Galactic Dreams

The clanking crawlers rattled into the immense chamber cut into the living stone and now filled with deadly war machines of all description. The only human there, if he could be called human, was the larshnik operator whose soiled fingertips sprang to the gun controls the instant he spotted the intruders, but he never stood a chance. Precisely aimed rays from two blasters zeroed in on him and in a millisecond he was no more than a charred fragment of smoking flesh in the chair. Corps justice was striking at last to the larshnik lair.

Justice it was, impersonal and final, impartial and murderous, for there were no “innocents” in this lair of evil. Ravening forces of civilized vengeance struck down all that crossed their path as the two chums rode a death-dealing combat gun through the corridors of infamy. “This is the big one.”

Steel grimaced as they came to an immense door of gold plated impervialite before which a suicide squad committed suicide under the relentless scourge of fire. There was more feeble resistance, smokily, coruscatingly, and noisily exterminated, before this last barrier went down and they strode in triumph into the central control, now manned by a single figure at the main panel. Superlash himself, secret head of the empire of interstellar crime.

“You have met your destiny,” Steel intoned grimly, his weapon fixed unmovingly upon the black-robed figure in the opaque space helmet. “Take off that helmet or you die upon the instant.”

His only reply was a slobbered growl of inchoate rage, and for a long instant the black-gloved hands trembled over the gun controls. Then, ever so slowly, these same hands raised themselves to clutch at the helmet, to turn it, to lift it slowly off ….

“By the sacred name of the Prophet Mrddl!” the two Corpsmen gasped in unison, struck speechless by what they saw.

“Yes, so now you know,” grated Superlarsh through angry teeth. “But, ha-ha, I’ll bet you never suspected.”

“You!!” Steel insufflated, breaking the frozen silence. “You! You!! YOU!!!”

“Yes, me, I, Colonel von Thorax, Commandant of the CCC. You never suspected me and, ohh, how I laughed at you all of the time.”

“But …” Jax stammered. “Why?”

“Why? The answer is obvious to any but democratic interstellar swine like you. The only thing the larshniks of the galaxy had to fear was something like the CCC, a powerful force impervious to outside bribery or sedition, noble in the cause of righteousness. You could have caused us trouble. Therefore we founded the CCC, and I have long been head of both organizations. Our recruiters bring in the best that the civilized planets can offer, and I see to it that most of them are brutalized, their morale destroyed, bodies wasted, and spirits crushed so they are no longer a danger. Of course, a few always make it through the course no matter how disgusting I make it — every generation has its share of super-masochists, but I see that these are taken care of pretty quickly.”

“Like being sent on suicide missions?” Steel asked ironically.

“That’s a good way.”

“Like the one we were sent on — but it didn’t work! Say your prayers, you filthy larshnik, for you are about to meet your maker!”

“Maker? Prayers? Are you out of your skull? All larshniks are atheists to the end ….”

And then it was the end, in a coruscating puff of vapor, dead with those vile words upon his lips, no less than he deserved.

“Now what?” Steel asked.

“This,” Jax responded, shooting the gun from his hand and imprisoning him instantly with an unbreakable paralysis ray. “No more second best for me — stuck in the engine room with you on the bridge. This is my ball game from here on in.”

“Are you mad!” Steel fluttered through paralyzed lips.

“Sane for the first time in my life. The superlarsh is dead, long live the new superlarsh. It’s mine, the whole galaxy, mine.”

“And what about me?”

“I should kill you, but that would be too easy. And you did share your chocolate bars with me. You will be blamed for this entire debacle. For the death of Colonel von Thorax and for the disaster here at larshnik prime base. Every man’s hand will be against you, and you will be an outcast and will flee for your life to the farflung outposts of the galaxy where you will live in terror.”

“Remember the chocolate bars!”

“I do. All I ever got were the stale ones. Now … GO!”

You want to know my name? Old Sarge is good enough. My story? Too much for your tender ears, boyo. Just top up the glasses, that’s the way, and join me in a toast. At least that much for a poor old man who has seen much in this long lifetime. A toast of bad luck, bad cess I say, may Great Kramddl curse forever the man some know as Gentleman Jax. What, hungry? Not me, no, NO! Not a chocolate bar!!!!!

DOWN TO EARTH

“Gino … Gino … help me! For God’s sake, do something!”