“… start recording.
“Imagine if you will a parent teacher meeting. While teachers are meeting with some of the parents, the other parents wait outside in the hall. While sitting there, they aren’t going to be hanging around doing nothing. All molecules – the building blocks of our universe – are in constant motion, however little the motion they continuously move. That’s a given fact. And people, parents, are the same in this respect. They won’t just sit quietly. They’re going to talk.
“And what else is there for upper-middle-class suburbanites to talk about other than the skills, talents and achievements of their kids? Their oh-so-perfect kids.”
“My son can play the guitar.”
“My daughter is so good at painting, I got confused between her still-life and the real thing!”
“My kids are going to compete in the x-games/world cup/Olympics/every sport ever invented.”
“That last example is a little ludicrous I suppose, but I think you get the picture.
“So what do my parents talk about? What great achievements have I made that my parents can boast about? Let me tell you, there are plenty. I’ve done things no other kid my age could even dream of doing. And therein lies the problem.
“My achievements – all of them – were unacceptable to the basic human norm. This isn’t simply a theory my over-inflated ego dreamed up one day. This is a scientifically proven fact. See exhibit-A;
“My parents show up at a PTA meeting. The conversation shifts to children and their achievements. And my parents decided to run their mouths. That sounds harsh, I know. But, seriously? What were they thinking!?
“What were they expecting to happen after they finished telling the tale of how their William built a fully functional rocket-ship in the backyard out of recycled tins and other household appliances? Were they expecting showers of praise and applause at the conclusion of their tale about the eight year old boy who blasted off into space, explored mars, saved the Earth from alien invasion and even thwarted the destruction of the whole galaxy?
“At least they left out the story of how I saved my babysitter from being eaten by hungry Bloogs.
“My name is Billy Blaze – or William if you’re feeling particularly proper – and I don’t remember a time I didn’t dream of being an astronaut. I don’t remember a time before dreaming of being some kind of space hero blasting off to adventure and saving the day.
“When I turned eight I lived the dream.
“I’m still not sure if I’m either super smart, some kind of freak, or genetically altered/mutated; but for some reason when I look at things I don’t see them in the same way other kids would. Show me a junkyard, I’ll see a goldmine. Show me a pogo-stick, I see a portable jumping platform. Show me danger, I see adventure. Show me problem, I see an opportunity. Show me a washing machine, I see a warp engine. Etcetera.
“At age eight I built the ‘Bean-with-Bacon Megarocket,’ my trusty old bird built out of recycled food-cans and other household bits. Shortly after its construction I adopted the persona ‘Commander Keen’ and blasted off to explore the surface of Mars. No, that’s not a cute way of saying I pretended to blast off. I was literally (that’s the old definition of literally, not the new one) the first eight year old to walk on the surface of the moon.
“NASA still can’t figure out what to make of the satellite photos.
“Everything else my parents tried to talk about was also completely true. There had been a Vorticon warship on the verge of destroying all major Earth cities and launching a full blown invasion. The twist was that the Vorticons were a peace-loving race. They had been brainwashed and enslaved by something called the ‘Grand Intellect.’
“As smart as I was I couldn’t figure out what that meant at first, and looking back I kick myself for not guessing it was Morty. Only Mortimer McMire would be inclined to refer to himself as a ‘grand intellect.’
“Mortimer McMire was my polar opposite. My arch nemesis. My ultimate rival. The same in many ways, but different in every one that counted. He was my classmate, smarter than me by about a single percentage. But he was also humourless and completely out of his mind.
“After I freed the Vorticons of his grasp, Mortimer allied himself with the Shikadi, energy based life-forms with the means of destroying the galaxy! It was when I thwarted those plans that I lost track of Mortimer. Heck, I though he was dead! He’d fallen into the ‘mangling machine.’ Yeah, that’s exactly as brutal as it sounds. There’s just no coming back from that.
“Or so I thought.
“I had been home for about twenty four hours when my babysitter was kidnapped by aliens known as the Bloogs. Bloogs are a race of carnivores with one purpose. Eat. And they were going to eat my babysitter! Luckily I rescued Molly McMire before the Bloogs could finish tossing the side salads.
“Her explanation of what had happened exactly was pretty stupendous. She had been nabbed by her little brother – Mortimer, had organised the kidnapping and potential eating of his own sister! Like I mentioned before. He was a little psychopath.
“So what happened after I returned home victorious with Molly safe and sound? Did I blast off on another adventure to find Mortimer and stop him before he figured out a way to destroy the whole universe? Did I beat down the next race of aliens stepping up thinking they could take on Commander Keen, guardian of the Sol System?
“Err... no. Nothing happened. Mortimer stayed missing. There were no more alien menaces to fight after the grateful Vorticons declared the Sol System a preserved sector. Come my ninth birthday I wasn’t even leaving Earth’s atmosphere anymore. The Bean-with-Bacon fell into disrepair. The name Commander Keen became a memory.
“I grew up.
“I hung up my helmet, holstered my blaster and life moved on. Fifteen years old, sitting in my room, tinkering with my high-school science fair project, the adventures as Commander Keen were far from my mind.
“Little did I know, my old life was about to come back and shoot me in the face.
“End recording.”
COMMANDER KEEN in
“PONY PANDEMONIUM!”
Episode One
“Back in the Saddle”
The bedroom was in a state that spoke in volumes about his style.
Gadgets and bits of technology were strewn all across the space, his unmade bed included. Old computer cases lay gutted under the desk, bits of demolished watches and Gameboys stood under the glare of his work-light – a soldering iron stood vigil, smoking off to one side with his tools lost among the various components, wires, fuses and diodes scattered across the workspace.
The fifteen year old boy sitting hunched over the ‘God-only-knew-what’ he was working on seemed like an average enough teenager. Pale skin with some fading freckles over his cheeks and the bridge of his nose; Billy Blaze had spiky brown hair and a lean physique. He seemed healthy enough, but it was clear he didn’t get as much exercise as his young body was supposed to get. He was a techno-kid. It showed in his build, the state of his room, the timid eyes and even the way he dressed.
A purple t-shirt and baggy jeans were pretty much the extent of Billy’s fashion sense. Maybe he’d wear a red hoodie if it was cold out, and at least the colour would go with his bright red trainers.
Whatever Billy was working on for his high-school science fair, it looked far more complicated than what the rest of his classmates would be working on. Other kids in his class, his whole school even, might show up with baking soda volcanoes, models of the first electric light, an old arcade machine or at the very least a play-through recording of their avatar performing a moon-landing in Kerbal Space Program.
None of them would even think to perform a demonstration and explanation on the phenomenon known as ‘flux pinning.’ While the demonstration wasn’t particularly complicated, it took a degree of care to make sure the model worked. Magnets needed to be mounted properly and the right way up. His superconductive disk had to be a balanced type-2 superconductor encrusted in dry ice to keep it at sub-zero temperatures.
Billy’s attention was so riveted that the hunched over teenager didn’t notice his door handle twist and the door swing quietly open behind him.
“William?” a woman’s voice called sweetly, but despite the soft kind tone Billy still winced.
He didn’t like being called ‘William’ very much. It sounded too proper, too formal. Only his parents and his teachers called him William... sometimes his friends too if they wanted to get under his skin. It was mostly just his mother who called him William.
If Billy’s older brother took after the mountain of a man that was their father, Billy took mostly after his mother. Tall, thin, brown hair, freckles, dark blue eyes. The prime difference was that his mother wore glasses, Billy did not.
Leaning into his room, one hand holding on to the door-post to balance herself perfectly at her precarious angle, Mrs Blaze smiled seeing her son sit up to greet her.
“William? Your father and I are driving your brother to college.” They weren’t really taking Billy’s brother to college. It was a Sunday evening. They were driving him home twelve towns over where he went to college. “The babysitter said she was going to be late, so you’re going to be on your own for an hour or so.”
Billy sighed as he swivelled in his chair. “Seriously, mother? I have the highest intellect of any youngster in my class and you still find it necessary to assign me a babysitter?”
Mrs Blaze knit her thin eyebrows and rested her hands on her hips at her son’s tone. “Now-now, there’s no need to be snippy, William. Besides, I thought you liked Molly,” she added with a grin.
That pulled Billy right out of his slouch. In an instant he sat bolt upright and was throwing panicked looks around his cluttered room. “Molly’s coming over!?” he squeaked, his voice breaking as he snatched up the nearest bits of litter and started sorting out what he could throw away and what he could file neatly. Suddenly realising he was coming over a little over-enthusiastic at the concept of Molly coming over, Billy stopped himself, taking a deep breath and clearing his throat. “I mean, err... Molly! Great. She’s nice.”
Molly McMire was nice. Billy just wasn’t thinking about her personality when he mentioned her being nice. Simply thinking about her made his cheeks flush.
It was weird how that kind of reaction had only cropped up in the past couple of years. Normally Billy wouldn’t have cared about his image. And then out of nowhere he suddenly cared about how he was presented, especially in the visual range of a girl.
And he tended to turn from messy to a neat-freak in the space of twenty seconds whenever he learned Molly was coming over. He wasn’t sure what it meant, but he certainly knew it was pretty odd.
After some quick goodbyes following the tired old weekly ritual, Billy stood by the front door waving off his parents and brother as they backed out of the driveway and drove off out of the cul-de-sac. Suddenly alone with his hands stuffed in his pockets, he nudged the door shut and started walking back up the stairs to his room.
Billy wanted to clean up before Molly came over, but he wasn’t quite done with his project yet. The science fair was tomorrow and he still hadn’t found a suitable superconductor for his flux pinning demonstration. He knew exactly where he was going to find a perfect type-2 superconductor, he was just working his way up to retrieving it.
Everybody needs their stuff, and taking apart said stuff especially when it holds fond memories is never as easy as people make it seem.
In his room, Billy crossed straight to his wardrobe and pulled open a door. And just as if he was stepping from one room into another, Billy stepped inside with a scrape of coat-hangers being pushed out of his way. The screech of metal hangers was quickly drowned out by an electronic whir before the whole closet began descending into the ground. Inch by inch it vanished into a concealed shaft that ran straight down through the foundations of the house and deep into the Earth.
The secret elevator didn’t stop until it had carried Billy all the way down, fifty metres below his house to his very own Batcave – or was it the Commander Cave? Opening the door of the wardrobe as it came to a halt, Billy was reminded of how seldom he went down there.
The air was cold, stale and dusty. Not to mention it was dark, the only light was what spilled out of the wardrobe light. It pooled on the bare metal ground revealing a few painted on hazard stripes and arrows. From there the light stretched up to a workbench immediately in front of the teenager, but left everything beyond bathed in absolute darkness.
Sat on the surface was a familiar piece of head gear, now at least a size too small but important enough for him to hang on to regardless.
Billy picked up the battered yellow Packers football helmet with a nostalgic grin. There wasn’t much holding the helmet together anymore, just a few bandaids, sell-o-tape and drops of super-glue. There were ray-gun induced scorch marks, ragged claw marks and even dents where the helmet had saved him from headaches nine-thousand.
But the helmet wasn’t the only thing that held memories of space adventure. Putting the helmet back down, Billy reached over and clicked on the chamber’s lights. With an electric hum the tube lights overhead flickered and flashed on, illuminating the hangar space spread out before him.
Stood on the hangar floor under a launch tube that ran straight up back to ground level was a ship. His ship. A vessel built out of household scraps along with plenty of old soup cans, rubber cement and plastic tubing. His trusty steed. His pale horse.
The Bean-with-Bacon Megarocket.
In her prime she was the fastest ship in the Sol System. Efficient too, she was fuelled solely by spirits and driven by a home-built ion drive. The warp engine was elegant for a device built out of a washing machine powered by a car-battery. And the design was simple and efficient. A stark white construction with designs reminiscent of Battlestar Galactica’s ‘viper’ starfighters, she had a cockpit built for one – and maybe one passenger in emergencies. Stubby wings, engine construction right behind the cockpit and a pointed dart-like nose with blasters on the wing-tips.
Only the Bean-with-Bacon wasn’t in her prime anymore. She’d fallen into disrepair. Billy had been stripping her for parts to work on lower profile projects. The blasters were gutted. Bits of thermal plating were missing. The engine’s internal components, including the core were completely exposed.
Billy’s situation would have to turn pretty desperate for him to go for a flight in that thing.
Eyes fixed on the exposed engine core, Billy walked over, fingers brushing the sleek nose of the ship as he moved.
“Sorry about this, girl,” he sighed, reaching into the engine compartment.
It was over with a sharp twist and a subsequent click. What little life remained in the Bean-with-Bacon was gone. Without the superconductor in the engine core, the ship wouldn’t even be able to power up, never mind fly.
Removing the perfect disk only a few millimetres thick, he inspected the superconductive material with a satisfied nod. It would be perfect. As an ion engine core it had to be a type-2 superconductor, as well as the exact right size and thickness for producing a pretty decent flux pinning demonstration. It was a very convenient coincidence.
Without delay, Billy turned away from his old ship and walked back to the secret elevator. He didn’t dare look back for fear he’d be too tempted to go for one last spin in the decaying death-trap.
Making it back to his room, Billy made sure to only open the wardrobe door a crack to peek through before stepping out of the secret elevator. The last thing he wanted was for Molly to find out the Bean-with-Bacon was reasonably intact. She’d likely demand they go looking for trouble out in the known galaxy. Not that they actually could (even if Billy could get the Bean-with-Bacon to take off he’d never make orbit, not in a million years).
Billy’s last adventure as Commander Keen had been to the hostile planet of Fribbulus Xax to rescue Molly from carnivorous aliens who had kidnapped her. Up until that point Billy had been the only human – aside from Mortimer McMire – to go beyond the fringes of the Sol System. One could imagine she was pretty shocked at the discovery that the galaxy was teeming with lifeforms and the fact the young boy she looked after regularly was a space explorer.
Billy smiled thinking back on it all. It sounded quite silly, an eight year old boy blasting off halfway across the galaxy to save a beautiful girl from being eaten by aliens. It sounded like the plot a child might come up with while playing pretend with a babysitter.
Blinking, Billy’s face flushed as he realised he’d just considered Molly as ‘beautiful.’
Trying to keep himself from being side-tracked again, the boy crossed back to his desk with every intention of finishing his science project. With luck he’d be able to do a quick test in preparation for his presentation in the morning and still have time to clean up before Molly arrived.
Though it seemed the universe was working against him. It seemed powers on high had determined that Billy was not allowed to leave a positive impression on a girl.
As he went to sit down, his soldering iron exploded.
It just popped, bursting apart in a shower of molten slag and plastic that peppered half of Billy’s science project. He should have been distressed, but the shock of it all just caused him to freeze up and stare at the mangled metal stand that used to hold the trusty implement. For a moment he dared think that the soldering iron was simply faulty. But common sense said that was simply not possible.
Especially given that in the wall beside where the soldering iron had been sitting bore a small hole. The edges of the hole were ragged and actually glowing with heat, with natural light pouring through it to indicate it went all the way through the external wall.
There was only one thing in the universe Billy was aware of that could do that kind of tidy damage.
Pulse rounds.
At the realisation Billy dropped to the floor, taking cover under his desk. And not a moment too soon either, as a split second later the first hole seared in the wall was followed by several more being ripped through his bedroom wall. The window didn’t shatter, it didn’t even crack, instead super-heated pulse rounds simply passed through the glass leaving perfectly circular holes across the panes.
The rest of Billy’s room didn’t fare too well. Everything else the energy projectiles touched seemed to explode on contact.
Scraps of smouldering paper that used to be the contents of a notebook danced through the air like snow in a blizzard. The sheets on his bed caught fire, springing into a small inferno. Ragged holes were punched into the plasterboard forming internal walls before rounds continued their path on to gut whatever lay beyond.
Billy had only the holiest of guacamole to thank that there was nobody else in the house, and that the shooter was only aiming at torso-height. He was safe under his desk; at least until the attacker wised up and changed the angle of attack.
Luckily the thing about pulse weapons was that their strength was also their weakness. Pulse blasters had unmatched penetration capabilities and an insane rate of fire. But their power meant an excessive build-up of heat. So the guns had to stop firing after sustained bursts in order to cool.
Exactly that happened only five seconds into the attack; the whine of the pulse weapons cycling rounds upon rounds into the Blaze residence halted abruptly. But those five seconds of sustained fire were enough to have completely destroyed Billy’s room.
Looking up as he waved off the thick clouds of dust hovering in the air, Billy barely recognised the space around him. Everything had been turned to Swiss cheese. His bed, his cupboards, his wardrobe, even the wall between his and his brother’s bedroom had been completely demolished.
Grabbing the edge of his still relatively intact desk, Billy pulled himself up to peek through the hole of molten glass that used to be his window. Outside he saw exactly what was attacking him. It was a ship, no bigger than his own Bean-with-Bacon, hovering just outside in the dying light of the evening hours.
The design of the attacking craft was impossible to mistake. It was a like for like replication of the Shikadi warbird-class starfighter built out of solid elements instead of pure energy as would be Shikadi norm. Black armoured hull plating gave the sleek vessel a smooth, stealthy finish with the name ‘VALKYRIE’ painted in silver along the nose.
Billy didn’t get much more time to admire the simple, functional design of the lethal ship as the blasters along the wingtips flashed once again, lighting up the house with a flurry of energy projectiles. But sitting there as the next five seconds of fire demolished the remnants of the wall separating Billy from his big brother’s bedroom, the teenager didn’t need to be a genius to guess who was tearing his house down.
“Mortimer, cut it out!”
The pulse fire halted again, the noise replaced with just the whoosh of the Valkyrie’s jet engines holding it perfectly stable in the air. A crackle followed by the whine of a megaphone nearly drowned out the crackly voice of an adolescent Billy’s age.
“Nice to see you remember me, Blaze!” came Mortimer McMire’s amplified voice, followed by the rival’s crackling laughter. “I was worried the seven-year-sabbatical would have frazzled your brain! Though I’m pretty sure your brain was already frazzled.”
“Hey, don’t fancy yourself, Mort! Your IQ is only one point higher than mine!” Billy shouted back, lifting his head over his desk a little to get a look at the warbird. “Where have you been anyway? I was worried you’d gotten yourself sucked into a black hole!”
“I’ve been in the Horsehead Nebula. I figured it out, Blaze!” Mortimer’s voice grew into an excitable babble. “I figured out how to destroy the universe. But I’m just missing one ingredient. An ingredient you happen to possess.”
Billy frowned, wondering what that could possibly be. Mortimer had all the same resources he did, maybe even more thanks to his Shikadi allies. How the heck could Billy possibly have anything Mortimer didn’t?
“And what might that be?” Billy tried hoping to get some kind of clue what this was all about... well, it was about the destruction of the universe, which much was pretty obvious. Billy was just hoping to figure out how he fitted into this whole plan.
“Ah-ah-ah! That would be telling.” Mortimer giggled. “By the way, I totally forgot to ask. How’s my sister? She never did join the Bloogs for dinner, did she?”
Billy rolled his eyes. “She was right, you know. You are a twerp!”
Mortimer’s answer came exactly as one would expect. Another volley of fire forced Billy’s head down and continued to eviscerate the house. The Valkyrie pivoted from side to size on the spot, the heat of the VTOL engines scorching the lawn and flattening Mrs Blaze’s rosebushes.
“Who’s the twerp now, eh Blaze?” Mortimer yelled over the whine of the pulse blasters. “Who’s the twerp now!?”
Scrambling out from under his desk in the next reprieve from the fire, Billy made a run for it. He wasn’t even looking where he was going. He just ran straight ahead and held his arms up to shield his face. A moment later he slammed headlong into the remnants of the plasterboard forming a division between his room and that of his big brother.
Billy passed clean through with a grunt, kicking up clouds of dust with bits of insulation and rubble clinging to his hair as he fell to the ground hands first. Sliding to a halt on the rough shag-carpet lining the floor, Billy stayed prone with his hands covering his head as Mortimer’s guns cooled and he opened up the next barrage.
White hot energy rounds licked through the air mere inches above him; Billy could only hear the sizzling snaps as each round broke the sound barrier coupled with the whine of the blasters and Mortimer’s cackling laughter. He was enjoying this way more than he was supposed to. Morty really was a psycho.
Lifting his head a little as something thudded into the floor right beside his face, Billy saw his brother’s FAST helmet had rolled off a shelf and landed within reach. The headgear was bright yellow with green stripes, much like that old Packers helmet Billy had borrowed once upon a time to complete his Commander Keen persona. Only unlike that old football helmet, this FAST helmet was specifically designed to be low profile and streamlined. Much like what Special Forces guys wore to protect their noggins from flying bullets, Billy’s brother used the helmet for base-jumping. Leaving the ears open and home to some ventilation holes, it fitted snugly and was secured with a cushioned chin-strap and sported mounts on the sides for torches or cameras.
Billy grabbed it, and holding it over his head to provide a bit of comfort despite how little cover it provided, the boy managed to crawl deeper into cover behind a wardrobe.
Once again the fire broke for a few seconds, before it continued yet again. Only this time Mortimer was starting to sweep up and down, tearing into the ground floor and the house’s foundations hoping to either riddle Billy, or at the very least cause the building to collapse on top of him. But at least while he was working on the ground floor, Billy was less likely to be shot to pieces.
He had time to think. But what did he have that he could use to fight back?
Looking down, Billy noted he was still holding the superconductor... a crazy idea sprang to mind. A crazy and suicidal idea. It was better than nothing.
Holding on to engine core and his brother’s base-jumping helmet, Billy made a run for his own bedroom again. His situation had turned pretty desperate. So there was only one thing to do.
---***---
Pulse weapons didn’t just have issues with overheating with firing. With the rounds themselves superheating the air around the targets, issues were often carried over to thermal targeting and optical systems.
The exact problems Mortimer was experiencing.
But since he was having way too much fun ‘spraying and praying,’ he didn’t much care. The control yolk shook with the feedback of the pulse blasters as he relentlessly squeezed fire controls. Stomping on the pedals he swivelled from side to side with long sweeping motions tearing more holes into the Blaze residence. His thermal optics had turned to a blur of bright orange and fiery reds, so he yanked aside the scope mounted to the forehead of his glossy-black and blood-red football helmet. The brushed metal wireframe faceguard hovered in front of the fifteen year olds’ face.
A face with an expression that seemed to enjoy the carnage he was inflicting more than was considered healthy.
Mortimer McMire wasn’t just Billy Blaze’s opposite in moral values, he was physically too. Light skin with the light beginnings of a moustache and goatee forming on his face, he had dark red eyes and long black hair that was – unbeknownst to any looking at him – tousled and tangled under his helmet.
Besides being about as smart as Billy, Mortimer was physically fit too. He had a lean, muscular frame, all the makings of an athlete very much revealed through his sleeveless red shirt and skinny blue jeans.
Cackling at some morbid joke in his own mind, Mortimer was too busy to notice something stirring right beneath his warbird.
The garden shed was shaking like a structure caught in a heavy earthquake, or an oscillating sound-wave. It vibrated from left to right visibly blurring as a line formed down the middle. Then parting down that line, both halves seemed to flop to either side revealing a launch tube hidden in the Blaze garden. A moment later the Bean-with-Bacon came shooting out of the tube, slicing through the air beside the warbird with enough force to illicit reaction from Mortimer.
Crying out, concerned with the Valkyrie’s paint-job, Mortimer swerved the craft to one side and rotated right around to face the famous Commander Keen’s signature ship as she flipped backwards and levelled nose to nose with the warbird. Billy Blaze’s VTOL engines were spluttering and spitting black smoke as they struggled to hold the ship steady, letting his weave slightly from side to side.
Glaring through his cockpit canopy, Mortimer glared at the yellow-helmeted fool at the helm of the Bean-with-Bacon.
“Don’t make me do this, McMire!” Billy transmitted in a vicious snarl on the broadest channel his ship’s paperclip-and-ticky-tacky comms could manage.
“Do what, Blaze?” Mortimer cackled with a pointy toothed smile. “You’ve stripped down your ship! And you should know what that means. No blasters.” As he was talking, the Valkyrie armed up. The pulse cannons glowed carniverously as several belly mounted racks opened up, missile pods rotating into view as the warheads armed and the guidance systems locked a firing solution on the Bean-with-Bacon Megarocket. “Whereas this warbird is fully operational!”
Meanwhile in his own cockpit, Billy gulped loudly realising he was picking a firefight he’d brought naught but a knife to… heck, he didn’t even have a knife!
“Curse it, I really should have thought this through,” he muttered, fingers curling around the controls.
The pulse blasters lit up. Several plumes of smoke shot out the backs of the missile pods and rockets riding on black trails of smoke shot forward wearingly drunkenly for their target. Billy was moving at the same time. Yanking back at the controls, he forced his ship into motion with a stomp on the throttle-controls. The nose rose sharply and he rolled about face, shooting off into the sky. The rockets missed and thudded into the neighbour’s garden leaving scorched craters. The stray pulse rounds sliced into a chimney, blasting it into oblivion.
Leaving the smokestack that was his home behind, Billy looked up into the top of his cockpit copula. A rear view mirror revealed the nose of the Shikadi warbird was speeding after him, closing slowly. Billy had the Bean-with-Bacon cranked into top gear, but there was no out-running Mortimer’s more advanced vessel.
He needed to outsmart his rival to survive this. He wasn’t even thinking how he was going to explain to his parents what had happened to the house. Billy was focused solely on solving one problem at a time.
Within seconds their sound-barrier-shattering chase cleared the suburbs and they were scorching their way into the city centre. Towering buildings slid out of nowhere in the blink of an eye. So quickly in fact that Billy had to force himself to slow to what felt like an agonising crawl. Tall buildings meant plenty of cover, but also more obstacles to crash into.
Lifting his foot off the right side pedal, his opposite foot slammed down on the pedal on the left of the cockpit. With a metallic grinding of the transmission and a subsequent roar of the Bean-with-Bacon’s engines, Billy forced the ship into a low gear before yanking the Nintendo™ yolk to the right. Responding instantly, the ship rolled right, slipping around the far side of a skyscraper.
Mortimer on the other hand didn’t turn. He didn’t even slow down. Overshooting the turn, he sped into the next street, leaving a vapour trail and the subsequent sonic-boom shattering every pane of glass on the glossy skyscraper’s face.
His cackling laughter told Billy that Mortimer had done that on purpose before pulling up into a steep climb in an attempt to track his prey.
Looking up like a mouse being stalked by an eagle, Billy tried to keep his eyes on the Valkyrie. A shadow blocked out the low sun, casting a warbird shaped shadow over the Bean-with-Bacon.
Looking up at it, Billy had enough time to roll hard to right and drop into a nose-first dive towards the street as a trio of rockets came screaming down towards him. Pulling up hard, Billy forced some more throttle into the engines and skimmed horizontally over some of the cars parked on the side of the street. Behind him the rockets slammed into the road, throwing up an empty car in a ball of fire, the other missiles pounding massive sewage spewing craters in the street.
Pulling to a more comfortable height, Billy took a hard turn and shot into a wider avenue. Glancing to his side though he caught the reflection of the warbird pulling up behind him, followed by a sensor alarm as Mortimer locked a firing solution on the Bean-with-Bacon.
“I got you now, Blaze!” Mortimer laughed triumphantly.
Billy smirked though, curling one hand into a fist. “Actually, all you got is flares!”
His fist slammed into a big red button on the side of the cockpit.
“Wha-…” Mortimer couldn’t even finish talking.
Even in the rear-view mirror, Billy could see Mortimer’s eyes widen to the size of saucers. Two panels opened up on the back of the Bean-with-Bacon and dumped a good handful of little red sticks. As they dropped, they passed through an electrical field, sparking their tips and igniting the roadside flares. At least nine of them were chucked out the Bean-with-Bacon, and every one slammed into the Valkyrie.
“Gaaaaah,” came Mortimer’s frustrated cries as his targeting systems were confused by the sporadic heat and light sources. His optics washed out and the boy instinctively tried to swerve, an attempt to avoid more flare impacts and shake loose those burning flares clinging to his cockpit window blocking his view.
As a result he drifted too far right, one tail stabiliser clipping the edge of a building.
The crash of buckling steel and shattering glass was loud enough for Billy to hear it. Shifting his gaze up into his rear-view mirror, he saw the Valkyrie spin out of control on a centre axis. The flaring engines flickered as he was thrown clear of the city buildings. It was like a giant had thrown the warbird like a boomerang – miraculously he hadn’t stalled and dropped like a brick.
The thrust vectoring engines pulsed, choked, then roared spitting a pillar of fire that managed to pull Mortimer out of his dangerous spin in the open sky high above the city. Thick stacks of black smoke spat from his ship as his engines died down again, spluttering pathetically as he weaved from side to side like a car feebly trying to fish-tail out of a ditch.
Pulling up behind him, Billy flicked on his own targeting computer and armed everything he had left. Unfortunately, all he had was a small harpoon gun that popped out of the nose. Connecting the barbed harpoon to an electric winch was a high tension steel cable. It might be enough to drag Mortimer out of the sky – mind you it might pluck them both out of the sky, so Billy would have preferred not to have to use it.
“I got a lock with my harpoon gun, Mortimer!” Billy called as he put the crosshairs of the gun on the tail end of the Valkyrie like Captain Ahab sighting Moby Dick at the climax of his adventure. “Don’t make me do it!”
Billy’s broadcast went ignored as Mortimer’s ship angled upward. With the nose pointed at the sky, the warbird fought for altitude. At the same time the Geiger-counter in the console beside Billy clicked furiously, the needle spiking all the way into the red for a moment before drifting down to safe green.
Billy’s eyes widened as he pounded a few keys on the keyboard in front of him to do a full sensor sweep of the Valkyrie. He hadn’t thought Mortimer so reckless at first, but he had to remind himself exactly who he was dealing with. He was dealing with a kid who was trying to destroy the universe here!
Sensors indicated Mortimer was charging his warp-drive. But with the state of his ship, he might not even make it out of Earth’s gravitational field before he fired the drive.
“No! Mortimer, don’t!” Billy yelled as he pounded the ‘fire’ button on his harpoon controls.
The gun le tout a thunderous bang and sent the harpoon sailing with a spool of cable trailing like a miniature twister in its wake. A moment later it made contact, embedding into one of the Valkyrie’s nacelles.
The winch wound tight with a whine, and a jolt nearly tore both ships in half. Pounding down the clutch, Billy forced the Bean-with-Bacon into reverse then floored the throttle. Two nacelles opened up on the nose as the outlet-booster turned into a massive inlet. Flames melted the forward paint-job as the engines struggled to pull the Valkyrie back down to Earth, but they just hung there only a few kilometres above their home city in a tug-o’-war stalemate.
“Mortimer, if you open up a warp-tear in atmosphere there’s no telling what could happen!” Billy tried, hoping a boy of McMire’s intellect might see reason. But there was no reply on the comms to indicate he was listening. Billy checked his comms and confirmed his messages were reaching the warbird. “Mortimer, a warp-tear in-atmo could spit us out anywhere in the galaxy, or it might just set fire to the ozone-layer if you’re close enough!”
Still no reply on the comms as Billy realised the Valkyrie’s warp-drive reached max-charge. He gritted his teeth and braced for impact. He knew very well where this was about to go. Lost in space or a planet-wide wild-fire. Neither predicted outcomes were particularly pleasant, and worst of all Billy realised he could do nothing about either.
White light exploded in the sky like an in-atmosphere supernova. A ball of light at first, the intensity grew to that of a small sun before bursting into a wide, glowing rift. A warp-tear, usually flown into by ships with warp-drives to navigate across the galaxy in just seconds.
There and then it wasn’t a means of travel. It was a deadly hazard Billy was desperately trying to avoid.
Mortimer’s warbird vanished in the pool of white light, the cable connecting them still tugging at the Bean-with-Bacon Megarocket. Milliseconds crawled by at the rate of what felt like hours as Billy desperately glanced around the cockpit wondering what he was going to do.
And every moment that was wasted he was drawn a little closer to his joint doom with Mortimer.
Only one thing left to do. Billy punched the ‘escape’ key on his main keyboard, the command for detaching the grappling cable connecting the two ships. However in his panic, the cable didn’t detach quite as quickly as he was hoping, and he reflexively continued to bash at the keyboard with his fist, accidentally pressing all the surrounding keys.
System beeps filled the cockpit to confirm something was happening. The cable wasn’t detaching however. Instead all the displays flashed, showing blue screens with white text screaming various unintelligible STOP-errors at him.
“Oh, rats!” Billy yelled at his main console, cursing his persistence in postponing Windows operating system updates. “Rats-rats-rats-rats-ra-...”
The unstable warp-tear flashed as it swallowed the Bean-with-Bacon whole, closing on the tail and snipping off a section of tail-stabiliser that fell spinning back to Earth.
---***---
Princess Celestia was giddy. Hardly befitting the matriarch of Equestria, but the state of her being none the less. And the sight of Ponyville looming below as her chariot drew nearer only doubled her excitement.
The princess’ chariot was like a side to Celestia the ponies of Equestria usually saw. Gold and alabaster, prim and neat. Stoic and disciplined, like the four pegasus guards drawing it.
Nopony realised the chariot had it’s rough edges hidden behind the moulded golden decorations, under the plush fabric lining its seats. Nopony realised that their princess was a little less than a goddess and a pony just like the rest of them. A pony with hopes and dreams. A mare with fancies and desires.
And sitting there as her guards drew her ceremoniously down into the postcard town for landing, Celestia was almost trembling with excitement thinking of a particular fancy waiting for her. Not her faithful student and her charming friends. Not the ever friendly Big Macintosh Apple always ready to offer an apple pie and polite conversation. Not even Zecora’s finest brew was what Princess Celestia had her eyes on for this visit to Ponyville.
Princess Celestia was excitable over her date with Prince Altair Farid of Saddle Arabia.
Although Celestia’s little sister would argue that ‘date’ was perhaps a liberal term for their meeting up.
“You are reading into it too much. He is just being polite, sister,” Luna had nonchalantly told her.
Perhaps that was all there was to it. But that was what made Prince Altair so great! He always did things, made special effort, just to be polite! Celestia had only met him briefly when his parents visited Ponyville earlier on in the year on a diplomatic mission. And even in their brief meeting he’d charmed the hooves right out from under her. After all, he had taught himself equish simply for the purpose of meeting her.
He was kind, conscious, well read, open minded… and not to mention cute.
And speaking of the stallion, she spotted him almost immediately after landing. The pegasi drawing her carriage were barely skidded to a halt and the tall alicorn was bounding from the chariot. Realising she was coming over as a little eager, she stopped herself and looked down at one of the guards. The gold-clad stallion merely rolled his eyes discreetly.
Clearing her throat and composing herself, the princess righted her tiara, shook the dust from her wings and straightened her posture. With a deep – but discreet – breath she did her best to consider this a friendly meeting rather than a date before moving closer to the waiting young stallion.
As she got closer she suddenly realised she was terribly overdressed in only her usual regalia. Prince Altair hardly looked like a prince at all.
The sandy-coloured coloured stallion was built like a lean earth-pony athlete, light on his hooves and with stamina rather than raw muscle. Wrapped around his neck and secured with a small knot was a khaki and black cotton kiffiyeh. His amber mane was tousled like his short tail, making him look almost common. All that gave away his regal nature was the way he carried himself. His movements were fluid, almost breezy and free. And he was constantly glancing to his side as if he was expecting a guard or a servant to be nearby.
“As-salāmu ʿalaykum, Princess Celestia,” Prince Altair Farid greeted brightly with a smile. “Good day to you.”
“Greetings, Prince Altair Farid.” Celestia returned the smile, adding a deep bow as she said, “you are looking well today.”
“Oh, nonono.” The Saddle Arabian seemed almost mortified as Celestia’s head dipped low, and he gently touched her chin with his hoof to lift her up again. “Please, no need to bow. We are here as friends! Besides, I’m trying to be incognito,” he added behind a hoof and lowering his voice to a whisper. “Nopony knows I’m royalty. I’m trying to ‘walk among the people’ as it were.”
Celestia chuckled. “And having tea with the princess of Equestria is your idea of remaining incognito?”
“Alright,” Altair shrugged with a sigh. “I do admit my plan to steal a date with the beautiful Princess Celestia does have its flaws.” As he admitted his ulterior motives he turned away to walk Celestia towards the café.
His true motives were out in the open… and the alicorn didn’t much care.
Yes-yes-yes-yes! Celestia was thinking gleefully at the realisation this was a date, as she pranced happily after the young prince like a love-drunk filly.
When he looked back at her with a smile, Celestia had concealed her excitement, walking normally with her chin held high and posture proper. Though there was no hiding those rosy red cheeks.
“Um… are you alright?”
“I’m fine!” the princess blurted out with a toothy smile, feeling like she was a dorky little school-filly with social anxiety again.
As if liking her smile, Altair smiled shyly back, rubbing his neck as they closed in on the out-door café.
“So, how have you been?” the prince started, trying to make small-talk. While it seemed he did have motives, he was clearly not so experienced at this.
Giggling, Celestia was considering making this as hard as possible for him just to see his reaction when she was interrupted by something.
It sounded like the magical bang of a teleportation at first. And being in Ponyville, Celestia was at first sure it was bound to be one of Twilight Sparkle’s antics. Possibly some study or experiment gone wrong.
Then the blast was followed by several more, louder and closer coupled with some faint flashes of fiery light flashing over the rooftops. Celestia paused to watch, considering if it was perhaps one of Twilight’s experiments gone horribly wrong.
She wasn’t even able to consider anything else when another explosion ripped into her ear-drums. This one so loud and close, it washed out all other sound and left only the sound of bells. As the whine of her poor ears droned on, there was a flash, so bright it washed out her vision like the blast had done to her hearing. Her equilibrium went before the ringing faded and for a while Celestia felt as if she was falling through an endless white void.
Then she said her fond hellos to the hard, uncomfortable ground.
Slamming to a halt, Celestia blinked trying to focus and figure out what was going on. It did no good. Laying there stunned with bright multi-coloured spots filling her field of vision, Celestia could only helplessly listen to the distressed cries of her little ponies as they tried to figure out what was happening. That; and the loud gruff voices shouting loudly over the mess of screams.
“Right, lads,” an alien voice yelled. “Supper’s served! Let’s start wit’ da’ bigg’un!”
That statement alone did not bode well.
---***---
He had been in warp-space for exactly point-eight-three seconds. Exactly.
Barely a second. Barely even a noticeable moment. But in warp-space, that was ample time.
Ample time to get you anywhere in the known universe.
And on the point-eight-fourth second, Billy was spat out ‘somewhere’ in the known universe. Without a guidance computer and sucked in by an unstable warp-tear, there wasn’t any possible way of telling where he was. All he knew was that he was spinning out of control.
Blue filled his vision as he rolled pointing at the sky. Blue turned to green as he flipped over and the Bean-with-Bacon Megarocket pointed straight down at the ground. Blue and green followed as he levelled out looking at the horizon. Though blue at the bottom told him he was most likely upside down.
All the time the stall-alarm was blaring deafeningly through the cockpit, red lights flashing along the deathly blue monitors all across his console. Even as his out of control spin felt like gravity was pulling his body in every direction at once, Billy managed to keep a grip on the control yolk while his free hand bashed at the reset button. His foot punched at the clutch pedal repeatedly as he desperately tried to get some life in the engines.
It was no good. His uncontrolled spin continued – tumbling helplessly through an alien sky. He was going to hit the ground one way or the other. What he did now determined how hard that might happen.
Reaching over to a lever beside the throttle controls, Billy squeezed the safety trigger and tanked the controls all the way back with the metallic clicking noise of a ratchet tightening. Immediately all the emergency air-brake flaps opened up, a non-electronic system Billy had installed on a series of metal wires. It brought a whole new definition to ‘fly-by-wire.’
Air screeched thought he flaps as the Bean-with-Bacon flipped over and made one last nauseating roll before levelling out reasonably. The nose was still pointed downward, but at least not at an insane angle. But the good news ended there as the sheer velocity the warp-space tear had spat him out caused the brake-flaps to buckle and tear free. There was a jolt as he slowed for a moment.
And then Billy was thrown into a dive with fresh speed. For a brick; he was flying pretty good.
A crack blasted through the sky as he broke the sound barrier, curling throught eh air just past a massive mountain that looked like a spire built out of the landscape. Billy just about made out some kidn of marble settlement perched on the mountainside, his near miss of the city tearing bits of light debris into the air. Hats were plucked off heads, road-signs were knocked over and the wind of his passage even tore apart a few market-stalls.
Beyond that he didn’t see much as he tore further across the colourful landscape, drawn helplessly in by gravity’s loving embrace.
There was one more thing he could do before hitting the ground. Broadcast as much as he could and record everything to the ship’s black box.
“MAYDAY-MAYDAY, this is the Bean-with-Bacon Megarocket, going down in-atmosphere.” The teenager cried desperately into the microphone of his communicator. “My position is...” – he paused for a split second as he checked his unresponsive nav-computer out of sheer habit only to be disappointed – “my position is unknown. I repeat, unknown. Navigation is down. Ion drives are down. Reaction wheels are not responding. RCS, uh.” Billy glanced at the RCS tank pressure gauge. Unlike the electronic systems it was still responding, but the needle was way down in the red zone to indicate it was empty. RCS wouldn’t do much in-atmosphere, but a little control and reverse thrust was better than none at all.
“No RCS. All systems are down,” he continued as he tried one last ditch effort. He yanked back the parachute controls. There was nothing. No reassuring bang, not flap of the chutes opening. Just the whistling of air howling past the cockpit canopy.
Without delay he reached down to a bright yellow lever at the base of his seat between his thighs. Grabbing it with both hands he pulled it straight up. Once again there was nothing. The canopy didn’t burst open and his rocket-chair didn’t eject him from the crashing ship. Without delay he was leaning back, yelling into his microphone again. “Chutes have failed! Eject sequence unresponsive!”
Punching in the clutch, Billy forced the throttle into reverse – for whatever good that might do. Transferring his grip so both hands were clutching the yolk, more for comfort than better control of his descent, Billy braced for the inevitable.
Mountains and hills filled his field of view.
“This is Commander Keen! Mayday! Mayday! I’m going in!”
With an ear-splitting crunch it was all over. Just a void of inky blackness and the searing pain of his safety belts cutting into his shoulders.
Time passed at her leisure. Billy wasn’t sure how much time had passed, bit the stiffness in his joints and the crick in his neck where he laid slumped against the cracked cockpit told the boy a lot of it had gone by.
Lifting his hands, Billy undid his harness as he lifted his head. Double vision made it hard to find the manual cockpit copula release handle, but on the fourth attempt he found it, unlatching the canopy and pushing it open. It only opened a crack before making a grinding noise of glass against rock, but the space was enough for the skinny boy.
Helmet first, he slipped through, then tumbled down the side of the stationary Bean-with-Bacon. When he hit the ground he whined, pain shooting through his hands and knees where he landed in the grass. Reaching up he undid the strap of his helmet and pulled it loose, blinking hard to focus his vision. Letting the helmet fall where he sat recovering his senses, Billy looked around the countryside. All he could hear through the ringing in his ears were the songs of birds, buzzings of insects and the whoosh of the wind through a cluster of trees. It reminded him of trips to the park with his family. No city noises, no shouting neighbours, no low flying planes.
Just peace and quiet.
When the ringing in his ears faded and his eyes righted themselves, Billy pushed himself to his feet. He was standing on the edge of a valley dominated by lush green fields broken up by a few low walls, hedgerows and clusters of bushy topped trees. Below was a village judging by the golden thatch rooftops, moving dots dominating the streets. There was definitely life down there.
Taking things one step at a time though, Billy turned for a look at the Bean-with-Bacon. His heart sank.
The old bird was scorched and shattered. Whole pieces of hull plating were missing revealing busted engine parts within. The cockpit canopy was half-shattered, and the nose had been completely crumpled like a collapsed accordion against a massive rock face on the steep side of a mountain’s foot.
A deep groove had been cut into the landscape behind the crashed ship. A nearby hilltop had been turned into a crater at the initial impact giving it a new volcanic appearance. Then a long trench of mud running down through the hillside and foliage, deviating only where he’d bounced off a number of rocks. There was at least a kilometre worth of trench there, slowing him enough to make his nose-crumpling impact with the next mountainside less than lethal.
First taking on Mortimer’s warbird with a stripped down ship and without functional weaponry; now he’d won a game of ‘chicken’ with a mountainside. “Holy, moley. I really am walking a fine line between lucky and stupid today,” Billy commented breathlessly as he stood up.
Stumbling his way around the side of the wrecked ship, Billy found the handle of the cargo compartment. Opening it up took a few attempts, and Billy wished he’d spent more time playing outside getting exercise than sitting in with a science project or a video game. On his fourth tug however, the teenager managed to yank open the compartment.
Reaching inside, he stepped back with a bulky device in his hand. Laying it on his left wrist, he worked the strap around his arm and tightened it up like a watch.
His ComputerWatch wasn’t as sleek as say the average iPhone; and what would you expect of a device built out of paperclips and pieces of computers from the nineties? But it was definitely smarter than the average smart-phone.
“Engage SOS beacon,” Billy ordered the bulky wrist-device.
In response the screen flashed, reporting it had a beacon primed and ready. It was ready for input. So angling his wrist up a little higher to his face, he spoke into the microphone to make sure his input was as clear as physically possible.
“This is an emergency SOS beacon broadcasting on all channels. I have crashed on an unfamiliar planet. I was taken down by Mortimer McMire. I repeat, Mortimer McMire is alive!” the return of the menace that almost brought about galactic destruction was bound to get the attention of the Galactic Federation, the Vorticon Empire at the very least. That kind of attention would surely lead to a rescue party entering the area.
But if the return of a galactic menace didn’t shove the galaxy’s community of civilised creatures into gear, the return of a galactic guardian surely would. “This is Commander Keen. If you can hear me, I need some help,” he added, finishing his message.
The ComputerWrist beeped as the recording was attached to a micro SOS beacon. As the launch sequence was primed, a small flap opened up on the side of the device. Without hesitation, Billy angled his hand so he was pointing straight up at the sky. The ComputerWrist was just waiting for one last vocal command.
“Send it!”
The launch was recoilless. With a light ‘crack’ a small electronic probe was sent shooting into the sky. So small and so fast, the naked eye could only spot it by the tiny vapour cone and subsequent trail that faded on the wind. The beacon would enter a stable orbit and begin firing tachyon burst transmissions into space. Hopefully someone out there with a ship would pick up one of the bursts. And hopefully whoever did was one of the good-guys.
Closing up the beacon launch tube on his ComputerWrist, Billy heard the next of his emergency beacons load into the launch chamber, in case he needed another. Shutting off the device he returned to the cargo hold of his ship. He wasn’t planning to just sit around and wait for rescue. It could be days, maybe even weeks before anybody found his beacon. And that village down the hill would have most likely seen him crash. Civilisation was probably rallying a search in his direction. He needed to meet them halfway and determine if he was in the presence of friendlies or hostiles.
Optimism told Billy he’d meet friendlies. He liked to think not all alien races were like the Shikadi. But there was no way he was going to march down there and make first contact unprepared.
Reaching into the Bean-with-Bacon’s trunk, he extracted a belt. A tool-belt to be exact. It had been his dad’s, a leather model with customised pouches and a holster holding his Vorticon Hyperpistol. The pistol was bright red with a typical ray-gun satellite dish on the barrel and a lightning bolt printed on the side. Very fitting, since the hyperpistol fired bolts of electric energy that interfered with the target’s motor nerves and equilibrium, paralysing and disorienting them temporarily – intensity of the effects all depending on the mode of fire that was selected of course.
Wrapping the belt around his waist and securing it with the hyperpistol resting on his right hip, Billy reached back into the cargo compartment. This time he retrieved something that might be considered completely out of place.
Holding the pogo-stick in both hands, Billy smiled down on it. Of all equipment to bring with you while exploring alien planets, nobody ever thought to bring a pogo-stick. Typically people considered pogo-sticks playthings, not space exploration equipment. But that pogo-stick had saved Billy’s life more times than he cared to count. With it he could evade danger, bounce quickly out of attack-range, survive high falls and even make death defying jumps.
Mind you, it wasn’t an average spring-operated pogo-stick. It wasn’t even one of those new high-tech compressed-air principle pogos. Billy had a graviton-pogo. Built like a compressed-air pogo-stick, the air chamber was not completely sealed allowing air to escape. But the chamber contained a reverse gravitational singularity. A ‘reverse black hole’ if you will. Instead of sucking in everything, it was pushing stuff out at a constant rate. What kind of stuff, you ask? Mostly just graviton and carbon particles.
Every time the miniature singularity was compressed, it forced out more harmless particles to give itself adequate breathing room. That was the spring in Billy’s graviton-pogo.
Securing the pogo diagonally across his back, the boy moved back to where he’d fallen out of the ship and snatched up the yellow and green FAST helmet he’d ‘borrowed’ from his brother’s room. It didn’t have the reassuring metal heft of the old Packers helmet he used to use, but it was better than nothing.
Billy slipped the hardened head-gear over his head and secured the chin strap. Pogo on his back, hyperpistol on his hip, his transformation was complete. Billy Blaze was taking the back seat for a little while. If he was going to survive this and get home, the teenager was going to have to shake the dust off his old life.
Hand resting on the stock of his hyperpistol, Commander Keen started his march towards the town below.