“But you’re all sterile, right?”
“Sterile doesn’t mean devoid of function and desire,” Fizan said. “Our stuff still works for pleasure purposes, but with the way we act and subconsciously smell, nobody wants to touch us and we don’t want to touch each other. The first few generations sent into the galaxies didn’t come back and didn’t send anything home. They found friends, lovers, formed families of their own and forgot why we existed. The implants make sure we remember.”
“That’s terrible,” Electra said.
“Nah, that’s what we exist for. If there wasn’t the need for goods, the Queen wouldn’t bother making us in the first place,” Fizan said. “I know my exact purpose and goal in life, what I was born to do. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt what the meaning of my life is. Can you say the same, sugar-tits?”
“I’m getting there, I think.”
“You’ll love the feeling when you make it all the way to knowing,” Fizan said. “Now, stand back while I work my magic on this clusterfuck.”
The hours passed. While Fizan labored to bring Letterman’s chassis back up to working condition, Electra set up the other parts of her plan. The first step was to get properly glamorous. She reset the Spatronic to go full-fabulous, ultra-glam and slid into the shell.
By the time the pinnacle in personal grooming accoutrement had finished with her, she looked better than the completely fabricated image on the front of the magazines to the point of hardly recognizing herself. The illusion took forever to achieve and apparently wouldn’t last long. Electra only needed a few minutes and she wasn’t planning on making a habit of going full super-starlet.
She sat in the lounge, prim, proper, glorious, and focused a camera on her to record a personalized message.
“Ready, Ivy?”
“Lights, camera, action, Miss Electra.”
“To the incompetent, bungling, wall-eyed, pitiful excuse for a pirate, Sempa,” Electra began. “I was surprised to learn you survived the minor scuffle with low-level collection bots on Station 111. I’m sure a massive amount of blind luck was involved in your continued, wretched existence. If you haven’t already heard, the items you failed to steal from me were successfully delivered and I was paid an exorbitant amount of money. It’s indelicate to talk about how much I have with someone as destitute and desperate as you, but let’s just say I am worth billions now. That’s billions with a capital B. They’re throwing me a gala at the grand opening of the Bi-MARP station. You probably didn’t get an invitation because you’ve fallen out of the top ten list of contributors. No doubt because you’re worse at treasure hunting than you are at piracy. In a display of how much bigger of a person I am, I’d like you to attend the gala as my personal guest. Feel free to show up fashionably late, like you always do.”
“Cut, Miss Electra,” Ivy said.
“Save the message,” Electra said. “I’ll tell you when to send it.”
Electra cleaned off most of the excessive makeup and undid the uncomfortable hair pins and ties creating the elaborate style spiraling up from her head. Timing would be important, especially with how much she had left to do before the grand opening.
She printed a six-pack of glass Coke bottles, had Ivy fill them with Coke Classic and headed down to the cargo hold. Fizan was putting the finishing touches on the Letterman conversion project when Electra arrived.
“Got your payment,” Electra said.
“Or we could work things out the old-fashioned way.”
“Nah, you’ve got an unfuckable pheromone odor turning me off.”
“No more jokes about that where people can hear,” Fizan said. “Not all of us Gromphra know that secret, and it might go badly if the wrong ones heard.”
“Got it. That was the last one, stinkbug.”
The electro-mace bounded past the doorway to the cargo hold, bounced off a wall and headed down the hallway toward the lounge in a series of ba-zzzerps.
“What was that?” Fizan asked.
“That? That was…this whole other stupid thing. Don’t worry about it,” Electra said, really not in the mood to explain impotent rage and the silly things it could make humans do, especially not to a Gromphra who had thoroughly figured out the meaning of her life. “Hey, why were you guys playing Yahtzee earlier?”
“Earthling board games are all the rage now,” Fizan said. “Everyone’s buying licenses to print the things. Clothes, too, like the hat you gave Blix. I’ve got a friend saving up to buy an elephant.”
“And Coca-Cola, I assume.” Electra held out the six-pack for Fizan to take. If she didn’t have her own private copy of the formula, she probably couldn’t have afforded to print even a sip, let alone a six-pack.
“Worth a fortune, but I’m drinking these.” Fizan took possession of the soda and ran her proboscis over the bottles to smell the glorious boon of carbonated sugar water in curvy, clear bottles. “Blix said it’s heaven in liquid form.”
“Yeah, it’s the original formula with cocaine in it,” Electra said. “So, go easy—or don’t. You’re a big girl. The cocaine made us fuck energetically and talk fast. Do with that information what you will—or what you can, I guess.” Electra chewed sheepishly on the inside of her cheek for a second. “Is Blix cool with what happened on the Make-a-Wish con?”
“She’ll get over it when I give her one of these…maybe half of one,” Fizan said. “Sending her a few nude pics wouldn’t hurt.”
“If that’s the price of smoothing things over, I’ll just have to accept Blix being mad at me for a while,” Electra said. “Walk me through the work on the collection bot.”
“I’ve got the frame as straight as it’s going to get. The door should close, but you’re going to have to put your hip into it to make it stay. Don’t bruise those luscious curves getting it locked or I’ll have to come kiss them better.” Fizan walked to the front of the repaired enforcement bot and opened the door. “I couldn’t rebuild the servo motors. Whatever you did smashed them flat against the floor, ceiling and back wall of the main casing. If I had more time, I could use a torch to burn them out—or you could set that hot ass of yours on them and they’d melt like butter. The deployment tanks had to be a little smaller than you hoped because I needed the room for the new servos and the mobile VI module.”
“Did you get the arms to work?”
“Only one, but that’s all you’ll need for what you’ve got planned.”
“This is going to work,” Electra murmured to herself.
“After all the work I put in, it better. Swing by and tell me how it goes.” Fizan walked down the ramp out of the cargo hold, waving the two arms on one side in farewell.
“Watch the galactic net newsreels,” Electra said. “You’ll know when it goes down.”
She hit the close button on the ramp and waited anxiously for it to finish buttoning up the ship.
“Ivy, set a course for Station 111,” Electra said, “and print up another Dickies jumpsuit for me.”
Chapter Eighteen
In a matter of a few days, Station 111 had transformed from a bloated, metal slug sitting in the middle of a nebula of vile gasses into a proper roadside attraction. Signs, flashing and lively, promised tours of the Battle of Bi-MARP, an all-elephant petting zoo and pictures with a genuine Electra Rex look-alike. Electra desperately wished she could turn to Treasure and have a laugh at the ridiculousness…except she was alone. She didn’t even have Letterman to make snarky comments about anymore.
“Ivy, are you seeing this nonsense?” Electra asked.
“I am unsure of what you are indicating is nonsense, Miss Electra.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s all nonsense. Hey, we’re friends, right, Ivy?”
“I am incapable of forming complex emotional attachments…”
“Please, just tell me we’re friends and you’re seeing the nonsense.”
“We are friends, Miss Electra, and I am witnessing the nonsense at the same time as you.”
&nbs
p; “Great. That didn’t make me feel even worse or anything.” Electra shook off the melancholy feelings and zipped up her jumpsuit. Shit needed to get done. That was the second most popular Embarker motto behind ‘never owe’ and she planned to embody it.
Ivy guided the ship to the designated docking point the landing authority had set aside for the Cadillux. Electra watched the exterior collision scopes that stated the private slip was reserved for the Captain Rex. At least her broke ass was getting free parking. A mob of adoring fans was already gathered outside the entrance to catch a glimpse of her.
As she descended the gangplank, the gathered throng erupted in dozens of different alien versions of cheering and applauding. At best, the noise was reminiscent of playing every type of music at the same time inside an active volcano. If they really loved Electra, they’d stop trying to make her ears bleed. She waved, even as she grimaced through the auditory discomfort.
Five Glott security guards, dressed in fancy new uniforms, created a pathway through the crowd. She stopped occasionally to take pictures with fans who asked. It was more of a reflex than anything, since ‘have your picture taken with a human’ was an option she’d offered as an activity back when she had been a professional party guest. She’d liked when her patrons had checked that box, since she could charge extra to sit and smile half the night—no forced conversations, no awkward dancing, just sit, smile and ka-ching!
There wasn’t a compelling reason to take a tour to see where the Glott pirates had fought the collection bots. She’d been there for the start of the event and hadn’t thought it interesting enough to stick around for all of it the first time. It wasn’t even accurate to call it a battle, especially since nobody had died. Electra had looked it up on the galactic-news-net while she and Treasure had practiced nudism on their way to the far wormhole spawns. Five Glott pirates had been injured, seven collection bots had become disabled and a minimal amount of property damage had been reported. Battle of Station 111 indeed. What Electra was interested in seeing was who they’d found to be the genuine Captain Rex look-alike.
She followed the flashing signs through the crowd, pointing out her new destination to the Glott guards clearing the way for her. They seemed perplexed as to why the actual Electra Rex might want her picture taken with a fake Electra Rex. When the mob finally parted at the edge of the stage, Electra had her answer.
“Captain Rex, sweetheart!” Weisella screamed.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Electra groaned.
Weisella, Electra’s former employer and last owner of the Cadillux, looked nothing like her. For one thing, Weisella was a Panaeus and only vaguely humanoid. They’d dressed Weisella’s shrimp tail in an Utopalex sleeve, put a brown wig on her and stuffed her tentacle arms into a reasonable facsimile of Electra’s rarely worn leather jacket. The likeness was underwhelming.
Weisella rushed to her and folded her in an extremely awkward hug by wrapping all her tentacles around Electra from neck to belt. Eventually Electra had to pat Weisella on the hip. “Can’t breathe.”
“I knew you would come to see me once you heard where I’d landed,” Weisella said, loosening the hug but not releasing Electra entirely yet.
“I didn’t…”
“And you brought my ship!”
“I brought my ship,” Electra said. “I also paid off your debt.”
Weisella forced a giggle, looking around whimsically at the people gathered to have their picture taken with the Electra Rex look-alike. “Oh, you’re so funny, Captain Rex,” she said. “Let’s call it a gift with a few minor entanglements.”
“Whatever,” Electra said. “How did you even get this job? We look nothing alike.”
“Of course we do, silly! I showed them the picture of us at our last party and they couldn’t hire me fast enough,” Weisella said. “The Glotts declared we were practically twins.”
“The party you stiffed me on? That party?”
“All irrigation under the overpass,” Weisella said. “That’s the Earthling idiom, isn’t it? I’ve been practicing your kind’s turns of phrase.”
“I have no idea. I’m not an Earthling.”
Weisella curled her tentacles to bring Electra closer. “I’ve thought a lot about this, a lot about you, and I’m willing to let you stick it in my nose. I may even like it.”
“Gross. No, I wasn’t trying to stick it in your nose,” Electra said. “I thought that was your butt.”
“How is sticking it in my nose grosser than in my butt?” Weisella asked.
“I don’t know. It just is.”
“Because my anus is on the bottom of my tail.”
“That’s really not…”
“I guess you can stick it there, but it’s full of poisonous spines.”
“Seriously, not what I was going for at all…not then, not now,” Electra said, desperately trying to extract herself from Weisella’s tentacles. After the struggling became a little awkward and their audience began grumbling, Weisella released her. “This is all a misunderstanding. Your nose is in the same place as a human butt and it’s shaped like a very nice human butt.”
“Exactly why I offered to let you—”
“I’m with someone,” Electra said. “She’s a prisoner right now, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m spoken for. And rescuing her seems to be a huge turn-on for both of us, so I’m saving myself up for… Why am I explaining this to you? Goodbye, Weisella.”
Electra walked away from the whole encounter, both literally and figuratively, feeling like she needed two showers after visiting Station 111 to wash off the smelly air and the film of social awkwardness that Weisella had smeared all over her. The Glott guards, more confused than ever after watching the odd exchange, asked where she wanted to go next. Electra pointed them toward the mercantile area.
The spindly, greenish, mottled Glott at the window didn’t seem to recognize her when she stepped up to the exchange booth, or, if he did, he didn’t care. It wasn’t like his job had ever hinged on the existence of tourism. “What do you need? What do you got? What do you want? Buying, selling, trading?”
“Buying,” Electra said. “I need two of your least volatile, most odorous gases mixed with an agent to create sticky condensation.”
“I got you. I see where you’re going. Making a stink bomb. That’s a thing we do. We’ll do the hell out of that.” The mercantile agent slid a datapad on a little chain across the counter to her. “Click the species you want offended by the smell and we’ll get mixing.”
Electra held her finger down and swiped the entire list.
“Tall order, but we’ve got the stuff. We’ve got the know-how. How much you need?”
“However much fits in these tanks, filled to the brim.” Electra showed the mercantile agent her own datapad displaying a picture and schematic of the tank Fizan had installed in Letterman’s old frame.
“You’re going to ruin a lot of people’s week, Captain.”
“Counting on it.”
“It won’t be cheap.”
“I’ve got a credit line.” Electra handed her datapad over to have her account code scanned, and just like that, she was back in debt. “Never owe,” she muttered to herself. “Sure, but shit’s got to get done.”
* * * *
Back aboard her ship, jumpsuit recycled and two showers taken, Electra finally relaxed in the captain’s chair, sipping a Cherry Coke. She could still back out. The point of no return hadn’t come and gone yet. Doubts might have gotten the better of her if she hadn’t seen the final piece of the Bi-MARP puzzle lock into place on Station 111. Dr. Baarqua had been maddeningly coy about the purpose of Bi-MARP, assuming she’d figure it out, and she had, at least partly, since she still didn’t know how it was going to serve as a cautionary tale.
Why had the Chamber decided to rebuild Earth? Why had they given the reconstruction contract to the frivolous Jun’Tar? Why had they poured almost limitless resources into the collection portion of the projec
t? Why had they turned around and secretly set up a wildlife sanctuary on Europa rather than sending the humans back to the slowly rebuilding Earth?
Electra knew the answer the moment she put together the piece of Fizan playing Yahtzee to the seemingly unrelated clue of Weisella having a paying job. Bi-MARP was an economic stimulus package. It had nothing to do with restoring Earth to working order. The Jun’Tar had done their job perfectly, while seemingly bungling the whole affair. They’d collected mountains of easily commoditized items and provided an army of highly colorful characters to race around the galaxies to promote the project and build interest in the mystery of Bi-MARP while creating an alluring mythos about humans. Even if Electra, the only human treasure hunter on the roster, hadn’t won the monetary prize—which she had, fair and square if not begrudgingly—they probably would have bounced her to the top in some other way to make her the face of Bi-MARP’s success. A human saving Earth? Everyone could feel good about that and, by extension, the Chamber for making it happen.
There was just one problem with the Chamber’s plan. Humans were chaotic and self-destructive, especially while under the influence of love.
“Send the video message to Sempa,” Electra said.
“Sending now, Miss Electra.”
“Plot a course to the Sol System. We’ve got a party to attend.”
Chapter Nineteen
There wasn’t really any way to prepare for what happened when Electra arrived in the Sol System and the now-complete Bi-MARP ring around Earth. Waste makes haste, an ancient Jun’Tar proverb promised, and apparently delivered often enough that people, the all-knowing Chamber included, still gave them contracts. Immediately upon exiting the wormhole, Electra found her ship surrounded by an honor guard of Jun’Tar construction vessels shaped like rings. They flashed lights, broadcast celebratory music that sounded like something ugly being tortured and flew happy patterns around Electra’s ship.
All she’d had to give for such royal treatment was a screwdriver, a mostly complete Monopoly game, a partial Yahtzee set, a Volkswagen Beetle, arguably pointless data from a sociologist’s dissertation, the fabled Bort Pod that contained an irate Martian, some reconstructed elephant DNA, oh, and the love of her life. Obviously, the last item on the list was the only thing she’d like to have kept. It wasn’t even close when she thought about it. Monopoly was a frustrating game that took forever to finish, and the Volkswagen Beetle had no luxury amenities. The rest of it was junk she would have recycled for fabricator molecules. Except maybe Bort, although he might currently be trying to impregnate Treasure, in which case, she’d recycle him too.
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