|
|
Post By The Hooded Hood follows the golden road to Samarkand Wed Jun 23, 2004 at 12:24:50 pm EDT |
Subject
Sir Mumphrey Wilton and the Lost City of Mystery - Part the Twenty-Fourth: Penny Madrigal and the Aryan Ideal | |
|
|
Next In Thread >> | |
| Part the Twenty-Fourth: Penny Madrigal and the Aryan Ideal “Are you Penelope Madrigal?” the tall handsome blonde man asked the grubby girl in the oily overall. “Who wants to know?” she asked, rubbing her hands on a cloth and pulling herself out from under the cockpit of her Stinson 108 Voyager. “And why?” “I have a commission for you, if you are Fraulein Madrigal,” the Aryan Ideal told the pilot. “Cash.” Penny Madrigal looked the visitor up and down. “Are you a Nazi?” she asked him. “I don’t work for Nazis.” The blonde man was not impressed. “By the looks of your plane and your hanger you don’t work for anybody,” he scorned. “I’ve asked around. I know about your debts. I know you can’t afford to leave Samarkand. I know you can’t afford to turn down jobs.” Penny pushed back her russet hair. “You’re right, I can’t afford it,” she agreed. “Now get out.” The Aryan Ideal moved too fast for her to see, and suddenly she was dangling by her throat with her feet off the ground. “You have made a very unwise choice, Fraulein Madrigal,” the nazi superman warned her with a sinister leer. “But it will be my pleasure to administer a slow, through correction. Penny reached out and grabbed her attacker by the balls and squeezed as hard as she could. The Aryan Ideal was almost invulnerable. Penny squeezed harder until he gave a little cry and doubled over. She whipped the bowie knife from beneath her overall and pressed it to his throat. “Are you going now?” she asked dangerously. The Aryan Ideal limped out of the hanger. “I’ll be back,” he warned. “He will be as well,” Penny’s knife said to her. “And a super-strong grip won’t save you next time.” “I just don’t like Nazis, Knifey. They bring out the worst in me.” “Here here!” agreed Sir Mumphrey Wilton from the other door. “Hello there Knifey old thing! Long time no see.” “So… you know Knifey from before?” Penny Madrigal checked again as she handed over cups of the strong sweet local tea to Sir Mumphrey and Miss Canterbury. “We’ve met,” the talking knife admitted. Knifey was always cagey about revealing his past. Mumphrey sometimes wondered why. “It all seems a very long time ago.” Miss Canterbury accepted a sticky rice cake and noted that Penny’s blade appeared to be talking. “Yep,” agreed the girl flying ace. “He does that a lot. There’s apparently nothing that can be done about it.” “I’m the brains of the outfit actually,” noted the sentient weapon. “Rescued her from a den of thieves and rascals and I’ve been taking pity on the poor kid ever since.” “He means I won him in a drinking contest in Mandalay and then immediately had to stab people with him to stop them being sore losers,” Penny argued. “He does come in marginally useful when big brutish Nazis hold me two feet off the floor by my neck.” “Ah, Gunther Blitz, the so-called Aryan Ideal,” noted Mumphrey. “Yes, they’re takin’ this little Tibetan junket seriously, aren’t they? He’s one of a special division of ubermenchen the Nazi science boys have been tryin’ to assemble. Only one out of fifty top athletes that wasn’t killed by the treatments. Strong, fast, damn near invulnerable, personality of a pig’s backside, pardon my language ladies.” “I guessed he was with the Nazis that flew in a few days ago,” Penny admitted. “They’ve been trying to get hold of a light flyer small enough to land on snow, like my Stinson here. It was only a matter of time before they found out I’m the only game in town.” “And you play rough,” added Miss Canterbury with a smile. Penny lifted her teacup in a small gesture of salute. “I take it you’re the reason the Nazis are all worked up then, Mumph?” Knifey surmised. “They have that indefinable wound-up-by-Wilton air to them.” “We’re both racin’ for the same finishing post,” the eccentric Englishman admitted. “But only you’ve been there, Knifey-me-lad. Funny coincidence, that, findin’ you here.” “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Mumphrey.” Miss Canterbury had worked it out though. “Blanchford Bertram referred in his diary to a ‘Knifey’. A talking knife that was with him when he found the Black Dome. That was you!” Penny laid her head in her hands. “I already have a hangover from last night and that stupid brawl. Now I’m in another of Knifey’s epic quests.” Knifey denied remembering anything about the trip to Mount Shishapangma. Mumphrey felt the blade was being evasive. “You were attacked last night?” Miss Canterbury asked the young pilot worriedly as Mumphrey and Knifey continued to talk. “Are you alright?” “Oh sure. Just a bar-room fight. There’s not that much for a gal to do trapped out here in the back of beyond, so when the locals started picking on this English flyer I naturally had to hit somebody with a broken bottle.” “Naturally. How are you trapped? Can we help?” Penny shrugged. “If you’re hiring me as a pilot that’ll help. It’s just some gambling debts and stuff. And a few complications around local crimelords and orphanages and things. Nothing I won’t solve in my own way in time. I don’t need any help, from anyone. Not even from Captain Basil I’m-God’s-gift-to-stranded-womenfolk Pepper, I can tell you that!” “Captain who?” Just then the jeep drove through the door. “Down!” shouted the young man with the torn shirt, leaping from the driver’s seat. He was almost in time to avoid the rain of machine-gun bullets that spayed across the hangar and perforated his torso. “Hmph,” scowled Mumphrey, replaying the event using his Chronometer of infinity so that this time the mystery man moved just a little faster. “Company calling I see.” Outside the gunfire abruptly ceased. Mumphrey could hear an angry German voice berating a stormtrooper for firing close to the aeroplane they needed. “Looks like they mean to have your plane one way or another,” noted Knifey. “I had to warn you,” the torn-shirted newcomer – whom Miss Canterbury could only assume to be Captain Basil I’m-God’s-gift-to-stranded-womenfolk Pepper – gasped. “But I’d hoped to do it with rather less cross Nazis chasing me.” Mumphrey peered through the broken glass of the hangar door. A dozen or more uniformed stormtroopers were gathered out there, including the Aryan Ideal. “But no sign of Wertham or the Expediter,” he muttered. “The creepy little guy and the slimy Yank?” Penny Madrigal asked. “They took their larger plane and went on ahead yesterday.” “Hmph. Have to kill them later then,” frowned Mumph. “Frau Madrigal, can you hear me?” called Gunther Blitz, strutting behind his soldiers like the master of the world. “Your hangar is surrounded by the finest warriors of the Third Reich. If you surrender now and come out you will not be harmed. Resist, and my men will find many amusing things to do with you before you die!” Miss Canterbury noted down the words Penny replied with, for future reference. “Okay, here’s what we do,” Captain Pepper suggested. “I leap into the truck and try and drive the bastards down. You folks make a run for it while they’re busy.” “Ack!” spat Penny Madrigal. “What is it with you and your hero complex? You’d not get ten feet and we’d be no better off. Well, except for not having to watch you swaggering about.” “So you noticed me swaggering, eh?” grinned Pepper. “Excellent!” “Children, could you do your mating rituals later?” asked Knifey pointedly. “I think it’s time for us all to depart from Samarkand. Penny, get the plane started. Pepper, Miss Canterbury, be ready to open the big doors.” “We’ll be shot to pieces before we get off the ground,” Penny objected. “They may want the Stinson but they’ll never let us leave in it!” “They’ll be busy,” Knifey assured. “Right, Mumph?” “Good to work with you again, Knifey,” grinned the eccentric Englishman, reaching for his pocketwatch. Miss Canterbury watched her companion with interest. “What are you going to do?” she wondered. “Already done it,” Mumphrey twinkled. He dropped a dozen metal pins into her hand. “Stopped time an’ collected these for you.” “What are they?” “Oh, hand grenade safety pins. Pulled ‘em from the grenades those Krauts are carryin’ on their belts while I had time stopped.” There were a dozen loud explosions that sprayed the remaining hangar windows with a gooey red wash. “Time to go,” admitted Penny Madrigal. “All aboard.” Captain Pepper helped Miss Canterbury into the four-seater cockpit as the hangar door burst in. A flame-scarred Aryan Ideal charged forward growling like a wild animal. “Start her up!” Mumphrey called. “Won’t be a moment.” “You will all die!” shrieked the livid Nazi ubermench. Mumphrey slowed time around the Aryan Ideal to neutralise the villain’s enhanced reflexes. Then he swung his pocketwatch round on its chain, using its weight and gathering momentum through a manipulation of velocity. By the time the fob impacted with Gunther Blitz’s nose it was moving with roughly the speed and force of a steam locomotive. The Aryan Ideal was hammered back through the shattered window, his face a mass of ruptured cartilage and splintered bone. Mumphrey leaped aboard the Stinson 108 Voyager, “Tibet, please,” he asked Penny Madrigal as the plane lifted from the cratered airfield. “And hurry.” In our next exciting episode:Sir Mumphrey and Miss Canterbury arrive in Tibet at last, but are they too late? Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2004 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2004 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
chillwater.plus.com (212.159.106.10) U.S. Company
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6/Windows 2000
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6/Windows 2000
| Echo™ v2.0 Beta 7 © 2004 Powermad Software |
|
|