by

Yanick Champoux (38%)

Lee Watts (18%)

Josip Nað (17%)

Michel Lacombe (16%)

Dorian (4%)

goldkngt55 (3%)

Andrew Avila (2%)

Marten (1%)

Oliver (1%)

Part 31

Michel Lacombe (12/2/2002)

Byran fumed as they walked briskly across the 'port, attracting way too much attention with their four Vau guards. Demuel had offered zero resistance to their orders. Take da retard along? Yes, sir, mister mandarin. Abandon da Baboon here on Vera Cruz for da Vau ta keep? Oh aye, sure thing, oh me Shepherd sir. Would ya like a blowjob with that?

And Shepherd pontificated on... "From this point on, the Auspices reveal nothing to such humble servants as us, but fear not, for you are the tools of ineffable destiny, and therefore shall you undoubtedly prevail..."

Tools? Had he been in the mood for comparative introspection, Byran would've realized he had never been more pissed off in his entire life.

Skull crouched inside the Fearless Baboon, once in a while edging away from expanding puddles. The femtophones painted onto his eardrums reproduced the creak of Migite's pensive frown; the single-molecule sensors he had exhaled into the ship's ventilation system were done painting their picture.

Skull formed the words "How many?" in the back of his mind.

"Seven hundred and sixteen onboard, not counting the dead."

Anything subtle would take all day. Skull disliked skipping lunch.

"Plus we have eight exits."

That settled that. "Evac surroundings." Skull started mentally reading the ship's layout.

Dem and Mad had been trying to reconstruct the dream scroll's text from their memories of it. Dem had had the dream too, and had also thought himself alone. He had, however, dreamt himself to be in Maddie's body still.

You're starting to like it inside me, I think.

Oh, I knew I'd like that the minute I laid eyes on you.

Yeah, well, you were looking up my skirt at the time. Run translation.

The software went over their partial recollections and returned the usual error message.

We can't be making typos in every word, can we?

Package allows for variant spelling. Okay, this isn't a known language. We need some linguistic software, something that can infer meaning from structure. Or something.

The boy in the dream was about to speak when we woke up. Maybe he'll explain next time we dream.

Won't help us much if he speaks the same language he's reading.

As they asked Shepherd whether there was an upgrade for their translation package, it wasn't exactly clear to them which one was making the sounds, but this didn't bother them at the time.

On his downtown office's screens, Migite watched civilians and regular personnel trot away from the Fearless Baboon. The blank space where he knew the Baboon was told him Skull's silence field kept anyone inside the ship from hearing the fire alarms. Spaceport emergency teams would arrive soon, however, so Skull had very little time...

The Baboon reappeared and imploded.

A question typed itself onscreen and Migite transmitted the eight exits' locations.

"What the hell was that?" Byran had been about to slap the retard away from the ticket counter he was clinging to when the blast rocked the station.

Mad/Dem shot a look at Shepherd. He was frowning.

This is not good. We'd better just yank Toast away from that counter and pour on the speed.

Toast?

Hey, it's better than what Byran's been calling him.

A soothing, maternal voice on the PA said something about a fire in section 1152 and invited all to remain calm. 1152 was where they'd left the Baboon, and Byran spat out the requisite curses. Dem/Mad took a moment to gauge the crowd. Mostly affluent sheep with overprotected lives. Only stunned whispers for now, but if any small group panicked, their idiocy would cascade into a general, deadly stampede.

Toast stared at them imploringly. The ship docked at that terminal was in final boarding stage, but there were still places available. Destination Sutek. The attendant was what you'd expect from a high quality tourist trap: resplendent vacuous smile, fifty-word vocabulary at most, and a tanned body Dem immediately thought of twelve different uses for.

You can't do that last thing!

Don't worry, dear, I wouldn't cheat on you using your own body.

No, I mean that's not physically possible.

Dem vividly remembered doing the thing in question. Maddie blushed.

How can we blush from your reactions when I'm in command?

Any further thought on the subject took second place to Byran's lunge for Shepherd's throat. Dem caught his friend half a second before the guards energy staves did, but there was a rustle in the crowd around them.

"Shepherd, this is where we part ways. We're taking that ship Toast is so bent on. Byran, shut up, I'm saving our lives here."

"An' good bloody riddance!" Byran spat at the Vau's back as Dem/Mad approached the pretty attendant.

"How are you today?" the attendant beamed.

Dem returned the smile with a pleasure unspoiled by a few yells from different points in the 'port. "Well, he's homicidal, he's semi-anencephalous and I'm turgescent, though not so much as I would've been last week in equal company."

"That's nice."

Told you, fifty-word vocabulary.

And to you, it's a turn-on.

"Three tickets?" The mob nearby was steadily going bugfuck. Likewise throughout the 'port, from the sound of it.

"Four actually, I'm buying you one."

Excuse me? I'm the one with sex on the brain here, and I wasn't going to do that!

These people are going to rush 'port personnel and tear them to pieces soon, she doesn't deserve to die like that.

...

Okay, and I want to see how that's physically possible for myself.

"Five direct to you at twelve o," Migite said.

"Visual confirm," Skull thought.

"Three buying tickets."

"Get me a seat."

The Vau carried a fifteen-foot wide clearing with them through the crowd. Only one man stepped into the clearing, straight for them. The captain of the guards noticed his eyes and said 'shields'. Then the artificial lighting went out and in spite of broad daylight pouring through high windows, the crowd ripped itself to boiling, terrified entropy.

Shieldless, his staff without energy, the Vau captain barely saw the man's arm flash by his face. The next guard, the tip of his nose nicked, died equally fast, but then the small piece of bone was drained of its poison, so Skull had to kick and punch.

As his last protectors' spines snapped, Shepherd found himself backing away into a sea of civilians too deeply immersed in their imagined danger to notice the actual massacre among them. Faced with certain death, Shepherd found he had not the courage he had expected his faith to give. As his muderer turned to look him in the eye, he remembered that it was he who was to feed the faith, not the reverse. He steadied himself.

Dained of the toxin for which Skull's own blood was the only antidote, the razor was too small to be used dangerously except as a bullet. So Skull threw it at Shepherd's left eye.

So hard it embedded itself in the back of the mandarin's skull.

Drained of the toxin for which Skull's own blood was the only antidote, the razor was too small to be used dangerously except as a bullet. So Skull threw it at Shepherd's left eye.

So hard it embedded itself in the back of the mandarin's skull.

Letting Byran have the window seat had been a bad idea. He could see the smoking ruin of the Baboon, and could barely contain himself enough for the other passengers not to notice he had a stake in the tragedy they all oohed and aawed at.

Dem wasn't sure how he felt about the fact that his best seductive smiles seemed to work better on the former attendant, whose name was Lima, for being made with Maddie's mouth. Maddie didn't seem to have a problem with this, so he gave her body-command and went back to linguistics on the back seat of their brain.

Ben had felt bad below. Now he felt good.

None of them had noticed the very last passenger to board the ship, just before the door had closed. He had his reservation number, carried no weapons and was perfectly calm in contrast of the pandemonium security was trying to contain, so they had helped him through, one good, solid, old man in the lot, good thing they'd saved him. Pretty little blonde girl in the next row with her beautiful blonde mother had saved the shipload's life by grinning the word "Gran'daddee" at him as he sat down. He hadn't seen his quarries, but he had their seat numbers. They were somewhere far in front. He could wait. They served lunch on this flight.

Imagining Lima in many positions, not all in fact possible, Maddie said: "You're a nanoengineer? Really?"