Mirror, Signal, Scream Like A Girl
WHO: Lester, Lester and Dai.WHERE: A Mollopod ship above the Mollopod kingdom of Little CheftoniaWHEN: Look, does that really matter right now?
<SNIP>There, gleaming in the light from several powerful standing lamps was an enormous six-wheeled transport; a massive truck the wheels of which, even tall, lanky Lester was dwarfed by. What's more, it was metallic-black. It was surrounded on all sides by Mollopod technicians who, uncharacteristically, were concerned with keeping it shiny and pristine. "Oh wow, it's got wireless networking to the ship!" Lester winced as his disembodied self yelped in his ear. "OK, I have a new plan." "How did I know he'd say that?"
</SNIP>
The truck suddenly growled into life. The Mollopod technicians and engineers peered at it in surprise, then in panic as the airbrakes hissed open and the massive vehicle rolled backwards, then forwards, crushing a few of them with a sticky splat.
"Grrrr get onboarrrrrrd," the very engine of the truck growled to Lester and Dai as it attempted a turn in the confined space. Several ten metre high stacks of supply cases fell crashing as the truck simply drove into them, trying to maneuvre. A door opened and a long, thin ladder telescoped down. Dai shoved Lester and they both clambered up into the control cabin.
"Grrrreat, grrrrrrab a seat, we'rrrrre leaving," the Truck roared at them and turned in a slow, gentle but somehow inevitable half-circle that smashed more Mollopod creatures into the deck.
The control cabin of the truck was simple, spacious and contained a basic steering wheel, mounted on a shaft that disappeared into the floor. Wide plates big enough for the Mollopods to slurp over, provided accelerator and brake control. Something Lester thought was an oversized pin cushion turned out, in fact, to be the sixty-seven gear levers which currently shunted and moved of their own accord to the accompaniment of a series of stomach-churning crunches.
"Get the smeg in gearrrr you blasted thing!" The Truck apparently chastised itself. Then with a lurch it was rumbling towards the cargo bay doors.
It wasn't a fast collision. It was very much like watching a scale model of continental drift. Metal buckled on both sides and for a while it was touch and go about which would give first: the cargo bay doors or the truck. Luckily the doors gave out and peeled apart, venting the atmosphere in the cargo bay out into space and killing everyone who couldn't get behind an emergency bulkhead. The massive truck popped out like a cork, before turning towards the planet below and beginning the slow, inexorable plunge into gravity's ever welcoming embrace.
***
On the Mollopod ship the Commander was trying to work out the last time stopping for a snack had caused so many problems. It had just been a little something, which he had enjoyed very much. If only they could have got rid of the dairy product and starchy layers to leave just the delicious bacteria and fungus. Still, you can't have everything. He had been loocking forward to enjoying the two humans as a main course later but when third lunch came and went without a sign of his gourmet meal, he'd sent someone to find the chef.
The chef had been found, deep fried in beer-rich batter and, once the security detachment had consumed him, they reported this to the Commander who ordered an immediate search and destroy on the human infestation.
Then there'd been the problems with the ship's computer system. Eventually the technicians had identified a virus, but any attempt to contain it were practically laughed at as the strange program flitted across computational nodes. It was last seen in the cargo bay, with no sign of the humans until:
"What in the name of my fetid spleen was that?" The Commander curled his body tighter around the command pillar from which he surveyed the bridge.
"Decompression in the cargo bay your blubberiness!"
"Cause?"
"Unknown, but.. yes, it would appear the Meat Wagon has been stolen!"
"On screen!"
There, in beautiful holographic 3D was the Meat Wagon, prize of the Commander's collection. It was his fond hope that one day he would be able to retire and drive his precious Wagon across many different worlds, picking up members of the local populace, and experimenting with different ways to cook them.
"Nobody steals the Meat Wagon!" The Mollopod Commander quivered with naked rage, "destroy it!"
"Firing dispersal cannons," the weapons controller reported.
***
The first impact shuddered through the truck but was almost lost amongst the screaming, wrenching noises and other signs of imminent doom currently plaguing its occupants. Lester had re-downloaded himself back into his body and with Dai and his other self was carefully struggling up the incline of the truck's central corridor.
"Long way down, isn't it?" Dai shouted over the sounds of tortured metal.
"Not long enough!" Lester shouted back and reached for a door, "this is it! I'm pretty sure this is the room I saw on the schematic plans!"
Dai gave him a boost and Lester forced the doors open into a softly glowing, blue chamber with a shielded dais at one end and a shielded control console the other.
"Teleport, isn't it?"
"Yep, get on the transmission platform!" Lester gripped the carpet with his very nails in an effort to reach the control console. With his other self's help he quickly reprogrammed the teleport, then he simply let go and fell back down towards the transmission platform, smacking hard on the transparent shield before crawling painfully into the chamber itself.
"What have you done?" Dai yelled as the teleport began to build power.
"Had to reprogram to cancel out all inertia," Lester said, "but don't worry, I've locked on to the largest collection of human lifesigns I could detect. It's either the Blue Dwarf crew, or the Mollopod City's larder!"
"That's a nice thought isn't it?"
Then everything went white.
***
"Direct hit, your ooziness!"
"Excellent, keep firing, destroy the Meat Wagon! I don't want a single piece of those murdering sccchuuullzzzups left big enough to make McNuggets from!"
"As you command," the weapons controller re applied the firing control.
"Commander?" A nervous science technician quailed.
"What?"
"I'm reading a massive build up of chronon radiation from the planet's surface."
"What?"
"And also, a larger signature of messaline radiation from the Meat Wagon."
"Messaline?"
"It's the fuel cells, your most excellent slobberingness, they're..."
"About to go critical?"
"Yes."
"Hard about! All power to engines! Destroy that Meat Wagon! Vapourise it before..."
The Meat Wagon landed on the palace. It ground its way through the towers, spires and walls until it hit the central keep and exploded.
The heat came first. It incinerated the leaves from trees and blasted the trunks into black twisted skeletons. It caused skin to bubble and blood to boil then it simple wiped through the population, leaving nothing but ashes.
Then the shockwave came: a ring of terrifying power that could be seen only by the rapidly expanding frontier of destruction. Plas-crete buildings buckled like paper and collapsed onto themselves. Vehicles were tossed up like children's toys and smashed into each other and the ground.
Then the noise came and everything that had been smashed to pieces was ground to dust in its wake and as it passed, nothing was left alive.
Silence descended on the Kingdom of Little Cheftonia, broken only by the rumbling, traversing after-shocks as they criss-crossed the crust of the tiny world, uprooting countries, destabilising continents and finally, finaly the Kingdom of Little Cheftonia settled down, a gaping whole in its crust where the illegally powered Meat Wagon had hit.
When the planet finally broke up a few minutes later, hardly anyone was left who cared.
***
"Got to be a better way to travel, hasn't there?"
"I heartily agree," a smooth, cultured and ever-so-confident voice purred near Dai's ear. "But we make the best of what we have, don't we?"
"You've got that right. You for example, appear to have no fashion sense, but that doesn't stop you from going out in public, does it? Therefore I have to make the best of it."
Dai opened an eye. A stranger, dressed in tall boots and a jerkin with a leather tunic of some sort was standing on a rock looking down at him.
"What? Where's Lester?"
"That certainly was some knock you took coming down, my friend," the man continued, jumping down from his rock.
Dai looked wildly around.
"Where am I?"
"I? WE appear to be in a forest, or wood, I haven't decided yet. Nothing that reminds me of the Mollopod world though, so I think there might have been some error in our calculations." The man smiled, white teeth in the darkest skin Dai had ever seen. He looked faintly sinister, or at least what Dai might have described as "dodgy". There was also something decidedly feline about him, from the toes of his chunky, greasy biker boots to the tips of his grey-tinged dreadlocks he slinked and slid gracefully with every motion.
"Who are you? Where's Lester? Skinny bloke, looks like a stick insect having a bad hair day, doesn't he?"
"Look, if we're going to get personal I shan't play," the man said and strode past Dai to the edge of the clearing they were in. "I d-don't th-think he r-recognises us," the man suddenly quavered to himself. "I know," he replied, "I was just prolonging the agony."
The man whirled and as he did so his dreadlocks moved revealing the glittering metal implant in his temple. With his good hand he fished in a pocket for a strip or thong of leather with which he tied back the waving locks. He smiled again at Dai. "Shall we skip the bit where I tell you something about us both that only I know and get on with rescuing our team mates?"
"Lester?"
"Ah, give the man a leek, he's got it!" Lester Phelps turned and leaped for the lowest branches of a tree, hauling himself up. Meanwhile, in his rustling PVC poncho, Dai Evans followed, shaking his head.
"It's Lester isn't it?"
"Yes, I'm Lester, the small buzzing in my head tells me that SNIDE's not far away and those two over there been brutally manhandled against their will... I assume it's against their will are a blue man with lots of arms and my personal friend Justin Pancake who once shot me in the chest."
With that he jumped down from the tree and dashed down the path towards the retreating backs of Justin and Efof. Dai watched with his mouth open, then shut it again and set off after him.
<dun dun dun!>"
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