by Wayne Hill
“What’s your name?” Splinter asks.
“She’s called Robin,” Lemon and Pug slur in unison. Each is supporting her by a shoulder, and they have draped pirate Crum’s huge jacket around her. Gert is also fussing around the young woman, as if in orbit about her. No doubt glad for feminine company, thinks Splinter. Must make a nice change from pissed up, hairy-arsed space-bums.
“It’s Robin, boss,” repeats someone in his ear, putting their hand on Splinter’s shoulder. Huh, thinks Splinter. Must be a newbie, or else this lizard is very, very drunk.
“Get your slimy whelks off of me,” hisses Splinter. He snaps two of the offending fingers, leaving the pirate behind him howling in pain and hopping around, sucking on the pained digits.
“Okay, this one’s for you, Robin.”
Splinter opens the communication channel and broadcasts to the entire Golden Falcon.
“Hello, my violent, little wasps. This is an important person announcement. I have a little present for you all. I’d advise people to quickly make their way off of deck seven or they might feel a slight draught. I am about to blow a hole in the side of that particular level to let out those arsonists. Y’know, give them a little fresh air. Cool off, as it were. On the count of three: one...two...three.”
Splinter presses a button on the side of his mech-arm. There is the deep, whole ship vibration of an explosion. People looking out of a porthole on the correct side would have seen a jet of detritus and more than three hundred people blasted into space.
“Now I have your fucking attention,” Splinter continues with a smirk. “I’d like you all to remain calm or else I will seal offenders in a garbage pod, flush you from this ship, and get Pug and Lemon to take pot shots at you—”
“That-that-that’s a bit ... harsh, wouldn’t you say?” splutters Levy, turning to face Splinter.
In one smooth motion, Splinter rises from the command chair, punches Levy square in the nose and sits back down.
Levy, his repeatedly abused face a mess, staggers backwards, trips over a seated Titan’s outstretched leg and sprawls to the floor. Titan stands up and looms over the USA captain, lip curled in derision. Levy quickly pulls himself away, scooting backwards on the seat of his trousers, until a wall halts his progression. As Titan resumes his seat, sharing a joke — no doubt at Captain Levy’s expense — with his pirate comrades, Levy realises his hands are wet. There is also a dampness starting to become apparent in his lower limbs. Sniffing at his now wet and soiled hands, the distinct odours of vomit and urine dominate. Shaking his hands with disgust and wiping them on his no longer immaculate uniform, he looks around at the puddle of filth in which he now finds himself sitting. He has inadvertently crawled into a makeshift latrine. The pirates — being pirates, and drunk ones at that — had, rather than taking the short trip to the rest room, simply found a corner in which to answer the call of nature. Despite the circular room not having a corner, they had en masse somehow formed a consensus — with the silent, almost psychic, herd-mind of drunken people everywhere — and Levy was now seated in the resultant lake of feculence. Face scrunched up in disgust, Levy notices Splinter regarding him with a small smile before he continues his announcement to the remaining crew.
“If you would all, now, like to remain calm, and keep watching the ship monitors, I will show what happens to dirty wasps that can’t keep their fucking grubby little mitts out of the honey pot! ...a la Winnie-le-Turd.”
With this, Splinter cackles a racking laugh, which his crew echo. The monitors throughout the Golden Falcon switch to an internal live feed from the escape pod which Splinter had specially customised for the rapists. The uplink displays the most depraved scene that the crew aboard the Golden Falcon have ever witnessed. There is no audio. Inside the pod, the three rapists are being viciously penetrated in every orifice by mechanical arms with a variety of attachments. The pods occupants clearly would be screaming ... but all their holes were otherwise engaged. The men are clamped in assorted positions, and their eyes are rolling and streaming tears, as mechanical members repeatedly ream them.
“I’ve taken the audio away because it’s a little too much even for me,” Splinter says. “But I have added some musical accompaniment that I will pipe into the pod to accompany them on their merry way to... prison.... planet... Earth.”
The last three words are staggered as he searches for, and presses, the correct buttons on his arm. Brass band music suddenly enriches the feed. Short chaotic blasts of horns and tubas, rising and falling tones of trombones, violins trilling, cymbals clashing. It is like a comical orchestral accompaniment to some archaic silent movie. But the on-screen happenings are far from humorous; they are horrific.
“O-kay,” Splinter continues after a large pull on his flask. “I hope I’ve got my point across about behaviour. What shall we do with the remaining one-thousand six-hundred and ninety-seven of you? I think I will just be honest with you. A novel approach, I’m sure you’ll agree. I’m not a nice man. You might have noticed. I’m happy with that. I don’t care if you want to give up. I will happily flush you into space and Gert, here, will play a fiddle while you wend your frozen way into the nearest gravity well. She plays well, does our Gerty. The choice you must make is unfair. You may think, ‘why me?’ ... well, just like this universe, I don’t care. Get used to cosmic indifference, people. You can’t all live till the end of time, so you might as well have a fucked-up time! Come on, don’t be pussies — eternal happy hour awaits!”
Laughter erupts in the control room. Someone drunkenly stumbles onto Splinter’s lap and is air-blasted away with a curse. Silence slowly fills the control room once more. Cracking his neck one side and pulling his face into what he considers, in his inebriation, a friendly smile, Splinter moves his scarred face closer to the camera. With his grimace-like smile filling the screen — his multiple scars clear as day, his intense eyes burning out of his death-mask face — Splinter once more addresses the crew of the Golden Falcon.
“Your options are simple: you either drink or you die. There’s no cure for what you now have. I’m sorry from the bottom of my black heart. I am. I wish this plague on no one. I hate to be the bearer of apocalyptic news, so I’ll just tell you how it is. From here on in, it’s going to get a little bit bumpy —”
Splinter stops in his speech and stares at his metal forearm, as if expecting something to happen. His arm is just a blur. He closes one eye to see if this helps, but it just makes him see less, so he opens it again.
“Right, what the fuck am I...?” Splinter wonders, before his train of thought rights itself back onto its tracks and continues its meandering journey. “Ahh, right. Yes, I remember ... Right, listen up, you scrawny wasps! I made an accurate measuring device which I keep on my arm. It’s a reminder of what precious little time I have left.”
On his mech-arm, Splinter presses three buttons. The first button has an icon depicting a cartoon monkey with its hands over its ears; the second button has a monkey with metal plates riveted over each eye, and the third shows a monkey with its mouth stapled shut. Once all three buttons are pressed, a plate flips up on his arm. The plate displays a countdown in days, hours, minutes and seconds. His remaining life. It is only an estimate, but Splinter has no illusions as to its accuracy.
At this moment, Splinter feels very alone. Empty and alone. He looks fondly at his cavorting crew. Pulling himself together from this momentary dip into melancholy, he pushes the plate on his arm down, swigs from his flask, coughs, wipes space grog and saliva from his chin, and continues into the camera.
“Looking at my device, I am reminded of how many sober days I have used up. I have — despite the virus, the one which you all now have — lived a relatively long life. If you, too, wish to live for any significant amount of time, I have four words for you. Low. Alcohol. Level. Alarm. Lala, for short. The wise have it about their person at all times. Good enough, says some; No, says I. Sow it in. Make it into a sticky bracelet, as Toad and Lemon, are
now sporting. Here, look —”
At Splinter’s prompting, a rather disgusting parade of pirates display how they always keep their Lalas on them.
“But the most inventive use I’ve yet seen of the Lala was by our late and great colleague T-bag Bobby B.” Here there is a series of chuckles and grimaces amongst his pirate crew, as they each remembered the example of T-bag. “T-bag created a vibrating ball with his Lala. But he kept losing the fucker ... so he fucking sowed the vibrating ball into his scrotum. Shame. Fucker was immobilised. Kept passing out from the pain. So, the take home message is be clever and inventive, but not too inventive or clever. If you’re too hammered to think, have a sober day to plan for a life of drunkenness. As for alcohol, drink what you like. But you must drink. We’ve all thought about intravenous methods. They don’t work. Remember Doc Doomuch, lads?”
Many pirates grimace. Some clamp hands quickly over their mouths. Some run jerkily to the latrine area and vomit loudly over a vainly protesting Captain Levy, who still hasn’t moved away.
“I would advise that you start drinking now,” chuckles Splinter. “I would advise that you consume enough ethanol to satisfy your Lala. Always keep it on you, once you’ve made one. I’ve uploaded the design schematics to the ship’s communal database. It includes an idiot-proof assembly guide. The easiest to make are sticky bracelets, even Pug and Lemon can make them. Try not to hang around with these two stink nuggets!”
Two of the roughest examples of humanity hove into view. They are grotesque homunculi, human caricatures, as if the Creator had suddenly run out of paints and grabbed for his crayons to finish the job. They both smile toothless grins and stare into the camera. Lemon grabs Pug’s neck and pulls him down low enough to fart in his face. Pug splutters and throws up over Lemon’s boots.
“Stop that, you fucking animals!” Splinter roars. “Can’t you see we have guests? Disgusting ferrets!”
“He farted in my face,” says Pug, his eyes still watering, pointing at a beaming Lemon.
“I know, Pug. I feel bad for you. He’s a terrible person. But you need to learn to embrace his disgustingness and see that a fart in your face is a character-building experience. Hopefully, your relationship will only grow stronger, despite Lemon’s violent and abusive flatulence.”
“Right. I hear ya, Captain,” says Pug.
He picks up Lemon and suplexes him into a nearby console. Pug laughs and runs off, grabbing a bottle of scotch as he passes the booze stash.
Lemon slides off the console onto wobbly legs. He shakes his spinning head. “BASTARD!” he screams, grabbing a bottle of tequila and charging after Pug. He runs directly into a wall, knocking himself unconscious.
The pirates all roar with laughter at the pair’s antics, as they always do. Looking away from the senseless form of Lemon, Splinter continues his circuitous monologue.
“All I can do is make you feel a little safer whilst we track down the bastards who want to kill us. All of us. Some of the medical bays will be converted into holding cells for rowdies. I’ll get a few of my boys to regulate it. Maybe then we can start winnowing out the decent, placid drunks — like all of my crew!”
A pantomime cheer arises, and, grinning, Splinter raises an arm in acknowledgment.
At this point, Pug re-enters the control room through a sliding door. He has been hiding around a corridor corner hoping to ambush Lemon, unaware that the man had already knocked himself out.
Out of shot, Pug shouts, “And as for those of you who are nasty fuckers when you’ve had a few ...” He shakes his head and feebly brandishes his fists at Splinter.
The crew bursts into further hysterics.
“Right,” continues a chuckling Splinter. “I’d like to say this is the point where I take questions, but my hearing isn’t too good, so I wouldn’t be able to hear a fucking word you said. Besides, I doubt we have much in common, anyway.”
“Yeah,” shouts Lemon from the floor, holding his head, “it’s not like we’re ever going to be bum chums!”
Laughter.
“We’re not going to fall in love with you and go on trips to see Uranus!” adds Pug.
More laughter.
“We’ll never send each other flowery poetry about one another’s slippery nipples!” says Lemon.
Further laughter.
“We don’t like you and won’t do stuff to make you happy. A funny comment, also,” intones a hollow, electronic voice.
Silence. There are a few nervous coughs, and some people look at Hector.
“Yes,” says Hector into the confused silence, glugging from his bottle of scotch.
Splinter does a double take at Hector and runs his hand down his face. His self-restraint firm enough to push through a diamond wall, Splinter tries to work out where he was in his speech.
“Survival,” Hector prompts.
Splinter grins, points his fingers at Hector like a gun, and winks at the strange pirate.
“Most of you will not last a month. It’s very difficult to stay drunk for long periods of time. It’s very hard to function and keep yourself alive. There will be a lot of fights. Mostly over nothing. There will be blood and tears and brutality, the likes of which you will never be able to imagine. There will be extremely amusing things, too, but you won’t be able to explain the amusing stuff properly to anyone, and it probably isn’t funny, anyway. Nothing is when you are like this. The first three years are possibly the worst. If your kidneys and liver don’t explode by around the fourth year, you should be able to reach year five. If you don’t piss anyone off who’s drunk, and, more importantly, in charge of a weapon, you might survive six years. Years seven, eight and nine, stay away from people with two first names; always respect a man who has less teeth than you do, and remember to marvel at how mossy green your extremities become. After you have reached a decade, your stomach will be raw as a beetroot from puking stomach lining up, and you will be a past master at passing liquid, of various composition, out of every orifice, usually at the most unexpected and highly embarrassing moments. When you are just so fucking tired and you think that if you have another drink then something inside will break ... that’s when you know you are doing it right! You’ll have a lot of respect, then. You can call yourself a proper drinker. After twenty or thirty years of this, then you can call yourself a Splinter Salem Space Pirate! There aren’t many of us. We all drink too much! Haha!”
Splinter stops his rant long enough to drink heavily from his flask of space grog. Something on one of the monitors catches his eye. Believers. The people who had banished him. The ones who had destroyed his life. Split up his family. Sentenced him to death. You evil bastards! he thinks. Creeping around with your hoods and robes and fucked up rules. I’m going to destroy you all. The universe will finally be free when I strangle the last of you vile fuckers using a Believer’s intestine as a garotte!
“Believers! Don’t think I can’t see you creeping around in my ship, you dirty little wasps! You vicious rat-bastards! You oily snake stink-holes! You will all meet me on deck five, in the docking bay, where have a meeting planned in —” Splinter pretends to consult an imaginary wristwatch then roars — “JUST GET THE FUCK THERE NOW!”
Splinter staggers from his command chair muttering, “Let’s get this over with. I’m a very busy person. People to skin. Worlds to conquer. Universes to subvert.” As he passes through the sliding door, he shouts over his shoulder, “Titan! Bowdon! You have the com, just like before.”
Titan shoots an anxious look over to the grinning caveman face of Bowdon and absently rubs at his still aching hand.
THIRTY-FIVE FANATICAL Believers were waiting for Splinter at deck five’s docking bay. They had been waiting there for about an hour. Splinter had gotten lost. This ship is a fucking maze, Splinter thinks absently. He swaggers up to the waiting priests, swigging from his flask of space grog. Bowing deeply and flamboyantly, dreadlocks sweeping the ground before the bald men, he announces:
“Lanky Luddite’s
! Demiurge fans! The chosen one has arrived!”
No doubt the first person to speak will be their leader, Splinter thinks. My money’s on the tall streak of piss near the front. He looks a proper twat. Twatish, at best. The man’s a maggot.
Sure enough, the Believer Splinter identified uses his bony elbows to brush aside the restraining hands of several of his comrades and haughtily says, “What do you imagine, Demon? That the goodness and love we contain inside us cannot protect us from evil such as you?”
“What are you gibbering about?” asks Splinter.
A short fat priest, one who Splinter had noticed trying to restraint the tall man, stepped forward beside the tall, glowering Believer. He lays his chubby hand companionably on Splinter’s shoulder.
“What my Brother, his Highness, is trying to say—”
Not taking his eyes from the gangly High Priest, who is practically vibrating with indignation, Splinter snaps the rotund priest’s wrist.
As the portly priest falls to the floor howling and bawling, holding his unnaturally bent joint, Splinter points to a ship. His anger is clear as dark shapes sinuously twist on his face.
“Get the fuck in that transport, you dirty little wasps!”
“Look, Brothers,” the High Priest says mockingly to his associates. “It seems that this... unbeliever ...has cause to be sad and alone in the terrible universe that he has created. His coffin has many nails. He is lost, my fellow Believers. We shall show him pity. We are instructed by our faith to pity both the beast and the Demon. For it is written that, in the time of distress and suffering, a man shall come from darkness and show us the way to the light. This wretch of a man is before you now. This pirate is a tiresome darkness on to which I, being the only voice of reason on this majestic craft, shall shine our blessed light...”
