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 47

Yanick Champoux (28/5/2002)

Demuel wiped the blood that was running down the bodymates' nose, eyes warily locked on what once had been Skull.

"You had to spoil a perfectly terrifying moment by saying the silliest platitude you could think of, did you?"

Sergei's smile -- or rather the grimace that Skull's facial muscles rendered as a smile, atrophied as they were after a lifetime worth of sullen apathy -- didn't falter. The woman's insult barely stung him. He was back from the dead, and it would take more than a little pique to burst his bubble. So it was not with irritation, but mirth that he dashed forward and slapped the impertinent wench's face hard enough to send her sprawling on the ground.

"You really don't get it, do you?" he cheerfully crowed.

Something bumped into him. It was the boy, obviously upset about Sergei's playful roughening of the woman. Skull's shield had been devised to resist the brunt of a naval laser canons. As pure and commendable Toast's intentions were, his intervention was sadly doomed to be as table-turning as a toad's belch.

Sergei needed the simpleton alive. So instead of ripping his head off, he magnanimously settled to sucker-punch him in the stomach. Toast went down like a rock, retching and covering his belly with both hands in a way that made Sergei's heart sing.

The woman was struggling to get back on her legs. The boy was down for the count. Only Byran was still standing, and the way he raised his hands and took a step backward hinted of a desire to keep things that way. Facing no immediate threat, Sergei had the time to observe his surrounding.

The lights were back online, he noticed. And so was the gravity grid. Someone must have found a way to defeat the virus he had unleashed in the ship's computer system while he was dead.

I wonder for how long I've been dead? mused the Decados. Technically, his question made little sense, as he never had been alive in the first place. He wasn't the real Sergei Visarionovich Godunov; he was just a backup copy. And a very crude one at that.

The think machine implemented in Sergei's chest had been the best that could be tortured out of an Engineer, but still the Second Republic and its technological miracles was long gone and there were limits to what science could achieve in this age of crass luddism. The amount of information that form the psyche of an individual, his skills, his traits, his preferences, his memories, is truly phenomenal, and to fit all of a Sergei in a little box, some corners had to be be cut fairly round. The core personality of the Decados had been preserved in its entirety, and the memories of everything that crossed his mind in the three hours preceding his death were intact. But all of the rest was at best foggy, and at worst completely missing. For instance, he remembered that he was betrothed to one of his cousin and that they were supposed to get married somewhere during the next year, but he couldn't recall either the face nor the name of his wife-to-be. In all fairness, however, the original Sergei probably wouldn't have recalled either.

So he was nothing but a pale copy of the man he was. But as the man he was was lying dead in the dining room with his brain spread over the carpet like some cheap paté, Sergei didn't think he was in position to complain.

The woman was back on her feet. Blood was oozing down her nose and mouth -- and from a nasty cut on her forehead, and from a gunshot wound at her side; in mint condition that lass wasn't -- and she was not too steady on her feet, but upright she was. She had moxy, that Sergei had to give her. Which was perfectly fine with him; there was no fun in killing someone who wasn't struggling to remain alive.

But before killing her, he would indulge in the little pleasure of telling her who he was, let her know that while House Decados might loose a round (or get one in the head), it always won the match.

"You have no clue who am I, do you?"

The woman's voice, as she answered, wasn't as quivery as Sergei might have hoped. Nor was her words proper for the kind of horror one might feel when Death is growing close.

"By your own admission, Toast's uncle. By the way you're acting, an old buzzard with an incontinence problem and some severe case of mood swings."

Sergei rested his hands on his hips and laughed.

"This was the man that inhabited this body. But, lo and behold, this man is dead, and instead of he a dead man lives! This man is I, Sergei Visarionovich Godunov!"

The affirmation was met with a most disheartening silence.

"The Decados," added Sergei once it was apparent that no recognition would happen if he wasn't to provide one more hint.

"Which one?"

"The one you just shot in the head, dammit!" screeched Sergei. Pancreator be damned, that wench was spoiling his return from the grave.

"Aaah... That one. Sorry. We had our mind on more important things. What are you still doing here? Hell's full?"

Sergei was fuming. On his sides, his hands flexed. He was going to wring the impertinent woman's neck like a chicken's. No, not wring her neck: he was going to choke her until her eyes would bulge out like a courtisan's bosom in a grand ball's dress.

He was so engrossed in his murderous outrage that he completely missed the words Byran uttered.

"What?" he spats, turning his eyes toward the Ukari.

"I only said: you're the Decados we-- I mean, Dem, just killed, with his mind transfered in the old man body?"

"Yeah, that's right. You got a problem with that?"

"Oh, no, not at all, it's just funny, considering..."

"FUNNY?!" The new cybernetic implants of Sergei warned him of a sharp increase of his blood pressure.

"Not funny inna 'ah ah' sense," quickly amended Byran, fearing that the Decados might choose to kill him before -- or worse, instead of -- Maddie. "Funny in a 'ain't the world a weird place?' kind of way. I mean, it's pretty much what happened to Dem and the girl..."

Sergei blinked. Blood lust or not, some tidbits of news that are just too disconcerting to absorb in stride.

"Wait a second. Dem? And the girl? Do you mean this woman's actually...?"

"Vau Dating Services," rasped Demuel, "when they say they will match you with someone, boy do they mean it."

"Demuel's body has been deep fried by my ship's computer -- it was his fault, mind you -- so the Vau stuffed his spirit in the girl like farce inna turkey," helpfully explained Byran.

"Gee, Byran, thank a lot for that," snorted both Demuel and Magdalena.

"Wait a second," Sergei was indignant, "Are you telling me that this Demuel has been electrocuted and got stuffed in a bodalicious young nymphette whereas I get a fuckin' bullet in the head and, for my trouble, ends up being merged with an old goat? Na khuya? I'm about to start believing the Pancreator doesn't like evil people, after all... And to think I just kissed a man inside a woman's body full on the mouth. That's just disgusting!"

"You know, coming from the member of a House known to stick it in everything with cavities, I find this highly hypocrite of you," pointed out Magdalena.

"You're confusing depravity with open-mindedness. You don't get as high as I did in the Decados food-chain without learning to despise and hate any lifestyle different than mine."

"So you despise and hate everyone who doesn't despise and hate everyone else?"

"Put that way, yes, that sums it up pretty nicely."

"Lux Splendor parties must be so fun in your family."

"We are digressing. I don't enjoy kissing men."

"Nice to know you share some affinities with your mother."

"You waste your time throwing insults at me: I'm going to kill you anyway." Sergei paused to mull over what he just said. "Wait, this doesn't sound right..."

Magdalena shrugged, grabbed the bottom of the tight jersey she was wearing and pulled it over her head.

Sergei's left eyebrow reached for the sky. Victim of a sudden flash of liberalism, in a moment of moral satori, he realized how badly mistaken he had been. There was nothing wrong with being attracted to men, after all. Not as long as they were filling black laced lingerie as voluptuously as this one was.

"Are you going to beg for mercy and propose to peddle bodily favors in order to save your life?"

Magdalena giggled and strutted toward Sergei, hips swaying to and fro like an Al-Malik battlefront. She stopped barely two feet away from Sergei and winked coquetishly.

"No," said Demuel.

Holding both sleeves, Demuel sent the jersey flying over Sergei's head. Then, using all of Magdalena's weight as leverage, Demuel pulled and twisted. The jersey became a sling; Sergei's head, a pellet.

Slamming the Decados in a wall wouldn't do much good. Not with his shield still on. So Demuel didn't do it. Instead, he kept him spinning and spinning.

Sergei was doing his damnedest to regain his balance, without much success. While his new body was crammed with cybernetic components and think machines that would have enabled the previous occupant to easily get the upper hand over this dirty trick, Sergei was still too unused to all those nifty toys to use them efficiently. For the time being, the internal gyroscope incessantly notifying him of a change of heading, the tactical tracking system displaying the green spirals of his trajectory on the inside of his right eye and -- most of all -- the bloody tachometer going bunker inside his head were just one big nuisance.

Despite everything, Sergei's hands managed to get a hold of the taut sleeves linking him to the Demuel. He tugged at them, hoping to draw his opponent to him. Instead, the bodymates let go. Suddenly untethered, Sergei went flying into the corridor's wall.

The Decados felt on his knees. The wind was knocked out of him, he was feeling sick and dizzy. The woman was so going to die, he swore to himself. As soon as the ship stopped to turn and turn and turn and turn.

The bodymates didn't give him the time. Demuel darted toward Sergei and grabbed once more the sleeves of the jersey still clinging to his back. Deftly, he wounded the cloth tight around the Decados' head, tying it securely in place.

Sergei howled and lunged forward. But the bodymates where already out of reach. Blindfolded, head spinning, Sergei reeled like a drunken Gannock.

A hissing noise on the left. Sergei spun toward the noise. A little too quickly, warned the tachometer, a little too far, pointed out the gyroscope. He readjusted. He was facing the right direction, he was sure, when the foot hit him squarely between the shoulder blades, sending him stumbling forward.

Not ten minutes had passed since Sergei's rebirth. In this laps of time, he had shat himself, had been been subject of rude mockery, had had his head wrapped up in a vomit-stained piece of clothing and was well on his way to get spanked good and proper by a insufferable (although topless) wench.

Had Zakhayelos himself appeared to announce that, it was confirmed, the meek were going to inherit the worlds, Sergei wouldn't have been in a fouler mood.

Roaring, he grabbed the cloth blinding him and tore it asunder.

Just in time to see where Demuel had pushed him.

"Well, at least it explains the hissing noise," he mumbled a split second before the closing airlock slammed into him.

Again, his shield saved his life. But he was now pinned in place by the airlock and its frame. Worse still, the straining pneumatic system behind the door was still pushing, and was slowly penetrating the shield.

The bodymates smiled at Sergei, their fingers still on the airlock's override latch. Taking their time, they walked to a near by intercom interface and punched an access code.

"Lima? You there? Could you do me a favor and channel a little more power to the airlock of room... seven-oh-thirty-three? I'm trying to divide and conquer, here..."

Sergei's fury was instantaneously replaced by chilling horror. She wasn't serious, was she? She wouldn't dare squish him with an airlock.

Yes, just like she hadn't dared to shoot him with a blaster.

"Wait, wait!" he shouted, "Not twice on the same day. Please! I have information that can help you! Give me a little chance to talk myself out of a gruesome death! Hell, if you want I'm ready to beg for mercy and propose to peddle bodily favors in order to save my life!"

A mousy whine came from Toast, who was looking quite miserable. "Maddie gonna sprottle n'uncle?"

The bodymates chewed on their lower lip for a moment, having a quick, silent council. After a time that seemed long, very long, to Sergei, they seemed to come to a decision.

It's a miracle we are still standing, thought Demuel. If the bastard comes to realize how close we are to just fall down and blackout, he will not hesitate to do unto us what we should do unto him. We might come to regret to do what you propose.

"Perhaps," said Magdalena, "but it's a chance that we have to take." She hit the 'talk' button of the intercom. "Lima, forget about what I said. On second thought, there's a discussion we must have with the door-stop."