SWNOVELS Chapter CHAPTER SIX
Van lifted the syringe up to his shoulder; he pressed the miniature needle into his arm and pulled the trigger. He winced; the sting was brief, but intense. It may have felt bad but it was a small price to pay to have life-saving nanites back in his body. He set the gun-like medical instrument down on the kitchen table and walked over to the sofa plants, collapsing in to one. Both he and Dallas were exhausted, having spent the past day and a half in the game-sys training environment. They had battled bosses, taken down tanks that had no business being in a building in the first place and made piles out of their fallen enemies just for fun. Not to mention their corpse looting scores were through the roof. Dallas had even found a ‘red key’. Yes they had had plenty of fun, but now was the time for the real thing.
The ship dropped out of warp and found itself in shallow orbit around a dry looking planet. There were water masses on the surface, but the vast majority appeared to be flat and arid.
“Ok,” said Van, “we’ll make planet fall in about an hour, I want to check on the ammo supplies first. Dallas, I should have some body armour that’ll fit you and-“
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” interjected Dallas, with a wave, “Why do I need body armour?”
“Because a red hoodie won’t protect you from gun fire?” replied Van, nonplussed at the seemingly self-explanatory question.
“But I’m staying in the ship.”
“The Hell you are.”
“But-“
“Look,” said Van, “We made a deal that I would take you to a space station, if you got me laid. Now, as I don’t know whether or not I did have sex that night and I still took you to a space station; that puts you in my debt. Ergo, you are gonna help me survive this encounter. Ok?” Dallas stared at Van, he had no comeback, it was pretty sound logic and he was in no real position to argue. “Good,” smiled Van, “so, I’m gonna guess you take a size 16 and probably don’t want something in pink, so come with me.”
“Do I at least get a gun?” asked Dallas, defeated.
“Noooo,” Van retorted sarcastically, “I was thinking you could stare them to death. Yes, you get a gun, we’re gonna put those sniping skills of yours to good use. I have a rifle that’ll do the trick if the shit and a fan happen to coalesce.”
“Well good, because I don’t want to die or anything.”
“Neither do I Dallas, that’s why you’re coming along. Chances are this’ll be legit’, Mondo seemed pretty adamant about this being a real job, so he probably won’t try to kill me ’til it’s all over. Now come on we’re wasting time.” Van led Dallas to the cargo bay. Except for a few spare ship parts it seemed empty.
“Where are they?” asked the reluctant gunman.
“Open up that hatch over there,” instructed Van. Dallas did as he was asked and was greeted by a stench that made his nostril hairs turn white. It was the hatch in which Van had stored the hover-dolly, days earlier.
“Oh fuck! What the shit dude!?” He turned to see Van clutching his stomach and laughing.
“I’m, I’m sorry. I-I just had to!” He continued to laugh, “Ok, for real this time, I keep the guns hidden over here.” He pointed to a box marked ‘sewerage’. Dallas looked at him with contemptable scepticism. “What? It’s a good place to hide shit, no pun intended.”
“You open it,” said Dallas.
“Fine,” replied Van, indignantly. He heaved open the lid of the large box, “come and pick your toy.”
Dallas walked over, cautiously, and peered in to the open crate. The contents were by no means organised but, more importantly, it didn’t make him heave. Everything looked like it had simply been dropped in over time. He looked around as best he could. There was what appeared to be a long butt-stock protruding from a mound of mismatched ammunition. He grasped it firmly and began to pull, it was heavier than expected. Van cleared away some of the random weaponry which buried the lengthy killing machine. Eventually, Dallas was able to free the large gun and lifted it from the crate. He stood it next to him; the gun was a little taller than he was.
“Compensating are we?” joked Van with a wink, “it’s a 60.cal rifle, so it should put a hole in most things. Don’t know how much ammo I’ve got for it though, I took it from a really annoying guy who thought it was fun to take pop-shots at me while I was relaxing on what I thought was an abandoned moon. He was like a mile away so at least you know it’s got range.”
“Cool,” replied Dallas, “I’ll have a look through this box, if I don’t find any rounds I’ll just grab something else.”
“Ok,” said Van, “just check with me first, some of these things don’t work anymore.” He left Dallas to scavenge through the crate of death and went to fetch some body armour. By the time he returned Dallas seemed to have emptied the entire contents of the gun crate onto the cargo bay floor. “WHAT THE ABSOLUTE FUCK!” cried Van upon seeing the ever expanding pile of guns and ammo the floor was now thick with, “what the fuck are you doing?!”
“Well, right,” began Dallas, “I was having trouble diggin’ out any ammo so then I started going through the rest of the guns and I thought ‘why not fix the broken ones’, then I thought; ‘even better, I’ll make some new guns with the parts’. So, I started getting ’em all out and then you walked in and that’s where we are now.” Van stared at his would be companion; he didn’t know whether to shake his head in disapproval or just blow him out of the airlock.
“Can you make your new weapons in the next ten minutes?” asked Van, holding back his anger.
“No,” said Dallas.
“Then just pick a working gun, put as much of this away as you can and join me in the cockpit because I need an extra pair of hands to make planet fall and D00D sucks at it owing to some mystery damage the ship took to its aft electrical system.”
“Is it a mystery,” came D00D’s voice over the PA.
“Shut up,” said Van, “It’s a mystery and will remain so.”
He turned to walk away, leaving Dallas to tidy. He stopped and looked back, “Oh and put this on,” he threw the light-weight body armour at the unsuspecting Dallas, “it’s size ‘fat-fuck’, hope that isn’t too tight.”
Van made his way up to the cockpit and settled down in his chair, breathing the anger out of his lungs. Dallas soon joined him, sitting in the co-pilot’s seat. In front of each of the men were a set of controls that would have looked at home on a sci-fi motorbike, with a holographic HUD showing the flight path and altitudinal information. “Okay,” said Van, turning toward Dallas, “it’s a really simple process with two of us. All you have to do is follow my instructions and line things up with display-thingy on the screen. It’s a piece of piss, as long as we don’t do it wrong and kill ourselves in a fireball of pain and failure. Any questions?”
Dallas sat for a second unpacking the brief instructions on how to avoid death, “how do you know which side to land on so that you don’t fall off?”
“Huh?”
“The planet’s a ball shape, right?” explained Dallas.
“Yeah…” said Van eager to find out where this was going.
“Well, then if you’re on the bottom, you’ll fall off won’t you?”
Van stared blankly. A smile began to streak across his face. He started laughing hysterically, panting and holding his sides. Dallas didn’t get it and glared at the giggling fool he was sat with, insulted. Van gasped for air through a flurry of laughter that had brought genuine tears to his eyes. “Let… let me get this straight. You… You, you think that you can fall off the surface of a planet?” he asked, wiping dry his cheeks.
“Well… Yeah. I’ve never been to a planet before ok? It makes more sense that you stand on something flat, than the bottom of something round.”
Van stifled his laughter, “just think of it as a never-ending room, that just loops around. First; I’d like to say thank you for that, I haven’t had that good of a laugh in ages. Now, let’s get this out of the way, we need to land about half a mile away in case we get any surprises from the locals.”
“Aren’t you meeting the locals?” asked Dallas confused.
“Doesn’t mean they won’t kill us when we meet them, now clench those butt-cheeks it’s time to take this big bastard in.” The two men worked in unison, pulling against the deathly wind currents and fluctuating atmospheric pressures, to fight their way down to the planet. The heat of the planetary entry took its toll upon the scarcely painted hull of the Bessie as she cut through heavens of the small planetoid. She threatened to buckle on her way to the surface, the lack of aerodynamics turning a mellow sky in to a tempest sea.
Eventually the ship levelled out and landed softly upon the unyielding terra firma below. Van and Dallas released the controls and breathed a collective sigh of relief. They high-fived silently, without even making eye contact. “Okay,” said Van, “now comes the tricky bit.”
After donning their body armour and affixing their weaponry, our would-be ‘bad-asses’ disembarked the aridly cooling vessel and set foot on the sands of the pirate planet. Dallas began to giggle, “Why is the fucking sand pink?” he asked through muffled titter.
“Lazy terra-forming,” answered Van, “whoever TF’d this bitch apparently didn’t want to grow plant life and shit, so left the terra-forming salts to multiply across the surface, rather than pumping them into the atmosphere and growing shit.” Van was correct, whomever had terra formed the planet had used the specially designed atmospheric adaption nanites to swarm the planet. This was a technique used by many who could not afford an atmospheric regenerator or simply couldn’t be bothered to do so.
“So how do we know which way we’re going, if there’s no landmarks to follow?”
“You like asking questions don’t you? I’m using the tracking map that Mondo sent me,” said Van holding up his wrist. “Now let’s get going, we’ve got a half mile walk toward that ridge over there.”
Dallas looked at the horizon ahead of them and let out a defeated sigh. This scenario was what he would later describe as ’all kinds of bullshit’… How eloquent… Anyway, the clandestine cohorts made their way briskly across the tepid pink sands and climbed to the summit of flamingo coloured ridge.
Once they reached their destination, two things became glaringly obvious; firstly, that the terra-formers were not as lazy as first believed, and, second, that amassing trees on an otherwise deserted planet is the perfect way to give away your location. On the other side of the ridge, nestled around 40 feet below, was a dense forest roughly the size of a takeaway restaurant. It couldn’t have looked more conspicuous if the progenitor had left a large sign with an arrow on it with the words ‘no baddies here’ written across it.
“There’s a landmark,” commented Van pointing downwards. The peculiar collection of woodland appeared to have no clearing visible from above. There was no way of telling what would be waiting for them inside.
“Any chance that’s not the place we’re meeting these guys?” asked Dallas.
“According to the map; it- isn’t, it’s that tent over there.”
Van pointed to a large canvas tent a few metres to the right of the dense thicket. There was a cheerful looking, orange, humanoid-alien stood outside of it waving to them. “Let this be a lesson to you Dallas; Just because people are cut-throat murderers, it doesn’t mean they aren’t complete dorks,” said Van in a tone of mock-condescension. He waived back at the strange, orange dork and they began descending the ridge toward him.
As they approached they could see that the alien was wearing a white lab-coat. There were strange devices protruding from the breast pocket. The coat was far from clean; it had oily stains of every colour in the rainbow streaked across it and singes chewing at the seams. The alien was bald and both of his eyes had been replaced with large prosthetics. He had no lips and his nose was little more than two, dark slits.
“Hi,” said the orange dork from beyond the stars, “it’sh shuper you’re here, we’ll brief you inshide and you can get shtarted shtraight away.”
Van shared a brief knowing look with Dallas. “Before we go anywhere, what’s the deal with the mini forest over there, is that some kind of scientific experiment or something?”
“Not a clue,” said the alien, “it washh there when we shhowed up, it creepsh the living shit out of me to be honesht. Now pleashe, follow me won’t you.”
He led them into the tent. It was lit with several glowing orbs that hovered in place. The inside was not as the two visitors had expected of their lispy host. Instead of the stereotypical ‘nerd cave’ complete with laboratory equipment and hentai-soaked ‘masturbatorium’, there was nothing but a large, open metal hatch in the pink earthen floor.
The alien stepped down into the hole and beckoned for Van and Dallas to follow him. Dallas secured his rifle under his arm and disappeared down the hole after the alien, Van felt like saying something about the abundant danger of going into a dark tunnel but was just happy that he wasn’t going first. The tunnel was dimly lit by more light orbs that hung in the air, a few metres apart from one another. This, together with the dingy metal walls, gave the impression of a subterranean bomb shelter. They appeared to be walking downwards on a steady but noticeable gradient.
Van slid his hand over his sidearm and released the catch on his holster. “So, what you got going on down here?”
“Amazing thingsh,” replied the mechanically-eyed space dork, “we are improving upon the greatesht creations of our universh. Turning dreamsh into realitiesh. We have been here for decadesh, pushing the boundariesh of shcienshe and imagination, in the shearch for perfection.” The alien closed the shutters on his eyes as he spoke, speaking with passion.
“I see,” said Van, “I guess what I should have asked is; what the fuck does that have to do with me?”
The alien stopped. In front of them was a door, “come inshide,” replied the alien, “and all will become clear.” He began to open the door.
“You’re not gonna probe us or anything are you?” asked Dallas, blankly.
The alien stared at him, mortified. “What?!” he asked.
“Well you’re being all mysterious and shit, and we’re in the middle of nowhere, in a place where you do ‘experiments’. I don’t know, it just seems pretty rapey is all…”
The alien stood there, slack-jawed. He didn’t know how to reply to this question. He managed to answer with a very feeble “no”.
“Oh good,” said Dallas without acknowledging the creature’s total shock at his question, “alright, after you”.
The horrified alien opened the door, silently and walked through. Van shot Dallas a ’what the fuck’ look and followed the alien. Dallas shrugged and walked in after them. They entered a gigantic, brightly lit hanger filled with massive machinery and people in lab coats, frantically scurrying from machine to machine. Something over to the left was huffing out blue-green smoke onto a strange animal suspended above it. Each time the smoke cleared, the animal had become smaller and smaller until nothing visible remained, then the smoke turned to a yellowy-orange and the odd looking creature began to grow again. Several orange aliens in lab coats were watching and taking notes on the data screens they clutched in their gloved hands. Another machine was pumping out disgusting lumps of flesh onto a conveyor belt, which fed them into the top of yet another machine.
The alien that had led them in walked over to this machine and pressed a big red button on the side. The machine spluttered and rumbled, making terrible banging sounds. It seemed as though it was about to explode, then it made a ping sound and a glass of thick cloudy liquid appeared in the alien’s hand. “Shmoothie?” asked the alien.
“What flavour is it?” Van asked sheepishly.
“All of the flavoursh” announced the alien, complete with a dramatic hand gesture.
“Umm. Sure, why not,” answered Van. The alien pressed the button again and one noisy moment later, Van was grasping the frosty sides of a freshly materialised smoothie. He took a sip and spit it out again immediately. “That tastes like shit!” he exclaimed disgustedly.
“Yesh,” replied the alien with a sense of triumph, “thatsh what all the flavoursh, mixed together, tashtes like. A true accomplishment, I’m sure you agree. I call it ‘Shtuart’s Shpectacular Shuper Shmoothie’! Pretty impreshive right?”
“Well, you’ve definitely pushed the boundaries of nausea… Prick…” Van wiped the remainder of the repugnant concoction from his mouth. That taste was going to stay with him, he knew that. “I really hope I’m not here to test anymore of this stuff.”
“No,” said Stuart the alien, deflated, “You’re here because we need you to help us finish the greatest invention ever created. You’re here to finish our Mercury drive.”
Van stared at the alien. He knew what he was referring to, but he also knew there had to be some kind of mistake. “Did you just say you have a ‘mercury drive’?” he asked tentatively.
“Yesh” replied Stuart with new vigour, “would you like to shee it?”
Stuart led the two men to the far wall of the hangar and through a large door into a smaller, but still house-sized hangar. In the middle of the room was a large egg-shaped capsule. Thick, metal roots were coming out of holes all over the device, sticking directly into every wall, floor and ceiling panel in the room. There was a large control desk with several screens set up in front of the white egg. The roots were pulsing and emitting a glowing, purple light. Despite the bright lighting of the room, the glow still gave off a very eerie vibe to the observers.
Van stared at it, speechless with awe. As a child, Van had been taught the theoretical science behind the Walford Mk II Mercury Drive. It was said to be a machine that could completely change the concept of transportation. The device was so complex and relied upon so many unproven scientific principles, that it was thought to be unbuildable. Van was staring at the greatest myth in the universe. He couldn’t believe it, surely it doesn’t work, this must just be some mad-man’s folly. It was unthinkable that this was the fabled Mercury drive. He began to feel insulted that this neon twerp would deceive him with such a preposterous lie. But what if it was true? What if this crazed genius with electronic eyes had actually built the impossible? Would he, could he, pass up an opportunity to be a part of such an undertaking? He thought for a moment, and then asked very slowly;
“How do you want me to help?”
“I’ll let itsh creator answer that,” said Stuart, humbly.
The wall to the left slowly slid open, spilling cold steam into the room. An orange alien walked through the growing opening. He looked different to the others they had seen in the facility. Unlike the others, he had short, red hair on the top of his head. His large turquoise eyes were his own and his face was wrinkled and weathered by time. He had the face of a man without innocence, his skin told the story of a life spent in obsession. He walked slowly towards them. His legs were supported by exoskeletal walking aides, he had long ago lost the natural use of his legs. No doubt a symptom of his life’s work. He approached Van, “I hear you know what this machine is?” he asked.
“Only academically,” Van answered, taken aback.
“I don’t,” said Dallas, raising his hand.
The old man turned his gaze towards Dallas, who still had his oversized rifle slung under his arm. He looked him up and down and sighed. “It is a tool by which one can transport matter through space and time,” he explained, “travelling immeasurable distances instantaneously. Anything it’s connected to could be moved from one part of the universe, to the other, without the passengers or any observer being aware of any passage of time. Using quantum entanglement and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, we transfer matter from one area of space-time to another, compatible, area of our choosing. With this, space travel as we know it today will cease to exist.”
“What do you mean by compatible?” asked Van, “I read Professor Walford’s work on this concept and I don’t remember anything about ‘compatible space-time’.”
“The good Professor was indeed a genius but his failure to balance his equations was down to one key miscalculation; only certain points in time and space coincide on a molecular level with the particles that make up an object in order to allow for them to become entangled on a quantum level. Does that answer your questions?”
“I don’t really know that much about the specifics of quantum theory,” said Dallas, underwhelmed by the situation, “but I got the gist of it.”
“You gentlemen should take this more seriously,” snapped the elderly scientist, “even the arrogant Skolareans have only managed to accomplish this with information. If I’m ever going to put a knife in their smug, self-satisfied sides, I’ll need you to heed the importance of this work.”
“Sir, please,” implored Van, “I have more reasons than most to hate the Skolareans, but I don’t understand what I could possibly help with.”
“I know all too well of your reasons,” said the alien, placing his hand on Van’s shoulder, “that’s why you’re here. I have a contact who has worked hard to create for me the final, and most crucial, piece of this wondrous device. And to obtain this, I need someone who can get onto Thosisa and meet him.”
“I can’t go back there,” said Van solemnly, “if you know my past, you know why.”
“I do,” said the alien, “but I don’t care. You have the experience necessary to get onto that planet and find your way around. You can either go and have a 50/50 chance of survival, or; you can refuse and your employer will hunt you down and torture you to death. There appears to be only one real choice.”
Van stared at the aged alien, his mouth hung open. He was trying to think of a good retort and resisting the urge to head-butt the bastard stood before him. Mondo wanted Van to bring the component to him, most likely for the purpose of extortion. And yet this rube was now threatening him as well. This job was already going south and it hadn’t even started yet.
“Should I take your silence as an acceptance of this task? You’re already a month later than expected and time is of the essence,” asked the humanoid orange peel.
Van gave up looking for a third option and nodded silently. His situation was hopeless, but the old man was right; he did have a chance at survival if he did go, slim though it most certainly was.
“Wise decision Mr Morrison,” said the alien, “here are the details of your mission.” Van’s CID lit up, showing that data had been transferred to it.
“Just one thing,” asked Van, “how, how do you know who I am? Even Mondo has no idea about my past.”
The old alien smiled, “make it back with my property and I will tell you everything. Goodbye now, Atlas, you have a very important job to do.”
Van and Dallas made their way back to the Bessie without exchanging a single word, not that Van was paying attention to much except his memories and fears.
Thosisa was one of the binary home planets of the Skolareans and one of the last places in the Universe that Van never wanted to go back to. To say he had a bad reputation there, would be the understatement of the century.
As no one did say this however, the understatement of the year went to Pheeble Wingstip of the paper people of the Beetlejuice nebula who, when his home planet was set on fire simply commented; “Oh, dear. This isn’t going to end well’.
Van had run from his former life on Thosisa for the better part of a decade, but he knew that he could not, in good conscience, expect Dallas to accompany him, without explaining exactly what could be waiting for them once they arrived.
They boarded the Bessie and went into the main compartment. Sitting down on the plant sofas and laying down their weapons on the floor.
“That wasn’t too bad,” said Dallas, testing the water of conversation.
“I need to tell you some things before we go any further, things about the place we’re going to,” Van said.
“It’s ok if you don’t want to mate,” said Dallas, “you seem like it’s something you aren’t comfortable with.”
“No. You should hear this, because I can’t get onto the planet alone and you need to be ready in case shit goes down.”
“Is it a gangster planet or something?”
“Far from it,” said Van, shaking his head, “It’s a planet of intellectuals, or rather it’s one of two planets of intellectuals. It’s also where I was born and raised. I think my parents might even still live there. They don’t have money there, they don’t even care about ownership, they care about knowledge. To them, knowledge is the ultimate in life and anything associated with knowledge or learning is prized above all else. I was brought up to respect knowledge and information more than living creatures, then I burned down my school and fled the planet. So now I’m wanted for a capital offence there and if I’m caught will most likely be put to death. We need to get in and out without being noticed, so when we get there-“
“Hang on,” interjected Dallas, “they want to put you to death for burning down a building and running off? That’s nuts!”
“It was full of books and testing data for the entire student body. I told you that knowledge is more important than life to these fuckers. They think of themselves as the only truly intelligent life in the cosmos, so my life’s worth less to them than a book mark with a dirty limerick on it. So we need to avoid getting me killed at any cost. I can probably get us onto the planet under the guise of tourists, but I’m still gonna need a disguise that’ll stop the face scanners from picking me up. I have something that’ll do it but just in case the shit hits the fan, I’ll need you on top form. It’ll take about a week and a half to get there from here so it’s back in the simulator I’m afraid.”
“Alright,” said Dallas, “but then you’ve gotta take me somewhere I wanna go. This staring death in the face shit is tiring and stressful as fuck.”
“Deal,” agreed Van, “Now let’s get into orbit and then we can begin training. We’re only about five levels away from the mech suits and that’s gonna be awesome to play.”