by Logan Hunder
“Hardly surprising you would flee like a cowardly child,” Todgerworth’s voice sneered from the entrance.
He stood blocking the exit, rifle already levelled, and a twisted sneer marring his pale face. Cox put his hands up and backed away what few inches he had left.
“Y’know . . .” He reasoned. “I know I don’t always handle stuff the right way. But I don’t think there’s a whole lot of shame in running away from a guy with a gun when I myself got nothing.”
“Oh, spare me your shabby rationalizations. This is the end of the line for you. You’ve exhausted your bag of tricks and your exit opportunities, and now the only dilemma left falls onto me. Do I bestow the same torture unto you that I myself had to endure, or shall I just put a ray through your torso and be done with it all? The first option is so tempting; however, I could never forgive myself if one of your underlings successfully interrupted me and saved you before I could—”
A large pipe wrench flew out from behind one of the gyrating pieces of machinery. It caught Percy right under the cheek bone with a sickening crack that shut his lights out before he had even hit the ground. The old-fashioned hunk of metal clanged to a rest on the floor next to him shortly afterward. Despite having been hit by nothing himself, Cox also slid down the wall and collapsed to the floor in shock.
The thrower emerged from whence the wrench came. Just a silhouette at first, the short stature and mane of long dark hair suggested an individual of female persuasion, which helped to steady the captain’s erratic heart rate. He let out his first breath in quite some time.
“Baby, I swear sometimes I actually think you have spidey senses.”
“You think I’m somebody else, don’t you?”
The voice did not resemble Kim’s in the slightest. It was all sweet and no sultry, with a peppy, almost musical quality. However, the primary giveaway came via the pronunciation vagaries commonly heard in a habitual Hinglish speaker. When she stepped into the light to retrieve her wrench, the newcomer was revealed to be a younger woman, perhaps late twenties or early thirties, with both darker hair and darker skin than who she was initially assumed to be.
“Captain?” She asked. “Are you alright?”
“GAH!” Cox exclaimed. “Who are you?!”
“I . . .” She seemed unsure whether to be hurt or confused. “I’m your engineer, Diksha. Do you not remember me?”
“No! No, I do! Thatsyourname. Diksha.” With quick clap, he was on his feet and reaching out to grab her hand. “It’s just been a while! But, boy, am I glad to see you.”
“I can see that. Who is this man? And why is he so angry with you?”
Upon being asked, he could not help but bob his head to and fro, trying to formulate an explanation that sounded reasonable without incriminating himself too much.
“Well y’see, back when we were at Space Guan . . . Wait. Have you been down here this whole time?”
“Of course. Where else would I be?”
“I . . . I guess,” Cox avoided the question. “And you haven’t noticed anything weird going on?”
“No? Nobody has come down to see me since we arrived at the Kalliope mining station.”
“Wow. What do you do down here all day?”
“Is that really a more important question than why a strange man is on our ship trying to shoot you with a BSA69 blaster rifle?”
“I guess not,” Cox chuckled. “It’s kind of a long story, though. I promise I’ll tell you it all later! But while I got you here right now, I need your help. I gotta crack open a battery and get some of its acid-y nectar. It’s not for me, it’s to save the world.”
“I see.” Diksha stared at him, blank-faced. “Well, actually I do not see, at all, as your explanation prompts far more questions than it answers. But you are speaking with such urgency that it is clear you do not wish to take questions. Wet-cell batteries are not very common anymore, but we do have one. Extracting the hydrofluoric acid is simple enough. Just let me grab my tools.”
“No time! My nametag has a laser built into it. I’ll just cut the cover off.”
“Um, okay? But I still need to get the proper pipette for the actual extraction. You cannot just put hydrofluoric acid in a cup.”
“Oh! Well, I was just going to grab the whole battery and carry it like a bucket. But your idea works too!”
With how smoothly things went with Whatshername, Cox could not help but wonder why he never visited her down here. Usually one’s ability to knock out a man with a pipe wrench did not factor in to the quality of their company. Yet, when combined with her encyclopaedic knowledge of the inner workings of his pride and joy, as well as her total willingness to comply with strange, unexplained requests, he quickly found a fondness for his once invisible crew member. She even offered to boil the acid down for him to increase its potency. It was quite refreshing to have at least one underling treat him like a captain and welcome his presence without apprehension or reluctance. Best of all, at no point did he consider that his former indifference may have been the only thing that prevented some grave misfortune from befalling her throughout the course of his messes. That probably would have ruined the moment.
“Here you go, Captain,” Diksha smiled as she handed over the caustic substance. “I do not know how you will save the world with this, but good luck!”
“Thank you, Miss Dishka!”
The acid changed hands, yet the transaction did not feel quite complete. To just duck in, have his life saved, then mooch and take off seemed so impersonal. The poor girl’s job was so lonesome already. Trapped down here all alone in this dingy— but not too dingy—machine room, she was probably dying for somebody to reach out and offer her some social interaction.
“Say, just so you know, if you ever feel like getting out of here sometime, you’re always welcome to come up to the bridge. I’m sure the rest of the gang would love to see ya!”
“That is very nice of you. But I stay down here because I like being away from people and have no desire to be dragged along on the unsafe outings you’re very famous for. Instead I can concentrate on my work and build my models. Not every crew member of a ship wants a turn in the spotlight, you know.”
“I . . . wow, you’re good at having points. Okay, then! Well, I guess I’ll get back to the ‘spotlight!’ Haha.” He turned around to leave but kept spinning until he had gone a full 360 degrees, then raised a finger and opened his mouth once more.
“Even though I don’t see you very often, that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the importance of your job. You’re just as valuable a part of the Jefferson as the rest of us, and don’t you forget it!”
Diksha mulled the statement for a moment.
“ . . . What is the Jefferson?”
“Uh . . . that’s the name of the ship! You didn’t know that?!”
“I did not. Why do you call it that? Is it something to do with Thomas Jefferson?”
“Well, no . . .” Cox mumbled. He shuffled his feet and gave an awkward shrug. Previous eye rolls and groans had taken all the joy out of answering this question.
“I dunno . . . ever since I was a kid, I always wanted my own Jefferson Starship.”
“I do not understand.”
“Yeah, I was pretty sure you weren’t gonna. I’ll fill you in later, I promise.”
“Are you gonna send someone down to take care of this?” She asked as she gestured at the body on the floor. “Am I supposed to . . . ?” She followed up after a moment of awkward silence. She neglected any further queries when both remained unanswered.
Adrenaline coursed its way back into Cox’s bloodstream the moment he departed. Holding the acid at arm’s length as if it were a peeing baby, he stumbled his way through the Jefferson’s halls. The mission’s end was in sight. All he had to do was figure out where Donald had fled with the goopy mac-guffin, and they would be able to put this whole thing behind them. Fortunately, in the dark days of yesteryear, he would have been forced into an elaborate cat a
nd mouse type circumstance where he would have to rely on deduction and intuition in order to locate his charge. However, years of humanity funnelling its collective intellect into programs that removed all need to possess any intellect made for an easy way around that. A quick visit to the nearest wall terminal, an awkward inquiry to the psycho torture-bot that ran the thing, and presto: a blinking light coming from . . . Donald’s room; go figure. The fact that his designated icon was the Punisher skull may have hinted at who got to choose the crew’s symbols.
At a giraffe’s pace, he could cover the distance in less than two minutes, though navigating the halls as an eighteen-foot-tall quadruped would probably slow him down more. Two legs would suffice. They were enough to take him up stairs, around corners, and even around obstacles jutting up from the floor, such as Czech hedgehogs, or his wife’s dishevelled and limping visage.
“KIM!” Cox yelped, nearly dropping the cargo he so carefully carried.
She let herself fall into his outstretched free arm, enjoying the opportunity to save some energy and wipe away the streams of water cascading down her face.
“What happened?!” Her husband continued to prod. “What did he do to you?!”
“I’m not crying!” She blurted, smearing her hands across her face some more. “After I broke his nose, I think he realized I wasn’t going to just go down like a bitch, so the old goat pepper-sprayed me.”
After trying to put some weight on her bad leg, she shuddered and gripped him harder.
“Agh! I think my foot is busted . . .”
“Here, sit. Sit!”
“No, Tim, he’s not that far behind me. We gotta go.”
“How are you gonna go?! You can barely walk.”
“I don’t think I have much choice at the moment, love. Can’t kick his ass without a foot.”
It was in that moment that Sir Richard Head, premier woman-beater of Britain’s secretest service, loped on into the scene. With a face looking like a punctured can of red paint and a hand white-knuckling a spot in his midsection, it appeared he had underestimated the hardiness of a homegrown space scoundrel. Two-bit underhanded fighting approach aside, though, he had the spine to stick it out and attempt to see the job through. With only Cox left in his way and no engineers armed with pipe wrenches hiding around corners, it was entirely possible he may even succeed yet. But there was still one bump left on his road to victory.
The captain pressed the acid container against his wife. “Hold this.”
“Why? What are you doing?”
“I’m having my character-defining moment.”
Maybe luck really was the only crutch he had. Maybe help was his only means of triumphing. Maybe it was true that every success he had ever attained was owed to an intervening force, tangible or otherwise. Or maybe those were just accusations made in anger by a bitter rival who sought to sneak beneath his skin. To find the truth would require an enormous scoreboard and more thought than the captain was willing to put into the matter. A plan to rely on outside interference simply was not his brand of irrationality, as it would require a plan to have been made. For better or for worse, every gig began as plainly as it was intended to remain. And no matter how bleak a prognosis, he always pressed on; even on his own. If fortune felt fine to favour him along the way, then there was no sense in turning it down. It wasn’t his problem if others considered it unsporting.
In compliance with tradition, there was no ace in the hole when he marched the distance from wife to beater. In this moment he was just a man. A man with a beautiful mop of feathery blonde hair and a balled up, smaller-than-average hand that he slammed into Sir Head’s skeletal mug. Both recoiled from the impact.
“You . . .” The captain grunted in pain as he clutched his quivering fist. “Just got cold Coxed.”
Sir Head did not respond immediately, perhaps due to having his brains thoroughly rattled. He dabbed at his cheek and opened his mouth until his jaw clicked.
“I ain’t even mad. I didn’t think ya had it in ya.”
“There’s a lot of things that you don’t know I have in me!”
All three of them looked down with hunched shoulders and scratched at the back of their head, in the wake of his awkward exclamation.
“Right, then,” Sir Head broke the ice after a moment. “Now that you’ve grown a pair o’ bollocks I reckon it’s about time I kick them in.”
With a wrinkled nose and squinty eyes, the captain wiped his bloody hands on his jumpsuit, then put them up in an old-timey fisticuffs stance.
“May I borrow your can opener?”
The boxing stance was then abandoned and replaced by a pounce with the force of a thousand unloved kitties. It struck Sir Head with such thunderous strength that the agent was forced to take nearly an entire step backwards. Once the dust had settled, they were left in a heated and mildly erotic embrace, the Brit’s hands clamped onto the captain’s collar and the latter midway through performing some kind of half-hearted bear hug. When their eyes locked, the surprise round had ended, and the floor was left open to counterarguments.
Cox wished he could tell people he fought the good fight, and that through grit and love his hands avenged his wife’s honour. He wished he could tell people that. But fights were not the consequence-free fun and games that they seemed to be in cartoons and the NHL. People got hurt in those things.
Cox was already feeling the pangs before Head had even returned the favour, as his hand still smarted something fierce from the initial sucker punch. Things only got worse from there. The implausibly firm old-man grip on his jumpsuit left him helpless to avoid the dizzying retaliatory Head headbutt. Not only did it put him on the floor, ears ringing and vision blurry, but it also smeared the agent’s pre-existing blood all over his face, magnifying the awfulness.
Yucky as it was, it would take more negative reinforcement than that to keep him down. It would, in fact, take several punches to the midsection, a knee to the jaw, a kick in the groin, and a few elbows to the back of his head. There were a variety of other things that would have done the job as well, but that was what he got, and it was super effective.
Sir Head stepped toward his body and scrutinized him, giving an occasional foot nudge.
“You wanna get up again?”
Cox groaned into the floor to buy a couple more moments before rolling over.
“Not really. I mean, I gotta. But I feel like you’re just going to beat me up some more.”
“No shit. What else would you expect me to do?”
“Well . . . your buddy liked standing around and talking until something happened to make him lose his opportunity to kill me. Maybe we could do that?”
“Percy’s a sopping puss and words ain’t never solved anything. Now are you going to get off your arse and have another round with me or shall I wrap things up?”
With an offer like that, what else could he do? He had to get up. Rocky lasted a whole fifteen rounds, and he already had brain damage. Surely he could be at least two-fifteenths as good as Rocky.
The notion got him back on his feet, much to his opponent’s glee, but he still needed a helping hand to stay there. Sir Head didn’t mind sparing one if it gave him more time with his playmate. After swatting away one last ditch attempt from Kim to intervene, the sadistic spy had free reign to work out whatever deep-rooted daddy issues that made him the way he was in the form of tenderizing Tim’s face until all hope had been wiped off of it.
Battered, broken, and beaten, Cox fell backward into a bulkhead the moment he was released. The heroic feeling that was once enough to keep him going when his muscles just couldn’t be bothered had about reached the end of its magic. Yet he did not feel pain, anger, sadness, or disappointment, any of which would have been preferable. Instead, he had become numb; and it was not nearly as comfortable as past philosophers had suggested. For the first time in his entire life, Cox could not feel at all. He could not even feel silly about his slumped over pose, staring at the ceiling with gla
zed eyes and tongue hanging out of his mouth. At least the awkward, futile display did succeed at defining him; it was just a shame it was as a terrible combatant who really was incapable of succeeding on his own.
All these pessimistic notions swirled around his reeling mind over the course of just a few seconds. None lingered long, popping like bubbles shortly after manifestation. By the time his mental faculties began to return, such sentiments fell to the wayside when he realized the light he was staring at this whole time was awfully bright. It was also perfectly centered on the ceiling, and far more radiant than any of the other electrical illuminations in similar spots. When a large figure dressed all in white appeared in the middle and dropped through into the hallway a few feet away, the captain’s mental faculties were once more under suspicion.
“Wow . . .” His pupils shrank to pinheads as he slid down the wall. “Are you an angel?”
The astronaut shook his head and pulled off his helmet, revealing a bald octogenarian with pointy ears and a ficus growing out of his nose.
“Are you an idiot?” The man asked him back.
“Banks?!” Kim exclaimed. “Why did you put on a spacesuit to get on a docked ship?”
“Take a look at all the singe marks on it and figure it out.”