Hardcore Honey & the Distress Call

Honey glanced at the data readout with no small degree of irritation. Its beeping was incessant and while she would ordinarily have been all over a distress call like a prehistoric mosquito over amber, it’d been a long week.

Fuck, it’d been a long month.

She’d saved a fledgling civilisation from certain genocide, allied herself with a band of thieves and whores to prevent the forces of darkness entering the mortal realm, and had even managed to fix a vending machine with nothing more than a well-placed kick and a posidrive screwdriver.

To put it mildly, Honey was completely and totally fucking knackered.

“Alright, alright.” She muttered to herself as she padded barefoot to the still-beeping console. “All fucking right…”

There’s no doubt at all that Honey was always going to answer the distress call. That was just what she did. In no universe ever would Honey, any Honey, have let such a call go unanswered. Her mood did shift significantly, however, upon giving the readout a thorough look.

“Eighteen Eighty Five, eh?” She grinned. Either her day was about to turn into some kind of parody of the weakest of a decent trilogy, or she was going to save the day and celebrate with some hopefully disease-free pussy - the Wild West was not known for its advancements in women’s health, after all. Regardless she’d had all of her shots, and Honey did not need an excuse to don a Stetson and ride bareback.

“Ready, Orca?” she asked out loud of her vessel, to which the ship hummed a positive response. “You know the drill. Punch that shit.”

***

Flat on her belly with a pair of binoculars to her eyes, a somewhat uncomfortable position given her double D’s, Honey watched the wagon train from a distance. That was definitely the source of the distress call, she’d had Orca quadruple check.

That in itself did not make a great deal of sense, for as best she could tell there was nothing or no one even remotely out of time on or around the wagon train.

She got to her feet. Sense or not, there was clearly something not quite right else there would be no distress call. Her only viable option was to get her derriere down there, and find out what the fuck was up.

Many folks who traversed Tima and Space, Honey knew, were cautious.

She was not.

The way she saw it, what was going to happen was going to happen, and if it wasn’t going to happen but did happen as a result of her actions then so be it, no one would ever know any different because once something has happened it has, of course, happened.

There were fixed points in time, of course. Events that always have will happen (and yes that does make sense - try again) have will always have happened. Honey knew of only one individual capable of breaking a fixed point and as far as she knew, he hadn’t been back to the Wild West for an inordinately long amount of time.

***

She dismounted, holding up her hand signalling that the wagon train should come to a halt. Before she had chance to utter so much as a word though several individuals appeared from within the train and assembled themselves into what could only be described as a somewhat offensive formation.

Honey’s eye twitched. It was involuntary but most absolutely justified, for rather than brandishing what would be considered the primitive weapons of the time, those in the aforementioned offensive formation appeared to be carrying weapons that would not have looked out of place in the midst of an intergalactic civil war. She knew this for a fact, because she had carried such weapons herself, in that exact scenario.

“Note to self,” she said under her breath. She was not carrying a weapon herself; she rarely did unless the situation demanded it. The situation she currently found herself in did, of course, demand a weapon, but she didn’t know that until it was too late. “Have Orca run a self-diagnostic programme. This shit’s fucked.”

Without any particular warning, one of her would-be aggressors turned actual aggressor, and fired. It was an energy weapon and the shot was true. Honey had absolutely no chance whatsoever of dodging it or any Matrix-type shit like that, which made it all the more remarkable when the bolt of energy did, indeed, come to a quivering halt no more than eight inches from the tip of her nose.

“Time dilation.” The voice came from behind her and she spun around on her heel. “It’s moving, but if you were to remain in the same position you were in you’d likely die of old age before the shot got to you.”

“You’re a Honey,” said Honey.

“Yeah,” replied Honey, as if that response was necessary. “My Orca picked up the distress call, too.”

“Well clearly your Orca told you there was some funky shit going on here. Really must get that voice unit repaired.”

“Yup. Best I can tell these fuckers are Honey Hunters. Draw us in, take us out.”

“Reckon we owe them a world of pain, in that case. May I?” Honey nodded towards the weapon, a good old fashioned semi-automatic machine pistol, at Honey’s hip.

The gun in hand, Honey fired into the time dilation field, taking the time to set up a single shot for each of the Honey Hunters.

“Drop the field whenever you’re ready,” she said. “This is gonna’ be fun.”

And with the time dilation field no longer a factor, mere nanoseconds later all of the Honey Hunters found themselves with a single bullet to the head. About the same amount of time later, they were all dead and fun was definitely had.

“Thanks for the assist,” said Honey, turning back to face Honey, but Honey was gone. A lesser being would’ve questioned whether Honey had ever actually been there in the first place. Honey, however, was not a lesser being. She was, in fact, Hardcore fucking Honey.