PeeDee3, Intergalactic, Insectoid Assassin in: Fafafalala and Dosido my Eggplant (Season 1, Episode 4) Read online

field beneath me, but only toppled over onto my side with a loud ring of the metal cockpit. Damn. Unicyclones are hard to get moving once they’ve stopped. The cops had figured out that I was actually just in a bad way and dove for me, their photosynthetic torpedo tubes were glowing orange with building power.

  I was out of time.

  I stood the cyclone back up, and, with a loud grunt, gave the pedals as hard a push as I could. I started back into a shaky forward momentum. The cops were still too far away to draw decent aim, but panicked and started taking wild shots. Everything around me started to explode and the sky filled with receipt slips, burning sales fliers, and lots of crappy looking merchandise. I kept peddling and stayed focused on getting the unicyclone up to maneuvering speed. A few good turns of the crank and the cyclone started to whirr and I was on my way. Good thing too because the whole asteroid started shaking, apparently it was unstable and all the shooting had triggered an eruption. I zipped across the cracking and crumbling atrium, avoiding several magma bursts, and straight through the outlet’s double doors.

  Once inside I twisted the shifter into neutral and cranked the cyclone generator up as fast as my claw-feet would turn it. My plan was working; dander, dust, and hairballs blew up into a great cloud of valuable merchandise, just a few revaluations more and I’d have the cover I needed. But the whole building started collapsing. Towers of prepackaged lint began toppling, threatening to crush the unicyclone with old PeeDee3 still inside. Cover or not, it was time to go.

  Just as the roof caved in I twisted the grip, shifting the maelstrom drive up into high gear and pulled the control yoke up. I just managed to clear a falling girder and burst through the burning roof sheeting. I’d caught another lucky break as well, the cloud of feathers, fluff, dust, and dander had gotten caught up in my little tornado and had me completely camouflaged. There were the times I wished my mandibles could smile. The space patrol cruisers were still below me, weaving in and out of magma bursts and crumbling bits of building. Beings laden with oversized shopping bags were screaming, waving their twiggy arms, and running all around in a panic. Some of them were on fire—stupid jerks. Beings should know better than to shop on unstable asteroids. I even spotted a couple of weaseliarians raiding the all you can wear corset and girdle mart, the scavenging rodents were a product of their culture.

  I snapped the canopy closed, waited for the artificial atmosphere to reach normal levels and set course for Fafafalala. As I whirred off I saw the asteroid beginning to crumble in the rear-view vid visionizer. Apparently I’d made it out and the Galactic Space Patrol hadn’t, tough break. The entire asteroid was blowing apart in giant bursts of magma; most of the buildings were all ready gone. The main asteroid’s black surface had sprouted great cracks that glowed orange. As it began it’s final round of destructive eruptions, it set off a chain reaction and the nearby asteroids began to destabilize and explode, destroying the many shops on the other asteroids. And that was the end of the Boatloadsofcrap asteroid belt and the beginning of the Flaring Spiral of Deadly Magma Whirlpool that’s claimed so many unaware ships over the decades. Someone should put up a warning beacon or something. Oh well, not my problem.

  Several mega dosa-bits later and my proximity alarm woke me from a dream I was having about a Centipetaur’s daughter I used to know—terrible timing. I switched the auto-peddler off and guided the unicyclone around the edge of Fafafalala’s time displacer shields. Now I had to hope the information I’d bought was worth it, not that I’d actually paid for it, but, in theory, if I hadn’t stolen it, I had to hope it was worth what I would have paid for it.

  Fafafalala’s time shield is a tricky thing to maneuver, if you don’t time your pass through perfectly you’ll spread your atoms very, very thinly all though time and space. I rechecked the coordinates on the display screen and started my wrist countdown timer. three…two…one…now! I punched the shifter and peddled hard. The unicyclone started shaking something terrible. The view outside the canopy showed ships from a thousand different ages flying by me. I saw everything from solar-sail galleons and Pegasus-drawn galactic barges, to a country mile long big-bang drive grand imperial cruse vessel. My gauge readouts kept changing and weren’t making any sense. My upper claws struggled to keep the handlebars straight, and the lower claws were trying to keep up with the continually changing coordinates. I was caught in the time-slip, and if I didn’t find a way out, I was one bonked bug.

  “Hot damn!” I spotted a passing time-falls ferry, one of those, come see time and space rip itself apart tourist ships. Those gaudy boats have very expensive time bumpers installed that protect them from the effects of Fafafalala’s unstable time continuum. They also have an open deck for better viewing. I steered for the ferry, but time kept warping and changing around me. From out of nowhere a prehistoric flying reptile came diving straight for me with its giant jaws wide open. It looked awfully hungry and I bet I’d be tasty; I looked tasty.

  But I was never easy.

  I flipped open the canopy, stood on the saddle, and drew my Hagswalla Toad sticker. I waited, letting the flying lizard draw closer and closer. Just as it licked its bill with a long reptile tongue, I fired off a charge inside its open mouth. The toad-sticker’s artificially generated bolt of lightning lit the sky. The big reptile’s beak let out a terrible cry and a cloud of black smoke, and then it began to spiral from sight. What a waste. The smell of burnt tongue was making me awfully hungry.

  I was way off course. The ferry was passing into the time mists, but I still had a chance. I peddled up to full cyclone speed and made a run at the fading ferry. I just managed to maneuver over the safety railing, but was still moving too fast to land the damned thing. It smashed into a Beckelstien’s soft pretzel and live flid stand—pretzels and flid flew in every direction. The unicyclone, with yours truly still strapped inside, tumbled end over end across the deck and slammed to a stop against the passenger compartment.

  This little human came storming up to me. He was wearing an apron with a big embroidered B on the front and had a head of singed hair and flid guts. He was screaming and shouting about some expensive cart he’d managed to destroy. I didn’t know what it had to do with me, but I had to see how intact I still was.

  I had some trouble prying my seven-foot seven inch frame out of the badly misshapen vehicle, but, as I stood up fully, brushed myself off with the claws on the ends of my four arms, and snapped my mandibles open and closed a few times, the angry human seemed to find something else important to do because he stopped his whining and scurried off quicker then a Werecobra at a Mongooseian family reunion. I just don’t get why humans are so damn excitable, but, except for a few scratches and dents in my armor, I seemed to be in working order.

  I stripped off the tight-fitting flight suit, man I hated wearing those things, and pulled my quadra-sleeved trench coat out of the remains of the unicyclone. I slid into the coat, and then donned my fedora, passing my antennae through their respective holes.

  I rested all four claws on the ferry’s railing and looked out into the time mists. The ferry was in a sharp descent, I’d make landfall shortly, which should put me back on schedule. I’d never landed on Fafafalala, never had a reason before, but now I had a bunch of reasons—little slips of plastic with Galacticpus Caesar’s smiling face printed on them, and I had plans for that dough.

  But I couldn’t kid myself into thinking that this was going to be easy.

  As soon as the ferry landed a whole swarm of humans scurried down the aft plank and ran away. Strange that I hadn’t seen another being during my entire ride, I guessed they were smart enough to keep away from PeeDee3. Maybe humans weren’t as stupid as I thought.

  Nagh, I’m sure they were.

  Now the work would begin. I’d been hired to hit a filthy filching Fredifice whose fancy for fortune had focused his fortitude on fame so fully that he’d forsaken his former float by fingering for-mentioned float’s funds and framing a faultless and fanatically faithful friend. Only t
he Fredifice’s formulating failed fully fastening his fate firmly to fatality. Receiving forewarning from a fortune telling Forebabble about my fortuitous forthcoming, his fixed fate and unfortunate need to fill out funeral forms, but with a mind fixed on forestalling feared finality, he flew his fatherland for far-off Fafafalala. Yeah, yeah, I couldn’t think of a better F word for totally screwed. What do you expect for a guy with no brain?

  Anyways, said Fredifice got wind that a contract had been taken out on him and that yours truly was looking to cash in so he decided to lose himself on the galaxy’s most lost planet. No stupid move either. Fafafalala is ruled by these snobbish time-masters, an ancient race of big-brains who, supposedly, first invented time travel. Being first they went ahead and declared themselves rulers of the entire time continuum, like their frass didn’t stink. But they couldn’t stop meddling with the thing, and the more they did, the more messed up the time line became, and the more messed up the time line became, the more they tried to travel back and fix whatever they’d screwed up. Every one of these pompous jerks thought they were the smartest, so they wouldn’t talk to each