”

  Their dramatic yearnings thoroughly purged by the evening’s entertainment, and now drunkenly indifferent to whomsoever had delivered which sp
ecific elements thereof, the soldiers collectively rolled their eyes at this fresh display of creative vitality, and turned back to their drinks as Puff swept from the bar. I followed with a smirk, and was surprised when a sergeant looked up from his game of dominoes and plucked at my sleeve as I reached the foot of the stairs.

  The man was stocky and red-faced, with piggy bloodshot eyes that spoke of unspeakable nightmares, many of which he’d probably inspired himself. “This play…” he slurred.

  “Um. Yes?” I replied, doing my level best not to squeak with terror.

  The man blinked a couple of times, trying to bring me into focus, or possibly trying to remember what he’d been about to ask. “Does it,” he said eventually, his gruff voice almost plaintive, “does it preserve the unities?”

  A pit yawning in my stomach, I looked around wildly. I was alarmed at the number of faces suddenly pointing in my direction with interest. Though the faces of the STI members were very much tuned for amusement. Bastards.

  The soldier was continuing, though I was giving serious consideration to butchering the man with his own ornamental sword. “The unities are so sadly neglected in contemporary theatre. Take the recent Pinter revival…”

  His drinking partner slumped mournfully in his seat. “Oh! Pinter is gone, quite gone!”

  “Indeed, and it is ever so,” the first grunt continued, waving graciously to his virtually supine comrade. “And they call it modern, well of course they would… but the unities, the unities, sir, ought to be held as sacrosanct. Or what the devil are we poor bastards fighting for?”

  I affected a look of grave concern. “I’m afraid Mr Puff is the fiscal deity before whom I must abase myself in order to get any of my modest scribblings before an audience, and he has some most singular ideas about staging. But rest assured I shall argue most emphatically for the greatest attention to be paid to the, ah, unities.”

  The grizzled critic appeared mollified, and fell back into slurred conversation with his comrade, their dominoes quite forgotten. By the time the door had swung closed behind me, they were discussing the woeful consequences of Brechtian distancing on the unities, and sealing a pact to slit Godot’s throat if they ever tracked him down on the battlefield.

  I took a deep heady breath of cold desert night air, feeling half-pissed just from spending five minutes in that booze-sodden hole. The temperature was well below freezing, and the twin moons blazed across the cloudless night sky in all their splendour.

  Pop!

  I threw myself to the ground even as I recognised the sound of the popping cork for what it was. I spat a mouthful of sand as I looked up. Sure enough, Puff faced me, brandishing a bottle of something fizzy and chilled, judging by the vapour that rose from the bubbling fluid that ran down the bottle’s neck and spattered on to the sandy street.

  “Well, well, you do know what to do in a gunfight, and I’m avenged for your little giggles at my expense. Now, step into my office.”

  Puff tossed the uncorked bottle to me as I scrambled to my feet, and I managed to catch it clumsily by the neck just inches above the ground. The old man smirked at my discomfort, took a long swig from a second open bottle which he’d produced from his cloak, and wandered away towards the ship’s hangar.

  When we reached the bridge of the Peter Hall, Puff headed straight to the science officer’s station, and plugged in the data chip. He waved me vaguely towards the Captain’s chair.

  “I could get used to this,” I sighed, as I sank into the padded seat, and took a long swig from the probably-not-champagne. Bubbles tickled my throat as the sharp ice-cold liquid flowed, but there was a background flavour that suggested Puff was testing the adage that anything will pass for vintage fizz if served cold enough. I set to making sure it didn’t last long enough to warm up and wreck the illusion.

  Puff was making generally approving noises as he scanned through the data, while drinking deeply from his own bottle every few moments.

  “Troop positions, artillery resources, supply line details… this stuff is bloody gold, dear boy.” Puff capped this effusive praise with an explosive belch that he tried only half-heartedly to pass off as an ‘emphatic yawn’ before reaching under the console for a fresh bottle of bubbly.

  “It was a pleasure,” I murmured with a smile, sinking further into the padding and wondering how captains managed to combat the constant temptation to doze off between issuing orders. Perhaps they didn’t, moments of snap decision seemed to be few and far between, from what little I’d seen of interstellar travel so far. A first officer’s duties could reasonably include giving the chap in the chair a discrete nudge every few dozen parsecs or so to get fresh directions.

  “It’s exemplary work, it really ish,” Puff was well-oiled now, but there was a brittle smug edge to his tone that woke me up in a moment. “It’s just a shame you’ve reported the movements for the wrong army.”

  A long silence rolled over the bridge, and made itself comfortable. I cleared his throat, found it suddenly awfully dry, glugged down the dregs of my bottle of bubbly, and tried again.

  “Wrong… army? Hahahaha.”

  The silence was now one-sided, but Puff showed no sign of breaking it, glowering balefully at me through his one eye, which was admittedly now bloodshot, half-closed, and distinctly unfocused.

  “Getting almost a bit nervous now, ahahahaha,” I added, but the confident chuckle now sounded dry and desperate even to my own ears. I suddenly realised what a great Polonius the old man would make, at the exact same moment as I also inwardly resolved never to breathe a word of that thought to him. “You should probably qualify that kind of statement.”

  “Well, dear boy, I’m not sure there’s much to qualify. We land in a besieged city on the eve of battle, to give our acclaimed interpretation of Romeo and Juliet. Under cover of which you’re dispatched to collate details of our host’s numbers, resources, and probably medium-term intentions for sale via a suitably shady and disreputable agency. You very much appear to have collated these details for the wrong army. What in the name of bedevilled stoat-fuckery does that suggest to you?”

  I felt my cheeks prickling with the first heralds of intoxication, or possibly even shame. It was hard to tell; they both usually came along around the same time, and tended to bleed into each other. “Ah. Given that we are indeed billeted in, as you say, a besieged city, is it within the realms of possibility that I may have strayed across enemy lines?”

  Puff nodded, curtly. “Aye, lad. After we landed with great pomp and circumstance and gave the performance of our careers to a carefully-bribed theatre of passionate insurgents, right next to their command base which had been left completely defenceless thanks to a maintenance crew who we’d paid handsomely to take a sudden yet passionate interest in the arts. You somehow decided to eschew the open goal of military intelligence that lay before you, and instead took it on yourself to wander through several miles of radiation-charred suburbia in order to impregnate the opposing force’s citadel. No wonder you missed your damn cue!”

  He was still talking, and hadn’t shot me. So this was obviously not the end of the world. “So what do we do?”

  The old actor bounced from his chair as though he hadn’t just knocked back an entire bottle of sparkling wine in less than five minutes, and made for the door. “We get everyone back on board and into orbit, just as we planned. We were only in that pub waiting for news of you. As far as we know, that offensive’s still scheduled.”

  I remembered hovertrucks careering from the compound in search of an unseen and indeed non-existent sniper. “We might be all right there. I sent a good chunk of their army in a bit of a wild goose chase.”

  Puff raised an eyebrow as he stepped out into the corridors. “That’s... all right, that’s quite good. But you still robbed the wrong army, so don’t think you’re off the useless dickhead charts just yet. And there’s still Harkreth. He won’t have been fooled.”

  We hurried along the plush red-carpeted corridor,
the gaping hole in the hull now firmly patched with a new photo of Rory Kinnear. “It was an accidental wild goose chase, he might have been fooled by a cock-up?”

  “Oh, I wish you’d learn when to stop digging, dear heart.”

  We hurried together down the saucer’s ramp, only to see Kraal, Grizabella and Gielgud scurrying across the vast hangar floor towards us. “Don’t you dare finish that fizz without us,” Griz called, beaming.

  “You can pry this bottle from my cold dead fingers, you alcoholic vultures,” the old man boomed genially, “or you can open up the stash under the stage in the rehearsal studio. But only, and Daddy must insist here, after you do the quickest prep for take-off. How does that sound, my delightfully deranged angel of death?”

  Bugger me if Grizabella didn’t actually purr at that, and give the old man a peck on the cheek as she scampered up the ramp. “Making it hot right now, Captain Bird’s Eye,” she called over her shoulder.

  “I’ll find the glasses,” mumbled Kraal as he and Gielgud followed fast behind.

  I made to follow them, but Puff stopped me with a surprisingly gentle hand on the remains of my scratchy sleeve. “The set, the props, our lovely costumes...” He looked genuinely agonised, his eyes darting between the ramp and the hangar doors. “I suppose...”

  “There’s two pissed-off armies out there, Puff. Leave the inventory to the local am dram or something, and come back for it when their war’s over.”

  He nodded, but put a hand to his brow and groaned a bit as he did so, which was frankly a bit much even for me. “You’re right, dear boy, you’re right, even though it’s all your fault, you’re right. Let’s...”

  He was turning to leave when, with a faint but decidedly sinister whine, the hangar’s lights flickered, and a squadron of Jargroth imperial troops stepped through their concealment fields, encased from head to foot in glossy black armour, and bristling with unpleasant-looking weaponry.

  Their leader stepped forward and flipped the visor up from his helmet to reveal a pinched face covered in a fine lattice of scars. “You dicked us, Puff?” he growled, brandishing his rifle.