The Back Garden

Overgrown twisted dominions and lurking supernatural forces had conspired to lend The Back Garden its curious nomenclature, which began life as a nickname that stuck. If some of that dread space-expanse’s mystique had faded after the vanquishing of its beldame Empress Ungus by The Four Heroes, it nevertheless afforded fearsome enough vistas for Zeldich and Grey Bag as they stepped down from the two flying jeeps which had carried them there. Progress in this place was on foot, along the tops of tendrils distorted to terrifying size which stretched tangled fingers through the black void between worlds and so bridged the spheres they ensnared. Though Grey Bag and Zeldich stood in interplanetary space they did not require oxygen-masks, for there was no cosmic vacuum in The Back Garden, just a universal moist stagnancy suggestive of cellars at midnight. This fusty fug teemed with nutrients and microbes on which thrived the gargantuan plants and the denizens that crawled and slithered among them.

Sending their jeeps to patrol the perimeter the two men struck off along a fleshy trail suspended above dim stars, Zeldich at a light run and Grey Bag shambling and bounding on all fours. “Scents I’m pickin’ up don’t spell anythin’ good,” rumbled the latter. “Not that that narrows it down much in this lousy pit. Only kinda place fer the likes o’ me though, in the thick of things, danger on every side. Solidity used that, gave me the fight I needed to keep me this side of crazy-mad. Taken me this long to learn that when the fight’s no good, man might still come out of it a monster.”

“I know something of that, brother Bag,” Zeldich declared as he jogged alongside him. “For the same reason have I pledged my blades to Blaster-Track Commander since the war, instead of returning to the galactic dojo with my comrades-in-arms. For now I understand my twofold defeat at the hands of Earth’s Master Stevens. What warrior, after all, can prevail when his cause is unjust? Nothing will dissever me from my beliefs, in the Prophecy and in honour. But serving Ungus and her kind I battled myself, and there is no more dangerous opponent.”

Zeldich smiled gravely. “Our friend the Commander is wise, Bag,” he added. “We are well-suited, you and I.”

“Yeah, between the two of us we’re both fightin’ the animal inside, pal,” Grey Bag concurred.

The tracking skills and heightened senses of this determined duo were not slow to locate their objective, deep in the fungizoid jungle of this savage land. Hunkering down behind a sprawling arm of knobbly root they surveyed a scene lit by the very skin of its numerous participants, for the bare heads and arms of the mushroom-men assembled gave off a watery greenish glow which hinted at fair numbers. Grimly and with silent strength amid the semi-dark they moved as one through an intensive physical regimen under the exactitude of Spookan himself, who presided over the horde atop a severed stem whence he rapped out streams of commands. Longer in the limbs and trunk than any human being, that one loomed with legs apart, shoulders hunched and fists clenched behind his back. His raiment resembled black leather and was either robe or trenchcoat, bound to the gaunt physique by chains and adorned with matching steely spikes, while Spookan’s other distinguishing features were concealed under a masked helmet whose only decoration was the semblance of three glaring eyes.

With a practiced eye of his own Zeldich scanned the exercises. “Infiltration and extraction techniques,” he reported to Grey Bag in a whisper. “This is no civic disturbance Spookan and his army are plotting. It’s a jailbreak.”

The men shifted nearer to try and discern more. That action was not what betrayed their presence, for when it came to negotiating untamed wilds or the warrior’s art of going unseen, Grey Bag and Zeldich respectively were the best there was at what they did. However, against an adversary whose range of perception included the arcane, as that of many Back Garden worthies did, such skills availed our heroes naught.

Spookan’s hand, spindly-fingered and deathly white, shot out and pointed. The fungal faces of a hundred alien assassins turned their limpid luminosity to pin the pair.

“Here’s somethin’ else we’re well-suited fer,” commented Grey Bag, as Zeldich’s swords exited their scabbards.

Streams of ghoulish glowing mushroom-men surged along tendril-tops or rebounded from rooty overhangs to deliver devious downward strikes upon the fighting-mad Zeldich and Grey Bag, as the Back Garden melee dug in and clung to its swinging slugging life. Spookan himself, though reluctant to soil his pristine palms with physical combat, maintained his vantage-point and rained eldritch fire on the warring horde. Our heroes however were not without a few tricks of their own, for Grey Bag after the fashion of certain pigeons and bullfrogs was capable of inflating his chest-cavity to an enormous air-filled balloon, which was how he had earned the second half of his name. This talent he now deployed, and the ten or so foes swarming upon him were flung in as many directions at once.

Grimly Zeldich observed Grey Bag from elsewhere on the battlefield, knowing his friend well enough to tell he was on the verge of animalistic berserker fury. These marauders were a test for his own mettle likewise, and their cunning twisty daggers of hardened fungus-bark would have taxed Zeldich even without Spookan delivering his own contributions from on high. Turning to shield himself against the latest such flame-burst Zeldich spied an opening, at which instincts honed through a lifetime’s study carried him aloft to sail past the summit of Spookan’s pedestal with sword upraised.

Given the circumstances Spookan reacted fast, but this time not even his fabled slipperiness was up to the mark. Leaping back from the lightning sword-slash he landed intact but bare-headed, as his triple-eyed helmet span away in two halves and was lost amid Back Garden undergrowth.

When Zeldich saw the face thus revealed, he froze.

Streaking through the stars with the Back Garden behind them, Zeldich and Grey Bag atop their jeeps were homeward-bound at a breakneck pace. One of the men was less than happy about this arrangement, and Zeldich could not say for sure that the unreasoning rage he had anticipated earlier in his companion was yet deferred.

“Never run from a knock-down drag-out in my life, pal, so yer better have a good reason for turnin’ tail!” Grey Bag growled. “’Less it turns out that after all yer big talk about honour, yer just plain ol’ gutless!”

“You know me better than that, Bag,” Zeldich replied, as together they reached the suborbital asteroid headquarters and sailed inside through open bulkhead doors. “The dishonour of fleeing a fight paled in significance to the risk we might not live long enough to report that which I discovered. You shall see why the enormity of its implications takes precedence over all else. Psiona, read my mind,” he finished, having sensed that the girl’s psychic presence was already among them.

Obligingly there appeared before Grey Bag and Zeldich a spectral projection of the face glimpsed by the latter under Spookan’s mask. Chalk-white in complexion and grotesquely elongated, the repulsive lipless and hairless visage was that of a high-caste fungus-man all too well-known across the quadrant.

No mistaking those good looks, Psiona’s telepathic tones observed darkly. It’s Prince Agaric. Second-born to Empress Ungus, which these days makes him titular sovereign of that entire vile empire.

The doors to the adjoining docking-bay slid open and admitted Blaster-Track Commander, Carmilla, Croldon Thragg and Sludge-Man, all trundling in on the four jeeps that had borne them back from their own adventure.

“We have much to talk about,” The Commander declared.

NEXT: 'CARMILLA'S RESOLUTION'