Deirdre Chen: Saviour of the Multiverse

Chapter 9

Deirdre

Getting into the rift was a chore; the dodgy, rusty hoop was spinning way too slow. The ship sort of inched its way through, like the fabric of reality was constipated. As our heroes squeezed their way in, you could practically hear the ship panting. You could also hear it shouting. “I am FART!” making it easy prey for Lenga, who was waiting for them on the other side.  She appeared on the comms screen, and she wasn’t best pleased with Deirdre, I tell you now.
  “You insolent pup! That zimmer frame costs more than your planet.” She had a blanket over her legs and was sipping cocoa.
  Six vines materialised around the orbit of Lenga’s ship. It was like one of those wildlife programmes where the giant squid unfurls itself, ready to devour the sperm whale.
  “Let’s go for a ride,” Lenga cackled as she latched on. The force of the vines caused Ehutu and Cassie to smack into the whiplash arrestors. Deirdre wasn’t so lucky. Her head rattled as she was forced into an unwanted Glasgow kiss with the hull. Lenga dragged FART straight into the wall of the rift.
  Deirdre heard a gentle tap, tap, tap. She looked out of the windscreen to see where the noise was coming from; junk was raining down all around them. This wasn’t space; other than the absence of stars and nebulas, what unnerved Deirdre was the sound - chiefly that it had a sound. Balls of garbage had grown so big they had an orbit and were pulling everything that fell towards them. The ones up above were catching fire, one after the other and Deirdre could hear the roaring of the flames, and see the smoke drifting downwards toward them. Gently bobbing through this were creatures that looked like grapes with wings.
  It weren’t half hot too! They began by sweating bullets and proceeded to sweating mortar shells, until they were perspiring a heavy artillery barrage.
  “This was once an entire universe, until it defied Mengo and he turned it into a scrapheap. This is what you’re up against girl. If you’re thinking of escaping, it takes two hoops to get out of here,” Lenga said, with a voice dripping with relish. “Fancy a trip down memory lane Ehutu?”
  “I am FART.”
  “I’ll take that as a yes.”
Lenga slammed FART into a garbage ball.
They got back to their feet, having been battered around the inside of the ship. Ehutu stared out of the window.
  “Oh no,” she said.
  “You don’t get to say ‘oh no’, I-”
  “-Am FART.”
  “Am the scared kid, I say ‘oh no’!” Cassie shouted.
Ehutu was going grey, not breaking her stare for a second. Deirdre looked at what she was looking at. It was a billboard with an image of her younger self. She was standing triumphantly in the middle of the arena, clad in armour and pointing her sword up to the sky. It was what was on the floor of the arena that made Ehutu freeze: bodies strewn across the sand, corpses of blue, green and purple.
  “Poor little Ehutu was kidnapped from Earth as a child by Diruxan slavers and sold to the death pits. Tell me, what do you miss the most: the screams of your adoring fans, or the screams of your dying opponents?” Lenga asked.
  “Let’s go to another dimension!” Cassie shouted at Ehutu, but she just wasn’t responding. “Come on!”
  Deirdre knew what was happening to Ehutu; she was going through what Deirdre went through whenever she thought about her mum. It didn’t matter how long ago it happened, in her head it was happening right now.
  “Behold the power of my hoop ripper!” Lenga brayed with bratty bombast.
  The middle right vine rolled itself up and rapped on the hoop like it was a door - a door that crumbled apart. Bits of rust went floating off, searing and catching flame. Deirdre held her hand out to the screen showing Lenga’s flower ship.  “Shawanabli-”
  “am FART!” She saw Cassie open her mouth at her in confusion.         
  “Shawanaupacoc-” Deirdre blushed at her accidental swearing. In that moment, she didn’t want to vaporise anything, Deirdre would have settled for a new hoop to get them out of there.
  It suddenly felt like the atoms in her head were splitting.      
  “Hey, what happened to my hoops!” Lenga was going ballistic on the screen.

Energy Level: 1

  “You’ll have to find a new one Lenga,” Cassie said, throwing herself against the thruster, leaving Lenga languishing. Ehutu was right, Cassie could fly, especially now FART had two, brand spanking new hoops on the ship!
  Deirdre had seen her move like water through defenders, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise to see her dodging the falling rubbish. She banked left to Meg a ring-shaped space station. She had to dive down to avoid being peppered by a cloud of disused nanobots. Cassie had no idea where she was going, but it was keeping the three of them alive.
SPLAT! Cassie jumped out of her skin, instinctively pulling the yoke towards her. FART flew up.
  Ketchup, lettuce and a huge beef patty covered the windscreen. It must have been a burger from a dimension of giants, or a regular-sized burger from America. Cassie pressed a yellow button and a wiper cleared the gunk away, giving a clear image of the wall of nuclear fire that they were about to fly into. This dimension was an incinerator. No banking or diving was getting-
  “FART” out of this. Cassie wished Ehutu had taught her rift travel, because she’d rather have been on the motorway, steering a car with her feet, than hurtling towards a sun!
  A solar flare lashed from the surface, like a flaming tongue trying to barbeque them with a lick. The flare was heading straight for the planetoid that they’d left Lenga on. It was then that Ehutu decided to come alive again, gently brushing the girls aside with her thick arms and firing up the hoop. The Rift was starting to open up. Lenga’s voice was audible;
  “Help me! It’s so hot, please just help me AAARRRRGHHHH!!!!!” The crackling of static mercifully cut her short.
Ehutu moved FART into the rift.
  “Who throws away a sun!” Cassie shouted.
  “It’s a form of air-con for type 3 civilizations – oh for crying out loud!” Ehutu pointed to the screen. Pythonia was grinning, in a kind of stupor.
  Deirdre did her own drum solo this time, called ‘Won’t someone find me a ladder to beat this snake with!?’ She shouted at the screen, “You’re meant to be dead!”
  “I”
  “Am FART”
  “-sup Lormian Tears when I’m eht on razzle.” She looked like she was still out on the razzle too, going like a bobblehead.
  “Give up Pythonia, you’re as wanted as we are now,” Ehutu said.
  “You think you’re the only Resistance? Plenty o’ folk wahnt see Mengo get deathed, I’ll flog Deirdre to them.” Two rugby balls appeared at either side of Pythonia’s ship. “It takes a lotta money to look this cliché love.”  When the screen went off, Ehutu started giving out commands.
  “Alright, Cassie, you co-pilot. Deirdre, get to the gun port.” Ehutu pointed to the left where a clear glass orb was hanging down by cables. Inside was a leather gaming chair with two joysticks on the armrest. A headset was propped over the right one. Deirdre’s fear of death was briefly washed away by how cool it looked. The door lifted up like a Ferrari, and three steps folded downwards.
  “Oi Ehutu! How do I turn this on?” Deirdre shouted, sinking nicely into the soft leather.
  “The red button on the left!” Ehutu shouted back. Deirdre pressed the button, ready to unleash a barrage of laser death at Pythonia from the barrel of her...Plank? That’s right, instead of a Minigun, a wooden plank with a nail was the weapon of choice.
  “Ehutu, what button do I press to get a proper weapon?”
  “A proper weapon? What have you got?”
  “A-
  “FART”
  “-wooden plank!” Deirdre heard that familiar drum solo, followed by an alarmingly sweet voice from Ehutu.
  “No worries Deirdre, just do your best, ay.” Deirdre’s fears had gone flying out the window, but now they’d returned like a boomerang.

#

   So here our protagonist was, locked in a game of inter-dimensional rounders, with Pythonia trash-talking like it was her job. Deirdre was in thepoohashitthefanistan once again, so was unable to retort.
BANG! The ball exploded into sparkling energy, making the rift look like the sky on bonfire night.
  “Good start! But the next ‘un ‘ll hit ya.”
KABLOW!
  “Nout better than a false sense of security…”
WAZHAM!
  “…to lure you to ya deeth.”
BLAM!
  “You smashed that one to smithereens!”
BOOSH!
  “Like you’ll be soon. You’ll go from Deirdre Chen, to Debris Chen!”
CRASH!
  “Ooh that wer close!”
KITOW!
    “Distracted by me puns. You’ll be joinin’ ya mam if you don’t keep switched on.” Pythonia took another shot.
Something snapped in Deirdre; fear turned to rage and her next words came out like a cannonball.
  “I’ve had an alien overlord chase me through a supermarket, bounty hunters kidnap me, had Lenga nearly flame grill me, but you insulting my mam? I’M NOT ‘AVIN THIS!!!!!”
Pythonia was the one who was distracted, because she didn’t see Deirdre hit the ball at an angle that sent it on a sweet curve, which glided right through FART’S hoop. The blast ripped the hull of the ship; it looked like it was about to rip in two.
  “I bet thee cudn’t dee that agen!”  Pythonia crashed into the wall of the rift as FART sped away, never fully knowing Pythonia’s fate, leaving her open for appearances in the sequels.

Energy Level: 0

  Deirdre ran into the hangar like she’d scored the world cup winning goal. Cassie bear hugged her, and raised her up like a champion, until Ehutu scooped them up in her big arms and lifted both of them off the ground.
  “You did it, Di. I told you, you could do this yourself!”
  “Well, I kinda needed you to-“
  “FART”
  “help”
  “The resistance is destroyed.” Those words sliced through the good mood like a chainsaw. Manea was on the comms screen, a black eye and a cut across her nose. Ehutu dropped the girls, ignoring their groans of pain as they smacked the steel deck.
  “No, that can’t be true,” Ehutu said. The image shook as Manea moved the camera to show them the view from the bridge. Broken rock floated amongst broken metal and broken bodies.
  “How did Mengo know where to find us?”
  “We can’t speak for much longer for all we know the empire could have bugged this frequency. I’m patching through the ship’s coordinates. Hurry!”
Deirdre looked over at Ehutu as she set the ship’s nav system to Manea’s location.
  “What are we going to do?” Deirdre asked
  “Go to wherever Manea is.”
  “And then?”
  “I-
  “am FART”
  “-don’t know.”