There Will Be Walrus: First Volume V Page 9

  *[Gun currently out of stock, locks and barrels. Squirrels may be found sleeping at night time and in winter. May contain traces of nuts. Not for sale to humans, badgers or tree mammals.]

  The Dead Tell No Secrets of the Dead

  Introduction by Mr Atomic: Straw Puppy and Timothy the Talking Cat, both of whom appear in this collection with their own individually crafted tales of wonder, have closely collaborated on numerous projects, most of which I have had to clean up. There was the time they decided to ‘invent pasta’ in the sewing room, there was the incident with the septic tank and of course there was their unpublished multi-volume epic science-fantasy “Straw Puppy and Timothy in Space fight the Space Aliens and Win”. That series (SPTSFSAW for short) also features a former Space-Navy Space-SEAL turned private eye and psychic detective/vampire hunter, Chief Sergeant Flight Commander Chiselled McEdifice of the McEdifice & Darkshadow Detective Agency/Psychic SWAT Mercenaries (MDDAPSWATM) and the demonically possessed funeral urn of his ex-wife Betsy. McEdifice is a man easily misunderstood by those around him, a man who has seen too much and must bear that burden on his soul. This is a story from McEdifice’s past - a story that reveals much about the complex universe created in SPTSFSAW.

  Readers of SPTSFSAW, if there were any, would find this story an invaluable addition and new readers may well feel eager to encourage both Timothy and Straw Puppy to spend more time writing their seminal science fantasy epic and less time finding out what happens when they put ground graphite into a chemical toilet full of petrol. Please encourage them in this regard.

  Author’s introduction by Straw Puppy: I wanted a really ace space story so I based this one on “Tell it to the Dead” by Steve Raza and Vox Day. Obviously I changed things around to make it heaps better, including adding our sidekick from SPTSFSAW. Timothy added some lame bits in exchange for letting me use his computer.

  The Dead Tell No Secrets of the Dead

  By Straw Puppy and Timothy the Talking Cat (my bits are the best bits, e.g. the vampires TTTC)

  The crushing cacaphonic sound of collapsing titanium shielding heralded the physical thump of acceleration that hurled the men of Tango Squadron, Fifth Phalanx of the Space-Navy Space-SEALS against the carefully contoured acceleration seats of the Poloxian rapid transit assault personnel injection transporter (Mark 8) as it accelerated at a vector of 0.6 parsecs per light year radians. Private Corporal Specialist Chiselled McEdifice knew that if the mass-momentum decouplers glitched for even a femtosecond, his internal organs would be spaggetterefiified into a string of bloody entrails that could be wrapped around the equator of a Jovian gas giant with enough slack for a delicate bow to tie it altogether. Even with the protection of the shielded acceleration seats the massive g-forces made the rides as uncomfortable as sitting in a very small car whilst carrying something awkward, like an old fashioned 1980s widescreen TV or something like that (which Mc Edifice had read about history books because obviously he didn’t have a TV like that himself and as he was like a top Space-Navy Space-SEAL he really didn’t have time for TV these days).

  But high velocities were a necessary part of the tactical strategy being employed - high velocity and low cunning. The transporter had been expelled from the Space-Destroyers forward electromagnetic blunderbuss as part of a massive high-speed projectile vomit of a thousand fragments of space debris and kinetic missiles. The planetary defence systems would be overwhelmed with targets, from sophisticated warheads to old 1980s television sets of the kind that you can’t even give away anymore. Also there was some tins of that cat food that I didn’t like - I’ve no idea why they even sell it as no self-respecting cat would eat it.

  PCS McEdifice was aware of all this (well not that stupid bit about the cat food Timothy won’t eat - the guy wasn’t psychic yet, that comes later in another story) but he couldn’t help clenching his pelvic floor muscles as if to protect him from the sudden impact of a hunter-killer defence droid attack. Death would be quick but not merciful if one of those droids locked on and slowly cut its way in like a man opening a tin of sardines for his cat, who richly deserved proper food after putting up with that disgusting stuff that he had been served earlier.

  “Your pulse is racing PCS McEdifice. Don’t go all cowardly on me now.” said Sergeant James O’Gruff who was leading Tango Squadron. “Calm down, McEdifice. You may have the rugged good-looks of a manly and yet deep hero but you still have a lot to learn. Take a leaf from Private Zwicky over there - his heartbeat is barely registering.”

  The sergeant’s words echoed in McEdificie’s head and his 2-sigma level IQ leaped into action instantly drawing deductive conclusions from the evidence around. He jumped up from the acceleration seat, ignoring the powerful forces around him

  “Sergeant, Zwicky isn’t relaxed. Zwicky is DEAD!”

  “What!” Cried the sergeant, ‘but how?”

  McEdifice removed Zwicky’s pace helmet and pointed at the two tell tale holes in Zwicky’s neck.

  “Space vampire Sarge. Some undead blood-sucking monster did this.” McEdifice clutched Zwicky’s body to his chest. He would never forget Zwicky’s humour, his easy way of blending in with the rest of the troops. Only last night McEdifice had helped Zwicky write a letter to his girlfriend back on Upsilon 7. “God dammit! Nooooooo!” shouted McEdifice to the heavens, “You died too young Zwicky!”

  “Pull yourself together McEdifice,” growled Sergeant O’Gruff. He turned to the rest of the troops.

  “I don’t know which mummy-flubbing one of you excuses for grunts is a space vampire but I’ll tell you now - I wont let no mummy-flubbing blood-sucking undead scion of Dracula stand between me and a successful mission. So which ever one of you is the demon-animated corpse, you’d better save your nosferatu-like antics for the enemy. Understood? I said UNDERSTOOD?”

  The chastened troops nodded in unison. Smith, Dibble, Sadowitz, O’Reilly, Hannity, O’Gruff Jr, Prince Vlad “the impaler” Tepes of Wallacia, Trump, Simon, Garfunkel. Each nodded one after the other.

  McEdifice climbed back onto his acceleration seat. Zwicky’s death was an unbearable tragedy that would haunt McEdifice’s tortured soul for the rest of his life, but on the bright side Zwicky had been spared the next phase of the mission: THE SPIN CYCLE.

  The spin cycle was loathed and feared and somewhat disliked by even the very best of the Space-Navy Space-SEALS. Once the outer-planetary defences were breached and the transport decelerated through the noxious atmosphere, the ship would fire the lateral rockets creating a centrifugal spin in the troop chamber. This spin would reach crushing g-forces before the outer hatches of the transport opened. At that point each Space-Navy Space-SEAL would be projected out from the ship in multiple directions all at once. I mean each one of them goes in only one direction but each direction would be different. I don’t mean that each one of them goes in multiple directions because that would tear them apart. So, to be clear, one direction per soldier but each direction is different for each one of them. Can we call them soldiers? Are SEALs soldier or marines? OK, we’ll look that up later. They’ve got guns and shit and shoot people - I mean that’s a soldier right?

  The commander came over the comm system: “They have no idea we are here gentlemen, despite our warship firing a massive blunderbuss at them like a crazy farmer chasing hippies trying to use his fields for free-camping. Now that we are at the right altitude, its is only half a kilo-minute to the target vector. Team leaders confirm asset preparedness!”

  “Team Tango is Tango Ready for Go!” shouted O’Gruff.

  “Ready for Tango Extraction!” cried Grenadier Sadowitz

  “Listen to my children of the night! Ready Tango Go!” called out Corporal Prince Vlad “the impaler” Tepes of Wallacia.

  McEdifice glanced at his HUD display readout screen visuals. A purple icon showed that he was ready to go as team pathfinder. “McEdifice code-named HUNK is Ready, Go” he growled laconically.

  With the last confirmation, the transport began its
infamous spin-cycle. It rapidly accelerated to two-thousand revolutions per minute crushing McEdifice against his acceleration seat like a man in a really small car with something else really bulky, maybe not a TV this time, perhaps a fridge or some other expensive yet uncomfortable appliance.

  Then with a sharp release, the hatches opened and each of the Space-Navy Space-SEALs were thrown out of the transport at high velocities.

  “Weeeeeeee” cried Garfunkel in his distinct high-pitched and yet dulcet tone.

  “Wa-hoooo!” cried Dibble in a more sort of manly way, while Vlad just made flappy noises.

  Below him McEdifice could see the ground rushing by him in a frantic blur like a hurriedly applied photoshop filter. As he hurtled towards his landing zone, trees, buildings and advertising hoardings whipped past him with the whippiness of a Devo video.

  As impact loomed the neuroenhanced nanotech inertial compensators in his suit activated into hard-mode, as the titanium-caladium composite fibre matrix shell in his power-suit amor activated to form a collision damper to cushion his planetary ingress.

  “Oof!” he exhaled as the moderated impact temporally blew the air from his lungs. “McEdifice code-named HUNK - successful landing in target zone” he reported as he began scanning the area for his comrades.

  A few metres a way a huge sign for eCyberdunk-eCyberdonuts had been partially destroyed by the impact from Garfunkel’s power-suit. His inertial compensators had failed, resulting in little more than a bloody mess scattered over a section of text advertising a two-for-one discount on borgimplantcyber-coffee.

  “Noooooo!” cried McEdifice, “You died too young Garfunkel! Your eyes burned so brightly but now they have closed and failed! I’ll take my memory of you with me in my heart, which has not yet become cold under the burden of all the pain and suffering that I have seen.”

  “O’Gruff here. Sound off Tango Squadron.”

  In turn the voices of O’Reilly, Hannity, O’Gruff Jr, Zwicky, Prince Vlad “the impaler” Tepes of Wallacia, Trump and Simon called out that they had landed safely. McEdifice passed on the sad news about Garfunkel. After a survey of the area the bodies of Smith, Dibble and Sadowitz were found. Dibble had been eaten by some kind of technovirus-infected badger; Sadowitz had burned up on impact and Smith had, according to Vlad, ‘died peacefully in his sleep’.

  “War is hell.” thought McEdifice as the tough outer-shell of his future personality hardened around him.

  Tango Squadron regrouped and headed towards their target objective: an eCyberHuman technovirus factory. The eCyberHumans were a degenerate and corrupt tribe of cyborg monsters who are utterly different from the Borg or the Cybermen. They are like, a completely original conception by me and Straw Puppy and frankly, we find the comparison with the one-dimensional monsters of so called TV ‘science fiction’ insulting. Our CyberHumans represent a philosophical critique of the transhumance tendencies of the modern progressive left. Also they have laser eyes.

  They got within 415.23 meters of the building before the eCyberHumans opened fire. Lasers bounced off harmlessly from the Space-Navy Space-SEALs reflective armour, lighting up the surrounding area like a disco of deadly coherent light rays.

  “Take cover!” shouted O’Gruff as the eCyberHumans shifted to kinetic weapons.

  Tango squadron hunkered down behind the concrete wall of an eCyberHuman techno-playground.

  Zwicky stood up and threw a momentum-implosion grenade at the kinetic cannon. Bullets ripped into him but he shrugged them off like he was immune to death.

  “You cannot kill what doesn’t live!” shouted Zwicky incongruously.

  Just then Smith appeared on the left flank armed with a plasma-bazooka and blew up the front door.

  “Charge!” shouted O’Gruff.

  Tango Squadron powered forward as their power-arbor powered them forward in a powerful display of military power. 112.20 meters out from their target Sarge lifted his left are and rained down explosive flechettes into the waiting hallway. Screams of injured and dying eCyberHumans echoed out over the noise of gun fire.

  “Surrender or we’ll blow you into some many pieces you could fill the shelves of a RadioShack!” shouted McEdifice at the remaining eCyberHumans.

  “Oh, I say good chap!” called out the lead eCyberHuman, a well dressed cyborg wearing a monocle and a laser cravat. “Please accept our surrender and do excuse the mess. I’m afraid the maid couldn’t clean up before your arrived due to his head being blown up by some of your more enthusiastic shooting.”

  “Can it, you limey-voiced excuse for a science-fair project. I’ve lost too many good men today to listen to your supercilious whining.” growled Sergeant O’Gruff.

  The lead eCyberHuman mimed that he was zipping his lips while arching his eyebrows and striking a flamboyant pose.

  “McEdifice!” called O’Gruff, “Sit-rep on Tango Squadron ASAP”.

  McEdifice checked on his comrades.

  Zwicky, Smith, Vlad and Simon were all combat ready. O’Reilly had tripped on a cyber-landmine and Hannity and Trump had apparently died of what Vlad called ‘a sudden case of flu-like symptoms’.

  McEdifice grabbed the lead eCyberHuman by his cravat and pulled him forward.

  “We lost good men taking this no-good den of techno-iniquity. You’ve got some explaining to do. Now talk. Where is your central base of operations?”

  The lead eCyberHuman mimed unzipping his mouth and then spoke in a voice somewhere between Jeremy Irons and Hugh Grant.

  “If you had simply asked at the Tourist Information office, you could have received that information at no cost as well as being provide with helpful advice on local attractions. The galaxies largest ball of ethernet cabling is quite charming in a kitsch sort of way and it is open most days of the week.” replied the eCyberHuman.

  “What’s your name cyber-scum?” growled O’Gruff.

  “Cyber-Lord Farquarson6@ Farquarson6@ of the Devonshire Farquarson6@s, at your service”, replied Farquarson6@ while failing to make a respectful bow due to being still semi-strangled by McEdifice.

  “Well Lord Fancy Pants Farquarson6@, you have some explaining to do!” growled O’Gruff.

  “I do? You have me at a loss. As far as I can see you attacked us and in an unprovoked manner. As for explaining, what I really want to know is why three of your soldiers are dressed as late 19th century central-European nobility and have the complexion of corpses?”

  “We’ll ask the questions!” growled McEdifice.

  “Fire away!” replied Farquarson6@, hastily adding “Well not literally! We’ve had quite enough gun-play already! ha, ha.”

  “Where is your central base of operations?” asked O’Gruff.

  “I’ve uploaded the coordinates to your display. I do hope that helps but I’d be grateful if next time you could just send a request on the inquiry form of our website.” replied Farquarson6@ with a note of exasperation.

  “Data checks out Sarge.” said Simon looking at his military grade iPad.

  “OK, send it as targeting data to the orbital weapons platform.” said O’Gruff who was watching Farquarson6@ like a hawk. I mean O’Gruff was being like a hawk watching something rather than him acting like he’d seen a hawk and was watching it, maybe through binoculars.

  A supersonic boom passed overhead as the orbital weapons platform open fired. Simon tracked the ordinance as it headed towards its target and…then gasped in horror.

  “Sarge! The orbital weapons platform just blew up one of our secondary landing crafts!”

  “Noooooo!!!!” cried McEdifice, the multiple deaths lying heavy on his tortured soul.

  “Just my little prank.” explain Farquarson6@, “A small virus in the data I gave you.”

  “Damn you to hell!” cried McEdifice as he shot Farquarson6@ through the head.

  “Stand down soldier!” said O’Gruff, “That freak of technology was a prisoner of war!”

  “I’m fine.” said Farquarson6@, “I’m a distributed i
ntelligence. Shooting me in the head is like trying to flood thee internet by dropping your phone in the toilet.”

  “He is techno-scum Sarge and he just murdered some of our men for no mother flubbing reason at all.” growled McEdifice.

  “Well technically I blew them up because of your unprovoked military invasion of our home world but lets not quibble over such niceties.” said Farquarson6@.

  “You’ll pay for what you did!” cried McEdifice, blasting a hole in Farquarson6@’s chest.

  “You are a bit thick, aren’t you?” asked Farquarson6@ as his repair nanobots busily fixed the second gaping hole in his body.

  “Die scum!” cried McEdifice, riddling Farquarson6@ with bullets.

  “How about this…for the sake of argument let’s all just assume I’m now dead. I’ll lie down quietly here on the floor and you can walk away with your honour intact?” Farquarson6@ delicately laid down on the floor and then stuck his tongue out of the side of his mouth.

  “Time to go.” said O’Gruff, “Head for the extraction vessel at two-niner-bravo.”

  Tango Squadron marched out of the building. O’Gruff leading the way, closely followed by McEdifice, Trump, Hannity, Smith, Zwicky, Simon and Vlad.

  “I can’t help feeling I’m missing something important about all this.” said McEdifice as he climbed into the extraction vehicle.

  Ten minutes after lift-off McEdifice carefully deduced the final piece of the puzzle.

  “Simon - you were the vampire all along!” shouted McEdifice.

  “You finally worked it all out did you?” said Simon as he floated out of his seat. “Yes, I am the space vampire and I finally have enough vampire servants to allow me to takeover your warship! But tell me, what gave me away?”

  McEdifice looked him in the eye and answered “When you were looking at the glass screen of your military grade iPad there was no reflection. I thought at first it was because of the special antireflection coating on the Mark 7 military grade iPad but then I finally remembered that you only had a Mark 6 military grade iPad.”

  “Curses! You were nearly too clever for me McEdifice. But your cunning intelligence is too late to save you. We vampires outnumber you four to three!” said Simon.

  “You mean five to two!” said Vlad eagerly.

  Simon and O’Gruff both sighed at the same time.

  “Seriously Vlad,” said McEdifice gently, “We’ve explained all this to you before. You aren’t a vampire. When you installed that hypo-training disc to learn kung-fu you accidentally installed a vintage Hammer Horror film by accident. It is a hypno-training induced delusion.”

  “Oh.” said Vlad disappointedly.

  “Now die!” cried Simon, lifting his vampire cape upwards.

  “Not so fast!” cried McEdifice, “Power suit - deploy holy-water impregnated wooden flechette stakes!”

  McEdifice’s power suit transformed into a vampire killing machine and in a matter of moments each one of the undead monsters was peppered with tiny but lethal wood fragments. As each fragment embedded itself into the undead heart of the vampires they collapsed into ethereal dust cloud, which were then rapidly sucked away by the climate controlled air-ducts.

  “McEdifice!” it was O’Gruff! In the heat of battle he had been hit by multiple flechettes.

  “Nooooo!!!!” cried McEdifice.

  “Don’t blame yourself soldier! I died doing what I love. Now go and avenge my death by dedicating your life to killing vampires!” and with that O’Gruff gasped his last breath.

  “I promise you O’Gruff and all the other brave men of Tango Squadron that died this day fighting the dual threat of space vampires and eCyberHumans, that I will never forget the debt I owe. From now on I will the live the lonely life of the vampire hunter. Perhaps one day I will once again meet comrades as worthy as each of you, maybe in the form of a puppy made of a straw and a talking cat with whom I could be best friends, but until that day I must dedicate myself to vengeance!”

  “You are a true hero.” said Vlad as he watched McEdifice climb into an escape capsule and head into the galaxy - his destination? Destiny!