Space Command and the Planet of the Bejewelled Concubines

Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

            Ferris Peyser shot another Spoggle ball at the patched-up, straw-and-paperboard, mock Morvin Raider head.  The ball hit a spot just to the left of the dummy’s face, smacking onto the ultraglass wall at the rear of Spoggle Hall and sticking there.  Next to it, four more green, rubbery blobs were clustered, slowly losing their form and disintegrating into green Spoggle dribbles and goo streaks. 

            “You’re not focusing, Cadet Peyser,” snipped Phearon, the veteran Weapons Master.  He stood to one side of the young trainee surveying his shooting stance, his dark and accordion-pleated red robe testifying to his membership in the select faculty of Space Academy.  “If that mock head had been a real Morvin Raider, he would’ve sliced you into a carrot-and-shredded-cheese casserole by now with his tri-blade.”

            Peyser blew at some strands of hair that hung onto his forehead.  He was an eager, if untested cadet, frustrated at the pace of his academy training.  “I’m bored of mock Morvin Raiders, Phearon.  When do I get to fight a real enemy?  A living, breathing, intergalactic stinkweed?”

            “You must first prove yourself, young Peyser.  You have yet to make even a successful fake kill.  You’ll never be ready to face an enemy in true space until you master your tendency toward distraction.”

            “I get distracted because there’s no challenge here.  I can’t take straw Raiders seriously.  You should see me playing Moon Rumble in my pod.  That’s a game with some excitement.  Spitting lavaworms snaking out of craters, their jaws gaping at you, metal bats attacking from all directions, shrieking like maniacs . . .”

            “Morvin Raider fighting is not a contrived visigame, Cadet.  A visigame cannot smell you, follow you, taste your fear in the air.  A visigame cannot bore into your eyes with the dreaded, spasm-inducing Morvin gaze.”

            “I’m not afraid of spasms.  I had a spasm just last month, when I had too much moss whiskey on Toggin’s Day.  No big deal.  I rolled on the floor and threw up a few times.  Next day, I was good as new.”

            Phearon narrowed his eyes, his battle-hardened, coffee-brown, multi-wrinkled, skeptic’s face projecting disdain in Ferris’ direction.  “I’m not talking about that kind of spasm.  I’m talking about the kind of spasm where your throat constricts to the width of a juice straw, where your body is instantly covered in the slick and morbid sweat of a quaking dog, where your legs contort into painful, unnatural curving positions beyond your control and where a thick gauze of turbulent gray, cosmiscally atmospheric intensity clogs your hearing.”  Phearon’s voice took on ever-more gravelly levels of sobriety as he spoke, each word filling the air with reverberations of militaristic starkness. “The Morvin spasm recognizes no gradations of rank or experience.  Even revered Commander Arf Landers fell victim to it.  He was on a solitary expedition to unearth the origin of tomato-eggplant hybrids on the Planet of the Abundant Grafts when a Morvin Raider crawled out of an inconspicuous gully and fixed him with the fearful Morvin gaze.  In moments, Landers was a helpless, sentient, jelly-like artifact, ready to be pulled into a Morvin Raider hut and served as a baked ingredient in a huge and gruesome flesh-and-vegetable stew.”

            Ferris frowned, juggling a Spoggle ball from hand to hand.  “Then you should rig up freaky eyes on these straw dummies or something, because you’re really not getting the whole evil gaze thing across.”

            Phearon was about to begin an icy lecture on Ferris Peyser’s lack of respect for his military superiors, when a somewhat reptilian squeak came from the area of his wrist.  “My arm phone.”  Phearon lifted his dark red sleeve to reveal a tiny visiscreen surgically implanted into his right forearm.  Prime Commander Ledder looked out at him, his mien one of crisis-level solemnity.