Batarangutan who lay moaning and bleeding beneath the busted robot. I took an instant seat capsule from my cart, dropped it on the floor and spit. It instantly expanded into a lazy-bug recliner with foot-claw padding, five way adjustable thorax support, and bi-level arm rests. I sat and crossed my legs.
“What…what are you gonna do, PeeDee3?” Westy asked in a week voice.
I pulled a jar of Uncle Nezbit’s Spicy Brain Sauce from the cart, screwed off the lid, and dumped the contents on the monkey’s head.
“No, wait, wait, we go way back you and me, I mean come-on PeeDee3, for old time’s sake, have a heart.”
I dipped a claw in the sauce running down his hairy face and then stuck it between my mandibles. “Man, that is spicy.” I dug a red checkered table cloth from the cart and tied it around my neck like a bib. “And messy.”
“No…wait, wait.” The ape’s eyes were darting back and forth in his head. “Money, yeah, I got tons of the stuff. I can pay you; I’ll pay whatever you want.”
That caught my attention. “Really, because I want a lot.”
Westy’s eyes alit with hope. “There, in my armor’s chest pocket is my credit stick. It’s unlimited, tied directly into my primary accounts. Take it, take it all, just get this robot off of me, my legs are going numb!”
I reached into the pocket and, surprise, surprise, found his stick. I waved it in the air. “The dough better be there.”
“It’s there, it’s there,” he grunted, pushing against the robot with his one free hand. “Now get this off, I can’t feel my feet!”
I started to laugh, I couldn’t help myself.
The heavy ridges in Westy’s face grew even deeper and he flashed me those incisors and growled. “What the hell’s so funny?”
I picked up the busted remote by a loose wire and let it pendulum in the air over him. “Looks like I didn’t need a remote, I controlled the ‘bot just fine and I’ll bet you didn’t know it could fly.”
“Yeah, yeah, nice throw, now get it off,” he said in a pain-strained voice. Tears were pouring down his hairy face.
“Hey now, I still owe you something.” After tugging off my bib, I patted him down with all four claws.
“Hey, knock it off,” he said squirming. He began something that sounded like half a chuckle and half an expression of pain. “That tickles, bug. Some of us do have skin ya know.”
“Not my fault, ahh here we go.” I lifted a ring of keys from his armor’s glove compartment and fished through them.
“What do ya need keys for? You’re already in the damn store.”
“I am,” I said and unlocked the sibling annoyance simulator. Instantly it retracted the poking arm and folded itself back up. “Ungh.” Without hesitation, I yanked the bolt out of my arm. Dark, acidic blood began to trickle from the open wound and sizzled on claw wipe mat. “And I’m here to return a defective product.”
In the lenses of the Binocufocals, Westy’s eyes blinked worriedly. “No returns excepted after a weapon’s been discharged,” he said at a worried, but well rehearsed tempo.
“No problem.” After rearming the trigger, I removed the key and shoved the bolt through Westy’s hairy arm.
“Aheee!”
Seriously bug, monkeys can reach incredibly high registers. With the whirr of those annoying servos the bolt split, extended its appendage, and began poking my ex-partner in the side of his ugly mug. “I know you’ll make an exception for an old friend.”
I stood and dug the emergency epoxy tube from my tunic pocket and squeezed an ample amount into the hole in my exoskeleton, plugging the leak.
He winced every time the metal finger prodded his nogg’n. “OK, a joke’s a joke, now get this thing off of me. Come on, bug, you got the money.”
I sauntered my cart toward the sliding doors. “I will, just as soon as I check the balance on your credit stick. My bank’s all the way on Nevarask, in the outermost Swiss system, and I’ve never trusted the wormhole-ways. I’ll be back in say, six, seven sun cycles tops.”
“You’re dead bug, dead! You know that?” he shouted as I strolled beneath the, Thank You for Shopping the Arsenal Outlet, Hope you Kill Some-being Today banner. “Caesar has a price on your head that will have every hit being in the galaxy after you. You’ll never get a moment’s rest.” He started to cackle uncontrollably, ya know, the laugh of the mentally insane. “You are so dead!”
But the blackness had already begun to descend in all around, covering me like a bucket of spilled paint. Then it sunk deeper, penetrating me until the dark and this old bug were one in the same, reminding me that Westy was righter than right about a couple of things. One, I was very much dead. And two, that sleep was a long ways away.
-Next Time-
PeeDee3, the universes’ deadliest, most feared, and most hated intergalactic, insectiod assassin spends most of his days breaking brain casings, dodging bullets, and insulting as many species as he can. It’s an exciting and exhausting existence. But some days meander along like lumpy sauce out of a gravy boat. Bullets and blasters he can take, but can the galaxy’s deadliest Kacekan survive the worst threat of all—boredom.
PeeDee3, Season One, Episode Eight, Gravy Day
I hope you’ve enjoyed this PeeDee3 story.
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