H2G2 Storytime III: From Prussia with Love. Part LV
Created | Updated Mar 10, 2007
X did not seem to share his partner's anxiety, and waved cheerily at the assembled brethren.
"All blessings on the magneeficent Pilchard!" he said heartily, in a pronounced foreign accent.
"Steady on, old boy," muttered Arthur. "We don't need to attract more..."
X interrupted him, speaking even louder.
"Greetings from the Latvian chapter of the Glorious Cult, here for the beeg event! I would like," he announced to the hangar at large, "to share my joy at our safe arrival with a heeem."
"What's that, brother? A heem?" inquired a guard, scratching the back of his head.
"A heem," explained X cheerfully. "Of mine own composeetion. I begin:
Oooooh, what a pilchard is our Pilchard...
Ooooh, how majestic his shiny little belly and goggling eyeeees..."
Arthur could only look on in frank admiration.
Sreka gave a look of vague disgust and wandered back across the gantry towards the elevator. The singer's voice was like nails on a blackboard mixed with the screech of a pterodactyl, all served with a healthy helping of Weird Al Yankovic. Very disturbing.
He pinched the bridge of his nose, and wondered if the Cult of the Dying Pilchard permitted the use of aspirin.
Within thirty seconds X's display of over-zealous religious sentiment (not to mention his tone-deafness) he had successfully driven away all curious onlookers. Merely being in the same room with someone as enthusiastic as X was slightly embarrassing. Hearing him sing...well, there was a limit to what you would suffer for your god.
"Good job," admitted Ody.
"That was...incredible!" said Jamilia, unstrapping the saddle from her horse. She beamed at X, who waved a hand desperately.
"No, no. Psychology, is all. Please."
He looked up shyly.
"I also made up...a second verse?"
Arthur coughed loudly.
"Maybe after we face these fanatical hordes of Cultists and stop their doomsday plan...maybe then we can hear it, okay X?"
"Right."
Sreka had walked away indifferently and had got about halfway down a corridor that lead away from the hanger and the dreadful singing when something persistant in the back of his mind bothered him enough to bring him to an abrupt halt. He grabbed a passing cult figure by the lapel of a tunic and actually raised him off the floor by several inches.
"The Latvian Chapter?" he asked through gritted teeth.
"They..er...they arrived last month.", the man grinned hoping this was helpful.
Sreka dropped the man, whose knees collapsed under him, and the cultist watched bemused and somewhat stunned from the floor as the large man turned and ran back up the corridor.
Sreka's heavy footfalls thudded on the mental gantry and he skidded out onto the walkway nearly colliding with the metal handrail.
He looked over the rim into the area below. The bustle of the place wafted upward as a throng. The three horses where still stood unnattended in the middle, but the riders were gone.
"Damn it!" Sreka shouted, and smacked his fist into the rail, which buckled.
He licked his lips, and considered his next move.
The Grand Master Annabel had ordered him to protect the gate - but only he knew that. He needed a solution - and just at that moment one arrived.
A door down below banged open, from his vantage point Sreka could see it opened onto some stairs stairs that led steeply down into the ground. Two monks emerged carrying a stretcher on which lay Freidrich Von Trapp.
Sreak backed away from the rail horrified.
Behind him another monk and then last to emerge came Shawn Daltmooreby.
In the shadows, Sreka's eyes flicked back and forth as he considered something desperate and deadly.
A few moments later and Daltmooreby was in animated conversation with a monk as Sreka approached.
Shawn glanced him walking over from corner of his eye and had to be physically restrained from attacking him.
"GET OFF ME!" he hissed at the monks holding him back.
"That's the one...he..." Daltmooreby barked.
"That's The Grand Master's personal enforcer." whispered one in Daltmooreby's ear.
"Personal enforcer?" Daltmooreby clucked through a strained smile and cocked his head. "Moving up the the world from turncoat assassin are we?"
"Sean..." Sreka started to say.
Daltmooreby strained hard against the monks holding his arms back "I should kill you!!"
Sreka said "let go of him."
"What?" said the one of the monks at Daltmooreby's side with awed surprised.
"Let him go." Sreka repeated.
Daltmooreby had his arms released and stood upright. He took a moment to straighten his shirt collar and neatened his jacket cuffs, before wiping an errant strand of matted grey hair from across his brow and shuffling his wig back into a central location.
"You and Vandeveer!" he seethed.
"Vandeveer is dead. I killed him." Sreka admitted
Daltmooreby blanched. "What?"
"I was in his debt. He was...ambitious but foolish. I am under his control no longer. It really was nothing personal."
"That's what this is about you wanted to say you're sorry?" Daltmoreby scoffed.
Aftr a moments thought Sreka replied. "No."
Daltmooreby beneath his rage could respect this.
"It's Robinson."
"He's here?" Daltmooreby snapped up, a cold look in his eyes.
"I think so."
Daltmooreby approached the Russian cautiously. "This ...thing between us. It still isn't settled."
"Later." The Russian growled.
"I get to kill him." Daltmooreby said placing an open palm on Sreka's chest in a friendly manner.
"That's the plan." Sreak said taking Daltmooreby hand by the wrist and placing it into his own to shake it.
The monks who were stood around in observerence of this odd ritual didn't quite understand what was going on, but for Arthur, X, Ody and Jamilla this new union spelt 'trouble'.
