Jed + Eddie "A Welsh Bushwhack"

Who: Jed Calvert and Eddie Monsoon
Where: The Pluto Express
When: After boarding the space train
<snip>
"Jed mate, I think we brought the hallucination virus with us. I'm
being attacked by some fat purple monster with one eye trying to
spray me with cleaning fluid saying his name is Barry Scott."
Jed chuckled. "Yeah pardner I've been seeing some strange things down
hyar."
"Really? What are you doing about it?"
"Ah'm just shooting the critters." Said Jed.
"Oh."
There was a pause and some fumbling and then a panicked Eddie came
back on the radio. "Mate, I'm joining you. This guy's got a small
metal cocktail umbrella and he's rather enthusiastic about putting it
somewhere."
A few minutes later, Eddie collapsed in a pile having fallen through
the ceiling hatch into the Pluto Express.
Back in the empty cockpit of the Starbug, the scanner went from
showing one person on the Pluto Express to two, and then after a
starship proximity alert was tripped, suddenly forty more life signs
appeared on the Pluto Express.
<end snip>
After an hour or so, the effects of the hallucination virus had worn
off, leaving Jed and Eddie alone on the long space train.
They went from cabin to cabin searching for what they came for, the
Idol of Chantico.
"So what are you going to do with your half of the money mate?" Asked
Eddie.
Jed spat some chewing tobacco onto the floor. "Ah'd turn that there
Blue Dwarf into the galaxy's best super-casino" he admitted.
Eddie grinned. "I'd buy a brewery and retire inside it, I'd never
ever need to leave."
Jed hushed him and looked ahead. They were in a darkened cabin, lit
only by the light from a display case in the far corner.
"There is it!" said Jed
"Mate, it's the idol of Chantico!" Said Eddie.
Eddie was about to step forward when Eddie stopped him. "Hold yer
horses pardner!" Then he pointed to the floor. "Them there's pressure
pads on the floor. One step on those and steel doors as thick as mah
ma's thighs will trap us in here, then they'll pump out all the
oxygen. Now ah can inhale some nasty sheet, but pure vacuum might
just be the thing to kill of mah lungs."
"Good point mate, well spotted." Said Eddie.
"Yer, I ain't having you spoiling our second chance at the idol
neither."
Eddie looked sheepish. "So what do we do mate?"
Jed grinned and pressed a button on the wall. "Ah can't believe this
is gonna be so easy. Who designed this security system anyway?"
Eddie instantly realised what Jed had done when he pressed the button
as he started to float off the ground.
"Gravity plating disengaged" boomed a computer voice.
Jed gave Eddie a friendly slap on the back and pushed himself over to
the display case and the Idol. The lack of gravity stated playing
havoc with Eddie stomach and he vomited shiny globules of whisky
around the cabin.
"Nooooo, I'm loosing my drink!" he said, trying to drink it again.
Jed rolled his eyes as he looked back. Yer stomach's not hard enough
pardner. You get used to it when you've done enough zero-g crime as
me."
They both reached the other side of the cabin within just over a
minute and peered lovingly into the glass at the shiny item.
"Nah that sure is beautiful." Said Jed.
"Sure is mate. I can almost taste my home brewed beer already."
Jed rolled up his dirty shirt sleeves and started to unscrew the
glass plating. He could almost hear the casino chips clattering and
the sound of a ball clattering in the roulette wheel. In his dream he
wore a blue pin striped jacket and matching trousers with a bootlace
tie around his neck and a neatly trimmed handlebar moustache. He
would show people around his extremely flash casino that enforced his
policy "more money than style".
In Eddie's dream he was sat in his large brewery in an armchair being
fed pint upon pint of beer shouting "Drink, DRINK!"
They both grinned at the thought of it. But sadly their dreams were
shattered when three Welsh Terrorists entered the room.
"Well look what we have here, like!" spoke up one. He was clearly the
leader of the other two. He had bright ginger hair and wore a
tracksuit, supplemented with a chunky gold chain that looked like it
weighed the same as him. The other two wore hoodies and stood at the
back looking generally menacing. They all trained their pistols on
Eddie and Jed. Who reluctantly raised their hands above their heads.
"Well if it isn't Captain Jed Calvert!" Said the first man, who for
the sake of narrative we'll call Daffyd. Daffyd got some blank looks
from his colleagues. "He's the guy who let his crew attack and
plunder our proud little planet just because he thought we were all
terrorists."
"Ah, so you're not terrorists?" Asked Calvert.
"No, we're thieves!" Said Daffyd. "We're going to steal this idol and
then sell it for money to further our cause."
"Your terrorist cause?" asked Jed.
"Of course!" Said Daffyd.
Eddie had heard enough. He wanted his brewery so much that he decided
to do something about these intruders. He had been keeping a can of
special brew up his sleeve for an important occasion, unfortunately
this occasion didn't require him drinking it.
He threw the can to the floor, setting off the alarm.
The security doors came down, just like Jed had said, crushing one of
the hooded terrorists who was stood directly in the doorway.
The other two terrorists looked around at their squashed
colleague. "That really was a bad move!" said Daddyd, who started
walking towards Eddie and Jed. As soon as he stepped onto the
pressure pads, something different happened this time.
Red lasers appeared, crisscrossing across the room at jaunty angles.
But they were spaced well apart, making it easy to walk around
them. "Tsk. Who designed this security system anyway?!"
He heard a muffled sound from his one remaining colleague behind him.
He turned to see that the man had been stood directly where one of
the lasers was pointing. The red beam entered his head diagonally,
and exited somewhere around his hip where it continued to the floor.
These were cutting lasers.
Unfortunately, Daffyd didn't realise this and wondered why his friend
was remaining perfectly still.
"Bos… I … I feel funny." Said the man with the laser pointing
straight through him. Had he remained perfectly still, this man might
have been absolutely fine, the laser had only punctured a hole about
the size of a pin through his entire body. But Daffyd grabbed him and
bulled him forward.
"What's the matter with ya boyo?"
The man fell in half.
Daffyd turned to Eddie and Jed, who had remained quiet all this time
and glared. "Sod the idol, I'll kill you!"
He ran at them and Eddie was the first to move, he ducked behind a
crate and took a swig from his hipflask. Jed jumped on top of a large
bin and kicked Daffyd as he came past. Then wrestled him to the
ground.
Jed was a formidable hand-to-hand fighter, mainly because he fought
in a crazy erratic manner, but he had a thin gangly body that had
barely any weight to it. Daffyd found it easy to push Jed away.
They faced each other. Jed swung his clenched fists around like a
manic madman and intimidated Daffyd with his crazy eyes. One frantic
punch caught Daffyd square on the jaw and he swung around, with his
back to the lasers. Jed merely pushed Daffyd backwards, and the laser
sliced through his midsection like wire trough butter. Daffyd's final
moments involved him desperately trying to cram his intestines back
into his torso.
"Eww." Said Eddie, stepping over the corpse and taking a swig from
his hipflask.
They looked back at the thing they had come for, the idol. A thick
metal door had closed around the cabinet, and a forcefield around
that.
"Well it looks like we've lost the Idol again." Eddie said sullenly.
Jed smacked him on the shoulder "Yeah, no thanks to you!"
"What? What did I do?" said Eddie, protesting his innocence as he
picked up his can of special brew.
"Yer got us locked in this hyar stinking room with no escape!" Jed
said, looking around for any other means of escape that wasn't sealed
up.
A few minutes later, more of the Welsh terrorists that had obviously
travelled with Daffyd opened the room from the outside. They held
their noses as the stench of three dead bodies greeted them.
All they saw was one squashed, and two sliced up bodies on the floor,
and two scruffy drunk people running at them swinging their fists
like loons.
The rest of the terrorists let the seemingly insane pair get safely
back aboard their ship and head of towards where they came from.