The Blue-Haired Bombshell (7 page)

‘‘Why are you scared of Threa?’’ I asked.

‘‘Apparently she’s never paid a province income tax.’’

‘‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’’

‘‘Zach, she’s worth close to a hundred million credits but she claims to live in a mysterious realm beyond our dimension, which is preposterous.’’

‘‘I don’t know. Have you ever met Threa?’’

‘‘No, I’ve only been threatened by her. She refuses to pay her taxes. So when I sent a warning to her, my lawyer came back on all fours, with a tail, and barking. He managed to bark out that if I insist on forcing Threa to pay taxes in New California, she’ll turn me into a toad.’’ Sexy looked up at me sheepishly. ‘‘I don’t know if she means a real toad or just make me think I’m a toad, but neither is high on my list. You know how hard it would be to do Council stuff and date and stuff if I was a frog?’’

‘‘Threa likes to talk. I’m sure it was an idle threat.’’

Almost on cue, there was a loud crashing noise. We all turned toward the noise to see two of Sexy’s armor-clad bodyguards flying through my door, smashing it into hundreds of pieces.

DOS, that was a real wood door! Of course, I had bigger problems than the door, as three more guards followed their coworkers into my house. They all enteredin pretty much the same manner, flying through the air and crashing to the floor, out cold.

Shannon leaped in front of Sexy. I popped my Colt 2062 into my hand.

Sexy eyed my strange weapon. ‘‘Really Zach, this is no time for HV.’’

We heard a
bomp bomp bomp
clanging toward my door. A large, bald head peeked in. When I say large, I mean this was a head the size of a normal man. The head ducked down and the body it was attached to lumbered into the room. The ceilings in my house are over four and a half meters high, but he still scraped his head.

‘‘An ogre!’’ I spat.

‘‘Zach, this has nothing to do with wild sex parties,’’ Sexy said, trying to sound intelligent.

‘‘That’s
orgy
,’’ Shannon corrected.

‘‘Oh, right,’’ Sexy said, sinking back behind us.

I sized up the Ogre. The only thing more noticeable than his girth was his disfiguration. His nose was bent in more places than I could count and stretched down his face, overlapping his mouth. The teeth his mouth did have were sharp and jagged. He vaguely reminded me of the cavemen I saw in museums, only three times as large and even more macabre.

To complete the caveman ensemble, he was dressed only in a fur rag and carrying a large wooden club.

‘‘Oh, that club so does
not
go with that outfit,’’ Sexy observed.

‘‘That was an antique door,’’ I shouted at the intruder.

The Ogre looked at my door lying smashed on the floor. He looked at the dent in my door frame. He scratched his head.

‘‘Ah, sorry, Mr. Johnson,’’ he said in a high pitched squeal. ‘‘Mistress Threa has no quarrel with you. I am sure she will make remuneration.’’

The Ogre pointed a long, bent, index finger at Sexy. His fingernails looked like claws. ‘‘
You
are the one she wishes to speak to.’’

Sexy peaked out from behind her cover of Shannon and I. ‘‘Make an appointment with my assistant’s assistant’s assistant, and I’ll squeeze her in next year.’’

The Ogre shook his head. I swore I heard rocks clanking around. ‘‘The Mistress does not work that way.’’

He took a step forward.

I pointed my gun at him.

‘‘Sexy is under my protection now,’’ I said.

‘‘Screw that,’’ Shannon said, standing straight and throwing out her rather impressive chest. ‘‘Sexy is under
my
protection.’’

Shannon focused her glare on the Ogre. I was all too familiar with that look. She was blasting him with mental energy.

The Ogre for his part knew this and was amused by it. He bit off a fingernail and spat it at Shannon.

‘‘Oh, gross to the meg,’’ Sexy mumbled clinging onto my leg.

‘‘Ogres are immune to mental attacks,’’ the Ogre smirked.

‘‘Let’s see how you handle this,’’ Shannon said. She drew a deep breath, looked at the Ogre, then exhaled on him, hitting him with her toxic breath.

The Ogre inhaled and smile. ‘‘Please, I’m an ogre. We live for toxic things like that.’’

Shannon took a karate stance. ‘‘Let’s see what you’ve got, big man,’’ she taunted.

It didn’t take my keen P.I. intellect to know how this was going to turn out. Shannon may have been a very powerful mutant psi, but she was out of her league when dealing with something from the mind of any of the Thompson sisters.

The Ogre moved forward on Shannon. Shannon hit him with a sidekick in his oversized beer (well, more likely ale) belly. If the Ogre felt it he didn’t show it. The Ogre put his palm on Shannon’s shoulder. Shannon crumbled to the ground, out colder than Pluto in winter.

‘‘The Vulcan nerve pinch?’’ I said to the Ogre.

He shrugged. ‘‘There isn’t much to do in Threa’s realm so I watch a lot of ancient TV.’’

The Ogre moved towards us. I had to give him credit; he had style, in a vulgar and geeky sort of way. The thing was, I couldn’t let him harm Sexy.

I aimed my weapon at him. The laser sights turned on, locking on his head and chest.

‘‘I’m betting you’re not immune to high-powered weaponry,’’ I said.

He nodded. ‘‘You’d win that bet.’’

The next move caught me totally off guard. The Ogre swiped at me with his club, knocking the Colt 2062 out of my hand and sending it flying across the room. Moving quicker than I thought he’d be capable of, the Ogre went to give me the Vulcan nerve pinch. I anticipated his move, ducking under his massive hand. He swung backward at me though, swatting me across the room.

I hit the ground and rolled up. Luckily he, like so many of my opponents in the past, had underestimated me. He thought that swat would knock me out cold. I’m a lot tougher than people think. (Of course the carbon-reinforced underarmor helps too.)

The Ogre was now ignoring me, concentrating solely on Sexy. That was his first mistake of the fight. I reached down to my ankle holster, grabbing my good old Colt .44. (It wasn’t a true Colt .44, it was a modernized version, but it still looked cool and it got the job done.) Not wanting to give him a chance to react, I lifted it up and pulled the trigger.

My gun made a very satisfying
BOOM.
The bullet hit the Ogre square in the back. He exploded into a cascade of bubbles.

‘‘Now
that
was different,’’ I said.

HARV appeared next to me for the first time since the fight began.

‘‘Where the DOS were you when the chips were down?’’

‘‘The Ogre emits some sort of computer dampening field. I was working my way around it.’’

I walked over to Sexy and helped her up. I gave her one of my patented ‘‘everything will be cool’’ smiles.

‘‘See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?’’

HARV tapped me on the shoulder, which wasn’t that easy for him to do since he was a hologram. If he was expending the energy needed to do this then something was up. HARV pointed out my living room bay window. Three more ogres had appeared. These had long hair and saggy breasts. They were females.

‘‘I compute that they are mad because you destroyed their mate,’’ HARV said.

I opened up my hand. ‘‘Yo, GUS come to me,’’ I ordered.

My Colt 2062 sprang to e-life from across the room. ‘‘With pleasure!’’ GUS sang. The Colt 2062 rose from the floor and floated across the room into my hand.

‘‘Cool weapon,’’ Sexy said. ‘‘You going to blast them? I like blasting them.’’

That’s when it occurred to me. If Sexy, an ex-teen-pop-star turned world politician, liked the idea, there had to be something wrong with it. Threa had nearly unlimited mental, physical, and financial resources. If I got in a pissing contest with her she’d drown me. There had to be a better way. I remembered something!

Grabbing Sexy by the hand, I pulled her into the hallway. We raced down the hall into my master bedroom. I slammed the door behind me.

Sexy smiled. ‘‘Why, Zach, I’m flattered, but I’m a big fancy-pants politician now. I can’t just jump into bed with you,’’ she said, pulling off her shirt and hopping onto my bed. ‘‘We have to issue a statement denying it first.’’

I headed to my dresser, pulling out the bottom drawer. I began shifting through the contents.

‘‘You know,’’ HARV said. ‘‘If you bought a modern dresser you would always know where everything was. And you’d never have to manually open a drawer.’’

‘‘Yeah, well, I need the workout,’’ I said, tossing items left and right. ‘‘Oh, and Sexy put your shirt back on,’’ I said. Sexy may have been beautiful and nubile beyond compare, but I was in a committed relationship. Besides, even if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t do it with a politician.

‘‘You could tell me what you are looking for,’’ HARV said. ‘‘I do have a much better memory than you.’’

There was no need for HARV’s assistance as I found what I was searching for. I pulled it out and showed it to HARV. It was a simple metal bell attached to a pink stick of wood.

Sexy sighed. ‘‘Okay, he’s lost it.’’

‘‘Hardly,’’ I said. ‘‘This bell was given to me by Threa after I stopped her sister Foraa from sucking the world down a black hole.’’

‘‘Yeah, that would have been a real bummer,’’ Sexy agreed. ‘‘At least on my case, you only needed to save a good portion of the northern hemisphere.’’

I rang the bell.

There was a flash of light.

Threa appeared in the room in all her glory.

Threa looked at me in shock. Sexy looked at me in more shock. She leaped off my bed.

‘‘How dare you call me!’’ Threa said.

‘‘How dare you call
her
, my archenemy,’’ Sexy barked.

When I say, barked, I mean barked. Sexy was now on all fours, barking away. I looked at Threa. She had a smile of satisfaction on her face.

Threa patted me on the shoulder (kind of like she would a pet). She smiled. ‘‘Ah, I see your plan now Zachary. Bring me right to my enemy.’’

‘‘That wasn’t my plan,’’ I insisted.

Sexy was now contentedly licking Threa’s feet.

‘‘It should have been your plan. Because I like it.’’ Threa patted me on the head again. ‘‘Good, Zach. Good, Zach.’’

‘‘Threa, I brought you here to call off your ogres and to appeal to your logical side.’’

Threa looked at me. ‘‘Wow, nobody’s ever tried that before . . .’’

‘‘To get you to call off your ogres?’’

‘‘No, appealing to my logical side.’’

I took a deep breath. Threa Thompson was one of the most powerful beings in existence. I was pretty certain my new high-powered weapon would, at the very least, cause her pain. But chances were great that if I tried to use it, Threa would stop me and I’d be joining Sexy, licking Threa’s free foot. Logic was my only hope.

‘‘Threa, I know you are powerful beyond compare,’’ I said playing with her ego some, ‘‘but even you can’t take on the entire world.’’

Threa put a finger to her mouth. ‘‘I don’t want to take on the entire world, just the World Council.’’

‘‘They have a lot of resources to throw at you,’’ I noted.

She put her hands on her hips. ‘‘I have a lot of resources too. I’m lady and mistress of my own realm.’’

Time to shift gears and appeal to her sensitive side.

‘‘Roughly 127,898,001 credits,’’
HARV thought.

‘‘Threa you’re worth over one hundred millions credits,’’ I said.

Threa was now rubbing Sexy on her tummy. ‘‘What’s your point?’’

‘‘My point is, if you
donated
a percentage of that to the World Council as say, taxes, that money could go to help this world.’’

Threa straightened herself up. ‘‘I’m not a huge fan of this world. It’s kind of a mean world. Look how badly they treat the Moon.’’

For the first time, I noticed Threa had blue hair. She was a Moonie.

‘‘But by giving money you could help set an example that the World Council can learn from.’’

‘‘Zach, they are politicians. Do you really think they can learn anything?’’

‘‘There’s always hope, Threa.’’

Threa took a step back. ‘‘Lead by example . . . It’s crazy enough that it just might work. I’ll take it under advisement.’’ She looked behind her at Sexy, now contently sniffing Threa’s butt. Sexy rolled back in the universal doggie ‘‘I surrender’’ position.

‘‘She is a cute pooch,’’ Threa said. ‘‘Tell her she has nothing to fear from me or my minions. At least for now!’’

‘‘Got it,’’ I said.

Threa held out her open hand. She wanted me to place something in that hand, but I had no idea what. She started tapping her foot.

‘‘Threa, I have no idea what you want,’’ I said.

HARV appeared next to me and bowed to Threa.

‘‘Threa, it’s always a pleasure to process your image,’’ HARV said.

Threa held out her other hand to him. He kissed it.

‘‘The pleasure is mine, HARV,’’ Threa said giving him a polite little curtsy.

It was a bit offputting that my computer was smoother than I was.

HARV turned his head toward me while his body was still facing Threa. This was one of the times HARV really took advantage of the fact that he was a hologram.

‘‘Give her back the bell,’’ HARV told me.

‘‘Really?’’ I said. I’m not sure why, but I hid the bell behind my back.

‘‘Zach, she’s not going to forget about it just because she can’t see it. She’s a powerful fairy princess, not an ostrich.’’

‘‘You really want your bell back?’’ I asked Threa, though truth be told, I wasn’t sure why I would want to keep it.

Threa bobbed her head a couple of times. ‘‘I said you may summon me once with that. You have. Now I need it back.’’

I placed the bell in Threa’s hand. She smiled, then disappeared in a puff of smoke.