Day of the Dogs Read online

  She glanced over at Asdoel Zo, who shrugged good-naturedly and took his cigar out of his mouth. "I suppose a test run won't do any harm," he said. "But take it from me. I know this woman's reputation. I had my people research her carefully. She'll be a real asset to your team."

  "I'll be the judge of that," said Johnny Alpha. "Now who else do you want on this team?" Asdoel Zo took a slip of paper from his pocket and held it out.

  "I've got a list."

  Middenface read the list over Johnny's shoulder. It consisted of half a dozen of the top Strontium Dogs operating in the local sector. He watched as Johnny nodded, a tiny nod indicating the most grudging of acceptance, but acceptance nonetheless. Middenface heaved one final sigh of relief.

  The first name on the list was Slim Drago.

  Slim was famed for his ruthless manhunting skills and his junk food orgies, Slim being vastly obese. The word from the Dog House was that Slim was between missions and was, as usual, spending his hard earned bounty money on huge quantities of low quality food.

  But Slim was not to be found at any of his usual haunts. After three days of hunting through the cheapest and greasiest of junk food meccas on seven planets, HMK unexpectedly came up with a lead. "He's in orbit around Elgar 4."

  "How the hell do you know that?" demanded Johnny. Hari Mata Karma just smiled and said, "I have my sources."

  So the fourth day of their search found them in a small fleet, star clipper loaned to them by Asdoel Zo. They flew up past the vast arch of a pink and white streaked giant of a planet that looked like marble, approaching a medium sized space station of the old fashioned double wheel configuration. It was the notorious Burger Heaven Drive-In.

  "People come here from all over the galaxy," said Middenface.

  "You can see why," said HMK. The double wheels of the space station had been covered by a bright shell in the shape of a gargantuan hamburger, orbiting gracefully in the beautifully eerie light of the pink and white planet below. "It's such an object of beauty," she said. There was a scattering of space vehicles docked all around the giant burger. "No doubt full of hungry burger fans," said HMK as Johnny skilfully and expertly put their ship into the docking pattern. The view of the space station vanished from their screen to be replaced by a dancing banana singing a high-pitched song, the gist of which was that Johnny Alpha, Middenface and HMK should not dare to leave Burger Heaven without sampling the "taste bud-bogglingly delicious banana burger, banana shake and banana fries".

  "Good God," said Middenface. "I've heard of a banana burger and banana fries before, but a banana milkshake? People consume the strangest muck."

  Johnny was cursing as his fingers skimmed smoothly across the control panel, making adjustments to the screen. "What are you doing?" said HMK.

  "Trying to get this damned ad off our forward viewing screen," said Johnny.

  "You can use one of the small screens," suggested HMK.

  "But why should I have to?" said Johnny. He kept struggling with the controls, but the singing banana still dominated their screen. "I don't understand why that screen doesn't have better anti-ad protection," said Middenface. "This ship belongs to a billionaire."

  "A billionaire who made his money from advertising," said HMK.

  "Got it!" said Johnny. The banana disappeared with a squeal and a flash, to be replaced by an image of the approaching space station, much closer now. They could see that there were layers of lettuce, tomato and onion tucked under the mammoth burger bun facade that clad the vast beef patty, which housed the main module of the space station. Suddenly a small vehicle popped up in front of them. It was a bronze-coloured, spherical vehicle. A robot-controlled satellite with twin white, slanting headlights at the front, which were deliberately engineered for an anthropomorphic suggestion of eyes. Above the eyes was an oversized plastic replica of a white baseball cap with the words Burger Heaven emblazoned on it. The cap enhanced an otherwise strictly minimal resemblance of the spherical vehicle to a human head. Two large mechanical tentacles appeared from either side of the head, as though sprouting from its ears. The tentacles reached out towards their craft with dreamy slowness. "It's trying to grab us," said Middenface, reaching for the weapons systems on the control panel. Johnny reached out one fast, strong hand and seized Middenface's wrist, stopping him. HMK sat down beside Middenface, smiling at him.

  "Not so fast, big man. It's only a parking drone."

  "Combination parking drone and waiter," said a cheery voice over the intercom. "Allow me either to help you dock safely aboard Burger Heaven, or remain parked out here in the drive-through zone and allow me to fetch your order and bring it back to your vehicle!" The artificial cheerfulness of the voice reached a new peak of engaging sincerity. "Whichever choice you make, make sure you don't miss our special Banana Meal!" Johnny reached for the control panel and cut off the voice of the drone. He hit the transmit button. Now the thing could hear them, but they weren't forced to listen to its unctuous sales pitch. "We'll be coming aboard," said Johnny tersely.

  The drone gestured cheerfully with its tentacles, beckoning them and flashing its lights to indicate that they should follow it towards the space station. Johnny looked at the others. "Check your weapons and make sure they're all set to stun."

  HMK grinned at him. "What makes you think we'll be needing weapons, stun or otherwise?"

  "Slim Drago can be kind of volatile if you approach him in the middle of a junk food binge," said Johnny. "Haven't you heard that about him?"

  "I suppose I might have heard something," allowed HMK playfully. "I might have heard that he can be quite a handful."

  "Handful is one way of putting it," said Johnny, strapping on his guns. "He has a mutation that doesn't allow him to metabolise certain foods properly. If he eats them it can make him berserk. And you don't want five hundred kilos of berserk Slim Drago coming at you."

  "God help us if he's in the throes of a sugar rush," added Middenface. Johnny didn't reply. He was concentrating on coaxing their ship into the narrow space of the docking port. A reverberant clunking sound signalled that they had established themselves in the berth, followed by the buzzing and clicking of the umbilicals attaching themselves to provide the ship with power and communications lines. A rumbling clank and a green flash on their screen indicated that the docking berth had sealed and was pumped full of breathable atmosphere. Johnny pushed the airlock release and a cool flow of fresh air invaded the ship, displacing the stale, canned atmosphere they'd been breathing for the last twelve hours. Johnny leaned back in his seat.

  "Before we go inside after Slim, there's a few things we need to familiarise ourselves with." He punched buttons on the control panel and the view of the docking bay on their screen vanished to be replaced by a photograph of a very fat, but very formidable-looking man with a rather silly fringe of tonsured blond hair. "This is Slim Drago," said Johnny, hunched over the control panel, frowning at the screen with concentration. "As we all know, Slim doesn't like to be interrupted while he's stuffing himself with junk food. But once he's had a chance to recover from the blowout, he'll be fine, a perfectly reasonable man. So the trick is to get him away from the trough without getting bitten, so to speak. Slim has even been known to pull a gun on a fellow Strontium Dog when he's at the height of a burger binge. So, I suggest we use some kind of anaesthetic gas, to render him semi-conscious, but docile. It will keep him out of action for a few minutes and give him a chance to recover from his feeding frenzy. By which time he should be in a more friendly and receptive frame of mind. In other words, we'll be able to talk to him and get some sense out of him. We've got several canisters of anaesthetic gas in the cargo bay in the rear of the ship."

  "Johnny-" said Middenface.

  "Just a minute, Middenface," said Johnny, still frowning with concentration at the screen. "Slim himself is just one of our problems. Here's the other one." The image on the screen changed. It showed a view of a dozen men in brightly coloured uniforms, all armed with what looked like gi
ant ketchup bottles. Their uniforms had the Burger Heaven logo emblazoned on them. On close inspection, the oversized ketchup bottles revealed themselves to be some kind of weapon. "These are the Burger Heaven security guards. Just a small sample of them. There are something like a hundred and eighty employed full time in the space station, although only half of those will be on shift at any given time. That still leaves ninety fairly husky bouncer types around the place for us to deal with."

  "Johnny-" said Middenface.

  Johnny held up his hand. "Just a minute," he said. "Let me finish. The Burger Bouncers' job is to maintain order, not to go looking for trouble. Those ketchup bottles they're carrying are actually spray guns full of a crowd quelling compound, consisting of a psychedelic tranquilliser in foam form. It's topically active, which means if they spray it on you and it hits a patch of exposed skin on your body, you can count on being out of action for at least eight hours. The psychedelic foam sends a person of average size and weight into cloud cuckoo land in a state of euphoric helplessness. It renders troublemakers very easy to handle. The Burger Bouncers' job is to use it only if absolutely necessary. But absolutely necessary situations arise about once a week on this satellite, given the unstable nature of many junk food enthusiasts combined with the tendency of the human metabolism to run out of control when fed on a diet of the sort of garbage they sell here."

  "Johnny-" repeated Middenface.

  "I'm almost finished. Just hear me out. This is the important bit. The Burger Bouncers shouldn't intervene in our attempt to have a little chat with Slim Drago. It's none of their business. But unfortunately Slim has been known to bribe some of the bouncers to work for him as a kind of personal bodyguard. As I said before, he doesn't like to be bothered when he's stuffing his face and the Bouncers are a kind of insurance policy. We can pretty much guarantee that there's going to be trouble even if we so much as approach Slim. His personal Bouncers are going to jump us and try to spray us with their foam guns. Complicating this situation is the fact that we don't know which bouncers are working for Slim and which aren't, so we're just going to have to assume that all of them are our enemies for the purposes of this mission. This means that we should wear full body space suits with the visors down when we enter Burger Heaven. This ensures that no matter how much of that foam they spray on us, it's not going to knock us out. So long as no skin is exposed, we'll be safe. We should just be able to walk in their, grab Slim, and walk out again. Now, is all that clear?" As he finished speaking, Johnny turned to look at Middenface and Hari Mata Karma - but the woman was nowhere in sight.

  "Where's HMK?" said Johnny.

  "That's what I was trying to tell you," said Middenface in an accusing tone. "She slipped out the minute the ship's hatch opened. You didn't notice because you were staring at that bloody screen."

  "Well, where's she gone?"

  "I don't know," said Middenface.

  "Why didn't you tell me?"

  "Johnny, I tried," said Middenface.

  Johnny Alpha scrambled out of his seat. "We'd better go and find her before she screws everything up for us." He hurried towards the rear of the ship.

  "Johnny, wait!" said Middenface. This time his friend listened to him. He stopped and looked back. "What is it?" Middenface was bent over the control panel, staring at the screen.

  "Look," he said.

  MHK appeared on the screen, trotting back into the docking bay and moving quickly towards the ship. She was wearing a space suit with the visor down. The space suit had several patches of damp white foam clinging to it. On her utility belt were attached a number of bright yellow canisters. Trailing over her shoulder was a length of red and black mountain climbing rope.

  "What are those canisters?" said Middenface, peering at the screen.

  "Our anaesthetic gas. What's that on the end of the rope she's dragging?"

  Johnny's question was answered by the viewing screen as HMK disappeared from sight, hauling the rope behind her and dragging her burden into view. It was Slim Drago, lurching unsteadily with the rope tied around his wrists. He was following HMK like a dog on a leash. "What the hell is she doing?" said Middenface.

  Johnny didn't reply. He was already running to the back of the ship. Middenface followed. They reached the hatch just as HMK stumbled on board, dragging the huge, sleepwalking bulk of Slim behind her. As she entered the ship she hit the undocking control on the hull and the umbilical power and coms cords dropped off the ship with loud popping and sucking noises. HMK scrambled through the hatch, dodged past Johnny and Middenface and secured her rope to a bracket on the nearest bulkhead. She tugged her helmet off, revealing a face bright with sweat and excitement. "Don't touch me, boys. I've got that damned crowd control foam all over my space suit."

  "Don't worry, I'm not going to touch you," said Middenface. Somehow it sounded stupid when he said it.

  "What the hell do you think you're doing?" demanded Johnny.

  "Bringing Slim Drago in for a chat," said HMK, tugging on the rope. The massive form of Slim came stumbling through the ship's hatch to join them. She smiled at Johnny. "Isn't that what you wanted?" Slim Drago was grinning stupidly at his new surroundings and the people all around him. He let out a loud, contented belch, then sat down on the floor and began to happily hum a snatch of song.

  "You were supposed to go in there with Middenface and me," said Johnny.

  "What difference does it make?" said HMK. She cracked open the chest plate on her space suit and slithered out of it, taking care to avoid the foam clinging to it. "We've got him now."

  "She has a point, Johnny," said Middenface.

  HMK strode to the control panel on the bulkhead and slapped it, causing the hatch to hum shut. "We'd better get out of here before those Burger Bouncers catch up with us."

  "She has a point there, too, Johnny," said Middenface.

  Six hours later Johnny, Middenface, HMK and Slim Drago were seated comfortably on the balcony outside Asdoel Zo's mansion, sipping beers in the evening sunlight while a bevy of Zo's beautiful gardening girls busied themselves cooking spare ribs on an infrared barbecue unit for the Strontium Dogs. Asdoel Zo was busy somewhere in the depths of his mansion, mixing a bowl of spicy sauce to go with the ribs. The billionaire had insisted on a celebration; he'd been delighted that they'd managed to track down and enlist Slim Drago.

  Slim, since he'd calmed down from his eating binge, was proving to be an amiable, polite and self-effacing man. He sat hunched beside Middenface, dwarfing the large wooden deck chair he sat in. He sipped at his bottle of beer and smiled shyly at Middenface.

  "How are you feeling now, big fella?" said Middenface.

  "Fine, thanks. Just a bit of a headache."

  "That would be the anaesthetic gas I used on you," said HMK, seated opposite them. "Sorry about that."

  "Heck, I don't blame you," said Slim. "Trying to talk to me when I'm eating is like taking a bone away from a starving wolf. Using that gas was the only safe way of getting me into a civilised conversation."

  "That's what we figured," said Johnny, who was sitting beside HMK.

  "But don't you mind us kidnapping you like that, Slim?" said Middenface.

  The big man shrugged. "If you hadn't turned up I would have just stayed there at Burger Planet, eating, until I ran out of money. I'm like a compulsive gambler in a casino. I can't leave the table until I'm broke."

  "So you're saying we did you a favour?" said HMK.

  "That's right, miss. To tell the truth I'm kind of relieved to have my eating spree terminated. I know it's self destructive behaviour, but I just can't help it."

  "Well then, here's to friendship," said Middenface, lifting his beer bottle. Slim smiled and did the same, and then Johnny and HMK joined in the toast. Four beer bottles clinked together, followed by four amiable gurgling sounds as the Strontium Dogs drank. Then they all sat back in a companionable, silence watching the sun sinking over Asdoel Zo's private jungle. As the shadows of night swallowed the balcony, the
girls who were busy cooking could be glimpsed in the red glow of the barbecue, like labourers in front of an open furnace. Fragrant cooking smells wafted towards the bounty hunters.

  HMK leaned over to Johnny. "So?" she said.

  "So what?" said Johnny.

  HMK shook her head. Her pearly teeth glowed in a smile in the darkness. "You know what I mean. How did I do?"

  "Terribly. You disobeyed orders and acted on your own."

  "I didn't disobey orders. I ducked out before you had a chance to give any."

  "You acted independently instead of as part of the team."

  "I figured that was the smartest move," said HMK. "One person could get in there and back out with Slim faster than three of us. And attract less attention along the way. That was my theory, anyhow." She smiled again and sipped her beer. "And it looks like I proved it."

  "It's true, Johnny. She did."

  "I don't like people taking charge," said Johnny Alpha. "Not when I'm in charge of this outfit."

  "No question," said HMK. "You're the boss. And I promise not to make a move again without consulting you. But I wanted to prove myself back there at Burger Heaven. To show you what I'm made of."

  "I guess you did that," said Johnny.

  "So?" asked HMK.

  "So what?" said Johnny.

  HMK punched him playfully on the arm. "Don't keep a lady in suspense," she said. "Did I prove myself, or didn't I? Am I on the team, or not?"

  Johnny shrugged grudgingly. "I guess you proved yourself. I guess you're on the team."

  HMK howled with delight and poured beer on herself, on Middenface and on Slim Drago, who sat placidly and amiably, keeping an eye on the sizzling spare ribs on the barbecue. Asdoel Zo appeared on the balcony wearing a tall white chef's hat and carrying a large wooden bowl. "I hope all of you like your sauce spicy," he said.

  While the others were busy eating, Johnny led Asdoel Zo down the steps from the balcony to the quiet and privacy of the terrace garden for a talk. "What's on your mind, Mr Alpha?" said Zo, igniting another cannabis cigar.