bowl-haired one kicked the chubby one square in the posterior, making him yelp like a dog. “Quit bragg’n, you numbskull.”
I’d had enough of these three robotic stooges—time to translate this conversation into Kacekan. I stepped back, drew four of my biggest and favoritest weapons from my quadra-holster, and trained them on my mentally challenged contractors.
Like three, terror-stricken blind mice, they broke into action. Rushing about and slamming into one another, they gathered their tools and got to work.
Good, because I really needed a drink.
I stopped at the pro shop to have my bowling balls polished, and then hauled my crusty frame over to Swallatikitiki’s Tiki bar and Recovery Spa and dumped it on a stool. The soldier sitting next to me raised a meaty finger to Swalla and spoke in a half-strunken slurr, “Barkeep, I’ll have a Pleading Charlie.”
Interesting, I’d never heard of a Pleading Charlie. I waited to see what came.
Typical shaved-headed Moon Marine, hard to tell what species it had been as he’d had some extreme muscular grafting done, muscles on top of muscles, on top of muscles. Even skin had been forsaken in the pursuit of greater mass. He looked like a pile of raw meat that had just come out of the grinder. Aside from looking really gross, what with all the exposed pulsing veins and bubbling goop, he was leaving residual residue on everything he touched. He also stank.
This one was from an elite force, the Lunar Loonies. I could tell by the tattoo on the swatch of preserved skin sutured to the pulsing muscle of his tree-trunk thick upper arm.
He looked over at me with two beady eyes mounted on extension stalks so it could see past its muscular face and his upper lip rose up like he had a sourball in his mouth. “You mean to tell me they let bugs in here?” he said in a shower of spit and goo.
Chairs slid back and a bunch of beings moved away, some even ran for the door afraid I would over-react to the species based slur. I wasn’t in the mood, besides, I didn’t like bugs much myself. “Yeah,” I grunted, “Swalla lets us in.”
Swalla, his long, webbed feet slapping the floor, hopped over and set a tall glass down in front of the marine. The moon marine leaned down to take a sip off the top when the worm inside popped up and leaned on the rim. His big, droopy eyes were moist with helpless tears. “No, please no, don’t drink me, sir.”
“Hooey-hooey ha!” the lunar serviceman shouted the copyrighted, pay-per-use battle cry, then laughed and pointed. “I’m gonna drink you worm, drink you down like a good soldier, what do you think of that?”
The worm’s lower lip started to quiver and tears welled in his eyes. “But I’m so young. I mean come on; I have my whole week ahead of me.”
The marine took a drunken stab with a toothpick, but the worm easily dodged out of harm’s way. “You’re going down—down my throat because you’re a weak, pathetic invertebrate,” he shouted loud enough for the whole bar to hear. Another cheep shot at yours truly. I could have squished him then and there, maybe I should have, but I wanted to see how this would play out.
The muscle-grafted creep raised the glass and opened his disgusting mouth wide.
“But wait…just wait!” the worm screamed.
“Why should I?” the marine’s voice slurred. He crossed his eyes to bring the proximate worm into focus.
“I have so much to live for, so many depend on me” the worm said, sobbing. I thought I saw a hint of moist glaze in the Marine’s eyes and he lowered the glass. “Look, I got a family, see.” The worm held up a wallet in a digitized holo-hand and a dozen photographs folded out. The worm pointed with a second digital appendage. “That’s my wife, Squiggles.”
“Hooey!” the marine shouted, but I caught a touch of lilt in his wet tone.
Undaunted, the worm continued, “And this is my eldest son, Wiggily, and my daughter, Squirms at her first ballet recital.”
“Hooey.” The marine’s cheek muscles went pink and he set the glass down.
The worm turned the wallet over and held up a picture on the back of a tiny worm cut in two. “And these are the twins, squish and squash.”
“Ha—ha, ha, ha,” the marine’s battle cry dissolved into sobs. “They’re…they’re adorable,” he spouted as tears poured from his eyes like a breaking levy. “You’re a lucky worm, so lucky, you have a beautiful family.” Then he collapsed completely into hysterics and, wrapping his arms around me, balled on my shoulder. “I miss my kids. I miss my little Deathboy and his sweet baby sister, Give’emhell.”
Swalla came and took the glass away. The worm tossed the wallet on the bar and sneered at the prostrate Moon Marine. “Sucker.”
“There, there…” I said, patting his sticky back, “You’re staining my coat, you disgusting jerk.” I grabbed him by the hunk of pulsing, raw meat that covered the back of his neck, tossed him over my shoulder, across the room, and into the android poker machine. With a rending of steel, a shattering of glass, and the failure of a heart never designed to supply blood to all that mass, the marine did his duty and expired.
“House wins!” the android announced, its cracked vid-screen face flashing the words, “Loser,” in multi-colored letters.
“What’ll it be PeeDee3?” Swalla asked though his thick frog lips then, billowing out his big, blue, translucent throat, gave a loud croak.
As I was more thirsty than bored, I resisted the urge to stick a pin in him and see if he’d fly around the room backwards and snapped my credit stick on the bar. “I’ll have one of those,” I said pointing at the empty stool beside me.
“Sure.” Swalla was back in a moment and set a coaster advertising baking-soda slush, one of those girly frozen beverages, and then a tall glass on the bar in front of me. As soon as I reached for the beverage my own little worm popped out. “Please, please don’t drink me, sir…” Then, seeing me, he rested his holo-arms on the rim of the glass and sulked. “Oh, never mind.”
Smart worm.
I tossed the drink down then held up a claw indicating another.
Thirty-two dosa bits and several antiseptic drinks later, I was feeling out of sorts. “Hey, cut it out!” I shouted.
Swalla hopped over. He was looking all around with those big, bulging eyes of his. “Who cut what out, PeeDee3?”
I leaned all four of my elbows on the bar. “Who ever the jerk is that’s shaking my stool all around.”
Swalla sunk back from me a bit and croaked nervously. “Nobody’s there, PeeDee3.”
“Huh?” I groaned and opened my ocellus. Sure enough the bar was packed except for a wide, empty swath all around me. So, it wasn’t just the worms that were smart. “Ahh, forget it and bring me a large Kitty Litter supreme with a Pepto-Bismol chaser.
“What?” Swalla gulped. His throat billowed a little but no sound came out. “Come on, PeeDee3, don’t you think you’ve had enough?”
I lifted a claw to stab it in his direction, but someone shook the floor and I nearly toppled off my stool. “I don’t pay you to ask me what I think because I don’t think, now don’t you think you should stop thinking and bring me my drink?”
Swalla shifted uneasily on his webbed feet. “But PeeDee3, that drink’s like pure base, man, you could completely detoxify yourself.”
I reached out and grabbed Swalla by his filthy apron and dragged his ugly mug close to mine. He gulped with a loud croak. “I said, bring me my drink.”
He held up his long webbed fingers. “OK, OK, I’ll bring you your drink, on the house, on the house, PeeDee3.”
“Hey crusty,” a voice spoke from behind me. “Leave the frog alone.”
I released Swalla, slid off the stool and turned around slow and easy like, slipping a couple claws inside my trench coat.
But I still didn’t see anybody. Maybe I was strunker than I thought.
“Down here you oversized oaf,” the voice said.
I looked down and spotted a Napoleoparte glaring up at me. The jerky twerp pulled his French officers coat open to show me that he was p
acking a Swirlpool 25.50 Diotronic Ping-pong ball launcher. Ever since the Napoleopartes had formed the Shortman Syndicate they’d all taken to carrying those things. Pretty diabolical really, a weapon designed to annoy and not annihilate. It’s one of the reasons I hated Napoleopartes aside from their bad attitudes.
Seeing him flash the weapon a couple of broads screamed and everyone ducked expecting a fight, and a fight would be just the thing to lift my sour mood. I set the two upper claws to the handles of their respective weapons. The broads screamed again and Swalla uttered a nervous croak.
“Hey man, wait a minute,” this little, squeaky voice spoke directly in my left ear-hole.
“What—who?” Feeling surrounded, I spun around, nearly toppling my seven-foot seven inch frame in the process. But no one was there, and that meant that, invisible or not, no one was in for some serious pain.
“Hey, just let him do it, I want to see the Napoleoparte get blasted—oh, yeah!” a second voice squeaked in my right ear-hole.
Aww no.
“Aww no.” I moaned, my head shifting right and left. Sure enough I had a gaggle of three inch little men with violet skin, black hair, little feet, and, of course, they were all completely naked, standing on my shoulders. I slumped down onto my stool and let all four of my arms hang. Tiny Purple Rickies…bug oh bug, I was about as strunk as I could get.
“Let’s see what you got tall, tedious, and crusty,” the Napoleoparte said drawing his Ping-Pong Ball Launcher. With a