-SALOON AT THE EDGE OF EVERYWHERE-

Chapter twenty

Rufus decided to let the pirate Captain stew for a little while. He had something much more important to consider. “Gup, can you bring up the surveillance on Mainstreet? I need to find out if Asa is still alive.” Evidently this operation required more flicking, because that is exactly what Gup did. He came up with good angles showing both the front and back ends of the Whalepede, but there was no sign of Asa or the two pirates that had been under the tongue with him.

Rufus turned to the assortment of life forms that crowded the comm room. “Okay, people, I need some volunteers to go and find Asa. He might have been eaten by that Whalepede thing, but maybe not. We need to find out if he’s still alive.” As he looked around the room he was hit by an overwhelming feeling of warmth and friendship for this strange, brave little group, and he considered himself very lucky to have friends such as these.

“Wait, I see something,” came Gup’s voice from behind Rufus. Rufus turned back to the screen and saw the scene on it shifting and moving forward. Gup must have been panning the camera or whatever it was, and zooming in to get a better look. There in the middle of Mainstreet, just emerging from underneath the pendulous rear end of the Whalepede as it moved slowly past, were two black and yellow striped aliens. They lay flat on the floor and didn’t appear to be moving. But as the view zoomed closer, Rufus could see that their eyes were open, and there were small, thrashing, wriggling movements if you looked very closely. Rufus realized that they were stuck to the floor like two flies stuck to flypaper. He couldn’t help but laugh, but he was instantly sobered again by the fact that Asa was nowhere to be seen.

Losing one of his team reminded him that another had been wounded. He searched out Ox in the room and met his eyes. Some of his eyes anyway. “How you doing, big guy?” He was shocked to notice that the shredded portion of Ox’s torso seemed to be almost completely healed. There was no more liquid oozing, and the gashes and rips were visibly smaller. Even as Rufus watched a small sliver of metal squeezed out of one of the wounds and fell to the floor. Now that, Rufus thought with some admiration, is some pretty fast healing.

Ssseeeet briefly but enthusiastically waved his eyestalks at Mr. Toad. In fact he was so enthusiastic that to Rufus it looked, from his viewpoint, that the Slug was using his eyestalks as drumsticks to play a solo on Mr. Toad’s head. Mr. Toad turned around and said, “I have been commanded to stay here, but Ssseeeet and Frodo will go and look for Asa.”

“Ox,” Rufus asked, “are you in good enough shape to go with them? You know, provide them with a little muscle?”

Ox growled and said, “Gladly. I would like to meet that pirate Captain one more time.”

Rufus would not have wanted to be that pirate Captain at that particular time, he was sure of that.

“Okay, Ox, but don’t do anything crazy. Just find Asa if you can. I don’t want you running over there and challenging this guy to a duel or anything,” he said with a smile. He continued, “You guys, go out the back door, the way we came in, and go back to the last cross corridor. From this screen view it looks like the Whalepede is right outside our front door.”

Even as the three volunteers left Rufus turned back to Gup and said, “Show me the lounge again. Let’s find out what this guy is up to.” Rufus watched the screen as the view inside the lounge appeared. Gup panned the view around, and they could see that the hostages had all been pushed into a back corner near the entranceway to the boarding ramps. The remaining pirates were clustered near the door that Rufus and his backwards-marching troops had used in their awkward escape from the lounge earlier. It looked as if Beeltee was giving them some sort of a pep talk, or orders of some sort. Rufus watched him for a moment, wondering what the pirate was going to do. And more importantly, what he himself was going to do.

That’s when he was interrupted by a voice coming out of a speaker near his head.

“Hub control, Hub control,” said the very businesslike female voice. “This is the U. S. S. S. Obama. We are requesting a vector for docking. We understand you have been boarded by armed terrorists, and I am preparing to disembark my Marine contingent as soon as I have completed docking. Hub control, Hub control, do you copy? Over.”

What the hell, was Rufus’s first thought? We have a warship in space, was his second thought? The third thought was the worst. Did she say Marines? As in, nineteen and twenty year-olds with automatic weapons? Oh, that was just what he needed. “Gup, buddy, tell me there’s some way I can talk to that crazy lady?”

Once again Gup said, “Sure,” and then he did some flicking. Then he pointed at the wand again.

Rufus bent over and spoke. “Uh, hello, who did you say was calling?”

“This is the United States Space Ship Obama. Identify yourself, please,” said the voice.

“We have a space ship?” Rufus asked, completely seriously. Then he decided there might just be more important questions to ask.

“Identify yourself please,” insisted the female voice.

“Uh, yeah, my name is Rufus. But that’s not really important right now, could we…” he started to say, but the voice cut him off.

“You are not following communication procedural protocols. I am in contact with Hub control, is that correct?” said the voice.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Rufus was forced to admit.

“I need to speak to the ranking comm tech you can put on, or someone in authority on the Hub,” insisted the voice.

“Well, usually there is no one in authority on the Hub, but it just so happens that you are in luck, because as of right now, I seem to be running this place.” I am of the opinion that the beer was making it hard for Rufus to concentrate.

“Sir,” the voice persisted, “I need you to clear this line for a military emergency, and put on the nearest ranking officer.”

Rufus had had a very long day. He was feeling put out, and he kept getting interrupted by people. “Listen, Lady,” he began, “the situation here is not really what you think it is. I need you to just shut up and listen to me for a minute.”

“Sir,” came the voice, cutting in like a cold wind, “I am the Captain of a United States Naval warship. You will put me in contact with a comm tech immediately, or I will have you…”

This time Rufus cut her off. “Lady, just let me explain. We have the situation almost wrapped up, here. Anyway, they aren’t terrorists, they are pirates.” He realized at that point that the distinction might be negligible. “Or they think they are pirates. But they are really just a bunch of scared kids, don’t you see? It’s all make-believe to them. Well, except for the Captain, we might have a little trouble with him, but I think we pretty much got it covered. Thanks anyway.”

“Are there still armed intruders aboard the Hub?” demanded the real Captain.

“Well, yeah, I guess, technically, but…” and again he was cut off.

“Then I am landing my Marine security detail now,” said the Captain calmly.

“Lady,” Rufus said, losing his patience at last, “you are making a really big mistake, but I don’t have any more time to argue with you.” And with that, he signaled Gup to cut off the communication.

Rufus had been keeping an eye on the screen during this frustrating conversation. Beeltee was still in some sort of a conference with his dwindling crew, but it was starting to look more like an argument now than a friendly chat. From this angle he was again struck by the fact that Beeltee was so much larger than any of his classmates. He had Gup flick back over to the PA system. When Gup gave him the go-ahead signal, he said casually into the microphone or whatever it was at the end of the wand, “Hey, Beeltee, I’ve been meaning to ask you, why are you so much bigger than all of your friends? Are you a weightlifter or something?”

The pirate Captain started glancing around, trying to spot where Rufus was watching him from. He didn’t see any obvious security cameras. The truth be told he was actually rather sensitive to the fact that he had been held back in school for two sessions, and was therefore older than all of his supposed peers. To Rufus it looked like Beeltee was yelling as he waved his arms about angrily. Rufus couldn’t hear him, and he didn’t really know if he cared, but he asked Gup if they could get sound, and there was Beeltee’s voice sure enough. He was just finishing a threat to chop Rufus up into little, tiny bits.

Rufus figured it was about his turn to interrupt the Captain, so he cut in with, “Listen, dude, we have a more important situation right now.” Rufus called everybody dude, including women, partly because he thought it was funny, but also because he was bad at remembering names. He didn’t mean anything by it. That was just his little way.

“Listen, Kid,” he said, starting over and trying to go for a more amiable tone, “we need to settle this. There is a warship from Earth getting ready to dock, and they have Marines on board. You know what Marines are, right? They tend to wear lots of green and carry automatic weapons. They’re trained how to use them. They’re not really good at diplomacy. They are just here to make sure you guys go home in body bags. So maybe we should get together and talk. You gave it your best shot, but lots of people are going to die if you keep this up.”

Rufus was startled by a loud voice shouting at his shoulder. He had forgotten all about Winnse. Evidently Winnse was still pretty upset about his former friend and commander shooting a gun so close to his head. He had finally reached the boiling point. “You want to know why he is so much bigger than the rest of us?” he yelled. “He was held back in school. Twice. So he is older than all of us. He’s practically a grownup.” This last part sounded as if it were the ultimate betrayal.

It seemed that the pirate Captain could hear this as well, for he started shouting, “Shut up, Winnse, shut the hell up.”

“No, you shut up,” Winnse screamed even louder. “This is all your idea. Ooh, let’s be pirates, you said. We’ll get some money and buy a planet somewhere. It’ll be fun.”

“Shut up, Winnse,” said Rufus. He really didn’t have time for this right now. “What do you say, Beeltee,” he said to the other, trying to regain control of the situation, “will you meet me so we can have a little conversation?” But for some reason the fact that Beeltee was older than the others really bothered him. He thought back to his trouble days. Even during the worst of them he had never dragged younger kids along with him on his escapades. It just seemed irresponsible.

The pirate Captain was in no mood to be mollified. “What about that big thing out there?” he screamed as he gestured out into Mainstreet. “It ate two of my crew.”

“Hey, I had nothing to do with that,” Rufus hastily explained, “They were just standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. It ate one of my people too, if you recall.”

The pirate was forced to admit that this was true, but he still knew that he had been tricked into that situation somehow. And he still hadn’t come up with a way to get himself, his crew, and the hostages off of the Hub, so he reluctantly agreed to a meeting with Rufus out on Mainstreet in five minutes. And now he had another problem. He only had two of the guns left, and he needed to leave one gun with a guard to watch the hostages. That meant that his gun was the only one he could use, and he oh-so-desperately wanted to pull some sort of a dirty trick on Rufus. He had a score to settle, after all.