Saturday, 21 March 2015

Ermahgerd: Ratsies!


It was a dark and stormy night. The large moon of Panna threw lingering orange shadows across the towers of the stark and foreboding metal prison building. A few constellations Rungs recognised twinkled overhead. His homeworld of Rinn was out there somewhere, glittering green against the velvet blackness. The Tin Tin Dwarf chittered to himself, cleaned his whiskers and remonstrated with himself for not sticking to thinking about the task in hand, which in this instance was an audacious prison break. Reegesk had told everyone he was in a retirement home. Pfui! That would have been easier. Panna's prison complex was all hi-tech and vaunted new machinery, relying on complicated electronic systems and sensors to be nigh on impregnable. But it wasn't heavily guarded by humans, and that might well be to Rungs' advantage. 


Although he looked like oversized vermin and possessed the aroma of damp woodchips, the Tin Tin Dwarf was an incredibly intelligent being. He had patiently perused the schematics of the prison complex on a piece of tattered paper in a darkened booth in the corner of Ackmena's cantina and had memorised every power conduit and control outlet in the place. He hadn't even let the bartender's insane bouts of awful singing distract him. Not that he would ever dare tell his beloved mentor Ackmena she couldn't hit a note; he was an intelligent being after all.  

Having easily breached the perimeter, Rungs scampered through a few ventilation shafts - which were an incredibly useful sci-fi cliché he noted - located the main power bank and chewed through the lighting and electrical cables, immediately disabling the doors and plunging one particular wing of the prison into darkness. This section of the prison building housed the dissenters and thieves, and one particular resident who had shown the audacity to pick Palpatine's pocket and steal his only photo of Darth Plageius. The two guards in corridor 9D9 shuffled uneasily as the red emergency lighting came up.

Reegesk was huddled on his bunk inside a spartan cell half way down the detention corridor. He was curled inside his huge tatty brown robe as always and singing rude songs about the Emperor, just to annoy his captors. Nuffin got Reegesk down; not being a member of one of the most hated species in the galaxy, smelling like trash, having no morals: nuffin. That's what his bitches liked about him most.  

The guard outside Reegesk's cell didn't see the access hatch in the ceiling above slide aside or notice anything amiss until Rungs had leapt onto his shoulders and bore him to the floor of the corridor. The guard screamed 'ermahgerd!' and tried to bat the giant rat away. The other guard unholstered his blaster but the agile Tin Tin Dwarf swiped the man to the ground with one swing of his mighty tail then perched on the man's chest to keep him down. The first guard had soiled his underwear and passed out with terror. In that order.

Reegesk peered through the bars of his cage at the commotion.

'Whoa! Dis is well wicked! That guy shit himself. It stinks in here, man.'

'Row ow ow row!' Rungs bid Reegesk loudly.

'You don't have to tell me twice bro, keep calm and swindle Jawas. Dat's my motto, dat is. Long time.'

Rungs' dexterous claw punched in the correct code on an adjacent panel and Reegesk's cell gate swung open.

'This is a sugar-coated rescue, is well sweet bruv.'

'Row ow. Row ow ow!'

Reegesk instantly leapt on the guard, who began whimpering in fear. Reegesk's beady eyes glittered maliciously under the shadow of his fabric hood.

'You scared, homie?'

The guard nodded slowly.

'Is it cos I is Ranat, innit?'




Rungs was impatient to depart: 'Row ow!'

'Okies. Let's split this joint. I miss me some Owl City on the radio and toking on a doobie dat's wide as Bob Marley's leg.'

Rungs was in agreement on that one. The furry pair scampered for the exit. The first guard was stirring now and summoning up some bravura, aimed his blaster after the two oversized mice. But even as he squeezed the trigger Rungs and Reegesk vanished around the corner. Reegesk hurled a couple of finely honed insults back at the guard.

'Can't catch me homie, innit! You is too slow bro!' 

There was a battered YT-1300 Millenium Falcon class starship parked up in the staff docking bay. It didn't take the murine pals long to bypass the security codes and get on board the empty freighter.

Reegesk was twitching with excitement: 'oooh, our very own miloonium falcow. We can goes on adventures and solve crimes and do madcap things now, bruv!'

'Row ow ow ow!!'

The freighter lifted off and trailing a blue particle tail of light shot past Panna's waxen moon, then turned left and vanished amid the galaxies.
 
Neither Rungs nor Reegesk knew how long the journey had lasted: they had put 'Fireflies' on the boom box and cranked it up to max, broke out some emergency absinthe from the freighter's glovebox and proceeded to get as high as possible on a little stash of contraband Reegesk had found in one of the many pockets of his robe. As the space shrooms and amphetamines kicked in, the furry pals chittered happily and hallucinated like fuck. Reegesk hit the hyperdrive and the newly re-christened freighter Ratfinities made the jump to the appropriately named lightspeed. As Rungs and Reegesk sang songs of the Rebellion and victory and nights in Ackmena's Cantina, they even saw God wave at them through the windscreen.  

Their adventures had only just begun!

 


Ermahgerd! Gerd!
 
 
 
 
 


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