Scum of the Universe Read online

  The Universe returned.

  Now that he could see, Tuesday staggered to his feet to regard the landscape. Everything beyond the distant edge of The Mistress was still glowing like a giant ember, but there was no way Tuesday had any inkling of how or why. The World Slug didn't seem to mind that Her long-overdue breakfast was hotter than molten aluminium, and continued to munch away with thrumming vibrations that shook the bones within Tuesday’s flesh. Looking up and panning his vision across the starscape, Tuesday could quite clearly see that the four other local moons looked like miniature suns, too.

  Curious and curiouser…

  Tuesday's suit CLANG CLANGed again.

  “Seven minutes of oxygen remaining, Current User.”

  Tuesday sighed. In just a few minutes it would be time for an appetiser of chlorine, followed by a main course of methane, finished by a delicate hit of sulphur for dessert…

  There was movement in Tuesday’s peripheral vision, and his head instantly snapped towards the inhabited planet. Although that peaceful, Earth-like orb still filled most of the sky, something new had appeared between Tuesday and the green-blue ball: it was a phalanx of what looked like giant, blocky cylinders. In the space of a second the fleet immediately went from mere dots to almost close enough to touch. If Tuesday's eyes weren’t red raw from chemical burns, he might have been able to read the names welded to the hulls of the ships. What stood out most of all, though, was that for some reason the starships reminded Tuesday of Lego.

  So, it seemed as though the nearby planet was finally going to do something about the apocalyptic monster eating the Welcome mat right off their doorstep. It was about time, too...

  “Hey!” Tuesday yelled, waving his arms as the fleet of ships came to a halt, waiting for something unknown. “Down here! Help! Earth native! I've only got seven minutes of air left!”

  “Six minutes eight seconds,” the suit contradicted.

  “Slig off!” Tuesday snapped.

  Although the starships didn’t move another inch, all of a sudden the sky was filled with thousands of growing white dots. Tuesday froze at the sight, confused by what he was seeing, but then the rodent part of his brain sent a single basic command to his limbs: scurry!

  Tuesday bolted from a standing start as thousands of seven-foot-long white spears rained from the sky as though he'd pissed off an army of Olympic javelin champions, and the onslaught of thin lines began to thud into the soft, pliant flesh of the World Slug with thip thip thip noises. One whistled past Tuesday’s head, barely missing him by inches, and all he could do was dart about at random and hope that luck was on his side. It was a relatively pointless exercise, though, as the cloud of javelins seemed to have been launched at random, and that meant no spot was safer than any other. The main advantage of darting and scurrying was that it made Tuesday feel as though he was doing something constructive, rather than just waiting for death to come and claim him like an old pair of undies from a Chinese dry-cleaner.

  And then the obvious happened: Tuesday’s luck ran out when a seven-foot-long javelin cleanly tore through the left shoulder of his spacesuit in an explosion of old rubber and duct tape and lodged into the ground. The impact twisted Tuesday's spine into a tight sheepshank knot, and the sheer kinetic force of the spear sent Tuesday somersaulting twice before he hit the Slug at top speed. The spiked tip plunged a full half of its length into the Slug’s flesh before finally stopping. Thankfully, this javelin was one of the last ones, and the barrage seemed to have officially ended.

  For a moment, all was still. The only movement was the quivering of tens of thousands of white poles.

  Tuesday groaned. He'd been denied sweet unconsciousness, and to make things worse his throbbing head was being assaulted by a jumble of noises. The casserole of sound eventually resolved to become three separate things: a loud hissing, a jumble of nonsense words, and a constant series of CLANG CLANG alerts. Stunned but relatively unharmed, Tuesday blinked up at the sky. It took a moment, but the jumbled series of nonsense turned out to be clearly formed Unglish.

  “Severe suit damage detected. You have eighteen seconds of air left, Current User.”

  Tuesday sat up. His head was all over the place, but Tuesday still had enough sense to reach up and cover the tear on his left shoulder with his right glove. The hissing calmed about one percent, and definitely didn't stop.

  Great…

  Tuesday reached down and retrieved a standard-issue PusCo foam sprayer from his meagre utility belt. The foam sprayer had more than a passing resemblance to a one-handed Super Soaker water-pistol, and it even operated in the exact same way: pump-action. Tuesday’s dazed mind wandered for a moment about whether there had been any litigation between Nerf and PusCo.

  “Ten seconds remaining, Current User.”

  Jamming its tiny nozzle into the hissing rip, Tuesday rapidly pumped the sprayer’s grip as hard as his fingers could manage and was quickly rewarded with a spurt of putty. Technically, the repairs sort of worked. On the plus side, yes, the hole was definitely no longer an issue. The downside was that gout of sealant foam had immediately expanded into a mountain of bubbles that soldered Tuesday’s right hand (and the sprayer itself) to his left shoulder with virtually unbreakable resin. Living for longer than eighteen seconds would always take priority over technical flair, of course, but this outcome was still embarrassing.

  “Sealed.” The suit noted. “You now have three minutes of air, Current User.”

  Tuesday grunted, twisted a bit, and used his free hand to start getting to his feet.

  Eh. Three minutes is an improvement, right?

  Stiff and sore all over, Tuesday reached his left hand out to the same javelin that had ripped his suit and used it to drag his sorry keister upright. On the way up Tuesday’s visor passed over a clearly-etched brand name on the long white streak, and although he would probably lose a spelling bee to an actual bee, it was a word he instantly recognised.

  “Pethidine?” Tuesday muttered.

  Those nine letters were an instant flashback to the treasured times Tuesday had spent stealing chemicals from the medical unit back at Cell Block Preschool. Although he'd never gotten high on the stuff himself, Tuesday knew Pethidine was a powerful opiate that had been around for over half a millennium and had a lot in common with morphine and heroin. The stuff was always in high demand.

  “Why would they...”

  Pain choked off Tuesday’s next words as he reached a slouch. Everything hurt, including bits he didn’t know he had. Slowly panning his vision across the Slugscape, taking in the thousands and thousands of identical spears, it was a no-brainer to assume that they were all full of the exact same opiate.

  But it still made no sense. Why kill Her with an overdose? Wouldn’t nuking Her be cleaner and more humane? Wouldn’t it be easier to...

  Tuesday’s train of thought was instantly derailed by a scream of exhaust from directly above. The blocky starships had decided to quit hovering like Switzerland during World War II, and were landing in a complex pattern. Scrambling well out of the way of the closest vessel, Tuesday watched in fascination as a drill bit the length of a skyscraper and the circumference of a Volkswagen extended from the underside of every ship. The sharp drills sank into Her grey flesh and immediately spun into action in a geyser of gore and grey fluid, biting into the Slug with a sound like a traumatic dental procedure. As the epic power tools continued boring further into the World Slug's flesh, they were soon followed by equally-huge lengths of clear tubing filled with thick, bubbling green liquid.

  Tuesday watched as they pumped The Mistress full of some unknown chemical, totally clueless about what they were trying to achieve, but then he looked up again to see HIM, and everything else ceased to matter. Like most humans who were unlucky enough to see one of THEM in person, Tuesday’s mouth gaped open stupidly and his heart missed a beat. Both his knees went weak, and Tuesday nearly sagged to the ground.

  For Tuesday, time stopped.

  St
anding at an incredible four metres tall, the gold-and-alabaster creature was like an archangel of vengeance made flesh. It was as though War itself had been shaped into something physical that breathed and thought, that had the ultimate power to choose between life or death for anyone and anything HE came across. HIS kind had a name: they were called Monoliths.

  Over centuries of genetic enhancements, cybernetic augmentations and neural programming routines, the warriors who enforced Order within the wide span of The Unison had gone by many names and been fashioned in an many forms. But the elite soldiers of this particular era were known as Monoliths, and for good reason: looming at a good thirteen feet, Monoliths wore nine-tonne suits of baroque hand-decorated armour fashioned out of unbreakable glass plates, balanced atop a complex series of antigrav wafers and pneumatic suspension. Beyond the thick reflective surface, Monoliths had so many redundant systems built into their suits that there was almost no known force in the known Universe capable of harming one of them, and the entire concept of actually killing a Monolith was idiocy of the highest order. You might as well pick a fight with the Sun. This also extended to the flesh within the invulnerable shell, as their bodies had been granted a total immunity to anything as laughable as pain. They could easily survive unprotected exposure to the vacuum, and could not be pierced, burned or otherwise damaged by any projectile, blade, chemical, or explosive that had ever been manufactured. Just to round off their grandeur, when it came to weapons, every single Monolith was an entire army unto themselves. Each one of those four-metre-tall monsters carried a combination of offensive and defensive systems that would best be described as “apocalyptic.” The actual specifics of Monolith load-outs were pure speculation, of course, as anybody close enough to actually see a Monolith engage in an act of violence had the tendency to not exist afterwards, but it was rumoured that they had roughly all of them.

  Somehow Tuesday managed not to fall to his knees as the looming Monolith gently touched down toes-first beside the closest drillship. Top-of-the-line antigrav wafers built into the undersides of the Monolith’s armoured footwear and the palms of his bulky gauntlets barely made a sound as the giant landed. He came to a stop as softly as a teenage boy kissing his cousin on the cheek in front of a whole family gathering. Sunlight danced over his white and gold glass plates in a chromatic rainbow. Now that he was just a few strides away from the creature, Tuesday could clearly see the Monolith's face through a transparent – though equally unbreakable – glass sheet. His huge, slabby head looked like something Ancient Egyptians would use to decorate a Pharaoh’s tomb to scare off graverobbers.

  “Th-thank you...” Tuesday began, beginning to blubber in relief as he realised his ordeal was finally over. “I… I thought I was going to die here! I...I…”

  But there was no answer. Tuesday's intense honour at being personally rescued by a Monolith dissolved like a stream of cigarette smoke in a hurricane as the giant promptly turned and stomped toward the sunken blade of the nearby drillship. Thick lines of antigrav wafers on the giant's feet meant that the giant was strangely silent when he walked, even though he'd doubtlessly be able to stomp really, really loudly if he so desired.

  It suddenly dawned on Tuesday that he wasn't even important enough to deserve a second look. It cut him. It really did.

  Whispering over to one of the biggest needles in the Universe, the Monolith used the incredible strength of his nine-tonne suit to slam down a series of heavy brackets around the tube, locking it firmly in place, and called out over the local MeshLink on a channel that Tuesday's helmet somehow picked up.

  “Secured,” said the most baritone voice Tuesday had ever heard. It was like Vin Diesel had been reincarnated as a subwoofer. “Pump it.”

  CLANG CLANG.

  “Two minutes of air remaining, Current User.”

  Tuesday realised something: if he could hear them, then they could hear him, right?

  Scrambling after the monster, Tuesday tapped the radio function on his pectoral with his one free hand, flinched at a squeal of distortion, and tried to speak calmly yet assertively as he approached.

  “I'm Robert Tuesday, and I'm…I’m about to die. Please...please help me. Please!”

  So much for calmly and assertively.

  Tuesday could feel the Slug growing sleepy beneath his feet, and the rumble of Her gorging had almost slowed to total stillness. So, they'd drugged Her! Well, that made sense: World Slug fluids were far too precious to just charcoal into a cloud of smog. It would be wasteful beyond comprehension, like using the Mona Lisa as toilet paper, or having an original Marilyn Manson CD as an ashtray.

  CLANG CLANG.

  “One minute of air remaining, Current User.”

  Tuesday went to speak again, but the Monolith waved at him with a snap of pneumatic suspension like Tuesday was a horsefly, and gave a very precise order over the Link.

  “Interfering with Unison business is a capital offence. Piss off, or get shot. Your choice.”

  “But I'll die!” Tuesday protested, confused that this seemed to have no significance to anyone except himself.

  The Monolith blinked through his visor in total boredom.

  “You could die quicker. Believe me.”

  Tuesday was lost for words. But not for long.

  “But I'm from Earth! Isn't The Unison meant to watch out for Earthlings, to defend our species, to keep us safe from harm?”

  “Nope.” The soldier flared nostrils the size of golf balls. “We generally just kill things who don't do as we say. Would you care for a free demonstration?”

  “Forty five seconds of air remaining, Current User.”

  “I...”

  The Monolith turned away again with a dismissive gesture.

  “Piss off, slig-head. Go smoke an arse.”

  Something clicked as Tuesday's mind reached the extent of its tether, and all of a sudden it was time for a good-old explosion of hateful, spur-of-the-moment, immature screaming.

  “You spug-headed, dog-smoking lump of scum!” Tuesday roared. “I spit on you! Your honour is cat vomit, and your mother works as a cut-price harlot at a syphilis clinic! I hope you catch bum pox and die weeping!”

  Tuesday gave two fingers from his free hand to the giant’s back and stomped a boot as emphasis. Caught up in the heat of the moment, Tuesday lunged for the closest object – which turned out to be his Tupperware container full of dry noodles - and threw it as hard as he could. Sailing in a smooth arc, the little plastic box hit the Monolith right on the back of his helmet and exploded into a shower of elbow macaroni.

  Time stopped again...but for a different reason.

  Tuesday had precisely one second to regret assaulting one of the most dangerous beings in the known Universe with a decidedly non-lethal Tupperware container. After a moment of disbelieving stillness, the Monolith calmly turned to glare at Tuesday. This was the extent of the Monolith’s response: no bullets, no napalm, no mushroom clouds…nothing but a dirty look. Unlike most dirty looks, this particular stink-eye was backed up by some sort of exotic psychic artillery, and that squint immediately caused Tuesday’s entire nervous system to fizzle out as though a switch had been flicked. Despite the fact “if looks could kill” was nothing but a metaphor a one point in the distant past, with modern psionic weapons it had become a much more concrete concept.

  Crumpling pathetically to the ground as his muscles went all floppy, the last thing Tuesday heard as he slammed into the Slug like an axed redwood was a final CLANG CLANG followed by a calm, emotionless statement.

  “You have run out of air, Current User. PusCo wishes to inform you that upon the point of death, all of your dental benefits and unused overtime will become null and void. Thank you for working with PusCo.”

  Tuesday’s lungs seized and spasmed as he sucked vacuum. His face quickly transitioned from red to purple to blue, his eyes bulged in the obscene beginnings of terminal hypoxia, and he mercifully passed out.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SEV
EN SUNS

  Tuesday woke up slowly. The first thing he became aware of was a raw pain that ran all the way from his jagged yellow toenails to his small mountains of dandruff. After the zapping that Unison goon had given him, Tuesday's entire body felt as though it had been dragged out of a deep freeze and half-reheated in a microwave.

  Groaning pathetically and silently cursing the entire concept of non-lethal weaponry, especially the kind that was designed to shut off human nervous systems, Tuesday consoled himself that at least the ogre hadn’t used one of those stunners that made you void your bowels everywhere.

  “Are you awake, Mister Tuesday? Can you understand me?”