BadAsstronauts by Grady Hendrix

Author:Grady Hendrix [Hendrix, Grady]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Walt asked.

“And an evil cursed and old.

Of a school for magic true

And a heart both stout and pure…”

The singing sounded like something you’d hear at a funeral, and it made Walt’s eardrums vibrate painfully. He dragged himself out of bed and hid from the kid in the bathroom for a while, hawking up some yellow crud. Then he pulled on some clothes he hadn’t worn since 1995, and he went running. He didn’t want to risk that hideous singing again.

The air was moist and dark. Cicadas screamed in the trees. From the fabrication assembly shed, he could see the flickering of welding. Volor followed him a respectful twenty yards behind. Silently.

He’d been coasting. He knew it. And now he was embarrassed to find out that other people knew it, too. He wanted to impress Volor with the fact that when push came to shove, he still had what it took, but after a hundred yards his knees felt like they’d been pounded with rocks and his ankles felt like skin stretched around broken glass. After two hundred yards, he was breathing so hard, his chest hurt.

His feet slapped the road and, slow as a beetle, he trundled on, doing about two miles before coming home. He only threw up once. Those other three times were just the dry heaves. Volor easily kept pace with him, even though he was still wearing his velvet cloak. As the sun came up, Volor brought him to the medical tent and asked one of the nurses to give Walt a full physical. The results weren’t encouraging, but they weren’t a disaster, either. By the time noon rolled around, Walter was on a new diet and he had a health plan in place. Volor would hold him to it.

Around two PM, as Walter was leaving the medical tent, a runner brought some ugly but not entirely unexpected news.

“Mr. Reddie,” the kid shouted. Walter really wished that if these kids were going to stick steel bars through their nipples, they’d at least wear shirts so he didn’t have to look at their brutalized boy nips. “The principal’s here and he’s got some fascist police state thugs with him.”

Walter met up with them at the gate where the Goon Squad was refusing to let them pass. It turned out that the Big Government Thugs were three pencil-necked officials from the FAA and one all-business lady from the AST (Office of Commercial Space Transportation—the acronym had never made sense to Walter, either).

“Afternoon, fellas,” Walter said, extending his hand. “Walter Reddie, Discovery, crew of ’86. Pleased to meet you. And this is Volor, my personal trainer.”

“Greetings,” Volor said, sweeping his cape and bowing low.

“I’m Dr. Huger,” the AST woman, said. “We need a quiet place to sit down and talk.”

“We can talk right here,” Walter said. “Unless you’ve got something embarrassing to say that you want privacy for.”

“See,” Mr. Gaudy said. “I told you. He has no respect for anyone or anything.”

“Eugene,” Walter said.

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