What an odd thing, Astroburger reflected, I’ve never thought that I, while constantly thinking Astroburgian thoughts, could personally be the subject (or was it object?) of my own catastrophe…
His thoughts were interrupted by a loud buzzing.
“The Drone Squad!” Queen Beia gave a delighted squeal. “I knew they’d come!”
“Who or what is the Drone Squad?” Astroburger asked as he stomped on a probing limb.
“My special protectors,” breathed Queen Beia. “Totally fearless in defending their queen!”
“But how are they getting past that thing?”
A loud, electronic hum filled the air, then Hedrone appeared at the gaping hole in the womb’s wall.
“Eassyyy,” he said. “We usssed vibronic pulssse drillssss. No matterrrr innn the known universsssse can withsssstaaaand them, however touggghhh!”
“What is that beast?” asked the queen, as it continued thrashing about.
“It’s an anti-planetesssimal,” explained Hedrone. “Like a giant, parassssitic sssspider, they attack living bodies larrrger than themselves. Don’t worry, our lasssser scimitarssss will ssslice it up in noooo time!”
Clutching a flaming blade he made wild, slashing movements at the legs, promptly separating them into chunks that twitched as they bled violently onto on the floor.
In the next few seconds, fifty of the fearless Drone Squad appeared and laser-scimitared their way through the anti-planetesimal’s bristly exoskeleton, while the living asteroid shuddered and died around them. Within that titanic creature’s besieged womb, the struggle abruptly ended, freeing them to break out…
Astroburger followed Beia and Hedrone past the black and red monster and into the Drone Squad’s craft. What a relief to be back inside a ship, headed for civilisation… but after leaping away through hyperspace they emerged into a place where the universe’s depths had an ominous bluish tinge.
“May the black stars condemn us,” muttered Astroburger.
“What’s up now?” asked Queen Beia. “Is it safe for us to return to Simulacra?”
“Return?” said Astroburger. “I’m afraid we haven’t the slightest hope of returning. We are deep in the most dreaded system in the galaxy – the realm of the Rhomboids! Not even your fearless Drone Squad can save us from our almost inevitable doom!”
“ ‘Almost inevitable’ – that is exactly what I would expect from you,” said Queen Beia. “A catastrophiser of the first order.”
“Oh noooo,” said Hedrone. “Look, it comesssssss…”
At the near end of the Rhomboid System was the Sargasso, a graveyard of spacecraft, the casualties of cluster warps and pirate attacks, now inhabited by mutants, Punkoids, and gypsy life forms that cultivated strange moulds reputed variously to be cures for disease or, alternatively, the cause of galactic contagion. Rumour had it that the notorious love toads, which were bright pink, wrinkled, and squat, and that constantly boomed their swollen bellies in a futile mating call throughout the ripe foliages of the Gardens of Fleschimor, were spawned of these exotic flora. And, wondrously, from the discarded tubes of rockets, the airlocks of ships, and the gently spinning rings of space stations sprouted growths that resembled weeds and kelp – all spawned from this dense Sargasso of space.
Tucked in behind the Sargasso were the Rhomboids, a collection of worlds held together by a complex gravitational system that had gradually pulled each of them out of shape until they were almost oblongular. The culture and laws of the Rhomboids were different from any other realm of the galaxy. Here was chaos with its own arcane rules, a weird entropy that challenged the laws of physics. Here was decadence – celestial, unearthly, and interstellar.
And herein lay the realm of the Octopus, said to rule by slime and fear. Fear was easy to comprehend, for all who opposed his / her rule were crushed in the monstrously huge, stinking coils. But slime? The heady exudations of the Octopus’s arms had a strange power over all those who breathed them. The perfume, aromatic and fetid, produced a state of desire strong enough to immobilise. While paralysed thus, the Octopus could orificially ransack its victims, weeping crocodilian tears shed not out of distress but unbridled hermaphroditic pleasure. Attendant upon the Octopus were the Jezebels, a deadly race of Slutoids who seduced spaceship crews through the cunning use of the vibrations emanating from their chthonic harps, the aroma of their perfumes extracted from the neck glands of diseased love toads, and the salacious glances of the Jezebels’ own eyes. Over thousands of years, the Jezebels had evolved the ability to float in space without air or protection, completely naked, their bodies perpetually ghost-white, their hair a fantastic glittering trail extending hundreds of feet through the void. They trained their young from the time that they could walk to ensnare and strangle their prey in the writhing coils of their hair and by issuing subsonic vibes with the acoustic charm of temple bells. Although seldom encountered outside the Sargasso, these space sirens were feared across the galaxy… yet those who had survived their serpentine entanglement said the moment just before death was deliciously sensual, and the pain an unholy delight.
Pondering these dangers, Rhameo looked up from his final preparations for the launch of the Skorpean fleet, and turned to Teleporteus.
“Our attack must be short and swift,” said Rhameo. “Take them by surprise, quickly and with overwhelming force.”
“Why not a little cunning, Brother?”
“There is no time for cunning, sibling. You heard our father.”
“That old fool?” laughed Teleporteus. “He’ll calm down in a day or two. You know his manic turns never last long.”
Rhameo was aghast. “The great Zoah’s command must be obeyed.”
“Here’s what I suggest,” Teleporteus resumed with a shrug. “We take fifty of our best ships, cloak them with invisibility shields, and attack through the Sargasso. They won’t be expecting us to come via that route. When we have demoralised them with our surprise attack – from the rear, as it were – we cut a swathe through the Punkoid rabble, then strike at the pulsing heart of their empire.”
“What about the Octopus?”
“Scared of his seductive slime, brother?” Teleporteus jeered.
“Pundit says there are two things to fear in the galaxy – the Wrath of Zoah, and the slime of the Octopus.”
“I have anti-slime tablets to counter the oily one.” Teleporteus patted his tunic pocket. “My own father, I do not fear.”
“And what do you fear?”
“Very little, and certainly not the Rhomboids, Sleazoids, or Punkoids.”
“And the Sargasso’s Jezebels?”
Teleporteus nodded. “Those erotic mermaids of deep space will present the greatest danger to us today.”
“What about the Volgogthians?”
“Brother, have you not heard of the Wrath of Zoah? He will be destroying them even as we speak.”
Rhameo was forced to agree, both with his brother’s observations about Zoah’s wrath and his scheme to attack the Rhomboids via the Sargasso.
Within an hour, the fleet was on its way. Once they had passed the Outer Worlds and the Crystal Belt, they went into spacewarp. Fifteen minutes later they appeared near the eerie silhouettes of the Sargasso.
From a distance, they could see little more than a dark, featureless expanse through which no stars could be seen, though as they closed in on the sprawling mess of abandoned ships they could make out individual craft. They jetted around the fronded hulk of a spaceship that was spread like a frozen starfish across the blue-blackness, while before them sat a rocket thick with the virulent space weeds that could feed off a single atom of hydrogen drifting by at a parsec’s distance. Branded on its side, a cryptic inscription composed of mysterious letters – USA – marked the gouged metal. Rhameo wondered about the strangeness of his destiny, for he was now a prince at war rather than hunting at his leisure, angry (yet relieved) that his bride-to-be had proved to be nothing more than a disembodied ovaloid and a pile
of clothes. After a few short years of peace, they were once more at war with the Punkoids, the Rhomboids, and the Volgogthians. Would there ever be peace again? Would he ever see that strangely beautiful, odd-coloured girl he had met in the remote gardens of Qwerty?
“Don’t worry,” soothed Teleporteus, apparently mistaking Rhameo’s thoughtful silence for fear. “We were all Sargasso virgins once.”
As Rhameo gazed out the portal, he was astonished to see a naked woman of larger than Skorpean size, yet exquisitely beautiful. A sweet, tangerine-like smell filled the cabin. And wasn’t that the sound of a harp? He felt oddly at peace…
“We’re not in heaven are we, Brother?” Rhameo asked.
“No way,” Teleporteus replied. “This is Sargasso and you’ve just seen your first Jezebel. Probably not your last.”
Aiming one of the ship’s laser cannons, Teleporteus pressed the trigger and the white-skinned form vaporised into a blue explosion. A second naked woman with even longer hair appeared at another portal and was similarly gasified by the trigger-happy Teleporteus.
Suddenly, their ship was shaken by an impact. Rhameo looked to the left and to the right, and then spied a long, thin craft pulling up alongside their own – the impact caused by long, suckered arms affixing themselves to the flank of their ship.
“So much for our invisibility shields,” muttered Rhameo.
Through the portals of the attacking craft, he could see the leering faces of Punkoids and hideous mutants with distorted faces and malformed bodies, mindsets warped to battle frenzy by tugga tugga juice, reactions accelerated by synaptic boosters, artificially amped up by a mordant soup leached from the tobogganing smut plants of Random. The roar of vibronic pulse drills filled the cabin as Rhameo watched the attackers smash through the space lock. Calmly, he drew his bow, and arrowed a four-armed monstrosity that scuttled towards him with the grace of an orangutan on expired steroids. But a moment later the ship was swarming with bloody-eyed Punkoids and other hideous mutants. One particularly horrible-looking specimen had a right arm studded with dozens of mad, hypnotically staring eyes, and a left orificed with drooling mouths uttering interstellar obscenities…
Though the situation looked hopeless, Rhameo raised his bow to fire an orange-tipped cortical command arrow, then felt the nozzle of a neuronic stun gun shoved into the small of his back.
“Drop it, sibling!”
“What are you doing?” cried Rhameo.
“What does it look like?” laughed Teleporteus. “I’m betraying you. And if you don’t cooperate I’ll throw you to the enpenised Slutoids!”
“How long have you been planning this little escapade?”
“For a very long time,” said Teleporteus. “In fact, practically since childhood. For as long as you’ve been the pomegranate of rheumy Zoah’s emerald eye!”
“You won’t get away with it.”
“Don’t talk like a comic-book character,” snapped Teleporteus, “This is real life! I will get away with everything! In the galactic arena of hard knocks, might is right. Didn’t you learn that in all your years of hunting?”
“I’ve learnt to respect the integrity of what I hunt.”
“That’s what sticks in my craw – your lily-white nobleness! You sick little saints make me want to vomit. Hey, what a great idea – let’s have you retching. Punkoid, hand me his vomit pistol. Open gobbo, bro! That’s right, open it good and wide. Now suck on this, sibling!”
Teleporteus squeezed the trigger, and instantly Rhameo disgorged.
“You pig!” shouted Teleporteus. “You’ve been sick on my space suit! Punkoid, punish him at once!”
“How, oh mighty one?” the Punkoid asked.
“Any way you please, you suppurating piece of space trash!”
The Punkoid tore open his spacesuit to reveal an obscene parody of a mouth in his side. The wound was unhealed, and oozed blood and pus. “Okay, sick saint, go down on my wound!”
Rhameo did not move.
“He’s being noble!” cried Teleporteus. “Well, we can fix that. Give him a taste of his own medicine – prick him with a cortical command arrow, and then his will will turn to jelly! There, Rhameo, hoisted with your own shaft! How does it feel to be a will-less animal? Now suck that Punkoid’s pustulent wound! And don’t try to enjoy it! We don’t want anyone getting off on humiliation in the Rhomboids, do we?” He turned to the jeering mob of Punkoids and Slutoids for agreement.
“Well, enough of this sport,” said Teleporteus. “We have an empire to conquer. Ugly friends, gather closer and listen to my plan… And you – my poor, trusting sucker of a sibling – the Octopus wants to meet you! Don’t look so alarmed! It’s a great honour!”
“Just what exactly did you do, child?” Gorgon asked the distraught Juraletta.
“Nothing,” Juraletta said with a shrug. “I behaved like any normal bride.”
“You must have overexcited him.”
“All I did was get undressed,” said Juraletta, for what more normal thing could a young bride do than disrobe for her husband? “And even then, I didn’t get completely undressed.”
“That must have been it. You mustn’t get undressed in front of the Fissionable Duke ever again,” Gorgon warned.
“There can’t be an ever again,” sobbed Juraletta. “The duke has incinerated! There’s nothing left – only a pile of ash!”
Gorgon was looking very worried, Juraletta could see, and she tried not to watch the despair forming on Gorgon’s countenance. As she glanced away, a broken sob escaped from her trusty friend’s throat. In a second, Gorgon was crying her heart out.
Moisture bundle, thought Juraletta, then felt ashamed of her thought.
“What’s the matter?” she enquired tenderly. “Have all your snakes died?”
As this was the worst calamity she could imagine for Gorgie, she had playfully mentioned it often in the past and it had become a joke, so when Juraletta deployed her familiar stratagem of theatrical exaggeration, she expected her jest to be responded to with a giggle. Not so – the tears and the sobs continued.
“I can’t tell you,” wailed Gorgon.
“What do you mean you can’t tell me?” Juraletta exclaimed in exasperation. “I’m your friend.”
“It’s too awful.”
“Don’t be silly, Gorgie. It can’t be that bad.”
“You silly child, can’t you understand?” Gorgon shrilled. “This isn’t just the end of your marriage. It’s the end of Qwerty.”
“What are you talking about? There will always be a Qwerty.”
Gorgon shook her head angrily. “How that trips off your silver tongue, Princess. How innocent you are and how terrible it is that that innocence is about to be shattered! But that’s the way with innocence – it only lasts as long as milk, and then it turns sour. You see, there isn’t any Empire of Qwerty. There was once, centuries ago, but over millennia the population dwindled from billions, to millions, to thousands, to dozens, and finally to two – the Fissionable Duke was one and you were the other. So it was imperative that the two of you marry and reproduce in order that Qwerty should continue.”
“When I think about it,” murmured the princess, “I think of my marriage to the duke as putative.”
“Mercy, child, who or what is putative? I never thought I’d hear such language issue from the pale lips of a princess. In any case, marry you did, putative or no putative – then alas, the passion the duke felt for you was too strong. His was truly a flaming torrent of love! Can’t you see, Princess, you are the only Qwertian left – the last of the line! When you die, Qwerty dies!”
“But – my parents,” protested Juraletta. “I saw them, spoke with them. Or with Mother, at least.”
“Shadows – all shadows from the past,” the gorgon explained in a sorrowful voice. “They died three hundred years ago, I’m afraid. They only exist in the screens – just like the guests.”
Gorgon gave herself up to sobbing, and even the snakes joined in, we
eping reptilian tears.
“There must be someone else – is aristocracy so frail?”
“Most aristocrats are chinless wonders, the result of inbreeding of countless dukes and barons. Take the Reversible Count – he wound up inside out and so was quite unsuited for marriage or the siring of progeny.”
“Do not be afraid, Gorgie,” said Juraletta stoically. “We must be courageous as we fight this common foe. Sorry – what was the foe again?”
“Oh Princess, do I have to tell it all again? Extinction is your adversary.”
“There must be something we can do. There is Sage, after all – though I’m not sure if I want to marry a walking beard. And when I visited Outside I met a dwarf…”
Gorgon looked up from her tears. “Dwarfs need not apply for your hand in marriage. You need to marry someone of royal blood – but I’ve just thought of something. We could visit the Galactic Sperm Bank, which has always claimed to hold the seminal deposits of every known life form in the galaxy.”
“And a few unknown?” asked Juraletta hopefully.
Gorgon nodded. “Doubtless. And they might well have a Qwertian sample in their vaults… but it’s so far away.”
“We must try,” said Juraletta. “We must journey to the Galactic Sperm Bank. Where is it, by the way?”
“Many parsecs from here,” said Gorgon thoughtfully, staring into the distance in a mad, prophetic sort of way.
“Then let us leave at once,” said Juraletta resolutely.
“What do you think it is?” whispered Queen Beia.
She was referring to a pair of widely separated eyes that floated in space, the faintly discernible outline of titanic jaws and an enormous nose hanging in the darkness below those two green globes, and the sensation of cold air being sucked into that starry maw. Hedrone had become a foetally curled heap of crumpled fear.
“I think it might be a Voidling,” ventured Astroburger.
“And what, pray tell, is a Voidling?”
Tropic of Skorpeo Page 12
