The Ace of Spades

From L to R: Patches, Kiara, Bonzo, Professor Feurich, Neimglo X3-30, Spike


“Well, professor Feurich, we’d like to thank you for your support.”

“Yes, professor, it has been an exquisite…collaboration, I must say. Bet one hundred.”

“Raise two hundred”

“Call.”

“Call. Well, I expect that I will be given safe passage to Grrnor before earth is destroyed.”

“Call.”

“Raise four hundred. Why of course professor, you can live happily on Grrnor.”

“Do you boys want anything to eat”

“Thanks, darling, but I’m good.”

“I could use a refill, Kiara”

“That’s not good for your system Patches.”

“Yes, I know, but this is the only good thing that’s come out of earth, and I’m hooked!”

Laughter all around

“You know, I’m a bit worried that I’ll be badly out of place on a planet with a superior race of dogs!”

“Don’t worry, professor, you’ll get along great with everyone. Humans are actually such sweet, naïve creatures. It’s a pity that we’re going to be annihilating the planet. But then again it’s such a rich energy source, and the positioning of earth is such that the repercussions of the implosion will be negligible.”

“By the way professor, you won’t be the only non-dog there. Grrnor is a melting pot of planetary cultures. Of course, you’ll be the first human there, but we are home to all sorts of races, even Horcens like Neimglo here.”

The dogs snicker; Neimglo glares

“I believe it’s your call Patches”

“Raise another six hundred”

“Call. You know what’s ironic, these humans call dogs ‘man’s best friend’”

More laughter among the dogs

“Call”

“Yes, but that did make our surveillance a lot simpler, than on the other planets.”

“Call”

“Yes, Kiara placed us in good homes.”

“I agree. Well done Kiara!”

“Call. Yes, the data collection was impeccable”

“I hope you have all the data you need to trigger of the implosion properly.”

“Yes, living in the homes of those scientists, made our jobs so much simpler. We won’t have to make any assumptions, we’ve got the precise data we need!”

“Not to mention good tummy rubs”

Doggy laughter

“So when will we be able to collect the plutonium”

“Don’t worry about that, we’ll handle it.”

“Well that’s what you said on the last planet too, yet you managed to inundate the sector with tachyons, and we couldn’t retrieve any of the plutonium.”

“That was a small oversight. We miscalculated the planetary mass, which caused an exponential particle decay, but this time we’ve got the exact…”

“I don’t care why that happened, I don’t want you to screw up again!”

“Shut up, Neimglo. You’re only a parasitic bounty hunter!”

“Well, perhaps you’d like to stop blabbering and show us your cards!”

“Three aces it is”

“Damn!”

“And just when I had a nice J,Q,K straight”

“Hold on a second professor, you might still have won. Perhaps Patchy here would care to explain how he keeps getting aces, especially when the Ace of Spades is still in the deck.”

“So what? I’ve got the diamonds, hearts and clubs”

“How convenient, you forgot to mention the ace of spades in your hind paw.”

Spike sniggers

“Oh, and what about you, Spike? How come you slid the king of diamonds under your seat? Oh, wait, that’s because the professor just showed a king of diamonds. You cheating lot of flea-bags!”
Patches stands up, knocking over his glass

“How dare you say that ingrate, when you should be thankful that we even let you dirty lot of scavengers tag along with us and collect up the remains at every planet!”

“Come on boys, relax!”

“Shut up, Kiara!”

“You son-of-a-bitch, don’t you dare tell my girl to shut up!”

“You go around destroying planet after planet scrounging up whatever energy you can generate from them and call us a dirty lot of scavengers?”

Now Spike stands up and whips out a de-atomiser

“I’ve had enough of you Neimglo!”

“And I’ve had enough of all of you!”

Neimglo clasps his hands together sending out waves of high amplitude ultra sound, the dogs fall to the floor flailing. Spikes sends out a blast from his de-atomiser, that hits the lightbulb and causes an flood of antimatter particles destroying nearly two blocks of building.

So finally the dogs’ devious ploy is thwarted by an unassuming ace of spades, and the earth is not obliterated (except for the two blocks around Professor Feurich’s place)


I thought it would take 15 minutes, but it took nearly an hour. Click on the image for a full sized version, I didn't post the full size pic here cause it's screwing up my blog alignment. And I hope none of the readers are colour blind!