You've Got Red On You

“I got nothing.”

“Yeah, but that’s always…” started Lando.

“Not this time, buddy,” Single was shaking his head gravely, “not this time.”

“OK, but there’s the…” began Lando.

Single shook his head again.

“Really?!” blurted Lando.

“Really,” confirmed Single.

“But Roy is down there on his own!” gasped Lando.

Single frowned, “I know.”

“But without the mysterious and unknowable force of the power, that we all know drive the contrived plot…” Lando trailed off. He didn’t need Single to butt in this time.

“He will have his ass handed to him in a rusty can,” Single concluded Lando’s train of thought.

“No,” disagreed Lando, “he will surely die.”

“You know we don’t talk like that,” Single reminded him, “that’s part of the mystery of the invisible power that guides us.”

“And that is supposed to save the day, even if it is in the last possible second!” protested Lando.

Single stroked his chin, “bit of a problem that, isn’t it?”

“Problem? Problem!? We have no plan, no overriding forces of good to save the day, and no hope!” Lando was pacing the deck that sat behind the cockpit of the space freighter, the convenient space that allowed for pacing and in previous times, plot progression and plans, “I mean, we’ve carried things along by the seat of our pants in the past and we’ve been accused of losing the plot more than once! We, at times, make no sense, you talk to an overgrown teddy bear that brays like a donkey being castrated and you both claim to understand each other and I have a robot that beeps in an endearing way and just so happens to have blue-prints, maps and other information vital to the success of our rebellions at exactly the moment we need it. Has he ever, told either of us that he’s carrying that data before we’re desperate for it?!”

“Now you come to mention it…” began Single.

Now it was Lando’s turn to interrupt Single, “tell me, Single. Do you actually understand anything that Munchbeccie brays at you?”

Single looked ruffled. Single never looked ruffled. Ruffled wasn’t even in Single’s repertoire, “well I…” he began.

“See, the way I think it goes is that you have to say you understand him and that’s about as far as it goes. Same as he has to be content with whatever you say back to him. You’re just keeping up appearances aren’t you?” 

Lando was advancing on Single as he said this. Fired up with his theories. He wanted to be wrong. He so desperately wanted to be wrong. He wanted Single to throw him a bone, but Single was diminished by Lando’s words and the passion with which he said them.

“Now you’re saying that, I…”

Lando’s eyes went wide, he didn’t want to be right and he didn’t expect to be right, “hell! We really do have nothing, don’t we?”

Single nodded with such a damning lack of conviction that Lando had no choice but accept the truth of it. 

“We were winging it before now, but without the power. Without the light side. Well, the badly dressed forces of chaos will triumph won’t they?”

Single sat down, he felt very tired all of a sudden. He looked up at the sound of Lando laughing. The laughter wasn’t a short burst of manic laughter to punctuate the futility of their predicament, it was a terrible, belly laugh that threatened to undo the man.

“Why are you laughing?” Single asked him, but Lando did not hear him through the sound of his laughter, so Single had to wait the worst of it out and then try again, standing to drive his question home to the now wheezing man who was bracing himself on a chair and shaking with his exertions, “why are you laughing, Lando?”

Lando looked up at Single and smiled through tear filled eyes, “because if we don’t have anything, imagine how it’s going for the other lot.”

Single smiled uncertainly, then the smile broke into a grin and the grin blossomed out into a beautiful, sonorous laugh and in that laugh was something like hope. 

After the laughter, Single broke out a bottle of something he’d been keeping for a celebration. Once their glasses were charged, Single raised his and caught Lando’s eye.

“What are we going to drink to, Single?” asked Lando.

“The emperor and his hapless gale-soldiers,” Single smiled his trademark, roguish smile and suddenly he was back in the room and back in the game, “because if we’ve got nothing and we’re drifting rudderless right now, then how do you think those guys are doing?”

Lando chuckled, but there was a lack of effort to it, they could only hope things were also going wrong for those on the bad side of the power.

That was their only hope.

Their single hope

Their last hope.

*

“What do you mean they’re on strike!?” the emperor bellowed to one of the more well-dressed of his minions. The cut of the minion’s military garb denoted a higher rank, but the garb itself looked somewhat drab, dreary and dull and just not all that interesting. This was not a uniform to aspire to and there was something very functional about it, the most practical element being it really didn’t show blood up all that much, which was just as well as uniforms always outlasted the wearer and this particular uniform was currently passed down to the next newly promoted minion every three or four months. Sizing never seemed to be an issue either. This state of affairs was all a little too neat and tidy, and wrong.

“We had a complaint about uniform from one of the gale-soldiers last week, lord,” said the minion averting his eyes. He had been advised to avert his eyes because apparently it was better if you didn’t see it coming. No one had told him what it was, but he had a bit of an idea that it wasn’t good, and that if he was wrong about that, then at least it would be a nice surprise.

“What has that got to do with anything?!” blasted the emperor.

“Well, then things escalated,” said the minion, barely containing the fear-fuelled tremor in his voice.

“Escalated?” the emperor didn’t want to admit it, but he was actually interested to see where this was going. One of the reasons he didn’t want to admit it was that he was worried. He thought that there had been a disturbance in the power, but when he’d tried to dial into the power when he’d come into work this morning it appeared to be down, so this was a welcome diversion to this troubling development. Even if this was in itself a troubling development.

“The original complaint was with regards to chafing, lord.”

“Yes, do go on,” commanded the emperor.

“Well, when this was raised, certain other practicalities were raised,” explained the minion.

The minion then went on to tell the emperor the whole sorry tale of chafing. It had all started with a seemingly innocuous comment, “this uniform really chafes!” and then it had snowballed from there. The chafing was discussed at length and this lead to lots of helpful advice involving Vaseline, Swarfega, plasters and various other useful products that would take care of the symptoms, but it turned out that no one who wore the feared uniform of the gale-soldiers escaped the industrial scale and eternal chafing. The old guard even dreamt about chafing, not that there was much of an old guard, not really, and the criteria required to qualify as the old guard was as simple as surviving any skirmish whatsoever. That particular bar was set really low.

The initial conversations about chafing and the survival thereof then escalated to the study of survival. This was when things got heated and concluded in the unanimous vote for strike action. Prior to the vote, the escalation of the conversation went this way and that.

“Did someone say feared?!”

“Why are you saying feared like that?”

“Well we’re not are we?”

“Yes we are!”

“No, actually he has a point.”

“Yeah, he does.”

“Anyone noticed anyone fearing us?”

“Now you come to mention it…”

There was an awful hush as the gathered gossiping gale-soldiers considered their status out there in the universe. Then another set of observations ensued.

“The rebels always seem relieved to see us.”

“I’ve seen them laughing at us.”

“I had one goading me and doing a dance and shouting that I couldn’t hit a Ta-Ta on the arse with a banjo.”

“I heard one calling us Target Practice.”

“I’ve heard them say that too!”

The new consensus was that the gale-soldiers weren’t exactly respected by anyone at all. They realised that they didn’t even respect themselves all that much. The kicker was when a slight lad called Nif made a further observation about the uniform they all wore.

“Ever wondered why it’s fluorescent yellow? I mean, it makes us stand out a bit doesn’t it?”

Nif was wrong. The colour of their uniform didn’t make them stand out a bit, it made them stand out a lot. Worse still, it inspired a deadly loathing in anyone and everyone who set eyes upon it. The colour of the gale-soldiers uniform evoked an ancient dislike that had fermented in the oldest segment in every species brains and the fermentation process compelled the owner of the brain to annihilate the owner of that uniform and to do so with extreme prejudice. 

Once the gale-soldiers had begun to explore their lot they realised that something needed to be done, but what? They had nothing in their favour barring one, single attribute and that was their sheer numbers, thus collective action was the only way forward for them, and a strike was called.

The story told, the emperor was now tired of the presence of his minion and so he raised his hands and curled his fingers in a very meaningful way, in addition he pulled a face of deep thought and intent.

“Everything alright, lord?” the minion had looked up when the emperor started grunting, it looked like he might be having a funny turn. The minion had heard about funny turns, his Uncle Albert had had one and was never the same again by all accounts.

The emperor looked confusedly at his hand and then at the still living and breathing minion, this was not in the plan. His lower jaw forgot what it was doing and dropped to his chest. The plan? Where was the bloody plan? He was a Syph Lord and that was all they did. They planned and they planned and they planned until they ruined everything with layer after layer of convolutions but now the emperor came to think of it, he had no plan and without a plan he didn’t even have a clue. Maybe that was why he had just failed to use the power to effect a progression plan for a more junior minion. HR were going to have fit over this, which was yet another headache for him and something he could really do without today of all days. 

“Yes, I’m fine,” the emperor told the minion, “just a spot of cramp.”

“Oh!” said the minion, “I could get my aunty Beryl to look at that. She has magic hands when it comes to things like that.”

“Silence!” bellowed the emperor, “what is it that the gale-soldiers want?”

“Want, lord?” asked the minion.

“Yes, man! People always want something!” growled the emperor.

“Oh! The strike! I get you now!” the minion was smiling. The man was actually smiling. Worse still, the emperor found it endearing. He’d not had anyone genuinely smile at him in aeons. Grimace, yes. Smile, no.

“Well?” asked the emperor far less fiercely than he would have liked.

“They want red shirts instead,” the minion told him.

The emperor did not speak for a moment, this was simply because he had not expected this demand. Such a simple demand, and yet, there was something about it that…

He supressed a smile of his own, “if that is what it takes, then see to it.”

“Really?” the minion was surprised by the ease of the emperor’s capitulation and he was not at all convinced. This was not the way he had seen this panning out, not that he’d seen it panning out at all. Not for him, anyway.

“Really,” confirmed the emperor, “now go see to it!”

The minion remembered himself, nodded in deference, “yes, lord,” turned on his heel and half-marched and half scurried from the emperor’s presence. Two years of drill practice on the parade fields of Kadu had not been wasted on the man. He was oblivious to the emperor opening and closing his hand behind his retreating back as though he were throttling several mini versions of him, which was exactly what he was trying to do.

Once the room was empty the emperor sighed. Today was a bad day at the office, but still he’d averted a strike and kept the men in his command happy and better still, he was inexplicably happy too. 

“Red shirts,” he said, grinning to himself.

Red was his favourite colour!