by RyFT Brand
off his shimmering cowboy hat, and then tossed it discus style to a fluttery trollop who got a little winded just by holding it.
Gods, I wanted to puke.
I sauntered to the floor, watching all around, dressed only in my battle tunic. No, more Mr. Nice Bug. I snatched a Leggs grenade off my bandolier—I loved those big egg shaped smart-bombs—set the timer and threw. It didn’t matter how well this guy could prance, posture, and spin, the Legg’s grenade would catch him in the end, they always did.
Just as I threw, Convoy made three successive spins then slid to the floor in a split with one hand clutching the end of the white silk scarf around his neck. The grenade sailed over his head and was caught by a guy in brightly colored tights hanging upside down from a high-wire trapeze. He dropped it. Three colorful clowns below him were racing about holding a little, round trampoline, and nearly collided into a whip wielding lion-tamer in a safari suit. The grenade bounced off the trampoline and headed straight for me.
Have I mentioned how much I hated this planet recently?
I turned and made a break for it.
Fat chance.
I heard the grenade hit the floor. It extended its long, thin black legs, and then started looking for a target. What it saw was me.
With a little gleeful jump, it ran after me.
I was already moving, weaving around several spectators, who screamed and scampered about, trying to avoid me and the pursuing grenade. If I got lucky they’d confuse the Leggs grenade. They didn’t; it was still on my tail. There’s nothing these things like more than to blow up, but first they have to hit their target. I dove over the bar and landed side by side with the big eggplant.
“Oh no, you idiot!” she screamed and bolted. I grabbed her delicate ankle and she dropped to the floor. “Ouch!” I leapt and landed on top of her, pinning her down. “Let me go you maniac, it’ll blow us both to Kaymart-come!”
“Yeah I know.” I checked the timer on my wrist. “I figure you got another ten micro-dosabits until it finds me. So what gives?”
Her eyes trembled as she looked for the grenade behind me. “Convoy’s the best dancer there is, ever was; he’s the last living human from the sacred seventies.”
“Impossible,” I muttered.
“No, really. He got pulled through in a time vortex decades ago. But instead of being pulled back to his time, he stabilized and has been here ever since.”
“Human’s have exceptionally short lifespans, and most of them don’t live to see the end; they’re delicate and squishy. Believe me, I know.”
She shook her head as much as her thick neck would allow and kept looking past me with trembling eyes. “He keeps updating himself with cybernetic implants. He’ll never die.”
“I’ve killed, and eaten, a lot of cyborgs in my day sunshine, how’s this guy different?”
“He’s…he’s…” she was stammering, keeping her peepers peeled for the grenade. “He’s the only one that can do it.”
“Do what damn it?”
“He can dance around the temporal gaps, he can disco around, over, and though time.”
I had more questions but my time had run out. I saw the grenade peek around the corner. It got so excited to see me that it jumped a full meter straight up in a state of pure joy then ran for me. I leapt to my feet and tossed the sultry eggplant at it; what a waste of food, then leapt over the bar.
The disco man was right in my mandibles, waiting for me. He snapped his fingers then spun in three tight turns. As he did a bevy of arrows flew past him and straight my way. One of them stuck in my cracked thorax plating. I started to gag, barely able to breathe, but I still made a grab for Convoy. He hustled out of reach with a sultry kind of pout displayed on the LED screen he had for a face. I was easy prey to this guy; or so he thought.
A bunch of red-skinned humans riding four-hoofed animals charged toward me, whooping and hollering, arrows flying. Their faces were painted and they had feathers attached to their heads.
I was getting tired of running, really tired.
Still struggling to breathe, I drew the weapons I still had at hand, and fired them all, moving steadily toward the mounted warriors. I fired the triple barrel shotgun/rifle, empting all the chambers, let the leaders have it with my sonic-visionizer, and tossed a bevy of manstuff flaccidator spears at the same time. How do beings expect fight with just two arms?
Humans and horses alike dropped to the light-flashing checkered floor, some screaming, some dead. I’d love to have stayed and enjoyed the dining, but I still had a Leggs hot on my trail.
I ripped the arrow from my thorax. I could breathe again but I’d also started leaking life fluid, the acidic black goo began dissolving my tunic. I was running out of time on the one rock that had too much damned time.
I hopped off the stage and ran into a crowd ogling the master as he danced. So entranced by his slick style were they, that they didn’t see me coming until I was in arm’s reach.
I grabbed the biggest guy I saw, a muscle bound mussel with a breathing aquifier mask, and threw him to the floor. “Hey, cool-it man!” he gurgled, bubbles rising in the glass cover of his aquifier.
I didn’t. Within a few heartsbeats I had him in my fedora and trench coat.
“Not cool, Toni. These threads got no soul man,” he said as I dragged him to his foot—like this polyester-clad urchin had the right to criticize my taste.
I snapped two branches off a potted palm by the door, stuck them in the holes in my fedora, and, with a well placed foot to his squishy ass, shoved him stumbling toward the dance floor. “Time to shake your groove thing, mollusk.”
“Hey, man, come on,” he gargled out as he stumped to a stop on his big, slimy foot.
The grenade spotted my doppelganger and raced for him. “Wow, that’s like the biggest, whitest Easter egg I’ve ever seen, it’s totally sheen, man” the dope managed to say before the Leggs leapt up and swan dived inside the coat. An instant later and he exploded into little smoky slivers that made me wish I had a bed of pasta and pesto. I would miss that coat though.
Oh well, first things first.
I shoot back to the dance floor. Mr. Badself was getting up, getting down, and boggeying. “Nice moves bug,” he said in that thick drawl that gave me the shivers. “But how about this one?” With a change in the music’s tempo he broke out into some, dare I say, slick moves. But something looked familiar in that language he was strutting. It read, fifty dosados south, one-fifty north-west, and a dosido back home.
That was it—that was why I’d hated this stuff so much. Disco dancing was actually based on the language of my ancient ancestors. Disco was bee-speak, a language I knew well.
As he turned in a fast series of sliding back steps, a chariot mounted Roman legion charged out from behind him.
But I knew the response. I’d had to perform it many times on watch as my hive still practiced the ancient language because no other race had ever managed to translate it. “Care to dance, squat, big-bottomed, and purple?” I didn’t give the broad a chance. I grabbed the eggplant’s hand and dragged her onto the floor.
“Ahhhh,” she screamed, but I lead her into a spin. I danced it out, shaking my ass like a returning fight-wasp, dosido north, six-hundred doo-das east, flowers to the west, pollen to the south.
The Romans vanished as fast ad they’d appeared as the time vortex snapped closed. I left the eggplant in a fast spin, then caught her hand and brought her to a stop. She swooned, the crowd cheered, and Convoy Shasta Badself scowled.
Surprised but determined, he stared at me, his breath wheezing in and out thorough a Tetramin dual diaphragm air-pump that sounded like it hadn’t been oiled in a while. With a snap of hydraulic fingers the music changed again. This song had a crazy-fast tempo snare drum rhythm. He broke into a series of dance moves that left the crowd aghast with envy.
Child’s play; every pupa knew the, attack the other hive, take all food, destroy the cells, and leave none living, dance. “Sorry doll
, this one’s a solo.”
She batted her thick, black lashes. “Sure thing PeeDee3, what ever you say.”
I hit the floor and moved though the sequence as it was meant to be danced—with six appendages. As I did I saw the gaps in time, dinosaurs in the cross step, fighter jets on the turn, and hover cars in the shimmy-back. I had this cat’s number.
I stopped in his face, my complex eyes glairing down at his bi-focal camera-lenses. “You ready to get down yet, Badself?”
A half smile crept up the side of his artificially wrinkled face. “You know I am Kacekan.” That said he stepped back and drew a tube of hair jell from the pocket of his denim jacket. I followed him but he dropped the tube on the floor, and then smashed it down with the heel of his pointy-toed boot.
Jell spurted out, heavily coating the floor and my feet. My claws lost all traction and sent me sliding across the glass floor. I tumbled down in a heap of tangled limbs.
There was no standing on that slippery floor. I scrambled around with my claws, searching for a hold. Then I hit something hard and familiar and I smiled inside, honest I did.
Bracing myself as best as I could with the lower claws, I reached up and drew the Oric 3000 level with the floor. But Badself was hustling across the floor in a fresh set of steps even I found hard to read. A gap opened up in time and a mechanical-bucking bull rocket slid out. He’d obviously had it lying in wait.
Frass.
He tipped his glittering ten-liter hat. “I