Big Bang Generation (3 page)

‘No, no, she really is a friend. An old friend. Well, not old like your grandad – no one's that old – but a friend from a long time ago. And that might be her handwriting. I actually think you've met once or twice. I don't recall how well you got on.'

‘I rarely get on with your friends Doctor. More often than not they try to kill me. Or, in the case of your old tin dog, shoot me.'

‘Well, to be fair to K-9, you were possessed by the ancient spirit of the Kortha Gestalt. Sarah Jane and Luke did explain to me that you weren't best pleased, though…'

‘Anyway, moving to the here and now, just how did this particular “old friend” know I'd broken my leg, yeah?'

‘Ah yes, that might have something to do with Gal-Tube.'

‘And my leg-breaking incident was on that, I'm guessing. Humiliation on a universal scale.' Keri paused. ‘Who uploaded it, Doctor?'

‘Anyway, so it's possible that she saw it and decided to make her way here, to see you. And maybe me. It's been a lot of years and faces since we last met up. Well, I'd better head off.'

‘Oh no you don't. If someone I don't know from your past is coming here, you're sticking around too.'

‘I am?'

‘You are. But before she gets here, you're also going to explain why you uploaded footage of me falling on my bum to the entire universe, yeah?'

The Doctor smiled. ‘Fizzy water, yeah?'

The human colony of El Diablo was established in the late forty-ninth century, on the outskirts of the Vadim solar system, right at the heart of the human empire's trade routes. El Diablo was named because of its dichotomous sulphurous atmosphere and volcanic polar regions, which put a lot of settlers off – its distance from its sun didn't help.

But enterprise can be found everywhere and one of the fledgling power companies, a small mom-and-pop family operation, decided to invest in the dwarf planet, seeing if it could contain the unpleasant lava seas and turn that into self-perpetuating power to keep a colony going, rather like being a planet and sun all in one.

After many years of planning and experimenting and some very hard-sought patents, the company succeeded and began selling plots of terraformed land on this exciting, potentially prosperous new world.

And that's when the big corporations moved in – not worried about the dwarf planet itself, but terribly
interested in the technology and patents owned by the family business. Without too much concern for the people involved, one of the bigger companies, Bolen, simply absorbed the company in a hostile takeover, sacked the family, and owned El Diablo outright.

Within a hundred years, with the technology having proved functional and successful, Bolen began populating El Diablo with businesses – mainly banking, securities, and a few satellite offices of the bigger cosmo-nationals. And a lot of coffee shops.

But as always when you mix big business with financial institutions (and a ready supply of coffee) the less-than-honest types move in. Not exactly crime lords and gangsters, but a significant number of small time grifters and con artists who saw an opportunity to make a quick buck out of shady transactions, then move on, perhaps to the gallery world of Rembrandt or the jewellery world of Sappho–lots of easy pickings from the celebs, aristocracy or other delusional inbreds with a shared IQ of six that populated such places.

Bolen, however, wanted to stop these stings occurring, so they went to the Church of the Papal Mainframe and signed up for their security and other services.

Thus it came to pass in the early summer of 5064 that a man as wide as he was tall (and he was quite tall) called Cyrrus Globb arrived on El Diablo. Globb probably wasn't his real name – rather as Al Capone had been called Scarface or George Nelson was called Babyface because of physical characteristics, so Globb had become known as
exactly that thanks to his impressive bulk. He also, it had to be noted, moved very fast and quietly for a man of said shape and size.

So Globb became a grifter, a conman and a rogue. There's often a charm, a slight admiration of someone who can steal millions of currency by swindling someone more stupid and gullible and rich and (usually) unpleasant. They become sort of modern Robin Hoods (although not so much redistributing the wealth to the poor as redistributing it more through their own tax havens).

The drawback for someone like Globb was that people often don't like being swindled, especially if, along with the money or the goods (or both), they also lose face with their peers and family.

The result of a successful criminal career is often an equally impressive bounty placed upon them, and in Cyrrus Globb's case, the emphasis was on the DEAD part of WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE.

Enter a slim, muscular lady from the planet Spyro, famed for her ability to always get whatever she was paid to get, and also for having hollow telescopic bones, which meant she could usually get in and out of places few others could. She was known universally as Kik the Assassin – if that was her name, no one knew. She was a weaponista, meaning that there were no weapons in the known universe, past and present, that she didn't have an instinctive ability to use to absolute perfection. As a result, she was very highly regarded and very highly paid. Most people were also utterly terrified of her – it was said
that if a lean, powerful reptile lady with turquoise skin, a short silver Mohawk and pupil-less yellow eyes was standing before you, you were probably already dead and your brain hadn't registered yet.

And that falling sensation, that sound in your ears of a roar like the sea, and that blur of movement as the ground seemed to be reticulating was your brain finally going, ‘Oh, damn, I've just been killed by this corner of the universe's foremost weaponista, Kik the Assassin.' Although to be honest, the brain only got as far as ‘Oh damn, I've—' before shutting down.

Therefore when one of the small but respected-in-dodgy-circles cartels on El Diablo took umbrage at Cyrrus Globb casually relieving them of two years' profits in exchange for a suitcase not of neutron plasma tubes but of common-or-garden bricks, they paid Kik the Assassin handsomely to rid the universe of Globb.

Globb, perhaps sensibly, rarely stayed put for long and it was actually 5066 before Kik the Assassin (now quite rich because her monthly retainer was nothing to be sniffed at) tracked Globb down.

He was on Mason's World, a popular casino and leisure planet and he foolishly stopped for one last whisky one night, offered to buy one for ‘the pretty blue-ish lady beside me' and found himself facing the wrong end of a number of weapons.

Ironically for Globb, rescue arrived in the form of the Church – a Verger-led troop took out the door, the windows and a significant number of tables and chairs
while entering the bar to arrest him. And Kik the Assassin, not possessing a death wish, surrendered immediately.

Six weeks later, the swiftest judgment ever came back from the courts of El Diablo: Globb was sentenced to life and Kik the Assassin, who was a bit cleverer at covering her tracks that night, got a three-month sentence for carrying an unlicensed firearm – the rest were all licenced, because she was too good at her job for them not to be. Almost. She was pretty sure this was a frame-up, but what's three months when the average Spyro lifetime is 450 years?

Thus it came to pass that the Church of the Papal Mainframe saw fit (or maybe some governor with a delicious sense of humour and irony) that Cyrrus Globb and Kik the Assassin were placed in adjoining cells. And, like all the cells on this Stormcage facility, the walls were merely force fields and the two could sit and glower at one another all day long.

One day, salvation presented itself in the form of a Headless Monk who came bearing a letter – a real, honest to goodness paper, handwritten and sealed with candle wax letter – for each of them.

Kik the Assassin read hers, written in the finest Spyro fractal fonts, with a huge grin on her face.

Globb read his, written in block capitals in green ink, with a scowl.

When they looked up, the Headless Monk was gone, his task done.

A moment later, their cell doors deactivated and they both walked out. Two guards were in the corridor, chatting
about wives, dinners, cricket – who knew or cared? The important thing was that although they saw their two prisoners escaping, they did nothing about it. This was probably because of the wad of cash the Headless Monk had given each of them a few moments earlier.

Outside the Stormcage was a small two-person shuttle. Wordlessly, they got into it, Kik the Assassin expertly gunning the propulsion unit, and off they soared into space.

Only then did Globb speak. ‘It says you aren't allowed to kill me, and this contract negates and invalidates all and any others you have regarding me.'

Kik the Assassin smiled and nodded. ‘I understand that too. It also stated that when this is over, I am to return you here, alive and unharmed and if I do, I get a pardon. If I don't, they'll kill me.'

‘I thought no one could kill you,' Globb said.

She smiled again. ‘If a Headless Monk tells you he'll kill you, I have little doubt that his order are the only people in this galaxy that can do exactly that. I have no desire to die or remain in captivity, so we're doing this job, getting back here with you safely in tow, and then I go home.'

‘And what if I don't want to come back with you? What if I decide that a life on the run is better than a life back there?' He thumbed in the general direction of the Stormcage.

Kik the Assassin passed over her letter. ‘Paragraph three.'

Globb looked at it. ‘I can't read this gibberish.'

Kik the Assassin sighed, snatching the letter back and
pushing it against a small screen on the systems console of the ship. Immediately a hologram of the letter appeared in the air. ‘Earth English. For beginners,' she snapped.

Immediately Globb could read it. Paragraph three made it quite clear what would happen to Globb, courtesy of the Headless Monks (something about his joining their order permanently), and Globb nodded. ‘Stormcage it will be.'

‘Don't you get a reduced sentence, though?'

Globb shrugged. ‘A decade suspended. Time to try and get away, I suppose.'

‘From them? Good luck trying.'

They remained sat in silence for the rest of the journey as they plotted and schemed about how to do exactly what was required of them according to their letters.

Which was to go to a planet neither of them had heard of called Aztec Moon and steal an ancient artefact from under the noses of another part of the Church of the Papal Mainframe. Weird, but neither of them felt like arguing with the Vatican.

‘A door! We have found a door!'

It was a massive door – that was a fact no one could argue with. Not the military specialists, the learned explorers or even the shuttle crew could find any reason to argue with Professor Horace Jaanson's proclamation.

‘You're quite right,' muttered Colonel Sadkin. ‘That is, indeed, a door.'

‘What's really fascinating is that it's a door created by a civilisation vastly different to ours. A whole species
created that door leading to heaven knows where and we are here. Now. Today. Ready to open it and explore the unknown.' Professor Jaanson smiled at Sadkin, as if that made everything all right with the world.

He was an annoying little man, Sadkin had decided about a week ago. When he had arrived at the Mainframe, along with his weird little alien helper, Jaanson had looked like he'd stepped out of a historical movie – he wore a tweed jacket, tweed plus fours, massive boots and a ridiculous tweed deerstalker that made his whole ensemble look as if he were going for a grouse-shoot on one of the Aristocracy Planets rather than exploring a damp, icy, muddy barren place like this. It appeared he had a wardrobe of identical clothes as that was all he'd been seen wearing ever since.

Colonel Sadkin sighed and looked behind him. His Clerics, the Vergers and, standing right back by their shuttle, the two pilots – although they were already bored by the door and had started tapping away on their tablets, no doubt on some social networking site, trying to find company for the night.

Not that anyone was likely to make a trip to Aztec Moon, even for the dubious delights of the two pilots. It was, frankly, a dull planet with large mountains of russet-coloured rock and a couple of local stars that lit the place up moodily. At one point, as the shuttle had buzzed through the atmosphere, they'd spotted a silvery lake lined with more rocks. The colour of the stone had earned the place its name: Aztec Moon.

At least that was what people knew it as. Its true name was Bates's World, named after some explorer who had discovered it years back. But Sadkin had always heard that – as no one liked the mysterious Bates that much – when humanity came to map it out and discovered that the reddish rock made it look like seas of blood from the upper atmosphere, tales of the violent South American ancient society had been cited and Aztec Moon had stuck as its name.

Right now, the Colonel decided, no matter how exotic or poetic Aztec Moon sounded, it couldn't disguise the fact it was raining. Hard.

The Colonel adjusted his iVisor and scanned the doorway. It was cut into the side of a large obsidian pyramid, carved from some rock that evidently wasn't part of the natural landscape of the planet. It was decorative but that gave no suggestion as to why it was there. But it was the only sign so far that Aztec Moon had ever had visitors before, or indigenous people – perhaps they had built it. ‘Indigenous.' Colonel Sadkin hoped he'd used the right phrase – he had overheard Jaanson and his Talpidian digger say it earlier. The image in his iVisor ran through the spectrum waveforms, searching for evidence of recent activity, dangerous substances or just anything other than dark rock.

What he suddenly saw, making the doorway flash in his iVisor with a purple glow, made him physically step back.

He swung his blaster up, cocking it. Without waiting to be told, his six men did the same.

The sound of this drew Jaanson and his Talpidian assistant's attention to them. Even the shuttle pilots looked up, albeit only briefly, at this.

‘Colonel?' the Talpidian nervously stammered, blinking its pink eyes and rubbing its whiskers, as it always did whenever something alarmed it. ‘What is the problem?'

Sadkin pointed at the door. ‘That is. It's not a door.'

‘It most certainly is a door,' whined Jaanson. ‘You can plainly see it's a door. A door for a giant, yes – you would need to be over thirty feet tall just to reach the handle, but it is still a door.'

‘A door,' confirmed the Talpidian.

Sadkin waved his Clerics and Vergers backwards, then reached forward and rudely yanked Jaanson towards him. Jaanson opened his mouth to complain, but Sadkin told him to shut up.

The Talpidian scurried over, its mole-like nose scrunching up, smelling. ‘I smell danger,' it finally said.

For the first time Jaanson took things seriously. ‘OK, Colonel, tell me what the problem is.'

‘How long have you been searching for this place?'

Jaanson took a deep breath, like he was delivering a lecture. ‘The Ancients of the Universe, it is believed, once seeded the universe, bringing life. Akin to the Prometheans. The Kokopellian Republic. The Corcini. The—'