"I'm broke," Riff said. "I had some cash stuffed into my mattress back home, but I ain't going back there now, not with the Cosmians skulking about. Steel, what have you got on you?"
The knight raised his chin. "A knight seeks not monetary compensation."
Riff groaned. "In other words, you're broke too." He turned toward Nova, then winced to see the rage blazing in her green eyes.
"No," she said.
"What?" Riff raised his hands.
"I know what you're going to ask me, and no." Nova squared her shoulders. "First of all, I'm not using my credit card again, not after the last purchase brought the Cosmians down on us. And even if I did have cash on me, I'm not buying you a spaceship. You want a ship? Barter for it."
Riff sighed. His shoulders slumped, and he caressed the golden motorbike. "Very well. As much as I'd hate to sell your bike, I—"
Nova grabbed his collar, twisted it, and sneered at him. "Your guitar, your idiot!"
He bristled. "My Dora?" He pulled the guitar to his chest and hugged it. "My baby? She's signed by Bootstrap and the Shoeshine Kid! Legendary blues duo! You know what this guitar is worth?"
Leroy stepped forth, joining the huddle. "About ten thousand credits, I'd say." The greasy man grinned. "Love me some B and the SK. Saw them play about ten years back. Used to play some licks myself." He reached grubby fingers toward the guitar. "Mind if I take a look?"
"Yes, I do mind!" Riff stepped back, hugging the guitar close. "This . . . this guitar is . . . is like a child to me." He turned toward Nova. "You don't understand, Nova. After my mother died, I was in so much pain. So angry and scared. But I still had blues music. When I was older, when I was drunk, when I was alone and living in that piss-stain of a club . . . I still had music. No matter what happened in my life, I could always listen to Bootstrap and the Shoeshine Kid. No matter how alone I felt, how afraid I was, how dark life seemed, I always had their music. When I finally got them to sign my guitar, well . . . it felt like having a baby. It felt like something that could bring me light and joy forever." He lowered his head. "Selling this guitar would feel like selling a child."
They all stared at him, silent.
Nova stepped forward.
She grabbed his ear, twisted it, and shouted, "Riff, you are going to sell that guitar! Do you understand me?"
"Ow! Let go! God!" Riff pried her fingers loose. "Fine! I'll sell the damn thing. But you owe me one. A big one. A trip to see Bootstrap the next place he plays, and backstage tickets too."
She rolled her eyes. "Deal. Now give the nice greasy man the guitar, and let's choose a spaceship."
Riff closed his eyes. He clenched his jaw. He held out his guitar, eyes screwed shut, unable to even look as Leroy took the precious treasure away.
"I'll . . . I'll give her a good home," Leroy said, voice scratchy. For the first time, the man seemed genuine. "I won't play her or nothing. Maybe someday you can buy her back."
Riff opened his eyes and nodded. It was hard to speak. "What starship can this buy us?"
Leroy cleared his throat and scratched himself. "Well, see there . . . guitar like that, even with those signatures, is worth ten thousand credits maybe. Not enough for most of the larger starships. But that's all right!" The grin returned to his face. "You don't want a ship that's too large anyway. Fuel guzzlers, they are. I offer you: The HMS Dragon Huntress!" He pointed at the rusty old dragon that rested in the yard.
Nova raised an eyebrow. "That's a starship?"
Leroy shrugged. "Eh, kind of. Used to be part of those Monster Ship shows up around the moon. You know the ones? The dragon used to grab smaller starjets and roast them with fire. Crowd loved it. A few years ago, some guy souped up her engines, ran a small alien pest control business with her, flying around to catch critters on the colonies. She's a good ship."
Nova growled and unfurled her whip. "If she's a good ship, why are you swapping her for a damn guitar? Why not charge a hundred thousand credits like your other ship?"
Leroy tapped ash off his cigar. "Well, I'll be honest with you. There's some folks that claim the Dragon Huntress is, well, possessed."
"Possessed?" Nova repeated.
Leroy nodded. "By a demon."
"A demon?" Nova groaned and tugged her hair.
Leroy puffed on his cigar. "Well, you know folks. They can be superstitious. Claim they hear clanking in the loft. Probably just a family of possums, but rumors of demon possessions spread, and well . . . nobody wants to buy her. Been sitting here on the lot for a year now. But if you're sensible folks, and if you don't believe in demons, she's a steal. A beauty too. Go on, take a look inside!" Leroy patted his new guitar. "I'll go put this baby in a safe place."
Feeling like a part of him was missing, Riff stepped toward the giant mechanical dragon. Flecks of paint hung off its facades. The words "HMS Dragon Huntress" appeared on its hull, and smaller letters underneath spelled, "Alien Hunters Inc." The bridge seemed to be located in the dragon's head, but the glass panes were too dusty to be sure.
"It's a piece of junk," Nova said.
Riff nodded. "It's a cool piece of junk."
Steel tapped one of the ship's wings. He frowned. "A knight should slay dragons, not fly within them."
Riff found a hatch, yanked a lever, and tugged it open. A staircase unfolded, leading up into the shadowy interior.
"Let's take a look," Riff said. He climbed up the stairs, entering the belly of the beast, little knowing that it would be many days before he emerged.
CHAPTER EIGHT:
IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
Riff climbed the last metal step, opened a second door, and entered the belly of the HMS Dragon Huntress.
He found himself in the strangest ship he'd ever seen.
The main deck was about the size of a typical house's living room. Two couches stood against the walls, topped with a few stuffed animals. A board of counter-squares stood on a table, the pieces arranged in mid-game. A goldfish swam in a bowl, and a dartboard hung on a wall. For a moment, Riff wasn't sure if he'd stepped into a starship or somebody's home.
"It's . . . cozy," he said.
Nova entered the starship and stood beside him. She frowned. "Where are the weapons? Starships need weapons. Where are the racks of guns?"
Steel entered next and looked around. His frown deepened, and he stroked his mustache. "A knight has no use for stuffed animals or dartboards."
Footsteps thumped deep within the ship. A voice rumbled. A hatch opened in the floor beside one of the couches. Riff's eyes widened. One of the strangest creatures he had ever seen climbed through the trapdoor and into the living quarters.
"Hello there!" said the creature, voice deep and raspy. "Welcome, welcome to the HMS Dragon Huntress! That's HMS for Humanoid Mercenary Starship, in case you were wondering. We bow to no Her or His Majesty here."
Riff blinked.
"What is it?" Nova whispered, leaning closer toward him.
"A gruffle!" he whispered back from the corner of his mouth. "Don't stare."
Riff thought back to his history lessons. Thousands of years ago, when humans first spread across the stars, a group of miners had built a colony on the massive, rocky planet of Gruffstone, far in the Tauros system. The planet was several times the size of Earth, its gravity immense. Over the generations, the settlers had evolved to match the harsh conditions. They got shorter, the gravity pulling them down, and far more muscular than humans back on Earth. Their low stature, wide girth, and sheer strength let them survive on a giant rock the size of several Earths. Like Nova's people, the ashais, the gruffles evolved into a subspecies of humanity: Homo sapiens gruffian.
This particular gruffle stood a couple of inches shy of five feet, and he was almost as wide as tall. His arms and legs were all thick muscle. His chest was like a truck. He wore brown leather studded with iron bolts, and his skin was the same chestnut brown. A massive hammer hung across his back, and a luxurious white beard flowed down to his belt.
"My name is Piston Bergelgruf!" the gruffle said, reaching out a hand that looked able to crush granite. "Just call me Piston. No need for Mr. Bergelgruf here. I'm the engineer on this ship."
Riff took the oversized hand and shook it, then winced as Piston nearly crushed his finger bones in his mighty grip.
"The engineer?" Riff asked after introducing himself and his companions. "You . . . don't work for Leroy?"
Piston's bushy white eyebrows rose. "Work for a used starship lot? Laddie, I work for only one place. Alien Hunters Inc. The little business we got going here on the HMS Dragon Huntress. At least until the last owner sold it."
Riff looked around the main deck. "Alien Hunters?"
Piston snorted and flopped down onto a couch with a groan. "Aye, it's a small alien control business. We mostly would handle little cosmic critters. Rigelian tunnel worms. Fuzzy Centaurian rodents. That kind of stuff. You know, the sort of aliens that clog up a ship's engines or a space station's plumbing. We had to trap a Taurian digger once, and that was nasty business." The gruffle grumbled. "Not many people last long in the alien hunting business, I can tell you. The previous owner only lasted a year on this ship. So did the owner before him. And the one before that . . . oh gods of granite, he only lasted about three months before selling it all." Piston grinned. "Glad to have new owners on board! Hope you fare better than the past seven."
"Wait a minute!" Nova said, stepping toward the squat gruffle. "Listen here, Piston. We're not buying any exterminator business here. We're only buying a starship."
Piston raised his eyebrows again. "Lassie, the business comes with the starship. So do its employees."
"Its . . . employees?" Riff asked. His heart sank.
Piston nodded and thumped his foot against the floor. "Twig! Twig, damn you! Come up and say hello to our new owners." His voice rose louder. "Twig! Damn it, get your little butt up here."
A clanking ruckus sounded from the lower deck. A voice cried out in dismay. Footsteps padded.
"Twig!" Piston shouted again.
The voice cried up from below, "Piston, I lost my wrench in the engine again! And there's cobwebs growing in the cooling coils, and—" A head popped out of the hatch in the floor. "Oh! Hello."
A second little person climbed out of the hatch into the main deck.
Twig was even shorter than Piston; she couldn't have stood taller than 3'5". While Piston was wide and muscular, Twig was slender as a sapling. Her skin was pale, her hair long and black, her eyes bright and blue. She wore cargo pants, a white shirt, and a tool belt from which hung wrenches and screwdrivers. She grinned, displaying bright teeth.
She's a halfling, Riff realized. Long ago, her people had immigrated to a small, peaceful planet called Haven. The gravity was weak, the land scarce, and slowly the people of Haven had shrunk to diminutive size. Even fully grown, they were now no larger than human children.
"Twiggle Jauntyfoot, at your service!" The little woman reached out a small hand for Riff and the others to shake. "Chief mechanic of the HMS Dragon Huntress."
"Assistant mechanic," Piston corrected her.
Twig placed her hands on her hips. "You're the engineer. I'm the mechanic. And since I'm the only mechanic here, that makes me the chief one. Got it?"
Piston growled. "Chief mechanics don't keep dropping their wrenches into the engines! Now go unclog them! I swear, it's a wonder this ship hasn't fallen apart with you messing about down there."
Twig blew him a raspberry, then hopped back into the hatch and vanished.
Steel stepped toward Piston and spoke for the first time. "The used ship salesman told us the Dragon Huntress has been idling on the lot for a year now. Have you and Twig been living here for a year?"
Piston nodded, pulled out a pipe, and began to smoke. "Aye, laddie. Best place to live, this ship. It's comfortable once you get used to Twig dropping and breaking things."
Riff glanced up at the ceiling. He could see another hatch there, leading toward an upper deck. A heavy padlock secured that hatch shut. "Leroy told us the ship's possessed. By a demon in the attic."
Piston snorted. "Oh, you can ignore that one. Problem's under control." He leaped off the couch. "Come on! Let me give you the grand tour."
The gruffle lolloped across the main deck, boots thumping, and opened a doorway. He led them into a corridor lined with other rooms.
"This here's the captain's quarters. Nice bed and desk there, as you can see. Fancy stuff. And here's the crew quarters." He pointed into a room containing three bunk beds. "Bit more crowded but comfortable enough. Here's the washroom—decent enough shower when it works—and here's my favorite room, the kitchen." He laughed and patted his belly.
Walking through the ship, Steel pointed at a doorway. Within lay a round chamber with two seats, its windows gazing out upon the weedy yard. "What's this place?"
"Ah!" Piston grew somber. "That there's the escape pod. If the ship's ever shot out of space, this pod will take you to safety. Can survive a fall through the atmosphere, if you need to make it down to a planet in a pinch. Hope we never have to use it." The gruffle shuddered and closed the door. "Moving right along . . ."
Piston hurried up a staircase—it seemed to run up the dragon's neck—and into another chamber.
"And here, my friends, is the bridge!" Piston announced. "The central hub of command. The brains of the ship. The—" He cleared his throat and tugged down some cobwebs. "Excuse the mess. We haven't been up here much in the past year."
Riff entered the bridge and looked around.
He was standing inside the dragon's head. Panes of glass afforded a very dusty view of the outside world; Riff could make out little more than smudges. Three plush, suede armchairs stood before a plethora of control panels. Buttons, joysticks, monitors, and throttles covered the place, and a hula dancer bobblehead stood on the dashboard.
In the center of the bridge stood a woman.
"Konnichiwa!" she said, pressed her hands together, and bowed.
Riff blinked.
The young woman wore a blue kimono, and her smooth black hair fell down to her chin. Her accent and appearance harkened back to Japan, one of the provinces of United Earth, once an independent empire.
"This here is Giga." Piston stepped toward the young Japanese woman and kicked her. "Useless piece of junk."
"Hey, wait a minute!" Riff said, racing forward. Steel drew his sword. Nova raised her whip. All three growled at Piston, prepared to fight.
"Whoa, whoa, hold your horses, lads!" Piston said, raising his hands. "She ain't real. Can't feel a thing. An android, she is. Rather a useless one too." He kicked Giga again. A metallic twang filled the bridge.
Giga smiled and bowed her head again. "I am Giga. Happy to comply!"
Riff sighed and leaned against the wall. "So the ship comes with an android."
Piston scratched his beard. "Well, technically, Giga here is the ship. She's what they call an HI. Human interface. They were a fad back when the Dragon Huntress was built. See all these control panels?" Piston gestured at them. "Complicated stuff. Too many buttons and gizmos and doohickeys. So they built Giga. You tell her what the ship needs to do, and she'll make it happen. Think of her as a sort of complicated mouse or keyboard."
Steel stepped closer, his sword still drawn. "You will not refer to this damsel as a piece of hardware."
Giga turned toward the knight, still smiling sweetly. A scent of jasmine rose from her, and her silken kimono rustled softly. "But I am hardware, sir! I am Giga. Happy to comply!"
Riff frowned. "I've heard of human interfaces before." He turned toward Piston. "Most are metallic butlers. Not very realistic looking. Giga, well . . . she looks so human."
Piston nodded. "Aye, laddie. Whoever built this ship thought she'd be a friendlier face than a metal man. Thought she'd help reduce stress. If you ask me, she's as big a source of stress as Twig down in the eng
ine room. Always malfunctioning, our poor Giga is."
Giga tilted her head. "Some orders are . . . hard to compute."
Riff turned back toward the android. "Giga, show me your stuff. Can you play any music?"
The android smiled again and nodded. "Yes, sir! My databases contain a full library of the classics: Mozart, Beethoven, Michael Bolton—"
"Do you have any blues?" Riff asked.
She nodded again. "Yes, sir! All the classic blues masters. Half Full Freddy. The Squeaky Newsboys. Old Gin Jackson. Gristle G—"
"Got any Bootstrap and the Shoeshine Kid?" Riff asked.
Giga frowned and tilted her head. "Cannot compute."
Riff groaned. "Gods. You got a cyberspace connection on this thing? Download some B and SK. Play me something."
"Happy to comply!" Giga closed her eyes and seemed to think for a moment. Metallic sounds rose from within her. When she opened her eyes again, the sweet sounds of Bootstrap's guitar filled the ship, accompanied by the Kid's ivory tickling.
Riff stepped toward one of the suede chairs and slumped down. He closed his eyes.
For a night and day, he had been escaping the Cosmians. He had lost his home, his guitar, his old life. All he wanted to do now was listen to music and sleep.
Just as he began to drift off, the roar of engines sounded from outside.
His eyes snapped open. He leaped up.
"Giga, windshield wipers!" he said.
Giga tilted her head. "Cannot compute 'windshield.' There is no wind in space. Did you mean the front fused silica viewport panes?"
"Yes, damn it, wipe them!"
"Happy to comply!" said the android, and wipers whirred across the panes.
Riff stared outside and his heart sank. "Cosmians," he muttered. Several of their starjets were flying toward the used ship lot.
A voice boomed out of a megaphone. Metallic. Cruel.
Grotter's voice.
"We know you're in there, Starfire!" One of the jets flew closer, the barrels of its guns turning toward the Dragon Huntress. "Step out of the ship and surrender yourself, or you and everyone inside that box of bolts will die."
Alien Hunters - Discover Sci-Fi Special Edition Page 6