Space Weasels (Dirk Beretta (ex) Space Marine) Page 2

  “Shut up and eat your Weasel BitesTM,” the third weasel squeaked.

  “They taste like shit,” the second weasel squeaked.

  “They’re nutritious and contain all essential elements for a healthy coat and body.”

  “They still taste like shit,” the first weasel squeaked.

  “And there’s no fibre,” the second weasel squeaked. “I haven’t had a good dump in a week.”

  Dirk closed his eyes and concentrated on the task ahead. He focused happy, life-enhancing energy through his body as his old master, the Delhi Llama, had taught him so many years ago. After a few seconds visualizing butterflies, dancing hamsters and jumping sheep, his hands glowed with Chi Power, and his mind raced with killing techniques. Now, three weasels would be no match for Dirk Beretta, even with a hangover.

  He didn't have a plan beyond killing these three and any others who got in his way, rescuing the girl, and accepting whatever payment she might offer in return before capping the deal with a pool full of nachos. He tried to keep his options open, and had always trusted excessive and extreme violence where intelligence might fail.

  He didn’t think this job would be any different.

  “Die Weasel Scum!” he shouted as he threw himself over a pipe, and dropped into their midst. One of the weasels held a welding torch, as it worked on some pipes. Another held a clipboard and pen, and the third chewed on a piece of jerky.

  Human jerky.

  Jerky weasel moved first. “Lunch!” he yelled, and threw himself towards Dirk, whose supercharged reactions were too fast for the attacker.

  Dirk faked a lunge to the left, and, as the weasel reached that way for him, he moved right. The weasel flew past, and smashed head-first into the pipe behind with a reassuring crunch of bone against metal.

  Clipboard weasel was still staring at him, mouth open in shock. Dirk grabbed the pen from the weasel's hand and swung it in an enhanced blow which slammed the point of the pen into the weasel's eye. Bone crunched as it smashed through into the brain, and the weasel dropped the clipboard, lifted its hands to its bloody face, and screamed like a little girl who lost her candy.

  Welder weasel swung the torch towards Dirk, who dodged away from the long blue flame. Clipboard weasel spun around in the narrow gap between the pipes as he tried to pull out the pen, and Dirk dodged him too. Welder weasel swung the torch again. Dirk grabbed Clipboard weasel and pushed him between them, where he squealed as the flame flashed across his glowing red uniform, igniting it. Now he really was a Flaming Weasel.

  Dirk heard movement behind and his head flicked around at his enhanced speed to see Jerky weasel lunge towards him with blood pouring from a twisted, broken nose. It was too late to move, the weasel's mouth opened wide and the teeth plunged into Dirk's arm. It tore away part of the muscle and began to chew as it flung itself towards him again.

  “Tasty,” it squeaked.

  He grabbed the fallen clipboard with his uninjured arm and swung it. The thin metal corner hammered into the weasel's forehead on the weak spot just above the eyes. With the added impetus of the weasel's own movement, it punched straight through, and half the clipboard disappeared into the weasel's skull. Blood spurted over the pipes, and he went straight to Weasel Hell.

  Clipboard weasel screamed, the flames from his clothes lit the confined space, and the smell of burnt weasel turned Dirk's stomach. Welder weasel held back for a moment, and Dirk guessed he was trying to decide whether to run or suffer the fate of his comrades.

  “Time to die, rodent brain,” Dirk said, with his toughest stare. The effect was somewhat spoiled by clipboard weasel running between them, screaming, with his fur on fire.

  Welder weasel took his chance and dropped the torch, then turned to run away between the pipes. The torch ignited liquid dripping from the pipes, and Dirk ducked back as a wall of flame erupted across the passage.

  He had to stop the weasel before it brought reinforcements. He covered his face and jumped through the flames, rolling as he hit the ground on the far side.

  The weasel stood facing him. The passage was a dead end.

  Dirk grabbed the fuel hoses feeding the welding torch. He pulled it toward him, and twisted the controls to enlarge the flame.

  “Say hello to Flaming Weasel Hell.”

  Dirk crept along the corridor. Weasels squeaked ahead, over muffled human muttering. Something moved behind a window on the left. Nothing seem to have raised an alarm after the fight and he crouched and crept toward the window, then stood against the wall to listen.

  “Come on, Gothaer, would be a waste not to,” one of the weasels squeaked.

  “Keep your hands off me, you filthy rodents,” a female voice yelled. Dirk guessed that must be Felicia.

  “You will not copulate with anything I may have to eat,” the other weasel squeaked. Dirk took that to be Gothaer.

  “Put that away!” the girl cried.

  Dirk twisted his neck to peer through the window. He could see the two weasels inside, one of them with his pants around his ankles. The girl writhed naked in chains at their feet.

  “Put your pants back on, Cotto,” Gothaer squeaked. “I don't need to see that, and stress will spoil the meat.”

  Felicia struggled against her chains. “If you touch me I'll set my father on you, and then you'll be sorry. He knows all the right people. His lawyers will take every penny you have and then he'll send you to the Nacho Mines of Xendor!”

  Cotto pulled up his flame-red pants. “Can we eat her then? Just a little bit?”

  “That is completely against authorized procedures,” Gothaer squeaked to Cotto. “We have detected signals from a human school on a nearby asteroid. After we repair the ship, we will stuff the hold with human pups and return them to Weasel World for processing. This one is destined to become Weasel Bites DeluxeTM.”

  “Can I--?” Cotto began.

  Sirens blared, and the warning system squeaked. “Warning. Fire in engineering bay three. Implement procedure 19C/3.”

  Footsteps raced toward Dirk from the far end of the corridor. He looked for the nearest door on the other side, and ran for it. It opened and he rolled inside, finding himself in a weasel restroom.

  Fortunately empty, unfortunately smelly.

  He climbed into a stall and closed the door. He would wait a moment, until the weasels were preoccupied with the fire, then he'd sneak over, rescue the girl, and be out of there before you could squeak “Computer, set the reactor to self-destruct.” That would teach them to turn humans into convenience food.

  He could hear loud, indecipherable squeaking from the corridor over the sound of the sirens, then the squeaking grew quieter. The weasels must have moved away to investigate the fire. He heard the door slide open again, then the next stall opened and closed.

  Time to go. He pushed his door open.

  “Hey buddy, can you get me some paper?” squeaked the weasel in the stall alongside.

  Dirk ignored him and strode toward the door. He had more important things to do.

  “Hey, who is that?” the weasel squeaked. “You don't smell like a weasel.”

  “Must be the human curry I ate,” Dirk squeaked. “Always gives me wind.”

  The weasel laughed. “Don't it just?”

  Dirk didn't want this weasel raising the alarm before he could get the girl. He stepped back to the other stall and picked up a roll of toilet paper. He rolled it under the weasel's door.

  “Thanks, buddy,” the weasel squeaked.

  The weasel's shadow leaned forward below the door. Dirk raise his foot and slammed it into the door with all the power his artificially-augmented legs gave him. The lock broke apart, and the door swung open with a loud crunch as it smacked the weasel's head.

  As the door smashed into the wall, Cotto slumped back, eyes dazed, on his lap a copy of Shaved Fur Monthly open at the centrefold of a smiling, naked, shaved weasel girl.

  For a second Dirk was distracted by the picture, and Cotto took the opportuni
ty to grab a mop that stood in a bucket in the corner behind the toilet. He swung the mop head toward Dirk's face. The motion drew Dirk's attention away from the magazine, and he dodged the blow, then grabbed the handle.

  “Standing order ninety-four,” Dirk said. “Mops are only to be used by licensed cleaning personnel.”

  “Hel--“ Cotto began to squeak. Dirk's augmented arms slammed the mop handle into Cotto's chest so hard that the handle crunched through the weasel's heart and spine, and out his back.

  Cotto slumped forward, squirting blood onto the magazine. Dirk guessed that wasn't exactly what he'd planned to squirt there.

  “Warning,” the computer squeaked. “Fire in engineering bay three has spread to fuel lines. Temperatures approaching critical in antimatter tank five. Initiate procedure 7D/9”

  Dirk peered out of the restroom. He could hear a gaggle of squeaks from the engineering section, and hoped the fire would keep the weasels busy while he got the girl and got out.

  He peered into the window of the store room. Felicia was lying in chains on the ground. and the weasels had gone. He pressed the button by the door, but nothing happened. He tried to pull the door open, but his fingers couldn't get a grip on the seal. They were too big, and it was too small.

  One last option. He pulled his hand back and punched the glass with all the power his servo-assisted shoulder muscles could give him. The window exploded, and Felicia screamed as shards of glass flew her way.

  Dirk looked in. The glass had left cuts across her body, but nothing life-threatening. Something bright and shiny caught his eye.

  “Who the hell are you?” Felicia squealed.

  Dirk spotted a crate of beer bottles on one of the racks. He reached through the window, ignoring the blood oozing from his own arm and hand where the glass had cut it, grabbed one, smashed off the top and downed it in one gulp. He tossed the bottle over his shoulder.

  Maybe he had time for another one.

  Or three.

  “Excuse me,” Felicia said. “Who are you?”

  Dirk wiped his mouth, as her voice distracted him from his alcoholic dream. No way was he going to fall into a drunken stupor and end up marinated on the weasel’s lunch menu.

  “Dirk Beretta, ex-Space Marine. I'm here to rescue you.”

  Felicia reached into her hair, to remove pieces of window. “Couldn't you have done it without spraying broken glass all over me?”

  Dirk moved his arm around behind the window and found the inner door controls. He pressed some buttons at random, until the door slid open.

  “We can't all be perfect, miss. Now, if you would care to follow me to the bridge I can get you out of here before these weasels spit-roast you, and eat you for supper.”

  “Eat me?” Felicia squealed. “That didn't look like what they were planning to do.” She lifted her wrists and wiggled the chains. “And I'm kind of tied up right now.”

  But that was no problem for Dirk Beretta. He stepped into the storeroom and grabbed the pipes the chains were attached to. He breathed deeply for a moment to focus his Chi energy. His muscles glowed with power as he visualized fluffy bunnies hopping with lions in a field of flowers, then, with a long pull that strained his augmented muscles so hard the veins stood out like worms in spandex, he tore the pipes from the wall.

  Brown liquid squirted from the pipes. Dirk sniffed.

  “Crap,” he said. From the smell, it must have come from the restroom across the hall.

  With one last glance at the beer, he pulled the chains from the pipes and took Felicia's hand, making the best use of his brief opportunity to admire the naked, genetically-enhanced female body.

  “Let's blow this joint.”

  Dirk strode into the bridge. Felicia followed close behind, chains clinking as she carried them in her arms. A weasel was hunched over a console, munching from a bag of Weasel BitesTM. It span around at the noise.

  “Supper!” the weasel yelled as he pulled a Blazer pistol from his holster.

  He smirked as he raised the Blazer, and pointed the barrel at Dirk. Any second now, he would squeeze the trigger to send a gigawatt of hot death flaring across the bridge, leaving behind nothing but instant barbecue long pork.

  “Do you have a permit for that thing?” Dirk said.

  The weasel lowered the Blazer for a second, then raised it again. Its jaw quivered as though it was about to speak, but then it stopped.

  “I want to see your form 27C/6,” Dirk said.

  The weasel lowered the gun. “Alright, I don't have a permit. I meant to file for it last week but I forgot. I've been working overtime on these repairs.”

  “Give the gun here.”

  “I'm sorry, sir. I'll do it today.”

  Dirk motioned for the weasel to hand over the gun. “Yeah, right. Give it here.”

  The weasel's shoulders slumped as it crept towards Dirk, like a boy caught with his head in his sister's underwear drawer. It held out the Blazer.

  Dirk took it. Then he punched the weasel in the face. Its nose and jaw crunched as they broke, then it fell to the floor behind a console.

  “Computer,” Dirk squeaked in his best weasel accent. “Set Security Authorization Code 1-Alpha-1-Alpha-1. Reactor is to self-destruct. This order cannot be countermanded.”

  That was the default authorization code for a weasel ship. He'd never found one which didn't use it, because no-one wanted to do the paperwork to change it, and he was sure they would have reprogrammed the freighter’s computer to accept it.

  “Please scan completed form 19A/1A,” the computer squeaked. A scanner in the console opened, and lights flashed.

  “Scan this,” Dirk yelled, and smashed his power-enhanced fist into the scanner. Sparks flew, lights popped, and his hand shook as electrical current sparked through it.

  “Scan accepted,” the computer squeaked. The alarms grew louder and more shrill as lights began to flash around the bridge. “Warning. Reactor overload. This ship will self-destruct in two minutes.”

  Then Dirk realized that he only had one space suit, and that was back in the engineering section behind a huge wall of flame, amidst a pack of irate weasels.

  His plan was foiled just at his moment of triumph.

  Felicia leaned on his shoulder. “What's it saying?”

  “Uh, the fire is too big, and the ship is going to explode and kill us all. We have to escape fast.”

  “How fast?”

  “Very fast.”

  The bridge door slid open. Dirk spun on his heels. Gothaer stared at him.

  “Who the fuck are you, meatball?” Gothaer squeaked.

  Dirk picked up the Blazer pistol and pointed it at Gothaer. “The name is Dirk Beretta. And I've brought an end to your little hunting mission, but you won't live to see it.”

  He pulled the trigger.

  “Permission denied,” the Blazer squeaked. “Please scan form 27C/6.”

  “Ah,” Dirk said, and stopped. He didn’t want to swear in front of Felicia, who dove to the floor behind him.

  He pulled his arm back and threw the pistol at Gothaer. But it was too late. The weaselly weasel was already moving, and the pistol flew past, then smashed into the wall.

  Dirk turned and looked for Gothaer, but he had disappeared behind a console. Dirk leaned over to look for him, but could see nothing out of the ordinary, other than clips on the side of the console where a fire axe should have been.

  “Breakfast!” Gothaer squeaked.

  Dirk spun around as Gothaer leaned over the console, axe raised, a wicked grin on his face.

  Gothaer swung for Dirk's head. Dirk reflexively threw his arm out to block the blow, but Gothaer twisted his grip and swung the axe to the side. Dirk grimaced as the blade slammed into his arm just above the elbow, swallowed a swear word as it crunched through the bone, and almost had to stifle a scream as it punched out the other side.

  Blood sprayed from the stump as his shoulder continued the blocking motion it had begun, while the rest of the
arm span through the air until it smacked into the computer screen. It left a bloody stain behind as it slid down the screen and rolled across the floor.

  “Dirk, are you all right?” Felicia called from her hiding place behind the Captain's chair.

  Dirk fell to his knees, trying to stop the blood flow with his remaining hand. He gritted his teeth against the pain, until his integrated auto-medic could begin pumping out pain-killers. Felicia struggled towards him, slowed by the weight of the chains.

  “I’m fine,” Dirk lied.

  Gothaer stepped around the console and raised the axe again. “I will be invited to all the best parties in the galaxy, when the Great Weasel hears I have rid him of Dirk Beretta.”

  “You ain’t rid of me yet.”

  Gothaer licked his lips as he smiled at Dirk. “We shall roast your eyeballs for hors d'oeuvres, and make a creamy curry of your liver.”

  “Sir!” a weasel's voice squeaked from the intercom.

  “What?” Gothaer squeaked.

  “Sir, requesting permission to abandon ship.”

  “Permission denied.”

  “Sir, the ship is going to explode in less than a minute. I have completed a form 19B/5.”

  “Permission denied. I am about to put an end to our pesky trespasser, and all our problems.”

  He turned toward Dirk, whose internal preservation systems had sealed the artery in his arm and stopped the blood flow. Blazer weasel stumbled toward them from the far side of the bridge.

  Dirk looked up at Gothaer and tried to funnel Chi Power into his arm, but, somehow, the happy, bouncing fluffy bunnies he was visualizing kept turning into screaming weasels.

  “Now Mr Beretta, time to die. Like your friends at Din Bin Foo. I hear they went down very well with a nice Merlot.”

  The words surged through the anger centre of Dirk's brain. His comrades had died at Din Bin Foo, and now he was going to die on his knees at the hands of the weasels who had killed them. His face glowed red, and his mouth opened in a scream of rage. Gothaer raised the axe to swing again. Dirk lunged for his severed arm, grabbed it by the hand and swung the elbow into Gothaer's groin.

  The weasel squealed and lurched forward, his swing going wide. Felicia grabbed her chains and swung them into Gothaer's leg. He toppled backwards. The dazed Blazer weasel hobbled behind Gothaer just in time for the axe to smash down into his head. Blazer weasel's eyes bulged with shock, then he slumped to the floor beside Gothaer.