VOL 2
FROM EVIL WITH LOVE
by
Simon A Forward
PUBLISHED BY GALAXY SIX BROADCASTING
Smashwords Edition
COPYRIGHT © 2012 SIMON A FORWARD
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2.1 Base Instinct
Prologue
On Her Majesty’s Golden Pond
4…
Gunfire bit at his heels, chasing him off the platform. He threw himself down the stairway, grabbing for the railing and sliding to the deck below.
3…
He raced for the helipad. Boots stomped down the steps behind him. Another guard stepped out in front, stubby machine-pistol up and ready to do business.
2…
Ducking under spitting lead, he came up and smacked the guard in the chops, flicking his tail around for the chap to trip over at his earliest convenience. He snatched the gun before it could follow the guard, toppling off the jetty. Ahead, the chopper’s rotors were spinning up. Someone was pinching his ride.
1…
Plan B. He whirled and squeezed off a burst or three at the pursuing guards. Then rolled right, coming up behind the crate and running full pelt for the edge of the deck. And launched himself off the side.
Zero. The refinery exploded in a grand mal seizure of fireballs and fractured steel. Spirillus Corporation’s illegal plankton processing operations had come to a fiery end.
Thankfully, Templar – Salmon Templar – hadn’t come to a watery one. It was unlikely, given his piscine ancestry, but he had, in any case, landed smartly on one of the jet-skis he had seen moored there on his way into the base.
As the first few metallic fragments and smouldering clods of green slop began to rain down on the platform and the sparkling sea-water, he was revving up the motor and – in no time at all – scooting out across the waves. Prehensile fins gripping the handlebars, he kept the guards on the jetty busy with a generous dash of small-arms fire. That still left a hand free for waving them goodbye.
Problem: just as he cleared the end of the pier, the chopper sailed into the air. Immediately, it spun, dipping its nose towards him. Giving him a good look at the pilot. Glint, Spirillus’ chief assassin, probably thinking he looked cool in his gold contact lenses but only managing to leer at him like the dumb dolphin he was. Before reaching for the weapons console.
Miniguns and rocket launchers bristled under the helicopter’s wings. The miniguns whined into action, while a few preliminary rockets streamed towards him.
Templar throttled up the jet-ski, veering in under the hail of artillery. Great gobs of ocean fountained upwards as the rockets exploded beneath the surface. Templar was hit with some of the downspray as he wrestled his machine around in a tight spin, tucking himself safely under the chopper.
The helicopter pirouetted, hunting for its target. Templar kept the jet-ski turning on a nano-dime under the chopper’s skis.
He glanced about. Out across the bay, silvery shapes scarred the horizon with furious white. Patrol boats. Half the Spirillus Corp Navy coming to investigate. He couldn’t stay under the chopper forever. But the bay was way too open, no cover.
His enemy above must have twigged. The chopper came bearing down, rotors fanning the water into a frenzy.
Not Templar though. He dumped the machine-pistol and sprang aloft, grabbing onto one of the chopper’s skis. Grafted human arms lent him the extra reach. Handy. As the helicopter continued to descend as close to the wave as it dared, Templar clambered up onto the rail and wrenched open the cockpit door.
Glint turned his head. Double-took.
Templar stuck his head in and thumped the dolphin with his nose. There was a time when he could have speared the guy with his nose, but this was no time for reminiscence. Jerking his head, he butted the guy again with his stump.
Glint screeched and slapped a flipper to a seriously bruised blowhole. The chopper went into a fit of dizzy whirls as though it too was dazed.
Templar thumped the guy some more, throwing in his human fists and fin-slaps for good measure. Desperately, his enemy started fighting back. They grappled as the chopper dipped and spiralled and generally went berserk. It flung them against the cockpit visor. Templar got a faceful of window.
The chopper see-sawed drunkenly and dumped them back into the pilot’s seat. They went on wrestling, dangerously near the open door.
In the struggle, the world in a mad spin, Templar wedged his wrist up under the pilot’s throat. “Where’s your boss?”
“Go to hell, Stumpy Fishboy!”
Dolphins. All the wit of a barnacle.
“Tell me!” He shoved harder. “Unless you’d care for a little off-the-cuff explosive.”
Actually he’d used both of his cufflink grenades. But there was a comm button on the sleeve of his tux that ought to exert a convincing enough pressure.
Glint nodded, then clutched at his sore head. “The river! You’ll never catch him now!”
“We’ll see about that!” He stumped the guy a third time. Then elbowed him out the door and watched him drop out of sight.
Gritting his teeth, Templar gripped the controls and fought the chopper into some semblance of stability. He aimed for the centre of the delta, gunning low over the waves. A few rapid flicks of switches called up the HUD. And picked out his target. There, just cutting into the river mouth like an especially vicious dental instrument: a Spirillus Corp speedboat.
He notched up the thrust. And zoomed the display. The HUD rewarded him with a prime close-up of Hugo Spirillus, smirking and waving, one flipper on the wheel as his boat chopped up the river. He pointed with his bottle-nose. Templar tracked the view back to the boat’s stern. Where Bunny lay bound and gagged on the deck – damn and blast, why’d the cute ones always get themselves taken hostage? No time to ponder the mysteries of life. Aft of her, a Spirillus crewman stood – also smirking – manning a twin-barrel autocannon.
Oh crap.
The chopper helpfully closed up the range a bit, then the crewman opened up.
Templar ducked, flying blind.
Hellish rattles ripped through the chopper. A noise like claws down a steel blackboard set his teeth on edge. Suddenly it was really chilly in here, blowing a ferocious gale.
He reached across to pull the door closed, but only half of it was there. Flapping limply like a broken wing. He looked up.
The cockpit had been sliced open like a grapefruit. Leaving him sitting in the bottom half – and diving towards the waves.
Templar unclipped the grapnel gun from his belt, aimed at the speedboat and fired. He clamped the launcher to the dashboard, held fast to the controls – and braced himself.
The cockpit bowl hit the water like a bomb.
Then rode up on the chopper’s skis, skimming like a not-very-flat stone.
“Water sports. My favourite.” Second favourite, he corrected himself, thinking of Bunny lying bound and gagged in the back of Spirillus’ speedboat. He fired a wink at the crewman who was frowning down at the hook biting deep into the boat’s ass-end. The guy leaned out, reaching to unsecure the hook.
Hard bounces slammed jolts right up his spine, but Templar stabbed at the weapons console and hoped systems in the bottom half were still fully functional – on himself and the chopper. He flipped the trigger-guard and squeezed.
A rocket smoked out from the launcher, fiery tail painting a path straight to the crewman. Blew him apart in toasted chunks. Coat him in breadcrumbs and he was done.
Spirillus shook his fin in a fist shape. Began steering his boat in big snaking moves.
Now, on top of the butt-jarring ride, Templar was veering all over the shop. Just as the speedboat went arcing around a sharp bend in the river, Templar swung out wide in the other direction. A richly verdant riverbank careened towards him.
He leaned back in his chair, tipping the bowl.
WHAMM!ed into the bank, shot up the slope – and the half-chopper was airborne. Sans rotors, the flight was going to be strictly short-haul.
Templar watched the jungle blurring by below, glanced ahead to see the speedboat lancing along on a near-perpendicular course. Perfect.
He snatched up the grapnel gun, hooked it back on his belt. Then launched himself clear. Parting company with the cockpit, he sailed on, committed to a trajectory that was a hastily shaken cocktail of luck and judgement.
As the chopper’s remains crashed into the trees, Templar swooped in on the speedboat. Legs tucked in for a paratrooper roll, he slapped into the deck like a – well, like a landed fish. He flopped about a bit in the belly of the boat, the wind knocked out of him.
Bunny stared, eyes big as bowls. Behind her gag, she was mmmph-mmphing at something behind him. He rolled over to see Hugo Spirillus, one flipper still on the wheel, training a gun on him – Dolce & Klein 10mm, nice.
The first shot chewed a chunk out of the port side.
Templar preferred not to wait for a second one. Flicking his tail, he swept Spirillus’ feet out from under him, scatting him onto the deck. The gun clattered past. Templar leaped up and dived in for the fisticuffs.
They brawled up a storm, trading kicks and punches. The boat slipped left and right as it bumped along. Suddenly, a bad bounce threw Templar off-balance. Spirillus carped his diem: in a split second, he had Templar by the throat, pinned him to the dashboard.
“I’ll kill you, Templar!”
There was a BLAM! A second hole opened in Spirillus’ head – just before he toppled over the side. Dead in the water, while the speedboat raced on, lathering the corpse in white.
“Nice wake,” remarked Templar.
He looked at Bunny.
Still bound and gagged, her shoes were kicked off and she had the gun between her feet, a toe curled around the trigger.
Wow, pretty dexterous for a receptionist. Human, too – his favourite species of female. He’d liked her from the first when she’d flirted with him at the front desk and let him on in. Just when he’d thought his covert intrusion was scuppered. One wrong turn and he’d ended up in the main lobby.
He knelt, briskly untied her and whipped off the gag. He’d had a lot of practice at that sort of thing. “Oh, Salmon,” she gushed.
But then he was looking past her, past the stern. A whole fleet of problems was coming their way. Churning the river into a single broad streak of angry white, the Spirillus Navy patrol boats. Didn’t they know they were unemployed?
“We’re not off the hook yet.” He ran to the wheel. “Reckon you can handle that autocannon?”
“Er, those molten bits sticking up on the back?”
Templar glanced aft to where the Spirillus crewman had once stood. “Ah.”
Bunny rushed to his side, latched onto his tux sleeve. “What can we do, Salmon?”
“We’ll have to outrun them.”
Engines maxed, he steered them tight around the river bends, chasing the racing line as they slalomed upstream. As some of the pursuers began to fall behind, they opened up with rockets and mortars, showering them with near-misses. Templar powered on through a chasing scatter of watery blasts.
Plenty of shots went wide, seeding the jungle with fireballs.
Too many boats were keeping up.
Pulling the boat around another bend, they were face to face with their next hurdle. Rapids. A low gushing wall of water, spilling down over a lip of rock. Maybe a couple of metres high.
Hurdle was the only option. He scanned the frothing white, found what he was looking for. Then drove them all-out at a hopefully handy cluster of rocks.
Bunny screeched and grabbed. They hit.
And flew.
They hit the water with a smack, speeding on at the higher level.
Right into the next set of rapids.
Templar went for it again.
A glance aft showed the pursuers crazy or determined enough to follow. They wanted him dead that bad. Quite a compliment. Some didn’t make it, patrol boats crunching into the wall of water and rocks. Enough thumped down safely and carried on the chase.
And so they went on, leaping the rapids, higher and higher – upstream. A slew of wrecks in their wake but still dozens of Spirillus gunboats sticking close on their tail, chucking pot shots after them in their spare moments. One lucky hit and this punishing ride would be over.
If only Templar could get them that little bit further…
Their boat vaulted another string of rapids like a flooded stairwell. The last jump dumped them on a flat stretch of fast-flowing water. And there it was, dead ahead.
“Dead end!” shrieked Bunny. She was a screamer: a good sign.
The rapids ahead were flanked by guard towers and spanned by a laser net, beams latticed like chicken-wire. Actually the gaps were generous enough a well-aimed chicken could get through, but he didn’t rate their chances. Fried speedboat was on the menu.
Still, their boat didn’t have to make it. As long as they did.
“Not quite. The Queen’s Reservoir. Most of the royal family was hatched there. Spirillus Corp wouldn’t dare follow us.”
He ramped up the throttle. Set the prow spear-straight at the barrier.
“What about us? Won’t they shoot us?”
“Not likely. I’m an agent of Her Majesty’s Government.”
She boggled. “And they can see your pass from those gun towers?”
“Fair point.”
Fins on the wheel, his hands got to work on his shirt buttons. A flurry of motion and he had his vest off and passed it to Bunny. “Wave that.”
She gave it an experimental flap and it unfurled into the Royal Piscapalian Navy flag. Templar left her to her task and coaxed a final desperate burst out of the speedboat.
He yanked back on the wheel, willing them into the air.
The bow was good and high when they struck. They sailed aloft. Soared. Shooting like a silver arrow at the laser net.
Templar pulled Bunny to the deck, rolled her to the centreline.
In a scorching heat haze, the boat was stripped away around them. Sliced and diced. Scales lightly seared, Templar was soon left holding onto Bunny and looking down at open water as they flew on. The surface sparkled, dappled with sunlight.
They splashed down in a messy tangle of limbs and fins. Bumped heads as they sank. Bits of burning boat plopped into the water around them.
Templar recovered his hold on Bunny and dragged her back to the surface. She floated with him, gasping for air and looking like she might punch him when she’d got her breath back. A few hissing jets of steam had a go at transforming this patch of reservoir into a sauna.
Below them, the Spirillus boats milled noisily about, engines growling frustratedly, in their stretch of river beyond the laser net.
Templar slinked closer to Bunny.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling the urge to spawn.”
She put her hands on his chest and bobbed a little further away. “But – you’re a fish.”
“I get that a lot. But look. These arms are all man.”
He slipped one smoothly around her waist and pulled her into a gentle squeeze. Soft proof. He’d save the hard evidence for later.
Through thrashing white water, we descend into swirling blue. Rays of light slant down to play among the bubbles and fluid shadows. Shadows transform: the slender silhouette of a naked woman emerges to dance in the light. Others rise from the depths to swim, almost shark-like, around her. We dive slowly into the midst of their circling naked forms.
An elegant silver gun juts in from the left, one beautifully manicured finger closes around the trigger and sends a bullet streaking across the oily maelstrom of silhouettes.
Sparks ignite and in the explosion of flame, the women are now fiery sirens. They dance, they somersault, they act out some fairly amateur martial arts. If you watch too closely, one of them can be seen to fall over.
Mostly they twist and turn gracefully, rising in a seductive fiery spiral. Above us, sunlight ripples on the surface.
Suddenly, a flotilla of speedboats spears past overhead, painting a screen of churning white in which the burning sirens die, fatally extinguished.
But no, we break through the white, rising into sky blue, bringing the dancing figures with us as curvaceous, vaporous hotties. Babes of cloud, cumulo nymphus, they take to the air, flexing sinuously as – suddenly – sleek fighter jets weave their way between them, looping them with vapour-trail ribbons as they engage in a deadly, balletic dogfight.
Some of the cloud-babes swoop in on the lead plane, settling to dance on the wings as it arcs through the sky, a brace of heat seeker missiles streaking hotly after it.
A phone rings.
Templar hit pause on the remote and turned up the lights. Every bloody time, without fail.
“Templar. Salmon Templar.”
“Templar. We have a situation. Get your tailfin to HQ ASAP.”
“What’s the situation, sir?”
“Are you alone? Need I ask?”
“No, sir, but I soon can be.” Templar looked over to the couch where the deluscious Bunny was peeping over the back with her tousled hair and come-back-hither eyes. “Sorry. Something’s come up.”
“It’s what I was hoping.”
She had succumbed to his charms pretty quickly. They always did. “No,” he told her, gesturing with the phone. “Time you skedaddled.”
She pouted. “Really?” She jerked a thumb at the screen. “That’s all you wanted me for? To film me in silhouette and drop me into some fancy graphics?”
“It’s a hobby.”
“You’re weird.”
“I get that a lot.”
Shaking her head, she hopped off the couch and disappeared to the studio to collect her things. Templar watched her cute butt receding, barely cloaked by the short robe.
“All clear, sir. What’s up?”
“Evil, Templar. Evil Unlimited.”
One Week Later…
Dexter. Knucks. Tanith. Ferret. Doomy. They all huddled together, frightened, bewildered, terrified. Ferret was bleating more than usual, but not for long.
A wave of blinding flame ripped through the ship, wiping the horrified, disbelieving expressions off their faces – and wiping their faces off the existential blackboard.
Act One
Thunderbowl
Six Days Earlier Than One Week Later…
Knucks was enjoying one of his favourite pastimes. It wasn’t quite the same one-handed, but he made the best of a bad situation.
He balanced the book on his knee. As novels went, it was the sort that should have come on a roll, wrapped around a cardboard tube. Not worth the paper it was written on.
Paper was in short supply – had been for yonks. It was – along with, perhaps unsurprisingly, wood – one of the rarest commodities in this arm of the galaxy. This had nothing to do with the scarcity of trees. Life-bearing planets were ‘scarce’, of course, but statistically speaking in a galaxy of 100 billion star systems, ‘scarce’ amounted to ‘rather plentiful actually’ and the Milky Way was more crowded with sentient life forms than was entirely desirable.
Likewise, trees.
Entire worlds could be given over to forestry, nature parks, orchards and so on, and with the advent of terraforming even the less hospitable planets could eventually be seeded with more trees than billions of monkeys, who had no ambitions to evolve into anything greater, knew what to do with.
Meanwhile, as humanity spread ever outwards across the cosmos, the long-dreamed-of paperless society continued to elude them.
Technological advancement was all very well, but when it came down to it people were old-fashioned at heart and preferred the solid feel of a book in their hands, the glossy veneer of a magazine at their fingertips and the curious comfort of their fried potatoes stained with newspaper print. And the various e-formats were a poor substitute when it came to a good book burning. Many a tyrannical despot had had to order vast libraries of great literary works transferred to print before chucking them on the bonfires. Demand needed supplying, but it was all okay. No matter how far the human population expanded, no matter how much they procreated like bunnies, there were always trees to meet the appetite of this paper-hungry species.
Until the System.
The System. When humanity discovered that all that was needed to achieve a paperless society was to set up shop anywhere within a few million light years of a sprawling interstellar bureaucracy.
Trees quivered at the System’s rampant expansion and, if they had ever developed a sufficient level of self-awareness, they would have spent a great deal of time wondering why they hadn’t focused instead on developing a good pair of running legs. If there was wood to be had, the System gobbled it up and spewed it out as ream upon ream of regulations manuals, application forms, rejection forms, acquisition forms, records, accounts, folders and files - and departmental Christmas cards whenever the annual budget allowed.
Paper fed the System. The System controlled paper.
Unlike the trees, newspapers and other sectors of the publishing industry - in neighbouring territories as well as within the System - learned to adapt and survive.
Newspapers and books were compiled and edited on computer in time-honoured fashion, but were converted into condensed data streams and broadcast in encrypted form to all ships as they arrived in a given star system. Those who wished to download would pay the decryption price and if they chose to print out their own hard copy they did so at their own peril. Or rather, they did so to the detriment of their lifetime Paper And Wood-based Products Allocation. This was the strict ration allocated to each individual at birth and in theory it was impossible to exceed your quota.
Of course the filthy rich had no problems circumventing such regulations, the simplest means being to make sure they lived outside the System, relocating to exclusive enclaves like the Beverly Extents or, as with those who claimed some royal blood, establishing separate states like the Empire. Where paper, wood and any other commodity could be bought.
Paper trafficking was rife, of course, and the penalties meted out by the System were severe, with additional sentences imposed on those especially cocky criminals who chose to thumb their noses at the law and conduct their illegal trade wearing paper pirate hats.
Knucks had a simpler solution still and was happy to just hack into someone else’s PAWPA account and arrange a spot of reallocation as and when his quota dipped dangerously low. And these days, he was quite the avid reader.
In the past he had himself engaged in the occasional act of paper piracy but even before his efforts to improve his mind and his literacy, he had begun to feel that all that was beneath him. That, and he had started to feel a touch silly wearing the paper hat.
Hacking and Allocation theft were serious crimes in the System, which suited Knucks. But there were lower practices being conducted under the guise of legitimate enterprise.
Junk mail producers, for example, would routinely offer to buy consumers’ personal Allocations, with the assurance that they would get it all back sooner or later and could always recycle it into something more useful. Those that fell for the scam would subsequently find their junk mail had been printed on paper that had been rendered useless for recycling purposes. And then they were faced with using what could have been their lifetime’s supply of good reading to supplement their frankly minimal allocation of toilet paper. A luxury which, never mind the expense, remained preferable to all of the technological alternatives developed by scientists so far.
Mr Knucks rarely gave a moment’s thought to those sufferers as he read while sitting on the bog. The satisfaction to be had from being extravagant with paper in two good ways at once was a bonus on top of his ongoing campaign of self-improvement.
He was only mulling it over today because the boss had said they were going to be taking on the System.
Good job, far as he was concerned. It got his vote.
Not everyone had such personal scores to settle with the System. But they were all up for it – Ferret, Doomy, Tanith, Evil R – even Hatchy’s egg had had an air of approval about it when the boss had announced the objective. The System was a bureaucracy, after all. Everyone hated it to one degree or another.
Knucks already had it in mind to take a wastefully extravagant wad of bog paper from the roll when he was ready. Just to rub the System’s nose in it. Metaphorically speaking.
He sighed and cast his gaze over the next few paragraphs of dross awaiting his reading pleasure. Yeah, he figured, he’d be flushing the novel down the pan straight after his business. There was about as much movement in the narrative as in –
KERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAASSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
With an almighty rending of metal, something rammed its way through the wall behind him and shoved him off the john. Flying forward he slammed into the deck, the wind knocked from his lungs but thankfully nothing else kicked out of him.
“Holy shit!” gasped Knucks.
It seemed apposite under the circumstances.
“People sometimes ask me,” said Mr Ferret, “how do you reconcile your squeamish sensibilities with the use of weapons? To which I always answer, it's all in the presentation, baby. Or words to that effect.”
He had the studio to himself, which was just the way he liked it.
“This week on Pimp My Firearm! we're looking at the Burger Republic M743-C Rapid Pulse Plasma Blaster, quite an old piece but a favourite from back in the very earliest days of the big fast food chains' diversification into military equipment manufacture. The cyclic rate of fire is considerably lower than the Mocha-Cola MP29X-3000 Compact Machine Pulse-Emission Demi-Rifle, but it's name and designation trips off the tongue a tad more readily and it comes with an integral suppressor, which not only cuts down on noise signature but reduces barrel overheating which, as we know, makes life a lot easier when it comes to suspending furry dice from the barrel. (Although do still make sure to use fairly sturdy well-insulated wire rather than thread, which will fray in no time at all in combat situations - leaving you entirely diceless.)
“Anyway, for this little number, I'm recommending a hot pink laminate coating. Glow in the dark is good, but not for night stealth missions, obviously. Some of you may prefer the full body rebuild, using transparent plastics for that chic see-through look, but for my mind, that's so last year. For the showier weapons enthusiasts out there, like my colleague, Mr Knucks, who is always very keen to announce the arrival of himself and his gun, a boom box can - just about - be incorporated into the stock, but it is a little excessive for a weapon of this size and bass vibrations may throw your aim off by some margin. On the plus side, it is equipped with a laser sight so the attachment of a bobble head figure of your choice atop the gun need not interfere with your targeting as you will never have to sight along the barrel.
“You'll also want all the trimmings with this little baby, and on this occasion I would opt for a dash of streamlining chrome to nicely offset the pink. And for the finishing touch of real class, some fur on the grip and perhaps on the ammunition clip. Zebra stripe would be my choice, but you could probably get away with tiger or leopard skin. Some people prefer to go for the more endangered species, for that extra Evil touch, but if you are squeamish like me, you can go with a synthetic substitute and no one need ever know.
“Remember, this little beauty packs quite a punch and anyone questioning the authenticity of your fur can easily be silenced at the pull of a trigger. Happy pimping!”
Mr Ferret smiled. “How was that?” he said to the quartet of hovering bobcams currently orbiting his head like shiny planetoids around, appropriately enough, their central star. Prof Doomladen had pointed out that, courtesy of the monoplasm in his nervous system, he could act as his own camera, but Ferret argued that viewers would want to see his face and since none of the others were willing to stand around and film him through their eyes, bobcams were the way to go.
They were also highly courteous.
“Very good, sir. We may have to go for another take though. Sorry.”
Ferret blinked his unpatched eye. The bobcams were also exceptionally fussy about quality. Every one of them fancied themselves as a mini Kubrick. “What was wrong with that?”
“We’re picking up some sort of rumble on the soundtrack. It is faint, sir, but it is really messing with your dulcet tones.”
“Oh. Well, we can’t have that.” Mr Ferret had thought he’d detected some sort of vibrations while discussing streamlining chromes offsetting pink, but he’d put that down to natural enthusiasm for his subject. “Let’s go again, then. From the top.”
He was a professional, through and through.
The director bobcam counted him in: “3, 2, 1.” Then flashed a red light at him.
Ferret had his greeting smile poised and ready to go. “People sometimes ask me - ” he began.
Only to be drowned out by a blaring alarm.
“Oh soddery buggerflip! What now???!”
Professor Doomladen woke with a start – to find a naked Tanith straddling him. “Wh - what are you doing? W-won’t Mr Snide be angry?”
“Oh, he’ll be furious, I imagine. Isn’t that what you want? Isn’t it what we both want?”
“I, ah - ” Doomladen knew exactly what he wanted and, to be fair, she was attending to that in some measure right now, and her soft, slow rhythm was pumping great globules of perspiration up through his pores. “But he – he’ll kill us. I mean, we’re – all comprehensively laced with monoplasm. He could see everything.”
Probably more than the Professor was seeing, since his lenses were getting seriously fogged. To an extent it only added to the steaminess of the scene, but he really preferred a sharper image of that flat, flexing sternum, those deliciously dangling breasts bouncing like a pair of perfect pink balloons experiencing some mild turbulence. It wasn’t the most erotic of similes, perhaps, but if he pursued the line of thought just a degree further, the bumpiness only added to the exhilaration of the flight.
“Then you’ll just have to make some careful edits, won’t you? A snip here, a snip there.”
Talk of snips could so easily have killed the moment. Doomladen focused intently on the gentle rise and fall of both nipples, seen through the dream-like haze of mist. Tanith Troy was truly a goddess. And yes, absolutely, even if their memories were available for all to see in the neural network formed by the gestaltic monoplasm, he could selectively prune those scenes before anyone viewed them. Nothing could be simpler.
He did wish he hadn’t thought of the word ‘prune’ though. It polluted his pleasure centres with concerns about what this must feel like for Tanith, sitting astride his wrinkled body. Disappointingly like riding an overcooked chicken-wing, he reflected morosely, all bone and dry skin.
“Look, I, ah – appreciate – I mean, I really do – what you’re doing, but – ah – you really don’t have to – if you don’t want -”
“Oh, but I do want,” she assured him, dispensing with the seductive velvety whispers of a goddess in favour of the thickly accented tones of a Scandinavian male.
Doomladen wiped an arm across his lenses and stared up at her. Suddenly she was horrifically broad, crushingly heavy and even her nipples were impossibly muscular. Rolph Stengun looked down at him with a stuck-on grin, set between a blond buzz cut and a jaw so square it wouldn’t have looked out of place on a bulldozer.
Somewhere, Doomladen was vaguely aware of an alarm blaring. But he couldn’t really hear it above the sound of his own screams.
A seasoned veteran – of a great many diverse careers – Knucks was quick to react and adapt to any situation. Face down in front of an unknown enemy, pants around your ankles, at best qualified as disadvantageous, so his immediate response was to flip himself over and pull up his trousers. Not the simplest of manoeuvres, with arms in short supply, but even with the absence of anything else up his sleeve, Knucks always had a few tricks.
Once upon a somewhen, he’d had to forge a band of Metobalian Sloths into an effective fighting force – long story - so he’d developed a special martial art for the generally prostrate and slovenly. (Ideal for couch potatoes, but his subsequent efforts to market the training DVD met with a disappointing indifference, as most sofa spuds were convinced the chances they would have to fend off attackers were pretty slim. Knucks considered going house-to-house to persuade them otherwise, but other more lucrative, less labour-intensive opportunities soon came along – like the paper piracy business, e.g.) Anyway, the moves came readily back to him now and in seconds he was properly trousered and face to face with his foe.
Face to bough, more like.
Thrashing and flailing around through a ragged hole in the bulkhead was a bloody big tree branch. Or Tree, capital T, branch. Not one of the main branches, thank crap – that would have spelled the end of him and half the station - but a minor offshoot, the thickness of several elephant trunks.
Smaller tendrils flexed and whipped about, as though clutching at the air like the fingers of a suffocating victim. Except with no sign of letting up any time soon.
One such tendril stabbed at Knucks – but he kicked himself back just in time to avoid a poke through the skull. These particular sticks would break more than bone, the Tree being a definite ‘hardwood’ – one of the hardest bastard materials in the universe. Not a plant you wanted to mess with.
What it was doing inside the station was anybody’s guess.
The stabbing tendril twitched, then flicked back and plunged headlong into the toilet bowl. The branch’s thrashing seemed to settle into a spot of mild swaying.
Desperate for a drink? Knucks wondered. That desperate?
“Have one on me,” he told the Tree.
Hopping to his feet, he figured he’d best go report the incident to Doomy. Let the Prof scratch his head over this one.
That was when the alarm blared throughout the station.
Knucks silently commended it on its timing.
Leaving the Tree branch to its choice beverage, he about-turned and headed out through his quarters, ready for the jaunt to the control centre. Taking a slight detour to one of the staff bogs en route, since he still had some unfinished business that, emergency or no, took personal priority.
Professor Doomladen woke to a flood of sensations and thoughts verging on information overload. He sat bolt upright, thankfully fully clothed and free of any naked Rolph Stenguns pinning him to the bed. Indeed, the sanctity of his lab coat had not been violated – not a button had been unfastened, not a stain was out of place.
He let out a sigh that, had he not been securely tucked in his bed, might have sent him flying about the room as he rapidly deflated. First things first, he reached for the mind bleach on his bedside table, fumbling a little before he got a hold of the bottle.
Knocking back a swig of the neural cleanser, he commanded his gigantic intellect to get a grip and start tackling the torrent of input in some sort of order.
One: the alarm. Keyed to the habitoid’s systems via the monoplasm, he was directly in touch with sensory data that immediately identified the cause. There was some additional information about internal damage to a bathroom, but frankly that registered as no more than a blip on Doomladen’s radar, along with reports of a plasma striplight on the blink in Studio 9, that a dead Goyle had been found blocking ventilation shaft D84 and one of the shops down in the mall was calling for a mop-up in aisle three. No, the fact that the Tree had dropped out of hyperstitial transit and a vessel was approaching were the important factors demanding his immediate attention.
Two: he didn’t want to think about two right now. Not least because two led to three and four and all the rest in a worryingly lengthy sequence. The neural cleanser was taking its own sweet time getting to work on flushing out his cerebellum.
Unwrapping himself from the bedcovers, he stood and rearranged some of the creases in his lab coat for a more satisfactory crumpled look. Then he was ready for action.
First things first, a deft flick of a mental switch and he deactivated the alarm. He knew how loathsome Mr Snide found repetitive alarms.
“Professor.” Dexter was on the comm. “Anything I need to concern myself with?”
“No, no, no, no, no.” Doomladen winced. Too many 'no's, guaranteed to generate suspicions. Plus it was sending his mind chasing down the spiralling maze that led to two and three and four, et cetera. Focus, he told himself, and shut out the Tanith-Stengun flashback as best he could. “I’m on my way to the control centre right now!”
“Glad to hear it. I’m in a meeting and would rather get it over with now and not have to reschedule. Do keep me apprised though, won’t you?”
“Oh, absolutely. Of everything.” No, he cringed, aware he’d overdone the reassurance-to-suspicion ratio once again. He reminded himself that, although he and Dexter were linked by the monoplasm, only superior intellects had any chance of breaking through his barriers and penetrating through to his innermost thoughts. But his confidence that there was no such thing as an intellect superior his own was being shaken by his innermost thoughts’ current habit of constantly relocating to outermost.
“Excellent. I’ll be by to check on things later.”
“Good. Great. That’s – ah - ” But Dexter had signed off. Thank God. A meaningless expression of gratitude, but there was always the chance he would at some point in the future elevate himself to a state of being that might be perceived as and termed ‘God’ by some, so there was no harm in a little thank you whenever it felt like someone was looking out for him. To be honest, those occasions were so few and far between it scarcely ever cropped up.
Doomladen set off at speed for the control centre. He could have accessed the habitoid’s systems extensively en route, but he preferred to use the time to address points two, three, four, five and so on.
Something had to be done. He couldn’t go on like this, that much was certain.
Originally his programme of aversion therapy had seemed perfectly well-conceived. Life as a scientist of the highest order, albeit not the tallest stature, had failed to cure him of his boyhood geekishness when it came to movies. And his fannish desires for Tanith Troy had been grossly exacerbated by her incorporation into the company of Evil UnLtd. Into his company, in a manner of speaking. Of course, she had attached herself to the leader and Doomladen was not about to lock antlers with Dexter in some primal battle for male dominance. Hence, his quest for a cure.
Subjecting himself to a series of carefully programmed dreams of sexual liaisons with Ms Troy had struck him as an inspired notion. Tailing each dream with an erotic bait-and-switch, replacing Ms Troy with some randomly selected member of Evil UnLtd, had been a singularly uninspiring but sadly necessary addition. Previous neurally-induced encounters with the Hatchling and Evil Robot had been highly effective in killing all sexual thought for days and he was sure that any heat given off by Tanith could be safely dissipated to inconsequential levels in due course.
And he had the mind bleach to purge his memories of any dreams that proved just too terrifying.
But something had gone wrong. Stengun was definitely not part of the program. Whether his own subconscious fears contaminated the neurosequencing or it was some side-effect of the unplanned hyperstitial dropout, he couldn’t determine. All he could say for sure was that it was time – past time – he came up with an alternative solution.
He assigned a generous percentage of his (to all intents and purposes infinite) mental capacity to the problem, while still reserving sufficient for the pressing matter of the approaching unknown craft.
Whatever else happened, it was imperative he keep Dexter happy in the meantime.
The opiates of the masses. And this lot looked like they were on masses of opiates. In fairness, it may have been a recent effect brought on by the hostile takeover, all of them trying to deal with the stress of change. But Dexter was not a great one for fairness, so he decided to assume they were normally this way. Drug dealers generally operated by a set of rules, principally they never did their own product. Thus, this mob of executives probably very rarely had time for watching any TV in their busy lives and kept themselves just this side of burnout by dosing themselves up with a nostril or two of the hard stuff every day. They all looked wired like they’d just latched themselves onto an electric fence to hang there and frazzle.
It suited Dexter. All the more impact would be had with his slide show. Dexter still recalled with despicable clarity that one of the greatest horrors the students of the Cryngemire Educatory Reform Habitoid For Wayward Boys had to endure was the slide show presentation given by masters returning from their holidays. Most arduous were those given by Mr Perrigrew of the Arts & Culture Department. Dexter shuddered and shook off a dozen involuntary impulses to relive the journey. Never mind. This was why he was about to grab the attention of his new employees with a slide show of his own.
“This,” he announced, “as you all know, is the face of your previous employer.”
Jaws hit the table, eyes popped wide and shrank in terror, lunches rushed around stomachs in search of an emergency exit.
Dexter allowed himself a satisfied smile. And left the slide in place as a potent backdrop.
“This is how I’d like you all to remember him.”
Squashed more than butternut, mashed like feline turnip and with eight entry bullet holes placed with the kind of eye for detail that only came with a special breed of vindictiveness. He would save the second Felis slide – the one with the exit wounds – for the end of the presentation – in case some of these execs hadn’t quite grasped the message. “Felis Corpulentis, as he was known to me. If any of you are caught remembering his fuzzy features with fondness, well, I’m sure you can all imagine what will happen. At the very minimum, it will involve a severe cut in hours. Off your life expectancy.”
So much for the stick. Time for the carrot. “The good news is that under new management, it’s my intention that this station continues very much in the same vein as before. And those who know me will appreciate that my intentions are invariably a close match with what actually occurs. Otherwise there are consequences. In other words, you all get to keep your jobs and not only that, with plans to increase profitability, I can foresee a significant increase in wages, performance-dependent, naturally.”
The execs eagerly tossed him nods like a lot of penitent church-goers throwing notes into the collection plate.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I am your new boss.” With some reluctance, he moved on to the next slide. Portraits of the Evil UnLtd crew clicked past, one by one. “These are also your bosses. Although you’re unlikely to hear any verbal commands from Evil Robot or the Hatchling, you had best do anything in your meagre powers to keep them happy. Management cannot be held accountable for any deaths arising from a failure to appease these two.”
One of the pasty-faced male execs with two particularly heavy rings around his eyes raised a hand. Dexter studied his name tag. “Yes? You.”
“Witkins, sir. Head of, um, Religious Programming. What if, hypothetically, any of us were, well, reconsidering our employment here?”
“Ah, then I would recommend you take that up with our Head of Personnel.” He tapped the relevant portrait on his screen with his cane. “Mr Knucks. I am not here to discuss staffing. I’m here to discuss Television production and the future of Galaxy Six. However, I will say, Mr Knucks is a firm believer in loyalty and sticking with a decision once made. A broken promise is a lot like a broken nose, he says. Or at least, you will often find the two go together. Or words to that effect.”
Witkins fell duly quiet. Dexter suspected he would be a long-term member of the Galaxy Six team. Even doing all he could to fight the signs of ageing, in case retirement was frowned upon as much as intention to quit. Dexter made a mental note to implement extensive changes to Religious Programming, both because it was one of those areas where much harm could be done with a minimum of effort and because it would make for a passably entertaining test of Witkins’ loyalty.
“Now, on the subject of TV. As I have stated, we will be continuing much as before, with a few changes in the schedule as noted in your handouts.”
Everyone rushed immediately to leaf through the documents. Dexter stayed them with a raised cane. “Please, don’t trouble yourselves. These are not open for negotiation, so we can spare ourselves discussion. Simply take them with you and digest them at your leisure. Commit them to memory along with - ” He flipped back to the first slide. “ – the image of your previous employer, if you like. Now, among our cost-saving, profit-enhancing measures, you will note that we have plans for making it possible to fill every hour of airtime with roughly twelve minutes of actual TV. Four commercial breaks of four minutes each, sandwiched between a minimum of two minutes of trailers for other shows on all our channels will take care of a full thirty-two minutes. And each segment of recorded TV can be topped and tailed with recaps and coming up next teasers, the lengths of which can be adjusted to pad out the programme as much as required. Advertising will all be done in-house, by the way, both so as to increase our revenues and to allow us to exercise full control over content, slip in subliminal messages and so on.”
“Please, sir?” Witkins again, looking like he was about to ask permission to go to the toilet. “You’ll be pleased to know that Mr – er – Corpulentis - ” he turned a little green as he eyed the slide “ - already put in place those kinds of arrangements on the advertising front. Not that I’m singing his praises or anything. But he was -”
“Yes, before you gibber on too excessively obsequiously, one thing you all need to understand is where to draw the line between obeisance and being a suck-up. Let’s be clear. To me, you are like vermin with uses. I no more expect you to bow and scrape than a professor would expect his lab rats to erect idols in his image. By which, of course, I mean any generic professor, not our very own Professor Doomladen, who is actually quite keen on such displays of loyalty from his specimens – and believe you me, he is more than capable of getting them to do it.”
Knucks stormed into the command centre and directed his anger at Doomladen, who was sitting in the control nest like a very meagre helping of ice cream in an upturned cone. Raspberry ripple flavour, by the looks of him. Flushed and flustered was nothing new, but the lattice of throbbing veins was novel.
“What I think this station needs,” said Knucks, thinking now would be the perfect time to pile on the stress for the little bugger, “is an alarm that goes off before shit happens.”
“What? Eh? Uh, it did.” Doomladen gestured in distrait fashion at the screen behind him. “The ship hasn’t arrived yet. It’s closing to dock. I’ve, ah, got everything under control.”
“Shit, I said.” Knucks didn’t care about some approaching vessel. Anyone stupid enough to attempt to dock with a space-faring Tree recently occupied as the headquarters of Evil UnLtd could stand by to be toasted. The expansive screen behind Doomy was a big blank and Knucks couldn’t help thinking, if the craft was at all large and threatening, they’d have a picture of it by now.
“No, ship. We don’t have the visual surveillance this place once had. Ordinarily we’d have been able to access the viewpoint of each and every Traukoid out on the branches.” The Prof tapped his domed bonce. “But I’m still getting plenty of sensory data and I can tell you right now, it is a ship.”
Things had changed here at Galaxy Six Broadcasting. A number of the staff had put in requests for a transfer since the hostile takeover. While quite a few didn’t have a problem working for an Evil organisation, especially when Dexter issued a statement confirming that they would be producing much of the same old tat on every channel. And they’d all been invited to join in a toast to the new management. Spiked with monoplasm, natch. Yes, Knucks had to hand it to the boss for that one. Only Tanith was still pissed at him, the thought of having her innards riddled with ‘that orange crap,’ as she called it. And she’d already started on an extensive search on the intergalactinet for whatever weird-ass colonic irrigation could flush it out of her system. Dexter was confident she’d come round before too long. Meanwhile, she had full editorial veto on scenes broadcast from her POV. They all did, come to that.
It suited Knucks fine. He admired the ingenuity and besides, like he told Tanith, it was a brand new kind of fame, wasn’t it? Instead of baring all for the media, she could show the universe what went on in that mind of hers. So from that perspective, it was a blow for feminism. And if that didn’t do much for the ratings, he promised he’d do all he could to catch her in the buff and treat everyone to an eyeful from his worthy perspective.
She’d threatened to break his remaining arm for that.
Knucks blinked back to the present. Narrowed his eyes at the distant speck that could now (just) be made out on the screen. Although doubtless hurtling towards them, it appeared reluctant to reveal any details at this stage.
“So, who are these people? Have we ID’ed them or are we just going to blow them away?”
“Yeah, about that, most of the habitoid’s defence grid got knocked out by the ‘quakes’. Just prior to our, ah, separation from the mother Hatchling.”
“Spare me the filler. I know all that.”
“Yeah, Dexter asked me to season my dialogue with recaps here and there – to help hook in viewers who might have missed the first episodes.”
“Right. Very post-modern. Anyway, what about the weapons on all the docked ships?” He craned over Doomladen’s shoulder for a view of the console. “You get to operate them from here, right?”
“Right. Well, as you know, we can all operate any part of the station from wherever we are. Remember? Since Dexter had us all linked with this monoplasm.”
“Yeah. You can stop that now.”
“Okay. But the point is, we can link in directly to the onboard systems and with the correct mental focus trigger any kind of procedure, activate any part of it. Even manipulate members of staff if we put our minds to it.”
“Neat, yeah. I’ve been meaning to give that a whirl.”
“Yeah, be careful with that. Anyhow, the only systems we can’t operate directly in that way are those on board the docked vessels which haven’t yet been laced with the monoplasm.” Knucks frowned, sensing they were still deep in unnecessary recap territory. “The only weapons we have available to us right now are the various ship-mounted ones. And yes, we access those electronically, from here. Thanks to your handiwork.”
“You mean when I hooked this up to govern all the ships’ engines in a co-ordinated thrust to get us free of the gas giant’s gravity well?” Knucks deadpanned.
“Okay, okay, I get how dumb it sounds. No more recapping from me, I promise.”
“Glad we got that sorted. Now, so let’s slave all these ships’ weapons, zero in on the intruder and blam, we’re done. Ready to address our internal problems.”
“No, I’m, ah, afraid not. Standing orders from Dexter. He’d rather allow approaching ships to dock. More vessels to add to our collection, you know. He’s not one to turn down a free gift. So I’ve sent Mr Ferret and Ms – Ms Troy down to meet them at the docking bay. Ready to catch the right train if they don’t dock where we designate.”
Knucks shrugged. “Fair enough. They need some backup?”
“They took Evil Robot with them.”
“Ah, so no then.” He eyed his hand. With only one thumb to twiddle, he was going to have a tough time amusing himself. He had no unfinished business and there was no way he was going back to that john to read.
“Um, by the way – what internal problems?”
At last, thought Knucks. The penny drops. Doomladen wore a trepidatious expression like he was hoping that whatever they were, the internal problems had nothing to do with Mr Knucks’ internals. Finally, though, he was twigging to Knucks’ priorities.
“Oh, nothing much. Just a fucking great Tree branch punching its way in through the bog wall while I was on the crapper. Don’t worry, it was a narrow escape, I’m fine. But, you think that sounds like something we need to worry about?”
Doomladen gulped. Perhaps picturing the incident in his head and perhaps even running through the scenario with him in Knucks’ position. Either way, Knucks took the Prof’s answering expression as a big fat Yes.
Even with the internal transit system, it was a long old haul all the way down to the docking area. Much longer than Tanith normally cared to travel on some menial errand. For company she had Mr Ferret and Evil Robot, of course, but Evil Robot had nothing to say beyond his usual non-committal – albeit slightly threatening - burr. And Mr Ferret, well, he had become even more of a diva since getting his own show and there were already enough divas, to her way of thinking, in Evil UnLtd.
Like Dexter Snide. She was still a tad upset with him over the monoplasm incident. She would grow out of it, he had assured her, before it grew out of her. Which was just another reason they were sleeping in separate quarters at the moment.
“I don’t see why we should have to traipse all this way to meet and greet potential hostiles,” she grumbled. “Shouldn’t we have people to do that for us?”
“Oh, minions. Yes, we should absolutely have minions,” Ferret concurred. “Mr Knucks and Dexter are seeing to that. We need some troops to replace all those nasty Goyles.”
“You mean I’ll have some goons to boss around? Oh good.” In some respects, she and Ferret enjoyed a common wavelength. Vanity, fashion and servants, at least. Perhaps, she thought, her humour was warming slightly. Another thought occurred almost immediately: “And I suppose they’ll all have to take the monoplasm pill.”
Perhaps not.
“For the viewpoint consideration, not so much. Nobody’s interested in a grunt’s perspective. It’s the main players the viewers will want to focus on.” Tanith eyed Ferret with a sidelong glance. It was all me, me, me with him. Something else they had in common. In theory she could empathise, as apparently he had been dragged away from recording his show for this; in practice, she didn’t care. She had been lying in bed, dreaming up ways of making Dexter’s life hell. She’d been robbed of some potentially sadistic meditations.
“But it’ll give us complete control over them and ensure direct communications. Very handy when it comes to minions.”
“Wouldn’t you worry about some foot soldier poking around in your head?”
“No, according to the Professor it functions like an intellectual hierarchy – so, um, it’s possible I have more to fear than Dexter, but no. I’m reasonably sure nobody who ingests the magic ingredient will be able to manipulate me.”
“Or me,” said Tanith pointedly. “But then, some of us don’t need organic gestalt polymers running through our innards in order to manipulate people.”
“You do very well.”
“I think you genuinely intended that as a compliment, so I won’t feed you my fist.”