The foursome made cautious progress through a broad square room with dark blue walls. They had deciphered the floor tiles so as to proceed without immediate impalement, but this brought Bott no great sense of accomplishment. Anyone who couldn’t figure out not to step on the tiles with holes in them didn’t deserve to make it. A trap this simple meant a more devious one later. Or sooner.
A big green hand swept up behind him to prop him up while the other thumped him on the back. “Gittin’ troo again, Blogsy Cap’n. Tan me toes iffen ‘at’s not halfway!”
Louba swung the thumping hand up to indicate a row of white tiles which did seem to mark the midway point. Bott nodded, making no real comment. Despite her size, the green Klamathan reminded him of young Mijedad Bianco, who had started firing way too soon, leading to the capture of the ship, and had burned for it. Bott would have to watch Louba very closely. In fact, he intended to keep an eye on all three of them, and not for the pleasure of it.
“Iffen ‘ere’s bushes next door, I goes firsts. Us greens I natural outdoorsy types.”
“Yer right,” Bassada told her. “Whenever I looks at yez, I t’ink wide, open spaces. He’d git lost. Ya’d probly rip his clothes besides.”
“I’d set off his grenades, I tell ya,” Louba replied.
The gold sniffed with disdain, but spoiled it by licking her lips. She and Bassada had been busy with an argument on the virtues of multiple climaxes over several hours opposed to holding back for one bone-shattering conclusion. The phrase about bones struck Bott as unnecessarily graphic. But he had apparently won their undying affection by dropping the Nubry doppelganger; a “hard man”, they called him, imbuing the term with at least three meanings.
“Oh, friction burns are a sure sign,” said Chlorda, agreeing with something the blue had said. One golden toe touched the halfway point on the floor.
The blue walls were suddenly green with orange patches; bells hidden behind them struck up a jolly, jingling tune. Everyone froze. Then Bott slid one hand slowly into his pocket.
“Ship,” he murmured, once had had the card to his lips. “What did we just do?”
“Did you know that Elsie had calves named Beauregard and Beulah?”
Bott nodded, not especially surprised. “You’re going to be bilstim useful, aren’t you?”
“Unless you’ve been named Imperial Worship, lummox, that’s all the information you get out of me.”
Sliding the card away again, Bott looked ahead, left, right, and, remembering the dome in the ceiling, up. There was nothing new to see.
“Keep an eye on the spear holes,” he said. Then he stepped into the row of midway tiles.
The bells rose in volume, but nothing else occurred. The company moved on. “I perfers other women’s men,” said Bassada, “No chance a getting’ too personal.” Bott wiped his forehead and was grateful, again, that there wasn’t much room between trapped tiles.
”Ah, refrain yerself.” Louba shook three fingers at the blue. “Youse guys fallalloxed up yer operation at Greenwood Bungaloo so much ya shoon’t need anythin’ else ‘til yez finds shoes ta fit yez.”
Bassada snapped two fingers on each hand, dismissing Greenwood Bungaloo. “Yeah? If yer Cap’n Stillwell han’t’a took his vacation we mighta hadda chance.”
While those two rehashed the story of Greenwood Bungaloo, Chlorda had a chance to ease closer to Bott. Her lower lip and underteeth were sticking out, in a face that clearly said, “You’ll need to work hard to keep up with me.” Bott walked a little faster. Gold Klamathans were partial to what they called the Breadmixer, in which each partner kept their right ankle on their partner’s left shoulder.
“You understand,” he said, “I’m no Captain Tiberius, to have sex with every crew member on a mission.”
He took two more steps before the clearer air told him he was walking alone. He looked back to find three Klamathans staring at him, the gold with crossed eyes. “Well, grab me grin!” cred Louba, punching herself in the chin.
Complete confusion that the captain would expect a say in their debate, or even object, showed in every line of every face as well as every line that showed of their bodies. Then the green slapped one massive buttock. “Aw, Cap’n Bottsy’s joshin’!”
“It must be a jest,” Chlorda breathed at him, leaning in. “I’ve had no one but these two for weeks. And they smell funny.”
The b;ue took two steps toward them. “”Yez gots to unnerstan’. “All ‘at keeps us goin’ is tings we finds ta play wit’ along the way. A jumprope, like stretchnose here gots, a little box of Itteh Ga Sugar, earrings what….” She cast her eyes not, not at all demurely. “Dangle.”
Louba’s big right hand was rubbing the captain’s shoulder. “Seem when ya never been off yer home planet….”
This shocked Bott more than anything they’d said during the previous discussion. “You’ve never….”
Bassada and Louba, he learned, had spent their whole lives at home, while Chlorda had left Klamath only twice, on school field trips. Bott’s shock, which was obvious, was immediately taken up by his crew.
“’At’s what yez needs in a cap’n!” Bassada told the others. “A man wit’ experience!”
“It’s what I need in a man,” Chlorda agreed. “A captain with experience!”
Bott fretted that his resistance was weakening. What they expected would weaken him further, but he had missed working with a crew. This might be the price he had to pay.
He summoned his strength to object again. “We know the Emperor’s watching,” he said, easing his shoulders from under Luba’s arm. “Why put on a show?”
Chlorda stared at him. Bassada and Louba broke into booming guffaws. Before Bott could inquire after the joke, guffaws gave way to a cry of “Tripplepletz!”
Bott swung around to look. The tiles of the halfway line had disappeared behind them. Coming up a ramp from where the tiles had been were short, square metal boxes on low wheels. Turning again, to order his crew to move a little faster, he found them three rows ahead of him, daintily dancing around the tiles with spearholes.
All but impossible to knock over or turn from their courses, Hall Security Units held attachments capable of inflicting any one of ninety-eight highly painful and potentially crippling injuries on anything that triggered their ten foot freeze frames. And that was only standard Imperial issue: the Emperor’s special game versions would have more functions and a larger area of capture. Bott spent only a fraction of a second estimating how far apart the units were from each other before turning to pursue his crew.
The HSUs did not worry about s[earholes; the stabbing of the fine points didn’t even budge them as they trundled forward. The spearholes were becoming more numerous, forcing Chlorda, in the lead, to look around for safe tiles. Their foe would catch up long before they reached the end of the room. Bott reached into his satchel, loosed a grenade, and leapt after Bassada as he made a practiced toss over one shoulder.
This had not escaped the notice of his crew. Louba slowed to check behind her. “Nothin’,” she said.
Bott shrugged. “They can’t all….”
With a loud “PLOOM”, what might have been steam billowed from the grenade. Bott wrinkled his nose. A gas grenade would aid the HSUs more than the fugitives.
The steam did not disperse. The chunky robots did not advance through it. As the steam went white, crunching signs indicated that the HSUs had reached the barrier, and found it sufficient.
Louba set her hands on her hips and shook her head in admiration. “Well, bra me with barb wire an’ call me dainty!”
“Let’s go!” Admiring the bumpy wall himself, Bott realized it wasn’t big enough to block the entire passage. As he turned his head, he saw the first of the HSUs come into view.
“Flallop!” cried Chlorda, who had reached the bronze door tucked among many tiles with spearholes. She had pulled this to one side, waving the rest toward the safe tiles and the threshold, only to see a line of HSUs coming straight at them. Bott was reaching into the grenade satchel again when he spotted Bott getting ready to grab a grenade and throw it at them.
The Klamathans understood this the same moment he did, and they all plunged into the mirrored corridor. Chlorda had to jump: the door had opened against her and clicked into the wall. They could not shut off pursuit that way: this would be a test of speed. Twelve, twenty-four, and then countless fugitives found a way among the mirrors as the HSUs rolled toward the door, hampered not a bit by the excessively large number of spears.
To their left, down one narrow byway, waited five dull silver doors, one of which was likely to be real. A brown door waited in a cluster of bronze doors at the far end of the tunnel of mirrors, down a short flight of stairs.
“Brown door!” Bott sped toward it, bouncing now and again from himself in the mirrors, without checking to see if the others were following orders. He could nearly feel the throbbing of those freeze frames, which could paralyze a captive without dulling the ability to fee pain.
Leaping down the stairs, he put a hand to the brown door and looked back to find his crew bouncing after him, some more than others. He nodded, his back to the door. The HSUs came on.
There was a reason HSUs were not used outdoors. Unable to deal with terrain that wasn’t flat, they stumbled at the first step. A loud metal avalanche followed the Klamathans, gradually slowing as the HSUs bumped into each other, jabbing metal arms out just as the freeze frames took effect.
“Nice work Bottsy Cap’m<” said Louba, rubbing a hip against her captain. “Now what? Does we jump back over for ‘at silver door or use what we got?”
Bott doubted his ability to jump past all those freeze frames, but the green Klamathan had a good idea. It would be just like Imperial designers…. Looking up, he found a metal sign above the brown door. From here, he couldn’t tell if there was one above the many silver doors he could now see among the mirrors. The sign here said, ‘THIS EXIST OPENS INTO A CHAMBER OF FLAMING HORROR”.
All Bott could read of this, however, was the word Nubry had taught him “EXIT”.
“This way,” he said, pulling at the broad, arrow-shaped handle.
They studied, but did not at first enter, the broad green landscape. Not far from them waited a vast ice-blue lake, little white flashes here and there advertising an availability of fish.
“Lodeon doesn’t look like this, does it?” All Bott could remember from travel ads was yellow mountains and big buildings.
“Purdy nice, though.” Louba took a couple of steps into the grass. “If anybody was to want ta stop an’…rest.”
She looked over one shoulder, lowering long lashes as her eyes swept up and down the captain. Bott felt four other eyes on him, and took six steps past the green Klamathan. “Better move on as fast as we can.” His voice was a little louder than it needed to be. “This has to be a trap.”
“Weather seems about right, Captain.” Chlorda licked a finger to hold it up to test the breeze. She spent half a second longer than she really needed to on that finger, in Bott’s opinion.
“Thinkin’ I could struggle along layin’ round here a few days.” Louba shook out her hair which, since it was soaked with sweat, was redolent of fillberry pie. Bott’s stomach rumbled. It seemed a long while since he’d eaten?
“Too nice fer me.” Bassada stepped up and ran a finger of her own along the green Klamathan’s back. “Why’d his Imperial Wort’less make sumpm fer funsies? Gotta be sumpm dangersome to it.”
“Don’t listen to her, Bottsy Cap’n. She gots feets in her pajammers!”
Bott swung a hand along the line of the horizon. “There’s too much of it. The trap could be waiting anywhere. The lake. The trees….”
“Closer than that, I do suppose.” The gold Kalamathan moved up to a line of shrubbery and, raising one leg straight out, parted the top branches to look between them. This revealed a steaming wooden tub piled high with bubbles.
“Me fer ‘at!” cried Bassada, leaping forward.
“I saw it first!” Chlorda plunged forward, but was just too far away for her foot to miss the rim.
Bott jammed a hand into one of his pockets, found a gear he’d stowed there, and let it fly. It passed just above the leg covered with golden down and dug a well through the shimmering bubbles. This allowed a passage for a fountain of flames in response.
“I enjoy a hot bath, but oh my!” said Chlorda, returning to hug her captain.
“Getting’ kinda tired of ‘at Emperor,” growled Bassada.
“Touch nothing,” Bott ordered. “We need to find a door somewhere. Maybe….”
“Lala!” Chlorda raised an arm.
Louba was halfway up a tree trunk, reaching for something that hung from a branch. “Come help us find the door!” the gold shouted.
“Yer not cap’n today, lumplegs,” Louba replied. “Call back tomorra.”
“It’s her weakness, Captain,” Chlorda told him, as they spotted what Louba was reaching for. “Red silk panties with tassels. I suppose if we just let her die there’ll be more of everything…for everybody.” She glanced at the captain and then strode toward the tree.
Bott’s eyebrows slid down as he hurried after her, and his upper teeth jabbed into his underlip. Captain Huti had been brought to a sticky end by just such a crew. Unsuccessful pirate crews lacked cohesiveness, pursuing whatever seemed best at the moment, regardless of plan.
Six hands were reaching for green ankles as green fingertips brushed the underwear in the tree. Yowling as it burst into flame, a green fist knocked the flaming lingerie away from the tree. It flew too far, hitting the surface of the lake. The entire lake burst into flame and shot into the air. The hissing did not stop as it all came back down, and was not the result of flame hitting water.
Blogsy Babbles 