PeeDee3, Intergalactic, Insectoid, Assassin in: Fafafalala and Dosido my Eggplant, Part-2 (Season 1, Episode 5) Page 2

and this jerk was going to give me some. Besides, whatever he was trying to tell me seemed awfully important to him. I stood, leaving him lying there, and, quick as a quark, drew my antique Drilling, triple barrel shogun and aimed it at his heaving chest. He could move seventeen millimeters any direction he wanted and the shotgun spread would still cut him to ribbons.

  Massaging his neck, it took several gasps until he had the breath to croak out some kind of sound.

  “Pain, are you saying pain? Look mighty brain, you need to speak up or I’m putting you out of both of our misery.”

  He drew a deep breath, raised his bushy eyebrows, and then spoke clearly, pointing stage left with a fair finger, “Train.”

  My head slid back and I felt my antenna droop. “I really, really hate this frass-hole planet—”

  A loud whistle blast turned my head and something huge, hard, and black slammed into me.

  I was pressed against a fast moving machine. My antennas were whipping back and forth, the erratic tempo giving me a headache. I was still clutching the shotgun in a claw, but that left three and both claw-feet free. I groped around and found some pipes that made for solid grips, and, with a little effort, managed to pull myself on top of the moving mass of metal. I was facing a tall, round stack issuing a plume of black smoke. Letting the smoke out is a sure sign that a machine is breaking, and I decided to get off of this one before it crashed.

  I holstered the shotgun and dropped to all sixes, skittering across the top of the engine like my ancestors of long ago. Able to use six claws for climbing, I managed most of the way back until a tall, brass cylinder blocked my pass. I stood, gripping blazing hot pipes with my toe claws, my exoskeleton isn’t much effected by heat, and prepared to step over when the thing lets out a whistle loud enough to sever a bug’s ear nerves.

  Caught unprepared, not something that happened often, I slapped my upper claws over my ear holes and tumbled down.

  I collapsed in a heap onto a little catwalk running on the side of the machine. I heaved myself up. Two legs, four arms, and three segments, I was still in fighting shape. Good, because I turned around to face two long barrels very like my shotgun’s. A grizzled human face stared from behind the old iron sights and I heard the hammers cock.

  “Be serious old timer, that pop-gun won’t even scratch my armor.”

  He didn’t flinch, but a little door at the side of the cab banged open and a fat human squirmed out. He was covered in black crud; he must have been trying to put the fire out, and was dressed in these bibbed-pants made out of some kind of blue canvas, and had a blue-striped cap perched on his head. He was carrying a shovel with a hunk of dead tree for a handle. “I’ll show you how we deal with train robbers on the Newmar-Kitt-Meriwether Railroad, creepo!” And the dope smacked me on the head with the shovel.

  “Nice shot frass-head,” I said as he rang his delicate little hands in pain. “Wanna try again.”

  He looked at me with these beady-little eyes (how do humans manage with only two retinas?) and he got a determined look about him—either determined or he had gas, hard to tell. He spit on his hands, rubbed them together, and tightened his grip on the shovel-stick.

  I crossed all four arms. “Give it your best shot twerp, but then it’s my turn.”

  The jerk took a couple of practice swings, carefully lining up his shoot. I let him aim as carefully as he wanted, what did I care? He wouldn’t even make a scratch in me with that thing, and then I’d enjoy a quick snack before getting back on the Fredifice’s trail.

  Despite all the aiming practice, the dope’s swing goes right past me and smacks a pipe running beside my crusty head. Before I could laugh, high-pressure steam blasted out of the pipe, searing the side of my head. I leapt away and took a header right over the side.

  I hit the ground and rolled, trying to slow from my one-hundred perk-a-sets per dosa touchdown. My arms were flailing, trying to search for something solid to grab. I crashed to a halt, papers and plywood flew in every direction. I was face first in a heap of newsprint, hoping I was mostly intact. I could hear sandaled feet moving past me, paying me no never-mind. I heard a young voice shouting, “Extra, extra, read all about it, PeeDee3, the scourge of Fafafalala killed to death by a jealous Hasenpfeffer!”

  Oh great, I’m dead. Wait, there was no Hasenpfeffer. I pushed up with three claws and kept my fourth resting on the handle of my Hogswalla Toad sticker; I still hadn’t reloaded the bowling ball cannon. On my feet I did a quick scan with a few thousand retinas. The stinking Time Masters were passing to and fro with their snooty snozes stuck in the air. But there was this kid in baggy drawers and suspenders waving a newspaper over the squat cap perched on his head. “Extra, extra, the bug is dead.”

  “I’ll take a copy, pupa,” I muttered, keeping my complex eyes on the lookout.

  “Sure thing crusty,” he blurted out, “two bits.”

  I snagged the folded paper from his hand and gave him a solid shove with another. “Walk away skrud and I won’t eat your hands.”

  “Aww, go on you big bug, you’re dead anyway,” he shouted in a thick Brooklyn accent—I was still banned from that planet.

  I looked down, flexing all four of my claws. “No, I’m pretty sure I’m not.”

  The kid guffawed. “We’ll you will be, you big crud.”

  “Only humans would be gross enough to let their larva out of the cell before they were fully developed,” I said as I drew the bowling ball cannon. “Now scram before I flatten your gushy hide.”

  With a high-pitched squeal the kid made a run for the border. But what the hell was he talking about? I flipped open the paper, dated for seven years and three days hence, and scanned the headline. The good news was that apparently I’d become Fafafalala’s most hated, most wanted, and least missed visitor. The bad news was that apparently I’d gone to meet the great egg-layer at the hands of some drippy Hasenpfeffer over some dame. Bahh, no way. First off there isn’t a Hasenpfeffer in the galaxy that could take out old PeeDee3. Secondly, I’d never waste ammo over some dopy dame.

  No, not me, not never.

  I dropped the paper in a nearby waste bin—gods I hated litter—but just as the bio-engendered disposal unit starts to chew, something on the page caught a few hundred retinas. I made a grab for the paper and the bin started chewing faster. “Cough it up waste-bin.”

  It whimpered, shook its box-shaped head, and made a run for it.

  Good. I love shooting and killing.

  I drew the toad sticker and fired. A super-charged, artificially generated and colored lightning bolt shot out and, with a crackle of current and a wafting of ozone, blasted the squealing bin to toast—singed papers and ash rained down on the cowering Time Masters nearby; smoke drifted around and made several of them cough.

  I caught a page as it fluttered down and took a gander. It was an ad for some new night-club that had just opened. And whose lumpy face do I see as the proprietor? Yep, it was Mark, my mark.

  Gods, sometimes I wish I had lips just so I could smile.

  I stepped over some burning fast-food bags and hailed an oncoming hover-transport. Outta nowhere this wooden-wheeled cart being pulled by a couple of four hoofed mammals pulled over.

  Oh, what the frass?

  I climbed in. The musty thing rocked with my weight. I banged the roof with a claw and, with a whip crack, the cart rolled off.

  “The club Sheen Frisco, buster, and step on it” I shouted.

  The carriage turned hard to the left. It wove, dodged, and parried through the planet’s unique mix of traffic, passing tall-wheeled bicycles, ducking under low flying blimps, avoiding jet-thruster exhaust, and dodging hungry looking dinosaurs. At last he dropped me off outside the club.

  “That will be fifteen bob sir,” the driver called down.

  Before I could blast him out of his miserable existence, he’s gone again as quickly as he’d appeared, slipped back inside some time rift.

  Lucky jerk.

  There’s a long lin
e waiting to get into the club. I stomped up to the two gorillas in business suits working the front door. I flashed them my credentials, meaning I opened up my trench coat and let them take a gander at the arsenal strapped to my torso. Like good primates they scampered off for some bananas, chortling like chimps.

  I crossed a dark entranceway, stopped long enough to reload and re-polarize the Orik 3000, then, with my usual scene making bravado, slammed open a pair of non-descript doors. “Ahhhhh!” I screamed. Horrible, blaring music forced all four of my claws to cover my head. My senses were assaulted with the most hideous weapons of visual and audible torture. Impossibly bright lights of every color known by sight and smell strobed and flickered. There was a dastardly looking mirrored globe suspended from the ceiling reflecting swirling lights on every surface. The very floor itself was aglow with brightly lit colors that changed and flashed across its checkerboard surface. And this indescribable rhythm, obviously designed by some mad masochist to cause pain and torment, blared from huge speakers and began swelling my upper nerve complex. Pressure built inside my brain casing and threatened to push my complex eyes right out of their sockets.

  Beings from a thousand different times and planets were on the electrified dance floor, draped in pastel colored suits made of some synthetic fabric. They had wide cuffs, tall collars, and multi-colored prints that were obviously designed to drive any bug right out