IT SEEMS THAT YOUR PREDECESSOR HAD A SIMILAR IDEA, SPEZ
The booming voice of the Eye filled her head, ringing out every single last thought that Spez had had for a few seconds. She shook her head, sat up, and then snapped her fingers. “Uh, uh, uh-” She grinned. “Eyebo! This is great, we caught them with their pants down! Fire the-”
The shipyard unfolded like some vast flower. From it came the most deadly pollen: Ships. Ships that were smaller than hers. Ships that were many times larger. Ships that were exactly the right size. Ships armed with missiles. Ships armed with spinal railguns and gigajoule grazers and gravitic impeller mines. Ships by the bushel. Ships by the pound. Ships for all occasions. Ships that, within a few short seconds, had adjusted their orbital courses to put them into a bracketing position around the WTF .
SO. WHAT IS YOUR PLAN NOW, SPEZ?
Spez could hear the threatening rumble within the Eye’s omnipresent voice. She could remember, as if it was happening in the very moment, the pain that had wracked her body when she had last mildly irritated the being that controlled her fate. Her destiny.
“Well!” She said, cheerfully. “This is perfect!”
YOUR DEFINITION OF PERFECTION IS HIGHLY SUSPECT, SPEZ.
“Eyebo, relax! Re. Lax.” Spez said, lifting up her palms. She grinned. “You didn’t just grab some yabo no body. You grabbed Captain Spez . And you know what they say about the Spez? Well.” She rubbed her palms together as boarding pods began to launch from each of the other ships. Each pod began to approach, propelled with the eerie stillness of agrav crystal engines. “If you rearrange the letters, remove some, replace the others, Spez spells Loki .”
...WHAT?
Chapter Six: Sarah Interrogates with Tentacles
Opinions in the Haven camp were mixed.
“Kill her,” Space Belisarius said.
“Kill her,” Sexy Napoleon said.
“Kill her!” Kellen Grant said.
“Yeah, I’m going to have to go with kill her too,” Texas Dallas added.
Sarah, her arms crossed over her chest, looked over at the Haven leaders. Annie was cracking her knuckles, her head spines flaring out around her narrow, angular scalp. “Kill the bitch,” she said. “She’s got a direct line to the galaxy eating evil.”
Sarah threw up her arms. “ I had a direct line to the Eye, you know?” She shook her head. “What about you, Lisa?”
Lisa, the incumbent head of the DSA, opened her mouth to respond, before a tiny chime came from nowhere. Each of them shared Sarah’s biocomp, which was what Sarah had decided to term the computer-like features of her augmented head. It replicated a lot of the features of their old HUDs – including communication systems and augmented reality projections. In this case, it was a gauzy collection of rapid fire statistics, blurring past Lisa’s gaze. She blinked, then scowled. “Oh, dang. Rose beat me in the general election.”
“What?” Sarah asked
“I’m not the head of the DSA anymore, Rose is,” Lisa said as the door to the room slurped open with a disgusting squelch of bone and muscle. Rose, a smaller, darker woman than Lisa, smiled at her shyly.
“Sorry, Lisa,” she said, shrugging. “but the Alliance has spoken...I didn’t even want to run.”
Lisa sighed, brushing her palms through her head spine. “It’s fine-”
“Are you going to be doing that in combat ?” Sexy Napoleon asked.
“Yes, why?” Lisa asked.
“We’re not about to give up on being the Demarchist-Socialist Alliance just because we’re in a war ,” Rose said, lifting her chin. “Our ideals aren’t just empty words. They’re the guiding principles for why and how we wish to operate – not now, but in the future. Even in a time of war.” She grinned. “You might actually find our system works better than antiquated ideas of hierarchy.”
Lisa’s eyes shone. “That’s why they elected her...” She whispered.
Sarah nodded. “W-Well. Okay. Cool!” She paused. “We’re deciding what to do about her?”
She jerked her thumb at the large sheet of clear crystal that separated them from the isolation chamber that they had jammed Spez into. Sarah didn’t like looking at Spez. While she was surrounded by other... hers , Spez felt like something different. Each Havener, though they were all green-gray skinned and had short stubby head-spines that flexed in time with their thoughts, and they all had the same biomorphic powers that she had, still felt like they were a person, a solitary shard of self that was given free reign to just walk around. Spez? Spez radiated the presence of…
The Eye.
Just looking at Sarah made the edges of her perception crawl with faint hissing and chittering. It was like the chorus of noise that her own army could make – but amplified and deepened, spread across light years and wrested from her control. It was how her army sounded to her enemies.
It horrified her.
Spez herself was sitting in the center of the fleshy room, looking up at the ceiling, then at the walls, then at the ceiling again. She never even glanced at the one way mirror that Sarah had put into the room in the frantic half hour they had had between capturing Spez and getting her on the station.
“I say we study her,” Rose said. “Then kill her once we figure out how to best hit the Eye as hard as we can.”
Sarah scowled. “Come on, why is everyone so in favor of killing her?” She asked, her shoulders hunching up slightly.
Rose pursed her lips. “Why aren’t you in favor of killing her?” she asked.
“Because she’s been captured and enslaved by the Eye!” Sarah said, flinging her arm at the glass. “She’s gone through the exact same shit I went through. If I didn’t have some sympathy for her, I’d be...be...” She fumbled. “I’d be a...a...”
“CEO?” Rose asked.
“Eyyy!” Annie held out her hand for a low-five. Rose smacked it. “I like her more than you.” Annie looked right at Lisa as she spoke. “Way more. It’s good she won the election.”
Lisa glared.
Sarah shook her head. “Okay, fine. But if we’re going to kill Spez, I want to talk to her first. Does anyone have any problems with that?” She glared at them – and she felt the faintest of tingling connections. She knew it was illusory – each and every single Havener had demanded that she cut any ‘command connection’ that might have tied them to her mind. But in the same way that a human being who had lost an arm might still feel that arm begin to itch during a rainstorm, she felt that severed connection. Sarah gritted her teeth and took the sudden surge of angry, bitter grumbling that tried to well out of her heart and tried to jam it out of her mental airlock.
The rest of the Commanders shook their heads.
“Okay,” Sarah said, then looked at the crystal membrane that stretched between her and Spez. “I’m going in.”
Spez snapped her head around as the wall that Sarah approached opened with a slurping noise and closed with the same sound that a human made while smacking their lips after a good meal. Sarah stood in the small, enclosed room and felt a sympathetic pang in her bones. She had been in a small room like this, not so long before, with labtechs deciding her fate. She smiled, gently. “Hey,” she said.
“Suppers,” Spez said.
She had a high, nasal voice – one that went with a body that made Sarah feel as if she was standing in a twisted, fun house mirror. She could still remember being a chunky, short, dork before she had been transformed into a walking goddess. By comparison, it seemed the Eye had skipped some of the cosmetic changes – since Spez looked too tall, too gangly, too stork like. Her neck was narrow and stretched and her eyes were huge and staring, looking almost elfin when set into her narrow face. She cocked her head slowly, her head spines rippling out. “Hey, Eyebo, why didn’t I get the knockers?”
She paused, then scowled.
“Oh, waste of time? I see! I see how it is! You turn El Dorko into the Fucksauce Goddess, and keep me all gangly.” She shrugged, then spread her thighs wider,
crooking her knees to hook her feet behind her head, her toes wriggling near her ears. “Forch, I’m still hot no matter what. Cause of confidence .” She grinned, then slowly slid out her tongue. It was as long and segmented as the body of a snake, coming to a narrow tip, which flicked against one of her nipples. Her eyes almost glowed as she looked right at Sarah. Sarah felt a slow, coiling loop of interest flicking through her body, tightening around her gut. She thrust out her chin, trying to shake it off.
“Is the Eye talking in your head?”
“He tells me to say no ,” Spez said, retracting her tongue with a faint slurp . “You’re fuckin hot by the way. Mind conducting this interview while twerking?”
“I- what?” Sarah asked.
“Some sline you are,” Spez rolled her eyes, her head spines flicking out. “I thought slines love twerking and doing drugs and shit. Has TV lied to me?” She shook her head, then whispered. “For this, they must all pay.”
“I-” Sarah put her hands over her face, blushing. “I know what twerking is, don’t you want that fucking thing out of your head?”
“And lose my dental plan?” Spez asked, as if it was the most rational rebuttal in the universe.
Sarah gaped at her. “You’re an immortal demigod with biomorphic powers, who the fuck cares about-” She blinked.
Spez was putting her feet against her head, her toes hooking against her scalp. She grinned, slightly, as she covered her ears with her feet, her palms pressed against the ground, contorting her body with a queasy ease. The lack of joint popping and muscles straining only made it more eerie. “Eyebo figured out the way to a woman’s heart, Sexgod: Capitalism. I. Love . Capitalism. I love the markets, I love the exploitation. I love the pyramids.” Her tongue slid along her lips, slowly, the very tip of it beading with an emerald droplet, which touched the floor and hissed. Blood welled from the organic carpeting, then scabbed around the wound as the entire room convulsed slightly. “I love being a completely unnecessarily evil bitch at all times.”
“Jesus Christ!” Sarah held her hands out. “Don’t do that!”
“Do what?” Spez asked. “This?”
She flicked her long tongue. This time, several spattering droplets of acid struck the ground. This time, the room didn’t squirm. The entire station did. Muscles tightened and contracted, putting immense, groaning stressors on the metal components. The glassy mirror in the side of the room creaked and Sarah grabbed onto Spez’s tongue without thinking. Her tongue wrapped around and around her wrist, squeezing her tightly as Spez’s voice spoke in her head, as if she was standing right beside her ear. “I’m your girlfriend now, Sarah.”
“What?!” Sarah asked, then yelped as Spez unfolded and stood in a single crackling movement. Her arms wrapped around her back as her tongue slurped free, then licked from Sarah’s armpit to her shoulder to her cheek, slathering her with a gleaming spittle that left Sarah’s skin tingling and buzzing. Lust began to throb between her legs, her nipples coming to eager tightness. She grabbed onto Spez’s hips as the lankier girl pressed her up against the wall. Sarah could feel the wall behind her convulsing – the muscles tightened up against the pain of the acid beads that were still buzzing and hissing through the floor.
She realized, suddenly, that Spez had just locked the entire room up – tight as a man groaning on the ground after a gut punch.
Spez’s tongue slipped back into her mouth and she whispered. “Do I have to S P E L L it out for Y O U, my little Sexgod?” Her eyes glittered. “I. Love. Capitalism. I love pyramids.” She leaned forward, her breath hot and warm against Sarah’s lips. “I adore being the boot .”
Sarah’s mind reeled.
And then…
She got it.
Spez’s tongue slipped from between her lips. The tip gleamed like a shimmering spike of bone, beading with acid. Her voice growled inside of Sarah’s ears. “Hey, eyeball. Say bye bye to the skull! Scoopico!”
Her tongue drew back, like a snake about to strike.
Sarah twisted out of the way as it plunged into the wall. Blood spurted from the muscular structure as the bone spear penetrated deep. It coated Spez’s face, splashing into her eyes. She drew back, clapping her hands to her face. “Ack! I have been blinded in an unforseen, unexpected way!” She wailed, stepping backwards. Sarah kicked out – catching Spez in the back of the leg. Spez fell to her knees, her hands grabbing onto the wall as she flung her head back, arching her spine. “Ack! My one weak spot! My frail, human knees!”
In an instant, Sarah saw a change come over Spez. She had, for the entire interrogation, been loose. Lanky. Flexible. But right after she spoke that sentence, her muscles tightened. They strained and her bones creaked as her fingernails gutted the wall. Her claws had sprung out, and blood spurted between her fingertips as she pushed her hands into the wall. Her neck strained and her whole body trembled. A bone cracked in her forearm with a sound that was both shockingly sharp and queasily slippery – made all the worse when the jagged white tip of it punched through her bicep, leaving a dragging, flappy bit of skin in the air.
Sarah had to act.
She grabbed onto Spez’s head, pushed her head back, then pressed her mouth up against the other woman’s ear. Her tongue plunged into Spez’s ear, wriggling, squirming. She closed her eyes and focused not on the strangely erotic edge of ear-fucking a stranger. No. She focused, instead, entirely on the brain structures that she was feeling. The similarities. The differences. And there it was, deep inside of Spez’s core. There was a nodule of hardened structures, more akin to a bone than to part of the brain. It was wired into nearly every nerve cluster Spez had, from her deepest, lizard brain to the more recently added portions that were only a few million years old.
That nodule of tissue was currently slamming Spez with enough electrical energy to fry a normal human.
Sarah wrapped her tongue around it, then jerked backwards without much care for the damage she was causing. Spez screamed, out loud, and then Sarah fell flat onto her back, hacking and coughing and spitting. The crystal skittered along the ground, then came to a rest in the corner, hissing and smoking and glowing faintly. Spez sagged, clutching her hand to her ear. “Fuckin’ ow !” She snarled as her bone retracted into her body, the wound healing with terrifying speed. “How many times did I have to say I fucking...”
“I’m sorry!” Sarah said, wiping her mouth off – it was coated in substances that she did not want to think about.
“No one likes capitalism...” Spez wriggled her fingers as she drew them away from her head, her ear already repaired. She grinned at Sarah. “Ahh. The boss is now outta my head. God. It’s worse than running freight for Disney, I fuckin’ swear.”
Sarah shook her head.
“So, what finally got through your thicko skullo, Sexgod?” Spez asked, shaking her head slowly.
“Well, uh, the capitalism thing, the ear covering thing, the tongue thing,” Sarah said, nodding. “The boot.”
“...the ear covering thing?” Spez asked.
“Yeah. I mean, we’ve both been head fucked, so, like, I figured you were trying to remind me of that. So, I’d then, uh, I’d just have to go in there and get the Eye out of your head!” Sarha grinned.
“Nah,” Spez said. “I just like stretching.”
Silence stretched between them, nearly as limber and length as Spez.
“Oh.” Sarah said, finally.
Spez stuck her finger into her ear, wriggling it like she was trying to scoop out some earwax. As she did so, she closed her left eye and cocked her head. “So, like, whatcha do to get the doorbies opened in this meatsack?”
“Uh,” Sarah said, slowly, trying to process what the fuck Spez had just said. “You, uh...well, the muscles have to relax from the tension they were put under.” She stood, looking at the gory ruin that Spez had made of the wall and the floor. “I’m seeing a downside to our biomatter based constru- where’s the gemstone?”
“The gemwhat?” Spez asked.
&
nbsp; The entire room plunged into darkness. The floor pitched underneath Sarah’s feet. Her arms flailed and Spez stumbled into her with a scream. Then a tearing, ripping, squelching sound filled the air and the floor became the ceiling. The two women slammed into what had been the roof with wet splatting noises, rather like throwing meat against a sidewalk. Then the acceleration increased – then dropped to nothing as the room began to tumble in an infinite blackness. Other than the sensation of touch, she felt as if she had been dropped into a void.
“What the fuckery is happening?” Spez asked.
“Uh, I think the room just...spat itself out of the station,” Sarah whispered.
“It can do that?” Spez yelped. “Why would you do that?”
“It was in case the space station started, like, exploding or burning or something.”
OR SOMETHING INDEED
Sarah’s blood froze in her veins.
She recognized that voice. She had heard it in the occasional nightmare, the nightmare that ripped her from sleep and shivering in Aiden’s arms. It was that deep, ever present, all consuming voice that had told her to submit. To bend the knee. To lower her head and to accept . To decay into a dusty nothingness, alongside her entire insignificant species.
YOU ARE PROVING QUITE TROUBLESOME, DR. KAPPEL.
Sarah, her arms drawing tighter around Spez, tried to not shake. But she was. She was quivering , like a terrified rabbit underneath the shadow of a massive hawk. Spez clung to her, and her fingernails dug into Sarah’s side with the same desperate fear. She felt Spez leaning her forehead against the side of her head, her face mashing against her neck, her shoulder as she tucked in close. Sarah wanted to be brave for the other woman – who had needed to live with this terrifying voice for who knows how long.
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