1.1 Pilot: Error
Prologue
“You - ” A couple of hundred profanities strained to burst out of him. Eventually one of the trusted veterans forced its way through the bottleneck: “Bastard!”
As brickbats went it lacked his characteristic pith, but at least it ricocheted around the confines of the chamber with some satisfactory volume. Besides he was fresh out of pith, confronted as he was with the sight of his would-be nemesis coming in to bugger things up. Especially now.
There was never a good time, but to think he had only just taken a pause to savour the deliciousness of the moment. Here, in the left nostril of Grand Pontifex Maximus Gorfideon the Third lay the culmination of his latest schemes.
Put like that, it sounded rather less than grand, but the bare fact was qualified by the truth that this was no ordinary nostril, and the Grand Pontifex of the Holy Thygon Empire was no ordinary ruler. And what was more, Dexter Snide was a man of no ordinary ambition.
But now - after months of planning, preparation, bribery, blackmail and lots of activities with uglier names just to get him here - this muscle-bound hero-type comes poking his head in to piss on his fireworks with the immortal words, “Hold it right there, Snide.”
Well, pith or no, Dexter Snide wasn’t bloody standing for it. And as luck would have it, the hairless simian was vulnerable, still hauling himself up through the cavern entrance. Sporting a smile you could grate cheese on, he stamped on the intruder’s hand. Hard.
Barely an answering grimace from the hardman. So there was nothing for it but to stamp harder. Again and again. Until Dexter was jumping up and down on the man’s paw like it was a meaty trampoline.
The man’s hide must have been every bit as thick as his skull.
Just as Dexter prepared to test that hypothesis with a kick, his foe grabbed hold of his ankle. One muscular yank flipped Dexter onto his back.
“Ow!” It felt like he’d cracked his spine on the cold cavern floor. (Ordinarily the chamber would have been plushly carpeted, but they had just started refurbishing the place in preparation for the ordination of the new Pontifex – Maximus Gorfideon the Fourth.) It left Dexter stunned for all of a second – long enough for the tanned gorilla, Stengun, to heave himself upright and launch himself at his prone opponent.
Which was how Dexter Snide ended up in a mortal struggle with his not particularly arch nemesis in the nose of a presidential statue high above the imperial grandeur of the Thygon capital.
Well, that was the short story. The longer version was something Dexter tried not to think about as he wondered whether to knee his enemy in the groin, or whether biting the blond brute’s ear might leave a nasty aftertaste.
In any case, he’d done all his thinking about the longer story in the always-crucial planning stage.
* * *
It was a monstrosity. It was perfect.
When the original colonists arrived on Thygos, they unearthed a fascinating discovery, and the founding father of this Gotho-Roman metropolis made of it exactly what Dexter Snide would have done: he carved a huge chunk of it into a mile-high statue of himself.
Geologists found to their amazement that some seventy percent of the planet’s crust was patholithic. In other words, the rock resonated in response to emotional wavelengths. A discovery only fully realised after one especially sensitive planetary survey specialist, jilted by her boyfriend, reduced the entire colony to tears and provoked the widespread burning of photo albums and CD collections. Thus, once all the tears had been dried and the bonfires extinguished, they built with masonry the perfect mechanism for controlling their populace; a mechanism that had the added advantage of being a city.
Originally, Dexter had ventured here - far from the clutches of the all-powerful, well-meaning and supremely inefficient System - with a view to obtaining a chunk of this patholithic stone for his own purposes. He had seen it from above, of course: a mighty lichen-stained figure, just one of many structures amid the sprawl of spires and grim stone. But only after he had smuggled his weapons and other personal effects through local customs and stepped outside the spaceport, did the full impact of the colossus, lording it far and wide over this architectural inferno, stir the serpent inside him and inspire him to higher aims.
And there and then he felt compelled to do the touristy bit and take a closer look.
Only to be reassured by the Thygorian Guard patrolling the high-security perimeter at the base of the idol that a closer look was out of the question. Apparently it was a common enough question and the guards had to do a lot of that kind of reassuring, often with the aid of guns and neurotruncheons, for the benefit of every fresh shipload of tourists.
The extreme levels to which the authorities went to safeguard their heritage merely confirmed to Dexter that a closer look was something very worth having.
Stalking the mosaic-spangled streets and the shadowed archways, mixing with the hoi polloi, he cajoled and extorted whatever information he could out of them; and occasionally indulged in some petty but curiously satisfying vandalism, damaging selected mosaic tiles with a few delightfully malicious taps of his cane. Most of the general public swore to the fact that the information he sought was freely available in the municipal libraries, but he abhorred bureaucracy - like he abhorred so many things - with a passion; in addition to which a library membership might have left too strong a lead for law enforcement agencies in the wake of his new masterplan. After that, it was a matter of insinuating himself into the higher echelons of Thygon society – although of course they were all hoi polloi to Dexter – to bruise a few official shoulders, and dedicate himself to a halfway enjoyable programme of seduction, extortion, blackmail, bribery and all the customary methods in his repertoire to get him everything he needed to know and, ultimately, where he wanted to be. In this case, up the nostril of some long-dead politician.
The really clever twist about the statue had been executed by subsequent generations, proud descendants of the august founder of the colony. Apparently they weren’t so proud of their glorious ancestor as to be overly happy with a big statue of him watching over their own efforts to govern. But, rather than run to the prohibitive expense of replacing an entire mile-high statue, they coated its noble features with a mask of electropliable plastic and hollowed out a chamber in its head, wherein a special inaugural ceremony could be held with each succession.
As each old Pontifex ascended to heaven and an Empire mourned, so a new Pontifex would ascend the steps, cleverly concealed in the carved folds of the statue’s robes, from the high collar across to the lips and up the philtrum, ultimately entering the hallowed chamber via the left nostril. Inside, he would take to his throne and allow the machinery of state to scan and map his likeness onto the exterior. And so into the hearts and minds of every native.
Idol worship was so much more literal here.
And within a few short months, Dexter would find himself in that very chamber, surveying the veined marble interior, the fine mesh of lumowire embedded into the stone, the brass-like ornamental plaques that made up the scanner surrounding the sculpted obsidian throne.
Propping his sword-cane beside the entrance, where a chill draught was blowing in through the gaping nostril and nipping at his trouser legs like one of those loud and intensely irritating small dogs, Dexter edged towards his goal. There was a shallow ramp before the throne, acting, he supposed, as a speed bump for each incoming Pontifex in their race to take up the reins of power; and it was with quiet satisfaction he took his first step up this small but significant rise.
A few subtle adjustments here and there, a spot of dexterous sabotage, and he would be ready to hardwire his own masterful physiognomy into the apparatus and make his permanent mark on an unsuspecting Thygon populace. Indelibly imprinting his image into the psyche of an entire world. Yes, he could taste the power in here. Such a delicious moment.
But also, sadly, a moment when his laughter and his next footsteps were interrupted by the words, “Hold it right there, Snide.” Each of them delivered like ill-fitting planks in a flat-pack assembly kit.
Turn around, and there he was: Rolph Stengun. The Muscles From Nova Stockholm. One of the most depressing sights to have ever crossed Dexter Snide’s path: the man was all physique and ego, topped off with a special forces crew cut, each golden hair standing fiercely to attention, and the whole sorry package parcelled up in neatly-pressed combat pants and designer-label camo vest. (Did the man go into battle with a travel-iron and styling gel?) Michelangelo’s Goliath meets Imperial Marine recruitment poster. Ugh.
One mile up, and it was incredible the sort of crap that came floating in on the breeze.
And the bastard even had the temerity to show no sign of feeling the cold in that vest. Which was, on reflection, probably a good thing: if he had, his goosebumps might have been about the size of Dexter’s biceps.
* * *
Dexter rarely sullied his knuckles with anything so crude as fisticuffs. He preferred the cut-and-thrust finesse of fencing or the ergonomics of shooting someone – or delegating the actual shooting to an underling. Martial arts were, to his mind, like cave-painting with a finer brush.
And here was the caveman.
Alas that his sword-cane remained propped against the wall near the entrance. Alas, also, that the only gun he had brought with him had been disassembled to bypass the weapons detection array surrounding the base of the statue. Of course the sophisticated but compact weapon was designed with speed of assembly in mind, but when a macho action hero throws himself at you there is scant time even for a few simple snaps and clicks. No, the malodorous lunkasaurus wasn’t even going to give him time to deal carefully considered blows. So Dexter found himself seizing any opportune opening for whatever vicious punch, kick or lower-down trick sprang to mind.
Whereas his foe was probably skilled in boxing, wrestling, rugger scrums and three kinds of martial art. Yes, Stengun definitely struck Dexter as the sporting type.
Just for which, Dexter issued him with the most unsportsmanlike poke in the eye at the earliest opportunity.
As the man’s eye smarted, Dexter rolled, trying to shove the sack of muscle off of him. Stengun switched from landing blows to a grab for the neck, a grit-teeth grimace as he did his best to squeeze the life out of Snide.
“You’re – finished – Snide!”
“Not – nearly.” Dexter was aggravated that his retort should emerge as such an impotent croak. Clearly Stengun’s best was more than adequate in the life-squeezing department.
Dexter clamped a hand over Stengun’s ugly mug, as though clawing his face off. Ideally he’d want to ram his spare fist down the guy’s throat, and with that aim in mind he strived to tug the lower lip down to meet his Adam’s Apple. But given that the man’s lips were as thick as bicycle tyres, well, chances of success looked slim. Instead, in a fit of pique and inspiration, Dexter chopped at the aforementioned lump in Stengun’s throat and made him choke on that.
At last, Stengun fell back – enough for Snide to scramble clear.
Dexter had very much had it up to here – where here referred to a space somewhere between his head’s current altitude and the planet’s poxy little sand-speck of a moon – so without even a pause to straighten his coat and smooth his lapels, he lunged for his sword-cane.
Smile primed and ready, he drew the blade and spun round with a flourish, already phrasing some suitable epitaph for the bastard. But Stengun wasn’t where he should have been.
The gormless goliath was lunging at Dexter’s knees in a depressingly rugby-like tackle. Before Dexter could execute either Stengun or an evasive manoeuvre, the ‘hero’ had locked his arms around Dexter’s legs, pulling hard and butting his head deep into Dexter’s midriff like a blond battering ram.
For a moment, Dexter worried that the man’s vicious bristles of hair might have pierced skin. But he needn’t have concerned himself and all too soon the fact that he was toppling and falling through the yawning opening that was Gorfideon the Third’s nostril took precedence.
Despite himself, Dexter yelped. He wanted to spit at his foe, but doubted he could make it count against the tug of gravity.
Falling, stomach leaping upwards, Dexter lashed out with both arms. Then every part of him sagged with relief as his hands struck slippery stone – and held.
Triumphant, he was not.
He was dangling by a few tenacious fingers from the nose of a mile-high statue like a – well, he didn’t want to think what it looked like. His coat tails flapped noisily and he focused on trying to stop his legs from flailing in the wind. And looked up warily to see what Stengun was doing.
Hands on hips – rather effeminately, Snide thought with a mental scoff – muscles and ego bulging, the man was scowling down at him with an oh-so-superior dominant-male bearing.
“Bastard,” Snide repeated. It was the best anyone could do under the circumstances.
“My turn,” said Stengun flatly. But then, he said and did most things flatly. Like the way he brought his size 16 combat boot down on Dexter’s fingers.
Dexter yelped and swore. He had definitely heard crunching. And now he could feel his hands giving way. All that empty air below him, waiting to gulp him down.
“That’s the last time you get up anyone’s nose,” Stengun assured him.
Who would have thought irony could have sounded so wooden? As farewell quips went though, it wasn’t bad – for Stengun. Not that Dexter was about to admit that.
Dexter lost his grip and slipped into gravity’s longing embrace.
Like Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls. Except he’d taken that smug, self-righteous deerstalking junkie with him. Well, at least halfway. Not to mention he’d had Sherlock Bloody Holmes as his nemesis. But who does Dexter Snide get? Rolph Bastard Stengun. Wonderful.
Finally, there was the modest consolation that he had some time to assemble his compact little blaster and shoot the smirk off Stengun’s rapidly receding face. This he promptly did – but missed, damn it.
Although a fraction of a second later, he fancied he could see part of the stonework crumbling loose, and the mighty Stengun tumbling, suitably horrified, from the Pontifex’s nose. Well, that was something at least.
All the same, he couldn’t help feeling this was a very bad day for Evil.
Each bump and scrape against the Pontifex’s chest served as a brutal reminder that his latest schemes had taken a severe setback. A sharp downward turn, one might say.
Dexter could easily imagine the tipping of some universal scales: Good versus Evil. Even more vividly, he could picture the bottom dropping out of an Evil market.
That was when the idea came to him.
Although, in retrospect, he could never quite recall which had struck him first.
The idea…
…or the ground.