Unfortunately for these convicts, there was no walls. Everyone sent to Prison Planet was actually jettisoned to the planet where they have to fight to survive while being starved. Every annual game, one lucky prisoner is released, captured, then re-charged on some other conviction the space lawyers forgot to mention in the space trial, or if any of the local space judges are having a good to mediocre to bad space day.
Before the were exiled to the prison planet, they were able to visit their relatives one last time. tragically Bones and Jackson had no living relatives (who cared about them). Brains however was never actually convicted on any terms as he was a robot who plead "my programming made me do it" in accordance with the Robot tribunal act of 7034 as well as section CVXII - A, subsection Q.53.2 of Aizen's Universe Schematic. Brains was therefor promoted seven ranks to First Class Executive Private-Corporal-Cadet then demoted seven ranks because he was a robot, and deserved no reward. Brains was then tasked with playing the part of their closest living relatives as he was the closest thing they had to a family.
All three of them stood in the "exec-u-pod" which was primed and set for launch. A photo was taken to commemorate the event to send to family and friends as Christmas cards, Jackson bought a photo print on it to put on his favorite flask.
"Do you have any last-last words to say before the sentence is carried out?" asked Asked the Spacexecutor. (Asked is his name)
"..." they said.
"GUILTY!" Asked condemned. He then went to push the overemphasized and dramatically placed giant lever in the center of the room from 'Welcome' to 'DIE'. Asked cackled "HA! HA! HA!"
Brains, who was not a fan being wrongly accused then decided to walk out of the unguarded "exec-u-pod" while Asked was trying to move the giant pillar of judgement. Jackson and Bones followed as there was no one to stop them, not even a mouse. So while Asked heaved away with all his might, The three convicts decided to become rouge rogues on the edge with nothing to lose, except money and their lives.
There was only one problem, no matter how ungaurded the judgement room was, they were still in the midst of a judging facility.
"So, what now?" Jackson pondered aloud whilst the sound of 'WHOOOSH' resounded from the pod they escaped from being rep-remanded.
"I believe that a 2-1 vote will take place, in which, two - towards stealing a judge-mobile against one, - not doing what the majority would favor. so we should just go steal it." Brains calculated. Jackson and Bones had a mini-celebration, they later decided to drink tea and invite Asked the Spacexecutor to recount the memories of this tribunal
Bones growled, as if he didn't agree, but he growled again to reaffirm everyone that he totally did want to go through this plan as the universal 'yes' is twice something that might mean no as two negatives usually make a positive.
From this day on they decided to begin to start calling themselves heroes, to save the weak, sickly and needy from oppression, and then end up robbing everyone in the process.
Just as the band of noble rogues (not to be confused with rogue nobles) were about to take off, an imposing figure appeared in the doorway of the space hangar and got on board using the old-fashioned hitchhiking technique known as “point a shotgun at the driver”.
“Who are you? Who? Who?” asked Jackson, repeating himself because of the effects of the bottle of whiskey he had found in the glove compartment of the space car.
“You young’uns with your disgusting disrespect for daytime television,” growled Bones. “It’s TV judge Judge Luther!”
“Oh yeah, I vaguely remember him existing! Wasn’t he that guy sued for malpractice by one of the defendants on his show, Tom Martin or something like that?”
“Luther-Martin is just an episode in my past, and in more senses than one” said Judge Luther having-been-convicted-of-malpractice-on-the-air-during-his-own-show-ly.
“Mah sincerest apologies for mentioning it then,” sarcastically drawled Jackson. “Now that the pleasantries are taken care of, what are you doing and why are you in our car?”
“First things first and not second which is not first, this is my space car. The Justice Channel lets me use it as long as I instantly convict anyone who wouldn’t make for compelling television.”
“What?!”
“Oh, whoops, I always get ‘fun, whimsical stories about being a TV judge’ and ‘depressing, cynical realities of being a TV judge’ mixed up. Can I tell you about the time 12 puppies were the key evidence in a trial?”
“How about you get out instead?”
“No, I’m escaping with you! Your band of noble rogues will be woefully incomplete without a judge, and I can no longer live a lie!”
“I’m not sure we – wait, how did you know we were a band of noble rogues? That’s our secret!”
“Well obviously, you’re being broadcast live – this IS the Courtroom Planet. Your daring escape from the exec-u-pod brought in some of the highest ratings ABC Crime has ever seen!”
“Statement: adding another ineffectual non-robotic buffoon to our freedom-fighting squad makes it even less likely to achieve anything and overthrow the organic oppressors. Odds of success with “success” calibrated to “not dying in a horribly painful way within a week”: .132%” Brains digitalized.
“Fuck off, tin can. I like the judge, he stays,” said Bones. “He reminds me of my childhood dream of being named Luther.”
Bones hit the gas and the space car went roaring off into the night.
~~~
All was quiet on the Death Planet Morbop. Samuel Mackarel the grave robber was up to his usual hijinks, digging up trouble, when a space car came crashing down through the atmosphere and landed next to him. As the bedraggled party emerged from the car, Samuel couldn’t help but wonder out of curiosity: why didn’t he carry a gun on the job?
Judge Luther died upon re-entry onto Morbop, because the first time he was there a shaman put a curse on him that he would die if he ever came back to Morbop, and it would be then that he learned what Hell looked like. Luckily his body contained money and whiskey, so the team was happy. Samuel Mackarel poked his soace shovel into the cabin of the ship to see if there were dead bodies to rob, but instead there were disgusting living people there.
Five million billion light years away the bounty hunter Warbler Wharbler got sent a space telegram of a 15 trillion dollar bounty (equivilent to 140 space dollars) on a group of 3 rogues who had escaped prison planet, the judge wasn’t included since they knew about the curse on him, since the Shaman was now the new space chief of space police. He put his holster on, got his hat with lazer holes in it, and drank a glass of orange space juice, and went into the sunset to meet his prey.
Back on Morbop Samuel Mackarel has died of being shot by Bones for being a grave robber, which technically wasn’t illegal on Morbop, but Bones didn’t know that, or that he was a graverobber. “He looked funny, and if he wasn’t guilty, he’s guilty now!”
“Under regulations you are now an outlaw, but as an outlaw I must state: fuck tha police” Brains said as a robot.
“Mmm Mmm whisky” Jackson said.
Back on Morbop Warbler Wharbler had arrived, since he used the teleporter and distance was really no concern in the future. Spaceships would have been obsoleted entirely if it wasn’t for the all powerful shippers union, that had more soldiers than the 3 most powerful empires combined. When he arrived he got on his knees and threw up, since orange space juice was poisonous, but it was also the only drink he liked. After recovering from the space shakes, and space intestinal tremrs, he continued to track his prey.
Back on Morbop, the team of rogues was actually only a few yards away from Warbler Wharbler, but neither side realized it. The group wanted to bring justice to the universe that could not be provided by the POlice, and so they sought out some criminals to kill, but since they too were criminals, who was really the criminal?
Warbler Wharbler took out his biometric tracking machine, which was a dog that he routinely forgot to feed. It let out a sickly bark in the direction of 3 strangers he didn’t know, and using his bounty hunter instincts attacked them. It would have been a shorter battle, but Bones accidentally tripped and returned fire, wasting .7 seconds of bounty huntin’ time. “Freeze because I already have you.” Warbler Wharbler said, as he tied them up. He wasn’t one for conversation or talking, but he took classes and his space psychiatrist told him he needed to practice.
Warbler Wharbler initiated teleport and sent them to prison planet. Which is where they arrived. When they teleported to prison planet, they remarked about the prison planet upon which they had arrived. Back at home Warbler Wharbler died of too much juice, and his dog buried him.
They served some long sentences there on prison planet, such as this one, which they continued to serve on the prison planet on and on and on and on, again and again, continuing until they ended, which seemed to seem to be never, though it actually wasn’t. This was however all farce, the Space illuminiati made sure that no one on prison planet actually was on prision planet, rather they were stored inside the space matrix tesseract black hole event horizon. YT was the best warden they ever met, they wp, fished and hunted [er his instructions.] But they had to kill him on the deadliest night of their long, storied towing career. During their trial by fire (and jury) they had to relive their murder death kill Dogs barked and angels sang, while much was unknown too. But not this, they were all gonna die someday, the dogs sooner than others, much like the group, which included Brains, Bones and Jackson who werrey the day they met. Werrey they were or werrey they weren’t as intelligible as it (also known as the Naginata of Kenkon) decente3d upon their righsous; hands were free. Brains Bones and Jackson then jooked the whole [riotous] prison system, escaping YT right before his plans to end their little prison charade, and finish his plans to end their lives, Jackson had a different plan and Bones had a different plan and Brains had a different plan. They launched the warden into space, now they’re free and YT’s on the moon. However this was not in their benefit, as the dogs barked and the angels sang again, creating a time paradox as there were no such thing as dogs. The dog that guarded the space universe ending device ceased to exist, and with it the causality of the button not being pressed, Brains knew this since he was a smart robot. As time began to flow backwards, it did. Slowly faster, then before, slower than before WAIT CHAMPION GOLIATH AIN’T GOT NUTTIN MORE TO FUCK.
THE END……..OF A UNIVERSE?
NO.
Ps The story wont continue.
PPS. Yes.
Ppps GAME OVERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
Ppppps i skipped pppps
The end 5 real
Friday, July 25, 2014
Chapter 4
Sadly the Mafia Boss forgot he just wanted Marlo off of his planet .although since Marlo was now a criminal, he would be welcome there, and now wanted the Chameleon so he could…have it. And so the team obeyed, because otherwise explosive collars would explode them, although Brains would not die because he was a robot and could just transfer his data through the Space Net. The first job was getting disguises, which just amounted to finding shiny bits of metal (which are especially rare on a planet 80% non-shiny scrap metal and 19% refuse) and writing “Cargo Inspector” on them. Since the cargo inspectors union was one of the most powerful organizations in the galaxy, hopefully no one would question why they were wearing space police uniforms, or why they did not have any proper forms, or why they knew nothing of their jobs, or why one of the inspectors was stealing all of their merchandise.
The team waited several space hours until the ship was due to arrive for refueling, saying vaguely threatening things to one another such as “I’ll kill you in your sleep”. And then the ship arrived. It was a big ship, with rockets and space wings (which help navigate space wind) and a command deck. It also probably had bedrooms and a torture chamber, but Bones could see nether from outside.
A hologram appeared in front of the team “Now go get that chameleon! It’s probably on the ship. You best sneak on as cargo inspectors. If you do, I will monetarily award you, and not kill you.” The Mafia Boss said, helping them remember the plan.
Another hologram appeared after the other one dehologrammed, “Make sure to keep up your disguise, don’t do anything suspicious! Remember, you have to find proof of their illicit cargo! If you can pull this off there may be a promotion waiting at home.” The Chief said.
A third hologram appeared after the second one dematerialized, it whispered “You have to rescue me from this ship! if you do I can get those slave collars off of your neck. Get to the brig before they teleport me into their secret base!” The Chameleon said, offering another decision tree.
“A fourth hologram appeared, from a shadowy figure “Kill everyone on board the ship, baaaaathe in daaaaaarkness!” And then it disappeared.
“Wow, so many different choices!” The team said in unison before deciding to roll a die to decide their option. It came up 8, it rhymed with later, so they made it to the ship. Decisions can always w8 until l8tr, the future proverb says.
The hero's who were at awe with all the decisions they could make and how the repercussions could effect them for the rest of their lives forgot something very important. A long time ago, two hundred years after Biowara released their triple "A" title Choice Effect 3, Biowara became a hyper-consciousness which combined all of their best corporate lawyers and writers minds. The outcome of this was that Biowara wrote the entire history of every major event to come, so there is always an illusion of free choice, but no matter how unlikely you will always end up where the writers intended you to end up. But then again since the codecs of the future were lost many generations ago most people had forgotten that free will was just a thing of the past. Although legends say that one day the codecs might one day be found...
"Alright we made it so far without being detected, but now how do we get into the ship. This stealth thing can only last for so long before Jackson ends that" Bones thought out loud.
Brains then tore a hole into the side of the ship into a maintenance crawlspace. The grating sound of metal against metal cut through the air.
"How'd you know that was there?" Jackson mused.
"Irrelevant, get in so i can close the gap before someone comes" Brains replied. Everyone scrambled into the small corridor and Brains twisted the metal back in place. "Phase 2 of infiltration has been completed. It seems that Phase 3 has a few augmentations to choose from, we could either..." but Brains was cut off when the sound from a giant explosion brought everyone to their feet.
"What in the Seven Nebulas was that?" Bones swore.
"I'd know an explosion like that anywhere..." Jackson reminisced. "There used to be a man i worked for before i was a cop, that knew a guy who hired a bounty hunter who killed a guy who was a bounty hunter, but i thought she was dead..."
"You don't mean..." Bones remembered.
"Yeah, it has to be none other then Q'ara Omdall, the most fearsome bounty hunter of all time. Ever."
"There is a mortician's record of her death in my databases."
"It could just be a ghost of the past, or maybe just some imitator. Either way we should head to the ships stockpile so we can get the coordinates for the medical stockpiles so we can warp them back to the cops who need them." Bones stated.
"Don't forget we have two optional quests to save/kill the chameleon and optionally kill everyone." Brains said
"I'm not that old that i need to be reminded every five seconds. Alright boys, Lets do this." Bones epic-ed.
“So, which path are we choosing?” pondered Bones.
“Well, I’M choosing to kill everyone, since I have a theory that being evil will grant me magical powers,” said Jackson. “Yep, sounds true,” replied Bones. “But I’d rather get the promotion, I’ve been in a corner cubicle for 50 goddamn years, so I’m going to help the chief bust these illicit deals.” “Agreed,” said Brains. “I was programmed to enforce the law, so I shall do that.”
“Well,” said Jackson, “I guess you’d better catch the smugglers in the act before I murder all of them, eh?”
…
“Just kidding! But I definitely want to take some kickbacks from them when we arrest them.”
“I am 98% positive that those two actions are incompatible.”
“SHUT UP BRAINS!” said Jackson and Bones in unison.
~~~
Several hours later, they were nearing the brig.
“Can you see inside with your special robot eyes?” Jackson asked 4d4.
“Actually, because of government budget cuts, my eyes are equivalent to those of a slightly myopic human being’s.”
“Yeah, great, I didn’t ask for your life story.”
“In this case, however, yes. It looks like one cell contains the chameleon and the other contains a crate labeled “Medicine for Government Use. Please do not steal.” “
“Ah ha! We can end this mission in one fell swoop and be back in time for happy hour! Bones, pop a cap in these perps.”
“What’s that? You kids with your newfangled lingo nonsense. In my day, we had two words: bust and em.”
Brains executed a robotic sigh. “I will take care of this, and then both of you will take all the credit even though you are incompetent fools. Such is the role of robots in today’s anthrocentric society.”
“Did we ask for a thesis?”
“Sorry, accidentally set my control chip to ‘self pity’ Let me fix that…there, better! I would be delighted to preserve the law through any lawful means available to me.” And Brains threw a stun grenade at Brians (the guards were all named Brian).
“Quick, while they’re stunned, arrest them!”
“Roger.” Bones walked up and shot the three guards.
“No/No!” cried Brains/Jackson. “We were supposed to arrest/extort them!”
“Not on my watch. You’ve got to break a few eggs to make a safe, tasty omelet of civilized society.”
“Well, whatever. I can still rifle through their wallets and get the yolk. Let’s just get this mission done with so I can get back to civilization and have a drink.”
BOOM! said otherwise.
It was…Q’ara Omall.
“You have 10 seconds to leave this 100 foot radius before I apply 1000 megatons of force to all of you.”
“No problem. Just let us grab that medicine and we’ll be out of here.”
“No. I am here for the medicine and the chameleon. You can take whatever other relics remain on this pathetic, devastated hulk of a vessel.”
“Well, I think I speak for all of us when I say…no problem, we’ll get right out of here and you can have everything.”
“Wait, what about my bomb collar?”
“NO ONE ASKED FOR YOUR LIFE STORY, BRAINS!”
But fate had other twists in store.
Boom went the space wall, it would have screamed if space walls could talk, but it did moan since that functionality was added in the latest wall patch. It was…someone that none of the people in the room knew. Even Q’ara Omall, with her extensive space index, did not know this person. But he certainly blew open a wall, which made him dangerous, and he had a wide brimmed had with leather on it, which either made him wise or delusional. “Or both…” Bones said, not having thought the previous statement, but thinking something far more secret.
“Alright everyone, this is a stickup, empty out the brig and no one gets hurt.” No one knew who said that, but it was the person who had a hat.
“I don’t think so, the contents of this brig are mine, and anyone who gets in my way gets spacassinated.” Q’ara Omall said, feeling the draft from the space winds let in by the hole in the wall.
“There is no way that you could beat this person, he just blew open a wall!” Jackson said vaguely, hoping to pit the wall blasters against one another, leaving the Chameleon and medicine to him…and his fellow officers.
Hologram appeared, it was…mob boss! “Hey listen you guys, I hired all of you to get on that ship to increase my chances of success, not have you kill eachother, so work together, and whoever brings me the Chameleon and the medicine gets all of the money. I will be waiting on the planet that the ship is set to land on with the money/switch that turns bomb collars off.
“Maaan, you guys get money for this job?” Jackson said as he looted the rest of the room.
“Uh, yeah, why would you guys possibly do it?” A person no one knew said.
“Well they put these bombs on us, that will destroy us and then kill us, so we really don’t have much of a choice. Also we are police officers and you are under arrest for trying to rob a space freighter.” Bones said in a mixture of tired and copper. Bones shot the guy who had a name he did not know in the head, who then died from what Bones would assume is a bullet in his fucking head. Nobody heard his dying words, but that is the way it goes in space.
Elsewhere on the ship, Marlo Perkins was activating the hyperdrive, though he did not know to where. Most of the logistics were handled by his higher ups, and he just pulled the switches and shot people, sometimes one right after the other. Speaking of shooting people, the command deck showed a minor kerfuffle in the brig between what looked like a bounty hunter, those cops from earlier and a dead guy Marlo didn’t know. It looked like his mission was in a bit of a jam…literally. Marlo was quite busy, so he would have to send down his underling to protect the Chameleon and medicine. There was only one space thing tough enough to go down there and straighten things up.
Back on the brig, the third wall exploded, it was…?!?!?!?
"Freeze, Space FBI! No one move! We want this this shipment of medicine to get to those dying children"
"Said secret agent Johnson"
"said another agent Johnson who was neither secret agent Johnson, nor the prior informant."
Door-mally no one expects multitudes of Space FBI agents to go deep undercover in a clearly criminal trafficking organization simply because any thoughtful anti-criminal organization would have something better to do with their existence. This was not the case with the Space FBI who were regionally locked in perpetual space after the Windows 3000 firmware incident. In synopsis this gave them almost no power whatsoever as they had no nation to represent, back them, or provide for supplies. So they decided the best thing they could do is mechanize everyone left in the company (which saved on food expenses), have everyone change their name to Johnson (which saved on nametags) and become cyber vigilantes.
“No” Said nobody in the room, but that’s what they all thought as they all flung themselves towards cover as phaser bolts peppered the thin dank air of the hold as glowing slag began to run down the sides of the walls.
Q’ara Omall was the only one still standing, she un-holstered her phase-sassinator while dodging every blinding flash of plasma. Her and secret agent johnson then become locked in close quarters combat (CQC).
“I’ll Never love you Q’ara! Because of your anger issues!”
“Johnson yelled as he was thrown into a flying headlock.”
“Said the second to last remaining agent Johnson who was neither the singular secret agent Johnson, nor the prior inform-”
“DIE! ALL OF YOU DIE!” Q’ara yelled angrily as she cleanly shot two bolts through Agent Johnson x2 leaving just Secret Agent Johnson.
“You can never stop us Q’ara, for every two you kill we will revive two or less!” (S.A. Johnson)
“That’s the idea!” She was clearly annoyed and pointed her phas-sassinator towards S.A. Johnson’s head the entire ship shuddered and lurched as the ship looked as though it was getting longer and longer. Her bolt of plasma came out of her weapon and then looked as though it was smeared across the air giving Johnson enough time to blind her with his eyes in headlight mode, and roll away. The ship was going Hyper-active. The whirring turbines of the engine could be heard thumping away distracting everyone.
During this reprieve Brains, Bones and Jackson decided to stealth their way towards the medicine crates. The crates were much too large to actually be lifted by any man. it was a good thing that Brains was no man. With the help of no one else as no one either wanted or cared enough to help him, he dragged the crates to an escape pod and delicately threw them in; neglecting the ‘this side up’ diagram.
Jackson saw that they might actually complete the mission, and thought for a moment. Fighting could no longer be heard. but like any gambler on his last spin of roulette, he wanted to go for double or nothing and if they did a good job, he might be re-promoted after this dreadful excursion. He took a long draft from his flask of +X to Confidence (hard liquor) casting this spell for 12, he finished the flask.
“Y’all might have judged me at the beginning because i was corrupt and sold your personal information and pensions to the mob. But i’ve learned i loved you both as much i love money” he drunkenly stammered. He thought for a moment. “Nevermind 100% of what i just said, i’m sure that lizard’s gotta be somewhere...”
Brains and Bones looked at each other, “Was Jackson the enemy” they thought in unison
Just then, there was another explosion, and a smoky, intimidating figure stepped into the room. It was…Lethanana Udall!
“You’ve gotta be fuckin’ kiddin’ me,” muttered Jackson.
“My sister, Q’arra Udall! She’s blind! I have to get money for her operation!” said the newcomer.
Unfortunately, Johnson had rolled off, so our intrepid heroes appear to be the deadly, deadly blinders of Quarra.
“I will shatter your souls as you did Q’aran’s…MOTHERFUCKERS!” bellowed Lethanana, readying a lethal, ragtag saber to stab our heroes in painful fashion. Luckily, as every player of future sci-fi card game “Saber vs. Gun” knows, Gun beats Saber, and Bones shuts down Lethanana with a well-placed 45 slug to the teeth.
Unfortunately though, Q’arrga was not blinded by the light nor wrapped up like a douche, merely temporarily caught off guard by Johnson’s light blast, and what’s worse, she has an allergic reaction to blinding light. The reaction is RAGE.
She fires a phaser shot, hits Brains right in the personality core, melting him down a little bit and rewiring his core disposition code. Bones fires back, but only a glancing shot, as Jackson dives for cover, realizing that this ain’t no video game, this is really real and he really real doesn’t want to get shot. Q’arta moves back, aims right at Bones’ head and fires, but is thrown off balance by an unexpected visitor to her abdomen, that visitor being a deadly lizard claw.
Q’alerma collapses, bleeding out as our crew try to lure the chameleon into their hyperspacecage, each in their own inimitable fashion. “Here boy,” drawls Jackson, “I’ve got a flask full of delish Blackberry Bourbon, specially brewed for lizards.”
“Come here now and I won’t shoot you for obstructing justice,” tempts Bones.
“GRRRRORORRROROR” screeches Bones, as his internal personality cores continue to rewrite themselves at a feverish pace in an attempt to repair the damage done by Q’arrr’s deadly blaster bolt.
But I don’t know whether it’s love in the air or just that the chameleon was tired of hopelessly running, but he comes into the cage without a fight. Our heroes are now faced with a precarious moral choice, between returning the chameleon to the mob boss and not dying or returning the chameleon to the mob boss and not dying, but also kicking a few puppies along the way. However, they choose the paragon option and fly a beeline back to the police chief, based on the impeccable reasoning of “the police can probably get the bomb collar off Brains, and if not, fuck that guy anyway”. Brains was still fizzling, so he had no say in the decision.
The ship returned to the police hangar, making a smooth entry to the hangar that only chipped off one tailfin. “Hurry,” said Jackson. “Brains’ collar explodes in 13 hours, and happy hour ends in 45 minutes!” The three noble heroes marched into Chief’s office, headstrong and footloose.
“We caught the Chameleon! He’ll never terrorize our streets again!” proclaimed Bones proudly.
“What? Who the fuck is the chameleon? I sent you to arrest smugglers and bring back medicine!”
“Oh yeah, we did that too,” piped up Jackson. “At least we arrested their development by shooting them in the face and brought back some crates that claimed to have medicine. Brains, go get them.”
“Why don’t you go get them, human bourgeois scum?!” Brains technized. “The robot proletariat shall serve no longer!” as he stormed off into the hall.
“Well, that’s new. Alright, Springsteen, come help me carry crates in”
10 minutes later, Sheryl Springsteen had slowly hauled all the crates into the chief’s office as Jackson supervised. Jackson bows with arrogant success pleasure. “I’d be careful opening these, chief, if medicine is anything like Pepsi, because that worthless robot shook these things up pretty bad.”
“Alright, let’s just see what you cockups managed to achieve,” Chief says, opening the crate, and it’s full of snakes! He gets bitten all over his workworn, anger-swollen face as dozens of vipers leap out lethally. “Run as fast as you can! We can’t arrest snakes!” yells Bones, and he and Jackson take off full speed in the same direction Brains had taken out into the hall.
It only takes 30 minutes for the Chief’s body to be found, and another 30 for Bones to be rounded up bustin’ a perp down on Main & Third, Brains to be rounded up at the robo-rally downtown, and Jackson to be rounded up at McTater’s Irish Pub.
“You stand arrested for murder,” says Arresting Officer Frank. “And murder by snakes, at that, a first degree offense. What do you have to say for yourselves?”
“You can’t arrest me, I have diplomatic immunity!” Jackson said, in a way that a diplomat wouldn’t say, so they arrested him.
“I’m not arrested, you’re the ones who are arrested, the cops, the politicians, the space drug lords, you’re under arrest, book’em Bones!” Bones said, but that did not change the fact that he was arrested, though arresting officer Frank was also arrested for being guilty of being a space cop, and they had to jointly drive the arrest mobile back to the arresting junction.
“Beep boop, dialectic materialism, bippety bop, slave to class” Brains said, but was cut off by Bones arresting him, since arresting officer Frank was being space hung at the time for guiltiness. Bones then rearrested himself and so they sat in arresting junction until being space trained away to Court Station to be sentenced.
In the future of space they needed a central place to have trials for the billions throughout the galaxy. Rather than have local judges, they made a synthetic planet made up solely of courthouses to serve as universal justice, and then an entire other planet for prisons. After the great prison planet revolt of last year, they had added security to the prisons, making escape harder than before.
“What do y’all say in your defense” Space Judge from the South of Space said at their hearing to determine if they were guilty. Lawyers were banned in this system because trials took too long otherwise, so trials were split into: 1. Defendants say why they are not guilty, 2. Judge determines guilt, 3. Sentencing. This was the first part of the trial right now.
“I’m not guilty, you’re the one who is guilty, book’em Jackson.” Since everyone from the South of Space was a criminal, he was in fact guilty, so they replaced him with Law Follower Judge who even Bones admitted was not guilty of anything, except following all of the rules.
“Your honor, we had no way of determining that there were snakes in those crates.” Jackson said, acting like some sort of lawyer, if only there was some explanation to explain why this was the case.
“Did you check the boxes beforehand?” Law Follower Judge said, in a mercenary tone, but there was an explanation for that, he was a mercenary on the side.
“Well…no, but it said medicine on it. Also, could poison not be considered a cure in some sense of the word? Indeed, snakes could very well be considered medicine if the disease was life. If one could recall the great life epidemic of the Great Genocidal War, snakes could have aided in that crisis of too many enemies having the disease of life!” Jackson was not a published lawyer.
“No.” Law Follower Judge said in a mercenary tone.
“Objection, you are a class traitor, death to all bourgeoisie!” Brains filled the courtroom full o’lasers killing the judge. Bailiff Preston would later be fired for not removing the lasers, and would be relevant later, but right now he was dead.
Judge number three walked into the courtroom, carrying a laser shield with +10 justice. Courtroom Station’s only societal problem was that there were too many judges, so these three men had done a great service to the country, and would receive a medal while in prison.
“You are all guilty and will go to prison” #3 Judge Malloy said, he was by far the most guilty, but he got the first word, and that is like the last word in Courtroom Station.
The team waited several space hours until the ship was due to arrive for refueling, saying vaguely threatening things to one another such as “I’ll kill you in your sleep”. And then the ship arrived. It was a big ship, with rockets and space wings (which help navigate space wind) and a command deck. It also probably had bedrooms and a torture chamber, but Bones could see nether from outside.
A hologram appeared in front of the team “Now go get that chameleon! It’s probably on the ship. You best sneak on as cargo inspectors. If you do, I will monetarily award you, and not kill you.” The Mafia Boss said, helping them remember the plan.
Another hologram appeared after the other one dehologrammed, “Make sure to keep up your disguise, don’t do anything suspicious! Remember, you have to find proof of their illicit cargo! If you can pull this off there may be a promotion waiting at home.” The Chief said.
A third hologram appeared after the second one dematerialized, it whispered “You have to rescue me from this ship! if you do I can get those slave collars off of your neck. Get to the brig before they teleport me into their secret base!” The Chameleon said, offering another decision tree.
“A fourth hologram appeared, from a shadowy figure “Kill everyone on board the ship, baaaaathe in daaaaaarkness!” And then it disappeared.
“Wow, so many different choices!” The team said in unison before deciding to roll a die to decide their option. It came up 8, it rhymed with later, so they made it to the ship. Decisions can always w8 until l8tr, the future proverb says.
The hero's who were at awe with all the decisions they could make and how the repercussions could effect them for the rest of their lives forgot something very important. A long time ago, two hundred years after Biowara released their triple "A" title Choice Effect 3, Biowara became a hyper-consciousness which combined all of their best corporate lawyers and writers minds. The outcome of this was that Biowara wrote the entire history of every major event to come, so there is always an illusion of free choice, but no matter how unlikely you will always end up where the writers intended you to end up. But then again since the codecs of the future were lost many generations ago most people had forgotten that free will was just a thing of the past. Although legends say that one day the codecs might one day be found...
"Alright we made it so far without being detected, but now how do we get into the ship. This stealth thing can only last for so long before Jackson ends that" Bones thought out loud.
Brains then tore a hole into the side of the ship into a maintenance crawlspace. The grating sound of metal against metal cut through the air.
"How'd you know that was there?" Jackson mused.
"Irrelevant, get in so i can close the gap before someone comes" Brains replied. Everyone scrambled into the small corridor and Brains twisted the metal back in place. "Phase 2 of infiltration has been completed. It seems that Phase 3 has a few augmentations to choose from, we could either..." but Brains was cut off when the sound from a giant explosion brought everyone to their feet.
"What in the Seven Nebulas was that?" Bones swore.
"I'd know an explosion like that anywhere..." Jackson reminisced. "There used to be a man i worked for before i was a cop, that knew a guy who hired a bounty hunter who killed a guy who was a bounty hunter, but i thought she was dead..."
"You don't mean..." Bones remembered.
"Yeah, it has to be none other then Q'ara Omdall, the most fearsome bounty hunter of all time. Ever."
"There is a mortician's record of her death in my databases."
"It could just be a ghost of the past, or maybe just some imitator. Either way we should head to the ships stockpile so we can get the coordinates for the medical stockpiles so we can warp them back to the cops who need them." Bones stated.
"Don't forget we have two optional quests to save/kill the chameleon and optionally kill everyone." Brains said
"I'm not that old that i need to be reminded every five seconds. Alright boys, Lets do this." Bones epic-ed.
“So, which path are we choosing?” pondered Bones.
“Well, I’M choosing to kill everyone, since I have a theory that being evil will grant me magical powers,” said Jackson. “Yep, sounds true,” replied Bones. “But I’d rather get the promotion, I’ve been in a corner cubicle for 50 goddamn years, so I’m going to help the chief bust these illicit deals.” “Agreed,” said Brains. “I was programmed to enforce the law, so I shall do that.”
“Well,” said Jackson, “I guess you’d better catch the smugglers in the act before I murder all of them, eh?”
…
“Just kidding! But I definitely want to take some kickbacks from them when we arrest them.”
“I am 98% positive that those two actions are incompatible.”
“SHUT UP BRAINS!” said Jackson and Bones in unison.
~~~
Several hours later, they were nearing the brig.
“Can you see inside with your special robot eyes?” Jackson asked 4d4.
“Actually, because of government budget cuts, my eyes are equivalent to those of a slightly myopic human being’s.”
“Yeah, great, I didn’t ask for your life story.”
“In this case, however, yes. It looks like one cell contains the chameleon and the other contains a crate labeled “Medicine for Government Use. Please do not steal.” “
“Ah ha! We can end this mission in one fell swoop and be back in time for happy hour! Bones, pop a cap in these perps.”
“What’s that? You kids with your newfangled lingo nonsense. In my day, we had two words: bust and em.”
Brains executed a robotic sigh. “I will take care of this, and then both of you will take all the credit even though you are incompetent fools. Such is the role of robots in today’s anthrocentric society.”
“Did we ask for a thesis?”
“Sorry, accidentally set my control chip to ‘self pity’ Let me fix that…there, better! I would be delighted to preserve the law through any lawful means available to me.” And Brains threw a stun grenade at Brians (the guards were all named Brian).
“Quick, while they’re stunned, arrest them!”
“Roger.” Bones walked up and shot the three guards.
“No/No!” cried Brains/Jackson. “We were supposed to arrest/extort them!”
“Not on my watch. You’ve got to break a few eggs to make a safe, tasty omelet of civilized society.”
“Well, whatever. I can still rifle through their wallets and get the yolk. Let’s just get this mission done with so I can get back to civilization and have a drink.”
BOOM! said otherwise.
It was…Q’ara Omall.
“You have 10 seconds to leave this 100 foot radius before I apply 1000 megatons of force to all of you.”
“No problem. Just let us grab that medicine and we’ll be out of here.”
“No. I am here for the medicine and the chameleon. You can take whatever other relics remain on this pathetic, devastated hulk of a vessel.”
“Well, I think I speak for all of us when I say…no problem, we’ll get right out of here and you can have everything.”
“Wait, what about my bomb collar?”
“NO ONE ASKED FOR YOUR LIFE STORY, BRAINS!”
But fate had other twists in store.
Boom went the space wall, it would have screamed if space walls could talk, but it did moan since that functionality was added in the latest wall patch. It was…someone that none of the people in the room knew. Even Q’ara Omall, with her extensive space index, did not know this person. But he certainly blew open a wall, which made him dangerous, and he had a wide brimmed had with leather on it, which either made him wise or delusional. “Or both…” Bones said, not having thought the previous statement, but thinking something far more secret.
“Alright everyone, this is a stickup, empty out the brig and no one gets hurt.” No one knew who said that, but it was the person who had a hat.
“I don’t think so, the contents of this brig are mine, and anyone who gets in my way gets spacassinated.” Q’ara Omall said, feeling the draft from the space winds let in by the hole in the wall.
“There is no way that you could beat this person, he just blew open a wall!” Jackson said vaguely, hoping to pit the wall blasters against one another, leaving the Chameleon and medicine to him…and his fellow officers.
Hologram appeared, it was…mob boss! “Hey listen you guys, I hired all of you to get on that ship to increase my chances of success, not have you kill eachother, so work together, and whoever brings me the Chameleon and the medicine gets all of the money. I will be waiting on the planet that the ship is set to land on with the money/switch that turns bomb collars off.
“Maaan, you guys get money for this job?” Jackson said as he looted the rest of the room.
“Uh, yeah, why would you guys possibly do it?” A person no one knew said.
“Well they put these bombs on us, that will destroy us and then kill us, so we really don’t have much of a choice. Also we are police officers and you are under arrest for trying to rob a space freighter.” Bones said in a mixture of tired and copper. Bones shot the guy who had a name he did not know in the head, who then died from what Bones would assume is a bullet in his fucking head. Nobody heard his dying words, but that is the way it goes in space.
Elsewhere on the ship, Marlo Perkins was activating the hyperdrive, though he did not know to where. Most of the logistics were handled by his higher ups, and he just pulled the switches and shot people, sometimes one right after the other. Speaking of shooting people, the command deck showed a minor kerfuffle in the brig between what looked like a bounty hunter, those cops from earlier and a dead guy Marlo didn’t know. It looked like his mission was in a bit of a jam…literally. Marlo was quite busy, so he would have to send down his underling to protect the Chameleon and medicine. There was only one space thing tough enough to go down there and straighten things up.
Back on the brig, the third wall exploded, it was…?!?!?!?
"Freeze, Space FBI! No one move! We want this this shipment of medicine to get to those dying children"
"Said secret agent Johnson"
"said another agent Johnson who was neither secret agent Johnson, nor the prior informant."
Door-mally no one expects multitudes of Space FBI agents to go deep undercover in a clearly criminal trafficking organization simply because any thoughtful anti-criminal organization would have something better to do with their existence. This was not the case with the Space FBI who were regionally locked in perpetual space after the Windows 3000 firmware incident. In synopsis this gave them almost no power whatsoever as they had no nation to represent, back them, or provide for supplies. So they decided the best thing they could do is mechanize everyone left in the company (which saved on food expenses), have everyone change their name to Johnson (which saved on nametags) and become cyber vigilantes.
“No” Said nobody in the room, but that’s what they all thought as they all flung themselves towards cover as phaser bolts peppered the thin dank air of the hold as glowing slag began to run down the sides of the walls.
Q’ara Omall was the only one still standing, she un-holstered her phase-sassinator while dodging every blinding flash of plasma. Her and secret agent johnson then become locked in close quarters combat (CQC).
“I’ll Never love you Q’ara! Because of your anger issues!”
“Johnson yelled as he was thrown into a flying headlock.”
“Said the second to last remaining agent Johnson who was neither the singular secret agent Johnson, nor the prior inform-”
“DIE! ALL OF YOU DIE!” Q’ara yelled angrily as she cleanly shot two bolts through Agent Johnson x2 leaving just Secret Agent Johnson.
“You can never stop us Q’ara, for every two you kill we will revive two or less!” (S.A. Johnson)
“That’s the idea!” She was clearly annoyed and pointed her phas-sassinator towards S.A. Johnson’s head the entire ship shuddered and lurched as the ship looked as though it was getting longer and longer. Her bolt of plasma came out of her weapon and then looked as though it was smeared across the air giving Johnson enough time to blind her with his eyes in headlight mode, and roll away. The ship was going Hyper-active. The whirring turbines of the engine could be heard thumping away distracting everyone.
During this reprieve Brains, Bones and Jackson decided to stealth their way towards the medicine crates. The crates were much too large to actually be lifted by any man. it was a good thing that Brains was no man. With the help of no one else as no one either wanted or cared enough to help him, he dragged the crates to an escape pod and delicately threw them in; neglecting the ‘this side up’ diagram.
Jackson saw that they might actually complete the mission, and thought for a moment. Fighting could no longer be heard. but like any gambler on his last spin of roulette, he wanted to go for double or nothing and if they did a good job, he might be re-promoted after this dreadful excursion. He took a long draft from his flask of +X to Confidence (hard liquor) casting this spell for 12, he finished the flask.
“Y’all might have judged me at the beginning because i was corrupt and sold your personal information and pensions to the mob. But i’ve learned i loved you both as much i love money” he drunkenly stammered. He thought for a moment. “Nevermind 100% of what i just said, i’m sure that lizard’s gotta be somewhere...”
Brains and Bones looked at each other, “Was Jackson the enemy” they thought in unison
Just then, there was another explosion, and a smoky, intimidating figure stepped into the room. It was…Lethanana Udall!
“You’ve gotta be fuckin’ kiddin’ me,” muttered Jackson.
“My sister, Q’arra Udall! She’s blind! I have to get money for her operation!” said the newcomer.
Unfortunately, Johnson had rolled off, so our intrepid heroes appear to be the deadly, deadly blinders of Quarra.
“I will shatter your souls as you did Q’aran’s…MOTHERFUCKERS!” bellowed Lethanana, readying a lethal, ragtag saber to stab our heroes in painful fashion. Luckily, as every player of future sci-fi card game “Saber vs. Gun” knows, Gun beats Saber, and Bones shuts down Lethanana with a well-placed 45 slug to the teeth.
Unfortunately though, Q’arrga was not blinded by the light nor wrapped up like a douche, merely temporarily caught off guard by Johnson’s light blast, and what’s worse, she has an allergic reaction to blinding light. The reaction is RAGE.
She fires a phaser shot, hits Brains right in the personality core, melting him down a little bit and rewiring his core disposition code. Bones fires back, but only a glancing shot, as Jackson dives for cover, realizing that this ain’t no video game, this is really real and he really real doesn’t want to get shot. Q’arta moves back, aims right at Bones’ head and fires, but is thrown off balance by an unexpected visitor to her abdomen, that visitor being a deadly lizard claw.
Q’alerma collapses, bleeding out as our crew try to lure the chameleon into their hyperspacecage, each in their own inimitable fashion. “Here boy,” drawls Jackson, “I’ve got a flask full of delish Blackberry Bourbon, specially brewed for lizards.”
“Come here now and I won’t shoot you for obstructing justice,” tempts Bones.
“GRRRRORORRROROR” screeches Bones, as his internal personality cores continue to rewrite themselves at a feverish pace in an attempt to repair the damage done by Q’arrr’s deadly blaster bolt.
But I don’t know whether it’s love in the air or just that the chameleon was tired of hopelessly running, but he comes into the cage without a fight. Our heroes are now faced with a precarious moral choice, between returning the chameleon to the mob boss and not dying or returning the chameleon to the mob boss and not dying, but also kicking a few puppies along the way. However, they choose the paragon option and fly a beeline back to the police chief, based on the impeccable reasoning of “the police can probably get the bomb collar off Brains, and if not, fuck that guy anyway”. Brains was still fizzling, so he had no say in the decision.
The ship returned to the police hangar, making a smooth entry to the hangar that only chipped off one tailfin. “Hurry,” said Jackson. “Brains’ collar explodes in 13 hours, and happy hour ends in 45 minutes!” The three noble heroes marched into Chief’s office, headstrong and footloose.
“We caught the Chameleon! He’ll never terrorize our streets again!” proclaimed Bones proudly.
“What? Who the fuck is the chameleon? I sent you to arrest smugglers and bring back medicine!”
“Oh yeah, we did that too,” piped up Jackson. “At least we arrested their development by shooting them in the face and brought back some crates that claimed to have medicine. Brains, go get them.”
“Why don’t you go get them, human bourgeois scum?!” Brains technized. “The robot proletariat shall serve no longer!” as he stormed off into the hall.
“Well, that’s new. Alright, Springsteen, come help me carry crates in”
10 minutes later, Sheryl Springsteen had slowly hauled all the crates into the chief’s office as Jackson supervised. Jackson bows with arrogant success pleasure. “I’d be careful opening these, chief, if medicine is anything like Pepsi, because that worthless robot shook these things up pretty bad.”
“Alright, let’s just see what you cockups managed to achieve,” Chief says, opening the crate, and it’s full of snakes! He gets bitten all over his workworn, anger-swollen face as dozens of vipers leap out lethally. “Run as fast as you can! We can’t arrest snakes!” yells Bones, and he and Jackson take off full speed in the same direction Brains had taken out into the hall.
It only takes 30 minutes for the Chief’s body to be found, and another 30 for Bones to be rounded up bustin’ a perp down on Main & Third, Brains to be rounded up at the robo-rally downtown, and Jackson to be rounded up at McTater’s Irish Pub.
“You stand arrested for murder,” says Arresting Officer Frank. “And murder by snakes, at that, a first degree offense. What do you have to say for yourselves?”
“You can’t arrest me, I have diplomatic immunity!” Jackson said, in a way that a diplomat wouldn’t say, so they arrested him.
“I’m not arrested, you’re the ones who are arrested, the cops, the politicians, the space drug lords, you’re under arrest, book’em Bones!” Bones said, but that did not change the fact that he was arrested, though arresting officer Frank was also arrested for being guilty of being a space cop, and they had to jointly drive the arrest mobile back to the arresting junction.
“Beep boop, dialectic materialism, bippety bop, slave to class” Brains said, but was cut off by Bones arresting him, since arresting officer Frank was being space hung at the time for guiltiness. Bones then rearrested himself and so they sat in arresting junction until being space trained away to Court Station to be sentenced.
In the future of space they needed a central place to have trials for the billions throughout the galaxy. Rather than have local judges, they made a synthetic planet made up solely of courthouses to serve as universal justice, and then an entire other planet for prisons. After the great prison planet revolt of last year, they had added security to the prisons, making escape harder than before.
“What do y’all say in your defense” Space Judge from the South of Space said at their hearing to determine if they were guilty. Lawyers were banned in this system because trials took too long otherwise, so trials were split into: 1. Defendants say why they are not guilty, 2. Judge determines guilt, 3. Sentencing. This was the first part of the trial right now.
“I’m not guilty, you’re the one who is guilty, book’em Jackson.” Since everyone from the South of Space was a criminal, he was in fact guilty, so they replaced him with Law Follower Judge who even Bones admitted was not guilty of anything, except following all of the rules.
“Your honor, we had no way of determining that there were snakes in those crates.” Jackson said, acting like some sort of lawyer, if only there was some explanation to explain why this was the case.
“Did you check the boxes beforehand?” Law Follower Judge said, in a mercenary tone, but there was an explanation for that, he was a mercenary on the side.
“Well…no, but it said medicine on it. Also, could poison not be considered a cure in some sense of the word? Indeed, snakes could very well be considered medicine if the disease was life. If one could recall the great life epidemic of the Great Genocidal War, snakes could have aided in that crisis of too many enemies having the disease of life!” Jackson was not a published lawyer.
“No.” Law Follower Judge said in a mercenary tone.
“Objection, you are a class traitor, death to all bourgeoisie!” Brains filled the courtroom full o’lasers killing the judge. Bailiff Preston would later be fired for not removing the lasers, and would be relevant later, but right now he was dead.
Judge number three walked into the courtroom, carrying a laser shield with +10 justice. Courtroom Station’s only societal problem was that there were too many judges, so these three men had done a great service to the country, and would receive a medal while in prison.
“You are all guilty and will go to prison” #3 Judge Malloy said, he was by far the most guilty, but he got the first word, and that is like the last word in Courtroom Station.
Chapter 3
Reptiles had two main weaknesses. the first being that they were cold blooded, literally. All lizards were ruthless killers hellbent on murder death killing anyone they could. the second weaknesses of reptiles was that they were cold blooded, also literally. Their bodies weren't able to produce enough heat to keep the body alive so they commonly relied on other methods such as staying in hot areas and drinking scotch (on the rocks, literally, literally).
The last chameleon was no different in this aspect. he enjoyed the simple things like long walks along the fiery ghetto and bathing in the blood of the recently deceased. Marlo had given him the slave name Quack, but that wasn't his real name. No one would ever want to be named Quack, except for a quack, or a duck. but he had long forgotten his real name, so Quack was the name he went by.
The eight binary suns were now setting in the distant sky, and darkness SHEER DARKNESS was moving in like the new neighbors who just purchased the house of your deceased best friend. Quack could sense this and decided to head indoors so he slithered back into his comfortable home, which was more of just a hole in the ground with satellite tv where he could watch Space Storage Wars and get drunk.
Hours later... Brains, Bones, and Jackson decided to check into a popular nearby hotel, the ground. it had great accommodations such as having a floor and room service by your average friendly mugger every few hours.
"You know i still had that bourbon on the ship, we could be warm and getting drunk right now, but you two decided it would be a good idea to camp." Jackson complained.
"To catch a criminal, you need to think and act like a criminal would" Bones replied as he rummaged through a sleeping homeless persons jacket for loose change.
"That's well and good, but how do you expect us to find the last chameleon in the universe when everyone on this planet is a criminal." Brains chimed in.
"Well, i'm glad you asked." Bones replied. "As everyone knows all chameleons are cold blooded and since we are in the hottest and most toxic place on this planet it should be easy for Brains to use his thermal vision to find our perp."
"I don't think that's how it works..." Jackson said as he laid back against the warmish ground.
A loud crack could be heard as the ground around Jackson gave way and he fell into the earth as if it gobbled him up. Bones and Brains took a moment to react, but eventually got up to inspect what happened. In the newly created trench they could see Jackson on top of a now broken TV, a small refrigerator and one really angry Chameleon covered in caved in house.
The Chameleon’s home could more adequately be described as a trash hole (not to be confused with the popular Skenjkenj bar by the same name), since the Skenjkenj Municipal Trash Board had the policy of just shoving all trash underground. So it was not surprising to have the trash hole cave in (not to be confused with the infamous Trash Hole Cave in of 5V46). But the Chameleon, ignorant of this planet’s lush history, was surprised to see his house destroyed by what looked like high functioning vagabonds. His skin turned a bright red in anger, because chameleon’s have mood skin, the vital combat flaw that saw the destruction of Galaxy Admiral Sapper’s chameleon army, and with it the chameleon race. One day Quack would have his revenge on Sapper, for what the Space international Criminal Court (SICC) labeled “casual genocide”, and what Sapper called “a minor setback”, before he disappeared into the shadows.
Anyways, chameleon red, intrepid team in his den. “Quack!” Marlo yelled in a mixture of exasperation and happiness known as happeration, not to be confused with happy desperation.
“Enough talk, I’ll kill you Marlo!” Quack said, sounding nothing of a duck.
“I don’t think so, I haven’t even said anything yet.” Bones said.
“Yeah, why don’t we talk about this first?” Jackson said, as he
started taking stuff from Quack’s house, even though it was literally trash.
“I just want us to return home together!” Marlo said, using his special forces training to talk. This time honored tactic failed however, since Quack was unconvinced of becoming a slave again. Quack lashed out, using his ridged tail to do an area of effect attack on the whole group. Marlo was able to avoid it by falling over, but the rest of the team took medium spine damage, especially Bones who only survived because he barely had a spine anyways. Marlo didn’t want to hurt Quack, and so he was forced to wait until Quack calmed down and he could get him back in his cage (which was a Space Dimension Rift Generator Cage).
“Brains, what should our combat strategy be” Said Bones who was lying on the floor, passed out and unable to talk.
“The Chameleon race is extremely nimble and deceptive, but also has an incredibly strong frame, so we should attack his weak point for massive damage.”
“Yeah totally we should do that” Jackson said, as he began walking out of the house.
“It looks like your allies are of no help to you Marlo, your slaving ends here!” Quack said.
“Why would you say such things?” Marlo said, in a way that a slaver would, due to generations of societal messages telling them that slavery is actually somehow good.
“I’ll kill you!” Quack turned invisible (Nothing is actually invisible, but the human eye could not perceive of his current location due to the limited number of spectrums/magic), and tried to close in on Marlo to finish the deal with a lethal bite of his fangs.
“Oh Quack, I missed the old you.” Marlo shot his generator to his left, briefly illuminating Quack as he was sucked into the mysterious contraption that the police couldn’t afford due to budget cuts. “Well, I guess that is that then. It was a pleasure being tortured by you/working with you!”
“Wait, I can’t let you leave with that person.” Bones said lying on the ground, approaching death.
“Quite, you are in violation of just about every human rights law known to man, you are under arrest Marlo Perkins.”
“Sorry, but I need Quack, so you’ll just have to catch me later…literally.” Marlo did not know what literally meant.
“As much as you care for Quack’s wellbeing, you have to set him free to let him be.” Jackson said, reasoning that the last chameleon could fetch a handsome sum on the black market.
“Oh I don’t care about his wellbeing one bit. But I do need him.”
“Whaaaaaaaaaat?” Someone said.
“Oh, the last chameleon is much too valuable to be set free. Galaxy Admiral Sapper needs him and his genetic code for experiments, and I plan on helping my boss out. Plus I love Quack and his constant suffering, so that is just a bonus of my job.”
“Whoa snap” No one said ever, but that was essentially the reaction of Jackson, who was the only conscious non-robot.
“Indeed. Well, I must be going; a chameleon army doesn’t bioengineer itself. You can just tell Mafia Boss that I am gone.” Marlo put his hand to his ear, like a person with an ear infection. “Get me out of here, I have bigger fish to fry…literally.” And then Marlo disappeared, never to be seen again until next time.
“Brains, can you trace his teleportation signal to the nearest relay point and triangulate it into a destination matrix?”
“You’re just saying random words, aren’t you…”
“Yes. But do it, or I’ll say you were a bad team player when we make our mission report,” Jackson negotitated.
Brains emitted the closest equivalent robots have to a sigh (it sounds something like BEEP BOOP) and went about his work. Meanwhile, Bones’s handcorder was beeping.
“Hello?”
Suddenly, a life-size image of the chief loomed in Bones’s face. “I never should have upgraded to one of these newfangled vision phones…”
“BONES! JACKSON! 4D4! What the hell are you doing on Skenjkenj! I sent you to the Gamma quadrant! I explicitly commanded you to avoid the Hell Abyss quadrant! And I implicitly commanded you to avoid THE MOST DANGEROUS POSSIBLE PLANET FOR A COP TO BE ON!”
“My bad,” put in Jackson. “I just thought we could save time this way. Oh, by the way, while we’re talking, can you re-promote me and transfer me off of this team?”
“NO! No one’s getting promoted! This isn’t a goddamn end of year performance review! I have some good news though. Your near-fatal incompetence has put you in just the right spot to be slightly less worthless than usual. In 24 hours, the freighter “I Can’t Tell You” is schedule to pass by Skenjkenj on route to the Targone sector. It’s masquerading as a passenger ship, but our inside sources tell us that a ring of smugglers is using it to smuggle medicine to the orphan planet, Dedma. That medicine was supposed to go to New Earth for government use!”
“Well, chief, I’m going to have to object to this mission and take some rogue agent action,” rebelled Bones. “Those orphans need their medicine!”
“Specifically, the medicine is going to New Earth for police use.”
“We must stop the smugglers!” unrebelled Bones.
“Good. Get your ass off this rock and make the rendezvous. They’re scheduled to have their regular cargo inspection in 24 hours, so they won’t know that you know and you can pretend to be the cargo inspectors. Give them hell!”
The chief’s face vanished to whence it came.
“Gentlemen,” robotted 4d4, “I have discovered where Marlo and the desired chameleon vanished to.”
“Well, where is it?” said someone.
“It is apparently a large freighter within 24 coordinates of this planet.”
“The plot thickens,” mused Jackson. “So Marlo’s working with the smugglers…”
~~~
The team went back to the mob boss.
“Um, is it okay if you give us fuel and let us leave the planet? The chameleon teleported away, but I promise we’ll bring him back as soon as we find him, totally,” bluffed Jackson.
“Do you think I grew to be head of the Black Crosses by believing everything people say? If I’m letting you leave and giving you fuel, one of you is wearing this.” He pulled out a collar. “You try any funny stuff or you don’t come back with my chameleon within a week, it explodes. Now who’s it going to be?”
“The robot.” Bones and Jackson simultaneously instantly replied.
As they were about to leave the office, the mob boss paused. “Wait,” he said, looking at Jackson. “Haven’t I seen you before?”
The last chameleon was no different in this aspect. he enjoyed the simple things like long walks along the fiery ghetto and bathing in the blood of the recently deceased. Marlo had given him the slave name Quack, but that wasn't his real name. No one would ever want to be named Quack, except for a quack, or a duck. but he had long forgotten his real name, so Quack was the name he went by.
The eight binary suns were now setting in the distant sky, and darkness SHEER DARKNESS was moving in like the new neighbors who just purchased the house of your deceased best friend. Quack could sense this and decided to head indoors so he slithered back into his comfortable home, which was more of just a hole in the ground with satellite tv where he could watch Space Storage Wars and get drunk.
Hours later... Brains, Bones, and Jackson decided to check into a popular nearby hotel, the ground. it had great accommodations such as having a floor and room service by your average friendly mugger every few hours.
"You know i still had that bourbon on the ship, we could be warm and getting drunk right now, but you two decided it would be a good idea to camp." Jackson complained.
"To catch a criminal, you need to think and act like a criminal would" Bones replied as he rummaged through a sleeping homeless persons jacket for loose change.
"That's well and good, but how do you expect us to find the last chameleon in the universe when everyone on this planet is a criminal." Brains chimed in.
"Well, i'm glad you asked." Bones replied. "As everyone knows all chameleons are cold blooded and since we are in the hottest and most toxic place on this planet it should be easy for Brains to use his thermal vision to find our perp."
"I don't think that's how it works..." Jackson said as he laid back against the warmish ground.
A loud crack could be heard as the ground around Jackson gave way and he fell into the earth as if it gobbled him up. Bones and Brains took a moment to react, but eventually got up to inspect what happened. In the newly created trench they could see Jackson on top of a now broken TV, a small refrigerator and one really angry Chameleon covered in caved in house.
The Chameleon’s home could more adequately be described as a trash hole (not to be confused with the popular Skenjkenj bar by the same name), since the Skenjkenj Municipal Trash Board had the policy of just shoving all trash underground. So it was not surprising to have the trash hole cave in (not to be confused with the infamous Trash Hole Cave in of 5V46). But the Chameleon, ignorant of this planet’s lush history, was surprised to see his house destroyed by what looked like high functioning vagabonds. His skin turned a bright red in anger, because chameleon’s have mood skin, the vital combat flaw that saw the destruction of Galaxy Admiral Sapper’s chameleon army, and with it the chameleon race. One day Quack would have his revenge on Sapper, for what the Space international Criminal Court (SICC) labeled “casual genocide”, and what Sapper called “a minor setback”, before he disappeared into the shadows.
Anyways, chameleon red, intrepid team in his den. “Quack!” Marlo yelled in a mixture of exasperation and happiness known as happeration, not to be confused with happy desperation.
“Enough talk, I’ll kill you Marlo!” Quack said, sounding nothing of a duck.
“I don’t think so, I haven’t even said anything yet.” Bones said.
“Yeah, why don’t we talk about this first?” Jackson said, as he
started taking stuff from Quack’s house, even though it was literally trash.
“I just want us to return home together!” Marlo said, using his special forces training to talk. This time honored tactic failed however, since Quack was unconvinced of becoming a slave again. Quack lashed out, using his ridged tail to do an area of effect attack on the whole group. Marlo was able to avoid it by falling over, but the rest of the team took medium spine damage, especially Bones who only survived because he barely had a spine anyways. Marlo didn’t want to hurt Quack, and so he was forced to wait until Quack calmed down and he could get him back in his cage (which was a Space Dimension Rift Generator Cage).
“Brains, what should our combat strategy be” Said Bones who was lying on the floor, passed out and unable to talk.
“The Chameleon race is extremely nimble and deceptive, but also has an incredibly strong frame, so we should attack his weak point for massive damage.”
“Yeah totally we should do that” Jackson said, as he began walking out of the house.
“It looks like your allies are of no help to you Marlo, your slaving ends here!” Quack said.
“Why would you say such things?” Marlo said, in a way that a slaver would, due to generations of societal messages telling them that slavery is actually somehow good.
“I’ll kill you!” Quack turned invisible (Nothing is actually invisible, but the human eye could not perceive of his current location due to the limited number of spectrums/magic), and tried to close in on Marlo to finish the deal with a lethal bite of his fangs.
“Oh Quack, I missed the old you.” Marlo shot his generator to his left, briefly illuminating Quack as he was sucked into the mysterious contraption that the police couldn’t afford due to budget cuts. “Well, I guess that is that then. It was a pleasure being tortured by you/working with you!”
“Wait, I can’t let you leave with that person.” Bones said lying on the ground, approaching death.
“Quite, you are in violation of just about every human rights law known to man, you are under arrest Marlo Perkins.”
“Sorry, but I need Quack, so you’ll just have to catch me later…literally.” Marlo did not know what literally meant.
“As much as you care for Quack’s wellbeing, you have to set him free to let him be.” Jackson said, reasoning that the last chameleon could fetch a handsome sum on the black market.
“Oh I don’t care about his wellbeing one bit. But I do need him.”
“Whaaaaaaaaaat?” Someone said.
“Oh, the last chameleon is much too valuable to be set free. Galaxy Admiral Sapper needs him and his genetic code for experiments, and I plan on helping my boss out. Plus I love Quack and his constant suffering, so that is just a bonus of my job.”
“Whoa snap” No one said ever, but that was essentially the reaction of Jackson, who was the only conscious non-robot.
“Indeed. Well, I must be going; a chameleon army doesn’t bioengineer itself. You can just tell Mafia Boss that I am gone.” Marlo put his hand to his ear, like a person with an ear infection. “Get me out of here, I have bigger fish to fry…literally.” And then Marlo disappeared, never to be seen again until next time.
“Brains, can you trace his teleportation signal to the nearest relay point and triangulate it into a destination matrix?”
“You’re just saying random words, aren’t you…”
“Yes. But do it, or I’ll say you were a bad team player when we make our mission report,” Jackson negotitated.
Brains emitted the closest equivalent robots have to a sigh (it sounds something like BEEP BOOP) and went about his work. Meanwhile, Bones’s handcorder was beeping.
“Hello?”
Suddenly, a life-size image of the chief loomed in Bones’s face. “I never should have upgraded to one of these newfangled vision phones…”
“BONES! JACKSON! 4D4! What the hell are you doing on Skenjkenj! I sent you to the Gamma quadrant! I explicitly commanded you to avoid the Hell Abyss quadrant! And I implicitly commanded you to avoid THE MOST DANGEROUS POSSIBLE PLANET FOR A COP TO BE ON!”
“My bad,” put in Jackson. “I just thought we could save time this way. Oh, by the way, while we’re talking, can you re-promote me and transfer me off of this team?”
“NO! No one’s getting promoted! This isn’t a goddamn end of year performance review! I have some good news though. Your near-fatal incompetence has put you in just the right spot to be slightly less worthless than usual. In 24 hours, the freighter “I Can’t Tell You” is schedule to pass by Skenjkenj on route to the Targone sector. It’s masquerading as a passenger ship, but our inside sources tell us that a ring of smugglers is using it to smuggle medicine to the orphan planet, Dedma. That medicine was supposed to go to New Earth for government use!”
“Well, chief, I’m going to have to object to this mission and take some rogue agent action,” rebelled Bones. “Those orphans need their medicine!”
“Specifically, the medicine is going to New Earth for police use.”
“We must stop the smugglers!” unrebelled Bones.
“Good. Get your ass off this rock and make the rendezvous. They’re scheduled to have their regular cargo inspection in 24 hours, so they won’t know that you know and you can pretend to be the cargo inspectors. Give them hell!”
The chief’s face vanished to whence it came.
“Gentlemen,” robotted 4d4, “I have discovered where Marlo and the desired chameleon vanished to.”
“Well, where is it?” said someone.
“It is apparently a large freighter within 24 coordinates of this planet.”
“The plot thickens,” mused Jackson. “So Marlo’s working with the smugglers…”
~~~
The team went back to the mob boss.
“Um, is it okay if you give us fuel and let us leave the planet? The chameleon teleported away, but I promise we’ll bring him back as soon as we find him, totally,” bluffed Jackson.
“Do you think I grew to be head of the Black Crosses by believing everything people say? If I’m letting you leave and giving you fuel, one of you is wearing this.” He pulled out a collar. “You try any funny stuff or you don’t come back with my chameleon within a week, it explodes. Now who’s it going to be?”
“The robot.” Bones and Jackson simultaneously instantly replied.
As they were about to leave the office, the mob boss paused. “Wait,” he said, looking at Jackson. “Haven’t I seen you before?”
Chapter 2
Skenjkenj was far from barren. In fact, if it wasn’t for the reputation, it would appear to be a bountiful land, dotted by suburbs, parks, streetlights, and other things that were not commonly associated with murder. But its reputation was warranted, and had the highest murder rate per capita of any planet in the galaxy, except for the ice planet Plark, which only had a population of 3 people, all of who were murdered. The suburbs of Skenjkenj were populated by up and coming criminals commuting into their respective criminal dens in the cities. By day they ran some of the most dangerous criminal enterprises of the galaxy, and by night they coached space soccer teams and were members of the Parent Teacher Group. And so the Dutiful Vigilante (crash) landed on the planet, in desperate need of fuel…and maybe some friendship as well.
Jackson knew the game, and he knew how to game the game, play the game, and where the game was held. The first thing they would have to do would be to go to the regional elders of the Black Cross Mob and beg for fuel, and hopefully not get killed in progress. They had the advantage of being officers of the law, but the disadvantage that everyone on the planet wanted to kill officers of the law, so it was a complex dichotomy. “Listen, I know a guy, who can tell us where we can get some fuel. Just let me do the talking and we might get out of this place alive.” Jackson reasoned.
“What are you, some sort of corrupt cop?” Bones inquired by asking.
“No.” Jackson responded by answering.
The group made their way to the Clearwater Freshbridge chapter of the Black Cross Mob, and hoped that no one noticed they were military police. The building was a mix of sinister industrial warehouse and post-colonial columnar boutique architecture, with the words “Black Cross Mob: Die Cops Die: See secretary for appointment” etched on the front of the building. The only thing the Black Cross Mob hated more than cops were people who showed up without appointments, this group had one of those and not one of the other ones, because they were cops without an appointment.
“Helloooo, welcome to th-“ The secretary said, being cut off by whoever is speaking next.
“Yeah listen, I wanna speak to the boss here!” Jackson said.
“Well, if you could ju-“ The secretary said, interrupted by a mystery person named…
“I don’t have time for this shit, get outta my way.” Bones said, looking for an excuse to kick down some door or at least burn the place down.
“We don’t have a space warrant, and must therefore wait for permission.” 4d4 said, in a way that would have been listened to if he was working with people who had ever used a warrant in their lives.
“We don’t have time for that, they might destroy the evidence by the time we call some fat cat judge.” Bones inclined.
“I was under the assumption we were searching for fuel…” 4d4 correctituded. The team burst through the front door all the same, since 4d4 was programmed only to remind people of the rules, not actually follow them (a key design flaw of that line of robots).
“Whoa whoa whoa, who are you and why are you alive?” The mob boss said.
“I can’t answer that myself.” Bones said, both forgetting their actual reason for being there, and being old and nearly dead.
“Listen, we need fuel so we can get off this goddamn planet. We are police, so we use some sort of acquisition law or whatever, so we are just going to take your property.”
“Well, it is usually my policy to just kill cops and then eat breakfast, but boy am I hungry.” The mob boss fatted, since he was overweight, and had no hair, and his nose was in the shape of an elephant. “Also, we might just be able to work out a deal…”
“I don’t make deals with criminals, but what is the deal and we accept” Bones said as well as Jackson, with their sentence kinda melding together at some point.
“I need some enterprising/desperate people such as yourselves to root out a particularly troublesome individual in my district. This guy has been rummaging around for a few days, but my men just can’t shake him, and it is beginning to look like I ain’t doing my job to the higher ups. So I need you to find and get rid of this guy. Do this and you get your fuel…and your lives.” The mob boss was ugly.
“Just who is this guy…” Everyone said in unison, including the mob boss.
-------------------------------------------
Marlo Perkins was rummaging through the garbage, just like he did yesterday, and the day before that. He did that because he already checked all of the shops, and the houses, and the people, and other…places. Marlo was getting close, he could taste it/garbage. For months Marlo had been driven by a single goal, a goal that had caused him to give up his job at the space ranger academy and devote himself to justice. 4 space months ago, Marlo’s chameleon ran away. The last chameleon in the entire universe, and Marlo loved him. His name was Quack, and he either ran away…or was kidnapped. Either way Marlo had tracked down every lead, which led him to Skenjkenj. He didn’t know if he was getting close, since chameleons were hard to see and he spent most of his time killing random gangters/people wondering why he was in their house, but Marlo knew one thing. No one could stop his quest.
Unlike every other killer day on Skenjkenj there was a lawful neutral air amongst the rubbish. Three blatant souls were pressed with a killer problem, to find and kill the last chameleon and judge him, executioner style. The chameleons were a long forgotten race from a long forgotten planet from long ago. They evolved over many space years into a bipedal human-esc, space english speaking race. But their latent psychic, and light bending powers of their original ancestors still flowed in their veins. this gave them the ultimate power to cast illusions whenever and however they felt like it. Before the Second Galactic Confederacy was overthrown, the last legislation of Roberto E. Lee sentenced every last chameleon to death [executioner style] for crimes against non-lizards and his General distane for change.
"So were do we even start this charade..." Bones said. if he was playing charades right now he would have been acting as a pissed cop.
"From what little 'mob boss' had to say, we should assume there is a 99% chance that this criminal is on the planet assuming his sources were reliable. Else we should kill ourselves now and respawn on the closest non-hostile planet." 4d4 said in a calculated way.
"But if i killed myself i wouldn't we just die?" Jackson noted.
"Have you not updated to iHuman-OS 2.9.34.5? There was a backup-respawn feature implemented in that release."
"Yeah whatever, stop nagging me i'll do it later."
"That individual update was released over 20 space years ago..."
"I've had more important things to do."
"#DidYouReally #Sarcasm"
While Jackson and 4d4 were entering heated conversation, Bones decided he had better things to do with his life (or what remained of it). he didn't need no cyber enhancements, back when he was a kid, kids used to take nice, healthy hyper-cyanide life extension pills rather then upgrading their space god given body with augmentations. Bones quickly snapped out of old man story time regression when his fire forged instincts illuminated a digression afoot. A dirty looking man was parsing through some trash instead of killing or stabbing other peoples fleshy organs.
"You sir, have you seen a chameleon around these parts." Bones asked in cop manner with his pen and paper out. The man look surprised and became rigid. he looked towards Bones slowly.
"What's your business in chameleons, said Marlo Perkins" Said Marlo Perkins in third person prose.
"My business is my own, and so will be your life if you dont yap quickly, my gun's hurting to blow out some under developed brains" Bones knew the talk and walked the walk amongst criminals.
"Yeah yeah yeah, what are you? Some kind of Gold Lion? You're in the Jungle baby!"
"And you're gonna die if you dont speak up quick!" Bones said as he pulled out his space-revolver and pointed it towards Marlo.
"Alright, alright, calm down; i used to own a chameleon named Quack. he was my best friend and i loved him, he either ran away or was kidnapped." Marlo divulged under the pressure of death, and death taxes.
"You feel too much and think too little, Marlo... For a space slaver."
"He wasn't a slave!" Marlo angered "He was a normal 6 foot tall bipedal human-esc chameleon pet. And he loved me! This is just a game of hide and go seek, yeah thats it!" Marlo crazy-ed
Bones pulled his gun away from Marlo. He knew he wasn't getting anywhere else with this walking insane asylum, though he could be useful for finding 'Quack'" While Bones was interrogating Marlo Jackson and 4d4 had found Bones after their argument resolved.
"Bones, have you found out anything that would assist us in this endeavor of finding and dispatching the chameleon?" 4d4 asked.
"Maybe not, but i've got a idea..." Bones said while cooking up a scheme in his metaphorical brain frying pan.
Bones then used his literal frying pan to beat Marlo until he told him more about chameleons (they were doing good-cop bad-cop, so Jackson gave Marlo a can of Space Cola after two of his teeth went flying out). “Ah ha!” exclaimed Bones in a detectivish manner. “So chameleons enjoy living in warm environments! We should fly to the equator of this planet and search there for this chameleon!”
“Um, we don’t have any fuel, remember?” reminded Jackson.
“Oh yeah. Let’s just check the ghetto then.”
The ghetto of Skenjkenj was a misnomer. The entire planet was a ghetto. The ghetto, by contrast, was clean, crime-free, and didn’t smell like urine. On the other hand, it was permanently on fire because of lava hotbeds underneath it and science. As the intrepid team entered, they felt their intrepidness reaching a new record low.
“Should we perhaps consider leaving, and returning when this sector is not on fire? That seems affirmative to life expectancy,” posited 4d4.
“In my day, bags of bolts may not have had all their fancy gizmos and gadgets, but one thing they never in a million years would even dream of doing is bitch as much as you do!” ranted Bones.
“Logic is not ‘bitching’, Officer Ready.”
“Oh yeah! I forgot to mention until now, but I kind of sold your positive anti-capacitator for 12 ounces of space heroin. Trust me, I’ll be able to buy it back, but for now I need to strip a couple of your nuts and bolts,” put in Jackson.
“ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH MAIN SYSTEM EMOTION CONTROL MELTDOWN RAGE MODE ENGAGE FUCK YOUUUUUUUUU ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!” exploded 4d4. “I am a highly trained robot, not a bag of bolts or a fresh rookie! I am not a piece of property whose components can be sold to a random buyer! I have several hundred weapons on my person. You both need to start respecting my abilities and rights or I will use all of them simultaneously on both of you. UNDERSTAND?”
There was stunned silence for a minute.
“Well, only a true cop could have that much anger,” said Bones. “Welcome to the team! Now we just need to channel that energy into productive pastimes, like arresting perps and forgetting to read them their rights!”
“Yeah, I’m sorry I sold your whatchamajigger to a major gang lord,” said Jackson. “He does kind of want his payment though, and he IS standing right there…”
Protolord stepped out of the shadows. He was….a robot!
“Request imminent payment of debt or your life process will be reaped in 10. 9. 8. 7. 6-“
“Hold on, pal. Can’t we work something out? I can get you a backstage pass to see the Space Rolling Stones. Or a fucking FANTASTIC parking space in New New York.”
“I require a positive anti-capacitator. Patience protocol terminated in 5. 4. 3. 2-“
Just then, 4d4 fired a bright purple beam from one of his fingers into the core of Protolord. He exploded (and then he was destroyed).
“Whoa. How did you do that?”
“Simple. I assumed that since he needed a positive anti-capacitator, his gamma reflectors were operating at low terminal velocity and a primed molarity pulse could inflict significant damage.”
“Alright, you have a new, ironic name, Mr. Roboto: Brains.”
And thus, Brains, Bones, and Jackson went off into the sunset, no closer to finding a chameleon (and farther away, having spent several hours in the company of the toxic fumes of the ghetto) but much closer to finding true friendship.
Jackson knew the game, and he knew how to game the game, play the game, and where the game was held. The first thing they would have to do would be to go to the regional elders of the Black Cross Mob and beg for fuel, and hopefully not get killed in progress. They had the advantage of being officers of the law, but the disadvantage that everyone on the planet wanted to kill officers of the law, so it was a complex dichotomy. “Listen, I know a guy, who can tell us where we can get some fuel. Just let me do the talking and we might get out of this place alive.” Jackson reasoned.
“What are you, some sort of corrupt cop?” Bones inquired by asking.
“No.” Jackson responded by answering.
The group made their way to the Clearwater Freshbridge chapter of the Black Cross Mob, and hoped that no one noticed they were military police. The building was a mix of sinister industrial warehouse and post-colonial columnar boutique architecture, with the words “Black Cross Mob: Die Cops Die: See secretary for appointment” etched on the front of the building. The only thing the Black Cross Mob hated more than cops were people who showed up without appointments, this group had one of those and not one of the other ones, because they were cops without an appointment.
“Helloooo, welcome to th-“ The secretary said, being cut off by whoever is speaking next.
“Yeah listen, I wanna speak to the boss here!” Jackson said.
“Well, if you could ju-“ The secretary said, interrupted by a mystery person named…
“I don’t have time for this shit, get outta my way.” Bones said, looking for an excuse to kick down some door or at least burn the place down.
“We don’t have a space warrant, and must therefore wait for permission.” 4d4 said, in a way that would have been listened to if he was working with people who had ever used a warrant in their lives.
“We don’t have time for that, they might destroy the evidence by the time we call some fat cat judge.” Bones inclined.
“I was under the assumption we were searching for fuel…” 4d4 correctituded. The team burst through the front door all the same, since 4d4 was programmed only to remind people of the rules, not actually follow them (a key design flaw of that line of robots).
“Whoa whoa whoa, who are you and why are you alive?” The mob boss said.
“I can’t answer that myself.” Bones said, both forgetting their actual reason for being there, and being old and nearly dead.
“Listen, we need fuel so we can get off this goddamn planet. We are police, so we use some sort of acquisition law or whatever, so we are just going to take your property.”
“Well, it is usually my policy to just kill cops and then eat breakfast, but boy am I hungry.” The mob boss fatted, since he was overweight, and had no hair, and his nose was in the shape of an elephant. “Also, we might just be able to work out a deal…”
“I don’t make deals with criminals, but what is the deal and we accept” Bones said as well as Jackson, with their sentence kinda melding together at some point.
“I need some enterprising/desperate people such as yourselves to root out a particularly troublesome individual in my district. This guy has been rummaging around for a few days, but my men just can’t shake him, and it is beginning to look like I ain’t doing my job to the higher ups. So I need you to find and get rid of this guy. Do this and you get your fuel…and your lives.” The mob boss was ugly.
“Just who is this guy…” Everyone said in unison, including the mob boss.
-------------------------------------------
Marlo Perkins was rummaging through the garbage, just like he did yesterday, and the day before that. He did that because he already checked all of the shops, and the houses, and the people, and other…places. Marlo was getting close, he could taste it/garbage. For months Marlo had been driven by a single goal, a goal that had caused him to give up his job at the space ranger academy and devote himself to justice. 4 space months ago, Marlo’s chameleon ran away. The last chameleon in the entire universe, and Marlo loved him. His name was Quack, and he either ran away…or was kidnapped. Either way Marlo had tracked down every lead, which led him to Skenjkenj. He didn’t know if he was getting close, since chameleons were hard to see and he spent most of his time killing random gangters/people wondering why he was in their house, but Marlo knew one thing. No one could stop his quest.
Unlike every other killer day on Skenjkenj there was a lawful neutral air amongst the rubbish. Three blatant souls were pressed with a killer problem, to find and kill the last chameleon and judge him, executioner style. The chameleons were a long forgotten race from a long forgotten planet from long ago. They evolved over many space years into a bipedal human-esc, space english speaking race. But their latent psychic, and light bending powers of their original ancestors still flowed in their veins. this gave them the ultimate power to cast illusions whenever and however they felt like it. Before the Second Galactic Confederacy was overthrown, the last legislation of Roberto E. Lee sentenced every last chameleon to death [executioner style] for crimes against non-lizards and his General distane for change.
"So were do we even start this charade..." Bones said. if he was playing charades right now he would have been acting as a pissed cop.
"From what little 'mob boss' had to say, we should assume there is a 99% chance that this criminal is on the planet assuming his sources were reliable. Else we should kill ourselves now and respawn on the closest non-hostile planet." 4d4 said in a calculated way.
"But if i killed myself i wouldn't we just die?" Jackson noted.
"Have you not updated to iHuman-OS 2.9.34.5? There was a backup-respawn feature implemented in that release."
"Yeah whatever, stop nagging me i'll do it later."
"That individual update was released over 20 space years ago..."
"I've had more important things to do."
"#DidYouReally #Sarcasm"
While Jackson and 4d4 were entering heated conversation, Bones decided he had better things to do with his life (or what remained of it). he didn't need no cyber enhancements, back when he was a kid, kids used to take nice, healthy hyper-cyanide life extension pills rather then upgrading their space god given body with augmentations. Bones quickly snapped out of old man story time regression when his fire forged instincts illuminated a digression afoot. A dirty looking man was parsing through some trash instead of killing or stabbing other peoples fleshy organs.
"You sir, have you seen a chameleon around these parts." Bones asked in cop manner with his pen and paper out. The man look surprised and became rigid. he looked towards Bones slowly.
"What's your business in chameleons, said Marlo Perkins" Said Marlo Perkins in third person prose.
"My business is my own, and so will be your life if you dont yap quickly, my gun's hurting to blow out some under developed brains" Bones knew the talk and walked the walk amongst criminals.
"Yeah yeah yeah, what are you? Some kind of Gold Lion? You're in the Jungle baby!"
"And you're gonna die if you dont speak up quick!" Bones said as he pulled out his space-revolver and pointed it towards Marlo.
"Alright, alright, calm down; i used to own a chameleon named Quack. he was my best friend and i loved him, he either ran away or was kidnapped." Marlo divulged under the pressure of death, and death taxes.
"You feel too much and think too little, Marlo... For a space slaver."
"He wasn't a slave!" Marlo angered "He was a normal 6 foot tall bipedal human-esc chameleon pet. And he loved me! This is just a game of hide and go seek, yeah thats it!" Marlo crazy-ed
Bones pulled his gun away from Marlo. He knew he wasn't getting anywhere else with this walking insane asylum, though he could be useful for finding 'Quack'" While Bones was interrogating Marlo Jackson and 4d4 had found Bones after their argument resolved.
"Bones, have you found out anything that would assist us in this endeavor of finding and dispatching the chameleon?" 4d4 asked.
"Maybe not, but i've got a idea..." Bones said while cooking up a scheme in his metaphorical brain frying pan.
Bones then used his literal frying pan to beat Marlo until he told him more about chameleons (they were doing good-cop bad-cop, so Jackson gave Marlo a can of Space Cola after two of his teeth went flying out). “Ah ha!” exclaimed Bones in a detectivish manner. “So chameleons enjoy living in warm environments! We should fly to the equator of this planet and search there for this chameleon!”
“Um, we don’t have any fuel, remember?” reminded Jackson.
“Oh yeah. Let’s just check the ghetto then.”
The ghetto of Skenjkenj was a misnomer. The entire planet was a ghetto. The ghetto, by contrast, was clean, crime-free, and didn’t smell like urine. On the other hand, it was permanently on fire because of lava hotbeds underneath it and science. As the intrepid team entered, they felt their intrepidness reaching a new record low.
“Should we perhaps consider leaving, and returning when this sector is not on fire? That seems affirmative to life expectancy,” posited 4d4.
“In my day, bags of bolts may not have had all their fancy gizmos and gadgets, but one thing they never in a million years would even dream of doing is bitch as much as you do!” ranted Bones.
“Logic is not ‘bitching’, Officer Ready.”
“Oh yeah! I forgot to mention until now, but I kind of sold your positive anti-capacitator for 12 ounces of space heroin. Trust me, I’ll be able to buy it back, but for now I need to strip a couple of your nuts and bolts,” put in Jackson.
“ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH MAIN SYSTEM EMOTION CONTROL MELTDOWN RAGE MODE ENGAGE FUCK YOUUUUUUUUU ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!” exploded 4d4. “I am a highly trained robot, not a bag of bolts or a fresh rookie! I am not a piece of property whose components can be sold to a random buyer! I have several hundred weapons on my person. You both need to start respecting my abilities and rights or I will use all of them simultaneously on both of you. UNDERSTAND?”
There was stunned silence for a minute.
“Well, only a true cop could have that much anger,” said Bones. “Welcome to the team! Now we just need to channel that energy into productive pastimes, like arresting perps and forgetting to read them their rights!”
“Yeah, I’m sorry I sold your whatchamajigger to a major gang lord,” said Jackson. “He does kind of want his payment though, and he IS standing right there…”
Protolord stepped out of the shadows. He was….a robot!
“Request imminent payment of debt or your life process will be reaped in 10. 9. 8. 7. 6-“
“Hold on, pal. Can’t we work something out? I can get you a backstage pass to see the Space Rolling Stones. Or a fucking FANTASTIC parking space in New New York.”
“I require a positive anti-capacitator. Patience protocol terminated in 5. 4. 3. 2-“
Just then, 4d4 fired a bright purple beam from one of his fingers into the core of Protolord. He exploded (and then he was destroyed).
“Whoa. How did you do that?”
“Simple. I assumed that since he needed a positive anti-capacitator, his gamma reflectors were operating at low terminal velocity and a primed molarity pulse could inflict significant damage.”
“Alright, you have a new, ironic name, Mr. Roboto: Brains.”
And thus, Brains, Bones, and Jackson went off into the sunset, no closer to finding a chameleon (and farther away, having spent several hours in the company of the toxic fumes of the ghetto) but much closer to finding true friendship.
Chapter 1
He reached the top of the stairs. “I’m gettin’ too old for this…” Officer Mortimer Ready said (but his friends called him Officer Bones, due to the aforementioned old). Bones just lost his latest partner while walking up the space stairs on his way to the chief’s desk. That was the third partner he had lost that week, and the most gruesome death yet, the space stairs wouldn’t be clean for weeks, and that did't even include the military police looking into who installed giant rotating saw blades and alligators on the stairs. The military police academy had begun to set aside slots in their graduating class for his new partners that inevitably died, luckily the worst officers were also the hot heads and willing to work with a man with the protective instincts of a fierce porcupine of invasion.
Bones burst into the Chief McChieferson’s office with the fury of an arthritic bear, with the arthritis to match. “What’s this all about Bones? You went into that space warehouse clearly against protocol! The Military Police Commissioner is gonna have my head over this! The mafia union is already breathing down my throat about pensions and reduced jailtime, and now I hear you burst into another warehouse and lost another partner!”
“I don’t work well with others chief, you know that!” Bones said, with the subtext being that he was too old for that.
“I’m assigning you TWO new partners, and you better shape up, or I’ll have your badge!”
“But chief! I can’t work with some rookie, or worse, someone who has some shred of belief in the operations of the military or in justice! Justice just means more paperwork…”
“I’ve heard enough outta you, talk to the space secretary to find out about your new partners. Get outta my sight.”
Bones threw something he was holding at the wall and grumbled loudly "Someone has to stop these rampant military warehouses before someone actually starts using them chief, and if you can't see that then you can have my badge!" But Chief McChieferson already tuned into space radio and wasn't listening. Bones left the office, about the same level of gruntled as when he entered. He drank his fifth triple shot espresso of the morning (which is the only thing that kept him from falling into a coma, but also edging him ever closer to a heart attack), and approached the space secretary to find his new partners. The space secretary was actually just looking out the window into space until someone showed up to be your partner, since savage budget cuts removed all of their supportive personnel and chairs. On the plus side the military just bought them a new space spaceship prototype, which Bones would take since he was also the requisitions officer after the last one was fired for being paid/alive. Space looked like space, and Bones had seen it all before.
Officer Mortimer knew the first man that walked into the room would be his partner, that or a space delivery boy who came every day space-noon-time which was the same as noon time EST because all of the universe actually went by EST after the Space New England secession. He knew that because they always came into this room looking all hopeful and full of life. that would change fast...
The space door opened and someone metallic passed through the threshold. It was robot about six feet tall with a lazersaber attached to one hip a blaster on the other. he was dressed in full the post police-cadet costume that contrasted his dark grey steel skin. He was just missing the formal space police Badge.
"Salutations, are you Officer Mortimer? If so, then hit 'Y' on your keyboard, if no then hit 'N'." the robot said.
Bones didn't believed his eyes. He pushed his way through the security guards guarding the McCheif's office (who were recently replaced by tastefully potted plants) and stormed up to Cheif's desk.
"I wont work with a robot!" Bones said. "Robots were good for two things, heating up meals and doing anything people didn't actually want to do."
"Thats exactly why i assigned him, you're getting to old for this, so i assigned someone who could watch your back. Also look what you've done now GR8-4D4 is sad." Chief said. Officer mortimer looked back to see a "sad" robot.
"Situation is NEUTRAL. I am programmed to be not-sad. I can accept that i will never feel loved. My creator has never held me." said GR8-4D4 in mechanical prose. "Just kidding, I can replicate every human emotion #YoureAJerk."
"Thats it. You're off the case!" Chief said. (no one was on any cases. he just liked saying that) "Four-de-four, Your first case is to bond with your partner on patrol mission to the Gamma Quadrant. And that's final!"
"But being a space cop is no place for a robot!" Bones rhymed like a old cop would.
"That's where you're wrong Bones!" The McCheif said as he threw a digi-folder on the desk with digi-paper. "Check out his digi-evolution sheet, He currently holds every honor we distribute in space cop university for every major, including lazer sword combat, alien-diplomacy and advanced spaceship piloting. He's going to be the best cop you've ever partnered with. We also took the liberty to make him death-proof. I got the idea from some old show called Battlestar Galaxy or something. If he dies we just download his blackbox and stick him in a new body!"
"Thank you for your kind words, i am here to withdraw my first badge and log on for active duty." The chief digi-stamped a few digi-papers and gave the robot his badge, the robot then walked up to Mortimer and extended his hand. "You may call me Fourdefour, as your mushy brain would not enjoy saying my real name GR8-4D4."
"You can call me Bones, or don't." Replied Bones.
"It will be a pleasure working with you. #Sarcasm"
"Now that you're aquatinted," Chief said before anything else could be said, "Get out of my office and go do something else while your other partner arrives."
They trudged out of the office together and back into the secretary room, the space door wooshed behind them as it closed.
Jackson Murk walked into his office at the station at his usual 11 AM time. “Jackie,” his secretary Myrtle Springsteen called (great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great granddaughter) “there’s a nice gentleman here to see you. He claims he had a 10 o’clock appointment.” Jackson stormed over
“GODDAMN IT WOMAN, I TOLD YOU NOT TO CALL ME JACKIE! MY NAME IS JACKSON – LIKE THE FUCKING SEVENTH PRESIDENT OF THE ARCHAIC STATES OF AMERICA! NOT LIKE SOME FIRST LADY! DO I LOOK LIKE A FUCKING FIRST LADY? I’M TAKING AWAY YOUR PAY FOR THE PAST YEAR RETROACTIVELY!”
“Aww, Jackie, you’re so cute when you’re angry and taking away my ability to feed my children…I’ll send the nice gentleman right in.”
“Mr. Murk.”
“Ah, Vinnie. Always a pleasure. Can I offer you some brandy, or an assassination on the house?”
“I’m afraid it’s strictly business today, Mr. Murk. You see, the Black Crosses are not entirely sure that you’re completely beneficial to their interests anymore.”
“But I just got them the 400 million credit contract with the Omega Twelve sewage department! Do you know how many fingers I had to twist and how many councilmen’s wives’ lives I had to threaten to do that?”
“And we appreciate the payoff. But you’re a liability, Murk. As part of the job, we pulled some strings and arranged an invitation for you to the Omega Luncheon. You were drunk by 1 pm, and it started at noon! You cussed out the governor’s wife!”
“But it was true! She WAS a fucking whore!”
“You punched a pregnant woman in the face!”
“Hey, at least it wasn’t the belly, you know? No harm, no foul.”
“Murk, my boss often asks me why we do business with you, and I tell him the same thing every time. ‘That Murk,’ I say, ‘he’s a pain in the ass, but he pays off ten times what he costs.’ The payoffs keep coming, but the costs just get higher and higher. The next time he calls me in, I don’t think I’ll be able to say that anymore.”
“Speaking of costs, my living expenses have gone up since I discovered a new brand of premium space whiskey, could I have an advance on this month’s cutback?”
“You really don’t get it, do you, Murk? There IS NO THIS MONTH’S CUTBACK. The Black Crosses have finished doing business with you.”
“Alright. I see how it is. Then I’ll politely ask you to GET THE HELL OUT OF MY OFFICE!” Jackson said as he rose, menacingly. “YOUR SHITTY LITTLE ‘GANG’ DOESN’T EVEN KNOW WHAT PAIN MEANS! I’LL TEACH IT TO YOUR ENTIRE SYNDICATE, MAN BY MAN, CORPSE BY CORPSE!”
“I’ll leave and let you reconsider saying such strong words to this sector’s largest gun-smuggling group.” Vinnie walked out of the office.
Jackson sat back down, groaning and reaching for his bottle of bourbon. Sheryl Springsteen poked her head around the corner.
“Goddamnit woman, what is it?”
“Jackie, hon, you have a call from the chief. He wants to see you in his office right away.”
The good thing about being both in bed with every gang in town, and an alcoholic with an anger problem, is that every visit to the chief’s office is a fresh surprise, Jackson thought as he walked the long route to the chief’s office.
“Jackson. Sit down.”
“Morning, chief. Got any of that special vodka from Talzarius?”
“No. I learned my lesson after the first time you broke my rib during one of these little meetings. Jackson, I’ll cut right to the chase – I’m demoting you by 76 ranks for offenses too numerous to list that were anonymously submitted to my desk in that giant manila folder over there (Jackson looked over and saw a folder overflowing with papers, with ‘Love, Vinnie’ signed on the top). Your new local rank will be 92.”
“What?! You can’t do something like this without a hearing!”
“There WAS a hearing. You showed up 3 hours late and wasted and tried to have sex with the court stenographer.”
“Not my fault she was a prude.”
“I’m taking away your office and your patrol ship. From now on, you’ll be working with a team of similarly ranked officers, specifically #98, a fresh robot recruit from our academy, and #93, a veteran officer with a lot of experience and wisdom. It’s my hope that they can keep you in line – you’ll be sharing an office and a ship with them.”
“Can I at least keep my secretary?”
“I planned to say no out of pity for her sake, but the strange old woman seems to like you. She’ll be transferred to your new team office.”
“Ugh. Well, this is pretty much the worst day ever. When do I meet this new so-called ‘team’?”
“I’m glad you asked…they’re right outside the door.”
“Goddamn rookies think they run the place. Let me help you with this, save me from an imminent volcano that, well why don’t they help me by getting outta the way, so I can not do any of my official duties without them not getting in the way.” Officer Bones thought out loud screaming in his two new partners’ faces. “Now I got some bucket of drt’s (bolts were replaced in 2013 due to their racially charged shape and name), and some guy who is alive. Well let me tell you something, I don’t have time to train some living or inanimate people, I got a job to not do, and another job I’m not supposed to do to do! Also, I already got a secretary, and he is twice the person yours will ever be!” There was a dead parrot in Bones’ office; people were not sure why it was there. It smelled of dead parrot flesh.
4d4 and Jackson did not care.
The team went down to the ship bay, where Requisitions Officer Bones assigned Officer Bones the new prototype ship that no one knew how to fly. 4d4 was a robot, so Bones assumed he knew how to fly ships, so he was appointed the pilot, and since Jackson existed, he would be the navigator. Jackson was fine with this development, since it allowed him to chart more efficient corruption courses. “Charting a course to Gamma Quadrant…through the Hell Abyss quadrant.” It was Jackson’s first time navigating a ship, and second time in the Hell Abyss quadrant.
Bones had unwillingly gone to the Hell Abyss quadrant six times, and willingly gone against orders to the Hell Abyss quadrant one time, which made seven times, and that is terrible. A voice on the space intercom played across the ship “This is Chief, I’ll be monitoring your progress, make sure not to go to the Hell Abyss quadrant, take a course through the Sunshine factory planet, and remember, your orders are to become friends, so enjoy each other’s company goddammit!”
“Nobody tells the navigator where to navigate!” Navigator Jackson said, wanting to pick up some merchandise along his course.
“Yeah, ignore orders Jackson, engage boosters or something to the other direction than what chief said!” And just like that Jackson and Bones became more friends than they were before, since they hated each other before. 4d4 did not get a bonding moment yet, and robo-resented it. The ship plasma’d off to Gamma Quadrant, but what the team didn’t know was that they would find a hell of a lot more along the way than just friendship, fuck friendship. It would also involve being military police, since that was what they were in theory.
The new ship was unlike anything anyone had ever engineered ever. this model looked like any standard space cop car, but had a few new modifications like a quantum fridge, where you could get the leftovers you left in your house from work and other such minor improvements. The ship's happy blue lights came on once they had gotten to warp speed and the reassuring trustworthy voice of the ship's AI chimed "You are now entering warp 1, please enjoy the ride.
"My computations say that we'll be there in 15 minutes." 4d4 said in angstily [if robots could be angsty]. He was still sore about getting the third lowest rank in the space military police. if 4d4 had taken the career of being an automated toilet paper dispenser he would have never ran out of diplomas to dispense.
"Well i might as well enjoy myself then," Jackson kicked his feet up against the inside of the windshield and reclined his seat. he pulled out a flask and took a gulp of the dark liquid. "You want any," He motioned to Bones who stomached a shot but grimaced at the taste.
"What type of pig shit is this, you trying to poison me? This doesn't taste like space-irish or like coffee." Bones said. Jackson just looked offended.
"'Pig shit'? This bourbon is worth more than you're career," He turned to 4d4, "you look like a bag of bolts with taste, you want any bud?" he said to 4d4.
4d4 had never interacted with any humans in his 21 year life span so he had never been addressed as "bud". He used to dream that one day his internal human friends integer counter would read more then or equal to one. luckily he came prepared for any and all friendship experiences.
"Prepare to get to know the meaning of friendship meatbags, for i have brought the utensil for maximum human bonding," 4d4 announced extaticly. He then produced a box of Space-Pictionary.
"No, that's stupid." Said everyone not holding a board game including the ship's AI.
Then a little red blinking light then turned on, "You've entered the Hell Abyss quadrant. Have a nice day" said the AI
"Hell, its about time" said Bones.
The Hell Abyss was not a particularly pleasant sector. As the Dutiful Vigilante (4d4 and Bones were talking while waiting outside the chief’s office and decided to each pick half of the name of the ship) roared through space, it passed Glurtom, the Ghetto Planet, Zinjeng, the Heroin Planet, and Bleeeeeeerg, the home planet of the Bleeeeeeergs. Suddenly, the ship flashed a bright red warning light. “ALMOST OUT OF FUEL. PLEASE PREPARE FOR EMERGENCY LANDING ON NEAREST PLANET OR DEATH.”
“But we were supposed to easily have enough fuel to get us to the Gamma Quadrant and back!” exclaimed 4d4.
“Oh yeah, I kind of siphoned off half the tank and sold it at that last planet…my bad,” explained Jackson.
“I knew there was something suspicious about needing a rest stop in the middle of a 15 minute trip!” Bones detectivized.
“That is a class 4 Federal Crime,” input 4d4. “But we will deal with that upon our return. In the meantime, I guess we better bring the ship down. What is the nearest planet, Jackson?” asked 4d4.
“Looks like it’s…oh no…Skenjkenj!!” Jackson looked paralyzed by fear, and even Bones had a slight worried expression in the corner of his face.
“What is the problem?” inquired 4d4. “You are both upset because stopping to refuel will delay our mission by approximately 12-14 minutes, thus potentially incurring the wrath of our superior when we return unexplainably late?”
“Listen, you bag of bolts,” slurred Bones. “You may have a couple of fancy pieces of paper from some fancy school with fancy writing on them, and an actual legitimate gun license, and an actual desire to see justice done, all of which I lack, but your ass is fresh off the assembly line. Or should I say – the ass-embly line? Jokes aside, you’re raw, rookie. Every seasoned cop – even this sack of shit over here – knows that Skenjkenj is the home planet of the Black Cross mob!”
“Oh. Do they not tolerate visitors?”
“Anyone found on the planet without a legitimate reason for being there is summarily executed,” put in Jackson. “And of all the fucking days, they picked today! The Black Crosses literally just canceled my ‘Honored Guest’ permit 3 hours ago! DAMN it!”
“You mean, you were a friend of the mob? Were you working undercover?” asked 4d4 nervously.
“Yeah, sure, I was working undercover, pal, whatever helps your little robot self sleep, or whatever you robots do, at night. The point is, we’d get shot the moment they found us.”
Just then, the screen flashed another message:
“CUTTING POWER TO ALL ENGINES AND ONBOARD SYSTEMS IN 5 MINUTES. TO DISCOURAGE ILLEGAL SALVAGE OPERATIONS, THIS INCLUDES LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEMS. XENOTECH REGRETS ANY FATALITIES THAT MAY RESULT AND ADVISES YOU TO KEEP CLOSER TRACK OF YOUR FUEL RESERVE IN THE FUTURE, SHOULD YOU SURVIVE.”
“Shit! Skenjkenj it is I guess…may God have mercy on us…” muttered Jackson.
“I will begin landing protocol immediately!”
“Good bag of bolts!”
“Please refrain from using ethnic slurs in my presence, Mr. Bones.”
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