Astro-Nuts
Page 21
If the room was a mess before, throwing some zero-gravity hubbub into the mix elevated it to hoarder levels of disarray. Neat stacks of boxes had been tossed the length of the place, and previously airborne ships had come to clumsy landings in all manners of positions on top of the piles of shattered glass and spilled oil. Some prisoners opted to hide under the shambles, while others made their way up top for better vantage points. Whatever their strategy, the time to implement it was short lived. As the funereal opening to “Renegade” came to a close, the much-better-organized opposing team breached through the openings at both ends of the room.
The music erupted into full swing. Chaos came thundering back into existence. Still clad in casual-Friday garb, guards poured in from both directions. The first one slipped on a grease patch and careened into a low-hanging ramp, while the rest held their footing and took to firing at every flamboyant orange jumpsuit in their midst. Those from both sides shouted a variety of situation-appropriate statements. Some boomed commands to any who were listening, others roared words of encouragement or declarations of having substantially greater combat prowess than the other shooty people. More yet just screamed unintelligible gobbledygook. But after those with the desire had hollered themselves hoarse, all that remained was more pews than in the whole of Vatican City.
Cox grabbed Donald and yanked him behind a nearby stack of metal boxes moments before an errant red streak punched his ticket. Thankfully, the lesser gravity mitigated the pain of the hefty fellow landing on top of him. Perhaps it was due to them knocking heads together, but in that moment they seemed to share a thought.
“We gotta build a fort,” Cox put it to words.
“We’re not five; can we call it a shelter, please?”
With nowhere to fly and no desire to fry, they launched into construction of a rudimentary box bunker and welcomed fellow cowards and pacifists into it. Luckily, there were few who desired its protection, as the music seemed to have a remarkable effectiveness at motivating would-be escapees to charge into direct confrontations.
Willy was at the front of the lines. His wild mane of curls was aflurry from the crosswinds of moving men, while his mouth dangled open in a scream position, despite no sound coming out. Blaster rifle at his hip, he fired indiscriminately in the vague direction of his attackers. They weren’t hard to hit, but he was really good at missing. His backup, however, was not. While for the first few waves they toppled over row after row of guards in their bottleneck, before long they had crossed the threshold and fanned out wide to flank the prisoners once more.
“Remind you at all of old times?” Joakim joked, taking cover behind an upturned shuttle.
“Hardly,” Kim grumbled back. She peeked around the corner and grimaced. “I made a point not to take jobs that required fighting armies.”
They looked up to see a fleeing prisoner leaping over their shuttle, all the while shouting cuss-laden declarations of better uses for his time. He was nearly out of harm’s way when a laser tagged him in the back. Together they watched the light gravity gently put him down like a leaf on the wind.
“Or becoming part of one,” she added.
They gave each other a final nod, then broke away on either side. Kim crouched and rolled from cover to cover, sneaking around the guards’ flank and popping up behind four of them. The first three were caught by her spray of lasers, while the final one managed to dodge the last bit, only to catch a snap left foot to his chin, causing his gleaming black helmet to fly off, soar over a guard phalanx, and land hard-side first against the face of the prisoner about to pepper them, diverting his once-carefully aimed gun and making it erupt a bright flash of red that streaked across the scene, threading past throngs of unsuspecting heads and flailing arms before coming to a rest squarely in the quivering uvula of a yelling prison guard, who keeled backwards and retained consciousness just long enough to make a few choking noises and slam into a nearby freight wagon, sending it, along with its ice-block cargo, hurtling across the battlefield, causing guarders and guarded alike to dive out of the way as the payload-turned-projectile picked up speed, then came to a crashing crescendo when a weakened floor grate gave way underneath it and stopped the buggy cold, but catapulted the ice block high into the laser-riddled air, where it sustained a few singes before bouncing off the very ship that had brought it in and then shattering against the floor in an explosion of ice chunks varying in size from bottle-top to beach ball, which then blasted into every unfortunate soul in the vicinity.
The thunderous culmination, in addition to incapacitating those within its immediate vicinity, had the additional effect of stopping the rest of the combatants in their tracks. Those who hadn’t already found themselves distracted by the tirade intricate enough to impress Rube Goldberg still found themselves marvelling slack-jawed at the wake it had left and eagerly tracing the trajectory of the debris as if in hopes the carnage would continue.
Most of the guards weathered the blast with little more than bruises and lost wind—except the one who was missing his helmet because of Kim’s kick. The ice chunk he took on the chin barely slowed as it barrelled off him and then on to Kim. It nicked her on the nose as she leaned out of the way before channelling all of its topspinning fury into a heap of assorted scrap. After it had finished crumbling into a flatter pile of junk, the group of wide-eyed wimps hiding underneath it stood up and had a look around.
“Did we win?” Cox asked, catching his wife’s glance.
She gnashed her teeth.
“Look around, Tim! Does it look like we won?! It’s like the Not O.K. Corral in here! I mean Jesus, all you have to do is look—”
“Okay, clearly that wasn’t the best time to make a joke.
I’m sorry, honey. Come—come over here where you won’t die, please.”
He ushered her into the remnants of his glorious bunker. There was plenty of space now, due to the recent renovations, as well as the fact that most of the occupants had scattered like they were at a high school party getting busted by the cops. Cox shoved the poker chips aside, accidentally knocking over the Jenga tower, and they huddled together in their makeshift trench. They were sweaty and dishevelled and breathing like a couple of women going into labour during the bar exam, but they still couldn’t resist a nice mid-war cuddle.
“So, hey,” he mumbled, nuzzling his face against the top of his wife’s head. “I don’t want to criticize the plan or anything. It’s a great plan; better than I could plan. But I was just wondering, um, why isn’t our ship in here?”
Kim moved her head away and looked up at him. Her beautiful sparkling eyes were made extra pretty each time they reflected a laser blast passing overhead. And that was in spite of how narrowed they were.
“Oh, god, Tim, you didn’t pay attention to the plan at all, did you?” She grumbled before sighing and shaking her head. “I shoulda known. I shoulda known when you didn’t protest at all.”
“Protest? You mean the fighting? I’ve totally protested that. But I also know that sometimes it has to happen because not everything can be resolved peacefully. Well, actually, it totally can, just most of the time people aren’t willing to work to—”
“No, not the fighting!”
She raised her hand and took a moment to breathe and find the words. After another scan around and a quick lick of her lips, she continued.
“Our ship isn’t in here because it doesn’t dock in hangars. You know this.”
“Yeah, I know it usually doesn’t . . . But I just thought maybe, y’know, since this place is super big, that it might.”
“Size doesn’t matter, Tim—” She frowned at his stifled chuckle. “Look, it’s not here. That’s part of the reason we sent Whisper ahead. It’s still outside at the same external dock where we left it, and we needed to keep all the guards distracted out here so she would be able to pull out—really?— without getting clamped in place by some asshole watching the gate.”
Now it was Cox’s turn to look around.
Kim shrugged.
“I dunno, love. They seem to really bounce off the walls over this sort of thing, I guess.”
“Well, hey, I guess we all have the things we enjoy.”
“Like heights,” she suggested.
“Heights? I wouldn’t say I enjoy them, necessarily. Never really understood the fear of them, though. Maybe that’s just a moon-guy thing. I feel like if I got thrown out of a shuttle taxi that was a hundred feet up I might be a little freaked out. Of course, I’m not sure what I would do to deserve it . . . I did have a driver once who thought I was a girl because of my hair. At least, I think it was because of my hair . . . anyway, he started saying all kinds of weird stuff, and boy was he embarrassed when—”
“Babe, I was just trying to segue as gently as I could into the next part of the plan.”
“Oh, man. I just got whooshed.”
She got to her feet and motioned for him to do the same.
Since he wasn’t too keen on getting left behind, Donald also followed suit.
With backs hunched and heads bowed, they braved the carnage once more. Ever since the advent of energy-based weapons, warzones were nowhere near as cataclysmic as in the days of yore. The atmosphere never really changed, but without bullets and explosives tearing up the terrain, the only noticeable earmark was a polka-dotted sheen of scorch marks covering the area like someone let loose a group of preschoolers armed with black bingo daubers. And bodies. Can’t forget the bodies. Some even find them more noticeable than the small black marks.
Miraculously, the trio reached the towering wall of the hangar untouched. There was a disproportionate amount of friendly forces milling around outside of it, apparently putting together some sort of barricade that was already looking far more effective than anything Tim could have erected. But even the most impressive improvised structure paled in comparison to those put together by funded professionals with time and tools. So rather than assist in the bungling—not that she planned to, anyway—Kim yanked open the closest proper metal doors and ushered the group inside before she took to pillaging the room’s contents.
They appeared to be in a storage locker of sorts. Most of the contents were still crated up, except for the open cans of varying mechanical fluids that were strewn about the room in a very OSHA-unfriendly kind of way. Spare parts hung from the rafters and tool chests lined the back wall, complete with open drawers and missing contents. However, Kim’s focus was on the wall hooks and the spacesuits mounted upon them. The clothing technology had progressed past looking like Michelin Man costumes, but it still wasn’t available in one-size-fits-all yet, so it took a bit of perusing before finding four appropriate fits. In complete deference to tradition, Donald donned his shortly after it was thrown at him, while Cox briefly postponed compliance.
“Yes, we are going outside,” Kim answered the question he never asked. She stuffed her legs into her suit and vacuum-sealed the lower half before carrying on with the top. Her husband started to do the same, but paused once more with another open mouth.
“Yes, it’s part of the plan. No, it’s not going to be dangerous. Yes, we have no other choice,” she rattled off in quick succession before he could ask anything. The loss of shuffling and rustling noises made her cease her suiting to look up and find the two men staring blank-faced at her.
“Sorry. Wasn’t sure which one you were going to ask,” she added.
Her husband nodded with acknowledgement.
“I don’t know anymore, myself.”
They re-merged with the skirmish kitted out from head to toe with the most advanced clothing technology known to man. Not only were the spacesuits fully immune to the perils of space, they could also withstand the cutting cold and the harrowing heat. These marvels of technology boasted an adjustable interior temperature control, plush lining, crush resistance, cut resistance, pierce resistance, electricity resistance, psychic damage resistance, drug resistance, resistance to change, partial resistance against Borg assimilation, and apparently a long list of other resistances that they didn’t include on the tag because the current one was already long enough to look like a piece of toilet paper the wearer dragged out from the bathroom.
About a quarter of the arena now was inexplicably on fire.
The music had stopped and the war cries had been replaced with the screams of man-children dangling from the ceiling and grasping at limbs that, while still attached, appeared to ail them in some capacity. Some remaining prisoners had tattered their own clothing and repurposed various mechanical substances as face paint in a sort of stylized guerrilla-fighter aesthetic.
The trio gingerly stepped from their closet hideaway and walked through a makeshift POW camp, taking care not to get caught in the outstretched arms of caged guards or to trip over any of the numerous improvised blackjack tables that had been set up. They didn’t need to go far to find Joakim. The man’s broad frame stood out starkly amongst his underlings as they busied themselves adding to their barbaric box-based barricade or gibbering around their captured soldiers while impersonating racist stereotypes. He didn’t take part, himself. In fact, he didn’t seem too invested in the odd interloper that he’d use as target practice either. Instead, he just paced, checking his watch every few seconds and looking toward the ceiling.
“What the hell happened out here?” Kim asked. She looked for something to gesture toward, but everything around her was on about the same level of ridiculousness.
“War,” Joakim rumbled. He turned and surveyed the carnage just in time to watch a rescue team cut one of the dangling ceiling cables and send a tangled man plummeting to the floor with a resounding clang. “War never changes.”
He spun back around with a smart-alecky grin.
“And thank god for that. Most people don’t survive learning it the first time.”
“Well, I just want to thank you,” Cox announced as he walked up and wrapped the big fella in a hug. “It really bums me out to see you and the boys are so crippled by institutionalization that you’re willing to die for the sake of complete strangers. But I’m honoured that those strangers were us.”
“Uhhh . . . ?”
“You should come with us,” Kim insisted. “I grabbed you a space suit.”
“I don’t think so.”
She let the suit fall to the floor, where it landed with a fwump that expressed contempt for her.
“You’d really rather stay here? You’d really rather take your chances facing down an army of underpaid, undersexed police-academy dropouts who live for no other reason than to bully the only people even lower on the societal totem pole than they are? And for what? If you’re not looking to escape, then what could you possibly be doing this for?! And don’t you dare try to say me.”
“Does nobody listen to the plans when I lay them out?!” Joakim mumbled through the hand over his face.
“I may or may not have stopped listening after the part where we divert from you guys and meet up with Whisper.”
“Well, I’m glad I didn’t bother to draw the diagram this time, then.” He rested the rifle on his shoulder and sidled past her, cocking his head side to side to crack his neck before snatching a can of beer out of the hands of a nearby underling.
“If you must know,” he continued before a long swig. “Ahh—we’re taking over this place!”
More whoops and cheers from the goons. Half of them spilled beer all over themselves in their attempt to take part in the plaudits. The other half spilled additional beer all over the first half. Only those involved in the ensuing fist fight paid it any attention. Kim simply scoffed.
“Oh, big deal. So you take over this dump. Then what?”
He considered the question. It seemed like the most obvious one to ask, and yet there was no pre-prepared a
nswer. Even some of the frat boys stopped fighting to mull it over themselves. The entire scuffle had just about burned itself out by the time Joakim threw up his hands and shoulders.
“I don’t really know, if I’m being honest. We’ve never made it that far before.”
“Oh, typical. You make an overcomplicated plan that involves tons of fighting and gives no thought to what you’re going to do after. Really shows everyone where your priorities lie.”
“We haven’t dated in almost twenty years and you’re still getting on my case about things that don’t matter.” He nodded towards Cox. “Good luck after the divorce, friend.”
“Why does everybody keep saying we’re going to divorce?!”
“And as for you, don’t worry about what we’re going to do! Maybe we’ll hold it ransom until we get nicer meals.”
“Oh,” a nearby voice jumped in. “How about a giant hologram player for the rec room!”
“Or a golf course!”
“Or women!”
“Or how about you guys just escape and go to places that already have those things?!” Kim suggested.
“Uh, Miss Cox, you do know most of these guys are bad people who probably shouldn’t actually be released into—”
“Shut up, Donald.”
Joakim boomed a deep belly laugh that drowned out the idle bickering and ransom suggestions.
“Escape?!” He managed to utter between guffaws. “Why in the Hell would we want to do that?!”
Kim and Donald were struck dumb. Most of the man’s associates seemed to share the sentiment, so Cox stepped in to prod the topic.
“Uh . . . but why wouldn’t—”
“Because this is the best place we could possibly live,” Joakim cut him off. The gun he held waggled to and fro between harmless and heedless depending which emphatic gesture was being used. More than once the crew had to cringe and duck out of the way. “Free food, free housing. You guys have any idea what real estate is worth these days? Plus, how many neighbourhoods guarantee your neighbours will have similar interests to yours? This place is awesome.”