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 50

Yanick Champoux (13/6/2002)

The Comet's corridors were bathed in the eery silence that can only be experienced after a good, solid large-scale massacre. Everyone that had to die were done, and their souls were already at the gates of the Great Beyond, punching out their karma card and waiting for Tholumiyelos to show up with the pay slips. As for the living -- the little of them that was remaining -- they were all very cautious to make themselves as innocuous as possible. For not only the Holy Writings were saying that the Meek would inherit the Known Worlds, but common sense added that they were less likely to get repeatably shot in the face too.

As they were making their way to the hull breach predicted by Sergei, the minds of the members of the little group couldn't have been on more divergent tracks.

Byran was ruminating dark, brooding thoughts. His fate was in the hands of a geriatric Decados, a crazy topless broad who once had been the closest thing he had of a friend (that was before the destruction of the Fearless Baboon) and a retard with an unhealthy fixation on large purple vegetables. The Decados was smelling of shit, the topless broad of vomit, but neither of them was stinking as bad as the Ukari's foreseeable future.

Sergei, on the other hand, would had been jubilating if he wasn't caught in such a perilous situation. Just like a pre-pubescent adolescent, he was thrilled by the discovery of his own body. He had asked a listing of the capacities of all cybernetic implants his host body was equipped with, and the report his internal think machine gave him in return was nothing short of astonishing. There were battle cruisers packing less armament and shielding technology than this old geezer was. A true blessing, considering that he was pitted against a treacherous Decados captain commanding a shipful of bloodthirsty marauders, a Void Kraken and, last but not the least, the wench that almost managed to kill him twice in the same day.

Toast -- the man that once answered to the name of Ben and now was generally greeting the mention of his new moniker by a salvo of saliva bubbles -- was upset. The part of his mind that was healing was aware that something bad, something evil, something both worst and older than Death itself was approaching. He was feeling Its hunger and tasting the unending howling that was Its mind. He didn't like either much.

And the bodymates? They were internally evaluating the situation.

"By the way, Sergei, did we mentioned that we saw the Decados ship disengage the Comet after we introduced your brain to the tapestry?"

"At least a dozen times, yes. And I don't believe you. The boy is too important for the House to abandon here. Boyard Atanasov is a bastard, but he's not stupid. He knows that we must have him. We can't afford to have him as a wildcard, and if he was to die..."

Sergei's words trailed off, unterminated. He had stopped walking too, and the expression on his face wasn't too reassuring.

"Oh no... They wouldn't..."

"Denial is always the first step, y'know. After that there will be anger, and then acceptance."

Sergei's mind was reeling. Could it be possible? Could the Mantis really purposefully do such a thing?

But if they didn't, why would the Void Kraken been summoned?

That's when Sergei noticed a small blinking warning his internal sensors were displaying at the edge of his field of vision.

"Fuck me with a troika full of dead monks..." he whispered softly.

"Could we know what's the matter?"

Sergei looked at the bodymates. He was feeling a little bit sick.

"The ship's gravity field is perturbed by a second, steadily increasing field. We are falling toward something big. Something that can't be anything else than the--"

"Eeeeeeeeeegplaaaaaaant!"

The bodymates and Sergei looked at Toast, and then at each other.

"Listen," said Demuel, "I propose the following. We stop trying to kill each other for the next few hours. We find fresh clothes so that you can stop stinking and me jiggling. Then we put our heads together and find a way to survive the Great Old Roach. If we manage to do it, we can always return to murderizing each other. Sounds like a plan?"

The Decados loathed to admit it, but it did.