SWNOVELS Chapter CHAPTER FOUR
By the time the Bessie had refuelled, Dallas and Van were both enjoying a documentary on the ‘Warriors of the Wandering Star’, a legendary group of freedom fighters composed of the greatest fighters in the Universe. The Warriors of the Wandering Star (WWS) are similar to the Ronin of Japanese legend, wandering Samurai in search of a master dispensing justice wherever they are. They are said to be an army of highly skilled soldiers; deeply loyal to a sense of honour and space based. They are a collection from many races that all share the same dedication to justice and Universal harmony, travelling the stars to deal with oppression, corruption and terror. They ask for no thanks or payment from those they save, but are often given gifts and supplies as a sign of gratitude before they move on. They do not care for Galactic politics, only that good prevails. The parts of the documentary, which the two men paid attention to, led them to conclude that they had a noble cause, but agreed that it seemed far too stressful to actually do. After all, who wants to risk their own life for the rights of strangers?
The documentary finally ended, allowing D00D the opportunity to speak up uninterrupted, “Ok Van, I am showing all green lights on our power supply. Should I set course for Mondo’s or would you like to take a detour?”
“Mondo’s,” answered Van, “D00D, I know you’re edgy about this trip,” he explained, “but running would be worse. Lay in the coordinates and take us to a mach.23 warp, I want to get this out of the way as soon as possible.”
“As you wish, warp will engage in 1 minute, we should arrive in 5 in-flight hours.”
“Thanks,” said Van, “I’m gonna get a little wrecked. Dallas, care to join me?”
“Sure, I’ll grab some more snacks and shit.”
The two men spent the following few hours enjoying botanical treats and speaking nonsense of the profound questions of life, such as; why are we here? Is there a God? And, what’s the point in pubic hair? Dallas also shared his obsession with understanding where belly button fluff comes from. He understood where it came from when his clothes were shedding, but couldn’t fathom how it appeared on a regular basis. These lines of questioning never yielded any results of merit, but did serve to pass the time quite well.
By the end of their journey, Van was rather enjoying having Dallas around. He was easy going, seemed to share a lot of Van’s interests (including his affinity for ancient music) and was adept at packing a pipe for maximum intoxication. It was such a shame, he thought, that he may die when he reached his destination. Fortunately, he was too high to really care all that much and instead put some ‘Credence Clearwater Revival’ on the stereo.
As the stereo launched into a recording of ‘Fortunate Son’, the warp-exit alarm sounded and Van knew it was time to get his head in the game. After all, he had to talk his way out of a very painful death, he couldn’t very well go about that without achieving at least a modicum of sobriety.
“D00D, cut the warp engines and send the landing codes. I need to tool up before I set foot outside this ship. Dallas, no matter what happens, you don’t leave the ship or let anyone on-board, you got that?” Dallas nodded.
Van took off for his quarters at a brisk pace, he wished he could take all of his guns, but knew that was out of the question. He would have to take something that wouldn’t seem too threatening, if things turned south, but he would still have to have a trump-card close at hand. Van might be the kind of man that would avoid near death experiences at any cost, but he was not the type of man to risk being unprepared for just such a scenario, as his dealings with Mondo often ended with just that. He would still need to appear tough to avoid being messed with by the countless lackies that were followed his sadistic employer, this meant dressing to look the part.
He strapped on a light-armour vest, over a plain black vest. He finished off the somewhat militant ensemble with faded black cargo trousers, half-laced brown ‘jack boots’ and a gun holster, which clung tightly to his right thigh. Although he would most likely have it confiscated upon arrival, Van wasn’t going in there without his favourite side-arm. He called it Charlotte and he had made her himself. Using scraps from an interstellar trash heap, Van had crafted quite the unique weapon. Charlotte was a hand-held rail-gun, a device capable of discharging high-density energy rounds at incredible speeds. She was powered by a high capacity battery-pack that Van could switch out if necessary and that could charge itself with UV rays. This saved Van from running out of ammo as he was prone to doing with other forms of projectile weapons.
The only downside to the chunky, metallic, satanic nail gun (other than its weight) was that it couldn’t puncture medium to heavy armour. That is, unless he were to remove the current restrictors, a dangerous thing to try. It did however, make one Hell of a mess when it hit living tissue and Van often found that the ensuing chaos provided him with a distraction through which to escape bad situations. Finally, he was ready to face his fate. At least, he was dressed to.
Van reached the cockpit, just as Mondo’s station was coming into visual range; it looked bigger than he remembered. He tried to calm his nerves, but his pulse betrayed him. It’s gonna be fine, he needs you, so he won’t kill you, at least, not until he’s got what he needs and there’ll be plenty of time to prepare for that. No matter what he told himself, nothing was slowing his hurried cardiac concerto.
“Are you sure you wanna do this mate?” asked Dallas in a sombre tone, “You could always just ‘nope-out’ of this. I mean, it’s not like he could find you anywhere, space is huge mate. You could proper hide if you wanted to.”
“I don’t really wanna risk it,” replied Van, “I know he’d probably not find me if I went to the other end of the Virgo Cluster and set mself up as a farmer or some shit, but I don’t like the idea of lookin’ over my shoulder, plus farming seems fuckin’ boring as balls.” He smiled, though this was more a nervous reaction than a sincere gesture. Dallas understood and said no more. “You not worried what’ll happen to you if I die?” asked Van.
“Well,” said Dallas, “Your ship seems really smart and I can’t imagine it’d want to get destroyed and I hope it wouldn’t just chuck me off and fly away. So, I plan to just hide somewhere safe and wait to find out the outcome.”
“Fair enough,” Van replied, “I’d probably do the same thing.”
As the docking bay doors of the ominous station swung open to swallow the bird-like craft, Van’s feeling of unease pushed his anxiety to alarming levels. This wasn’t the bay in which they were usually instructed to dock, it was much smaller and appeared to be devoid of other ships.
Nothing about this was good.
D00D landed the Bessie gently, as the doors closed behind them. Van took a deep breath;
“Time to go to work.”
The air tasted stale in Van’s mouth, as he cautiously made his way off of the ship. His nerves gripped him fast, but he knew that there could be no turning back. Something far more unnerving was at work, however, there was no one there. Even when Van was in favour with Mondo, there were still guards to greet him when he landed. This was wrong. Where were they? Surely they wouldn’t just purge the hanger to kill him off. No, Mondo was far too fond of torture to kill him off so impersonally. He made his way swiftly towards the hanger door, his eyes darting to every corner and shadow in the room. The door to the hanger creaked open as he approached it. Dust fell from the frame and Van could see nothing but darkness beyond it.
He entered gingerly, steadily traversing the hallway in the ever growing blackness which was fast engulfing him. His rectum had already tightened to the point it was ostensibly non-existent. He stopped moving, any further down this path and he would be blind, he squinted… What was that ahead of him? A floating orb of dull light appeared to be slowly drifting toward him. It came within reach, Van carefully extended a hand toward it, only to have it hover away from his touch. He couldn’t explain how, but Van somehow knew that he was meant to follow this thing.
The little glowing ball zipped off down the hall, Van followed closely, so as to stay in the patch of light it cast. The path began to slope downwards and the ball picked up speed. Van broke in to a jog to keep up with it. Maybe this was the torture, he thought, doomed to follow a speck of light until exhaustion finally kills me. Just as he finished this thought, he slammed face first into a hard surface.
He fell back; the orb had gone through a small hole in the wall that Van had fallen afoul of. Only a very faint glimmer of illumination was now visible above his head. Van sat in the dark, wondering what fresh Hell was next, when he heard a loud, deep grinding noise. His sphincter was now so closed with fear, he was sure he’d never go to the toilet again. The sound was right in front of his face. A fresh gust of stagnant air rushed against his nostrils, as the wall before him slid open to reveal a large room with a shaft of light in its centre. Clamouring to his feet, Van made his way slowly in to the room, caressing his sore face.
The first thing that occurred to Van was that the gravity in this room was higher than that of the hallway. Each step was like walking through treacle, the station had always had a higher artificial gravity setting than Van had been used to, owing to Mondo’s personal preference. Growing up on a small planet, he had grown up with three quarters of the gravitational pressure of an Earth sized planet, but this was at least double that. He trudged toward the room’s centre, coming to a halt in the middle of the shaft of light. He felt heavy, his arms pulled down to the floor. This was it, this was how he was going to die.
He stood there in silence, the anticipation was enough of a killer. Then he heard a noise that chilled him to his very core. A booming cachinnation of voices cut through the silence like a firework in a toilet bowl. Van went rigid as another shaft of light carved a path in the darkness ahead of him.
Mondo stepped into this new light, his repugnant form was even more disgusting than usual. He was a murky brown coloured blob that was crammed into a pair of, what appeared to be, leather trousers with armoured boots at the bottom. On top, he wore a grease-stained, red, military officer’s jacket that was left open exposing a nauseating mass of festering flesh. Much like on the monster’s face, the torso contained several luminous green eyes. They were spotted about exposed flesh as if they had been scattered by a careless child. Mondo’s fat head had no hair, only; a pair of crooked, stubby horns, six nostrils, those damned glowing eyes and a big toothy mouth, which right now was open and laughing raucously.
Van gulped, Mondo may have the appearance of a 7 foot tall walking mound of shit, dressed in a ‘Sargent Pepper’s’ outfit, but that didn’t make him any less terrifying a person to have the misfortune of crossing paths with. The disjointed, laughing voices erupting from Mondo calmed and died out.
“So, you got my money, you one-brained little fuck?” the amorphous gangster asked, simultaneously speaking with several distinct, yet guttural, voices.
“About that,” started Van, “I actually wondered if you still wanted me to do that job for you? As I kept you waiting, I’ll do it free of charge.”
The random laughing voices came from Mondo once more, “You fucked up that job of yours then, huh? That’ll teach you for believing you can get ahead in this Verse without ME!”
Mondo’s eyes were burning red now, but he maintained his sadistic smile, “I ought ’a end you right now for having the guts to deny me. Lucky for yo’ pitiful ass, I have a job that requires someone with your background and skills. So you’re gonna make yourself useful for once.”
“Whatever it takes,” replied Van meekly, “You were right.”
“Hmpf, damn right I am, now get over here and bow, before I change my mind.”
Van made his way towards the festering leviathan. He hated this, Mondo had all his cronies prostrate themselves before him to show respect and loyalty, it was a real dick-move. On top of that he also had to deal with the weight of his body and armour in the increased gravity, standing back up was going to be a real bitch. He reached the walking shit-sack and knelt down before him. The smell was worse than the spoiled meat he’d poisoned all of those people with. It smelled like raw sewage and was somehow spicy. Van tried to breath as little as possible, but his racing pulse wouldn’t allow it. He gagged silently, being careful to show no disgust, lest it cost him his life. Mondo had killed people for a lot less. A globule of thick, cloudy, foul-smelling liquid fell past Van’s face, barely missing his cheek as it spattered on the floor.
“You feel that weight Van? That’s how shame feels,” Mondo said with a sense of superiority, “now get up before yo’ piddly ass leaves a stain on my floor.”
Van gladly followed the order, dragging his body upwards against the intense gravity. He clenched his teeth and stood up straight. The eyes on Mondo’s torso stared at him. Mondo laughed again, “c’mon punk, let’s talk business.” Van heard the sound of a few dozen rifles being lowered in the shadows, as he and the patchwork of body parts began walking to the back of the room.
Van followed the beastly alien, in silence, through the darkness to a large metal door. The door began to slide open. A bright light burst through, temporarily blinding the weary captive of circumstance. He followed Mondo in to the well-lit hallway, the gravity was more tolerable here, but still not as comfortable as the Bessie Fontaine. Van felt it was better to let Mondo speak first so held his tongue. They reached the end of the path and another door, this one was much smaller and appeared to be just an outline in the grey wall it gave passage through.
Mondo placed a large, sloppy, mitten-like hand against the surface of the door. A beeping noise echoed through hallway, as the door pushed open. Van followed his insidious boss through the opening and found himself in Mondo’s office. He recognised the room but he had never known there was more than the one entrance he usually used. That entrance, however, was facing him on the opposite side of the ill-scented office.
The room was filled with tacky and mismatched decorations, some so garish that no sentient creature in their right mind would think to display them. There were various skulls hung from the fabric draped walls, all of them looked as if an infant had decorated them with gems and glitter. The floor was a patchwork of grease and blood-stained rugs. The patterns were no longer visible under the macabre stains that had long-since dried over them. A large table covered in a variety of intoxicants stood next to a monstrous throne adorned with more of the gaudy skulls. Facing this brobdignagian monstrosity, was a much smaller seat, this one had no aggrandisements. No, this seat barely had a back to it, it seemed to be a stool or an executioner’s block. Van knew which seat was his, and part of him was incredibly happy about this fact. Mondo’s lack of taste was something that Van didn’t want washing off on him.
“Si’down,” Mondo ordered, “we got business to talk.”
Van heaved his heavy frame to the stoop before him and collapsed on to it. Mondo waddled over to the throne and sat down. He reached over to the table and grabbed a large, black jar. He opened the lid jamming a slimy thumb and forefinger inside and retrieving a writhing, pink shrimp-like creature. The space shrimp squealed until Mondo crushed it in his gigantic hand. He raised his hand to his face and snorted the poor crustacean’s remains. He turned to Van, “Now, I have a contact that gon’ give you coordinates for a pick up. You bring me back that package, you don’t end up on my wall, you feel me?”
“What’s the package?” asked Van.
“That ain’t none ‘a’ yo’ goddamn business, all you need to know is that it’s mine and that you gon’ bring it to me!” spat Mondo Indignantly.
Van thought for a second, “You said you needed me for this, it seems a pretty simple job, why me specifically?”
Mondo laughed maniacally, “You worried I’m gonna kill you, little meat-sack? If I was gonna kill you, I wouldn’t send you to the other end of the Galaxy to do it. I’d take my time right here.”
He smiled insidiously, baring his knife-like mass of teeth, “you’ll find out where you come into this, in time. I just wish I could see your face when you do.” He began to cachinnate once more.
Van got a really bad feeling in the pit of his stomach, Dallas was right, he should have ’noped-out’ of the whole situation. Such thoughts were simply moot at this stage however. Mondo rose to his feet, spreading his arms out, “that’s all there is to it,” he said triumphantly. Van looked at him incredulously;
“So, why all the cloak and dagger when I first arrived?” he asked.
“Well, if you must know; if you hadn’t asked me about the job, I was gonna kill you,” smiled Mondo, provocatively. Van gulped and got to his feet. “Now get outta my sight. I’ll send your destination to that tin can you call a ship. And Van, don’t disappoint me, or I will enter you.”
This final threat alarmed Van to say the least, he didn’t want to know how Mondo intended to carry out this threat. He did a brief bow to the grotesque creature and let himself out through the main door.
The door closed behind him, he could breathe without feeling sick once more. He took full advantage of this fact, only to discover that the taste of blood hung in the air. Mondo’s office overlooked his gladiatorial arena. Much like his office, this make-shift fighting pit, was equipped with a variety of skulls and miscellaneous stains, though the gems and glitter were thankfully absent. There were two giant crocodile people battling with chains. They were dressed in metallic gimp suits and trying to take chunks out of each other while onlookers gambled and jeered. This was truly a den of inequities, one that Van would be happy to leave behind.
Van had no idea how to get back to the disused hangar, he had only ever been to the main landing bay before. He didn’t much like the idea of asking one of the local scumbags for help and was about to radio the ship, when the floating ball of light popped up again.
“Ok,” said Van, “but no letting me knock myself out on a wall again.”
The orb gave no acknowledgement of this request and simply proceeded to float off towards a maintenance corridor. Van followed, the sooner he got out of this shit-hole, the better.
After a few twists and turns and a near decapitation by low ceiling, Van was back in the hanger. As he approached the Bessie, the ball of light shot straight up and out of sight. Fair enough, thought Van, it probably wouldn’t be good to have a non-descript entity belonging to Mondo on board, though he had grown a little fond of the helpful orb during their brief encounter. He thought nothing further of it and made his way on to the Bessie and, eventually, to the cockpit. Dallas was sat in the same seat as he had left him in.
“What happened to hiding?” asked Van, incredulously.
“Well I thought about that,” began Dallas, “and I came to the conclusion that if they wanted to kill us, they’d probably just take out the entire ship, so I got comfy instead.”
He chortled jovially and Van joined in. Maybe having a companion for this potentially lethal excursion could make it fun. Perhaps not ’fun fun’, but at least ‘fun’. The HUD blinked, alerting them to the received coordinates. “Right,” said Van, “now they’ve come through, let’s haul-ass. Where’re we going D00D?”
“The coordinates are that of a pirate planet in the fourth quadrant of the Milkyway Galaxy. No further information is available,” answered the computer.
“Great,” replied Van sarcastically, “Let’s go there then. This is sure to be a barrel of fucking laughs.”
He collapsed in to the pilot’s chair, fired up the engines and began the task of exiting the disused hanger. The large, beak-like opening yielded once more to the Bessie, granting it safe passage in to the vast emptiness of space.
After reaching a safe distance from their departure point, the vessel jumped to warp speed. As much as Van would have preferred to use the travel time for rest and relaxation, he knew that this was no time to take his foot off of the accelerator. He couldn’t continue from this point without being properly prepared for a life or death battle.
Luckily, Van was a big fan of videogames and as such had long ago purchased a full emersion gaming system. Though only designed for recreation, the versatile set up could serve a wide variety of purposes, in this case he could use it to train for any foreseeable conflict. He lethargically got to his feet with a groan.
“Come on then,” he said to Dallas, “You could die soon too, better that you do some training.”
“I’m not bad at hand-to-hand combat,” replied Dallas from the co-pilot’s seat, ” I might just join you in a bit.”
“Well, unless you can fight off a sniper shot to the head, you might want to join me right now.”
Dallas let out a long sigh and sprang to his feet, “alright then, what are we doing?” he asked.
“Follow me” Van gestured for his unwilling cohort to accompany him and the two men began a steady trek into the heart of the ship.
They headed toward the guest quarters at the back of the ship. They passed Dallas’ quarters which now emanated a pungent, herbal scent. There were only four guest domiciles on board, each with the same internal layout, all that is except for one. This room was drastically different in decoration, which is to say that it had none. Instead the room housed a box filled with, what appeared to be, a random collection of electronic devices and a single recliner chair. Van reached in to the box and retrieved a pair of black gloves and a chunky, black ocular interface. He thrust them at Dallas and instructed him to don the curios devices.
Following the instruction, Dallas pressed the ocular interface to his eyes, it affixed itself in place, gripping his nose to secure its position. “Oh, I nearly forgot,” said Van pushing two small earbuds in to Dallas’ ears. Dallas blinked and found himself standing in a plain white room. It appeared to have no walls or ceiling, it was just an empty space. He scanned the void and saw that Van was now stood next to him. “What’a you think?” asked Van, “shall we start with a little gun play or have a go at a stealth simulation?”
“Whatever,” said Dallas, “it’s your game..”
Van thought for a moment then made his choice, “Game-sys, launch combat scenario 17: Urban warfare.”
The environment around them flickered and was then rendered with a desolate cityscape at twilight. Dallas looked down to find that his red, hooded jacket had been replaced with tactical body armour and he was now holding a large pulse rifle. “Alright,” said Van, “I’ll take point, you cover me. We’re heading towards the fucked up skyscraper over there.” He pointed towards a massive tower block that seemed to have been barricaded, providing a make shift fortification. “keep your eyes open, this is the most varied simulation I’ve got so it chucks new and more dangerous things at you all the time. Any questions before we get started?”
“Yeah,” replied Dallas, “how long exactly have we got to get ready?”
“Two days,” answered Van, blankly.
“Ok, so why are we starting now?”
Van let out an exasperated sigh, “because there’s like an 80% chance we could die on this job. I would leave you in the ship while I take care of business but I need someone watching my back if the shit hits the fan.”
“Oh, alright then,” said Dallas, “just wondered.”
“You wanna start then?” enquired Van, his patience already beginning to wear thin, “there are mech-suits near the top of the tower if it makes any difference?”
Dallas heaved his rifle into both hands, a serious look on his face, “Let’s fuckin’ do this thing.” The would-be warriors made their way across the desolate street corner, towards the base of the tower. They hugged the cover provided by fallen debris, Dallas hanging back to provide cover if necessary. They reached the main entrance and camped just out of sight of anyone in the lobby.
“Right,” said Van in a hushed tone, “usually when I play this, there’s around 200 combatants in the first half of the tower. I’d tell you more but I normally call it a day at that point. However, because there’s two of us, the game’ll probably double that so, you know, shit’s gonna get tough. You need to be on our guard at all times. It doesn’t get realer than this inside virtual space. On the plus side, if we can beat it, by the time we finish, we’ll be more than ready for almost anything we might face.
“I’m gonna set a charge on that front door, I need you watching my back in case of any surprises. Back in a sec’.” Van stayed low and crept briskly toward the large, heavy-looking door. He reached in to a large pouch on his belt and retrieved a square package, he fixed it to the centre of the door, then turned and sprinted back to Dallas. He dived behind cover and locked his hands over his ears. Dallas felt the ensuing explosion in his teeth. The sound thundered through the virtual area. A thick plume of dust and smoke coated the men as they cowered behind an upturned car.
“COVER ME!!” yelled Van, tearing over the fresh debris towards the new opening. Dallas locked on the doorway with his rifle until he saw Van disappear inside, then gave pursuit keeping his gun up as he moved. Inside the tower’s lobby, Van and Dallas took shelter behind an upturned table. They could hear multiple footsteps up ahead. The tracks came to a stop around the entrance. Van pulled out a grenade, “watch this. This is why you don’t cluster up like a bunch of dipshits.”
He depressed the red button on the end of the grenade and tossed it over the table. An earth-shattering boom filled the room. Van chanced a peek at the sight of the explosion. He tapped Dallas on the shoulder, “come on, you get more points and ammo if you loot the corpses.”
Battling their way through horde after horde of docile opponents, the two men made their way up several floors. The process was very much a rinse-and-repeat scenario, but the repetition was slowly moulding their reactions to be more in-line with a real life combat situation. After a few hours of senseless, cover-shooting violence, they reached an open room with a large platform, covered in weapons, in the middle. “Awesome,” declared Van, “we finally reached a check point. Let’s take a break and pick it up from here later, we’ve been playing for about 4 hours and I’m getting tired.”
“Ok,” replied Dallas, who had wanted a break since they started.
The rendered environment fell away and Dallas was once again fully aware of the small room they had entered hours earlier. Something was different now though, things seemed more horizontal and achy. He removed the ocular interface and stared ahead at the ceiling. “Shit, how did I end up on the floor?”
“Oh yeah,” said Van, sitting up in the comfy recliner chair, “It’s a neuro-control system, your body goes limp while you’re playing. I would’ve told you but I didn’t think you’d want to do it.” He smiled cheekily at the floor-bound Dallas.
“Aaah, well, it’d’ve been nice for you to give me a heads up while we were in there mate,” groaned Dallas, pulling himself into a seated position on the ground.
“Sorry,” conceded Van, “tell you what, we’ll have a break for a bit and I’ll bring you a chair in when we get back. Come on.” Van extended his hand and helped Dallas to his feet. He dusted himself off and stretched out his battered spine.
“Wait a minute,” he said, “if the game’s neuro-controlled, then why did you give me the gloves?”
“For a laugh,” chuckled Van with a wink.