The Reluctant Adventures of Fletcher Connolly on the Interstellar Railroad Vol. 2: Intergalactic Bogtrotter Read online

  “Sure, excuse me for breathing,” I mutter, and shuffle past her to boot up the various screens and displays.

  The first instrument that comes alive is the multidirectional radar.

  “Oi, what’s that?”

  Imogen flies to my side. “What?”

  The radar’s set up to track our sats in orbit. Obviously, we didn’t drop any sats in orbit. Yet there is something up there all the same.

  ESTIMATED ORBITAL ALTITUDE: 13,500 MILES

  ORBIT TYPE: GEOSTATIONARY

  “What the feck is that?!” Donal shoves me aside.

  “It’s a ship, dimwit,” I say. And because Donal has a tendency to be hopeful when things are bleakest, I add: “Special Delivery Sam’s found us.”

  After all, they’d have known where we came off the Railroad. It was the same place where they attacked us. All they had to do was come off the Railroad themselves and sniff around a bit.

  “I don’t think it can be them,” Imogen says, her voice thin. “I mean, why are they just sitting up there?”

  “Donal!” Harriet shouts over the radio. She always forgets that with suit-to-suit radios, you don’t have to shout. I clap my gloves pointlessly to my helmet. “We’ve got COMPANY!”

  “Guess they’re not just sitting up there, after all,” I smile at Imogen, and bolt off the bridge.

  We squeeze out through one of the still-unmended holes in the fuselage. The icy plain stretches bleak all around our poor, crippled ship. Harriet points up.

  A shooting star. It’s getting brighter and brighter. It’s a ship de-orbiting. The same one we saw, or their friends? Who cares? There’s another—there are three of them, and they’re coming in right on top of us!

  We stumble back to the dome, strung out across the plain. When we came out, following one of the dumper trucks, we wedged this end of the airlock open with a tree branch. Thank God, the branch is still in place. We crowd inside.

  It is at this point that I first question our unthinking herd instinct to run for safety. “Leave the branch there for a second, Donal!” I stand athwart it, peering through the man-width gap.

  Three bombs go off on the plain, at least that’s what it looks like. Vacuum or no vacuum, I can feel the incredible noise of the thrusters in my bones. When the smoke and the fountaining snow clears away, three ships stand dangerously near the Intergalactic Bogtrotter.

  They are, as I expected, up-armored DC-100s with Sam-I-Am painted on their fuselages.

  Your man must have stolen a whole fleet of the things.

  Almost before the thruster shields have stopped glowing red, people swarm down the steps of the DC-100s. They wear a motley variety of spacesuits, everything from marshmallows to sleek A-tech suits. I can see their guns from here, wicked sticks over their shoulders. They swarm around the Intergalactic Bogtrotter, besieging the wallies they imagine to be in there.

  At the same time, others are discovering the force field bubbles littering the plain.

  “Fletch, come on!” Donal begs.

  The diamond-stuff the dome is made of blocks radio frequencies. I lean a bit further out, so I can get a signal, and fiddle with the wrist controls on my EVA suit until I pick up someone bellowing, “Oh my freaking God! There are millions of them!”

  Maybe they’ll just load up on force fields and go away?

  No sooner have I had this hopeful thought than a fountain of snow kicks up in my face. Some bastard with a long-range scope’s spotted me!

  “There they are!” he, or one of his friends, yells.

  Donal grabs the back of my spacesuit, yanks me inside, and kicks the branch away. The airlock slams shut.

  We spill into the forest. Everyone pulls off their helmets, yammering. A group of CBs of the LP look on from the trees.

  “Quiet, QUIET!” Donal’s got a voice on him too, when he sees fit to use it. “First of all, are you shot, Fletch?”

  “Amn’t,” I say grumpily. “They’ve got horrible aim.”

  “Right, everyone CALM DOWN! They can’t get in for another …” Donal looks at his watch. “Six hours. That’s how long it is until the truck goes out again. Until then, they’ll be cooling their heels outside, same as we were when we first got here. So we’ve got time to plan our counter-attack.”

  Brave words.

  But when he and I are alone, sitting in the crutch of the big tree facing the airlock, Donal confesses that he hasn’t got a plan. “Apart from hiding until they go away.”

  I stare at the airlock. We can hear them banging on the outside of the dome. They can’t break in ahead of schedule. No one can defeat Denebite automation … but in another five hours and five minutes, Denebite automation will open up the front door for them.

  “We could hide until they go away,” I say slowly. “This place is fecking huge. There’s no way they’ve got the manpower to search it properly. But …”

  “If they give up and go away, there goes our only chance of getting home,” Donal quietly acknowledges.

  I nod. They’ve got the Bogtrotter, and if they can’t fly it away, it is a sure bet that they will blow it up for sheer spite. So much for Gordon’s hours of patient work.

  “Our best chance,” Donal says, “and it’s probably our only chance, is to capture one of their ships.”

  I stare at him, glad we’re alone. “Seriously, Donal? Capture one of their ships? With this crew?”

  Donal’s face grows whiter. He doesn’t have any real grasp of the possible. That’s why he is an explorer and not a pirate. I hate myself for dragging him into this.

  “You got any better ideas?” he says truculently.

  “Erm. No.”

  He stares at me. I do a big shrug: sorry.

  And then he bursts out laughing, this pal of mine, who’s never held anything against me, even when we got caught shoplifting from Dunnes Stores and I lied to the guards that it was his idea. “Yeah, well we’ll just have to give it a go then, won’t we?” he says.

  I will get him and the others safely off this planet if it kills me. He and Harriet will have their Treetop condo.

  “Well,” I say, “we might be able to pull it off. But it’s going to take everyone doing as they’re told, no messing about …”

  The growly squeals of Care Bears interrupt our discussion. We crane out of the tree. Three full-grown CBs are running full tilt down the road from the charging station. One is a female, with an infant clinging to her chest fur. The other two are males, carrying forcefield bubbles in their paws.

  A maintenance robot stalks after them, gaining ground.

  “It’s chasing them!” Donal says.

  The Care Bears sprint under our tree. The female trips over the big branch we left lying there. She rolls like a furry ball, ending up on her back with baby on her chest.

  The maintenance robot catches up with a spidery leap.

  A laser beam lances out of its thorax, exactly the same shade of blue as my lightsaber’s beam.

  The two male Care Bears thrust their forcefield bubbles into the beam …

  … as it bores into the helpless infant.

  “Aw feck!”

  With a cry of disgust, I leap out of the tree and slash the maintenance robot in half with my lightsaber.

  “Baby-killer!” I shout at the robot’s twitching halves.

  “So you do believe they’re sapient,” Harriet says sadly behind me.

  The infant is dead. Its mother keens over its body. The males press close to her, shaping their now-deflated bubbles into silvery ornaments, which they lay on the poor little corpse.

  “Bloody hell,” I say. “They’re making those in the baby’s memory.” I am shaken; would dolphins do this? Elephants build graveyards …

  “I gather this is the first time you’ve seen a cull,” Harriet says. “It’s a population-control measure, I assume. All fully automated. The Care Bears have no way to resist. But as you can see for yourself, they’ve developed ways to memorialize their dead.”

  All
those ornaments hanging at the doors of their shacks stand for dead babies. No wonder they were upset when the treecats stole them.

  “King Herod’s got nothing on the bloody Denebites,” Donal says. Suddenly he explodes, “I hate this fecking place!”

  The male Care Bears are pawing at the bisected maintenance robot, as if wondering will it come back to life. They glance at my lightsaber with a hopeful surmise.

  Donal’s right. This isn’t the Garden of Eden. It’s a Denebite zoo, or maybe a jail. I could destroy all the maintenance robots, but then the dome would break down. There are a thousand other tasks they do that keep the place running.

  Harriet slides her hand into Donal’s. “Have you thought of a plan?” she says, wincing at another bang on the outside of the dome.

  Donal takes a deep breath. “Well, sort of …”

  CHAPTER 13

  Time for action.

  The dumper truck trundles down the road from its parking garage and noses up to the airlock.

  Donal and I are sat high up in the same tree as before, hidden from the ground by the abundant leaves. The others are scattered in other trees nearby. We killed time by going for one last swim and collecting as much fruit as we could carry.

  The dumper truck rolls silently into the airlock chamber. It closes.

  The bashing on the outside of the dome stops.

  The dumper truck usually spends fifteen to twenty minutes outside. We stare at our watches.

  Again the airlock opens.

  Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two individuals in red-and-navy-blue spacesuits leap out of the dumper truck’s skip and stare around wildly.

  These must be Special Delivery Sam’s elite troops. They grab some of the force field bubbles that are lying around, throw them at each other, and exclaim in American accents. Donal and I shake with silent hilarity. It’s like watching a replay of our own arrival, minus the spear-hurling Care Bears. I could take out a few of them here and now if I wasn’t dying of laughter.

  But they’re armed with laser carbines and shotguns and fairly soon they calm down. A tall, curly-headed fella gives orders. “OK, let’s split up … Annika, Jesse, you guys hang out here. Everyone else pair off and search the dome. Those goddamn punks must be here somewhere.”

  “Is that Special Delivery Sam?” Donal whispers into my ear.

  “No clue.”

  “Have you never seen a picture of him?”

  “No. But that can’t be him, can it? He’s supposed to be at least Finian’s age.”

  “He’s probably leading from the back,” Donal whispers.

  The Samites jog under our tree and scatter into the forest.

  They’ve left their spacesuits lying in a heap in front of the airlock.

  I nudge Donal and point.

  He nods, his face bright with hope.

  Jesse, a rangy black lad, and Annika, who looks as Swedish as her name, sit down on the spacesuits. They chat a bit, speculating if the airlock will ever reopen, or if they’re stuck in here forever—it’s déjà vu all over again, honestly. I feel like shouting down to them, ‘Don’t worry, the truck will be back in twelve hours and seven minutes,’ but our plan, such as it is, depends on the fact that they don’t yet know the timing of the truck’s runs.

  Annika wraps some force field bubbles in a spacesuit for a pillow, and curls up for a nap. Jesse lights a cigarette.

  The smoke curls up to us. It makes me crave one. Jesus, I gave up the fags fifteen years ago.

  But it’s purgatory sitting in this tree, not making a sound, not daring to move, with our fecking spacesuits on, all but the helmets …

  … for another twelve hours.

  Six hours into our wait, Donal drops off to sleep, the jammy bastard.

  Jesse and Annika exchange radio updates with their friends. I earwig. The other Samites have discovered the Care Bears of the Lost Planet. The CBs of the LP have thrown spears at them and run away, surprise, surprise. Now the Samites have shelved their search for us, and are in full cry after the CBs. I hope they don’t find the village.

  T minus 4 hours 37 minutes. This is worse than a transatlantic flight. I occupy myself by coming up with exercises to pass the time.

  Flex legs (careful not to dislodge any leaves or twigs!)

  Scratch inside spacesuit

  Undo spacesuit seals to scratch the really itchy places

  Take spacesuit off (leaves and twigs!)

  Ah God that’s better.

  Make top ten list of best rock albums

  Top ten actresses I would like to sleep with

  Top ten places I wish I was now (all of them are far far away from Omega fecking Centauri)

  Top ten candidates for the name of my planet when I finally get it

  I have to abandon that exercise partway through. It’s too depressing. It seems so very, very unlikely that I will ever have my own planet now.

  More radio updates provide a welcome distraction. The Samites found our camp by the lake, and some of those bloody MRE packets. “Stay alert,” says the leader over the radio. “This Connolly’s a crazy fucker. Runs in the family, I guess.”

  Ha ha ha from Jesse and Annika, although I don’t see what’s so funny.

  Pray

  30 seconds later:

  “Donal. Wake up.”

  “Mmph,” Donal says.

  I clap my hand over his mouth.

  Something moves in the canopy above us.

  The furry face of a CB pokes down through the leaves.

  Ah, the poor wee thing’s been stuck up here with us all this time, scared to go down the tree …

  The CB turns around, showing us its naked pink bottom. It grunts.

  Jesse and Annika are on their feet, staring up. I pray they can’t see us through the leaves.

  The CB’s anus stretches. A glint of silver emerges.

  I stare, gobsmacked, as the CB shits a fully formed force field bubble onto Donal’s head.

  So that’s where they come from.

  “Ah Jesus,” Donal’s awake, wiping his face. The new bubble must have been sticky.

  “They’re Care Bear poop!” I whisper. “That’s why there’s always thousands of them lying around!”

  The bubble drifts down to the ground.

  Jesse shoots it.

  I am charmed to see that it continues on its drifting course, unaffected by shotgun pellets. Gordon was right: solid objects do go through them if they’re moving fast enough.

  “Another lovely, lovely force field,” Annika says, running after it.

  Jesse laughs in embarrassment. “Why’re there so many of them around here, anyway?” he wonders aloud.

  Ah my lad, I think, if only you knew. We were swimming with them, playing football with them … we mended our ship with Care Bear poop. That’s disgusting!

  Donal is cracking up as the truth sinks in.

  “T minus twelve minutes,” I whisper to him. “Get ready.”

  We daren’t use the radios to alert the others. We just have to hope they’re watching the time, too.

  T minus eight minutes, and the curly-headed leader of the Samites strolls out of the trees, eating a date-pear.

  The luck of the Irish strikes again.

  Donal curses under his breath. I whisper, “Don’t panic! Don’t panic! We can take them all!”

  “They’re just kids!”

  Yes, and I have sat up here for twelve hours hearing about the vintage Gibson guitar Jesse wants to buy, and Annika’s boyfriend troubles, but— “I’ll do it, OK? I will do it!”

  “So what’s the deal, Sam?” Jesse says. “You figure we’re stuck in here?”

  THIS is Special Delivery Sam?

  “Meh,” says curly-head. “That truck went out once, it’s gotta go out again.”

  T minus six minutes.

  There’s no time like the present.

  I slide down the tree at the speed of sound. Glad I took off my spacesuit. What I lose in protection I gain in mobility. I’ve got
my lightsaber in my bare right hand. Halfway down the tree, I slash the beam across the clearing on maximum range setting, catching Annika in the leg, oh Jesus I’m sorry, love, and Jesse is shooting up at me and I slash at him. The beam takes the side of his head off. I hit the ground screaming for him, because he can’t scream anymore.

  “Fuuuck,” Sam says, staring at the bodies of his friends. He belatedly connects me with the carnage. His gun starts to come up.

  “Don’t move,” I say, swaying. My lightsaber scribbles gouges in the dirt at his feet.

  He drops the gun. He’s got a brain on him, this one.

  “You are my prisoner, is that fecking clear, arsehole?” I snap.

  Donal slides down the tree. The others come running out of their hiding places. Harriet screams. Someone else breaks into sobs. Through all this I hear the heavenly noise of the dumper truck’s tires squelching on the road.

  Sam’s eyes dart all over the place, then fasten on me again. “I was supposed to make sure you were dead,” he says.

  I shrug. If I open my mouth, I’ll puke. I can’t believe I killed them.

  “My dad is gonna murder me,” Sam says. “I guess Finian was wrong, huh?”

  “Wait.” I can speak without puking, after all. “What did Finian say?”

  “Oh, he said you were crap in a fight.” Sam laughs morosely.

  I’ll fecking show him, I think, and then— “Hang on, he’s alive?”

  “He also said you were a total douche.” Sam rolls his eyes. “It’s like, thanks, oh legendary piratical one. Now he’s got my mom convinced this Fletcher Connolly character is a threat to her entire empire. So I blow you off the Railroad, but that’s not good enough, so I have to chase down the wreckage of your ship and grind it into infinitely small pieces of interstellar debris …” He says this last part in a sing-song, and I realize he’s mimicking his mother. I always assumed Special Delivery Sam was a man, but evidently she’s a woman. And this is her son. “So I come all the way out here to finish the job, and now you’ve SHOT two of my FRIENDS!”