Chapter 6
Space Sector J as designated by
the Space Customs Board of Interstellar Travel and Spaceway Management is known
throughout the remaining restricted universe as a remote lawless area populated
by thieves and mercenaries just beyond the civilized rim. Its vast lonely
stretch of the Neopolsi Bend Asteroid Field overlapping with the Dionide Belt
and intersecting with a plethora of derelict planet and moon orbits with no
less than four local stars makes it a complex haven for fugitives and
desperados of all kinds. Such a tight physical space configuration would not
have been possible in the earlier times of the universe but things had changed
much since then.
The Great Apococlysm had wiped away most of the infinite void
leaving only a concentrated pocket of space teaming with celestial bodies. It
was as if gravity and mass now dictated size and space and time in a backwards
sort of way. Stars and planets could now exist startlingly close to one another
and simple technology allowed the multitude of inhabitants to travel the warped
distances conveniently. If only these sentient creatures jetting all about
truly understood just how closely they teetered on the brink of extinction in
their fractured physical universe, like tiny fish around a temporarily clogged
drain in a dwindling pool, they might have realized just what was really
important in life. But alas things were clouded now and chaos, mayhem and
selfish tactics were often an accepted way of conduct.
“Could
we have picked a worse place to escape?” Kanda quipped.
The scene was indeed
inhospitable. Among a toss of blackened asteroid shards spiky makeshift rogue
pirate ships circled the small dust encrusted space craft at a distance trying
to determine what kind of incredible defense system such a seemingly vulnerable
little vessel would have for it to dare to traverse the J sector alone, and
what valuables they might also carry.
Suddenly a deep alien dialect
intoned over their com-speaks. “Koo-Datcha da hwongo, baloodar?” Then there was a shift in language as an automated
interpreter literally deciphered the words. “Hey man, nice butter fish you’ve
got there. What are you inserting?”
Yzo was puzzled by both versions
of the inquiry, but Kanda grabbed the gist. “I think he’s Virgilian,” Kanda
said and then quickly replied into the com with a bogus answer: “Ya broog, she
aint pretty but she hauls the quog.” Kanda’s bluff casually referred to a
dangerous and volatile old power system, knowing that a ruptured quog drive
would take out every ship in view. That would keep any attacks at bay for the
moment.
Suddenly a pan-ether Hucoti transmission interrupted the
tenuous conversation. A harsh militant toned voice accompanying an invasive
holographic projection commanded the attention of every star pilot across
Sector J. “Attention all space pirate scum of the J sector. The Empress
Tamary offers a hefty reward for the return of this alien. He must be intact
and alive!” From the Hucoti projectors
on every bridge and in every cockpit of every pirate ship in the quadrant
floated a crude translucent light image of Kanda taken from surveillance cameras
aboard the warship Cowchekk.
“Cheesy
butt-holes! You didn’t say you were wanted,” Yzo exclaimed.
“It
didn’t really think I was.”
“Goola dakta toobo. Ba rahnoo
Spic!” crackled a transmission from the
nearest circling ship, and then the translation, “I’ve not groped you around
here before. I think you are spec!”
A snaky yellow arm of plasma
leapt from the pirate vessel and phased without damage through the grimy canopy
of the small two-seater, morphing into a functioning melon-sized eyeball
between Kanda and Yzo. It leered about jerkily and then dissolved.
“Koota
Spic!” the pirate exclaimed.
Yzo was alarmed to see several
of the thorny ships suddenly alter their orbits and turn inward towards them.
“Oh, Kanda, we’ve got to be going….NOW!”
“Right, right! Strap your ass
down!” As Kanda dodged and dipped through the jagged giant black crystal
asteroids the foggy clouds of finer particles parted around them and the small
chunks bounced off the forward energy shield of their small shuttle. Still,
deliberately plowing through the media was shaking the cabin violently and Yzo
gripped the seat tightly, a bit horrified at the extreme evasive maneuvers his
new friend had chosen. Close
behind sped the space pirates. “Keep those big peepers open, I need somewhere
to lose these guys.”
Through the dark sparkling fog
Yzo saw connected masses snaking through the space above them and realized what
they were. “Kanda up there. It’s a patch of moon mold. We can hide.”
“I see it, hold on.” Kanda
banked up into the colossal webby masses that were a massive living space
garden thriving on the ice and nutrients of the volcanic asteroid field.
Moon mold was a bizarre mega fungus that formed thousands of
deep spongy caves perfect for hiding a small shuttle. Despite its phallic
serpentine appendages and spotty tangerine on grey pattern, it was not the
strangest thing one could find floating about in the void. That would debatably be a soft glowing and sometimes
dimensionally unstable substance called loctogrine or phasing space cheese, which is excreted from the
glands of an elusive inter-dimensional creature, the ungainly space-dwelling
drandack. Though a rare delicacy, it is really an acquired taste usually only
afforded by the very wealthy.
As Kanda piloted the filth-covered shuttlecraft down a dark
spore cave, Yzo having eaten nothing but a pocketful of dry emergency rations
for the last few weeks, let his mind drift momentarily to a much nicer setting
where he was being served a lovely loctogrine sandwich with a tall glass of
Kotapese Chablis on a breezy palm shaded veranda in the biggest dining room
ever conceived.
Kanda shut down the shuttle
systems to avoid being detected. Out beyond the cave he could see various
pirate ships combing the mold caves with searchlights and yellowish green laser
scanners. One was shooting pink smoking canisters randomly into the holes which
exploded with flooding phosphorescence. “We can’t stay here for long. We have
to get some where safer. What’s in this sector?”
Yzo
still immersed in his fantasy replied, “Well… there is The Club.”
“Ya,” Kanda sighed realizing it
was the best and most obvious choice, “Club N. That’s perfect. I think I’ve got an idea how to shake
them there.”
“You
wanna’ make a run for it?”
“Alright,
let’s see what this thing can really do.”
Chapter 7
Aboard the Cowcheck Ensign Salmoona looked up from the virtual want ads to
find her sensor display had excitedly reformatted to view a distant anomaly.
Quickly running a scan she announced her findings. “Colonel, There’s a small
vessel approaching off the starboard bow.”
Colonel Chen Sat up from his
lazy recline in the broad cushy command seat. As far as he was concerned
driving this old bilge tank around was far beneath his intelligence. It was
only a matter of time until he won the empresses favor and this was merely one
of her meager tests she had bestowed upon him until then. Fly the ship,
flush the system, don’t flush the system… Oh my aching asshole, Chen thought. I'm literally cleaning her toilets! How many mindless hoops would he have to leap through
and how long would he have to wait for her favored attention? Was she not
impressed by the magnificent army of loyal and nearly invincible cyborgs he had
presented her with for the last several years? And what of his dazzling charm
and sultry sex appeal? After all she was
a woman. How long could she resist her own needs? Needs that clearly the
emperor had no desire in satisfying, or so Chen suspected. He sighed and spoke
into the jaw-mounted com. “Starship, hold your position or be disintegrated.”
His voice boomed loudly on a bass-heavy voice enhancer giving Chen an elevated
sense of importance.
“This is the space vessel Cacha we request an audience to negotiate for the life of our
crew mate.” intoned Tardo’s crackly voice audibly across the Cowchekk’s bridge.
The commotion had caught the
interest of the Empress herself who at that moment made an entrance behind
Chen. Chen immediately stood, offering her the helm ceremoniously and she slid
into the seat like a serpent wearing a tight, metallic, blackish green,
reptilian skin suit with chunky gravity defying jewelry flashing about her face
and neck. The drone twins had just let her hair fall in a dramatic blonde
meter-wide swoop.
Aboard the Cacha Kimi grabbed the com set from Tardo’s head and yelled
into it. “We demand you return Kanda!”
Tamary listened to the voice of
the furious little she-alien. “How delightful,” she purred with an evil grin.
“Locking
on exploders. At your command Empress,” Chen reported.
“Hold
there Colonel. Scan their ship. What sort of life forms are they?”
Chen turned to the complex
display screen for information. “The sensors say they’re the same genetic
makeup as the previous prisoner.”
“Specs?! Oh, then by all means,
bring our guests in. We will grant them audience. Notify Tarx to meet us in the
royal dining chamber at once.”
Chen began enacting the idiotic
tasks but as he did he thought to himself. Ya, lets see how well you give
orders with my fat throbbing cock in your mouth.
The royal dining chamber was a
long enclosed hall with filtered synthetic daylight. Kimi and Tardo were
escorted in by a polite blue green robot and followed by a pair of armed brush
troopers. They were seated next to each other at the near end of a long marble
table striped with brownish red and white. Each place-setting had no less than
twenty sparkling utensils, combining different absurd aspects of spoons and
forks but nothing you could really eat with. Before them was an incredibly
large smoked ham being sliced by a trio of spidery server drones. In addition
there was also a wide platter of steaming gelatinous black-yolked eggs. To the
left of the table stood Dr. Tarx coldly focused on the two specs.
At the far end of the table
seated in a huge radial patterned throne was Empress Tamary in a white fluffy
gown of endangered Midalont feathers with a bold yellow-orange brazier. Her
hair formed a huge lofty platinum oval above her head. “We’d be delighted if
you joined us for breakfast,” her voice echoed across the chamber.
“Your majesty,” Tardo quickly
started, “we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience of-...”
“Oh,
Tardo, you’re such puss-hole, let me
handle this!” Kimi interrupted.
“Kimi
don’t-…”
“Tardo, shut it!” She gave him
the ‘don’t fuck with me’ glare then quickly turned her attention to the royal
hostess. “We demand you return my husband immediately!”
“Why, my dear,” Tamary began
with an illusive smile, “I'm sure I have no idea what you’re so upset about.
Your little… husband is it?” Her eyes
sparkled. “He left of his own accord soon after we saved him. Have you seen him
since, Dr. Tarx?” She asked feigning naïve innocence.
Tarx sensed also a slight edge
of implied growing impatience in the empresses’ inquiry. Undistracted, he
remained focused on a small hand-held scanner. As the device sucked in little
sniffs of air he walked slowly right up to the seated spec pair. “No Your
Majesty, I have not.” Tarx finally answered with a cold flatness.
“You are obviously lying!” Kimi
blurted at Tarx who seemed to be rudely analyzing her with his little machine.
“And get that thing away from me!”
Tardo slapped his paw over his
own wincing eyes, mortified by the accusatory outburst. “Oh Kimi, do not do
this,” He said uselessly, knowing once she got started there was no stopping
her.
“Tardo, you are not helping
here!” Kimi growled back in a low angry tone that drilled into his skin.
Tarx was finished with his
analysis and announced his conclusion, “I'm afraid these two aliens don’t
possess the pheromone the other one does. This one’s too old,” he flicked a
bony finger toward Tardo’s silver pelt, “…and that one’s a bitch.”
“Oh, you have no idea,” Tardo blurted in hopeless agreement,
though Tarx had simply intended a gender distinction.
“Oh,
fuck you Tardo!” Kimi kicked Tardo hard under the table.
The charade of breakfast was
over. “Well then if they aren’t as useful as the other one, throw them in the
detention cell. The smelly one will return for his mate soon enough.”
Tarx was momentarily engaged
with incoming information then turned and addressed the empress. “Empress,
there are reports of pirates pursuing a shuttlecraft headed toward Neopolsi.”
“Well
then,” She rose from her throne, “I’d better change.”
Chapter 8
Yzo and Kanda sped along through
a bright cloud of red protoplasma that drastically warped and weakened the
shock rays blasting blindly from the pirate ships behind them. Dropping down
out of the cloud in a quick unpredictable arch they met a spray of glassy ice
shards that burst upon impact with their front shield. The luminous
belthium-rich atmosphere of Neopolsi was coming up before them in all its glory
and thick blue green clouds boiled up to greet them. Kanda could see the jagged
pirate ships in hot pursuit but he did not immediately take cover in the
obvious fog. He knew they would just track his impulse signal. Instead he raced
off to the south in what seemed like a bad move as this gave the pirates the
advantage of clear chase and now they were gaining.
“What are you doing? Hide in the
clouds! They’re catching up with us!” Yzo was hysterical.
“I
know what I'm doing. I’ve been here before, trust me.”
As circuit-frying neutralizer
bolts arced randomly past their hull, Kanda suddenly veered directly into the
opaque steamheads, screeched to an obscured mid-air halt. Then as they hovered
motionless in the thick vapor he cut all power.
Yzo’s stomach heaved as they suddenly began a powerless
tumbling total freefall. They both gripped the seat tight as condensation began
a loud thunder directly on the small starcrafts surface, the shields all
deactivated. Immediately the dust and crud started peeling and rinsing away.
They fell six thousand meters through the torrent and when they emerged Kanda
saw that the ship he was piloting was a shiny pinkish orange. Before them was
the Dondooran Aero Highway with a stream of ships of all shapes and sizes
moving happily toward the beaconing search lights of Club Neopolsi. Kanda
powered back up and quickly merged with the traffic having effectively lost
their pursuers.
“Sacred ball sacks! What the
fuck was that?” Yzo was catching his breath. “What are you, a stunt pilot?”
Kanda smiled coyly and thought I'm
a brave and mighty Spec, but at the
moment he was busily encoding a message on a little used frequency. “I'm
sending a message for my wife and friend to meet us at the club. They’re
probably worried about me. Anyone I can call for you?”
Yzo
paused for a moment and thought. There was someone; someone who he was supposed
to meet here weeks ago. But he’d missed his opportunity for reunion. He had no
idea what he could possibly say this time. He’d have to think on it for a
while. “No, I'm b’loo, thanks.”
Chapter 9
The titanic royal war vessel
sped through the void enroute to the planet Neopolsi. Of course space was not
nearly the void it used to be. Now it was more a celestial obstacle course of
moons and stars and asteroids laced with stellar phenomena of all kinds, like
some sort of galactic-scaled sugary breakfast cereal swirling trough the
cosmos.
Tarx maneuvered himself into the
tall seat at a cluttered work bench in his private study. The benefits of being
science officer and personal physician to The Empress included full unlimited
access to the most highly sought after tools materials and technology in
existence. If only this were enough. For despite all his centuries of
experience and accumulated knowledge in the field of diabolic science, despite
all the reasonably amazing inventions he himself had created, all the theories,
experiments and studies he’d produced, he’d never earned the respect of the
Neopolsian science community. This painful fact burned down into his very core
for it echoed far back in time to when he was a young struggling scientist on a
human world that stole his inventions and robbed him of the credit. A world
that would have felt his wrath had it not ignorantly destroyed itself.
However, it was not so much that
the Neopolsian science community robbed Tarx of any credit due, it was that the
consortium of the most brilliant, productively creative and artistically
inspired geniuses in the remaining universe simply had no appreciation for
Tarx’s inventions which were unfortunately always divisively evil natured. Try
as he might, Tarx just lacked the ability and inspiration to create anything
that was truly beautiful or beneficial to all life forms.
Meanwhile all the
high tech artists and creative scientists residing at Club Neopolsi with their
innovatively holistic and creative minds were perpetually inventing and
producing the most cutting edge amusements, stimulations and life enriching
innovations lifekind had ever seen. The combined communal inspiration of so
many proactive and passionately creative geniuses was like a total
self-perpetuating life force of its own. Scientists and artists alike deemed
Club N as the true nexus of the universe and constantly flocked there to share
ideas and bask in its creative glow.
Tarx looked down at the oblong
angular device on his work bench. “This time will be different. They will not
only appreciate me, they will bow down in my honor.”
The door slid open and Tamary
flew in. “Tarx!” She was clearly upset. “Look at this! I have a wrinkle! Do
something now!”
Tamary was in fact, like Tarx himself, several hundred years
old. She however still occupied the same body she had been born with. Her youth
and beauty was due to a tiny but special fetus she held captive in a small
stasis tube strung around her neck and plugged into her spine. Slowly but
constantly she sucked the vital essence from this tiny unborn child like a
cold-blooded vampire.
“Oh let me see.” He came at her
with a giant luminous ringed lens on a multi-jointed metal arm that magnified
every makeup-clogged pore and persistent lip hair on her face. There dividing
the landscape was a craterous trench forming, swallowing whole villages. “Oh…
yes… I see what you mean.” He said drolly.
“Do
something! I can’t be seen this way!”
He sighed. “Well what do you
expect? That blob of fetal goo you exploit has lasted you several lifetimes. Hundreds of years later it’s almost
exhausted. You just need another source of youth.”
“Can’t
you just get a new one?”
“No
it was special. It’s one of a kind.”
“Well,
can’t you clone it?"
“No. You are living on its
spiritual essence. Duplicating its cells won’t duplicate its spirit. You’ve
just nearly exhausted it. Accept it. Let it go. This new method of enhancement
we’re pursuing is much more powerful anyway. You do want power don’t you?”
“Well of course! But I need it now!”
“Empress, as soon as we have the
spec we can use his pheromone to attract the clitorsa and extract her milk, and
then we can perform the… youth ritual.”
He stumbled over his last words not knowing quite what to call it.
“Are you sure this will work
Tarx?” Tamary asked, sensing a bit of vague uncertainty in Tarx’ voice.
Although the doctor had served
Tamary for hundreds of years before she was empress, there had been a period of
time when, obsessed with re-synthesizing his own human body lost forever to the
Great Apococlysm, he had ventured out on his own into this strange new
universal configuration. He was but a brain and a few other vital salvaged
organs housed in a pair of umbilically linked mobile cubes on thin robotic
tripods but he traveled throughout the strange new worlds in search of any
possibility of regaining what he had lost.
After several various cloning
disasters, One on Migeb and three others in Sector Q, Tarx’s quest brought him
to a small cavernous jungle moon where the primitive indigenous natives, the
Clitorians, practiced a mysterious religious ritual that promised eternal life
and power. He had observed the frenzied howling little tribes people invoking
an ancient powerful entity from another plain of existence in a ceremony
involving the milk of a rare clitorsa. The process proved to be a dead end for
his own purposes but he knew this knowledge would someday prove useful.
“Believe me Empress, I know for
what I speak of. I’ve witnessed it myself.” Tarx had thoroughly sold this
process to The Empress, however he’d never mentioned any possible side effects
that might occur. Indeed he had left out many details. “Now in the mean time
let me get some spackle cream for your trench. He turned and squeaked awkwardly
across the room.”
Tamary looked down at the device
on the cluttered bench, “What’s all this you’re working on here?”
“Please be careful it’s my
newest invention. I intend to present it to the Neopolsian High Science Gild
while we are there.”
Tamary inspected the sleek black
device and read the acronym lettered across it in bright red letters: BAR. “Well I hate to break this to you Tarxy, but I think
they already made one of these. How’s this supposed to work anyway?” She picked
up the dark machine, pointed the projection barrel precariously at her mouth….
and spoke into it. “I’ll have a fishy dildo straight up with a twist.”
The original fishy dildo
coincidentally was also an immoral invention. An evil torturous device of human
origin with an array of self deploying hidden barbs; its early introduction
into alien society nearly shocked the non-human community to their senses about
humanity and almost caused a universal human embargo. But being masters of spin
marketing as they are, humans successfully reinvented the concept in the image
of a potent mixed drink: One part Virgilian clam juice, three parts vodka or
what ever would get your physiology the most crocked, a dash of lime and a
whole pickle. After the reinvention human culture was more popular than ever.
“Nothing’s
happening Tarx. I think it’s broken.”
Suddenly the door slid open.
Colonel Chen strode confidently into the room. “My Illustrious Lady,” Chen
started with pretentious formality, “there are no reports of the alien’s capture.
Furthermore upon inspecting the prisoners’ ship we discovered a recently
received coded message sent from Neopolsi. He may be sending for their help.”
“He is there on Neopolsi. I am
sure. It’s the head quarters for those planet-hugging Galactic Gurus. Those
neutral nelly passive activists! … We shall retrieve him.”
“Empress,” said Chen, “the
security system at the Club is highly advanced and thorough. Conventional
weapons are useless there and my troops’ military programming will be
recognized by the scanners.”
It was true. whilst the rest of
the galaxy in paranoid fear of rumored massive random pirate attacks had
succumbed to the humanly popular idea that more and bigger weapons was the key
to survival, the many wise and diverse alien founders of Club Neopolsi had held
strong to the principal that the best defense against a gun was not another gun
but a gun-neutralizer. Thus all their efforts went into passive neutralizing
technology. It was no accident that the planet was surrounded by a naturally occurring
but totally out of place field of death-ray-neutralizing red protoplasma.
This
had always been a conundrum for Tamary’s empire-building forces and she so
hated that she could not possess the one last and most desirable vacation spot
in the universe. Still if she kept a low profile she could occasionally visit
to bask in its unparalleled amenities. It wasn’t that she could not afford to
build her own amazing club mind you; it was that her duplications of Club N
lacked the genuine inspiration the real thing possessed. Her facsimiles were
always pretentious and lame. It seemed that true passionate creation was an
entity that could not be merchandised, packaged or purchased. It had to happen
naturally.
“Chen,” Tamary replied with a
superior tone, “I am perfectly aware of the security at Club N. We shall play
by their rules, proceed delicately, diplomatically. And when we find him he
will surrender or else his little wifey gets it!” Tamary had
presented a small hand-held Hucoti projector that showed a three dimensional
image of Kimi and Tardo restrained in the make-shift torture chamber on board.
“And Chen, we are going to be in public so lose that tired battle armor and
find something nice to wear. My
crotch, were you born in that suit or something?”
