by RyFT Brand
of his three complex nerve plexuses.
This was the most evil, most tortuous, and most diabolical chamber in the entire universe, and I should know, because I’d made the most evil, most tortuous, and most diabolical chamber in the universe prior to the creation of this one.
But who was more dedicated to causing pain than PeeDee3? This was way beyond any Fredifice’s ability. He had someone else working for him, a pro, someone truly a challenge, and I wasn’t sure, for the first time in ages, that I was up to it, but I aimed to find out.
I wouldn’t last much longer, I had to act fast.
Fumbling with my shaking claws, I drew the bowling ball cannon. The familiar sound of its vacuum generator soothed my aching ears. I fired. In a bellow of shrieks and a shower of raining glass, the big mirrored ball crashed to the flashing-light floor.
Then the music, and the dancing, ceased and several hundred eyes turned to me, eyes that looked scared, and well they should. I was fed up with this planet and ready to be off world no matter who was in my way and no matter how bad their taste in clothes was.
“All right you sick, demented, dancers of disco, give up the Fredifice and you’ll all expire quickly…some maybe even painlessly.”
With a bevy of screams that were truly music to my ears, most of the crowd stampeded out the doors. What remained dived to the floor, ducked under tables, or hid behind the curtains with just their high-heel clogs sticking out.
They’d heard of me. Good.
Then a tall dame leaning back against the bar caught a few thousand of my retinas. And go figure, she was look’n back. Sporting a silky smile, she sashayed toward me, swirling her drink fast enough to make the worm inside it dizzy. She swung her sultry hips in a hypnotic sway powered by muscles that looked like they could beat the band all night long. She was succulent, and ripe, and ready for the picking. Her skin shimmered with a lavender luster and she had this short green haircut that said ‘sassy’ when it caught the ventilator draft. She was one hot eggplant and I was in the mood to sprinkle her with PeeDee3’s special parmesan.
“Hey there tall, brown, and buggy, what brings a villain like you to a swing joint like this?” she said in a deep, smoky tone.
I tipped my fedora back as far as the antennas passing though it would allow and gave her complex form a good going over with my complex eyes. “I’d say you did sprout, but you wouldn’t believe me, would you?”
“Nah,” she said, bending one of her thin, green legs, showing off the corvette red pump stuck to the end of her stem. “But I don’t really care why you came, as long as you’re here.”
That last line triggered my bullfrass nerve. Not many dames are happy to see me, not unless they had a bunch’a dough and wanted someone dead. I slid the fedora forward and cracked open my ocelli, literally the eye in the back of my head. Sure enough a little twerp brandishing a shock-rod was creeping up behind me.
I was getting board anyway.
The dame looked me over, running a purple tongue over her ruby-red lips. “What do you say we go someplace a little more private?”
“Sure doll,” I said, keeping the rear eye locked on the little twerp. “Right after I deal with the bird-brain you’re distracting me from.”
“What?” Her big mouth dropped open, but too late for her shout to do any good. Her pal stepped just in range with the stick. I spun and took it from him. His stout beak let out a terrified squeal. He spun on his twiggy bird feet and made a run for the exit with his wings flapping.
The stick’s probe was already charged so I turned it in my claw and tossed it javelin style. I was aiming between his stubby wings, the flightless jerk, but my aim was a little low.
“Aieeeeee!” he squawked, dropped to the floor, and then began to quiver and quake with the jolt of ten thousand volts.
Too bad those feather clad twerps never took to wearing pants; a pair might have saved this one an embarrassing episode. I’d have throttled him and made him chirp, but he’d be in no state to sing for a while. Besides, I had a better source close at claw.
I watched her creeping away. Dope. Kacekans’ complex eyes can see in a two-hundred and ninety degree arc, and that’s without the primitive eye in the backs of our heads. I grabbed her by her thick neck with the upper left claw. “All right eggplant, give up the game.”
“Oww,” she squirmed in my grip. “Name’s Kayellenbellendefellennertell.
If I had eyelids they’ve been blinking with confusion. “That ain’t gonna work for me sweetheart.”
She was gasping for breath, her puffing cheeks turning a deeper shade of violet, and struggled to croak out the words. “Friends call me Kay.”
“What do your enemies call you?” I eased my grip on her throat as I’d made my point.
She drew a deep, shuttering breath. “You can call me Kay Tell bug.”
“Everyone’s gonna call you deep fried and breaded if you don’t start to sing baby.”
All at once the screams, cries, and whispers in the room went silent. “You wanna let her go bug,” this deep voice with a southern draw spoke from the ether.
“No, I really don’t,” I said as I tightened my grip.
Her mouth flapped like a prickle fish out of water and she pulled uselessly at my claw.
“Yeah, bro, you really do.” For a time everything was quiet, dead quiet. Then I heard this subtle guitar, twangy and wavy, seeping out of the speakers. A bright spotlight clicked on and shined down on this human form in silhouette. He had one knee bent and one hand pointing high overhead. Then the worst of my fears came to pass. The silence was broken by an explosion of bass, drum, and guitar that could only be described as disco.
This was going to hurt.
Along with the music, all the other lights sprang to life, illuminating my adversary in an array of flashing and swirling colors. But it wasn’t a Fredifice, it was a human; tall for his species, and sporting a white cowboy hat and matching boots. He started strutting toward me with deep strides of his long legs. His big collard shirt sparkled and shimmered with ten-thousand glittering rhinestones, and his jeans were tight as a drum to his obviously cybernetic legs. He spun a long, gold chain in one of his cybernetic hands and had a dangerous glint in his McBiotronic eyes.
He was more dancing machine than man and I could tell by the way he used his walk that I was in for a world of hurt.
The creep was truck’n toward me and I needed to act and act fast, my Kacekan ears wouldn’t stand for much more of this abuse. I shoved the dame aside and drew my toad sticker and the Oric 3000.
Wouldn’t you know the broad started to laugh?
“What’s so funny twiggy gams?”
“You can’t win this one bug, that’s Convoy Shasta Badself, he’s the best damn hit-man there is.”
“No he isn’t,” I said, my eyes trained on the mostly artificial man crossing the brightly lit dance floor. “He can’t be because I’m still breathing.”
I cocked the bowling ball cannon with the lower claw. The vacuum generator whirred to life, quickly building that devastating pressure that made Orik infamous—and eventually dead. But this dancing fool was about to join him.
I let him reach the middle of the floor then I drew aim and pulled the trigger. With a shoulder-cracking woomp, the cannon fired. A twelve-pound bowling ball careened through the air; right on target for a meeting with the wrinkled human’s head.
Man, I wish moments like this could last forever.
But just as I’m expecting the sweet sound of crushing bones to overpower the driving bass line, Convoy spun in a short sequence of crazy disco moves then froze in position with one leg back and an extended finger pointing high in the air. The bowling ball missed his head by a fraction of a mega-micron and nearly hit a platoon of humans in some ancient military garb, dusty blue jackets and matching, square edged caps. Before I could ponder where they hell they’d come from they started blasting me with black powder rifles. Smoke drifted all about and little lead balls bounced harmlessly of
f my thick, exoskeleton.
“Please,” I said, raising the cannon and chambering the seventeen pound load. “At least pose a threat.”
One of the uniformed humans, this one with gold epaulets, pointed a sword in the air and exclaimed, “Fire!” I heard a loud boom, saw a plume of smoke and smelled burning sulfur. Something the size of a bowling ball slammed into my thorax. “Yeeow!” I flew backward, reeling in some serious pain, and slammed into a wall. Me and a thousand slivers of brightly colored glass rained onto the floor and the room grew a little darker.
Be careful what you ask for, the queen use to say right before consuming her latest husband.
“Ugggh,” with a grunt, I shakily forced myself to my feet, bits of the colored glass slid off me and tinkled to the floor. I was essentially still in one piece, but my armor’s structural integrity had been seriously compromised. I had a cannonball sized dent in my chest plate, and smoke drifted out of a hundred tiny fractures from everywhere else. The human platoon was gone, vanished back though the temporal fracture, but Mr. Badself was dancing up a storm across the floor. The crowd was clapping and whistling and whinnying, cheering him on. He extended an arm toward me, curling a finger again and again. He was calling me out, and I wasn’t one to run from a fight. I dropped the fedora on the floor and peeled out of the trench coat; I was going to need to be unrestricted for this.
Convoy Shasta Badself wove an arm sinuously overhead, peeling