Salvage Merc One: The Daedalus System (14 page)

I got to my feet and looked around the small ship. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I felt that if I saw it, I would know what to do. I didn’t see it. It was just the stupid insides of a small ship that some stupid family had taken on a stupid joyride one day and never came back from because they were stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid!

“Joe!” Mgurn yelled. “Strap in! I have the engines running, and I can lift off from here, but it will not be pleasant!”

Strap in? The insignificant Leforian wanted me, Mighty Minotaur Joe, to strap in like a common weakling? It was not going to happen! I was strong! I was powerful! I was not some tiny human that whimpered and cried whenever the ground shifted!

I was also falling on my bull butt then rolling towards the open airlock as Mgurn lifted off. Mighty Minotaur Joe was an idiot.

No hands. That was a problem again. Hard to grab onto things when you have hooves instead of fingers and palms. Especially when you are rolling right at an open airlock, and the ship you were in was already twenty meters off the ground.

I scrambled to wedge myself against something, but I had already rolled past everything big enough to keep me from falling out. My body twisted as I hit the airlock, and I jammed my legs against one side and my back against the other. For a brief instant, I was safe. I was pushing hard enough that I could hear the airlock frame groan from the pressure of my incredible strength.

Guess what happened next?

Yeah, I pushed too hard, and the airlock frame fractured. I was no longer wedged tight because I had destroyed the tight part. My bull mouth opened, and a couple hundred ants came tumbling out, and I cried for Mgurn to stop and land the ship. Except no words came out. More ants, yes, but no words.

He probably heard, “GROOOOOOOOOUUUUUNNNNN!”

Mgurn has always been good at parsing my meanings even in my most inebriated states. But he didn’t stand a chance with, “GROOOOOOOOOUUUUUNNNNN!”

I caught a glimpse of him turning to look at me just before I fell. He shouted something, but I couldn’t tell what it was. I was too busy tumbling head over hooves to the ground below. Twenty meters became ten became one became splat! I hit that shifting and sifting ground so hard that I sent a three-meter geyser of ants spewing into the air when they were forced from my bull lungs. Apparently, bull lungs can hold a lot of ant matter and still be functional.

I was allowed a brief moment to look up into the night sky and see a shooting star. I almost made a wish, but realized it was Mgurn flying by in the small ship and not some lucky comet or meteor.

Then I was gone. The ground swallowed me whole. No chewing or savoring the taste of Mighty Minotaur Joe. Swallowed all up and gone.

My arms were pinned to my sides, and my legs bent at a strange, and very uncomfortable, angle. The weight of the sand, and it was sand that surrounded me since all of the ants had hightailed it out of there, pulled me deeper and deeper into the darkness.

As my bull lungs burned and began to protest the lack of air, I wondered how much farther I could go. Eventually, I’d have to come to a stop. I’d have to reach my final resting place. The sand couldn’t go on forever.

But it did. My body was forced deeper still, and I winced as the pressure changed. My ears popped, my jaw became sore, I could feel my circulation getting thicker. It was like the worst deep sea dive ever. And my lungs continued to burn.

They could take no more. The air I’d swallowed before being swallowed myself was spent. I struggled to keep my jaw clamped shut, but nature overruled me and with anguish in my heart, I opened wide and breathed as deeply as I could.

My mouth, my throat, my lungs filled with sand. I was a Mighty Minotaur Joe sand bag.

The darkness went from external to internal, and I felt the last moments of consciousness leave me in a slow fade.

Was this the end of Mighty Minotaur Joe?

Fourteen

No. Not the end.

But it wasn’t the beginning either.

More like a vague middle.

I hurt all over. That wasn’t vague at all. My body was wracked with pain, and the first sound to escape my lips, once I’d rolled over and puked up a planet’s worth of sand, was a bone-deep moan. I moaned a second time when I pushed up onto my hands and knees and saw I still didn’t have hands.

Hooves. Mighty Minotaur Joe was still active and kicking. Although, not feeling so mighty and was trying to avoid activity especially the kicking kind since my bull legs hurt like hell.

I was covered in ant bites. I don’t think there was a single millimeter of my hide that wasn’t puckered and red. Yes, my bull hide was sort of red to begin with, but after the ants it became a vibrant, angry red. And it itched.

That’s when the sound of the waterfall caught my attention. Cold, clear, streaming water was only a few meters away. I lifted my head and stared at it, wondered at the simplicity of the relief it could provide. It took all of my strength to get to my feet (hooves) and stumble towards it.

There was a catch, of course.

I don’t know how I went from ant-sand world to wonderful waterfall world, but however the mode of travel, I ended up separated from the waterfall by a deep crevice. I stood on the edge, mindful of my footing (hoofing?), and stared down into the darkness below. The sound of running water, a tributary that joined with the huge pool the waterfall fell into, could be heard rushing along the rocks down in the dark. But the crevice was too deep and the walls too angled to see the tributary.

Not that it mattered. Tributary or not, I wasn’t getting across that crevice. I was so close to the waterfall that I could feel its mist when the wind shifted. The thought of not being able to soak my irritated and blistered skin nearly drove me mad. There I was, so foing close, and yet so foing far.

I clapped my hoof hands together, and the sound echoed around the area, bouncing off the rock walls that were covered in patches of heavy vines and dangling ferns.

The place was what would probably be called a grotto. No, no, that’s not right. It wasn’t a cave. More like the end of a canyon where the waterfall had slowly been cutting into the earth for thousands and thousands of years.

Where I stood was about fifteen meters below the top of the canyon walls. There was a ledge that extended about three meters out before dropping off to the raging waters below. This ledge ran the length of the canyon and was possibly the first river bottom before the waterfall’s brutality began to strike and cut deeper into the rock.

I stood on a carpet of soft moss, but couldn’t feel it due to the lack of nerves in the ends of my hooves. It was sad. The moss looked so soft.

Above me, at the top of the canyon, rimming the edge, were trees of various sizes, shapes, and species. Broad-leafed, needled, some strange stringy looking things. More kinds than I could count, all looking down on me, judging me, telling me I wasn’t worthy to go on.

Whoa… What?

“Quit, Joe,” a tall oak cackled. “Just lie down and die. Be with the moss.”

“Joe, oh Joe, why do you fight?” a short, thick willow hissed. “You can’t win, Joe. You sorry, sorry bull.”

“Joe, Joe, Joe,” a scraggly pine chuckled. “You aren’t even a man anymore. Is there a point to your existence? How can you be Salvage Merc One as a Minotaur?”

“And a cruddy Minotaur at that!” a rotting apple tree scoffed. “You don’t even have two horns anymore. Where’s your horn, Joe? You couldn’t hang onto something when it was attached to your head. Do you think you can solve all of this if you can’t keep a horn on your head?”

“Pitiful,” a palm snickered.

“Lousy human, worse Minotaur,” a mangrove snorted.

“Kill yourself, Joe,” a majestic maple said. “Five steps and jump. The fall will kill you. Trust us.”

“Trust us.”

“Trust us.”

“
Trust us.
”

“
Trust us!
”

“
TRUST US! TRUST US! TRUST US!
”

I started to miss the ants.

Ants. Itching skin. Waterfall.

I had to ignore the mocking trees and find a way over to that tall drink of ahhhhh.

I paced back and forth at the edge of the crevice, but there was no place narrow enough for me to jump. Even with my heavily muscled Minotaur legs, I didn’t think I would make it. Maybe if I had my battle legs still, but like I said, those were gone along with the rest of my Joeness.

I could have done with a healthy dose of clarity, but that gift of mine hadn’t reared its head in a long while. In fact, none of the gifts from the previous Salvage Merc Ones had been at my disposal since starting the stupid quest. That was supposed to be part of the Salvage Merc One gig, get the powers of the previous holders of my job.

Was it the Minotaur part that was blocking my ability to access the Salvage Merc One gifts? Or was there something else going on?

I started to explore other possibilities when a basic truth smacked me in the face.

Where the fo was Mgurn?

I spun on my hooves and looked all around. I hurried to the edge of the canyon and peered over into the churning waters below, seeing if his broken corpse was perhaps lying on some of the jagged rocks down there. Nope. No broken Mgurn.

I cupped my hands to my mouth, saw once again I only had hooves, sighed in frustration, but still shouted, “Mgurn!”

There was no response. I shouted again and began to walk away from the waterfall, following the wide ledge I was on. After about fifteen minutes of shouting, I gave up. No Mgurn. Sheezus. Was the guy stuck back on ant-sand planet? That wasn’t cool. Not cool at all.

“Mgurn!” I shouted one last time as I turned around to walk back to the waterfall.

A couple of trees blocked my path. One was a pretty big juniper, maybe five feet tall with a ton of those little purple and blue berries dangling from its spiky-needled branches. The other was a ratty-looking mesquite, its bark sloughing off its gnarled branches and trunk.

“Hey,” the juniper said in a high-pitched squeak. “Where ya think yer goin’, eh?”

“Yeah,” the mesquite said, its voice a slow, deep grumble. “Where ya think yer goin’, eh?”

“I just said that,” the juniper snapped.

“Me too,” the mesquite responded, missing the entire point of the juniper’s admonition.

Sheezus…

I shook my head and started to move past them, but the mesquite spread its branches out, blocking my way.

“Yous think you can just show up here and do whatevers yous wants, bull man?” the juniper asked. “Yous think yous can clomp all over our sacred ledge and just get away with it? Huh? Yous think that?”

“Listen, man, I’m just trying to finish a quest, alright?” I said, holding up my hooves. “I don’t want any trouble. I only want to get to that waterfall there and get this over with.”

“A quest, he says!” the juniper exclaimed. “Oh, ho ho! The bull is on a quest!”

“Yeah, he’s on a quest!” the mesquite echoed then paused. “Uh…what’s a quest?”

“Never yous mind,” the juniper said. “He ain’t gonna finish it if wes gots anything to says about it.”

“Yeah! Yous ain’t gonna finish it!” the mesquite cheered.

“Guys, listen,” I started then stopped. “Are you guys? I don’t know if trees have sexes or not.”

“Oh, he doesn’t know if wes got sexes,” the juniper mocked. “The ignorant bull doesn’t know if trees gots sexes!”

“I got sexes,” the mesquite said and nodded, more to itself than to me.

“Yeah, wes gots sexes,” the juniper said. “Just not the ways you blood-things got sexes. It’s different for us trees. Ain’t no ways to explain it to yous types.”

“No ways to explain it,” the mesquite echoed.

“Okay, fair enough,” I said.

I stared at them for a long while. They stared back, I assume. Trees may have sexes, but they don’t have eyes. These ones didn’t even have mouths. I had no idea how they were talking to me, but they were.

“Can I get by?” I asked. “I just need to get to the—”

“To the waterfall, yeah, wes knows,” the juniper interrupted. “But that ain’t gonna happen, bull man. What is gonna happen is yous gonna take a short step to your left and a long fall to the river. Then yous gone. Gone from here. Bye bye.”

“Bye bye,” the mesquite echoed. “Gone.”

It stabbed a branch out at me, and I instinctively swatted it away. The thing was lucky I didn’t have hands. My true instinct was to snatch the end of that branch and snap it right off, but you can’t do that with hooves.

“Ow!” the mesquite cried. “Did yous see that? Did yous? The bull man attacked me!”

“Oh, yous shouldn’t have done that,” the juniper said. “Yous really shouldn’t have done that.”

“Come on, guys, just move, please,” I said. “This doesn’t have to get ugly.”

“It’s already ugly!” the juniper yelled as it lunged at me, those spiky needles and branches whipping towards my head.

I punched it in the middle with a hoof, and it dropped fast. I could hear it moaning as it rolled back and forth on the ground, its branches wrapped around itself.

The mesquite let out an undulating roar and charged me. It was a lot bigger than the juniper, but as evidenced by its conversational skills, was not nearly as bright. Which was saying something.

I waited until it was almost on me, its branches raised high above with the obvious intent of bludgeoning me to death. When it was close enough, I stepped back away from the edge of the ledge and let the mesquite hurry by. Once it was parallel with me, I kicked out and sent it flying out over the canyon. It screamed the whole way down then was lost in the river’s churning waters.

“Yous gonna pay for that,” the juniper moaned. “Yous gonna get it good.”

“Probably,” I said.

I kicked it too, and it went sailing into open air. It cursed me the whole way down.

The entire ordeal was confusing, exhausting, and just dumb. What the hell was the point of that part of the quest? What could dealing with a couple of tree thugs even mean to finishing my quest? Was that part of the trials or just an inconvenient hiccup?

No way to know since I killed the bastards. Not that asking them questions was going to illicit any coherent answers.

I walked slowly back to the crevice and studied it once again. Far above, the trees heckled and called down to me. They spat insults and snarled threats. They told me of all the horrible things they were going to do to my bull body. They told me all the horrible things they were going to do to my family. When they started telling me about all the horrible things they were going to do to my pets, I reached my limit. I didn’t have any pets, but some of the things they said were just gross.

“SHUT THE FO UP!” I roared with all of my bull lung power.

The trees went silent. A few of them backed away from the top of the canyon, their limbs trembling and leaves shaking.

“Good,” I said. “Now, if you arboreal idiots want me gone so bad then how about helping me figure out how to get across this crevice and over to the waterfall? All I need to do is get to that waterfall, let it grab me, and then I can move on to the next part of my quest.”

I realized I had no idea what the next part of my quest was. My vision had ended with me plummeting down to the pool below. I swallowed a ton of water and was nearly eaten by something with a lot of teeth. That was when I woke up back at SMC headquarters and puked half a waterfall from my belly.

There was some low muttering from above, conspiratorial whispers talking over each other. I waited.

“Fine,” a tall aspen tree announced finally from directly above me. By that time, I’d plopped down on the ground and was taking a quick bull nap. “Hello? Wake up, bull man.”

“I’m awake,” I said and opened my eyes. I didn’t sit up since I assumed they had nothing of value to say. Plus, I had a good view of it from where I lay.

“We have decided to assist you with your quest with the sole purpose of getting rid of you,” the aspen said. “You will be allowed to cross the crevice and find your fate. We hope it is a deadly fate, and you are wiped from existence, but whatever your fate is, as long as it removes you from our presence, we will be happy.”

Voices rose in agreement then died as the aspen held up its branches.

“Prepare yourself, bull man, for your time is at hand,” the aspen said.

The other trees echoed the refrain of “Time is at hand!” over and over. Some got confused and shouted, “Tim is at hand!” This led to more confusion and several questions of, “Who’s Tim?”

Mighty Minotaur Joe wanted nothing more than to climb up there and tear them all apart, but even the bull side of me was exhausted, so I just sat there and waited for them to quiet down.

“Great, thanks,” I said. “So, how exactly are you going to help?”

“Behold!” the aspen announced and crept dangerously close to the edge.

It turned, squatted, and I quickly realized what it was going to do. I scrambled up onto my hooves and got as far away from the crevice as possible. More trees joined the aspen, turned, squatted, and began to “assist” me.