by Marc Horne
Chapter 15
Moving so many ships through subspace and successfully coming back out requires a lot of brainpower, navigation skills and reassuring of reality. The Earth brain farmer grid almost browned out. The farmers were confused and tired. They barely ate that day. Bits of the entire universe kept flying through their minds. Five thousand ghosts begged to come back to life nearby the farmers’ planet.
Tamano noticed it first. Her parents were farmers who lived nearby. She was visiting them and feeding them a simple nut soup when she noticed them doing a faded moonwalk around their hovel. Her mother slowly strolled to her bed and started endlessly smoothing the sheets, getting a millimeter closer to perfection every time she smoothed. Her father started mouthing long complicated numbers and sometimes a word or two “dragon”, “earth”, “remember”, “coordinates.”
Tamano’s cheekbones grew even sharper. She had tried tearing their eyephones out before but her parents didn’t like it. The feeling of unused brain capacity to them was like the feeling you or I would have if pounds of grey matter hung out of our ear holes. It was too late for them.
But still, this unusual activity worried her. She left them in their stupor and galloped to the new camp, passing a few more similarly confused Terrans on the way, truly blind and deaf now the implants on their heads were sucking up all perception.
Back at the camp she ran into Gomez who was sharpening a sword as he hung out with the guards outside Xolo’s tent.
“Gomez. Bad stuff is happening.”
Gomez looked up. “It’s piling up isn’t it? What is it now?”
“The headnet is overloading. Some big operation is going on. It has to be space travel…nothing else eats so much data… even the talent shows.”
“You think it has something to do with us? Space is…don’t make me say ‘space is big.’”
“Anytime anyone moves that much metal around space, it has something to do with Earth.”
“True.”
“And the princess just got back from an illegal trip out there, y’know. And then there’s this Xolo guy…”
“Stud!”
“Total. But, look where’s the king. Is he in his throne room.”
“Yes. C’mon. Let’s go get him. Tell him not only are the dead rising but also the sky is falling down. And it looks like rain.”
“Thanks Gomez. I like practicing bad news with a fool.”
“You’re welcome.”
…
The king’s brow was heavy. He was in thought after he heard the news. Think as he might, even he, the king of Earth, could not fight the data farmers’ thoughts as they carried the probability of a marauding space fleet through long mathematical knots.
“I’m thinking we should scatter, Tamano,” he said as he looked up at the tall, beautiful rider who he had occasionally ridden and been ridden by. He would miss her in the days on the run, before they killed him.
Tamano and Gomez looked at each other in embarrassment. The King was prone to these moments of doubt, especially when Sunny was not around.
Gomez looked at the king, waiting for him to hit bottom and then get the spark that would bring him roaring back to life.
Gomez needed to see that. His nature was to ride wild. When he met the king he had been roaming around on his mantis horse, playing his guitar, finding ladies who weren't paired up and plugged in yet and occasionally getting in a scrap with gangs of soil pirates and road warriors.
Then one day he saw the king and his knights roaring down a hill and pulverizing the skull clan, a clutch of flesh-eating throwbacks who had almost depopulated the spike of Italy.
The king was fast, his spirit moved so fast that his horse had to race to keep up with him. And he was cool: compassionate. Any skull face who would wipe off his paint and file his teeth flat again could roll with the human army.
At the end of that battle Gomez had been amazed to find himself standing in the wreckage. He couldn't remember at what point he had ridden in to fight by the king’s side and when everyone was congratulating him for rescuing the big man, it was already like a breakfast-faded dream.
Two years had followed. Amazing years. They had marched around the Mediterranean and established strong communities, happy humans. No bloody things stuck in their eyes and ears, not RePeeting celebrities’ proclamations and random thoughts, not figuring out things that fat people needed solved so they could breed a new species to eat.
Then came the zombies. From nowhere they came, on a day like any other. The dead of the King’s own wars made up the meat of the first waves. Horrible sight. Heavy casualties. But the King grew even stronger. And when he came up with the plan to challenge the status quo and make a space-alliance to clean up the planet, no-one had a moment’s doubt because the told them about it from astride a table in a voice like a song.
Now he had lost it. The sky was falling in. The gamble had failed. Death was probably coming from the sky, and it was definitely coming up from below the soil. The king could not handle this death sandwich.
Gomez looked at Tamano. He saw the look on her face. It was exactly how he felt. The feeling of a question mark without a question.
Sunny came in the room. They bowed. It refreshed the mind: the flush of blood and the comfort of courtesy.
“Father, if I may, Xolo is regaining consciousness and he is asking for you.”
The king’s usual tenderness was sounding a bit itchy. “We have an alien invasion about to happen we think, my dear.”
“So I think you should probably want to talk to the galaxy’s greatest killer then, shouldn’t you father.”
He smiled. There was steel in his spine again. He hoisted her on his hip and off they went. Gomez and Tamano were three steps behind. Gomez said to Tamano, “Shit is about to get real.”
Tamano would have had sex with Gomez over a year ago if he had not had the habit of saying that shit was about to get real. She considered that a deal breaker.
