C^{ommander Rocksalt
By Jeff Blechle}

Commander Rocksalt inhaled deeply and held it as he stared through his darkening porthole. He aimed his wide back stiffly at the new boarders that sat at his onyx and jade backgammon table; Mort playing solitaire, Lizzy rolling her eyes. Rocksalt was obliged to station the Selbanes in his quarters after the inverted landing on the Selbane’s planet had demolished, among other things, the entire wing of guest cabins. How the nuclear bomb had remained at peace during this stroke of incompetence struck Rocksalt as nothing short of miraculous. You only get one chance to destroy a planet and Rocksalt was determined to carry out this mission even if he had to swim through space with the bomb strapped to his back.

As the ship burned through the atmosphere and into the blackness of space, Rocksalt turned slightly and appraised Lizzy Selbane, who had her bare legs stretched out, crossed and rocking. She was smiling up at him as if she had just gotten away with something very wrong but very rewarding.

Not a bad make and model, he thought. Pretty good shape. Bright scarlet hair is a nice touch. No visible patchwork. Walks like she's ice-skating, though. Rocksalt had heard about similarly assembled androids that could undress a man with their eyes, literally, and, as a mild embarrassment sank in his belly, a warmness elevated his gaze and smoothed it over her exposed belly. Then a ludicrous paper-thin voice cut his appraisal short.

"So, tell me, Rocksalt," Lizzy said, uncrossing and flexing her long muscular legs, "have you slaughtered any placid races lately, or what?" She giggled as she adjusted her gun belt crookedly on her pink skirt. "Huh? Don't you want to talk about it? You're funny, you know that?"

Mort Selbane looked up from his cards to turn a slow disgusted look on his wife, who seemed about to slip off her chair.

"Your son Latroy is in the infirmary," Rocksalt gravely informed the couple. "He injured his groin on a handrail when we landed. Maybe he didn’t see the sign, ‘This Is Not A Pony’."

"Oh, thank God!" Lizzy blurted out. "I mean—that he's been taken care of—that is—I mean—I really appreciate your apologies. I'm sure you have very competent neurosurgeons—eh, hee hee, how is Latreen—I mean, Latroy, the little angel?"

< "Forgive her aloofness, Rocksalt, she's having trouble adapting to motherhood. You know, half a century with a son is like no time at all." Mort's face darkened. "Isn't it, Elizabeth?"

"Yeah, it's just like that," she snapped. Her eyes flashed wildly at her husband. "And don't patronize me, Mort. You're not exactly rushing to the infirmary, are you?"

"And leave you alone with him? Ha! You'd like that wouldn't you?"

“Aaa, go jump out in space.”

Lizzy rolled her brown eyes and shook her head, both movements were executed flawlessly and both created cuckoo clock sounds. After this she couldn't stop smiling.

The commander's disdainful eyes left the couple and returned to the black starry hole. After a few minutes of silence, he turned to speak but a deafening alarm shot through the loudspeaker followed by a panicked announcement:

"All crew report to their battle stations! Frigut peaceships are approaching! Report to your battle stations!"

"What the hell's a Frigut peaceship?" Mort asked, purposely disheveling a losing game of solitaire.

"Friguts are a race of sea pods bent on upsetting the order of the universe," Commander Rocksalt announced as he hurriedly slipped into his fighter jacket and checked his utility belt. "Damn! Low on saltpeter!"

"The universe has an order?" Lizzy asked calmly. “What is it?”

Rocksalt approached her as the Antichrist might approach a Methodist and very somberly said, "The status quo order, the only order worth preserving. God knows it's a never ending battle." He gazed off into a ceiling corner and pondered his poignant statement and then tucked the bottom of his tie between two buttons in his khaki shirt. "Since Friguts never mastered the universal language we can only guess at their dastardly designs. And as for their motives, well—life as a sea pod must hold some bitterness, and bitterness, as you surely know, is a product of passive behavior."

"That's rich, commander," Lizzy said, squirming like a nervous schoolgirl before her current idol. She rocked her crossed legs left and right on a heel. "Maybe they're just misguided barbarians that believe in the wrong god. Have you ever tried being nice to them?"

Rocksalt sprung back from his oval mirror as if a Frigut had brushed up against him.

"Being nice to them? Yuck! Those freaky mutants? Hell, deify them! Why not? We need someone to safeguard our values and principals!"

"Well, Mort and I are pacifists."

Rocksalt's heart leapt into a disjointed drum roll. How could he have let such degenerates desecrate his ship? His gaze dropped into Lizzy's tight lap. No! No more favors for Colonel Hargrave no matter what the benefits!

"Since when does a pacifist carry a gun?" he asked, speaking rapidly while brushing his blond crew cut with a handleless brush.

Lizzy reached over and removed a cigarette from Mort's ear canal, drew her gun, pulled the trigger and lit the cigarette with the tiny flame that shimmered out of the barrel.

"Oh, I see," Rocksalt said with a scornful laugh, "you prefer only the illusion of aggression so long as others have to fight and die for your right to cowardice!"

"Yeah, we miss out on all the fun.”

Rocksalt curled his lip and snorted. “It’s no wonder your planet is invaded constantly. Who’s subjugating you this week, little green men?”

“Whatever.” She turned to her husband and slapped the back of his neck, shooting his false teeth out of his mouth. “We don't believe in violence, do we Morty?"

Rocksalt turned an incendiary sneer on Mort, who sat smarting in his brown plaid shirt with his wooden cane between his legs. The old man seemed to be torn between a massive heart attack and spontaneous combustion.

"You've found you a nice one here, Mort, hohoho-oh boy, she's a nice lady!"

Rocksalt knew his mortality meant nothing to these two, not as long as they lacked the ability to master what their consciences condemned. He needed to impose some sort of unity on the situation, make a strong impression to prove his rectitude. He checked the power level on his gun and then looked at his watch.

"As long as I can kill for my freedom, lady, I plan on doing just that, and often. It's my God-given right. And freeloaders en route to a posh vacation like you two shouldn't expect to benefit from it. Just sit back and watch a real man defend his—"

The spaceship shook with a tremendous blast and sent the trio sprawling over cheap colorful furniture. In a matter of seconds, they were sitting on the ceiling offering each other startled expressions. Rocksalt threw his square head back and let out a howl to his first mate,"Ha-a-a-a-a-a-a-alston!"

The ship received another severe jolt. Halston cartwheeled through the door screaming, caromed off a pole and entangled himself in a spinning ceiling fan. A small brown object gracefully floated in and hovered coolly above the spinning private.

"Mills among here and hills shine divine and seen on God and green walk time and," the floating creature said in a high-pitched robotic voice. It was about the size of a football, configured like a clamshell and had the color and texture and charm of an unripe coconut. It continued in a more urgent voice, “Bring gold bring desire bring unfold bring fire!”

Rocksalt drew his gun and pierced the strange creature with a silent shaft of orange light. As it sizzled toward the ceiling making puppy dog squeals, the ship righted itself and the smoking pod smacked the floor and rolled up to a toppled coffee table and disappeared with a pathetic 'blip'. Lizzy blasted Rocksalt a fiery look.

"Don't you know a peace offering when you hear it?"

“I figured the little mutant was trying to rob us,” Mort put in, yanking at his pretzeled legs. “Now let Rocksalt alone!”

The commander didn't acknowledge Lizzy’s asinine compassion because he knew it was the puppy dog squealing that had promoted it. He was up and out of the room before Mort could twist his foot around the right way.

"Ye-e-e-e-owwww! Who do I sue?"

"Mort, will you quit acting so stupid?" Lizzy grumbled, going to the bar and finding bottles of alcohol and drink glasses nestled snuggly in black foam cradles. She smiled. Then, thinking of her husband's spinelessness, his cheapness and his nose, she frowned. "You and your bigshot brother, Colonel ‘Dipshit’ Hargrove. Talking us into this fricking warship to get to our vacation planet! Always trying to save a damned dollar. What a joke! Look at you! What's wrong with your foot? Oh I am so sick of your clowning I could puke a transistor!"

Mort was in too much agony to harpoon her with his cane. Sitting with his legs spread out in a mangled 'V', he reached for his dentures as Halston separated from the ceiling fan and laid a yodeling belly flop across the side of Mort’s neck.

Lizzy laughed, mostly out of fatigued annoyance.

For over an hour the ship collided with asteroids and Frigut ships, sometimes wobbling right side up and other times not. Rocksalt did more yelling at Halston about their fragile nuclear bomb than he did about firing upon the enemy's curiously shaped spaceships that seemed to come out of the corners of the massive space monitor as if lobbed by infants. Rocksalt, though he would never admit to it, found painful humiliation in fighting these softly tumbling vessels shaped like, among other innocuous forms, baby rattles and alphabet blocks. He feared he was becoming a laughing stock among his crew and developed a habit of unnecessarily saving face. During his last confrontation with these space oddities, he was knocked unconscious when his ship took a sharp turn to avoid space dust and was gently taken aboard a Frigut craft and comforted until he confessed to anything he could think of, for he had no idea what the fuzzy little pods were yapping about but had a sinking feeling (brought about initially by the psychedelic décor of their interrogation room) that they weren't discussing the philosophy of Wittgenstein. This entire kidnapping was video taped, the Friguts had their voices dubbed with deep rich baritones, and of course, the harsh lighting in the commander's face was less than flattering to his complexion. Fortunately for Rocksalt, the video was destroyed when Halston fired upon the enemy ship and three months in the burn unit was all the staid commander had to suffer. Still, he sometimes heard snickers when he entered a room and he just couldn't be sure if copies of the recording hadn't surfaced, but no one ever confronted him about it so he pretended as if the unpleasant incident, as well as cameras and microphones, never existed.

 "Commander!"

The effeminate voice registered with Rocksalt immediately: Corporal Higgins. Rocksalt turned away from the giant monitor and saw Higgins surrounded by several Friguts. They grasped the corporal’s spindly frame delicately and, chanting monkish nonsense rhymes, floated him up and down and around the perimeter of the circular war room like a reluctant child on a merry-go-round. Two photographers stepped in and snapped a few pictures.

"How did these damn things get in here?" Rocksalt shouted wearily.

"Sir, it appears that the Friguts have achieved obverse antiparticle quark capabilities," Dr. Phillis said solemnly with folded hands and flaring nostrils. "Or, oh, wait, did you mean the Friguts or those state-provided photographers?"

Rocksalt groaned and shot a couple lasers aimlessly into space. How could lowly sea pods achieve such disruptive powers when he never even mastered the game of chess? He could barely handle a word processor. Something was wrong in the universe: the very filth it produced was taking over . . . flourishing . . . prevailing! Quark capabilities? More like quantum jump capabilities. No, he refused the possibility that his famously overpaid and weird-looking doctor hadn't a clue about basic physics. Maybe the Friguts had brainwashed the idiot. Rocksalt considered plunging the ship into the nearest black hole, but fearing no one would object, decided not to. Then, sighing heavily, he drew his gun on the floating corporal's abductors and effortlessly burned holes through the center of each. Corporal Higgins fell fifteen feet to the titanium floor onto his face, stood up dazed and wobbly, said 'Thank you, s-sir,' curled over a railing and jammed his head between two spindles.

"Dr. Phillis," the commander barked, "take one of these pods again and analyze it again and find out how we can sterilize the bastards before they snuggle us to death! Ugh, I am getting so sick of babysitting all you dummies. You two, start firing on those Friguts! Felder, get that force field up! Son of a bitch, Hegel, can you work that synthesizing oscillator or not? Mother f—"

"But commander," the doctor interrupted meekly, "each time I've attempted dissection the pod snaps at me and disappears. In fact, I'm not yet sure how a sea pod survives in space, nor how they peacefully overtake an entire planet. Should we really be attacking them? They seem very contented. Woops, one just blipped!"

"Bright boy! I should have you court-martialed for treason!" Rocksalt paused to kindle some more resentment by studying the doctor's face. "You are permanently relieved of your duties, doctor!"

Doctor Phillis stood dumbfounded in recurring cold rushes. Up until now, he had been able to take Rocksalt's slights quite well. Now all the commander’s playful banter over the course of many voyages meant nothing, less than nothing.

"Oka-a-a-ay, so what do I do, sir?" Dr. Phillis asked in a heartbroken tone, fighting the compulsion to attend to the injured Corporal Higgins with soft motherly caresses. "Should I just jump out into space or-r-r-r . . ."

"You gotta be kidding me," Rocksalt sputtered, turning a crinkled nose and forehead on him as if he smelled something offensive. "You still here, Phillis? You are dismissed! Go sob yourself to sleep, space queen. I’m down on whores like you."

Each word seared Dr. Phillis' quivering innards like fiery brands.

"Uh, excuse me, commander, but we're three months out in space and I am not a whore," the doctor said, stinging from Rocksalt’s heartless abuse. "Should I just hang around the freaking lounge, or . . ." he paused to inhale a shiver and tilt his gold-spiked head at the trapped Higgins. "How can you be so unfeeling, Ice? This man could be mortally wounded. Oh sweet Christ Jesus, he's just a precious ba-hay-hay-by."

Rocksalt warned the inconsolable doctor not to call him Ice. Glaring at the tumbling Frigut ships on the screen, he pressed his hand tightly against his bruised forehead and slowly dragged tears of exhaustion down his face. As his hand passed over his mouth, the door slid open behind him and Lizzy Selbane swaggered in carrying a whiskey sour. A cigarette dangled from the corner of her puffy crimson lips. Over the years, she had developed the human capacity for self-destruction and felt certain that, with enough practice, she could polish it into a redeemable, if not a noble, trait; she at least hoped to impress Rocksalt with the few casual acts of rebellion that she had learned from Mort. Her dark eyes quickly locked in on a pair of shoulders of the perfect width rising above the back of a chair, another inch broader or narrower would have rendered her indifferent to the commander's physique, except perhaps, for his narrow waist and centaurian legs, which she worshipped almost as much as his quarry-faced grimaces.

"Rommander Cocksalt," she said as a little plume of red smoke escaped her left ear, "one of your randy crewmen has situated his hands all over me." Four men, a woman and a green monkey scattered out the door.

Rocksalt looked up at the smooth white domed ceiling with a sigh and, without turning around, responded in an unsympathetic tone, "All non-personnel are to remain in their quarters."

"Hey, I'm not complaining, Salty, it's just that, as I was beginning to enjoy his cologne, he gets called away to battle baby toys. I chased him as far as this—"

Lizzy looked up in mock awe and performed an unbalanced twirl. "This rumpus room." Her gaze broke free and pierced Rocksalt’s skull like two icicles.

"Anyway, my old man, who's a nut, is napping. And frankly, boys—I'm bored."

Rocksalt stood up in a jarring motion of absolute incredulity and recalled being beaten senseless by a pack of Gibuks after his first Communion. "Hemmins! Durble! Escort this renegade bucket of bolts back to her quarters, brusquely! Lock her down!"

Hemmins and Durble sank insubordinately into the shadows and touched hands.

The rest of the crew pretended to be working on something akin to ciphering. Everyone seemed to be indifferent to the fact that they were on a mission to destroy a planet. Suddenly, the endless beeps and dings of the ships equipment became know to Rocksalt for the first time in years.

"All right then, I'll do it myself! And make no mistake, the brig will be full tonight! I'll complete this mission alone! Morons! Helpless useless morons!"

With massive strides and a grinding underbite, Commander Rocksalt thundered across the floor and reached out for Lizzy's arm. She turned quickly so that his hand came to rest on her left breast. He accidentally squeezed it. She gasped, smiling. Tsk tsk tsk. In three minutes they were two corridors away undressing each other in a janitor's closet. Rocksalt's briefs, freed by two long red fingernails, dropped into an unemptied mop bucket. The janitor must die. Lizzy chuckled; here was another time that some thick-necked patsy would suffer for her mischief. Highly aroused by the notion, she raked her grasping hands over every piece of skin she could find on Rocksalt. A fingernail entered an especially sensitive area. Taken aback by such a coarse act, the commander lurched violently and tripped over the mop bucket while one of his veiny forearms cold cocked Lizzy and directed her pretty head into a steel shelf. Rocksalt smacked the floor just in time to watch his underwear, dabbed with wispy tufts of grayish foam, float across the floor and up against Lizzy's thigh, which quivered intermittently as she lay cross-eyed and crackling amid assorted cleansers. Rocksalt, naked but for one sock and insufferably distressed by injustices past, present and future, leaned his hard wide back against a cold wall and realized that this may be his last chance to have a nice long cry before disintegrating a heavily populated planet. He decided to have sex with Lizzy first. He spread her out on the wet concrete floor and, for nostalgic reasons, initiated a bit of foreplay. But before he could remove the mop handle, the ship flipped upside down to avoid crashing into a quasar and the commander found himself crammed into a small shelf. Now he would cry. And while he cried he would wonder, if he should die during one of these inverted fiascos and be fortunate enough to have an out of body experience, where would his spirit hover? In this case, probably under the grimy utility sink or next to his sopping twisted briefs, which were now dangling from a mangled wire attached to the floor drain. How undignified it all struck him. Yes, a good long cry would lessen this rumbling unending avalanche of unfairness; make him almost at peace for a little while, if only toward himself. But what good would peace be if his neck was broken? The notion that he had almost talked himself into a fit of weakness horrified him. He strained a bloodshot eyeball to locate his naked partner. She was straddling the ceiling light only a few feet away, on her knees with back of her hands and cheek against the ceiling, aiming her jutting crotch right at him as if she was picking him out of a line up. He envied her soulless ageless mechanical body and wondered why she would go to such lengths to perfect human vices. The correct answer entered his mind but was quickly forgotten when the ship righted itself and landed them in a fleshy heap on the floor, Lizzy on top of his buttocks, Rocksalt facedown in a frozen snow angel position. The door slid open behind them.

"Begging the commander's p—" but it was too much of an enchanting spectacle for the janitor to continue his formality. It was as if a gaseous cloud of glittering chances at retribution had encased him. How many times had this arrogant power mad clown belittled him or stuck out his boot to trip him for a laugh? Who cares? This was better than the commander's abduction video! The janitor snapped a couple pictures with his digital camera. Then he turned and hobbled like a wounded warrior to a restricted area where he was promptly tortured and hanged.

Rocksalt dressed rapidly with aches in every niche of his mind and body. He flung his dripping briefs into a dark corner, reared a boot back to kick Lizzy but instead pivoted and stepped into the corridor with what little dignity he could muster, which wasn't enough to fend off a hot pulsing paranoia, and he stood for a moment not knowing which way to go. The loudspeaker informed him that they were penetrating the atmosphere of the unsettled planet they were to eradicate. What kind of commander would he be if he didn't push that big red button? He had no palpable answer for this one. Lizzy crackled behind him. He ran like hell, slid to a stop, turned around and then ran in the opposite direction.

He passed two scrambling officers in the hallway that paused to salute him. This soothed his injured ego a little. He ran faster, turning corner after corner, sprinting down the corridors like the track star he used to be with each giant stride emblazoning him to some former sun-streaked splendor. He considered telling the boys in the lounge about his heroic sexual exploits with the loose android. A bubble rose in his throat, he swallowed it. It rose again. He mulled over his endless achievements as he ran past more scrambling and saluting crewmen. Were they snickering? Doubtful. But why was everyone running in the opposite direction? He dismissed it as widespread incompetence and charged boldly ahead, increasing his strides, traversing the vast concourse and thinking of an ancient tune: No no they can't take that away from me—

The fighting station door slid open before him. The massive arena was completely void of personnel, even the break area. Tiny beeps pulsed in his ears, blue and gold lights zipped past his eyes. He walked zombie-like toward the monitor. It was filled with the cloudy target planet, which was certainly overloaded with Friguts and their pampered hostages. He deduced by the coordinates that his ship was soaring just within the planet's atmosphere. Every color of valor and dignity flushed through him. He dropped into his chair and removed the cover from the red button on the small flashing console before him. Deserted by cowards! He checked the radar and spatial coordinates again. But specifically why had his crew abandoned him? Because of a little constructive criticism? An eerie moment passed. At the right side of the huge monitor entered the ship's emergency shuttle. It floated slowly across the screen. Noses and buttocks of his crew pressed against its portholes. Rocksalt reached for his gun handles and, clenching his teeth, reduced it to glowing cinders. Without relaxing, he eyed the target screen and smashed the big red button with the side of his fist and then immediately guided the ship to a safe distance to observe the spectacle, for there was nothing more fascinating or gratifying to Commander Rocksalt than watching an enemy planet explode from a safe distance.

Silently, as if it scarcely existed, a Frigut interceptor ship tumbled out of nowhere to seize the released nuclear bomb and, while Rocksalt leaned back to exhale and consider his illustrious destiny, returned it to its hold where it could detonate with minimal loss of life.