The COMPLETE Reluctant Adventures of Fletcher Connolly on the Interstellar Railroad: A Comedic Sci-Fi Adventure Read online

  I learn the answer to that when I reach the crew airlock. Three of the body bags are floating in the crevasse, bumping against the sides of the ship. Two of them are still lumpy. The other one’s hooked on a razor-edged crag, which must have torn it open when it was thrown out of the airlock.

  Butterflies converge on me. They clearly like the look of the powerpack on my EVA suit. I flail my arms at them. How did one Butterfly-zilla turn into hundreds of them?

  Obvious answer: It had babies.

  It must have felt in a cheerful reproductive sort of mood after all those tasty gadgets we fed it.

  Fuzzy wings beat around my helmet. There’s no air out here, so what are they flying in? The dark energy matrix or the fabric of spacetime itself or something. These are not animals, after all. They’re A-tech. Ah Jesus, I’m fecked.

  I slap wildly at the airlock’s control pad. I can’t see for butterflies. The green light goes on, I throw the hatch up and dive into the chamber, and about twenty buttlerflies get in with me and I have to spend the next quarter hour swatting them before I dare to cycle the airlock. They’re nippy for their size but if you can catch them, you can kill them by smearing them on the walls. It must break their energy receptors or something. I don’t know, Jesus, I’m guessing here! During the process my suit’s powerpack dies. My air supply cuts out.

  Lightheaded from breathing carbon dioxide, I fall out of the other end of the airlock.

  I might as well not have bothered killing the butterflies in the chamber, because the ship is full of them.

  A dense black cloud of them swarms me and then rises off, disappointed that I’ve no more easily accessible energy for them to suck.

  Except for the energy that’s in my own body, of course. So I can’t take my helmet off. But I’ll die if I can’t breathe. I chin-press the toggle to raise my visor—good thing it’s mechanically controlled. I press the toggle again immediately, leaving a half-inch slit to breathe through.

  The butterflies swarm the slit. I’m wearing a beard of fuzzy wings that I have to keep plucking off with my gloves as I look around.

  This is where we keep the EVA suits and the hull repair kit. All the EVA suits are still here.

  And of course my radio’s dead.

  I shout, “Harriet! Saul! Woolly!” I even call Ruby’s name, but the only answer I get is a familiar voice from behind me.

  “Holy Mary, what a shambles.”

  “Donal!” He’s squeezing out of the airlock in a marshmallow suit like my own, fending off butterflies with both hands. “What’re you doing here? You should be in bed.”

  “I’m not letting you rescue Harriet,” he says.

  “Rest your mind, I’m here to kill Sakashvili and Ruby, in whatever order I find them.”

  “You’re just like your uncle, aren’t you? Never let go of a grudge.”

  The criticism cuts unexpectedly deep, and I squirm for a moment, before remembering that this arsehole was going to cut me out of our big payday. “Yeah, Dimwit Donal,” I say. “You’re not so dim after all, are you? You were cute enough to arrange with Finian to split the proceeds, and me and Morgan none the wiser. That’s a nice way to treat your oldest friend.”

  “Oldest friend,” he says with a bitter laugh. “You’d have done the same to me if you got the ghost of a chance.”

  “I would not!”

  I would have, actually.

  “And I don’t want any lectures from you about friendship!” He’s properly pissed. This must have been building up for a while. “We put years of hard work into the Idjit, but that obviously means nothing to you. What do you care about all the blood and sweat and tears, what do you care about sticking together through thick and thin, good times and bad? All you want is your own planet, and everyone else can get stuffed. You’ve been halfway out the door for a long time.”

  He is right. I admit it, he is right. He may have a brain full of sentimental cliches but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong. I was on the edge of dumping the Idjit and buggering off to pastures greener … just like my uncle Finian.

  But I refuse to let Donal grab the moral high ground like this. “If I’ve been a bit fecked off recently, I’m looking at the reason why! You’ve been lying down on the job for ages. My God, sneaking around with Harriet, treating Penelope like a potted plant, you’ve not been here mentally or physically, and guess who’s been doing your job for you?” I am yelling at him in genuine fury now. “I’ve been carrying you for six months, Donal, and I am fecking sick of it! You bet your arse I’ll be dumping this lousy rotten tub … as soon as …”

  I trail off lamely. We both look around through our cracked-ajar visors at the black puffballs roosting on the shelves. This lousy rotten tub is now nothing but a butterfly jar.

  “I saved your life on Suckass, too, don’t forget about that,” I add.

  Donal laughs hollowly. “Congratulations might be a wee bit premature,” he says.

  “The antibiotics worked, didn’t they?”

  “Not antibiotics. Antitechnotics. Those bullets of Ruby’s were softnoses with metalforma centers.”

  “Don’t forget, he’s mine,” I say.

  There is a pause and I hear the unspoken words: if he’s still alive. If anyone is.

  “All the EVA suits are still here,” I observe.

  “There should have been enough for everyone,” Donal says.

  But there weren’t, because they broke down over the years and Donal never bothered to replace them. Cutting costs. So there were actually only eight. I don’t remind him of this out loud. It would be gratuitously cruel.

  “I guess we should split up,” he says wearily. “I’ll check the bridge. You check the crew quarters and the control room.”

  He’s still avoiding Penelope, or maybe avoiding a sight of her corpse.

  He pulls the laser carbine he’s brought from the Elephant around on its strap.

  Of course, it is a dead hunk of metal, because the butterflies have drained its powerpack.

  So is mine.

  Well, it might come in handy as a club.

  CHAPTER 13

  I sidle through the corridors I know so well, holding my carbine by the stock. The reek of musty fur coats my nostrils. In reality this is probably the smell of muons being spontaneously disassembled or something of that nature. Six or seven butterflies crowd the bottom of my visor, trying to fit the points of their wings in through my breathing slit. I keep taking one hand off the carbine to wipe them away.

  I am just doing this when someone jumps out at me from the Life Support office. I swing my carbine at them, one-handed, and connect with their torso. It doesn’t have much effect because they are wearing an EVA suit with built-in body armor and an all-too-familiar logo on the chest: GOLDMAN SACHS.

  “You did this,” I snarl, reversing my grip on the carbine.

  Ruby’s injured leg is obviously still giving him trouble. He lost his balance when I hit him and is trying to recover. I take a wide-legged stance and raise the carbine straight over my head.

  “Wait! Wait! Fletch?!?”

  “You let them out of the freezer.” I swing the carbine straight down at his helmet.

  He dodges, but not fast enough. The carbine chops into his visor, cracking it. The butterflies dancing around us dart at the crack. Unfortunately it’s not big enough for them to fit in. As Ruby bats them away, I see that his visor is already webbed with cracks. He must have done that on purpose, to be able to breathe after his suit’s air supply died.

  “You told me to look in the freezer,” he yells.

  So he did hear me.

  Feck, feck, feck.

  That means I can’t blame it all on him. It’s my fault, too.

  “I didn’t tell you to go opening the body bags!” I shout.

  “Sakashvili wouldn’t tell me what was in them!”

  “Is that little turd still alive?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s find out.”

  We proceed to the crew deck. I
keep Ruby ahead of me, although he keeps complaining he can’t see through his cracked visor.

  Whacking on closed doors, we confirm that the six South Africans are alive, stuck in their cabin, safe for now, although they’ve had to swat a lot of butterflies squeezing in through the ventilation ducts. One of them, Hendrik, got bitten and is in a bad way.

  “As I thought,” I say. “The Baby-zillas are more dangerous than the butterflies in the twilight zone. Those must have been the prototypes or something.”

  “Huh?”

  “Oh, who the feck knows? It’s A-tech. The point is with these ones, even the little guys can kill you.”

  “I think I’ve figured that out, thanks.” Ruby’s voice is dry. He tells me that when he stupidly opened the first body bag, hundreds of Baby-zillas poured out, and they killed Trigger and Trigger’s two assistants on the spot.

  Our cheerful cook, who could make the most delectable frozen meals taste like mushy cabbage. He’ll never break another microwave. I grit my teeth. “Why didn’t they kill you?”

  “I was wearing a biohazard suit,” he says. “I’m not stupid.”

  “No, you’re not are you, Mr. Wall Street?”

  “I don’t work for them anymore,” he says.

  “Good for you.”

  “They’re not paying me enough for this.” He swats at Baby-zillas with the energy of hysteria.

  “If you’re going to have a nervous breakdown, do it later.”

  “Oh, I already did that,” he says. “Around about the time the Baby-zillas—that’s a cute name for them, by the way—got into the bridge and killed Woolly, and we went off the Railroad. Or no, maybe it was when Saul successfully piloted us through this shit, only to get the ship stuck in a piece of a smashed planet. But all hope is not lost.”

  I am still hearing echoes of killed Woolly. Ruby said that like it doesn’t matter, because it doesn’t matter to him. All that matters to him is Jacob Ruby’s wants and needs. “Woolly’s dead! Is Saul dead, too?” I demand.

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure,” he says. “One of his assistants, what’s-her-name, might be on the reactor deck. The Baby-zillas can’t have got in there yet, or we’d be suffocating in the dark.”

  I have never been able to remember the names of Saul’s assistants either, which doesn’t make me feel any better. “Is everyone dead?” Apart from the South Africans. That crew could survive a nuclear apocalypse.

  “I’m pretty sure, yeah, they’re all dead. Come on!”

  “We’ve not checked the mess yet.”

  “That’s where it started, man. Everyone’s dead.”

  “What about Penelope?”

  “We don’t need her!” He’s walking backwards, and now he blocks my way, pleading, “We gotta get out of here!” He jerks on the strap of his rucksack. “I got spare powerpacks in here. This rucksack’s A-tech, the Baby-zillas can’t drain ‘em. So we’ll switch out the powerpacks outside—”

  “You can’t go outside with a cracked visor.”

  “Duct tape,” he snaps, and then gets confidential. “I guess you’ve been hiding in the cargo hold, huh? Nice work sneaking in there.” So that is where he thinks I sprang from. I was wondering. “You’re the man, Fletch. You piloted us back onto the Railroad before. You can do any job you turn your hand to. I respect you more than anyone else in this crew …”

  Flattery from this one counts for less than nothing. Anyway, I’m no longer listening to him. From up ahead comes the sound of furniture falling over, or being knocked over.

  I shove past Ruby and start to run—as much as you can run in a marshmallow.

  Bursting into the mess, I smell smoke.

  It’s billowing from the kitchen. Someone must have used the broken microwave again. But that’s not the worst news.

  Half a dozen bodies in fluorescent yellow biohazard suits litter the floor, among overturned chairs and tables.

  One person in a biohazard suit is still upright, stabbing with a mop at—

  —a Rorschach blot that heaves and surges like living jelly—

  —a dark matter eruption—

  —one of the original Butterfly-zillas, it must be, except it’s grown to ten times the size. It takes up half the mess. It now has so many wings that it’s easy to see they aren’t wings at all, they’re rips in spacetime or partially unfurled hidden dimensions or something else you can’t look straight at without hurting your eyes.

  I wanted dragons. I got Cthulhu in drag.

  And Sakashvili (his nametag’s on his biohazard suit) is fighting it with a mop, using the handle like a spear, quite expertly it has to be said.

  I recall that he once mentioned he enjoys medieval reenactments. That’s what he wanted out of life, adventure with the full suite of health and safety regulations. That’s why he went into the exploration industry. Not for this.

  I know I’ve been talking about murdering him, but now that it comes down to it, murdering Butterfly-zilla seems much more important.

  “Hey! Big and ugly! Over here!”

  CHAPTER 14

  “Nyah nyah nyah nyah!” I throw my carbine at Butterfly-zilla. It bounces off and hits the floor. It also distracts Sakashvili. Butterfly-zilla almost gets him. He recovers, shoves the mop into its maw, hurls himself towards me, and I take a couple of running steps into the mess, leaving him room to get out the door. Then I do the stupidest thing ever: I raise my visor another inch.

  Butterfly-zilla reaches for me with pointed wings of darkness.

  I toggle my visor down again and roll inelegantly out of the mess. Sakashvili drags me out and kicks the door shut.

  “Will that hold it?” I shout, voice raw. I’m readjusting my visor so I can breathe.

  “Fletch? How the fuck you get here?”

  “Is this door going to hold it??”

  “You save my life.” Sakashvili sounds like he’s crying inside his biohazard suit. “Shit fuck damn thing get everyone.”

  “All your lads. I’m sorry about that, Lukas.” We are sprawling in the corridor amidst the usual cloud of Baby-zillas. These no longer seem so scary now I’ve met their mum. As soon as I catch my breath I get up and run. Sakashvili follows.

  “You know why I fight it with the mop? Is anti-grav mop, for doing the ceilings.” Slithering after me, he giggles tearfully.

  “So?”

  “Butterfly-zilla don’t like anti-grav! I remember we kill the first one with the flitter. He get in the engine and die. No moving parts in flitter engine. Why he died? Anti-grav! This one bigger. With mop I hurt him. But not enough.” He’s giggling and snuffling again. “Wish I got anti-grav dolly, for to use like shield.”

  I skid to a halt. “Anti-grav! Fight A-tech with A-tech. That makes sense.” Although what I’m really saying is ‘fight a mystery with another mystery.’ This inherit-the-stars business turns out to mean a whole lot of pushing buttons in the dark, and hoping to feck they aren’t connected to things that go boom.

  “The Captain’s somewhere on the bridge deck.” I talk over Sakashvili’s astonishment. “Find him, and tell him what you just told me, and collect all the anti-grav gadgets you can find. I’m going to collect the EVA suits and take them to the South Africans.” There will be enough for everyone, now that half of everyone is dead.

  We split up and I go in search of Ruby.

  I justify this to myself as going to check on Penelope.

  Surprise, surprise, I find Ruby outside the door of the control room. “She won’t let me in,” he says in frustration.

  “Yeah, but we don’t need her anyway, do we?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why don’t you tell me what you’ve got in mind, Ruby?”

  He leans his helmet closer to mine. I can see the whites of his eyes between the cracks in his visor. “You probably haven’t been outside, but there’s a ship out there.”

  I feign surprise.

  “It’s called the Hellraiser or some damn thing. I EVA’d when we first got here
. Made contact with them on the radio. They’ve been here for months …”

  I don’t try to hide my astonishment. But I’m not astonished for the reason he thinks. The truth has finally dawned. That overgrown LZ I found on my way to the terminator? It wasn’t made by the Marauding Elephant.

  Of course it wasn’t. Finian’s lads don’t wear Carhartts. They are way too rock ‘n’ roll.

  “The Hellraiser’s a claim-jumper,” Ruby goes on. “They explored Suckass, found the A-tech, stashed it on board their ship … Basically the same shit happened to them as happened to us. But listen, Fletch, they got the A-tech under control in time. Their ship is still spaceworthy.”

  Yes, I know, I think to myself. Last seen chopping up the Marauding Elephant with its broadside lasers.

  “But! Their stacker got chomped. So they can’t get back on the Railroad. And they’re running out of consumables. They’re desperate, man. So I made a deal with them. We give them Penelope to operate their ship, and in return they take us out of here. Are you listening, Fletch?”

  I am, but I’m also listening to the faint sound of voices from inside the control room. The walls are as thin as paper on this ship. It sounds like Penelope’s taking to someone in there.

  “Not a bad plan,” I say, and that’s when an avalanche of anti-grav gadgets falls down the hatchway, followed by Donal and Sakashvili.

  “He coming!” Sakashvili shouts. “He escape from mess!”

  Sakashvili frantically climbs back up the ladder with one of our anti-grav cargo dollies. It’s a sheet of plastic with an anti-grav engine underneath and collapsible rails on top. We’re trying to wedge it into the hatch at the top of the ladder when I smell the choking odor of musty fur.

  “Penny!” shouts Donal, oblivious. “It’s me!”

  The control room door hisses open and there stands Penelope in an unusual costume, for her, of a Brown University t-shirt and sweatpants.

  And there stands Harriet at her side, only she’s not so much standing as struggling on her tippy-toes, because Penelope has a metalforma knife hovering at her throat.

  These knives are the business. They grow on contact, sending out nasty little spikes and tendrils, so even the smallest wound is likely to kill. A-tech. Of course.