Chapter Text
“Someone please tell me this is a joke.”
No one responds. I’m not all that surprised, really. El Pasoz is known for a lot of things… greasy oil, poor service, lousy exchange rate, high number of nasty “I coulda bin a contendah” types… but not for being a haven of erudite conversation.
That’s okay. I like to talk.
“Anyone see who put this up?” I ask, jerking my thumb at the holo-poster. “I mean, are they still around? Can I talk to them?”
Utter silence once again. Oh well. I give up and wander over to the bar. The serving mech is of a type I’ve not seen before – reed-thin, with eyes mounted on little horizontal stalks – and he regards me warily. He might be an unknown, but the look on his face plate is all too familiar.
“You actually want a drink?” he asks, unable to keep the surprise from his voice.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
He mutters something inaudible and wipes at the bar with an already oily rag. “What’ll you have?”
I point to a random bottle behind the bar, not caring how much it’s going to cost. Whatever lands in the pitcher in front of me will do. The last thing a guy like me is, is fussy about oil. That sort of pickiness is best left for others. There’s only two things in this universe that interest me, and I’m dead keen on getting one of them before I leave this two-bit flea pit.
“So,” I begin, one hand sliding some credits over the bar as the other wraps round the pitcher, “you run this place?”
“Uh huh,” comes the curt reply. The bar mech’s already back to his wiping.
“Work all the time?”
“If we’re open, I’m here,” he sighs. Obviously one of those unhappy small business owners.
“Which means you’d know who put that holo-poster on your wall, right?”
He stops wiping and straightens up. His eye stalks extend a little – I guess that’s his version of a cold, hard stare. “You ask an awful lot of questions,” he drawls.
“You don’t give a whole heck of a lot of answers,” I quip. “Come on, friend. Someone’s put a poster on your wall seeking a service. That means they’d want to be found, want mechs to get in touch with them. Am I right?”
The bar mech keeps on staring.
“Okay, so you’ve got a reputation for keeping your mouth shut and looking after your patrons,” I sigh wearily. “But the being who went to all the trouble of making that holo-poster is trying to advertise. You’re actually doing them a disservice by turning off your synthesiser, you know.”
A large shadow falls over me. The house lights have been well and truly blotted out. I turn around and look up… and up, and up… at my new friend. Now I’m no shrimp, but this guy stands a good twenty, maybe thirty feet taller than me. No mean feat for an organic life form, let me tell you. I’ve met members of my own kind who would call this guy “sir” rather than tick him off, based on size alone.
Big boy’s swollen mass is covered in a neon yellow, chitinous substance. Bits of mottled green and brown poke out from under the insect-like armour. His head is green and vaguely mechanical – enhancements, I’m thinking, not a natural technorganic – with tusks jutting out from the corners of his mouth. And, as is standard for yokels like this, his eyes are really really dim and beady. Ten bucks says his name is Cletus.
“This guy botherin’ you, Hank?” he growls. I’m thinking Hank is the bar mech.
“Come to think of it, Jojo, he is,” Hank the newly-christened bar mech replies. “I’ll give you a free round if you get him out of my face plate.”
Jojo. Damn. That was my second guess.
He-who-is-not-Cletus grabs me roughly around the neck. With one hand, no less. Told you he was a big boy. I’m lifted off the floor – which isn’t a bad thing, exactly, given how dirty the place is – and carried toward the door. My broad feet dangle in mid-air and I go limp, letting myself be taken. There’s really no point, at this juncture, extricating myself from the situation. Nope, not right now.
I wait until we’re almost by the door. I wait until every eyeball, optic, scanner and visual sensory input device in the seedy, smoky bar is turned toward Jojo and I. Once I am certain everyone is looking, ready to laugh as the big guy throws the little guy out of the bar, I summon it.
The orange glow catches everyone by surprise, especially Jojo, and produces an audible gasp. But the show is only just beginning. To my utter satisfaction, the room erupts in horror as the plate on my forearm slides across, changing things from red to purple. Then, when the glowing Energon blades snap out from the newly-visible internal displacement cannon mounted on my arm, people start screaming.
It’s a happy day.
I fire the cannon into Jojo’s foot. The big lug is just mechanical enough for it to hurt. Gyroscopic systems go haywire and he stumbles, pitching forward. I lift my feet to brace them against the wall, then push back. Already off-balance, Jojo is unable to resist my momentum and topples like a tree. The wall kick carries me up and over – freeing my neck from his grip – and I somersault onto the floor, landing on my feet.
Then, just for good measure, I drive the Energon blades into Jojo’s body and slit him from pelvis to throat.
The screaming is getting even louder now, and this facet of me is in its element. It’s just as well, really, I got around to balancing my natural duality a decade or so back. Otherwise I’d be feeling really guilty right now. But let’s face it: where’s the fun in being radically both if you can’t get radical every once in a while?
Jojo’s twin brother – well, save for the fact his carpace is blue – charges at me. Spontaneously I decide this must be Cletus. Not that it’ll matter for long. The other essential difference between Jojo and Cletus is that the former had just a hint of robotics about him… while Cletus has metal all over. Lovely.
The first shot from my cannon stops him cold. The second doubles him over. The third causes most of his internals to blow out through his back, spraying terrified patrons with coolant and sparking microchips. The fourth causes him to vomit up a good litre of nanites-rich fluid and drop, dead, right through the centre of the digital pianola.
Cletus and Jojo are dead. Nobody’s that interested in mourning them. The two bruisers with whom they were drinking – one red, one black – have somewhere else to be, judging by how fast they’re running.
It’s not fast enough. I flex my ankles and my blades spring into my hands. I whip my right hand out like a professional darts player would, back on Earth, and skewer Mr Black through the thigh. His red-headed friend takes the left-hand blade in the head. The force of the impact actually tears the cranium from the neck, and his headless crimson body trips over a anti-grav pool table before it stops twitching.
The crowd, still screaming, parts as I wander toward it. I don’t even have to push beings out of my way to reach Mr Black. He’s coughing and spluttering, cursing in a language I don’t recognise, and generally being a pain in the skidplate. I retrieve the other blade from the remains of the Red Baron before pulling its twin out of Blackie. He howls in pain; I don’t pay much attention. Instead, I fix the handles of the two blades together, forming what I affectionately call my “big-ass double sword”.
Mr Black is far too heavy for me to pick up, so I crouch over him instead. I hold the blade along his body lengthwise so that one edge is pressing into his nose, the other into his nether-regions. These organics and their need to reproduce… it’s such a biological failing.
“Your species is either obsessed with interfering in other people’s business,” I growl, putting just a little weight on the blades, “or you’re somehow connected with the holo-poster on the wall. I doubt you’re the one who put it up, which can only mean you’re some kind of bounty-hunting family. Is that it?”
He whimpers and nods.
“Competition in a free marketplace is one thing,” I say lightly. “But trying to kill your business rivals is just rude.”
Mr Black visibly relaxes. A sigh of relief puffs from his tusky mouth.
“I mean, either you respect them enough to actually kill them, to succeed in your murder attempt,” I continue, “or you just don’t try in the first place.”
The alien’s eyes go wide. They’re still as big as saucers even after I’ve put my full bodyweight onto the blades and sliced him in half.
At long last, the bar is empty. Blissful silence fills my audio sensors. Truly, there is nothing like a deranged madman to clear out a joint. I’ve been to a couple of inter-species weddings that could have done with a nice axe-wielding psychopath moment. Others have had them, and it’s usually been the mother-in-law with the cleaver.
My train of thought seems to have well and truly derailed, which means it’s time to slip into something a little less homicidal. With a thought and another orange glow, the plate slides back to red and my vision clears. Delicate, finely-tuned sensors pick up the sound of emergency calls; police alerts; pleas for medical assistance. I don’t have very long.
Hank the bar mech is crouched under the counter, spindly arms crossed over his head as if they were a force field. I reach out and pluck him into the air with one finger – one of his, that is, gripped in my right fist. His frightened expression is no doubt mirrored in the blank orange screen where my face should be, and that’s likely freaking him out even more. Good.
“The holo-poster,” I say with false malice. False because my symbols have switched – I’m all about being a nice guy again. Not that he needs to know that. “Who put it up, and where can I find them?”
Hank’s my new best friend, now, and all too happy to co-operate. “Two really weird guys came through, a couple of cycles ago,” he blubbers. “Never seen anything like ‘em before… weren’t cyborgs, really, but somethin’ else. Anyway they asked if they could put up the poster, and I knew Jojo an’ the boys would be through today, so I said okay.”
His eyes are pleading. “I always keep the best jobs for Jojo, mister, you’ve got to understand,” he implored. “They’re so much bigger than everyone else here, and they’d use my legs for tooth picks if I didn’t look out for them. Honest!”
I shake my head and tut. “If they were such a problem, you should have mentioned it to me,” I leer. “Because I’m in the business, too, and taking out creeps like that is something of a personal pleasure of mine.” My voice drops about one hundred degrees in temperature. “But now, Hank, you’ve made me an enemy. Pray I don’t come back to El Pasoz any time soon, or I might turn you into pipe cleaners.”
Hank falls to the floor. A second later, I let his severed finger out of my fist, so it can join him.
The poster makers left El Pasoz two, maybe three days ago. I’ve already got the energy signature of the poster recorded in my data tracks – with only a couple of days head start, the trail will still be fresh enough to follow. I can track these guys, whoever they are, to their next destination and then take the contract.
Because, let’s face it, this one is too good to miss. It’s not often you see the grim visage of a deposed deity slapped up onto the wall of a scummy bar, emblazoned with the words: “Wanted, Flame Convoy: Dead or Alive”.
“By the way,” I call to Hank as I walk out the swinging double doors. “Just because I don’t have a face doesn’t mean I stay out of oil bars. I might not be able to drink, but I can still come in for the conversation.”
He gurgles, groans and passes out. I step onto the street, transform, and make for the stratosphere. My name is Sideways, and I have a new job.