Based on Nicky's tendency to get distracted from her mission, I estimate that there will be one or two more episodes following this one. Again, it's Nicky's fault that it's taking so long, not mine.
Past episodes:
Episode Three
The tag on Nicky’s
spacecraft-issue police uniform scratched at her neck like a rash with a
vendetta against orange-haired women.
The suit itself was too
warm, and the spacecraft’s infirmary too stuffy, even for the moon. It wasn’t
simply that Nicky disliked the moon – though, to be honest, she hated it. It
had followed her everywhere, no matter where on Earth she went. Can’t you just leave me alone,
moon? she’d pleaded whenever
the waste disposal pods lent enough sky for her to see it – rather, it was her
inability to adjust to the moon’s air. You see, the moon’s artificial
atmosphere was like Earth’s, only stuffier, which served to make Nicky’s hair
twice as orange and three times more difficult to brush.
Nicky had moved to the moon
after being offered a job as a secret agent for the Untainted. They’d said that
her unsurpassed dancing skills more than accounted for her carroty hair. Meanwhile,
Flint’s orchard was dying; so, on the assurance that Nicky would one day earn
enough money for him to join her, he spent all of his savings so that she might
make the trip.
Alas, the Untainted is
non-profit, meaning that Nicky’s salary was far smaller than she’d hoped. She
herself had to fund the mission that involved assassinating the president to
allow Flint to meet her on the moon. It was only after paying for every viable
resource demanded for the completion of this mission that she realised the money
could have instead been used to buy a ticket for Flint, as well as a beach
house. Now, not only was she minus a beach house, she was stuck on an infirmary
bed with an itchy neck and a gnawing fear that the medic would soon return to
announce that her proclaimed injuries weren’t injuries at all. Her fears were
swiftly vanquished, however, due to a magnitude 6.1 murmur in her stomach,
which reminded her that she’d left her food-printing wristwatch at home in
favour of the one that had produced her irritating disguise. Her tummy’s
remaining hope was that a spacecraft large enough to have an infirmary would
also have a kitchen.
The on-board medic had let
her rest after she’d refused treatment for her lack of injuries. She hadn’t
planned on sleeping – she wasn’t even tired – but she must have dozed off
because, sometime later, she heard an alarm in her ear, which sounded like a
mountain man calling her name through facial hair thick enough to need hedge
trimmers. As her eyes readjusted to light, she realised that it wasn’t an alarm
at all. “What is it, Rowan?” she asked, unenthused.
“Were you… sleeping?” he
replied. “You should have left the craft an hour ago!”
Nicky looked at her watch,
which didn’t actually display the time. “Uh oh. How long have I been asleep?”
“No idea, but you’ve been in
there for more than two hours.”
Nicky paused to count with
her fingers. “More than two hours, then,” she concluded.
“Well, what are you waiting
for? Flint might already be on the moon!”
“Oh.” She jumped to her
feet. “On it!”
Thankfully, the kitchen was
in the adjacent room. There, her stomach enjoyed a deliverance of wholemeal
bread, cold chicken, banana cake and moon cheese. Moon cheese looked like
cheddar cheese shot through with white veins, and it tasted like cheddar cheese
shot through with peppermint. Neither Nicky nor her stomach complained, though.
“Food’s food,” she mumbled with a shrug and a swallow.
She was halfway through her
wedge of cheese when a guard entered. Addressing her, he said, “Captain
Tatai would like to speak with you.”
She looked up, mouth half
full. “Now?”
The guard nodded. Nicky put
her cheese down. A frown from her stomach came in the form of a low whimper.
It was a good thing that the
guard had escorted her; she’d have had no idea where she was heading, otherwise,
and would have just as soon found herself stuck in the extraction booth. Not a
fun way to go, certainly.
She was led into the control
room, which bore the shape of a semi-circle. The only furnishing was a
crescent-shaped panel, whose surface was crowded with colourful touchscreens.
The ends of the panel tapered to a point as if to make it look like a half
moon. Nicky could have vomited. Moons
everywhere.
The far wall was a convex
window made entirely of thick glass supported by a criss-cross of black
fibreglass frames. A man with his back turned to her stood gazing out the
windows, which displayed a grand view of the city of Moonopia, the moon’s
capital, over which the craft flew. The estimated two-hundred feet drop between
Nicky and the surface brought to mind earlier thoughts of how, while she
enjoyed squashing ants and small insects, she didn’t much desire to be squashed
herself. In any case, when the man at the window turned to face her, her fear
of becoming a disturbing pile of flesh, blood and ginger hair fell two places
on her list of top ten concerns. Above it sat the fear of being questioned and,
above that, the subsequent fear of being discovered.
“You survived the
explosion,” the captain said in a deep voice. His tone carried with it a
carefully-balanced weight of authority. “Tell me, what happened?”
Nicky almost cowered as she
looked her inquisitor in the eye (literally - he only had one eye). Old Captain
Tatai wore a long denim trench coat with dark padding at the shoulders. His
face was adorned with a black eye patch, which seemed to match his bald scalp.
Offsetting the darkness were gold buttons that dotted the middle, shoulders and
sleeves of his coat, and a fragment of daylight glinting off his silver
earring. Nicky noted the display of medals and marks of honour on his left
breast, and on his right the Ozricks crest: a half moon completed by a half
earth, set against a black sky. This time she did vomit, but it wasn't out of
any loathing for Ozricks. Rather, it was that damned cheese. Afterwards, she
wiped her mouth with her sleeve. Cheese
and peppermint… what was I thinking?
The captain seemed to ignore
the steaming, pungent mess on his carpet. “I asked you a question, soldier.”
His one eye bored into her like a sword made of ice.
“Oh, right,” Nicky said
between gags. She swallowed, shuddered and stepped away from the mess. Then she
cleared her throat. “The explosion, yes.”
“You will tell me what
happened, and who was responsible.” His tone was sterner now, so stern that
Nicky’s heart broke rhythm.
“Of- of course, captain.”
“Well?”
“Well, it wasn’t me, or… or
my hologram.”
“Hologram?”
She’d said too much already.
“Uh…” And her heart wasn’t slowing down. “There was a man. He had a bomb.
It… went off.”
Tatai leaned forward and
placed a hand on the panel, his petrifying gaze no less potent even with one
eye. “A man, you say? How did he get on the roof?” As he spoke, a cleaner
entered with a bucket and cloth. Nicky stepped aside to give him more room,
only then realising that she’d cornered herself.
“A grenade- I mean, what? A
jetpack!” She fumbled at her ear piece. “Rowan, tell me what to say!”
Tatai pushed off the panel
to stand straight again. “Who’s Rowan?”
She waited for the man in
her ear to respond. Then, repeating his words, she said, “Rowan is my deity. He
alone guides my every word and thought, ensuring only truth and justice even in
the midst of… trauma.” No longer having to think, her stutter had apparently
vanished.
Tatai allowed a slow nod,
but the furrow in his brow indicated that he had yet to be convinced. He
narrowed his eye to a slit. “If this intruder was a man, why did we find a
bunch of women’s clothing on the roof, along with a handbag containing a
hairbrush tangled in wiry ginger hair?”
Again, Nicky waited for
Rowan’s response. “This intruder was an extremist. His ploy was to send a
message to you and to the government proper: a message that Ozricks will fall,
fall like this spacecraft. But the craft sustained the explosion with little
more than a ruptured roof. How’s that for sturdiness? Anyway, two loyal men
lost their lives out of sheer dedication to protecting their station. They will
never be forgotten.” She paused then added, “He was also ginger.”
“Ri-ight,” Tatai said, tone
sceptical. “But can you explain the handbag, hairbrush, shirt, skirt, coat,
heels, hairpins, shawl and, heaven be damned, fake eyelashes?”
Nicky licked her lips. Rowan’s
voice was growing less and less assuring. “As I said, the man was an extremist.
Many extremists like to make a statement not only by their actions, but by
their attire as well. He wanted to be remembered after… killing himself.”
The cleaner, who had at some
point donned an oxygen mask, picked up his cloth and withdrew from the room. He
seemed to have forgotten the bucket. In place of the mess was a patch of
soggy-looking carpet about three times its size.
Tatai stroked his hairless
chin before responding. “Very well, soldier,” he said. “You are dismissed. We
will be landing at Ozricks Maximum Security Prison in ten minutes.”
Nicky could have jumped for
joy at his words. Thanks, Rowan, she
thought, and almost said. Moreover, she’d boarded the craft with the mere
intention of finding the coordinates of the prison. Never did it occur to her that
this same craft would be heading to that very place.
She turned to leave, but
paused as a thought entered her mind. Turning back, she said, “Can I have the
clothes?” She didn’t realise what she’d asked until she’d asked it. She
expected Rowan to scold her, but he remained silent.
“What?” Tatai asked.
There was no turning back
now. “The clothes you found. Could I… keep them?”
There was a pause. “Fine.
Now go!” He flicked a hand in her direction for emphasis.
Back in the corridor, Nicky
had trouble deciding what to do for the next ten minutes. “What now, Rowan?”
she asked.
There was no response.
“Rowan, push your beard
down; I can’t hear you.”
Still nothing. What is he doing?
Moments later she heard
Tatai speaking to someone, though no one had entered the control room since
she’d left. She leant an ear on the door.
“What? An intruder?” Tatai
was saying. “They work for the Untainted, you claim?”… “Still on board?” Nicky
wondered whom they might be talking about.
“And what is the name of
this man you’ve captured?” He paused again. “Well, tell this Mr Thorpe that his
ginger-haired friend here is about to be water-boarded with her own vomit!” He
cackled like that of a self-proclaimed villain. Then he added, “Oh, and after
that, you can kill him.”
At some point between the
words ‘Thorpe’ and ‘kill’, it occurred to Nicky that she didn’t much like what
she was hearing. She had to assume the worst. “I’ve been made!” she cried. Her
first instinct was to put as much distance between herself and the control room
as she could, but she was barely in the next wing when the captain himself
materialised in front of her, blocking her path. She would have tumbled into
him had her dancing skills not included lightning-quick reflexes. Already she
was racing in the opposite direction. Damn
him and his teleportation watch, she
thought. Why do villains
always have better tech? She
shouldered into the control room, only then realising that she’d cornered
herself. What followed was the sensation of déjà vu.
“It’s over,” Tatai said upon
entering. He took his time to straighten his eye patch whilst a troop of guards
squeezed through the entrance, flanked him on either side and aimed their
firearms at Nicky’s chest. She looked down to find a colony of red dots
mingling above her solar plexus. Her stomach whimpered again.
After all the guards had
formed up, the speakers overhead erupted with the sound of a computer-automated
voice message. “Arriving at Ozricks Maximum Security Prison, ETA five minutes.”
When Tatai was happy with
the position of his eye patch, he regarded his men to emphasise the impossible
odds of Nicky getting out alive. Then he turned back to her. “Any last words?”
Nicky eyed the faces of her
adversaries. “Actually, yes,” she said. In a moment of un-ginger-like clarity,
she’d noticed that, with the panel between her and her enemies, none of them
could see the pail held tightly in her hand. Just so, she clutched the bucket
with both hands, stepped forward and shoved it into the air. “Cheese vomit!”
she screeched as a flurry of mould, soap, stomach acid and sheer putridness
showered the faces and uniforms of her assailants. Tatai’s eye patch went from
black to sickly white.
The guards tried to open
fire, but their guns, splotched in Nicky’s regurgitation, had jammed; and
seconds later, they began to melt. Her assailants had time only to witness the
disintegration of their weapons before themselves passing out after a foolish
decision to inhale. Tatai also succumbed, if slightly more dramatically: as his
strength left him, he reached a helpless hand into the air and cried a lengthy,
“No-o!”
Nicky, meanwhile, held her
breath. She was able to hold her breath for five-and-a-half minutes, a skill
she’d mastered during her career as a dancer. This skill had absolutely no
relevance to said career, except in the case of underwater dances, of which she
had performed none, because Earth contained next to no water. Needless to say,
the ETA of five minutes had therefore been a welcome relief.
Four minutes later, she
turned around to behold the grey and obsidian site of the prison drawing closer
with each second. Guard towers and railed posts bordered every yard and sector.
Overheard, light from the-fiery-red-thing-in-the-sky hit the buildings at a low
angle, casting lengthy shadows into which the spacecraft would soon descend.
The sight of those dark forms made Nicky’s smile turn wry. Her mission
wasn’t over yet.
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