Meteor Mags: Omnibus Edition Read online

  METEOR MAGS

  OMNIBUS EDITION

  by

  matthew howard

  in conjunction with

  margareta’s alliance for

  gravitational studies

  puma concolor aeternus press

  2017 Smashwords edition

  Meteor Mags: Omnibus Edition

  © 2017 by Matthew Howard. All Rights Reserved.

  Volume Six of The Adventures of Meteor Mags and Patches collects and updates the material published in the first five volumes, plus three new stories.

  183,000 words. Available in paperback and many ebook formats. The paperback edition contains black & white illustrations not available in ebook.

  MeteorMags.com

  In loving memory of Ellie Kitty,

  who asked me to open the door

  so she could see the storms.

  And for Maggie,

  who showed me how

  she made the planets.

  No doubt her desperate courage, her battle against the tremendous odds of all the civilized world of law and order, have had much to do in making a popular hero of our friend the black flag.

  But it is not altogether courage and daring that endear her to our hearts. There is another and perhaps a greater kinship in that lust for wealth that makes one’s fancy revel more pleasantly in the story of the division of treasure in the pirate’s island retreat, the hiding of her godless gains somewhere in the sandy stretch of tropic beach.

  —Howard Pyle; preface to The Book of Pirates, 1921.

  WARNING

  As of November, 2029, possession of Meteor Mags material remains prohibited in all sectors of the Asteroid Belt and Mars pursuant to Amendment XVII of the Musical Freedoms Act. Possession of said materials will be considered grounds for deportation, or in extreme cases as defined by local ordinance, defenestration. Please see your Passport Command office for a complete description of applicable local laws.

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Chapter 1. The Secret Laboratory of Dr. Plutonian

  Part One: Turn It Up

  Part Two: Burn It Down

  Asteroid Underground Interview: Meteor Mags

  Chapter 2. Old Enough

  Chapter 3. Whipping Boy

  Chapter 4. Mountain Lions Forever

  Part One: Dancers and Degenerates

  Part Two: The Cat and the Cage

  Chapter 5. Patches the Immortal

  Part One: In the Eye of Death

  Part Two: The Immortality Machine

  Chapter 6. The Weight of the Universe

  Part One: Rainbows and Roller Skates

  Part Two: The Concert at La Plaza Margareta

  Epilogue: Supreme

  Asteroid Underground Interview: Meteor Mags

  Chapter 7. The Western Route

  Part One: Shotguns in Space

  Part Two: The Canada Connection

  Asteroid Underground Interview: Slim

  Chapter 8. Red Metal at Dawn

  Part One: The Labyrinth

  Part Two: The Liberation

  Chapter 9. The Curtain of Fire

  Prologue: The Girl with a Tail

  Part One: Vivan las Anarquistas

  Part Two: The House on Meteor Street

  Epilogue: Mothers and Daughters

  Asteroid Underground Interview: Hyo-Sonn

  Chapter 10. Daughter of Lightning

  Part One: The Vestal Virgin

  Part Two: The Ladder of Life

  Epilogue: Banned and Beautiful

  Chapter 11. The Ryderium Caper

  Chapter 12. The Lost Crew of the Volya IX

  Part One: The Abandoned Mine

  Part Two: The Crystal Palace

  Part Three: The Motherland Calling

  Part Four: Her Green Planet

  Asteroid Underground: Patches of Protest

  Asteroid Underground: Violence and the State

  Chapter 13. Blind Alley Blues

  Part One: The Visitor

  Part Two: The Band

  Part Three: The Storm

  Part Four: The Concert

  Asteroid Underground Interview: The Psycho 78s

  HyperSonicHatred: Back Cover

  Chapter 14. Voyage of the Calico Tigress

  Prologue: The Aftermath

  Part One: Radiant Graves

  Part Two: Sentient Tentacles

  Epilogue: Overlord of Darkness

  Chapter 15. Hang My Body on the Pier

  About the Author

  INTRODUCTION

  Ahoy, dear. We meet again!

  Now, as soon as you get all the cash and jewels out of that safe, you and me can go up on deck. You will not sound the alarm, or radio for back-up, or whatever crazy plan you have. Instead, we’ll open a bottle of rum and discuss the possibility of your joining my sorry lot of criminals.

  We will also consider tossing you out the airlock. It’ll be a point in your favor if you can play an instrument.

  You know, when my great-gramma ruled the seas of Earth, this was called impressment. That’s when you take another ship’s crew and make it your own. So, consider yourself impressed.

  That’s right. Put the guns in the bag, too. Just throw them on top of the money, and be quick about it. Me, my cat, and everything we can bloody steal are getting off this goddamn rock right now.

  Coming with us?

  XoX  XoX

  Meteor Mags

  Vivan las anarquistas!

  1

  The Secret Laboratory of Dr. Plutonian

  No holy bell nor pastoral bleat

  In former days within the vale.

  Flapped in the bay, the pirates’ sheet

  And curses filled the gale.

  Rich goods lie on the sand, and murdered men.

  Pirates and wreckers kept their revels there.

  —The Buccaneer;

  —Qtd. by Charles Ellms in The Pirates’ Own Book, 1837.

  PART ONE: TURN IT UP

  2027: The Asteroid Belt.

  “Punk is dead,” pouted Meteor Mags. “And so is the fuckin’ web.” She cut the sound to the speakers, disgusted with the music. Standing up from her command chair aboard the Queen Anne, she pulled off her boots and tossed them in a corner. Her socks quickly followed.

  She wiped the tangle of hair, dirt, and dried blood out of her face, searching unsuccessfully for a brush. “An entire asteroid belt colonized, and you still can’t find a decent radio station out here!” She grabbed a lighter from her bedside table and plopped back down in her chair.

  “Mew,” said the filthy grey cat at her feet.

  “Madre de dios, you are one dirty kitty. Come here.” Mags patted her lap. “Come on up, dirtball!”

  The cat crouched and mewed again, then leapt. She turned around and around in Mags’ lap, kneading her thighs.

  Not twenty minutes ago, the cat had run aboard the Queen Anne as fast as she could, while the thunder of Mags’ machine gun pounded her ears. Regarding the body count they had racked up in the last few minutes, the cat felt nothing but relief. She had wanted off that rock for nearly two months, and she could not be happier about leaving.

  “Is that your name, then? Dirtball? God, I am so fagged out right now.” Mags leaned her head back and sighed, staring towards the ceiling but not really seeing it for a minute. Her body had run on adrenaline and rage for hours, trapped in the spaceport. If not for her new friend, she thought, she would still be stuck in that goddamned storage closet. Or dead. Or worse.

  Mags absent-mindedly patted the cat in her lap as it licked its paws. She sank into her chair, letting the fatigue wash over her. The next time she looked down, the cat had cleaned one of its paws and a p
atch on its face. “Awww,” said Mags, “You aren’t grey at all! You’re a little calico under that grease.”

  The cat stopped for a moment and looked in her eyes.

  Mags rubbed the cat’s ears. “How would you like to be called Patches?”

  Patches purred, squinting twice.

  “Oh, you like that name? Patches?”

  Patches bumped Mags’ hand with her nose and went back to licking.

  “You need a bath, Patches! Now that your name is sorted, let’s see if we can find something to listen to on the way home.”

  ★ ○•♥•○ ★

  Twenty minutes earlier, a single drop of blood fell from Patches’ lacerated ear. It fell past the narrow girders where she hid near the ceiling of the tiny storage room. The blood fell a meter through the air to splatter on Mags’ shoulder.

  Mags had problems of her own. A sticky mess of half-dried blood, sweat, and dirt caked her forehead and the side of her face. She pressed her back against the wall.

  She hid there for twenty minutes or more. The bleeding slowed from the gash in her scalp, but a steady trickle of dark red flowed from her white hair, over her eyebrow and cheekbone, and down the side of her neck. But Patches caught her attention. She looked up.

  The cat crouched on a single skinny girder above her head. Poor little kitten, Mags thought. A laser pistol had vaporized the tip of its right ear. So much dirt covered Patches that Mags could not see her calico markings at all, just a grey and black blob in the shadows.

  But Mags recognized something in her eyes—something burning, but cold and hard like a steel blade. Mags raised a single finger to her lips, pursing them as if to say, “Shhh,” without making a sound. She pointed over her shoulder. Footsteps outside.

  If the patrolmen cornered her in this small room, they would shred her to bits with laser fire in less time than it takes to tell. She stood against the wall, behind the door if it opened, out of sight for a moment at least. Maybe it would be enough to shield her from the patrolmen’s eyes if they looked inside.

  The spaceport was crawling with patrols now. Even if she could get out of this room, they had posted guards outside the Queen Anne, and Mags was seriously outgunned until she could get aboard her ship.

  Patches stood up from her crouch to dart along the narrow girder. She moved quickly, but Mags detected a limp.

  The footsteps stopped outside. Mags held her laser pistol ready. The door creaked open.

  “Rooowwwrrr!” Patches hurled herself at the patrolmen. One had advanced to open the door, and the second one stood behind him, pistol at the ready. Patches caught the second one square in the face and swung her claws.

  Mags kicked the door as hard as she could. It slammed shut on the first patrolman’s arm. She put a laser round into his hand, and then another round to vaporize it in a spray of blood.

  He screamed. Mags threw the door open. She put three quick rounds into his chest. His body fell backwards into his companion, who tried in vain to pull the angry cat off his face.

  When the bodies collided, Patches leapt clear. Mags fired her pistol twice into the face of each patrolman. The cat mewed at her and bolted down the hallway.

  Mags did not really know why she followed, but Patches seemed to know where she was going. She hurried to catch up, dashing around corner after corner in the maze of hallways. Then she heard shouting.

  She tried to stop, but her momentum carried her around one final corner. There sat the Queen Anne, not twenty meters away. Patches had taken her to the edge of the landing zone where patrolmen now guarded her ship.

  Patches had also captured their attention. She howled like a demon, running full-speed through their ranks. They raised a hateful yell. Without a second thought, they chased the dirty cat across the landing zone to the cargo crates on the other side.

  Patches had stalked this spaceport for two months. She had crept aboard a ship looking for food but soon found herself whisked off planet Earth and parked on this miserable moon. She spent her days stealing food from these patrolmen and destroying their furniture.

  She wanted a ride off this godforsaken mud ball. But as long as she was stuck here, she felt compelled to make the patrolmen regret they ever knew her. Hunting the angry cat with laser rifles became a daily sport for them, one they pursued enthusiastically.

  Mags ran aboard the Queen Anne, straight into the armory she kept there. From a case on the floor, she pulled out an old-fashioned favorite of hers: the Negev SF machine gun. It had a bipod and a 200-round supply of bullets in a belt clipped to the magazine housing. She grabbed a few extra belts just in case.

  Mags ran to position herself in the ship’s doorway. Lying on the floor just inside it, she pointed the Negev at the mass of patrolmen on the other side of the dock. They ran this way and that, trying to corner the little cat darting between the cargo crates as fast as she could.

  “Kitty!” Mags yelled. “Get the fuck down!” She pulled the Negev’s trigger, pouring round after round into the group of patrolmen. The bullets slammed into their bodies, sending them sprawling against the cargo crates. Those that dove to the ground, Mags sprayed with another hail of bullets. “Die, you fuckers!”

  A group to the side pulled itself together and returned fire. Mags mowed it down in one, two, three sweeps of the machine gun.

  From the other side of the crates came a grey blur heading straight for her. Patches hated the sound of gunfire, but she knew a ride off a moon when she saw one. Mags laid down suppressive fire throughout the room.

  “Let’s go!” Mags slammed the ship’s door shut behind them. A fresh wave of patrolmen poured from every door in the spaceport. Laser rounds pinged off the hull of the Queen Anne. Mags brought the ship to full power. “Bloody fuck,” she said to the panting, filthy animal beside her. “We gotta get off this rock now. Hang on!”

  And that was how Patches and Meteor Mags became friends.

  ★ ○•♥•○ ★

  Mags pressed a button in the arm of the chair then spun a small wheel beside it. A screen on her console came to life. As the ship’s radio searched for broadcasts, the display showed two things: a waveform shifting through frequencies and amplitudes as the computer tried them, and a changing web address as the computer searched domains.

  The overhead speakers suddenly came to life with the Beatles ballad, Hey Jude.

  “Damn it, radio!” Mags pulled off her soiled gloves and threw them at the console. “If I wanted crap, I would have installed a septic tank! What the fuck?” She frowned and spun the dial again, this way, then that.

  A monstrous guitar riff by Kyuss erupted from the speakers. The singer’s raspy voice shouted her name.

  She jumped out of her chair, sending Patches howling through the air. “Sorry!” She waved her arms over her head and spun around. “Gardenia! That’s my song!”

  Patches looked from Mags, to the speakers, to Mags’ empty chair, then back again. Her new friend suddenly seemed miles away, thrashing her hands in the air, shaking, and singing the chorus at the top of her lungs.

  Patches had seen many things in her first year on Earth. But in her year prowling the forests and learning to survive, she had never witnessed head banging. Watching the pointing fingers in the air and the strange, rhythmic seizure, she decided the display was no threat. She jumped into Mags’ chair and curled into a ball, content to keep licking the dirt from her bushy calico tail.

  Mags felt not a drop of fatigue any longer. In her mind, she was transported to the time she first heard Kyuss play Gardenia in concert.

  It was 1993. Night blanketed the California desert. The humming generators and shouting crowd were drowned out by the massive amplifiers and drum kit the four young men had brought to the party. Hardly a meter to Mags’ side, on the makeshift stage hauled here on a trailer, the bass player held his axe in the air. Face hidden by a mane of hair, he pummeled the strings with his fist.

  On his other side, the clean-cut guitarist rose in a half crouch abo
ve the pedals he had manipulated a moment before. Now he began a relentless riff, his pick hand swinging, strafing the strings with mechanical precision. Mags writhed on all fours on the wooden stage. A plastic cup sailed through the air, trailing a stream of beer behind it. The stars burned holes in the sky above her. The singer attacked the mic like a street prophet just let out of jail.

  Mags had agreed to dance at this party for the same payment the musicians accepted: free beer. She hadn’t expected to actually like the band. But now the kick drum slammed her body over and over, the crash cymbal kissed her in the darkness, and then—

  A blood-curdling screech filled the Queen Anne. Mags covered her ears. Patches jumped into a crawlspace under the console and pinned her ears back. A sound like a truckload of washing machines falling into a wood chipper roared from the speakers. Then nothing.

  Mags frowned. “Damn it,” she shouted, kicking the back of her chair. “Just when it was getting to the good part!” She reached for the controls. But as her fingers touched the dial, she froze.

  Kzzzt. Kzzzt. A man’s voice came through the speakers in a mess of static. “—On? Shit—are we still on? They’re breaking in!”

  Mags heard growls and noise, then a shotgun being cocked near the microphone.

  “PBN signing off! Long live the resistance!” The speakers fell silent.

  Patches peeked out from her hiding spot.