by Logan Hunder
“Oh, good afternoon!” He finally said. “I am Sir Percy Todgerworth of the League of Extraordinarily British Gentlemen. With whom am I speaking?”
“I, uh, am Tim Cox!” The captain responded. “Of . . . the SS Jefferson. I, I am also a sir.”
Percy stared at him for a moment, blinking in the silence, before he continued.
“Charmed to make your acquaintance! I shall cut right to the chase. My associate and I are embarking upon a mission of great importance. That mission has led us to your ship. In order to continue, I must formally request you grant us access aboard to carry out our duties.”
“I . . . wow!” The captain stammered, rubbing at his head. He glanced over to Willy, who let out another sheepish shrug, and then down to Donald beneath him, still hiding under the table. The portly lad shook his head back and forth with a deranged, wide-eyed stare.
“Y’know, this is really a bad time . . .” He continued with an exaggerated wince. “We’ve had a pretty tough couple days already and I don’t know if another unexpected guest is really a good idea. I’d reeeeeaaally love to help you out, though! But just, like, with you staying over there while I do.”
Again Percy stared at him for several blink-filled moments before responding.
“Ah, yes. I had a feeling you would say something like that. I assure you our business will be quick and non-invasive, just how we Britishmen like our interactions with strangers! Ohohoho.”
His laugh was as fake as the captain’s confidence, but both of them continued to go for it anyway.
“Yeah, again, I see where you’re comin’ from. But as captain of this ship, I’m going to have to pass—”
“Well that is an interesting way of presenting things!” Percy cut him off.
“I, well, thank you! I think. I hope there’s no hard feeling—”
“You’re absolutely right!” Percy butted in yet again. “Well, this has been splendid. Illuminating, even. You are a very astute man or woman.”
“Hey!” Cox barked at him. “I’m a man! . . . Not that there’s any shame in being a woman.”
“Ohoho, well isn’t that humorous!”
“What?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“Ahh . . . you’ve kinda lost me there, buddy. I’m not sure what—”
“In case you haven’t realized, this is a pre-recorded message created for the purposes of distracting you while my associate and I board your ship. In the event we still have not arrived, please continue to wait whilst I entertain you with my beat-boxing proficiency.”
“Oh my, we certainly need not sit through that!” The real Percy Todgerworth declared from the doorway. He stood alongside a shorter and older man with a buzzcut and matching suit.
“First, the warmups!” His onscreen persona continued.
“Shut it off. Please.” The other man asked in a slow, strained tone, as if trying to suppress something.
Donald emerged from under the desk and tapped a button, causing the screen to go blank. He then turned to the two men and froze in position yet again, clearly realizing how the situation might look to the uninformed. At first he tried push away the chair upon which his captain sat, sinking his hands into the bean bag and uttering a mighty grunt. Not only did the seat not budge, but the action also resulted in his face being placed even closer to the salacious spot he was trying to avoid. The incriminating sound effect he did along with it made him just embarrassed enough go into full on flight mode and start thrashing around, trying to squeeze himself through the gap between chair and desk.
During it all, Percy looked at him, then back to Cox, then back to him, but ultimately decided not to share whatever thoughts he may have had on the matter.
“Right, then! Pardon our intrusion, but while the needs of the many may outweigh the needs of the few, the needs of the British outweigh the needs of the many.”
“How did you get in here?!” Cox asked. “We’re in space! We have . . . like, airlocks and stuff.”
“Mister Cox—”
“Captain Cox.’
“—My associate and I are world class secret agents. I would expound on how we achieved the seemingly impossible task of boarding your ship from the outside without you realizing, but I would rather you just trust that we can, due to the fact that we just did.”
“Dude!” Willy exclaimed. “You guys are secret agents? Like James Bond?”
“NO!” Percy’s associate screamed. “That man is nothing more than a Scottish erection with a gun! Don’t you compare us to him!”
“He’s a fictional character, Sir Head.”
“YOU’RE A FICTIONAL CHARACTER.”
“Can you just . . . stand over there until I need you, please?”
As instructed, Sir Head did indeed stand over there. But he didn’t seem very happy about it. In fact, in Percy’s admittedly short experience, he seemed to be the sort that often failed to get very happy about anything. With arms crossed, he leaned against the wall and silently seethed at the ceiling, pursing his lips from side to side. Taking the opportunity while it lasted, Percy cleared his throat and began to pace and lecture like a general before the grunts.
“Right, so as I was saying, Sir Head and myself were dispatched by our organization’s commander to follow up on a lead. This lead was brought to us by a ship that is currently in pieces floating in about a trillion and one different directions. However, through state-of-the-art technology and incomparable skills of deduction and analysis that you couldn’t begin to comprehend, we determined a limited interaction with this vessel before it, in a word, kablooied.”
Everyone continued to stare, even after he stopped speaking. When they realized it was the point in the conversation in which they were supposed to contribute something, all they could manage was a chorus of coughs and glances around at pretty much anything that wasn’t the bloviating secret agent standing in their midst.
“Well, did you rendezvous with another vessel in this quadrant or not?!” The Brit demanded.
“Well hey, I mean . . .” Cox stammered. “Rendezvous is such a strong word, y’know?”
“It really isn’t.”
“Like yeah, we met another ship. But we didn’t ‘rendezvous’ with it. We just, y’know, met it.”
“Aha! Progress! Splendid. Right, now, in your interaction, limited as it may well have been, did you happen upon anyone? An older gentleman perhaps? Surly fellow? Likely armed and disinterested in pleasantries. May well have elicited vibrations of discomfiture and impending doom. Also might have had in his possession an item of peculiarity—something that one could even call a macguffin?”
“Oh yeah, I totally know who you’re talkin’ about! Mister Nobody! He was a little bit scary, I guess, but he seemed like he could be an alright guy.”
Willy reached an arm wide while the other gestured at his face.
“What the hell, dude! That guy was a dick.”
“You are quite correct, sir.” Percy shifted his focus to the larger fellow. “That man is a fugitive named Mister Banks. A dick of tremendous proportions, as you would say. In bad need of a neutering, I would say.”
“Yeah!” The security officer agreed. “ . . . I knew that wasn’t his real name.”
“Well, that is indeed a service my associate and I can provide. Free of charge, I might add! All you need do is set us on his trail. Any information you can provide about his armaments and travel accommodations would be of benefit as well.”
“Oh, well, that’s easy!” The captain said. “He’s flying off towards Earth right now in an escape pod. He doesn’t have anything he can fight you with either, so taking him without feeling like you have to kill him will be real easy!”
“An escape pod?” Percy reiterated. “The vessel readings didn’t indicate that any were launched.”
“Did you read ours? It came from ours.”
Sir Head was starting to find the ceiling less and less interesting. His angular face slowly rotated towards the captain and
then sideways as he listened to the account.
“I’m—I’m sorry,” Percy said. “Are you trying to tell me he was here? Aboard your ship? Without murdering the lot of you?”
“Why are you saying that like it’s a bad thing?”
“Captain, please stop,” Donald begged. “Please stop saying things.”
“Shut up, fatty!” The tall Brit snapped. “You’ve been quiet up until now. If that’s your selection of first words then I have no choice but to now regard you with suspicion! What are you hiding?!”
“Hey, leave Donny alone! Breaking onto my ship and interrogating us is one thing, but you can’t come and start body shaming my friends!”
“Mister Cox—”
“Captain Cox!”
“—it is clear to me that you lack either the proper appreciation or the mental wherewithal to regard these circumstances with the necessary levels of concern. This is a matter of global importance.”
Willy raised his hand, much to the annoyance of his inquisitor.
“But we live in space. So wouldn’t that mean, like, it has nothing to do with us?”
“You’re from the moon! You’re our colony. You’re close enough.”
“Oh, for the love of Christ!” Sir Head screamed from his spot against the wall. “Are you about done with this pathetic attempt at ‘investigating?’”
“These things take time and patience, Richard!”
“Bollocks! Watch and learn.”
He pushed Percy out of the way and marched way too far into Cox’s personal space. His sharp nose pressed against the captain’s round, button one. Rancid breaths smelling of asparagus and bile wafted from his mouth. Without breaking eye contact, he shoved two bony fingers into Cox’s chest.
“Oi, you, cap’n Ken doll, what’s the closest thing you got any level of affection for?”
“Well I mean, that’s a tough question there, Agent Hurtful Nickname!” Cox responded after a few blinks. He gave a slight shake of his head. “I don’t think there’s anything in here I don’t like!”
“What about this thing then, eh!? Ya like this thing!?”
“Of course! That’s my microwave! Everybody loves it.”
“GOOD!”
He snatched it up, cord and all, and hurled it against the floor. The heavy steel clanged as if in pain with each bounce before it lay still. Seeing it was still intact, Sir Head picked it up again and slammed it back down, causing a few more dents and the door to pop open. He seized the opportunity to give the door a series of mighty tugs. However, the vintage construction proved to be more than he could overpower, so he abandoned his attempts to tear it off and instead proceeded to kick it repeatedly. Every bang was punctuated by various differently worded rhetorical inquiries regarding the crew’s emotional response to seeing their beloved microwave destroyed.
“Oh my god!” The only person who cared cried. “What are you doing?!”
Sir Head abandoned his beat down and closed back on the captain. He snatched up his shirt with both hands.
“Give me what I want!!” He bellowed in his face.
“But I don’t know what you want!!”
“You better not! It’s classified and if you knew then I’d have to kill ya! Kill ya!!”
“Why is everybody who lives on a planet so mean!?”
Head shoved Cox backwards before the captain’s tears could begin. He gave one final boot to the downed heating machine with a wiry leg then returned to Todgerworth.
“Oh, it’s on this ship alright.” He muttered just loud enough for Percy to hear. “Buncha mewling cream puffs like these? This Banks bastard could easily put the fear right in ’em. The only way to get past this is to make them fear me more.”
Sir Head contorted his lips into the closest shape his face could get to a smile. A colourless hand, nearly translucent, reached into his suit’s breast pocket and pulled out a pair of metal tongs and a bottle of hot sauce.
“You might wanna wait in the car,” he added.
“I cannot even begin to imagine how you’ve arrived at this conclusion.” Percy replied. “But of course there’s another way past this. Why don’t we just simply look for it?”
“Be my guest,” Sir Head said as he gave the tongs a test clinking. “But don’t you come cryin’ to me if you start settin’ off booby traps or triggering alarms. They ain’t gonna just leave it undefended!”
“You’re not the only world-class secret agent, you know. Even if these buffoons are indeed the patsies you believe them to be, any defensive machinations they concoct will be easy for me to circumvent.”
With a mighty harrumph and nose in the air, Percy Todgerworth set forth to prove his worth. To whom it was being proved remained unclear. However, his perceived necessity to provide such proof was enough to govern his actions nevertheless. His confidence didn’t falter in the slightest as he picked a door at random, ushered it open, and disappeared into the adjoining depths.
As soon as he had gone, Sir Head turned his newfound eagerness to work onto the remaining three crewmen. He hadn’t actually done anything yet, but they all recoiled anyway, completely oblivious to the fact there were three of them and he was just an old man armed with nothing but tongs and hot sauce.
That, kids, is the power of believing in yourself.
A couple seconds later, the door opened again. Percy trotted back into the room, stiff-necked as ever, and remarkably calm in the face of Kim digging a blaster rifle into his back.
“I don’t suppose you’re Mister Banks?” Sir Todgerworth asked her over his shoulder.
“That’s a bloody woman, you prat.”
“That much is clear, Richard, but it’s not out of the question that the “Mister” moniker could have simply been adopted as an act of subterfuge!”
“Oh is that right? Ya really think she’d just tell ya then, eh?!”
“She might!!”
“Tim, who are these people?!”
At the sight of his wife, the captain’s cheerful composure came flooding back and he hopped to his feet.
“Why, they’re British secret agents, honey!” He informed her, as if it was the most normal thing in the world.
“What are we, having an open house or something?! Where do all these people keep coming from?!”
“I got a better question,” Sir Head butted in, drawing a laser pistol of his own. “Why’s some freighter broad packing heat, eh!? I knew you lot were terrorists!”
“Terrorists?!” An unfamiliar voice exclaimed from the doorway.
They whirled around to find a uniformed man in his mid-twenties standing in their doorway. Both his hands tugged at his uncooperative hip holster. His soft grunts of exertion grew higher pitched and broken by huffs and puffs the longer he struggled. After several uncomfortable moments, he removed his whole belt, yanked the holster off of it, removed the gun, and pointed it at random people.
“Everybody continue to freeze!” He shouted, one hand holding his pants up.
No one defied his demands, but only Cox made a conscious attempt to be obedient.
“Excuse me,” Percy snidely addressed him. “I don’t know who you think you are, but we are in the middle of classified business right now.”
“Well, I don’t know who you think you are! So I need you to tell me, along with providing some form of identification. And then I need to tell you why you’re drifting through Earth’s devoid-of-airspace and not responding to any of our hails! I mean, you need to tell me. Why. That.”
Cox looked at Donald, receiving a wrinkled nose in return.
“Hey, they told me to shut off the coms.”
The captain nodded.
“Sorry about that, buddy!” He said, hands by his shoulders. “We’re not terrorists. It’s all just a big misunderstanding!”
The man’s gnarled facial expression melted away.
“Oh, okay then.”
Without another word he stuffed the gun back into its holster and dusted off his hands. They still s
hook slightly as he patted his padded vest, but his face wore a grin of shy relief.
“I thought I might’ve been about to die there for a second,” he mused, chuckling nervously.
“Ah, don’t worry about it! Everybody here’s had that feeling at some point today.”
“Haha! That’s kinda suspicious . . .”
“So what brings you here?” Cox asked in an announcing kind of way. Without any regard for the circumstances, he closed the distance between the two, draped an arm over the fellow’s shoulders, and used it to guide him farther onto the bridge.
“Are you another secret agent? How do you guys keep getting on my ship?”
Cool as can be, the man allowed himself to be led around. “Oh, well, I mean, I’m not a ‘secret’ agent per se. But I am a border patrol agent, and some people say that we’re pretty much the same thing.”
“Nobody says that,” Percy said.
“As for getting on your ship, it was pretty easy! Somebody lasered a baseball-sized hole into your airlock.”
“Wow!” Cox called out, looking over at Percy. “You weren’t kidding! You guys are high tech.”
“That was you who did that,” Donald reminded him.
“Oh, yeah.”
“I may or may not have to give you a citation for that, by the way,” the border agent added. “It’s not as dangerous as a hull breach, but we don’t like to see these tin cans flying around unless all the pieces are there!”
“Well, actually, did you know that this ship is titanium?”
“Why would I know that?”
“Well, I mean, you inspect these things, don’t you? Shouldn’t you know what they’re made of?”
“Well, then why would you ask me if I knew that?”
“Oh my god!” Kim griped. “Can you just write him the damn ticket so we can go back to our stand-off?!”
“HEY!” The border guard screeched back at her. “I am a certified border security specialist and I will not be interrupted!” Mouth now twisted into a frown and loud breaths snuffing out of his nose, he turned back to Cox. From a vest pocket he produced a small rectangular device with a screen and began working away on it with his thumbs.