Pew! Pew! - Bad versus Worse Read online

  Krantor nodded, once. He activated his wrist communicator. “Mr Lokhnakh, bring the Space Bastard into land, if you would. We’ve a crusade to launch.”

  Chapter 3: Slash and Burn

  It was around lunchtime of the last day on Selmis Prime, the fifth planet in the Quantock system, and Krantor was in a splendid mood.

  In the village square where his shuttle stood, surrounded by frags decked out in stylish black riveted armour, he held an old farmer by the throat and shook him a bit. While the crowds of peasants stared at the ground sullenly and mumbled, aware of the frags training plasma rifles on them, the suns were warm on Krantor’s armour, and there was even some very pleasant birdsong drifting over from the small pond they’d evaporated on their final approach, just so they could land in a cloud of steam.

  “We’re just farmers,” the man protested, croaking through a half-crushed windpipe.

  “So tell me what I need to know, and get back to farming,” Krantor told him reasonably. “I know who buys your dreary produce. I seek the Elders of Klirrip, and you will tell me where to find them.”

  The old man’s eyes tried to focus on Krantor’s impassive mask. “Elders? I have no idea what you’re talking -”

  His voice cut off as the gauntlet clutching his throat shimmered with crackling blue energy. His eyes bulged for a moment and his mouth jerked open and closed like a gasping fish, until he dangled limply in Krantor’s grip.

  Krantor opened his fingers, and didn’t bother to watch as the man dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes. Instead, he looked towards the crowd. “Does anyone feel like being a bit more helpful?” he called.

  There was no response. Krantor waited a few moments, then nodded. “OK. Looks like we’re going to have to do a bit more shooting. Trooper Froll, find someone you like the look of and blow their head off, would you?”

  One of the frags, presumably Trooper Froll, nodded, and trained his rifle into the heart of the crowd. Just as he was about to pull the trigger, there was a groan from the ground, and Krantor gestured for the man to hold fire.

  Kneeling down in the mud, Krantor stared at the old farmer. “Feeling a bit chattier now I’ve killed you, are we? That’s the spirit.”

  He pulled the man’s head up by his sparse white hair, and held his mask close to those trembling lips for a long moment, listening intently.

  Then he dropped the corpse in the mud, and stood up.

  “Well,” he said, “I suppose that concludes our business.”

  He turned on his heel and walked back to the shuttle without a backward glance, even when Froll pulled his trigger, and in the centre of the crowd of peasants, a young man’s head erupted in a fountain of blood and scorched bone fragments.

  The shuttle airlock shut with a nasty cheap clanging noise that wasn’t quite masked by the puff of thick noxious green vapour Krantor had specified. He made a mental note to torture the salesman’s family to death next time he was in Krellathorp Spaceport. Or just to get the engineer to fix it. He was a busy guy, after all.

  His frag honour guard scrambled to their crash seats as the pilot fired up the thrusters. He stood in the gangway, looming over them. Not for the first time, he vaguely wondered whether this was quite the right way round.

  “Take us up slow,” he called up to the flight deck. “Do a full three-sixty and shoot up a few hovels while you’re at it. Make sure the scum remember us.”

  The shuttle gave the gentlest lurch as it parted company with the ground, and Krantor’s posture stiffened slightly as his boots automatically magnetised to hold him in place.

  “Aren’t we the scum?” muttered Trooper Froll, as he took his helmet off to reveal his hideously scarred and clean-shaven head. The muffled sound of turbo lasers rang out somewhere outside, followed by the dull crump of exploding homesteads.

  Krantor winked at him, not that anyone could see it behind his impassive battle mask. “Of course not. Only the poor are scum. We’re rich. We’re bastards.”

  “SPACE BASTARDS!” chorused the crew, and cheered.

  After a moment, Krantor raised a gauntleted finger. “Which reminds me. Krantor to Space Bastard. Have you quite finished thrashing yourself silly in our absence, Mr. Lokhnakh?”

  “Fiddled myself blind, sir,” a disturbingly cheerful voice resounded around the cockpit. “I see you’re in the air already. Successful trip?”

  “We have our next destination. Only had to murder one old farmer to shake it out of them, but you can’t have everything.”

  “Better luck next time, sir. You’ll be a couple of hours reaching our orbit, I’ll make sure the warp coil’s prepped for your arrival.”

  “And if you could…”

  “Blow apart the planet? Crustbuster missile already primed and the red button awaits your declamatory pointing finger, sir.”

  “Jolly good.” Krantor cut the channel, and got back to looming over his men. He’d thought about leaving the grubby little world intact, but there was always some little orphan prick who got all uppity over the brutal death of their father and spent the next ten years plotting their vengeance. He’d been burned by that one before. Literally. His arm still hurt on cold nights. So on balance, it was better to leave no survivors, no witnesses, and nothing much at all except a gently expanding cloud of radioactive rubble where a planet used to be.

  Krantor glanced at his men. They’d all removed their helmets, and were staring straight ahead at the cockpit, impassively. Impeccable discipline, of course, but he did wonder how weird the pilot must feel with all those grunts staring at the back of her head.

  Another spot of turbulence, another gentle chime from his boots as they adjusted to keep him stationary and upright. God, two hours of this…

  “We should get a projector or something in here. We could have watched a film.”

  The Space Bastard was a huge, blocky generation cruiser craft. Stained jet black with millennia of tarnished heat shielding, and bristling with silvery weapons pods, that looked to have been welded to its hull in some hurry, she resembled nothing so much as a goth hedgehog.

  It was with mixed feelings as always that Krantor took in the sight of his flagship approaching over the curve of the planet. She was big, and while she wasn’t exactly manoeuvrable, once she got going, her quad engines could outrun just about any class of freight or exploration vessel you cared to mention - once you stripped out all the terraforming equipment and cryo pods, colony seeders weighed next to nothing and ran like shit off a shovel. But there was no denying she was a squat, ugly, ancient piece of crap. And by rights he should have been jetting the galaxy about in something sleek, cloaked, and lethal.

  Still, she was his. And though he’d never have admitted it to anyone he wasn’t about to brutally murder so they could never repeat the secret, he never tired of that slight jolt they barely felt as the autopilot handed over to Space Bastard’s computer control for the final approach. It was the feeling of coming home.

  There was no need for sinister puffs of vapour in Space Bastard’s own shuttle bay, and Krantor was halfway down the ramp before his lackeys had even unbuckled themselves.

  Bouffard was waiting for them, of course, lounging against the shuttle bay door, with one hand resting on the pommel of his ridiculous sword.

  “Did you have fun?” He was watching Krantor closely, so he removed his battle mask. Krantor had noticed people were much quicker to trust him when he wasn’t wearing the mask. They were so obsessed with dealing with ‘his true face’ that they never stopped to wonder whether the face he chose might be more true than the one he was merely born with.

  “You know how it is. Scared a few peasants. Your lads obeyed their orders, but no real flair as yet.”

  The frags began to troop from the shuttle in sheepish silence, each pausing to hanging their pulse rifle in the rack next to the door as they disembarked.

  Bouffard relaxed a little as he watched them. “They all made it back this time, then? No injuries?”


  There was a little catch in his voice, and Krantor narrowed his eyes. “From farmers on a barely terraformed dusty outpost? There was one bloke who looked like he might start slinging scrubby turnips at us, but I killed him myself.” He raised his voice slightly, his eyes flicking into the shuttle interior. “No injuries.”

  Unseen by the frag prince or any of his subjects, the shuttle pilot carefully put down a hypodermic she was holding as she stood at the back of the line of disembarking frags.

  Bouffard stared at him for a few moments, his jaw moving slightly underneath his absurd moustache. As he stared, the last of the frags, Trooper Belang, filed out, hung up his rifle, and ducked between the two men with a puzzled glance at the apparent tension between them.

  “Good,” said Bouffard, finally.

  “Even better,” said Krantor, doing his best not to make it obvious he wanted to change the subject, “I know exactly where we’re going next. We’ve followed the breadcrumb trail to its very source, Bouffard. The next stop will be the last outpost of the Elders of Klirrip.”

  The other man straightened up at this news. “They actually exist? Joth Krantor, after five disintegrated planets, moons, and asteroids, I rather thought we were just romping around venting your ancestral frustrations on farmers.”

  “I told you once that I’m not a pleasant man,” Krantor replied, his tone chilly, “but I don’t believe in wasting time. Not yours, and certainly not mine. Like I said, Bouffard, your frags will get their place among the stars.”

  “Apart from the one or two who always seem to die on your ‘routine’ little away trips. Where’s the other shuttle?”

  Krantor was wrong-footed for a moment, his mouth open to deliver a speech about the frags being soldiers, not porcelain ornaments, but the Frag Prince was fully focused on his question, staring hard at the patch of empty space off to the right, where the Space Bastard’s second shuttle usually sat with old Krantor-Huang retainers swarming all over it to check fuel couplings and the like.

  A quick glimpse through the forcefield that covered the shuttle bay doors gave him an opportunity to mis-direct the prince again. “It’s over there, look.”

  Sure enough the reserve shuttle had rounded the moon’s horizon and was making its own final approach to the Space Bastard. The two men watched as it passed through the forcefield with the faintest blur of light and sizzling noise, and settled down to land.

  “But what’s it been up to?”

  Krantor shrugged. “Buying scrubby turnips? I don’t know. You’re the one who’s been up here all morning.”

  He led the prince out of the shuttle bay, before the reserve shuttle began disembarking. Out in the corridor, the frags had already dispersed to their quarters. They seemed to have little patience for a debriefing, but that suited Krantor for the time being.

  “I can’t help noticing,” said Bouffard, “that I don’t see as many of your own people around the ship as I used to.”

  Krantor waved a hand vaguely. “I’d like to pretend I run a tight ship, but the truth is they’re all a bit evil. And not urbane, sophisticated evil like me. No, they’re sort of dicks, to be completely honest with you. And so they get into weird fights over trivia and wipe each other out in a contest to be the biggest badass.”

  “And you’re OK with that?”

  Krantor blinked. “Uh, sure. If they’re dead, I don’t have to pay them. And we reconstitute them from teleporter patterns. I just haven’t bothered resurrecting the full complement since you joined us, doesn’t seem much point with frags picking up the slack.”

  Lokhnakh joined the two men, wheezing slightly from his long journey across the Space Bastard’s sprawling decks. Bouffard noticed the otherwise affable old man wore a heavy blaster in a worn leather holster on his hip, and jarringly had a mop slung across his back like Krantor’s Lady Chatterley. In his hands he held a tablet, with a holographic big red button rising from the display.

  “The chaps are getting some odd readings up on the bridge, sir, I thought it was best to bring the crustbuster switch down to you, so we can be on our way.”

  “What kind of readings?” Bouffard asked, with a slightly exasperated expression.

  “I did ask,” Lokhnakh replied with a slightly affronted tone. “And I was given a couple of somewhat contradictory answers. So contradictory, in fact, that a lively dispute broke out. I set Fabricomp to replace the eight personnel in question, and I’ll finish the mopping later, sir. Now, if you would care to…?”

  Krantor shrugged. “It doesn’t seem quite right, extinguishing a whole world and countless lives while standing around in a draughty corridor. But needs must…”

  He reached out and stabbed at the red holo-button. “So long, Selimus Prime.”

  The Space Bastard rocked almost imperceptibly as the missile launched. “Selmis Prime,” Lokhnakh corrected gently.

  The dark warrior laughed. “Suit yourself. I think it just became faintly academic. So, let’s go and see about these strange readings of yours...”

  Krantor led Lokhnakh and the Frag Prince to the nearest lift, filling the old man in on his gory exploits down on the doomed world.

  Once inside, the three men lapsed into what each probably believed was companionable silence as the lift began its swift but no less lengthy crawl up to the bridge. Krantor brooded on how best to allay the Frag Prince’s suspicions while, ultimately, still giving himself room to do suspicious stuff. Bouffard brooded on how how he might be able to gain Lokhnakh’s confidence so he could probe him on Krantor’s likely agenda.

  And Lokhnakh leaned against the lift’s wall, glanced between the other two, and reflected happily on how lovely it was that Master Krantor had finally found a friend close to his own age. Who didn’t balk at detonating the odd planet or moon. It warmed the faithful old retainer’s heart.

  “Why do you need such a big ship?” Bouffard finally broke the silence with a question he’d clearly been pondering for a while. “This Space Bastard’s certainly a big bastard.”

  It clearly wasn’t the question Krantor had been expecting. He cleared his throat with a slight frown. “It’s not as though I had a great deal of choice, you understand. She was reasonably priced, which helped. Money wasn’t necessarily an object when I planned my departure from Central, but throwing vast sums around might have attracted unwelcome attention. And, well, it was a sound choice and I don’t regret it. When you pick up a generation ship, even a fixer-upper like the Space Bastard, you know you’re getting a ship that’s durable, easy to patch up en route, fast, and well-equipped.”

  “Storage space comes in handy as well,” Lokhnakh said genially, with a wide smile, just happy to be contributing to the conversation. He was surprised at the sharp look Krantor shot him.

  “Yes,” Krantor said through gritted teeth, “the empty storage decks mean we can travel for as long as we want, virtually self-sufficient.”

  Bouffard held up a finger at that, still looking puzzled, and opened his mouth. Before he could draw breath, however, the lift was rocked by a huge, jolting impact, just as the lights dimmed to blood red emergency levels, and wailing alarm sirens cranked themselves up.

  “Thank fuck for that,” muttered Krantor.

  Bouffard tore his worried gaze from the lift’s ceiling, and glanced at him sharply. “What?”

  “Ah… what the fuck was that?” Krantor amended, a little unconvincingly.

  Abruptly, the lift’s engines cut out, and the doors hissed halfway open, revealing it had stopped between two floors: a habitation deck on top, and below it a storage floor that didn’t even seem to have emergency lighting. Krantor led the three men in a scramble onto the upper deck.

  Krantor’s suit took over as it propelled him towards the nearest wall terminal. “What the hell did you crash into now?” he hissed over the comms link.

  The speaker crackled. “No impact… rapid deceleration only.” Then it fell silent.

  “Helpful,” Lokhnakh observed drily. “Still, we’
re on a hab deck. Must be one of those bloody stupid windows nearby.”

  No sooner had he spoken than Krantor took off down the corridor at top speed. Bouffard and Lokhnakh followed, the former bouncing along with his odd gait.

  Bouffard looked sideways at the old company man as they ran. He might not have bonded socially, but under stress? It was worth a try. “Your boss doesn’t usually break out of a determined stride,” he observed.

  The engineer grimaced as he struggled to maintain the pace. “Master Krantor steps… up to a whole new level when… he finds something he didn’t… plan.”

  Bouffard nodded to himself. He’d never seen Krantor break a sweat. Which he’d already concluded must mean that he’d anticipated everything that had happened up to now, and had planned around it. The frags had been exploited for centuries, he knew the signs. He still didn’t understand why a man with access to dozens, perhaps hundreds of his own people, needed the dregs of a forgotten offshoot of military technology, let alone a branch of that offshoot that had specialised in rising against their martial manufacturers, and dropping their mutilated corpses down ice-lined blowholes.

  The trio rounded a corner, and faced a wide window that took up one entire wall for at least ten metres. Krantor skidded to a halt, his boots striking sparks against the metal floor.

  For a moment, they looked out on the wonder of space. A twinkling carpet of stars, punctuated by drifting molten debris from the planet Krantor had just disintegrated.

  “Are they trying to avoid bits of planet?” Bouffard wondered.

  Krantor was staring pensively into the void ‘above’ the Space Bastard, his eyes flickering around a small area of space close to the system’s twin suns. “I doubt it, we have laser turrets to ward off that sort of thing, and if a chunk was too big to laser, we’ve got plenty more missiles where that crustbuster came from. Trouble with blowing up celestial bodies, though… it does sometimes get noticed.”

  “That’s why you do it, sir. Make a statement and all that,” Lokhnakh chipped in loyally, and received a thin smile of gratitude in return.