Violence never resolved anything. It had, however, many times been proved an efficient way to postpone unwelcome trepasses on one's freedom and bodily well-being.

It is in this optic that Demuel rammed his fist elbow-deep into the soldier's face. With a baleful sputter, the only sound left available to his energetically deconstructed maxilla, the soldier allowed gravity to fix him a blind date with the floor. Damien's heart sank as the man felt. Picking a fight with a retainer of one of the great Houses was never a good idea. Picking it in the middle of the said House's barrack was slightly worse. Choosing noon and the main cafeteria to do the deed was classified, under most circumstances, in the no-no section.

He looked around. The shocked silence rapidly spreading around an epicenter corresponding to the exact point where his knuckles had freed the soldier's teeth from the long dictature of unelected gums was leaving little doubts of the troubles that were laying ahead of him if inspiration was not to visit him soon.

From a table behind him, Demuel heard the sound of a gun's security being flicked off. Did he said soon? Very soon was more like it.

Quickly the calculations ran through his head.

There were five guards with firearms, three bearing katanas, and twelve in a state of arming. There was three feet to the window and a twenty foot drop to his rapier. His right leg kicked back as a slug erupted from the pistol and brought down a chunk of plaster from the ceiling. He could feel the wiring running through his nervous system erupting as fire flowed through his brain.

Two steps with a grapple and his new shield grunted four times as the other officers fired. Demuel hated getting blood on his uniform, especially Li-Halan blood. There was a spin, or did he roll, recollection after the fact was always disturbing. Unfortunately, his brain ran three seconds behind his body when he was fully `turned on'. The cause of his movement lay groaning on the floor. More Li- Halan blood.

Three lightning fast steps and he was through a window. He landed in the seat of his rapier as the realization hit him that he was shot on his way out. Blood flowed over his leg and onto his seat. He would have to fix that, but first, he needed to get off the planet.

Never touch a Wheeler's French fries.

It was a dry, earthen dusk in the city of Nutushu. In the process of day 'passing the buck' over to night, the shadows stretched and yawned their announcement to retire in the sinking sunlight. The city was winding down, though its citizens were not yet spent: with the night came the dark-traders and night-revellers, everyone looking to either make money or spend it.

Magdalena Nova stood at the corner of the cobbled street attempting to look both alluring and inconspicuous at the same time. She'd worked a hard day at the Reeve office processing debts for Landes Johnson, the mole-esque Manager of their branch, and worrying about the blind-date Annis Belial, the receptionist, had set up for her.

Magdalena was not the type to have blind-dates: not only did she feel more than capable to get her own men but blind-dates were so pathetic. But, here she was, waiting for a man she didn't know, trying her best to not look like a prostitute.

Darkness was fast approaching and she was beginning to cool. This 'really nice fellow' whom Annis had promised her had obviously failed to make their appointment, which was something of a relief to Magdalena, and so, deciding that she had stayed around long enough for a viable excuse, she hailed a hackney carriage.

The Li Halan city was rich and prosperous, filled with all manner of conveniences. Magdalena had heard tell of places where they had carriages which moved under their own power, but had never seen one herself. She presumed that they weren't just lies made up by dashing Charioteers trying to impress her.

The wooden carriage stopped before her, the driver looking down from his vantage point on the carriage.

"Where to, Miss?" asked a gruff voiced driver.

"Icon Apartments, block 2, please" she answered lightly as she climbed in to the open carriage.

She'd just seated herself when a man, dark of hair and uniform, leapt in to the carriage.

"The spaceport, NOW!" cried Demuel.

All her warning bells went of imedieately, screaming at her just to sit silently by, and let the man have his way. But when had she ever heeded those annoying bells? So, she turned, anger flaring on her face.

"Hey .... what the hell do you think you are doing? This was my freakin carriage, you can't just barge in here! Who the fuck do you think you are?"

Demuel couldn't help smiling. She was spluttering with anger, and on beautiful women that is always a turn-on. But this was not the time.

"Look," he yelled "I don't have all day. JUST GO!"

And he was right, he didn't have all day. Behind them, the Li Hallan guards had arrived, and they didn't hesistate. Without any warning, they began shooting.

His synapses fired as the wiring kicked in once more. The movement came naturally and without thinking. In almost freeze-frame, he saw the driver beeing hit in the back, and slowly, oh so very slowly, being thrown off the carriage by the impact. Demuel jumped, ignoring the searing pain in his leg, and in one fluid motion he had grabbed the reins from the disappearing driver and started the carriage. The bench at least acted as some sort of cover, otherwise he was a sitting duck. Splinters of wood were flying through the air. If he had been hit again, he hadn't noticed it yet. He just hoped she had had the wits to keep her pretty little head low.

As he turned a corner, he heard a scream of pain from the back seat.

"What do you think you're doing you Irideemable CUR?!" The shrill and distinctive voice piped from the rear of the carriage, "You've wrinkled my suit. Do you have any idea how many firebirds I paid for that? What is your name? I am to report you at once you feeble....peasant." A small bald head popped out of the window of the carriage.

"Where the [censored] did you come from?" Demuel asked.

"I was going to ask you the same thing! Only I'm not a peasant."

This conversation seemed more and more pointless as the lumbering and quite distinctive shape of at least a half a dozen vorox commandos moved forward in a graceful deadly glide, outlined in the twilight of the faded sun setting behind them.

The street narrow slightly ahead, as the road came to a bend. A wagon enteredi the street from a blind alley, forcing Demuel to the left of the road. The front wheel of the carriage slammed hard into the curb, forcing the bald cabbie's's right hand to slip. He caught sight of the oncoming lamp post just moments before slamming into it. Ripped from the side of the carriage, he lay beside the post, crumpled in a most unnatural position.

The oncoming herd beasts, not wishing to collide with Demuel's carriage, baulked and reared on their hind legs, giving the carriage enough room to pass. The first of the Vorox commandos made it safely by before the huge beasts returned to all six legs. But the next two were not as lucky. The remaining three, not breaking their stride, vaulted the beasts and then catapulted themselves off the side of the nearest building and continued their pursuit, having only lost 9 meters.

Having been tossed violently in the carriage, Magdalena righted herself as the carriage passed beneath the reared herd beasts. With another strong bounce, the carriage was back in the street and Magdalena came face to face with a mouthful of Vorox teeth belonging to the lead commando who had just grabbed hold to the back of the open carriage.

Demuel turned around to tell the damned wench to stop screaming so damned much when he saw the vorox latched onto the back of their carriage. He let out a shivery, staggered breath and pulled out the Buedon .50 from it's belt holster. Demuel began firing away wildly, eyes neither on the attacker nor the street ahead of them.

He would only manage to fire twice. "Get the hell down!" he bellowed to the woman, before a greengrocer's awning hit him in the temple. Fruit and vegetables flew everywhere, crates were shattered under-hoof, and stands were trampled. Demuel fell back into the passenger compartment of the carriage, unconcious.

Magdalena was trying to scuttle away from the second uninvited guest to come aboard the coach, when she felt something heavy fall on her back-- it was that knave that had gotten her into all of this. His revolver slid backward, stopped by her hand against the seat of the carriage. Berserk, she grabbed the gun and let loose thunder upon the vorox. Even if the substantial recoil of the revolver hadn't caused her to send the third and forth bullets off into the evening sky, it wouldn't have mattered: her target, the vorox's head, didn't exist in any useful form after the second shot.

Even through her growing shock, Magdalena noticed that the carriage was slowing down. "Merciful Pancreator," she murmured. The gun slipped from her fingers...

Magdalena sighed deeply. It was over. Thanked be Pancreator, it was over. The carriages' horses finally came to a full stop. Magdalena ruffled her hair and snorted disdainfully. Voroxes, there was not that much to them after all. Nonetheless, she was probably better to leave the scene before the friends of Headless Kitty were to arrive. She turned around to get off the coach...

...and beholded the DXIIth Li-Halan Calvary. It was on its way to the city's barracks, freshly out of a voidship coming back from Stigmata.

Of all present, there was not one man that wasn't a tough-as-nail veteran, not one man that wouldn't have sworn that their eyes had beholded too many marvels, too many horrors for the mocking fingers of surprise to ever tickle their breast again.

The sight of a scrawny lass in a skimpy red dress riding a bullet-ridden, bald headed man-ejecting carriage blowing off a Vorox's head off, however, forced them to reconsider.

Magdalena was lowly cursing the Panrotten Bastard, when a moist gargle bubbled from the carriage's floor. It was the carriage-hijacking scoundrel, rediscovering the joys of consciousness, fleshy perforation and cranial concussion.

"Problem?" he mumbled thickly.

"Depends. Does fifty or so soldiers staring at you can be considered a problem?"

"Not for you. It's me they want."

"I just shot a Vorox in the face..."

"You did?" Demuel winced, "How the Li reacting?"

"There is a kind of shocked silence, right now..."

"That's bad."

"One of them just flicked off his rifle's security."

"You're screwed."

"Thought so."

Demuel took a deep breath. "You know, I might be lying on my back, with a leg leaking like the diaper of an elder Gannock, surrounded by men that want me dead, and even if it's only a question of minutes before the Voroxes jump back into the picture to shred us to bloody ribbons, I can't shake one thought from my mind as my eyes stare skyward."

"Which is?"

"That's a damn fine pair of panties you are wearing."

A single heel crunched down on his nose. The blow elicited a single grunt from Demuel before he slumped into unconsciousness. Magdalena stepped out from the carriage, waving her arms.

"I'm innocent! He's unconscious in the carriage!"

The Vorox commandoes took the opportunity to leap forward at that. Within moments they had torn the carriage apart in their haste to enter. Numerous electric flashes sounded inside the carriage. After a moment, one of the Voroxes came flying out of the carriage. Three more were still engaged inside.

Demuel came flying out of the carriage himself. He was coated in blood, but no obvious wounds. His nose was smashed and his leg was on fire. The three alien beasts slowly emerged from the ruined carriage.

"Come on damnit. Where the hell is he?" Demuel muttered under his breath.

Magdalena backed away from the three groups. She didn't want to be caught in any kind of crossfire.

A clicking of heels caught all groups attentions. A Li-Halan Baron strode into the open combat ground as peasants and freeman began to stand by, to gawk at the proceedings.

"Criminal, I am Baron Takishi Chan Li-Halan. You are under arrest for a number of civil and criminal violations of the Midian justice code. How do you plead?"

There was a series of clicking as the guards lined up a bead on Demuel. It seemed for amoment that every guard's laser sight was pointed at the same spot, and it was beginning to get warm.

A lound whining noise began to grow around the area as search lights flooded the area. A sleek spacecraft of some kind darted down into the area as laser turrets cycled and pulled up a bead on the Li-Halan troops.

"Easy now." Came a voice through the craft's loudspeaker.

Everyone froze: Li Halan troops, bystanders, Demuel (hand throttling a Li Halan cavalry man) and Magdalena standing watching, a stricken look on her face.

Everyone stopped stockstill as the sleek looking craft manuevered into position above the scene.

Everyone looked at everyone else and came to the conclusion the situation had definitely become Much Worse.

Upon reaching this conclusion, Everyone stopped what they were doing and came to the communal decision that not getting incinerated by spacecraft-sized laser cannon was definitely a Good Idea.

"Everyone drop your weapons and stand down...." came the voice out of the craft's loudspeaker and Everyone complied.

Demuel let go of the Li Halan he had been slowly strangling and gave everyone a big grin: the cat who had been caught with its paws in the cream had just been given a reprieve. The craft slowly sank to the cobbled street and Everyone cleared out of the way.

A ramp descended in its belly and Demuel waved to the Li Halan around him, his grin never faltering.

Magdalena looked at the Li Halan guards all around her.saw their menacing grimaces: a group of children who had just had their favourite toys taken away from them.

She thought about it for a few seconds, noticed the few Li Halan who were edging towards her...there would be questions. they probably wouldn't believe her. oh hell - she made her decision.

Demuel entered the belly of the dragon and Magdalena chased after him.

The door ramp closed behind them and the vessel lifted off in to the heavens.

Magdalena took in her surroundings and noticed that Demuel wasn't smiling anymore.

"Oh fu." he started, only he never got to finish his sentence.

The Vau Mandarin was surrounded by a ring of soldiers armed with energy staves. The innocous outside of the ship, with the appearance of a 'harmless' imperial assault lander, most definantly did not bear any resemblance to anything even remotely human.

"Oooooooooooo" the Mandarin made a brief 'O' shape with its mouth and raised its hands in greeting, "I apologize for the brief deception, but the auspices dictated great uncertainty should we approach you in any other way. We have need of your services, both of you. Quarters are being prepared for the two of you. I presume, of course, being barbarians, that many questions are no doubt on your minds at this time. Ask away."

"Who the He... Who are you? Where's Byran?" said Demuel, trying to restrain his emotions. Obviously, his planned get-a-way pilot had been replaced. But why the Vau? Were they after the plans that he had downloaded into his internal think machine? He accessed history files, scanning for any other occurrence where the Vau had interfered with in similar operations. With a blank screen flashing in his mind's eye, he stared at the Mandarin.

"He is here," the mandarin said, motioning for the two to follow him up the set of stairs. " He is fulfilling his obligation and duty as pilot. You heard his voice of the transmission system, yes?"

The stairs lead up to the main level, with the rooms for the guards and Demuel assumed for the two of them. Two doors were indicated with a rolling motion of the mandarin's fingers.

"I hope that these accommodations will prove adequate for your needs and comfort. We will be living orbit in a matter of moments. If my understanding of your situation is correct, madam, you will find medication and water in the room to the left. There is also data terminals for your usage, sir. You will need to purge as must data storage as possible before your next mission." The Mandarin smiled, if you could call it a smile.

"What are you talking about?" Mad said, appearing shocked. "What situation are you inferring?"

"Your malady of space travel, madam. You tend to get sick during space flight."

"I've never traveled through space, why I have never been off planet. How can you say that I get sick when I've never ..." And then she felt it. A ripping sensation at her stomach as the anti-grave units kicked on and her stomach tried to leap from her throat. Demuel noticed that she turned a dreadful shade of green and he had to catch her as she almost crumpled to the floor under the assault of the anti-grave.

"As the rites have foretold," the mandarin said to the guards, raising his hands with their palms open toward the heavens. Demuel helped Mad into her room, found the bottle of pills and gave them to her with some water. Demuel heard chants come from the hallway in a language he did not understand. Mad lay down on the cot and Demuel quietly closed the door behind him. Turning away from her door, he came face-to-face with the mandarin.

"Understand that this mission that you are about to undertake was foretold before your grandfather's grandfather was born," whispered the mandarin as he held Demuel's right arm. "The stars are right now for your future to berevealed and for the mission of humanity to right their greatest wrong. I can not tell you much, for that could alter the course of history and condemn all sentient life to the doom of the Forever Dark."

The mandarin released Demuel's arm and began to leave.

"Who are you?"

"My name is of no importance. But you may call me 'Shepherd.' Sleep, child. You will need your strength and courage. Tend your wounds. We will talk more once we have passed through the holy conduit." Shepherd entered his room and closed the door, leaving Demuel standing alone in the hallway.

The door closed behind the Mandarin with a hiss. "Well..." Demuel mused, rubbing his skull, "either this is one very elaborate practical joke, or the Vau seem to think we're some kind of Chosen... Either way, I intend to get the Gehenna out of here." With that, he removed the small polyglass hypo of Elixir from his belt, and injected himself. He had been saving the rig for a needy time-- and this seemed to be it. For all he knew, the Vau might torture their Chosen to make sure they weren't wasting resources on the wrong people.

The painkillers and stabilizers kicked in a few moments time, and even though he wasn't all better, Demuel felt a little bit more like himself, instead of the bruised and bloodied pulp he was.

Magdelana somehow managed to keep the pills down, and crawl to her bunk.

"How are you feeling?" Demuel smirked, sitting on his own bunk. Looking at the suffering young woman, all dressed up for a date or a party, his smirk evaporated slowly. He let out a long sigh. "Uh... I'm... kind of... I'm sorry, sorry for all of this. Getting on the carriage, and all that... it seemed like a good idea at the time, you know?

Magdalena's hand moved to forehead. The greenish-white tone of her complexion was turning whitish-green. "Apologies? My... I never thought humility was a virtue accessible to the like of you."

Demuel bowed his head. "To get in someone's pants, one has to learn to kneel," he said, quoting the Secret Gospel.

Magdalena groaned. "I'm sick like a dog, you're holed like an Imperial budget, and still you go on. You never give it a rest, do you?"

Demuel shook his head. "Nope. I'm too far gone to know when to quit."

Magdalena would have sighed if her stomach's sudden impulse of dancing the calypso with her liver wouldn't have made her painfully wince. "Anyway," she managed to breath, "can you get out of my quarters...?"

"Our quarters, you mean?"

"The hell, the tall alien gave you your own quarters!"

"Yes, but they installed a second bunk here. Their visibly want us to stay together."

"And what would you have come with if there had been only one bed?"

"That they obviously want us to mate."

Magdalena, in usual circumstances, would have snapped a most devastating answer to that, but as she was busy convincing her lunch not to attempt a out-of-body experience, she remained silent. If groans and moans and whines could be considered silence, that is.

"You know," said Demuel, inspecting the walls, "this is the Fearless Baboon. For some reason, the Vau glued and fixed all those fake plastic thingies everywhere. Bad decoration sense? Tentative to impress us? Anyway, here's the data-socket. I think I will follow the advice of tall, dark and handsome and clear some memory." Whistling, he began to unbuckle his belt.

"What do you think you are doing ?" shrieked Magdalena.

Demuel rolled his eyes. "Accessing my spleen-jack," he said pulling a small output cable from the side of his belly. "What, you never saw one of these? Cheaper than the cortex model, and twice the capacity."

Magdalena closed her eyes. From the back of her mind she heard her old Amalthean teacher warning her class against the moral perils of blind dates. How right the old hag was, Magdalena mused. And holding this though, she passed out.

Demuel eased his 'jack in to the port and the woman, the room and general reality was yanked away. A rollercoaster-like rush assaulted the man, regardless of the fact that he was no longer utilising the five senses he was born with.

A silent cacophony of virtual light burned directly in to his cerebral cortex, a symphony of dazzling beauty threatening to consume him in electronic euphoria.

Grace.

Falling..

Blinding darkness.

A thought:
thisisweird.
somethingiswrongwiththisjack

Void..

Then, suddenly, an island of data presented itself to Demuel. It tempted him with its glacial vista but it remained beyond his digital reach. A thing held him captive: it was unknown and unknowable to his mind. He knew what he wanted to do (what he had always done) but he just couldn't seem to make it work. Something about the software architecture of the reality he was in differed greatly to what he was used to. Certainly, the data files he wanted to access were a radically different thing: something far from man-made.

He was in the blackness of some artificial void and a sun-like island of pure information blazed heatlessly before him. He could sense no data pathways around him. He could sense none of the usual protocols to make things work, subroutines or programs constantly ticking over whilst he went about his virtual business. This was Wrong.

A thought:
fuckImintheshitthistime ...
thosevau.
fuck.
theymusthavereplacedthethinkmachinesoftwarewiththeirownprotocols.
imfuckinglockedinthisreality.
stuckinavirtualcellwithnowayout

bollocks

A disembodied voice answered. "Bull Locks released. Please state parameters?"

"Neural grid, Alpha Gamma Delta, 0.0.0," said Demuel hoping that the base system still had some terran components.

"Neural Grid Activated. Please specify interface?"

"Anything damnit. Give me a reference point, now!"

"Will this do as a reference point?" came a voice from behind him. Demuel turned and looked at his reference point, a woman more beautiful then he had ever seen. If it had not been for the nimbus glow in strategic places, he would have sworn she was nude. Not a bad site to wake up to after all the falling and misdirection he had just suffered. She batted her eyes at him.

"Who are you? And where do I plug in?" Only after saying that did he remember that it was just a construct. His charms would be wasted on a mere program.

"I am Default System Interface Protocol." She extended a long slender arm, cupping his right ear. "Initiating scan. Scanning for Connectivity Protocols."

Demuel had been through several default scans on numerous systems, but never anything like this. She leaned her head back, arched her back. Who ever programmed this, must be butt ugly or never have had a real relationship. Or even a one-night stand. OR wrote porn entertainment plug-ins. Who ever he was, he was good.

She opened her eyes and removed her hand from his ear. "Hello, Demuel. I was expecting you. One moment while I adjust the environment for your equipment. You really should upgrade. Might I suggest a Dyno-Sys XX, Manufactured by Dyno Computers on Leaguhiem. Contact them at Grid Mark 15.158.25.Dyno once you have arrived on Leaguhiem. This link will gain you a 20% discount and they except trade-ins." She batted her eyes at him again to emphasize her point.

"A fucking advertisement built into the systems scans," thought Demuel. " Yea, this guy was a pro alright. Left me his fucking business card."

The darkness surrounding him faded, as connection lines began to appear. Now he had a direct line to the system's datasphere. He turned and began to move in that direction, to that island of light in the darkness.

"If you are in need of other services, please use the command, 'Assistance,' and I appear to assist you," she called after him. If you need additional data stores, please contact---"

He moved quickly to not hear the remainder of the next advertisement. He needed to find a nice quite location where he could download his stored data and keep it safe from other prying eyes. He pierced the datasphere surrounding the island, entering a crammed and active cell. He was near the ship's sensors, and saw the grouping of fighters accelerating fast to catch up with the Fearless Baboon.

"Shit."

Moving swiftly though the streams around him, he quickly found what he sought. He was a bit suprised at its ease. Something wasn't entirely right here.

As usual, paranoia proved to be justified as a large black snake uncoiled itself from beneath a bench. It was holistically unnatural, its black eyes gleaming electric death.

Moving faster than even he thought possible, Demuel crushed its head with his right fist and moved toward the prize.

The combat had been costly however, as he heard the tell tale sign of missile lock upon the ship.

Demuel's mind was removed from the physical world, so he didn't feel the ship rock as the missiles exploded against its shields. What he felt, however, was the havoc it spread on the ship's electronic systems. His reality flickered, twisted, went off for the briefest moment and returned to normal as the auxilliary matrix kicked in. The feeling was akin of being smashed like a rotten pumpin and then glued back together. If he had been in his body, he would have barfed his insides out. But as he was only a mind in a virtual world, he merely wished he was dead and whimpered a lot.

He was still craddling his shattered psyche when the air shimmed beside him. The virtual venus appeared. "Outside caller wants to open audio-visual interface with you, shall I put it through."

Demuel nodded without thinking too much. A screen materialized a few meters before him, and Magdalena's visage appeared. Her face was bruised and there was smoke and fire in the room behind her, but whatever she was going to say, she forget as soon as she got a glimpse of Demuel's virtual space.

"You..." she began, "You are.." she sighed, "okay, I'll bite. What are you doing with a naked gal, a big black flacid... thing at your feet and a, uh, glowing ball in your hand?"

"It's not what you think," blurbed Demuel out of habit. Only, in this case it probably really wasn't. He raised the hand that was holding the glowing ball. "I got the prize..."

Magdalena blinked. "The prize? What's that?"

"I dunno," he lied, "but it was there, all shiny and neat-liking. You know, sometimes, you see something and just need to get it..."

Magdalena nodded slowly. "Uh... Okay. I hope it makes you happy. Because, ah, well, you know we are under attack?" She waited for Demuel to nod. "Well, you see, the wall kind of exploded. The one with the terminal with you plugged into. And, uh, I don't know how to break the news to you, but you are a little bit dead..."

Demuel wasn't exactly expecting that. "WHAT?!"

Magdalena wept.

She was trapped on a spaceship heading for some unknown location.

Actually, to clarify, she was trapped on a spaceship heading for an unknown location which was now under attack, surrounded by aliens she knew nothing about and held prisoner-like in a room with a charred body which was once some sort of pumped up killer.

She was lost, scared and alone. Though strong, it was all too much, too crazy for her to assimilate. Magdalena was a member of the Reeves office. She didn't do crazy, never needed to. She knew numbers and contracts and appointments and . and . it was all too much and so she lay there on the floor, allowing the craziness to just happen.

Wake me when it's all over.

Demuel would have wept if it was something his virtual ghost could have done.

He was trapped inside an alien computer system, his meat dead and his existence reduced to a digital reflection. He was now millions of numbers, electricity and light: a programmer's afterthought.

How long he hung in that space, not quite able to comprehend what was happening, he couldn't know, didn't want to know.

Then everything changed.

A bright circle appeared in space and drew him in. Down he went, through a corridor of light, the island left behind, clutching the prize tightly. He knew nothing of where he was headed, merely that he was carried along a torrent of data, washed away on a stream of information and then unceremoniously dumped in a black void.

Demuel existed, that much he knew.

From out of the black, steel cables shot out and wrapped themselves around his arms and legs. They drew him towards, what he could only describe, as an infinitely large crucifix which burned like a sun.

Onward he was virtually dragged and upon reaching the crucifix, he was slotted in.

Magdalena awoke in what appeared to be some sort of surgical room. She lay on a bed, naked and barely conscious.

"Awake," came a voice.

"Yes. I shall inform the Mandarin," came another voice.

They were Vau. They were speaking Vau and she understood. What?

A door opened and she slowly turned her head to try and see. In walked one of the tall aliens dressed in large ceremonial robes. "I give you greetings. What do you feel?"

She tried but failed to speak.

"There is no worry here. You are well. I know. I have seen to that. There is a problem. We have solved it. We had bought the service of your colleague but he is no longer able to comply himself. But you are. We have transferred his flesh-ware to your person. We have implanted one of our computer-meat interface units as payment for your service. We have also implanted him in your neural net."

"Good morning, baby" said Demuel's voice in Magdalena's head. "I knew I wanted to get inside you, but this is not what I had in mind."

"Bollocks" said Magdalena.

Sensors were flashing red across the board. Missiles, beginning to run out of fuel, were exploding as they achieved proximity to the Fearless Baboon. But the acceleration curve of the Baboon was slowly gaining advantage of the fighter-launched missiles. 30 seconds more and they would be safe. Well, at least safe from missile fire. Beams could still catch them. A relative safety until they reached the jumpgate. They had a few days to work out a plan for leaving the system.

Lucky they had the five minutes head start of the fighters, else they would have sat on top of the Baboon when they had fired the first volley of missiles. And their slug guns would have had better accuracy as well. As it was, only a few had hit. Nothing vital*

"Oh, shit," said Byran as he saw the damage to the crew quarters. He had been devoting all of his attention to dodging the inbound missiles that he had not thought much of internal damage. He had activated the automatic repair systems without much thought. But now* He could devote more attention to the internal events.

A few taps at the controls with this replacement arm and he brought up details of the damage. A few more clicks of his metal fingers and he brought up the internal display. He saw the Vau transporting the young woman to the medical bay and his friend's charred body being worked by a half dozen Vau.

"Dam'd, bud'y. Yus messed up good. Makes me arm hurt just look'n at ya." Byran rubbed the stump where his mechanical arm joined his body. "Guess I can't keep on blaming ya for d'is. But da'll be able to fix ya right up."

Byran pushed his combat lens off, disconnecting them form his flight controls and dragged them over his dread locks. Then the weaponry glove came off his left-hand, his real hand.

He checked the gauges. Red lights slowly going out as the automated repair systems kept working. Soon the board was green and the Baboon's velocity was greater then the fighters could maintain and gradually pulling away as the fighters regrouped for their return flight. He plotted a course to the gate, fastest route, and set the autopilot.

Some moments later, he sat up from his flight board, time to go check on his long time friend and find out who the woman was. Figures that he would be dragging a woman long with him. Leaving the ship's bridge, he did not notice the Vau removing the think machine and skill wires from his friend's remains nor them prepping the unknown woman for surgery.

At first, Demuel's vision was hazy and intermittent, only showing flashes of his/their surroundings. The only thing he constantly sensed were Magdelana's surface thoughts, her panic and fear at having someone else in her brain, her inner commentary on the situation, and the flood of old memories brought back by current events, all the myriad little associations a mind makes. Dem was shaken, but more by his death earlier that evening than more recent events. His state of shock prevented any new horrors from really registering in his newly transplanted consciousness.

Two days later, Demuel and Magdelana had both begun to get the hang of things.

Put some choova sauce on those eggs, Demuel said in his and Magdelana's shared skull.

"Shut up." Magdelana said aloud. "Why in Gehenna does it matter to you anyway?" she then said, turning suspicious. Demuel of course already knew what was going through her mind.

I can tap into your nerves. I want to have some eggs with choova sauce. I want to taste them again.

"You can--"

see through your eyes? Demuel mentally laughed a stupid, lecherous laugh, and left it that.

"You pervert," she growled, swallowing down some more of Byran's runny eggs. "I should kill myself just to be rid of you!"

Then the Vau would implant us both in Byran's brain, and you'd like that even less than this.

Magdelana looked over at the young one-armed Ukar on the other side of the dining area, and as if on cue, he looked up and smiled.

"I suppose you're right," she mumbled bitterly.

How do you think I feel about this, being trapped inside the brain-case of some frigid bitch, and trying to tune out her loudest, stupidest thoughts? Demuel snapped.

Demuel could feel a rush of fury in Mag, but then, calmness, twinged with a funny kind of sadness. "You're right again, you insufferable creature..." she said very quietly.

They were called creatures of legend. Sailors from time immemorial spoke of the horrofic that moved in the Dark Between The Stars. It was said that any ship which contained a Gargoyl could repel their horrific countenance.

They were wrong of course. It is true-they were repelled by them, but if the hunger was strong enough, and the attraction deep enough then even that force would be infufficient to prevent their assault.

Deep, deep in the cold void of space, a hundred pair of eyes attached to writhing black tentacles snapped open.

The Void Cracken was awake. It was hungry. Very hungry.

Magdalena's eyes snapped open. Her mouth was open, but no sound was coming out. Her throat was too dry, her tongue too thick. Panting like a wounded animal, she waited for the icy hand of terror to loosen its grip on her heart.

Another bloody nightmare? came the voice in her head. The Kraken again? Sweet mercy. Can't you give it a rest? People are trying to sleep, in here.

"I can't help it," croaked Magdalena. "It was so real, so vivid..."

Yeah, yeah. I know. I saw parts of it. The voice climbed a few octaves, becoming a cruel parody of Madgalena's own voice. 'Oh no! A big monster with tentacles! It's going to eat me and the ship I'm in. Help!'

Magdalena closed her eyes. "Well, can it?"

Excuse me?

"Could a Kraken come after us?"

Hell. Don't you listen to your own dreams? Of course it will not. Gargoyles repeal Kraken. Which means any ship that has you on-board has nothing to fear. Of course, it might not stop them if they are hungry enough, but I doubt anything could get hungry to that point. I mean, starvation is not so bad a faith when you--

Demuel's voice stopped. Magdalena was crying. Tears were spilling from her open eyes as she was biting her lips in a vain effort to stifle sobs.

Uneasiness washed over Demuel. In normal circumstances, he would have shrugged and walked away from his victim and her fountain impersonation. Something he was no longer at liberty to do. To make things worse, her feelings and her crippling sense of despair were so strong there was no way to ignore them, no way to shut his mind to her pain.

Why are you crying? he asked. And as he wasn't getting any answer, he repeated again, his tone almost gentle. Why are you crying?

"MY WHOLE LIFE'S A NIGHTMARE!" she screamed at the empty room. "I killed a Vorox. I'm a criminal, a murderer . My life with the Reeves is over. I'll never be able to return home. My body's been filled with techonocratic devices and a fucking bastard is squatting in my mind. Yes, I'm a stupid girl. Yes, I'm ugly. Yes, I'm a boring, frigid bitch. But I never wanted any of this. I was just on my way to a blind date. Was that so great a sin? WAS IT?" Magdalena curled into a tight little ball, crying her soul away.

Demuel remained silent for a time. When his voice came to be heard, it was strangely subdued.

You're not stupid. Nor a frigid bitch.

Magdalena shook her head. "That's not what you were saying earlier."

Forget what I said. I didn't mean it.

"Unlike now?" snarled Magdalena. "You already tried this trick before, in case you don't remember."

It's different, now. I swear. If you don't believe me, look at me with your mind's eye.

Magdalena's first reaction was to refuse to listen to the wheeler, but something made her think otherwise. She rubbed the tears away from her eyes and closed them. Since the Vau had brought her her unwelcome guest, her mind had shimmied as far as it could from his. For the first time, she forced herself to peer at him, and found to her own surprise that she could catch glimpses of superficial thoughts, and fragments of deep memories. Greater surprise still, she saw that he was speaking the truth. She also saw the reason why Demuel had been so harsh on her. Not because he was despising her, or that he was holding her in contempt, but because

"you are afraid." She was astonished to find her own feelings echoed in his mind. "You are scared out of your skull."

Demuel almost replied that no, he had been electrocuted out of his skull, which had subsequently exploded, been burned to crisps and, later on, jettisoned into the Void. But Magdalena had seen into his mind, and there was no point in trying to hide the truth under snarls.

Fuck yes I am. I'm dead. My body is destroyed. Not had a heart attack, not been holed a little bit, but got deep-fried by an electric whiplash and a chemical fire. It's gone for good. All that remains of me is a lousy virtual copy of my mind. I'm dead, I'm just too pig-headed to accept it and let it go. So here I am, in the back-seat of a body that isn't mine, doomed to stay around until the Vau get me to do whatever job they want done or you find a way to flush me out of your head. I was maybe not acting exactly like it, but I wasn't looking forward to my death. I would have liked to... live a little longer.

Magdalena blinked. Having the wheeler's persona tucked in her brain had been less than a pleasant experience, but she never took the time to think of how things were looking, from his point of view. She had to concede that his situation would probably rake a three digits score on the suck-o-meter.

"But you're not dead. It's at least that."

Demuel's voice was bitter. Oh yes. I'm alive. I'm just without a body. Life has become a movie for me. I can only watch, and make witty comments. That's real sweet.

"I saw in your mind, you could take over and control my body..."

No. I could wrestle your body out of your control, but then it would put you in my situation. You said it. I'm a fucking bastard, but even I know right from wrong. I will not do that.

Magdalena paused. She knew that if she was to speak now, a line would be crossing, and that there would be no turning back. "Who talked about fighting for control? We could... share?"

Share?

She gave a small, tentative nod. "Share. I think we started on a very bad note. But it seems we are, to put it mildly, stuck together for the better part of the foreseeable future. Perhaps... it's time to wipe the slate clean and start again? I'm ready to put efforts to make our... cohabitation as comfortable as it can be if you are willing to do likewise. We are probably too different from each other to make this an agreeable experience, but at least we can strive not to make it worse than it has to be. What do you think of it?"

Magdalena felt Demuel's mind ponder on this, felt something akin to hope flicker at the core of his soul.

I... would like that.

Relief washed over Magdalena. It was a first step. The chances were that all good intentions would be forgotten once the morning would have come, but still, it was something. She breathed deeply, and forced herself to relax, to get back to sleep, although she still feared her nightmares to return, her terrors to slither back into her heart.

Don't worry. I'll stay awake. I can pick images from your dreams. If it turns to something unpleasant, I'll wake you up.

Magdalena started at the unexpected proposition, oddly touched by it. "Thank you," she whispered, meaning it. A mental gruff was the only answer she got. She wasn't expecting anything more. Slowly, she let herself drift into the realm of dreams.

Demuel, true to his word, remained awake, and kept a silent vigil on Magdalena's sleep. He was a discorporate prisoner, locked in a cage that would never see any light. He was alive for naught but the whim of aliens following an unfathomable agenda. He knew that the situation was bad, rotten bad, and would get far worse before it would get better.

But he was no longer alone.

Looking at herself as she combed her hair the next morning, she thought Dem... Since when was she calling him Dem? Anyway, the killer inside her brain was sweet to lie, but she really was ugly, and she should start trying to live with it better. She had more serious problems.

You're really serious about this, aren't you? You really think you're ugly? You have no idea what men see when they look at you, do you?

"That doesn't count. Men pounce on anything that even looks female."

No, we don't... Well, yeah, as a group, we do, yeah. I don't. No, really, I don't. Honest.

"Yeah, yeah. So what do you see in me, oh sensitive man?"

Instead of saying it, he loaded it whole into her mind.

It was a while before she could speak again, sitting back on the toilet with her eyes closed, a puppet with her strings thankfully cut off. He didn't dare think a word before she did. "Now I know how Narcissus felt."

Are you all right? were the words. The tone was I just screwed up, didn't I?

"You know, we just made love. In every way that counts."

I'm sorry, I didn't expect it to turn out like that... I got carried away.

"Shut up." She opened her eyes and looked at the mirror so he could see her smile. Gods of all the races, she was beatiful. She'd have taken her little nose between her sweet plump lips if she could've. "I'd been needing that for a long while. And intimate as we are, I can either share that part of my life with you, or not have it, so..." She felt him relax. "But I'm hiring an accountant to handle my taxes away from my sight from now on."

Fair enough. Can you let me have the body this morning for maybe half an hour? No, not for that. I need to try some physical exercises. No, that's not what I mean! Look, they've implanted my combat fleshware into your body. Automatic fighting relexes; you can fight faster 'cause your awareness isn't involved. But my body was trained for extreme hand-to-hand combat, I have to adjust the software for the shape you're in, or you're liable to get hurt.

She was still smiling at herself in the mirror, more like an imp now, and a steady amused thrill was the music of her mind. He was about to insist again when she said: "You know you're cute when you're straining to be nice? Calm down, I trust you."

She took a deep breath and let go.

What do I need to do?

" We've swapped already."

Oh. That was easy.

Demuel stood Maddie's body up... When had he started calling her Maddie? Oh well. They looked at themselves in the mirror for a while, pretty young woman with a feline killer stance. Every geek's dream come true. And one Wheeler's. Dem turned away from the mirror before that thought distracted him too much again. "Narcissus had it easy."

She wasn't in bad shape for an accountant. Dem only had to drop his combat default speed by 25% to be safe. He hoped, not too loud, that this wouldn't matter, and assured Maddie that it would do fine. Then he floated a menu before their shared mind's eye.

What's this?

"I'm adjusting our internal translator. Understanding Vau is fine if you want to listen to adverbs all day long, but this thing can also selectively shut out a speaker's voice from our perception and feed us a translation in our own language. Synchronous dubbing."

Wow.

"And best of all, you can not only choose your language, but your level of speech." Yo dude, how's it hangin'? "Bit too far down." Hi. "Ah. Perfect."

Maddie was awed by the menu.

Wow. It goes all the way down to Binary.

"Yeah, but Assembler translates faster."

This adjustment spared them Shepherd's lenghty speech. It's amazing how loud one's body language becomes when one's voice is imperceptible. To Dem's credit, he managed to limit the expression of his amusement to a polite smile on Maddie's sweet plump lips. Maddie, however, was free to howl merrily at Shepherd's expansive gestures of solemnity.

"Cut it out, I'm trying not to laugh here."

Sorry. But he looks like he's about to lay an egg!

Dem made the small high-pitched sound you get when you desperately suppress a chuckle. Then Shepherd's speech translated, and any danger of laughter ran out the door. "I don't know what your mission is", the translation said.

"Get out of here!" Dem had thought this into his translation package instead of speaking out loud, so Maddie's voice spoke a more diplomatic Vau phrase. Also more convoluted. And much, much longer. This gave the bodymates ample time to freak out.

They had very little patience for how long it took Shepherd to say something Vau that translated as "We follow the prophecies blindly. We're supposed to bring you somewhere and leave you there. We know nothing more and are very happy with this."

"Look, Shepherd, we don't bleat, okay?" This time, he'd spoken out loud. He regretted it almost immediately, as a frown rippled over Shepherd's serenity. Letting the translation package make that more polite would've been safer for Maddie.

Don't worry about me, she mind-whispered. I've had it with this peacock pushing us around too.

Shepherd remembered he was dealing with barbarians, and was once more awed by the inscrutability of the Gods, who would choose such a lowly instrument for such a grand purpose (it must be a grand purpose, whatever it was, otherwise the gods wouldn't have bothered, much less threatened the end of worlds). He would pass this test of patience and show the gods how great and profound of character he was in his humility and subservience to their cause. He spoke once more, more ornately than ever before to honor this unlikely savior before him. This added another five minutes to a declaration Dem and Maddie's innerware rendered as "You were told more about your mission than we know already."

"What in the name of the Pancreator's gall bladder are you..."

Shit. Oh shit.

"What's wrong?"

He means my dream, Dem.

"Oh. Oh shit."

Dem had let Maddie have the wheel again by the time they went to bed. He'd always hated brushing, and when he'd offered to wax her legs for her, she'd thought he was kidding. You win some, you learn to live with the rest.

Okay, if and when you start dreaming, I should be right there by your side. If I'm not, I'll need you to check some things out for me, so don't panic, okay?

"Okay." She was getting better at sounding brave by leaps and bounds. "What kind of things?"

I'll need you to verify that it's actually a dream you're having. Bear with me. If you see any textscreens or signs or books, or a clock, try to read them. Try for a while. If it's a book, stare at the same page for a while. If you're dreaming, you won't be able to read, the text will change as you're looking at it. If you can find any sort of a light source, try to switch it on or off. In dreams, you can't change the quality of light; light switches don't work, blowing clandles out won't change a thing.

"Got it."

If all else fails, stop and look at your hands. Same as with the writing, stare at them for a while. If you're dreaming, they'll change as you're looking at them, change shape, or color, or maybe your fingers will float off your hands likes balloons or something.

"Writings, lights or my hands. Okay. And this is how I can tell whether you've been asking for too much choova sauce or whether this is their prophecy."

'Prophecy' may be pushing it. We'll blow that bridge up when we get to it. Really important thing you have to remember, though: whether this Kraken thing you're having is indigestion or prophecy or some obscure reference to how you're afraid your father didn't love you, it can't hurt you. You're not in danger. You're asleep in the safety of this ship.

"The safety of this ship wherein you were blown to barbecue. Oh shit, Dem, I'm sorry, I meant to think that for myself, I'm so sor..." She stopped short. He was laughing his metaphorical head off in the back of hers.

Heeheehee, haaaah! Hasn't been a week since the first time you saw a dead body, and you've already kidding about it. My kind of girl. Go to sleep, Maddie. Have some horrible dreams for me.

"Good night, Dem."

"Hey, when did I tell you about my father anyway?"

Captain Al-Mal sat in his ready room, reviewing the logs for the past day of transit into and out of the system. A few diplomatic envoys, a returning frigate from the Stigmata front, two freighters of grain and miscellaneous food stuffs and an avesti scout ship. The captain pulled up the details of the avesti ship. A three member crew, low yield weaponry and they had allowed the ship to be inspected without complaint. Must unusual. He was beginning to review the data files of the three priests when the door buzz sounded.

"Enter."

The blast resistant door parted. An ensign, dressed in Li Halan dress uniform with matching charcoal turbine and polished knee books entered and saluted the captain.

"At ease, Ben," said the Al-Mal as he put down the datapad that he was reading.

"Captain, I bear an urgent message from Central System Command." The ensign stepped over to his commander and handed him another datapad and stood waiting for a response.

"So, how is the family, Ben? You heard from mother?" Al-Mal said as he took the pad and began to read.

"Our mother sends her love and requests to know if you will be accompanying me home on our next holiday. Your birthday is coming up soon and *"

Al-Mal waved off the comments. "How long have you had this transmission?"

"EW, Less then 20 minutes. I was replying to standard requests for the rest of the fleet when this came in from planet side."

"We have an outbound ship," said Al-Mal as he turned his attention to the internal ship's com system. Flicking a switch, "Attention all personnel. This is the Captain. Battle stations. Repeat, battle stations." He rose from his chair and moved toward the door, realizing the look of shock on his little brother's face. "Don't worry about this one, we have 5 hours before they reach us and the gate. And the report said they only had one main gun.

"I'll see to it that you get home in time for the holiday," trying to comfort his little brother with a smile. "And tell mother, I will be there for my birthday. Come on now, I need you to communicate with the rest of the fleet so that we can capture this Fearless Baboon. Seems they have stolen something that they should not have. And impinged the reputation of Baron Takishi Chan and you know how he can be."

Gate duty was generally very boring. 90% cleaning the decks and system checks with just 10% real activity. And Battle Stations was rarely called onboard the destroyer. The door opened on an explosion of activity on the bridge. Slapping his little brother on his back and giving him a slight nudge, the two brothers emerged to do battle. One had seen real conflict and one was about to experience it for the first time.

In the late twentieth century, three thousand years before, a little known but well liked magic latern presentation called "Connections" dealt with how the littlest of things often led to the most catacysmic of events.

It is thus with some temerity that three innoculous peasants, we'll call them for the sake of posterity Larry, Curly and Moe (these were not of course their real names) slowly moving an antique statue for the late and great Baroness Gloriana Hazat on Byzantium Secundus.

The connection, in this case is the fact that the late great Baroness was inexorbibly cheap, and did nothing about the rather nasty hull rate problem in her own domicile. Thus, when the well chewed rope snapped, sending the statue hurdling down to the ground and crushing the three innocent (And now quite dead) men beneath it, the small, seamless metal package inside that wasn't meant to ever be known or seen by the light of day again was exposed to full and public view by all those in the square.

The scraver that swept into the shards of clay that littered it, snatching it up in dextrous young fingers was about to have a date with destiny off world that he could hardly begin to imagine, or its connection with a rather nasty situation going on a spaceship...to which we now return you...

[though a quick note however, our sad but heroic larry, curly and moe, do alas, not make any grad difference in the sceme of things by their death...except perhaps their bartender who will miss them greatly]

Darkness, pierced only by the tainted crimson bleeding of twin dying stars.

No, not dying stars. Eyes. The Beast was awakening. It was hungry. Soon it would stir itself out of torpor. Its tentacles would begin to writhe, a million snakes dancing a most unholy dance. Already eldritch sentience was gathering in the burning eyes. Soon it would see. Soon it would feel.

Soon it would find her.

Magdalena looked around her. But there was nothing. Nothing but darkness, her, and the Beast. No place to run, no place to hide. A twisted, blasphemous parody of Judgment Day, where no mercy could be expected of the abomination sprawled in the throne of Heavens. There was nothing she could do, but hide her face behind her hands and pray to a god that will not answer her.

Hands. Fingers .

Magdalena raised her hands before her eyes. Her fingers, as she always knew them. Fine, long, nails carefully manicured. No, they were changing. Heavier, coarser. Calluses on the index, and on the side of the thumb. Fingers of a killer. Fingers of a dead man.

Magdalena was dreaming.

She felt as if a heavy veil had been ripped away from her eyes. Gratitude washed over her. The Wheeler, blessed be his salacious heart, had been right.

"Dem?"

No answer. She was alone. Her eyes caught a movement. The Beast, the Kraken, it was wide awake. And it was coming for her.

Magdalena felt fear clutches her heart. Fear, but no terror, no panic.

She wondered for a moment if she could wish herself awake. Then dismissed the notion. The hell with it. Dem asked her to look for clues, and that's what she would do. This was a dream, not reality. She was safe.

Of course, there was still a moon-sized atrocity that was rushing at her with slavering jaws silently shrieking its hunger. Dream or no, this was a problem.

What to do? Magdalena was a simple, unadventurous Reeve. She was not cut to challenge big-assed monstrosities from Beyond. If that was true, it only meant she would have to stop thinking like Magdalena.

What would Dem do?

The Beast was drawing closer, but still a sly grin twisted the corner of Magdalena's mouth. Well, that Kraken wears no skirt nor lipstick, so he would probably not try to flirt with it. No, I think he would rather...

Magdalena shifted her position. She was no longer merely standing in the middle of nothingness. She had her feet solidly planted in the middle of nothingness, and she be damned if anything would make her move from there. A hand came to rest on a cocked hip, while the other raised to point at the Kraken as Magdalena opened her mouth and barked

"Close enough, Buster! Sit down right now, or there will be no treats for you."

Magdalena was ready for almost anything. She, however, had not expected what the Kraken did.

It obeyed her.

Magdalena was feeling like laughing a shrill laughter of victory. "Good doggie," she said aloud to the void monster. Great, what now? Then she remembered. It's a dream. Go with the flow. And she knew what to do. "Hey, Buster, open that great big mouth of yours for mommy, will ya?"

Again, the Kraken obeyed. Jaws strong enough to shatter cerasteel opened, revealing rows upon rows upon rows of razor-sharp fangs taller than Magdalena. The Beast's breath was stale as old death.

Without hesitation, Magdalena walked in the maw of the Beast.

Pretty rocky for innards, she mused. She was in a passage carved out of something that was looking like jade. There was still a head between her and the ceiling, and she had to stretch her arms to touch the walls. There was no light, but still she could see. And while she had no way of knowing, she knew she was in a tunnel carved out by an underground river that had stopped flowing eons ago.

The tunnel stretched for leagues. She met many bifurcations, but always she chose one way without hesitation. She walked, tirelessly, until she was the light of candles flickering far ahead. I am reaching the hub, she thought.

The tunnel opened on an underground cave roughly circular. Diverse objects were littering the ground. At the center of the room, a large table on which sat the candle-holder that Magdalena had seen in the distance. Someone was hunched over the table, his back turned to her.

Magdalena stepped into the cave. The silhouette didn't stir, completely oblivious to her presence. As she drew nearer, Magdalena saw it was a boy. Young, skinny and clothed in dirty rags. A street urchin, most probably. He was mumbling awkwardly, as if reading words he couldn't quite pronounce. Magdalena looked down. He was reading something. An old scroll. She strained her eyes and recognized the text to be Latin. She had been forced to learn a little bit of it when she began to manage the accounts of the local Amalthean monastery. But this was far older and intricate that what she was used to. It would take her hours to decipher its general meaning.

Magdalena frowned. Something was wrong. The text, it was not shifting as her fingers had done. Its characters were unwavering. The cold finger of apprehension ran down her spine. She stretched a hand toward the candle-holder and snuffed a candle. The room went a little bit darker.

Oh shit.

It took her a few seconds to realize that the mumbling had ceased. She looked at the boy. He was staring at her, his mien devoid of any expression. Slowly, very slowly, his hand left the scroll, and he reached out.

Skull stared at the young woman on the bed. His eyes were burning, but in business, image is everything, so he did not blink.

The young woman glanced from him to those pieces of viscount Wilfred Hawksmoor that had fallen on the bed. She was heartbreakingly beautiful. Noble of course, but not too inbred; well educated, but kept soft by complete isolation from any harsh experience. Hawksmoor had always insisted on the finest, most delicate of whores.

Taught this evening that men are made of the same meat she had only ever seen so scattered in butcher's shops, she sobbed softly. Skull watched her sob, unmoving and unblinking on a dry patch of carpet.

When Skull was eleven, his thirteen-year-old sister was accosted on the street by a tall man with dark robes and darker intentions. She ran home, shut herself in her room and failed to hug herself hard enough to keep the tears in.

Skull had drilled carefully placed, near-invisible holes in the wall between their rooms years before, and watched her bloom into the the kind of beauty that no jackal-hearted tall man could pass by. The nightly spectacle of his sister's naked body had moved Skull's heart in ways he knew not the use of, but the sight of her naked hurt that one evening made his heart quake. He picked her lock, walked into her room and hugged her close until she stopped crying. This, he knew, was the use of his hunger for her flesh.

Skull had found the tall man six months later, and then no one had ever found the tall man again.

When Skull walked over to the young woman, careful not to wet his soles, she mouthed attempts at words. When he wrapped his arms around her trembling sweetness, she moved to lessen savagery by accepting it. But there was no savagery.

'Shhh, it's alright, it's all over now. I'm leaving now.'

And she just knew he wasn't lying. Her relief shockwaved over Skull, bringing him as close to ecstasy as he ever came. But image is everything, and so his eyes remained diamond as he released her, walked out on the balcony and jumped off the sixty-third floor.

Skull's body was an encyclopedia of forbidden experimental technology. Throughout his freelance career, after his retirement from the elite forces, he had given free rein of his body to the best frustrated weapons engineers he could find. He thrust and threw the many blades he carried with augmented reflexes and bacterial-computer-assisted precision. Genetically modified glands under his skin secreted poisoned bone razors on mental command. As the ground flew up to him, he concentrated and his senses dulled.

He hit the pavement like a meteor, turned off the integrity field that would keep him together down to the atomic level through any violence, and ran silently through magnificent gardens as the young woman's scream spoiled a thousand tourists' Friday night on Vera Cruz.

On Byzantium Secundus, the young scraver sat in his secret place, a nook in the sewers others avoided because of how quickly and often it was flooded. He believed his name was Rodent because this was how his father called him most of the time.

Rodent had been trying to open the metal case all morning. There was no visible mechanism and his fingernails found no fault in which to wedge themselves. Beaten, he rested his forehead on his fists. This never aided reflexion per se, but at least he looked like he was thinking hard.

When the hand in which he held the case touched his head, there was a click. Not in his hand. Behind his eyes.

And his consciousness exploded with visions through light-years of space and days of time in every direction.

Rodent sat in the belly of the beast and examined the ancient scroll. When he looked up at the woman who had been reading over his shoulder, Rodent saw that she was actually a man, a man who couldn't read the scroll like Rodent did. Which was very strange, because it was obvious which one of them had been at fine Reeves schools.

As Rodent began trying to explain the end of everything to the visitor in his head, he didn't notice water rising in his secret place.

Migite walked in and stated the facts plainly.

'Your older nephew is dead. His younger brother is missing. A ship fought its way through the jumpgate they were assigned to yesterday.'

Skull said nothing. His sister was crying, too far away for him to reach out and hold her. The sight of something like emotion in Skull's eyes was the most terrible thing Migite had ever seen. He forced himself not to run out of the room and added: 'The ship is headed into this system.'

Skull's eyes became diamond again.

Ben held himself tightly, his knuckles turning white. A single flashing red light lit the interior of the escape pod. How he had managed to get inside, he could not remember. The explosive decompression of the bridge had knocked him senseless and he was only now regaining them. He did not care that he had soiled him uniform. He was forcing himself to remember. The pain, blood returning to his brain, he floated in zero gravity. But the pain brought forth memories. His brother…Al-Mal…he was dead.

He and Al-Mal had tried to reach the escape pod together. Al-Mal had been dragging his dazed younger brother against the force of escaping air. A hull breech, but why? How? Ben's eye grew wide as a shadow passed across the view port.

That…thing…it attacked the Blessed Anointing. Its maw, an opened gateway to the blackest hell of all hells, had bitten the destroyer in two. Or nearly so. And it was still out there. Oh, Pancreator, it was searching for those who had escaped it. Ben knew that he had to act quickly, to get out of the area.

The gate. He could maneuver the pod to the gate and would appear to be part of it. Uncurling himself, he pushed off to the cockpit controls. Months of 0G training as a cadet had honed his movements. That, plus being team captain of the Academy's 0G Quad-Ball team. He slid into the con position's harness and buckled himself into the chair. A quick glance at the controls, he fired the thrusters maneuvering the pod toward the gate and away for the wreckage of his former ship.

No signs of the creature on the scope. But there had not been signs of it on the destroyer's scope either. He just had to get near the gate. It was too big. It could not attack him near the gate. He forced images of the open maw sucking the pod away from the gate, sucking him into the dark hell his teacher had so often described, from his mind. Such thoughts were not constructive.

A ship appeared on the sensors. This was the outbound vessel they had been ordered to stop. It had slowed to maneuver. Ben looked through the viewing portal. The small, sleek craft maneuvered by the burning and flashing hulk of the Anointed, or what was left of it. A clear half moon had been taken out of the middle of the ship.

The communications board lit up. They were broadcasting. "Attention damaged destroyer. This is the Fearless Baboon. Is anyone receiving this transmission? Please respond." The enemy…offering aid? Why?

"Attention survivors of damaged destroyer, this is the Fearless Baboon. Is anyone receiving this transmission? Please respond."

Byran turned to the Vau known as Shepherd. "There ain't no response. De all be dead. Can I leave da system now?" Byran couldn't tell if Shepherd was in deep thought or having gas problems.

"There must be survivors. At least one. I have seen him in my visions. A youth, of perhaps 20 of your time units." Shepherd turned to consult the other Vau standing in the cramped hallway.

"Well, if'n his out dere, he's not responding to me calls. We best be agoing, b`for da reinforcement arrive."

Shepherd shook his head and faced Byran again. "Proceed. Perhaps the youth is on the other side of the gate." The Shepherd and his fellow Vau turned and left the cockpit.

"About bloody hell time." Byran inserted and turned his key. The think computer lit the navigation screen. Three options appeared on the screen. Byran selected Vera Cruz. A series of lights lit up on the board as strange arcane symbols rapidly scrolled across the screen. A green light lit indicating that the jump engines were charged, the Sathra devise system checks completed, and the final transmission to the gate ready. Byran pressed the corresponding button.

Large cross-pieces on the gate began to move. The gate began to glow, a ball of energy forming where the cross hairs of the gate would be. The ball, growing rapidly, displays the sun and planets in their orbits. Then, the ball implodes, swirling energy coalesces from the inner circle of the ring, forming a whirlpool within the gate. Byran fires the Baboon's thrusters, entering the maelstrom of energy.

Eddies of energies toss the escape pod around, causing Ben to lose control. The eddies throw the small pod violently, colliding with vessel he had been trying to avoid. That is where Ben forgot all about his problems. Everything became white as light erupted from every pore, every atom screamed in unison, "Sathra."

Ben did not exist, physically. His mind was shot across thousands of parsecs of space. On Holy Terra, he stood before the pulpit of the Grand Cathedral as a priest expounded to the great council of bishops on the sins of mankind. "The darkness of every sin committed causes the suns to fade more and more and that the Holy Flame, by which all beings are given life was being shutout"…He stood before the Howling Gargoyle of Nowhere. A crown of tall and powerfully build beings encircled him and the gargoyle. The Gargoyle turned and spoke…He was standing on a plane of pure light. A figure, so brightly lit that he could not look at him directly, reached out a hand. "Ben"…He knew the working of Pentateuch, the flow of essence along it's points being disrupted by new and unplanned cities…The machines of Pandemonium which made the planet habitable were child's toys…His mother, weeping…Running with a herd of Shandors across open planes… All the lost worlds, suspended like marbles before him… The gates and their makers. And before them, their god, Sathra. Ben reached out to touch them…Darkness.

The surrounding darkness was as absorbing as the bright lights had been. It took a few moments as the images and feeling and understanding drained away into the great void of space. All that was left was the emptiness, the void left by the experience of all. A great aching agony of void, wishing to be filled once more. He returned to the fetal ball as before he was born.

Ben wept.

The boy called Rodent was in deep shit.

No, really, he was.

A few moments ago, things were nowhere as bad as they were now. He was doing his best to explain what was written on the scroll that he was holding in his hands to the woman that was also a man. The whole situation, while distinctly peculiar, wasn't really disturbing Rodent. Since birth, he had often seen things invisible to other people, heard voices when there was no one around to speak. Rodent liked to think those were signs that he was someone special, someone with a special gift. His father, more pragmatic, was of the opinion that 'that's what you get when your mother had been too stoned to know the difference between contraception pills and hallucinarcotics'.

But the point was that Rodent was used to weirdness. In fact, he welcomed it. Life, through progenitors entertaining the notion that parental duties ended five minutes after the conceptual coitus and a social system that made sure that what's down stays down, had pretty much doomed him to a life of spite, grimness and misery. Yet he was still young and he still dared to hope. To hope that, somehow, he would one day break free. And until this blessed day would come, weirdness, his and that of the the world he was living in, was all Rodent had to keep the dream alive.

And that's why Rodent hadn't freaked out. He was way too excited. At long last something was truly happening to him. For once, he was doing something important. For once, he was proving more capable than anybody else at something. For once, he was essential. This, to the young lad, was magic.

But his bubble had burst and he had been roughly dragged back to a reality that was doing its best to be unpleasant.

While his mind was elsewhere, the pungent water of the sewers has risen, and had trapped him. The water was up to his armpits, which meant that most of the tunnels and rooms in the vicinity were flooded. For the time being, it had stopped rising, but there was no way to tell if it would remain thus for long. While the water level of the sea was orchestrated by the movements of the moon, the water level in the sewer was following the much more erratic movements of the valves operated by some disgruntled city worker. It could suddenly go up, or slowly drain, or stay at the same level for days, if not weeks.

Rodent's options were fairly limited. He could stay where he was, marinating like a pickle in a rather unwholesome sauce, or he could try to find his way toward drier grounds through kilometers of pitch dark unchartered sewer systems and caves that would be for the most part flooded. In all honesty, he would have been hard-pressed to qualify any of those two options as appealing.

He seriously considered staying were he was. If in both cases the chances were he would end up drowned like a rat in a bucket of vomit, why bother at all? But he remembered something one of his friends once told him: 'A sitting dog's more likely to get kicked than a running one'. On the other hand, he also had heard someone say that 'the dog who doesn't cross the road doesn't get shredded to bloody ribbons by the passing street-cleaning machine', but it was a saying that didn't rolling as smoothly on the tongue as the first one, and was therefore less likely to be true.

Strong with this conviction, Rodent made his mind. Carefully, he tucked the case he was still holding inside his shirt. Then, stretching his arms before him like a blind man, he began to wade through the foul water.

Byran was really looking forward to getting this whole Vau business behind him.

The principal reason for such a neck-hazardous desire was the Vau themselves. They were driving him crazy. A crew of Vau, Byran had discovered, was about about as useful as a ballet troop of Gannocks, and nowhere as entertaining. The tall aliens were good at looking mysterious and mystic, but not much else. The events of the morning were a perfect illustration of that. When Byran had picked up the bleep of the escape pod on his post-jump check routine, Shepherd had been proud as a peacock. The Auspices, once more, had been right. The Auspices never lie. We are so hot to be able to read the Auspices. Now, you go and pick up whoever is in there. The Auspices say you should. Yeah, right. Huzzah for the Auspices... Byran wondered if the Auspices had warned Shepherd of the hefty rescue fee that would appear at the bottom of his bill too.

So to pick up the escape pod the Fearless Baboon went. And what did they found in the escape pod? A drooling idiot. Not a surprise, really. Passing through an activated jumpgate without a Sathra device had that unfortunate consequence of turning the best minds to mashed potatoes.

What you do with a man with a broiled brain? If you are a reasonable being, you tuck him in some quarter and forget him until you wander near a planet where you can sell him at meat-price to the local slave cartel. But are Vau reasonable beings? Visibly not, as Shepherd, under the ubiquitous advices of his goddamn Auspices, decided to call a meeting over him. So there Byran was, wasting his time in the briefing room in the pleasant company of a few Vau and the man with the grilled grid, waiting for Demuel to make his appearance.

The airlock of the room hissed open, and right on cue the man appeared. Or rather, the woman, although the sharp twist of her eyebrows and the way the thumb of her left hand was hooked in her belt, right above the holster tied to her leg, left little doubts on who was at the commands. He briefly looked around, and moved his attention to Shepherd.

"I feel this one's gonna be a good one."

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?"

As the shuttle continued to rise up into the atmosphere, Skull's single particle scan came back. 8 rows back, aisle seat. His nephew was there. Glancing at the chrome-plated panel in front of him, he fixed his eyes on his target. Skull had only seen his nephew once, just after he was born and in similar anonymity. Since his transformation, he did not dare show himself. To his family, he was dead. And that was how it was to be, except with his sister.

The boy's resemblance to his sister was notable. The reading from his enhanced senses picked up the minute details. Obviously, her husband's gene had been dominated by hers. The boy was suffering from something. His pulse rate and reaction times were slowed. What had happened to the boy?

The stewardesses, shortly after the "remain seated" sign has gone out, begin passing out dinner trays. Some fruit, a meat stew, bread and cheese, and a desert pastry. Skull looks at these and moves them around on his tray but does not eat. Recovering his tray, he handed it back to the stewardess.

Skull rose from his chair as the captain's voice comes over the speakers, "Hello, this is Captain Milan. Welcome aboard the shuttle Andrea. We will be docking with the Hazat Comet in a little over three hours. My entire staff and I hope that your stay with us will be pleasant and memorable. If there is anything what we can do to make your experience more enjoyable, please let us know and we will do everything in our means to satisfy your request. So, please set back and enjoy your ride."

Skull walked down the aisle toward the aft of the shuttle. He walks slowly by the three oddly matched passengers with his nephew. His scans show that the boy is suffering from trauma due to explosive decompression. But there is something else wrong. His brain patterns are scrambled, jumbled together, irregular. Demuel noticed that the old man passing by them let his eyes linger of all three of them for just a bit too long for just a passing glance. But the old fart didn't even measure up to a minimal threat level. Demuel returned his attention to Lima.

The image of an old man in his 60's sat down at one of the recreational tables in the aft common room. Verities of entertainment options present themselves to him: chess, cards, music jack and 3D holo-dramas. Just a few feathers each. They all disappear from view, leaving him a clear vantage point to watch his nephew and his captors.

Byran fumed. The Demuel/Maddie combination was busy trying to arouse the new found twinkie named Lima. His only other companion to speak with was the brain dead boy sitting next to him. And that was no good. Byran was entering stage 2 of grief. He had lost his greatest possession, the Baboon. 14 years of slaving away to pay her off. He should have known better then to take the Vau contract. He knew that it would be troublesome. But he had no idea that they would blow her up to cover their tracks. He was sitting in a passenger seat and they called this food?

Unable to amuse himself by looking out a window without any control of where he was going was beginning to annoy him. Unable to stand being trapped in the small passenger space by a brain dead boy, Byran shoved his way into the aisle and walked to the aft stewardess station. He needed a drink.

"Hello, Sir. What can I get you?"

"Alcohol. What's de strongest dat you got?"

'I'm sorry, Sir. We do not serve mixed drinks on this flight. Can I offer you a Makta Ale?"

"Ya mean ya do't serve mixed drinks in dis section, ah? Only in da Nobles' section? I'm a wheeler, ya see," showing his ring of keys. "We be like brother and sister, you and me. Yea?"

The stewardess's expression showed the shock of acknowledgement. "I'll see what I can do, Sir," she said as she decanted the amber contents of a bottle into a frosted mug. "In the mean time, please have this ale. On the house."

"Thank ya." Byran scanned the aft area for an unoccupied table, but found none. He didn't want to share a table with kids playing games and couples or larger groups occupied most of the others.

"Dis seat taken?" he said the old man sitting at a table by himself.

"No," grunted the old man, not even taking the time to looking at Byran as he sat down. 26 different methods of kill the black pilot passed through his brain. And those were just using the glass of ale in his hands.

The ale was a good one, not one of the cheap Makta she had offered. Byran smiled as he drained the last of the ale form the mug, setting the mug on the table. His beer finished, he motioned for another and turned his attention to the old man sitting across from him. The old eyes seemed sharp, and they focused out into the nothingness of space, through the window beside Demuel.

"So. Where ya head'n?"

"Not far. Just to the next system," muttered the old man not turning his attention from the window. He could use the pilot's tongue in at least 4 methods to kill him. A stewardess brought over another ale in a frosted mug.

"You's a pilot?"

"Have been," lied the old man. "But I'm retired."

"Ah, I can see dat. You look at space with a pilot's eye." Byran drank half the mug of ale before returning it to the table. "Ya look with dat want. To take control. To be in charge once more." The old man's eyes left the window and turned to Byran. This pilot was more observant then he looked. Skull was going to need to divert the pilot's attention away from himself.

"Does it show that much? And what about you? I take it that you don't own your own ship since you a passenger?" Skull saw the pain of that statement as it stung the pilot through the ale. "Don't worry. You're young. Your ship will come in one day." The old man smiled at Byran. That should be enough to make the pilot move along. A sensor registered that his neurotoxin reservoir was full.

"She's gone." Byran put his head in his hands. "My ship, she's da one that blowed up as we was a leavin'." Byran had found kindred soul. This old pilot would understand the loss of the Baboon. Or so he had thought. The eyes staring back at him were not filled with compassion as he had expected. They seemed rather cold. Like they were cutting through him. Byran slow stood up. The smile on the old man's face never changed.

"Ah, then you'll be claiming the insurance? What was she, a rust bucket? Won't be the first time a down and out pilot tried to cut his losses."

"Ya don't know what ya talkin' about. Won't me who blowed her up." Byran finished his ale. But he set the mug down a little too hard, shattering it on the table top. "Why am I wasting my time with you, old man? A real pilot don't retire. It's in the blood. We fly." Byran tried to return to his seat, but found himself falling face forward onto the deck. His knees had buckled under him, like a grav-plate had malfunctioned for an instance thus doubling the force being applied. But to everyone else, a drunken pilot had tripped over his own feet, falling on his face.

The old man got up, looking disgusted at the young pilot lying on the floor. He returned to his seat in the front row. The stewardess came over to assist Byran to his feet and helped into his seat.

"If you promise to stay in your seat, Sir, you can have this," the stewardess said as she presented a hip flask.

"Yea, yea. I'll not be leaving my seat for the rest of the trip." Byran accepted the flask, tucking it away in his coat as she walked away.

"What was that all about?" Maddie asked, leaning close to Byran's ear.

'Never you mind, Dem. Go back to ya woman talk."

The Comet sat in orbit between Vera Cruz and its moon. She was a big liner. The shuttles landing and leaving looked like flies on the carcass of a dead brute. The Andrea landed in one of the upper bays. Maddie and Byran helped the boy off the shuttle. The old man, no where to be seen, must have already departed. Stepping out of the shuttle, the group falls in line behind a group of priests at the check-in counter.

"Excuse me," came a deep, rough voice from behind them. Turning back to see who was now assaulting them, Byran faced gray robes with four arms. In each of the four arms were traveling cases, emblazoned with the words "Temple Mai Entertainers". Maddie shrieked as she turned to face the 8' tall vorox, as her last experience with a vorox had not gone well. Only Ben seemed glad to see the four-armed beast. Memories of childhood priests dancing and acting out plays begin to surface out of the maelstrom of his brain.

Maddie, switching into combat mode, grabs a hand as it lands on her shoulder. The priest is mid-way through the throw when Demuel realizes that she is about to crush the head of a priest on the landing bay's decking. He turns her body slightly and applies rotational pressure to the priest's arm, sacrificing her body as he bringing the priest down gently. Applause breaks out from the surrounding passengers. Surprisingly, the priest is smiling.

"Very Good. You must have heard of us," he says to the other passengers while helping Maddie up from the decking. "We will be performing each night in the main common room. Please join us as we share stories from the Omega Gospels in a style unique to our order." More applause resounds and then the crowd begins to thin as the excitement is finished.

"Very impressive maneuvers. For a moment there, I thought that you were trying to kill me," he says to Maddie. "I am Brother Mi Tou Chi.

"Sorry. I've had bad experiences with Vorox," said Maddie as she massaged her arm and shoulder.

"Ah, yes. This is Arguggath," said Brother Chi. "But we all call him Brother Garth."

"Sorry to have startled you, Miss…" moaned Arguggath, his head sagging low.

"That's alright."

"You will come and attend one of our shows?" inquired Brother Chi. "I insist. As special guests."

"Yea," said Ben as he clapped his hands together. It was the first word that Ben had spoken in weeks, since his trip through the gate without the Sathra dampenner. He was beginning to recover, his brain rewiring itself to compensate for the damage caused by unshielded exposure.

"It is agreed then, my lord," said Brother Chi, bowing to the young Li Halan. "I will leave word about your attendance. Until then." The half dozen priests bowed to Ben and the others as they made their way into the liner.

"What was that all about," asked Lima.

"Never mind," said Maddie. "Let's get onboard before something else happens."

"Welcome aboard the Hazat Comet. May I have your tickets, please?" The name tag read "Gwen". She was just as vocabulary challenged as Lima. Maddie handed her the tickets, but she did not respond to the charm as Lima had.

"You are on Desk 6, Suite 623. Follow the yellow line to the stairs, go up two flights. Your suite is mid-ship. Here is a guide to the resort areas. Levels 1 and 2 are restricted to Nobles and their invited guests only. Level 4 is the restaurant level. Levels 7 and 8 are recreational levels. All dueling is restricted to level 7. Please note that all weapons must be check at this time. Do you have anything to claim at this time?"

"Man, she has some lungs. Wonder if…" thought Demuel.

"Don't go there," replied Maddie.

“Why not?” insisted Demuel. “After all, we’ll be on this barge for weeks. She’d come in handy for keeping the boredom away.”

“Look at her, Dem!” Maddie replied. “She’s a cold bi...”

“Excuse me, Miss.” Gwen’s voice interrupted the heated debate. “I said: Do you have anything to claim at this time?”

“One more try, OK?” snapped Demuel.

“I have nothing to claim at this time.” spoke Demuel, without waiting for Maddie’s answer, twisting her lips in a seductive smile as he did so.

“But...” he continued “...maybe later...”

Gwen’s smile was still pasted to her lips, but now her eyes were looking at Maddie as if she were some particularly repulsive animal that had just defecated on the floor.

“If you have something to claim at a later time...” and here her voice became as soothing as liquid nitrogen “please report it to the claims office, Level 3, Room 125.” Still reeling from the unexpected rebuttal, Demuel hardly noticed the stewardess’ next words.

“Please move along Miss, you’re holding up the line.”

“Told you she’s a cold bitch.” Maddie snickered as she moved them aside, waiting for Byran and Ben to hand over their tickets. A minute later they joined them.

“Crash and burn, eh Dem?” Byran said, rubbing it in. After all, misery loves company.

“Oh, shut up.”

Jacked into the ship’s security systems, lounging in bed, Skull watched the odd duo that held his nephew prisoner. He could have watched them using the various scanning devices implanted in his body, but that was becoming too much of a strain. There was a time when he could have used all the machine do-jiggies at the same time, running them all at full power without breaking a proverbial sweat. These days, he had to be more careful. First that job at Vera Cruz, then blowing up the Baboon, followed by the fight at spaceport and the trip. Not to mention that he had had to hack into the ship’s think machines to assign himself the room next door to his nephew. In and of themselves, none of these jobs were particularly difficult. Taken on one after the other, with almost no time to rest in between, they were taxing even for him. His body was full of weird, wacky and wonderful machines, and what was left organic was heavily modified with gengineered bacteria, stuffed with steroids and enhanced by tissue grafts. But, the structure that held all those enhancements and modifications together was still the one he was issued at his birth. Without it and its organic enhancements, the machine parts were so much scrap metal. And, to his chagrin, that structure was beginning to show signs of wear and tear. He was not young anymore, and the enhancement therapies were having less and less effect. Sooner or later, Skull knew, he’d have to make up his mind. Retire, or commit what the Church would describe as the ultimate sin; transfer his mind in a completely mechanical body. In the meantime, he had to conserve his strength. He was still more than capable of short bursts of superhuman power, but now those bursts had to be separated by periods of rest. Without rest, he might very well find himself in the thoroughly embarrassing situation of needing all his powers and not being able to lift a finger.

SMACK!

The cuff that echoed through Skull’s head had not been directed at him. But the savant think machine embedded in his head had executed its instructions a bit too literally. Monitoring the security feed while Skull was brooding over his old age, the idiot computer had been instructed to give him an exact representation of any significant event that happened to his nephew. So, when that drunkard pilot decided to cuff his nephew over the back of the head, the thrice-damned think machine matched the pilot’s performance with a flurry of neural impulses designed to match the neural inputs that a cuff over the back of Skull’s head would cause. In short, Skull had just been boxed around the ears by his own computer. Which did nothing to improve his already sour temper.

His face twisted in a snarl of rage, Skull leaped from his bed, sending his think machine the shutdown code as he did so. Glaring balefully at the bulkhead that separated him from his nephew, Skull started towards the exit, determined to rip that asshole of a pilot to pieces. He was buck-naked; his hard, muscular body dotted with datajacks, firing ports, artificial tendons, access panels... He knew that if anyone saw him like that they would instantly see him for what he was. He didn’t care. He could and he would kill anyone who dared to stand in his way.

Then he stopped. Took a deep breath. Turned on the think machine again, changing its orders and mentally berating himself for giving them in the first place. And then he replayed the last few seconds of the security feed which had flashed before his eyes just as he was shutting down the computer.

There it was, in all its glory. The pilot cuffing his nephew, shoving him away from the viewport he himself wanted to look at. And then the woman, who had just exited the bathroom, telling him to leave the boy alone!

The pilot made some angry noises after that, but the woman just looked at him and said: “Byran, don’t make me whoop your ass.” His proverbial tail between his legs, the pilot retreated into a corner and took yet another swig from his flask, muttering about “unfairness of it all”, but that didn’t concern Skull in the least. The pilot was a nobody. A drunkard, a loser, no wonder the woman could stare him down so easily. But that woman. There was more to her than meets the eye, Skull was sure of it. She looked harmless enough. A beautiful thing, to be sure, but of no importance. Half the time she even behaved like it. But at other times, her behavior was very different. The way she talked, walked, held her head. The cautious glances she darted around. The constant tension of a coiled spring, ready to explode into a flurry of action. Not to mention the way she manhandled that priest. That was a lethal move if Skull had ever seen one, only changed into a mostly harmless one at the very last moment. Who was she? And why did that drunk of a pilot insist on calling her Maddie at one moment, and Dem or Demuel at the other? Skull didn’t know, but he intended to find out. At any other time he would have killed her out of hand. But now that she had showed compassion to his nephew, well, that might just have saved her life. Extended it at the very least.

“What’s the matter with Byran?” Maddie thought. “He didn’t have to be so rude. The poor kid was just looking through the viewport.”

“He’s drunk, Maddie.” replied Demuel. “He’s drunk because he has lost his ship. That old crate was all he had. No pilot...”

The doorbell interrupted Demuel’s train of thought. He turned them toward the door. Before they could take a single stride towards them, the bell rang again. And again. And again.

“Looks like somebody’s impatient.” Demuel sneered just before they opened.

The door revealed a young man, of Ben’s age, dressed in a glittery uniform of a ship’s officer. Beside his Ensign’s insignias, the most prominent thing on the uniform was the Hazat Claw. His eyes stuck to Maddie’s body like glued.

“Uh...ahm...Madam..I...” he stammered, blushing to the roots of his hair.

“Yes, Ensign?” replied Maddie.

“Uh...I was informed that Ben... a friend of mine was in this cabin.” the Hazat replied, this time less confusedly.

Before Maddie or Demuel could say anything, Byran shouted from the back of the room.

“Ben!? We do’t have no Ben! But we have Toast! Wanna see ‘im?”

Startled from his confusion by Byran’s voice, the young noble finally tore his eyes from Maddie and focused them at the back of the room, where he saw Byran and Ben. Both were grinning inanely.

Maddie forgotten for the moment, the young noble shoved past her and rushed to embrace Ben.

“Ben! Mi amigo! You haven’t changed a bit!”

The young Hazat was a credit to his house. It didn’t take long for him to realize that something was wrong with his friend.

“Ben? What’s the matter? Don’t you recognize me? It’s me, Pedro! Say something!”

“Aaaaaaggggaaaa?” was the none-too-intelligent reply.

The young Hazat whirled around to face Maddie, who had moved to stand behind him.

“What is going on here?” the Hazat snapped. “Why doesn’t my friend recognize me?”

“Who’s asking?” Demuel replied, putting just a hint of threat in Maddie’s voice.

Wrong move. Say what you will about Hazat intelligence, you can’t deny that they’re brave bastards, raised from the crib onwards to show no fear, to face any challenge. The transformation was immediate, and very obvious. The clumsy, slightly befuddled young ensign was gone within seconds. In his place stood a proud, tall, arrogant young noble, his shield engaged, his hand already reaching for the rapier that swayed from his hip.

“I am Don Pedro Diego Linares.” the noble snarled “Knight de Hazat, Ensign of the Hazat Fleet. Who are you, and what have you done to Ben!?”

Combat shields. Technological marvel stolen -- the forgiving soul would be more inclined to call it 'inspired from in a reverse-engineered kind of way' -- from the Vau. Devices able to deflect the most wickedly serrated blade, to damper the impact of the most explosively brutal high-velocity round.

Magdalena's body sprung like a weasel out of a kitchen drawer, reaching for an empty chair that was doing what chairs do near by. The Hazat didn't even had the time to ponder upon the relevance of warning the lady not to try anything funny that the erstwhile piece of furniture celebrated its promotion to bludgeoning apparatus by batting his hand away from the hilt of his sword. The chair's second pass slammed against the back of his knees, sending him flying into the bedroom's restricted aerial space.

Although not a noble suite, the room that Demuel had taken wasn't totally devoid of luxury. The carpet, for example, was pleasantly plush. Enough to tickle your average tootsies. Or soften the fall of a hapless ensign from a bone-rattling impact to a mere muscle-bruising collision.

The Hazat was enough of a soldier to know he was in trouble. Not that years of military training was required to reach such conclusions; any tortoise could tell you how bad for one's long-term health resting on one's back could be.

The chair that smashed legs-first into his face hastily proved the point.

Fortunately for him, his shield absorbed the impact and saved his mien of spontaneous restructuration. Unfortunately, the chair still achieved the goal its yielder had in mind, namely to pin the ensign against the floor long enough for Magdalena's hand to penetrate the shield's protective field and grab a handful of gorgeous Hispanic black hair.

The Hazat shrieked as he was pulled upward. The topmost part of his skull was such a shrill symphony of pain that he barely had conscience of being dragged across the room.

However, he once more became aware of his surrounding when his head got forcefully shoved down the toilet bowl.

Combat shields. About as useful as parakeet guano against someone who fights dirty.

Magdalena, snugly installed in the backseat of her own body, was contemplating the whole scene with befuddlement.

Isn't that a little extreme? She thought, starring at the ensign desperately trashing to get some air. Fat chance he would manage to do it: Demuel had Magdalena's heel, with all of her body weight, firmly set on the nape of his neck.

"Extreme?" snarled Demuel, his hands once more busy penetrating the noble's shield. "The guy was reaching for his sword! What did you want me to do? Talk him out of it?" Demuel gave a small grunt of satisfaction as his fingers found the shield's power module at the Hazat's belt and deftly snatched it away.

Magdalena felt a pang of pity for the poor lad as Demuel fished him out and sent him waltzing out of the bathroom and across the bedroom.

Well, yes, you could have. He seems like a reasonable fellow. And it's not like we are guilty of anything. We rescued Toast, remember?

Demuel couldn't believe it. "You are really serious, aren't you?"

Yes I am. It might surprise you, but there is other ways to get out of trouble than sheer violence.

Demuel quirked an eyebrow, then shrugged. "Okay. He's yours." He slipped the body's controls to Maddie.

Maddie straightened their body, adopting a more friendly pose than the fighting crouch Demuel had. She flashed a most warm smile, the one she was reserving for mortgage re-negotiations in the long-gone era when she was still nothing but a simple Reeve, and took a step forward. "I'm sorry, mister Linares, but I think we have a misunderstanding..."

Hazat are nothing if not gallants. Most of them learn to respect and venerate women around the same time they are potty trained, and would never dream of mistreating any representant of the opposite sex with anything else than insipid poetry.

Having barely escaped drowning in a toilet bowl, however, is one of those experience that makes you reconsider the fine prints of chivalry. And it is in the progressive point of view that gender equality begins with the right to uppercut rabid harridans that he hurled his fist in direction of Magdalena's face.

Maddie was in possession of all of Demuel's finely-honed reflexes, but had never been in a fight herself. It was like being at the wheel of a racing car while never having learned to drive manual. She, barely, managed to dodge the angry fist, but she never saw the Hazat's knee before it hit her sqaure in the stomach. She staggered backward. Just in time to receive a punch that split her lips like an over-ripe tomato.

Byran was nonplussed. "Dem, my man, what in da name of the Pancreator's hairy shin are you doin'?"

Demuel wiped the blood from his chin. "Being pedagogical, Byran, being pedagogical..." And he shoved the commands back to Magdalena in time for her to enjoy the Hazat's kick aimed at her kneecap.

"OKAY!" bellowed Maddie, backing away, "ENOUGH!"

What? You don't want to talk him out of it?

"Demuel, this isn't funny! He's going to kill me!"

Nah. He just want to beat you up real good. Nothing to worry about.

Maddie was close to tears. "Demuel, stop it. Please..."

Demuel sighed and slipped at the commands. The fist that was going to land on her face suddenly met the obstacle of an outstretched palm. A moment later the Hazat's little finger broke with a twig-like snap. The Hazat screamed and felt to his knees. Demuel didn't let go.

"Lesson number one," smiled Demuel, "most men have the tendency to become quite docile if you manipulate their little bits."

I could have told you that.

"Oh. A nasty potshot. There is some hope for you, after all."

"Miss..." It was the Hazat, still on his knees, his free hand holding the wrist of the hand whose savaged digit Demuel was holding firmly. "could you please stop the freaky soliloquy and accept my surrender before I pass out? Pretty please?"

Demuel snarled in a way that would have made a famished wolverine look homely. "I might. But first, tell me how you found out that we're here?"

The Hazat draw a short, shuddering breath. The crazy broad had stopped twist his fingers in ways the Pancreator hadn't devised the appendice to bent, and that was all he needed for the time being to feel happiness fill his heart. "I saw Ben's name in the guestbook... I asked a few stewards... I swear..."

Demuel tilted his head on the side. "The guestbook...?"

We left Byran and Toast alone a few minutes when we made the arrangements for the room, didn't we?

Maddie threw a dirty look at Byran.

"Byran...?"

The drunk pilot was suddenly quite uncomfortable. "I 'ssumed he was just doin' doodles..." He attempted a weak smile. "He looked so happy..."

"Happy?! Byran, we have people..."

Demuel stopped himself. He had almost fed the Hazat free dirt on them there. Not the kind of emotional impulse he would've succumbed to normally.

Are we about to have your period or something?

Sourly, Maddie's biological calendar flashed into their shared memory bank. No, that would be a couple of weeks away still. Dem had to get a grip on his temper, was all.

"May I stand?" Linares, having not been in intense pain for several seconds now, was beginning to regain his composure.

Dem let him go and sucked on Maddie's bloody lip pensively. Linares excused himself, marched into the bathroom and locked the door behind him. By the time he came back out, the bodymates had decided to be perfectly honest with him, mostly because they didn't really care about Toast one way or the other.

"We... That's my toothbrush." Linares had splint his finger with the first available oblong. Worries of further suffering shimmered in his eyes. "Forget it, what I meant to say was, we didn't do anything to Ben. Actually, we didn't even know his name. He wasn't coherent when we found him..."

"E-e-e-e-egg-PLANT!" Ben chimed in helpfully.

Dem had done a fairly thorough job of explaining Ben's plight when the door whooshed open again. He spun around mid-sentence, sweeping up his trusty chair along the spin and mentally calculating the distance between its legs in case he'd have to break more than one person's nose at once.

"I'm sorry, is this a bad time?" Lima's apologetic smile disappeared the minute she had a clear view of Maddie's face.

"How did you open the door?"

"Oh dear, what happened to you?" Lima threw herself at Mad/Dem, ignoring the upraised chair completely. Dem hadn't given Maddie's split lip a second thought, and to Maddie's surprise, neither had she.

"Hope for you yet, I told you." They put the chair down. Nothing to write home about, putting a chair down, but this was the first unconscious concerted action that they noticed themselves performing. It felt uncomfortably natural. The paradox made them feel vulnerable, and they let the superb Aragonese distract them from it.

Lima's adorable look of concern accentuated itself with a frown Demuel couldn't help smoothing away with a fingertip. "Hope for what? Don't talk, I have to look at that. What happened to you? Don't talk, wait."

"Tripped, knocked it on the back of the chair. Which is why, y'know..." Lima dabbed the last drop of blood away. "...I was mad at the chair when you came in." He patted its back. "But I've forgiven it now. How did you open the door?"

"I work for the Charioteers, remember? I asked Jesús for your key. He's head steward, we go way back. I called in, like I told you I would? There, that's not so bad, I don't think you'll need stitches, but we should get you some ice. So my supervisor said that because of the accident at the spaceport, I could take a couple of weeks off, right? For post-trauma recovery and suchlike? So I have a free cabin of my own, that the company's paying for, and I was coming to see if, well, you'd be cramped in here and I think I have some ice for that lip, and I have space for one more if you were going to..."

She closed her eyes, cleared her throat and smiled a little wider. "I'm rambling. Sorry." She opened her eyes again.

Dem stared at her hungrily for a moment and said "Your call." Before Lima could make anything of that, Maddie's face softened and that playful undertone returned to her voice as she turned to ask the others if they could manage without her for the night. Lima giggled inwardly. Anything she thought might displease others, she had learned very young to do inwarldy. She was very relieved that her nervous rant hadn't turned Maddie off. Maddie's snide comments to herself were a little weird, but Lima had seen much worse and Pancreator help her, that woman was gorgeous.

Maddie could have gone on all night, but she had mercy on her non-augmented lover and let her catch her breath a bit. Quietly, she checked on Byran and Ben, left them sleeping in peace and came back to cuddle Lima, who had waited awake for her.

"You know, I wouldn't believe that last thing was physically possible if we hadn't done it."

"Yeah, I know. Surprising that it's even enjoyable, eh?"

Lima nuzzled closer. "Oh, it's very enjoyable."

"So how does a nano-engineer end up working a travel desk?"

"I couldn't find a decent job. I mean, literally, the only serious offers I got from engineerig firm bigwigs were, you know, indecent? And not work-related?"

Dem/Mad examined the lovely cardioid face lying in its mess of sunbleached tresses, gazing back with promises of tenderness in her black eyes and a grateful relaxation of her smile. "Yeah, I can see how that could happen." He/she ran their hand up and down her body under the sheets, and brushed their sweet little nose against the rounded flare of Lima's nostrils and the softness of that smile, impatient for their own lip to heal and make kisses less masochistic. "I mean, I can understand where the instinct comes from. Shitty way to treat someone, still."

"Yeah, that instinct is a lot more welcome here, you know?" A lazy taste of Maddie's nose tip, Maddie's upper lip grazing her chin. "Anyway, the ones who didn't want me like that simply didn't want me. One look and I was tagged. Good-looking airhead."

One of the bodymates almost said 'Gorgeous airhead' but the other vetoed that particular compliment.

"But the pay's good and I meet wonderful people." Lima's voice was trailing off.

"Go to sleep now," Maddie whispered. "You'll love how I'll wake you up."

Children's Matinee: The Sacred Fish

Scene 1

The lights rise to the sounds of a brass gong clanging and small bells ringing. A man in rags appears from the right, his face concealed by a theatrical mask. His sad eyes peer out from beneath his long forehead and his mouth is turned down in a most sad of expressions. He is carrying a fishing net and a long pole. He walks to the center of the stage and throws down the net and bends to untie an imaginary boat.

Then a loud clang on a deep gong announces the arrival on stage of another actor. A woman, in rags as well, stomps her way to the center of the stage, with each step the deep gong sounds. The man cowers as she approaches. A mask conceals her face, it's eyes are narrow and close together, her nose, long and pointy, her mouth is a straight line drawn tightly between two round cheeks. In her hand, she carries a long rod, often used for the beating of rugs.

She brings the rug beater back and strikes her husband to the ground. She shakes her finger at her husband and points at her rags and points off stage, shaking her head. He nods in agreement and picks himself off the ground as she exits the stage to the right, each step echoes with the beating of the deep gong. He sighs, raising his hands to his chest, for he truly loves his wife. And he turns to the audience and holds his hands out wide, nodding his head. That is the size fish that he is going to catch today.

Taking up his pole, he begins to push his boat out, moving slowly across the stage. Every three movements, he would reach over the stage and pull up a empty fishing line. As he would shake his head and the line, a cowbell would ring. After poling his boat across the stage, he began to pole his way back.

Reaching mid-stage again, he reached down and pulls on the line. The end of the line does not appear. He pulls again and still nothing. His head bobs up and down, first one hand and then the other. Then he rubs his hands together and he plants his feet firmly on the stage. He pulls and he pulls, a high brass gong sounds, repeating faster and faster until...

Another actor, dressed in green and black sequins robe with the mask of a fish-head appears from beneath the stage, flying up into the air. The fisherman stumbles about the stage, remaining under the fish until he catches the dwarf actor in his arms. The fish actor flops about in the fisherman's arms, trying to make it back under the stage. But to no avail. The fisherman has caught him, so he stops struggling.

The fisherman shows the catch to the audience, nodding his head up and down with great excitement. He places the fish into the boat. Again he turns to the audience and rubs his stomach. The fish gets on its knees, placing its front flippers together. The Fish actor points to the fisherman with both flippers and motions over board. The fisherman shakes his head, "NO". Again the fish actor motions for the fisherman to let him go. Again the fisherman shakes his head, "NO".

The fish actor grabs the feet of the fisherman and kisses them three times and again motions overboard. The fisherman cocks his head sideways. Again the fish kisses the feet of the fisherman three times and motions over board. The fisherman hold up three fingers and looks at them, finally shaking his head and picking up his pole. The fish repeats the offer, and the fisherman stops poling. Again he looks at his right hand and holds up three fingers. The fisherman looks at the fish and back at his three fingers. He strokes his chin with his other hand.

Raising his index finger of his right hand, the fisherman reaches into his pockets and pulls them inside out. He holds both hands open, showing that he has nothing. He points off stage and draws the shape of his wife with both hands (head, breast and big stomach. The audience erupts in laughter.) He then rubs his head where she had struck him that morning. The fish nods and points overboard, then motions for the fisherman to check his fishing line again.

Following the lead of the fish, the fisherman pulls on the line, but it does not move. The high brass gong sounds. He pulls harder and the gong rings louder but still nothing. He spits into his hands and rubs them together and pulls harder and harder and harder. The gong resounds in rapid succession, but still nothing. The fish grabs hold of the fisherman and pulls on him as the gong goes crazy. Then from below the stage, a chest appears. Slowly, the chest rises falling onto the stage with a loud thump, casting the fish and fisherman to the stage in exhaustion.

Collecting himself, the fisherman climbs over the chest and pops open the latches of the old beaten chest. Opening the lid slowly, he peers inside. He then throws open the chest and runs his hands though the silver and gold colored coins. Tiny bells jingle as the coins fall back into the chest. The fish picks itself off the stage and dusts itself off. Tapping the fisherman on the shoulder, the fish points at the chest and holds up one flipper. Acknowledging the exchange, the fisherman nods his head. With a back flip, the fish flies over the head of the fisherman and disappears off stage.

Poling back to mid-stage, the deep gong announces the approach of the wife, each step appointed with a loud sounding of the gong. In her hands is the large rug beater. The fisherman flies to the side of his wife dancing as he stands before her. Until the rug beater smacks him across the head, driving him to his knees. He begs to his wife, to not hurt him again, but to come and look within the boat. He rises and dances across to the chest and begins to dance circles around it. The wife strides forward, the loud gong sounding at each footfall.

Arriving at the chest, she puts her hands on her hips, and begins tapping her foot. Each foot fall marked by the sound of the loud gong. The fisherman stops dancing and points to the chest. The wife holds out her arms, signing the size of the fish that she had told him to catch. The husband laughs, and holds his hands showing the size of the fish that he had caught. The wife brings her hands to her chest and leaps into the air. She then begins searching for the fish. She moves the husband back and forth, looking everywhere for the fish. Finally, she throws her hands up and looks directly at her husband.

He stops dancing and points at the chest. The wife holds out her hands apart equal to the length of the fish. The husband laughs and motions that the fish went overboard. Her hands go to her hips as her head tilts down. The husband points again to the chest. The wife takes a step forward, marked by the sound of the loud gong. The husband begins moving around the chest, pointing at it as his wife begins chasing him around the chest, her every footfall marked by the loud gong and the narrow misses of her rug beater by a high twang of a lyre.

They continue to run circles around the chest, until the wife begins to tire. She wobbles and kicks the chest, turning it on its side, spilling the gold and silver coins onto the stage. She stops running and looks at the coins. She looks at her husband who stops running. She looks back at the coins. She picks up a coin and looks at her husband. She throws her arm out wide and leaps high into the air. She lands in her husband's arms as he drops to one knee. She hugs him tightly and rests her head in his chest as the lights go out.

“....so, now you see my problem.” whined Pedro Linares. “Our doctor is nothing more than a butcher and by the time we get to somewhere where I can see an Amalthean it will be too late! My finger will remain bent forever! I will remain disfigured, a cripple, and all because of that bitch! I want her to pay for what she has done, and I can’t challenge her to a duel because I’ d become the laughingstock of the House!”

And you can’t simply attack her either, thought Sergei Visarionovich Godunov, lounging languidly in his plush chair, because if you did that you’ d most likely end up crippled for real.

“Of course you can’t challenge her to a duel, Pedro.” the Decados baronet replied out loud. “It wouldn’t be proper for a man of your rank to soil his hands by challenging a commoner woman.”

“However,” the Decados continued, playing with a gilded dagger as he did so, “it is your duty, both as a noble and as a naval officer, to warn the Captain about this woman.”

“What!?” shouted Pedro, springing to his feet, his arms gesturing wildly.

“Are you mad, Sergei!? Have I not told you that I do not want to become a laughingstock!? If I tell the Captain then the entire ship will know about this!”

Trust a Hazat not to see things beyond his stupid nose. Sergei thought wryly, his right hand laying the dagger on the nearby table, his fingers starting to drum on its hardwood surface.

“Relax, Pedro.” the Decados replied conciliatorily. “Sit down and we’ll talk this over.”

“RELAX, you say!!” Pedro shouted on. “Relax!? How can I relax when my best friend gives me such a foolish advice! How can I rel...” Sergei had had enough.

“SIT!” he bellowed, his right exploding into action, grabbing the dagger by the hilt and slamming it into the table point-first. Seeing the razor-sharp blade bend slightly under the force of the impact, sinking centimeters into the hard surface as it did so, the Hazat cringed involuntarily. All the color left his previously flushed face. He slid back into his chair wordlessly, his eyes fixed on his Decados friend.

“That’s better.” grunted Sergei, slowly letting his tense body resume its languid mask, his hand leaving the dagger stuck in the table “You are a good man, Pedro,” he continued “but I don’t think you have examined all the implications of that unfortunate event carefully enough.”

“Oh, really?” Linares replied testily, getting some of his courage back now that his friend seemed to be returning back to normal.

“Think, Pedro!” the Decados said rather more loudly than he had intended, barely restraining himself from grabbing the Hazat by his lapels. “You are a Hazat noble, by definition one of the best warriors in the Known Worlds! You are young, trim, fit, strong and supremely trained in all the martial arts! How could a commoner woman best you in single combat!? Even more importantly, how could a commoner woman be so good at one moment and such a lousy fighter at the other!? And, finally, think how could a normal commoner woman talk to herself in such a mad way...” Sergei trailed off, looking at Pedro expectantly.

Blank stare.

“A normal woman, Pedro!” the Decados continued in exasperation. Another blank stare.

“Look,” and Sergei was now addressing Pedro like he would address a dimwitted child “have you ever seen a normal woman do any of the things that bitch did?”

“Weell, no.”

“Of course not! That woman is not normal! Pancreator only knows what dark secrets she harbors! At the very minimum she is seriously sick!” the Decados ranted, gesturing wildly. “Or she might be a machine freak, possessed by the very computer she had implanted in herself! Maybe she is possessed by demons, or she could be a Symbiot agent! Whatever she is, she is a danger to us all and she must be stopped!”

Finally, finally the Hazat was beginning to get it.

“Damn it, Sergei, you are right!” he shouted excitedly. “That puta could never have hurt me if she were normal! I’ll warn the Captain! That way we’ll stop her and I’ll have my vengeance!”

“An excellent idea.” Sergei replied evenly, barely succeeding to hide the mocking smile that threatened to form on his lips.

“Please hurry.” he continued. “We are all in great danger for as long as that woman is on the loose.”

“Yes! YES!” Pedro shouted, springing on his feet and starting towards the door. “I’ll tell the Captain right now and we’ll show that bitch!” “You do that, Pedro.” the Decados said, barely keeping the satisfaction he felt out of his voice. He needn’t have bothered, the Hazat was already out.

As soon as the door had closed behind Pedro, the bedroom door opened and a slender, nondescript brunette exited the bedroom.

“I hope that everything went well, Sir.” she said, stepping lightly to where Sergei was still seated.

“You saw it for yourself Elena.” he replied, finally allowing his face to twist in a wolfish smile of triumph. “The stupid ass ate it all up, even thought it took him longer to get it than an average Vorox would have needed.”

“And now...” she asked expectantly.

“And now we proceed to Phase Two.” the Decados replied. “You will go to the comms room, bribe the usual man and send a message to Bolshoi Batiskii. You will give Boyar Atanasov my regards and inform him that we will be needing his Galliot shortly. He is to prepare his Marauders carefully, we will want no witnesses. After that you will visit our cargo bay and make sure that the team is ready. As soon as the Hazat leave with that woman, we move in, kill the pilot and take the kid. Then we sabotage the bridge and wait for Batiskii to come in for the kill. And, remember, Elena. Let everyone understand that there must be no survivors. It must look like a pirate raid gone wrong. We must make sure that nobody knows that we’ve got the boy. Understood?”

“Yes Sir.”

“Then let’s get to it, shall we? Glory to the Mantis.”

“Glory to the Mantis.”

Brother Garth looked through the eyes of the tiny insects that had followed the interprid heroes into the room. He held a close symbiosis with them, felt what they felt and heard what they heard. The sleeping, exhausted form of the two females, the idiot pilot and the braindead boy gave him pause.

His hive was loosing the cold war that had been going on for these last few years back on Chernoborg. It had only been the greatest of luck that had allowed him to meet his fellow vorox and join their traveling sect-and that luck had stretched doubly thin as his fellow agents were picked out one by one by more hostile hives...hives bent on destroying the known worlds by force of arms at whatever the cost.

He shuddered...some costs were too terrible to imagine...indeed the visions and portents told that once another people had thought the costs worth bearing and doomed themselves to eternal darkness and banishment as a result.

He would not let the same thing happen again...he could not let it happen again.

He sensed the dual nature in the woman, Magdalena. They had ignored his invitation but time still remained before the ship arrived at its erstwhile destination.

That the static ones had their mark upon her as well did not bode well, yet he sensed the link to the key upon her...or rather...a secondary link like another chain in a greater length of chain that spawned in an endless link as life itself...

He felt something cool and metalic touch the nape of his neck.

Winthrop's eyes snapped open at 0600 hours sharp.

Winthrop was a lifelong member of the Charioteer guild, and had served in the Hazat naval armada for more than forty years until, five years ago and to the surprise of everyone, he decided to retire.

In recognition of all his years of loyal services, the noble House had offered him the command of the Hazat Comet . Many Charioteers working for the military navy would have sneered at such an offer; the command of a civilian leisure ship was hardly perceived as a way to end one's career in glory. But Winthrop didn't mind. On the contrary, he had been delighted and had promptly accepted the position. The truth was that after more than four decades of ruthless campaigns, bloody conflicts and blazing Void battles, the old sea wolf was longing for calmer waters. The command of a civilian ship seemed a perfect way to get away of the tedious madness of war while staying within the arms of his one and only love: the Void.

Winthrop was preparing to shave when the door alarm chirped. 0630 hours. There was much good to be said about well-oiled routine.

"Enter," called Winthrop while raising the badger to his face.

The door hissed open and Martin Jackson limped in, a collection of folders neatly tucked under his arm. In his wake was a maid pushing a food cart. Both knew exactly what to do. The maid headed for the small round table in the middle of the main room. Jackson headed for the bathroom.

"Good day, captain," greeted the man, saluting.

"Good day. At ease, skipper," answered Winthrop. He picked up the Kurgan blade he always used to shave, a memento of an old campaign and a reminder that, no matter what the higher powers said, the heathen's blade was never far from the Known Worlds' throat. "How was the night?"

In the last fifteen years of Winthrop's military career, Jackson had been his second-in-command. Although not a single torture implement devised by bored engineers would have made Winthrop admit it, leaving Jackson behind was one of the very few things that had darkened his retirement. So when he had learned two years ago that Jackson had been decommissioned after an ill-fated Void battle had left him crippled, he had contacted him and presented him the position of second-in-command on the Comet. Jackson might have lost bits of anatomy here and there, and the burns covering his body might have made him somewhat unsightly, but Winthrop couldn't care less about the unknown whereabouts of Jackson's left foot or his esthetic potential. Jackson's brain was what he was interested in, and that part of the man was still as efficient as ever.

"The night," said Jackson, "has been remarquably busy. Should I enumerate you the various events COC-wise, as usual?"

"Please do," acquiesced the captain. COC-wise. An old military code that stood for Crescendo of Calamities.

Jackson coughed. "First, the premiere of the play given at the Golden Room was very well received by the public. The consensus of the critics, so far, is that it is innovative, thought-provoking, and rife with bosom jokes. It is expected to become a huge success."

Winthrop sighed and rinsed the lather off his blade. "Disquieting, but there's not much that we can do about that." He reached for the towel laying beside the sink and removed the last traces of foam clinging to his neck.

Jackson nodded. Now that the inconsequent artistic bulletin had been passed, he could pass to more relevant news. He picked a sheet out of one of the folders he was carrying and raised it to his eyes.

"We received the deposition of a passenger. A Hazat knight of the name of Don Pedro Diego Linares. He accuses a woman, a Reeve if the boarding log is to be trusted, to be a witch, a cyber-heretic, an abomination, a symbiot, a traitor to the empire, a freaky soliloquer and to harbor dirty thoughts about Urth donkeys. Upon being asked reasons for such grave accusations, the knight decided to remain silent. In a sulky, pouty way, the report specifies."

The captain picked his bathrobe from the its hook and wrapped himself in it before walking out of the bathroom, Jackson in tow. "Your opinion?"

"The usual, captain. Noble spots curvaceous commoner. Noble approaches said commoner and asks if she wants to see his bastard sword. Commoner answers she's not interested in men with small dirks. Noble takes it badly and, his ego bruised, does what any red-blooded male would do: he goes and whines to the authorities." He paused. "Of course, we can't dismiss the possibility that the Mother of All Evil booked room six-one-three on the Comet, but still I wouldn't bet any money on it."

The captain grunted in approval as he sat down at his table. He didn't invite Jackson to do likewise, such a breach of protocol was unthinkable to the old sea wolf. But just like every other morning there was a second glass of orange juice resting on the table for the skipper, a subtle testament to the considerations he had for his second-in-command.

"Yet if we don't do anything the knight might raise a fuss. Once we are done, send two security agents to fetch her. We will have a brief chat and I'll explain her that there are ways to say 'hope you go to hell and get skewered over rusty barbed spikes for all eternity, you creepy pansy-panted piece of societal ballast' to nobles in ways that will make then cluck with glee. Not that she shouldn't already know, being a Reeve."

Jackson acquiesced. "Noted. Next, our security cameras spotted a group of armed individuals consorting in cargo bay 21." His burned lips twisted into a thin smile, "I took the liberty of ordering the loading doors to be opened. Unfortunately, the roustabouts forgot to anchor some of the freight. The crates lost to the Void will be deducted from their salary."

"Also, navigation picked up a magnetic storm of class C seventy clicks away from us that is messing up with our long-range scan. Since this is a textbook pirate ploy, I've issued the helmsman with the order to keep well away of the disturbance's epicenter and asked navigation to probe the storm further. Deep analysis should be on your desk by 1200 hours."

Winthrop pensively chewed on a piece of ham. He washed it down with coffee. "Striding the interlopers was a tactical mistake. If there are pirates playing peekaboo with us, they might have been connected." Oh well, there was little gain in talking recycling when the garbage was already out. "Anything else?"

"A last thing," said Jackson, "It has been reported that six priests have been butchered during the night."

Winthrop allowed his eyebrow to raise of a few millimeters. Not because people had been murdered on his ship -- he was commanding a leisure ship, those things were bound to happen -- but because of Jackon's choice of words. The skipper was one of the most poised man he ever met. Compared to him, most Li Halan butlers looked like Tourette syndrome-afflicted hyperactive maniacs. If he had used a word such as 'butchered', it would be because the events warranted it.

"Show me the report," he asked Jackson. He didn't question the existence of such a report, and the skipper didn't disappoint him. The Manila folder was put on the table and opened with a flick of the thumb, revealing the few holopicts taken by the security agents.

Winthrop studied the holopicts. "Those men haven't been butchered, skipper" he said after a long time, "Butchered implies that at least slices of the victims remain. Those men have been smeared over their quarters." A thought crossed his mind. "How can we be sure that they have all been killed?"

"We can't," admitted Jackson. "However, the mass and volume of the biological remnants the cleaning crew scrapped off the suite match exactly those of the presumably ill-fated brothers. Nonetheless I already ordered a search for any potential survivors."

Winthrop finished skimming the report. "And one of them was a Vorox..." This could be considered a bad thing. From the pictures it was obvious that the massacre was the handiwork of a professional. There were no burn marks on the walls, a sign that the killer, or killers, hadn't used blasters or slugthrowers. So not only a professional, but a dangerous professional.

"I will read the details later," said Winthrop, closing the folder. "In the meantime, I want you to make sure the security staff keep their eyes open. I want a full investigation on those monks. This is not random killing; for some reason they have been targeted."

"I will be done," said the skipper. "I have nothing else to report."

"Good. This is already more than enough. I have the feeling this cruise will prove to be a lively one. I'll see you on the bridge at 0730 hours. I will be able to see the girl at 0815 hours."

Winthrop's eyes followed his second-in-command as he left the room. The skipper gone, he opened the folder once more and pensively stared at the holopicts within. Lively indeed.

Sergei Visarionovich Godunov lowered his binocular. Without them, Elena and the commandos were barely perceptible specks against the glittering backdrop of stars.

At least he was now fixed on the nature of Elena's cryptic transmission on their personal communication system. "This sucks. This sucks big time," had said the woman over a deafening slurping noise, before the connection had abruptly gone dead.

Oh well, rationalized the Decados, that's what plans B are for.

Sitting languidly in his chair, Sergei Visarionovich Godunov sipped on a glass of vodka. His eyes danced dreamily on the display in front of his eyes, never stopping on one detail and yet managing to encompass the whole. “It is the fate of all great Decados thinkers to be cursed with incompetent underlings.” he murmured to himself while he made the final adjustments to the lines of code than hung in front of him. “Therefore,” he muttered even while he started the compilation process, “if you want to do something right, you have to do it yourself.”

The computer chimed, showing him a cheerful “Compilation successful.” message. Baring his teeth in a wolfish grin, he accessed the back door that he had installed in the Engineering mainframe. He copied the program and started it.

“So, Chief Engineer, what is your evaluation?” asked Winthrop, sitting tensely at the edge of his chair, barely daring to breathe while he awaited the engineer’s verdict. He was, of course, pretending to be absolutely calm while he sat on his bridge, trying not to let it show that he was affected just as much as his crew was. How could a spacer, any spacer, not be affected by the darkness pierced only by the reddish glow of the emergency lights, by the dead silence broken up only by the soft swishing of the backup environmental fans. Their ship, his ship, was adrift; a powerless, uncontrollable hulk, drifting blindly on its last speed and course; the course that would soon take it beyond the fringe of the system and into the Dark Beyond the Stars. Still, if he pretended that everything was normal they had to pretend as well. So they sat at the darkened bridge, pretending not to be scared witless, pretending not to stare at their dead consoles, pretending that they weren’t living out every spacer’s worst nightmare. The Chief Engineer in front of him was probably even more scared than he was. Ever since he was a young boy he had lived among the machines, machines likes the ones that were now useless because there was no electricity to power them. The silence of the ship’s machines was probably even more eerie to him than it was to Winthrop. But, he was one of Winthrop’s officers, hand-picked for his ability, and his gaze met Winthrop’s steadily, with no sign of the fear that must have existed behind it.

“We will be able to repair the engineering computers, sir, but it won’t be easy” the engineer said. “I’d like to shake the hand of whoever sabotaged them, just before I pushed him out of the nearest airlock. That virus was a masterpiece, better than most of the engineers I know would be able to do. It had concealed itself as a routine file integrity check program, and then it started to erase our files, starting from backups and inactive programs first, so we only discovered it when it was almost too late. All we managed to save were parts of the reactor control protocols. Fortunately, they are also the most important. I’m certain that my engineers and I can cobble up a set of programs that will allow us to run the reactor and power the ship, but it won’t be easy and it won’t be quick. And after we’ve done that, we’ll have no option but to return to Very Cruz and have all our engineering software reinstalled in a shipyard.”

“How soon do you expect your software to be completed and the reactor running?”

“I don’t....”

“CAPTAIN!” the runner bellowed as he stormed onto the bridge, “Captain! We’ ve spotted a ship! Duxford spotted it from the 1st Class lounge on 5 Starboard! It was matching course and speed with us when I was sent...”

WHAM! The sound of the grappling hooks hitting the ship and marauders’ breaching charges blowing through the hull echoed through the Comet’s corridors.

“What was that?” someone yelled.

“Those, gentlemen,” stated Winthrop as he was getting up “are the first sounds of a boarding action underway.”

“NO! FOR THE LOVE OF PANCREATOR PLEASE N...” the priest screamed. Grinning like a madman behind his opaque faceplate, the marauder from Bolshoi Batiskii pulled the trigger. The assault rifle burped, stitching a line of red across the priest’s chest. He fell and the marauder continued onward, threading on the corpse as if it were a sack of flour.

"Grappling hooks", breathed out Demuel.

"What did you say?" asked one of the two security agents escorting the Wheeler in Reeve's clothing.

They had picked Magdalena as she was leaving Lima's quarters. They told her that they were to bring her to the captain, which was both true and the full extent of their knowledge in the matter. Demuel hadn't liked the sound of it, but as he disliked maiming fellow guilders unless it was absolutely necessary, he had decided to play along. A magnanimity he began to regret the moment the bright white light of the corridors turned into the dim red glow of the emergency system.

"You felt that faint tremor?" Demuel said, louder. "This was grappling hooks. We are being under attack."

The security agent who asked the question, a middle-aged man named Vekken, smiled benignly. "You can rest assured that this is not the case, miss. It was only the result of our engineer restarting the fusion engines. It's an exercise we do every few cruises. Something to do with regulations and maintenance, you understand. Don't worry, everything is fine. The lights will return to normal in a few moments."

This, it goes without saying, was a big pile of lies. Of all of the Comet's history, there was never had been such an exercise. But on a cruise ship servicing a clientele mostly made of nobles ready to go hysteric at the alarming prospect of seeing any aspect of their comfort threatened, there was two kinds of crew members: those who lied, and those who relied on medication.

The problem, however, is that a lie repeated often enough becomes believable to anyone, including to who is telling the lie. Vekken was conscious that something was wrong, but he supposed that it was under control. After all, in his five years of service on the Comet, nothing more distressing than Li-Halan birthday parties had befallen the ship.

And there was nothing to hope from the second security agent, a young lad of the name of Rick. Recently recruited by the Musters, this was his third cruise as a security agent. His brain was entirely devoted to two things: looking crisp, and learning from Vekken, his senior officer. If Vekken said everything was okay, everything was okay. It wasn't really the boy's fault: he was just too young to know worse.

"You don't understand," insisted Demuel, "The main power grid is down and grappling hooks smacked against the hull. Doesn't that tell you something? I'll give you a clue: it has something to do with wooden legs, parrots and a bottle of rum."

Vekken laughed a most polite laughter that Rick immediately swore to work on reproducing when his shift would be over.

"I don't want to sound insolent, miss, but I'm afraid you read too much of that pulp trash the Wordsmith guild is publishing nowadays. There is no pirates in this solar system, nor anywhere closer than three gate jumps from here for what matters." He halted before the ship's main elevator shaft and pointed at the soft light of the elevator's floor indicator. It was moving. "You see? The elevator's still running. If there was a real emergency, it would be stopped." Smugly, he pressed the calling button.

You know, he might be right, thought Magdalena.

Sure, Demuel thought back, and Gannocks might fly out of my butt. Still, he decided to make a last attempt at reasoning the security agents.

"You know as well as I do that the elevators of this type of cruisers can run on the emergency power grid. Hell, man, since when have the Musters' standards fallen this low?"

Vekken frowned. "Now, miss," he said sternly, "there is no need to resort to petty insults. You are going to meet the captain in a few instants, and will then be able to share with him all your worries."

Behind him, the elevator made a cheerful 'ping' noise, which filled Vekken with relief. This young woman was beginning to irritate him, with her pretension of knowing more about Musters in general and him in particular. Ah! As if! He turned to face the elevator's opening door.

And saw his own reflection in the faceplate of one of the two marauders occupying the elevator's cage.

While it always hurt to be wrong, it can be safely stated that Vekken felt his pain more acutely than most as the marauder opened fire and blew out several chunks off the Muster.

The Marauder's gun tilted toward Magdalena. Would had he been interviewed over a coffee in one of those oh-so-chic Thethys' bistros, the Marauder would have said that, in all his years of marauding and shooting peoples up, he came to learn that unarmed civilians of the female persuasion are subject to one of two instinctive reactions when unexpectantly being aimed at with a gun. Either they cower and beg for mercy, or they duck and run for cover. Once in a blue moon, one of them might try to beg for mercy while running for cover, but that was about the wildest kind of deviation to the rule he ever witnessed.

His surprise was therefore understandable when Demuel grabbed the edges of his faceplate with both hands and, with a deafening shriek of raw hatred, hurled Magdalena's forehead against the reflective surface.

The shattering noise attracted the second marauder, who had been until then busy doing bad, belligerent things to Rick. What he saw -- his companion falling on his knees, both hands trying to contain the blood pouring out of his smashed faceplate, and the woman with the murderous eyes that was now holding his gun -- didn't fill him with happy thoughts. He whirled his weapon, his finger flexing on its trigger at the exact same time Demuel's bullets converted most of his upper body in post-modern wall decorations.

Sergei Visarionovich Godunov was still sipping some vodka, but was now sitting on the couch throning in the main room of his suite. Outside his suite, he could hear the harsh bark of firearms and the high-pitched screams of the cattle getting butchered. A pleasant music for a Decados' ears.

One would have assumed that Sergei would feel smug and satisfied, and would be basking in the rotten-sweet warmth of an an evil deed well done. Yet, there was something nagging him, something preventing him of savoring the fruit of his labor to its fullest. Could it be a sense of guilt caused by the casual slaughtering of hundred of innocent peoples?

Sergei dismissed the possibility. Since his thirteenth birthday, occasion that Sergei's father had celebrated in the traditional Decados fashion by offering to his son the ritual kitten and jar of lubricant, his experiences of sentiments such as guilt, doubt and regrets have been scarce and far in-between. Beside, after the previous night's performance at the golden room, the ship-wide massacre could arguably be labelled as an act of mercy.

No, it was not it. It was like there was a little detail he was forgetting. But what? He couldn't put his finger on it, and that was definitively spoiling his fun.

Demuel wiped some of the blood that was running down the gashes on Magdalena's forehead. He noticed with alarm that her hand was shaking.

"Oh no, don't you dare to fall into shock!"

Magdalena whined weakly. Demuel felt their stomach heaves, the sour taste of bile filling their mouth.

Dem, we've been shot at!

"I've noticed, thank you. But it's only a flesh wound. Nothing, really. And, to be honest, I was felling uncomfortable in a body with no scars."

Magdalena's head slowly moved from left to right, from right to left. She wasn't hearing Demuel's words. The throbbing pain in her head was too much. So was the warmness spreading at her side. So was the mutilated bodies of the Marauders Demuel had killed. That she had killed. He had been at the commands when he killed them, but she had felt Demuel's immediate and all-encompassing outrage at the threat, she had tasted his cold, reptilian desire to kill before being killed. She had felt echoes of the same sentiments rise in her own soul. It was Demuel who had shrieked in defiance, but it was Magdalena who had grunted in satisfaction as the first Marauder had went down, his face ruined by the jagged shards of his faceplate. It was Demuel who had fired, but Magdalena's spirit had roared as the bullets tore into the flesh of the man who had tried to kill them.

Horror washed over Magdalena.

LISTEN!

Demuel's inner command felt like a slap. Magdalena attention snapped away from her horror and toward the man that was haunting her skull.

"Yes, it's bad, but before it's over it will get worse still." Demuel was speaking quickly, sharply, not leaving any time for Magdalena to relapse into horror. "Those two fuckers aren't alone, Maddie, and they are far too well equipped to be pirates. If you fall into hysterics, we are dead meat. I need you to be strong. Or I will have to get you off the commands and stick you in a far corner of our mind until this is over."

Magdalena's eyes widened. You wouldn't do that! You said you wouldn't do that!

"I lied. I would do that. If that's what it takes to protect you. And Lima."

Lima. Magdalena had forgotten about her. And Toast, and even Byran. They were all in danger. There was not much she, Magdalena, could do, but Demuel was a trained killer. He could do something. If she let him.

All right, I'll behave.

Demuel's lips twisted into a sly grin. "It's not behaving I want you to do."

The grin blossomed into a smile, full of nascent fierceness.

I'll misbehave, then.

"That's my girl."

A loud gasp put an end to the discussion.

It was Lima. She was staring, disbelieving, at Magdalena and the four cadavers at her feet.

"Maddie?" she asked meekly.

Magdalena and Demuel flashed Lima a feral grin. "I was Maddie. Now I'm Madder." Magdalena kneeled beside one of the dead Marauders and began to search him. "Go in the elevator," Demuel commandeered, "under the button panel, there is a small terminal. I'll give you the standard security codes in a second, and then we will see how good an engineer you are." With a smooth motion, they pulled out their spleen-jack and stabbed it in the Marauder's communication pack. "But before, there's a phone call we need to make..."

Sergei Visarionovich Godunov snapped his fingers. He had found it.

The initial plan was simple and elegant. While Bolshoi Batiskii's men where supposed to kill everyone on sight, Elena's commandos were to snatch the kid away. But Elena's commandos were now pursuing a new career as planetoids. Which means that if he didn't intervene, the marauders that had no way of knowing who the kid was could very well kill him and jeopardize the whole mission.

Right on cue the airlock of Sergei's suite hissed open and a marauder stepped in. Sergei rose to his feet and opened his arms. He was to greet the man from Bolshoi Batiskii when a thought crossed his mind.

If the marauders couldn't tell the kid of any other civilians, was it possible that they could also...

The marauder, grim as death itself, raised his weapon and aimed at the general direction of Sergei's vital organs, suggesting that, indeed, they could.

"Oh, what a lovely bardak..." Sergei muttered philosophically, before leaping behind the couch as the stacatto of the Marauder's weapon filled the suite.

Boyard Atanasov was comfortably seated in the Galliot's captain chair, enjoying a tall glass of vodka chilled to perfection. Yet another mission that would turn out to be a walk in the park. A park full of muggers, murderers and rapists, that is. His boys, he pondered with relish, he did taught them well.

The intercom chirped loudly. The boyard had the time to see his communication officer frown.

"Howdy, you bunch of wankers. Demuel's speaking. I'm pissed. You will all die. This is all."

The intercom chirped a second time, signalling that the communication had been broken.

Atanasov was bemused. "What was that?"

The communication officer shrugged and was to say he hadn't the foggiest when an engineer cut in.

"Uh, Boyard, the sensors are reporting that the Comet has turned all emergency lights off." He paused, "The gravity grid has been deactivated. The... I don't understand, the oxygen level is dropping everywhere."

The Boyard makes an annoyed sound. "Let's me reformulate my question in a slightly different way. What is this?"

"A killzone."

It was the pilot who had spoken. A renegade Charioteer who, at some point of his career, had opted for a lucrative alliance with House Decados. His face, the Boyard observed, was anormaly pale. Which was saying a lot coming from a man whose crew was used to spend months parsecs away from the nearest source of solar radiation.

"A killzone?" repeated Atanasov, "What do you mean, a killzone? There is seventy eight of my men in there. If anyone is making a killzone out of that tin can, it's us."

The pilot shook his head. "Demuel is a Void-born. Your Marauders have been trained to fight in space, this man has been raised in it. He's turning the Comet into the environment he's the most comfortable in."

Atanasov didn't understand why the pilot was so grave. "So? He's only one man. What can he possibly do?"

The pilot shrugged and unholstered the pistol hanging from his belt. Without a single trace of hesitation or doubt. He tucked the barrel of the pistol under his chin and fired.

A short silence followed the bark of the weapon.

The Boyard was contemplating the little bits of red and grey stuff that was slowly sinking in his vodka. Charioteers. They were such a melodramatic bunch.

"Now that it had been established that he might prove to be a pain in our collective pidzy, could someone please tell me who that govnuk might be?"

"Demuel Hubbard," said Winthrop, "Protégé -- if such a term can be applied to someone with his flair for effective violence -- of Ezekiel Moerae. Charioteer of guild, rumored to be Killroy. Might be true, considering that someone that know the security codes hacked in the main system and managed to locked us out. In all cases, his military and intelligence skills are honed to lethal perfection and, like his mentor, his fighting methods makes Ukari pit fighting looks like amiable tussle."

The old captain was still on the bridge of the Comet, along with Jackson and a handful of crew members. The rest of the bridge crew had been sent to protect the passagers. As Demuel's message had been broadcasted on both ships' communication systems, he had heard it at the same time than everyone else. He was also painfully aware of the havoc played on his ship's systems. It was hard to ignore, really, since he was now floating weightlessly in an atmosphere that was growing colder and thinner by the seconds. Just like Boyard Atanasov, the engineer had asked who Demuel was. Unlike the Boyard's pilot, Winthrop hadn't blew his head off -- he was keeping his rounds for when the fiends who were attacking his ship would attempt to take the bridge. Instead, he had calmly given a succinct summary of Demuel's bio.

Jackson politely coughed. He was a mere silhouette, barely visible in the weak light of the engineer's computer console.

"Sir, don't think that I'm ungrateful for such a gratuitous piece of exposition, but can I be so bold as to inquire how you came to know so much about this man?"

Winthrop almost smiled. "I happen to have been a close friend of his mother. She was a remarkable woman. Unfortunately, her career took a turn that was making it politically difficult for us to keep contact."

"She married a noble?"

"No, she turned her back to the Empire and made a foray into Kurgan territory where she offered a minor Sultan her services as a warlord. Last time I heard, the Sultan was not so minor anymore and the Al-Marik had put a hefty price on her head.

"Ah, an assertive woman, I see," said Jackson. "Should I therefore assume that the presence of her progeny on this ship is of good omen for us?"

"Not exactly," said Winthrop. "I have followed the boy's career, and met with the Moerae himself a few times. Having one of those two men get involved in any situation is like seeing your mistress step into the bedroom holding a pair of handcuffs. It could be very good news as well as it could be very bad news. There only one thing that can be sure: whatever happens, it's unlikely we will get out of it unscattered. However, there is a comforting thought."

"Which is?"

"Neither will the bastards that are attacking us."

Marauder Evgeni Denkov laughed when the lights went out. His three companions chuckled nervously after a moment of hesitation. What women they were! Their helmets' infrared imaging was practically as good as daylight, and they had fought more zero-grav sim scenarios than he could count. He kicked himself ahead against the walls and figured out how many children he still needed to kill to beat Nikolai's high score from last mission.

The woman flew downwards into view at a 45 degree angle left of vertical, straight out of a vent shaft, grabbed Denkov's shoulders, and vomited all over his faceplate. He opened fire reflexively, silenced shots soon buried by his companions' screams.

Skull had always found zero gravity made hand-to-hand much easier. The battlefield becomes a volume instead of a surface. No more up or down, so you're no longer limited to having those referrals in common with your adversary. Anything you throw will fly straight.

The Marauders didn't follow the paradigm shift as well as Skull did. He was careful not to breathe in any floating droplets of their blood as he cracked open the door to his nephew's room. There was no one there.

Skull started skimming through his internal recordings of the ship's sensor flow for possible escape routes. As this week's room service menu flashed through his awareness, Skull regretted not having Migite within comm reach to filter his data for him.

Marauder Denkov wiped his faceplate with the back of his glove and stared at his dead companions. He realized he had shot them himself as the woman behind him twisted only his head around this time.

"So that's how it is, eh?"

Byran glared at the Bolshoi Batiskii from the first class dining room Toast had dragged him to two hours before. Toast had been staring at the stars with obvious angst long before the Decados galliot had appeared and injected its murderous cargo into the crippled ship, and Byran was beginning to credit the idiot with some sort of prophetic sight.

He was trying to see if there was something floating around he could arm himself with (and lying to himself that the lowering of the air's oxygen count didn't make him drowsy) when it started getting darker. How could that happen? He was already seeing only by the light of the stars. He glanced out the window again and forgot about weapons entirely.

Toast started moaning plaintively.

The bodymates were very cold now. It was all Demuel had been able to do to keep that load of puke in long enough for it to be useful, and now there was cold sweat running down Maddie's arms, and he could hear some of Brittleneck and the Swiss Cheese Triplets' friends maybe two minutes away and closing. He didn't understand. He hadn't done the body that much damage, surely? And why did he have trouble breathing? This was his environment, he had called for Lima to modify it for his greater comfort, left her in that stalled, sealed elevator with its own atmosphere and went to war on his own terms, he was Void-born, damn it, and...

And Maddie wasn't.

The Vau just augmented her as much as he had been augmented, they couldn't carry over his innate specs.

Maybe cracking his own head open just before formulating his plan hadn't been such a good move after all.

Byran stared out the window at the rift in space spewing out Maddie's nightmare. He could see it was very far behind the ship, but already the Kraken eclipsed most of the stars.

Toast was crying now.

"Cease fire you fool, I am a Decados!" shouted Sergei Visarionovich Godunov, crouching behind the couch where he had taken refuge from the Marauder's unexpected attack. While telling a soldier who was attacking you that you are a member of the house who puts bread on his table would have usually been an almost certain way to make him stop shooting, in this case it was a grave mistake. It didn't take long for Sergei to find that out, since the short, staccatto sounds of controled three-round bursts were immediately replaced by a continous roar of an assault rifle firing at full auto, the soldier obviously willing to waste every single bullet if it meant that he could get away with killing one of the boyards.

"Ah, of course. How silly of me..." Sergei chastised himself while he listened to the thumping of bullets (special, low velocity models for shipboard fighting, good for ripping apart human beings but hardly capable of anything else) and waited for the soldier to run out of ammo. Glancing quickly around for any sign that the soldier might suddenly become smart and try to trow a grenade or something similar, Sergei drew his blaster pistol from its holster and flicked its power switch from standby to on.

CLUNK! The telltale sound of an empty bolt slamming into its stops echoed in the compartment. A small smile emerging on his face, Sergei stood up from behind the battered sofa and pointed his blaster nonchallantly at the marauder.

Unable to tear his eyes away from the gaping maw of the blaster's barrel, the soldier stopped fumbling for a fresh magazine. His faceshield was up and as he looked at the Decados, his face twisted into a sheepish smile. "Uh,....khm... I didn't recognize that you're a boyard My Lord." Seeing Sergei's eyebrows rise questioningly, the soldier hurried on. "Ahhh...I swear that your presence wasn't mentioned in the briefing we were given, we were only told..." the soldier trailed off, unsure whether to continue or not "Yees?" prompted Sergei, his blaster rising to point at the marauder's face. His doubts evaporated by another look at the blaster, the soldier started again. "I swear M' Lord! We were only briefed to capture a boy, the briefings said nuthin' about any other House boyards! If I knew I wouldn't have attacked you! I'm sorry!"

As the soldier's tone came closer and closer to whining, Sergei's smile started getting brighter and brighter. He wasn't really listening to the marauder anymore, his mind awash with new possibilities. "So," he thought "I wasn't mentioned in any of the briefings. How very...convenient." Tired of the soldier's whining, Sergei raised his palm in a "stop" gesture. Once the soldier spluttered to a halt, Sergei's smile grew positively dazzling. "I forgive you." he said soothingly. And pulled the trigger.

"And stay down!" Skull snarled, floating over the dead marauder. This one was tough, it had taken Skull more than a minute to take him out. "I'm getting too old for this shit." he thought to himself. There was a time when he could have slaughtered 16 marauders without breaking a sweat. Now, he was beginning to feel some small strain, and that didn't bode well for his attempt to find his nephew. Fortunately, he was getting near his objective, the First Class dining room where his nephew was supposed to be and...

"NOOOOOO!" screamed Toast and the sound of his voice coming from the dining room was like a knife through Skull's heart. He thrust himself forward as fast as he could, powering through the dining room door like a torpedo.

The dining room was a chaos of floating tables and chairs, spilled food and spinning bodies. In the middle of the room, two of the marauders were manhandling his nephew, trying to tear him away from that drunkard charioteer who was floating besides him, trying feebly to ward off the marauders. Slowly, almost casually, one of the marauders headbutted the charioteer who floated away, limp like a puppet with its strings cut, unconscious or worse.

His eyes red with anger, Skull kicked forward with a roar of rage. The marauders whirled towards him, anchored themselves and opened fire but Skull was already there and one of the marauders died a messy death when the ceramsteel nails of Skull's right hand punched through his armor, smashed his chest bone and tore his heart to shreads. The other marauder tried desperately to turn towards his lightning-fast assailant but Skull's hand was already out and he grunted in satisfaction as he brought both of them down on the marauder's thigs like two sledgehammers. The snap of bones was like a gunshot and the marauder's high-pitched scream could probably be heard in the deepest pits of Gehenna. "Serves you right." growled Skull, tossing the crippled marauder aside like a broken toy. Already, the marauder's face was twisted in a rictus of agony and the first signs of shock were becoming evident. Within a couple of minutes he would be dead from internal bleeding and shock.

Just as Skull was turning toward his nepher he was interrupted by the sound of doors crashing open. Whirling around, he saw a woman float in. He was about to dismiss her as unimportant when she caught sight of his nephew behind him. "

Leave Toast alone!" she shouted and Skull realised with a start that he had seen her before, that she was the mysterious woman who had defended his nephew from the drunkard charioteer. She was getting ready to launch herself at him, that much was abvious, but Skull wasn't ready to kill a potential ally without negotiating first. Quickly, he held up his hand. "Wait! I'm here to protect the boy!"

The woman untensed herself a bit, regarding Skull warily. Just as she was getting ready to say something, another voice echoed from the corridor.

"NOOOOO!!!! Pleaseeee!" the voice screamed and a second later a marauder burst through the door. His rifle was missing, he was flapping around in blind panic and behind his faceshield his face was a mask of terror. Before Skull could even imagine what could have scared the marauder so, a blaster shot echoed from the corridor. As if by magic, a charred, fist-sized hole appeared in the marauder's chest. He looked down at it and then his body went limp.

Just a few moments later, the source of the shot, a still-glowing barrel of a blaster pistol appeared at the door. It was quickly followed by the rest of the pistol and the person who was holding it, a Decados noble. In spite of his dishevelled looks, his torn clothes and a bloodied sword in his left hand complementing the blaster in his right, the noble still managed to extrude the air of cool superiority. While Skull and the woman were regarding him warily, the noble stopped and took in the entire room in one long, calculating look. As his eyes passed over the broken bodies of the dead marauders, an uncomfortably cheerful smile appeared on his lips.

"Well," he finally spoke " I guess I could introduce myself first. I am Sergei Visarionovich Godunov, at your service. Am I wrong or have I finally found someone who is as annoyed by these bothersome marauders as I am?"

Sergei's words and entrance were met by slightly less enthusiasm than he had hoped for.

"Throw me your gun," laconically commanded Skull to the woman.

"No need for that," she answered, "It's not like I can't shoot him myself."

As the bullet made his knee explode like some over-ripe tomato suffering from high blood pressure, Sergei Visarionovich Godunov realized that, indeed, it wasn't something she couldn't do; and that exactly like his reasoning, his short-term future was diving in the double negative.

You missed him, Dem!

Well, considering that our sight is quite blurry, our hands have the shake and we are dizzy like an Amalthean on his first visit to a brothel, you must admit it's not that bad a shoot. I mean, I still managed to take some meat off the green cockroach.

Yeah, yeah, whatever. I'm more familiar with our body, I think I can deal better with the abuse you heaped on us. Give me back the controls.

You think you have the nerve to kill someone?

Who is talking of killing someone? It's a Decados! In the old days I would have paid good money to stone any of those bastards to death with dead gophers. Do you how many of those creeps tried to grope me while we were conducting deals?

Sorry to have doubted you. In this case, please sit at commands and enjoy a good game of Whack-a-Molester.

Sergei was unaware of the bodymates' internal pow-wow. What he was aware of, however, was that his right kneecap had left him without so much as a 'Poka, sucker!'. And that not only shooting him wasn't something the woman couldn't do, but the crazy broad wasn't on the verge of not doing it again.

"Wait!" he cried before the woman could press the trigger. "I'm on your side!"

"Nope, you're in front of me," snarled back the woman, "No-one ever told you verbal evasive maneuvers don't work?"

"But I just shot a Marauder!"

"It isn't exactly the first time a Decados kills his own men, y'know..."

"They aren't--"

"Don't even try this with me, Sergio. I know a dolboyeb when I see one. And I saw a whole lot of them on this ship..."

"But they tried to kill me! Can't you give me the benefice of doubt?"

"Sorry, Pandora once said that the only good Decados are eviscerated Decados. And that even then 'good' was to be taken liberally."

"This Pandora obviously don't know nothing about the Decados!"

"This Pandora, Sergio, is a Decados."

"Oh."

Skull, who had listened to the exchange without a word, was about to leap toward the woman and wrestles the weapon from her. But just as he was to make his move, the said weapon was suddenly pointing in his direction.

"Don't try anything funny, grandpa. I'm not yet too sure about you either."

Skull shrugged. In the semi-darkness of the dining room, the shimmering of his force shield being activated was barely perceptible.

"Why are you loosing time by talking to him?" He asked, reluctant to hurt the woman unless it turned out to be really necessary. "Just kill him."

The woman smirked.

"I like to have a good chat with people before killing them. But you wouldn't understand; it's a girl thing."

The discussion was interrupted by Toast's long, whinny moan.

"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeegg plaaaaaaaaant ..."

"Aaah..." It was Sergei. From his position he had a good view of the windows. His face had turned an ashen shade of grey that couldn't entirely be explained by lost of blood. "I think you want to turn around and take a look at what is outside..."

"Real clever, Sergio. I'm sure no-one ever tried that trick before."

As a matter of fact, Mad, I think he's sincere, this time.

How can you tell?

He's wetting his pants. Decados, when telling the truth, often do that.

Demuel had a point. Maddie risked a quick glance at the window behind her, and saw It.

Staring at the Blackness outside, her voice croaked through a throat suddenly very dry: "What in the name of every unappealing man having contracted venereal diseases while being in a drunken stupor..."

Well, I would think that it's--

I know, Dem, I know. It was a rethorical question.

Oh.

Knowing he was to die anyway, Sergei Visarionovich Godunov would have loved to explain everything. Stand tall as the master of his destiny and all that. Or at least float tall. As far as accidentally setting yourself up to be killed by your own people could be called mastery of one's own destiny.

He was about to say 'It's a weapon' when Maddie pulled the trigger. The word 'it' was actually on his lips as the bullet punched through his forehead.

His audience transfixed by that first assertion, staring at him in awe of the span of Decados ingenuity and cruelty, he would have continued thus:

'Our ultimate weapon. A kraken delivered on-target via portable gate. And the irony, you see, is that we got the idea from a device sent from the future to warn civilization that we would one day invent such a weapon! We actually reverse-engineered most of the Gatekraken technology from analyzing the warning device itself! And we did it all inside of three weeks, within a time-stasis field also deduced from the device!

'But this isn't even the funniest part. Do you know where we found this device? On a scraver boy we fished out of the sewers of Byzantium Secundus because his mind waves were driving out psis insane!'

And then, Sergei would have had his last laugh, and it would have sent a chill up his audience's spines.

But no, the woman with vomit stains on her clothes just had to shoot him before he said a word.

Mercifully, there was only a moment for regret before the mechanisms Sergei used to regret things burst out the back of his skull. His body flipped backwards three times before a wall stopped it.

As his murderers left the room in haste, towing their unconscious friend, Sergei's dead eyes stared ahead at Bolshoi Batiskii breaking away from the condemned Comet.

Sergei's lifeless body floated limply in the dining room, globules of blood and brain tissue sorrounding his blasted head like a reddish halo. Nobody could have survived such a wound, and Sergei was no exception. However, deep inside his chest cavity, a powerful think machine was now initiating a program. Unlike the complex organ that had been blasted to oblivion mere moments ago, the computer didn't posses a shred of intelligence. It merely monitored the blood pressure, the rate of heartbeat, the rate of breathing and the electrical activity of the brain. And right now, all the measurements were showing a straight line. Sergei was dead, but the computer didn't care. Its program merely forked down another path, one that it had never followed before. It started a child process, compiling a piece of code. Once the code was compiled, the program executed it. In a true act of parenticide, the new code's first step was to delete the original program and to take all the think machine's reasources for itself. But the worst was yet to come. The new program accessed the very large capacity storage area attached to the think machine and checked the timestamp of the recordings that it could find there. Selecting the recording with the latest timestamp, the program quickly and efficiently compressed it and appended its own executable to it. Then it fired up the short-range transmitter attached to the think-machine and sent the transmission out. Twice. By the time the transmitter was done, there was a large charred spot on the body's chest. It didn't matter, for the transmission had already flown on the wings of radio waves and found the appropriate host.

Trotting briskly behind his nephew, Skull felt an odd tingle at the back of his head. His radio receiver had just received a transmission. Flicking a shred of his attention to it, he noticed it was a program.

"How odd." thought Skull absentmindedly. He was just about to dismiss it offhand when the proverbial lightbulb blinked over his head. Who could be sending a large program over the radio? And then a very real warning light flashed in his mind. The program had executed itself! It had executed itself and there was supposed to be no bloody way for it.....

AAAAGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH! Skull's high pitched scream ripped through the corridors and Maddie almost jumped out of her skin. What the hell? She whirled around, only to see the old man thrashing wildly on the floor. His mouth emmitted a high-pitched, ululating scream, his hands and feet flailed wildly around, his eyes flared wide open at one moment only to end up clenched in the next, foam and blood from his bitten tongue started coming out of his mouth. Suddenly, his body stopped thrashing and he stopped screaming. His muscles twisted into knots, his body tensed like a coiled spring and twisted like a pretzel, the old man almost hung in mid-air on his plams and feet. Then, just as explosively as they had tensed, the muscles went limp and the old man flopped on the floor, the puddle that started spreading from between his legs and the stench that started emanating from him mute witnesses that he had soiled himself.

"What was this?" muttered Maddie under her breath.

"I don't know." replied Demuel "But, if I had to guess, I'd say that all the excitement was too much for the old geezer. He's just had a seizure of some kind and I'd say he's gone."

"You think he's dead?" asked Maddie incredulously.

"Deader than an Avestite's common sense." replied Demuel.

"Still, let's check" replied Maddie and bent forward to grab the old man's wrist so that she could check for pulse.

HOST ACQUIRED.
ATTACKER PROGRAM INSTALLED.
HOST ELECTRONIC MEMORY DELETED.
HOST BIOLOGICAL MEMORY WIPED.
ERASURE OF HOST PERSONALITY TOTAL.
UNCOMPRESSING BACKUP PERSONALITY.
BACKUP PERSONALITY UNCOMPRESSED.
BACKUP PERSONALITY INSTALLED SUCCESSFULLY.
BEGIN AUTOMATIC RESTART OF BACKUP PERSONALITY.
BACKUP PERSONALITY RESTARTED SUCCESSFULLY.

The large green letters that scrolled across Sergei's face meant nothing to him. He was there, and he wasn't. He floated weightlessly in perfect darkness. He screamed trapped in a robotic body. He felt an old heart, many times enhanced, beting in his chest. He tried to move his hand, but it wasn't there. Then it was there, but it wasn't his. His hand used to be young. This one was old and wrinkled, with metal skeleton and artificial tendons. He opened his eyes but they weren't his. His eyes were young, these were old, frail and yet strong, foggy and yet sharp. Mulitple greenish lines, crosshairs, menus and icons scrolled across Sergei's field of view, clearly visible over the background blur. Slowly but surely, the blur solidified.

Arrrr... 'OOOOOOO aaRRRiiiiGGGt??? The voice, if it was a voice, was a blurred jackhammer in the ears that were not his. Suddenly, bold green letters appeared superimposed over Sergei's field of view.

SENSORY AND MOTORIC DIFFERENCES MAPPED.
COMPENSATING.

Suddenly, everything sprang into clearness. He had a body again, two hands, two feet, ears, eyes, a bitten tongue that had already stopped bleading. And he had cybernetics. A veritable treasure cache of cybernetics. And he had his memories. He had the memory of that same woman, who was now leaning over him, pointing a gun at his face. He also had a smug memory of "there's no way she's gonna kill me" kind. Well, she obviously had killed him. Fortunately that the personality backup device had functioned properly. Now, if he could only...

"Are you all right?" the woman, who was now shaking his shoulder, wanted to know. "We thought you were dead." she added.

"Never again." snarled Sergei through gritted teeth, and activated his personal defense field.

The woman looked at him blankly, and then yelped as the activated field singed her hand. Her yelp of pain was all the enticement Sergei needed. His limbs a blur, he sprang to his feet, tearing the woman's pistol from her belt, kicking her in the belly and sending her spinning into the nearest wall. The woman was good. Even completely surprised as she was, she had managed to land a telling blow at his crotch. Fortunately, it was as effective as throwing pebbles at a concrete wall when pitted against his field.

"Whoever you were, you sure knew your cyberware." thought Sergei silently towards the man his reviving had killed, and then, out of sheer paranoia, ran a quick check of all the places where a personality backup might be stored. Nope. The attacker had wiped that other guy's personality clean off the board.

The woman tried to use this momentary introspection by launching herself at him. She swung at him left and right but he dodged or blocked with ease. Then, checking a hypothesis, he grabbed both her hands with his, turning the contest into a pure contest of strength. Yes. Just as he had thought. The old man's body, enhanced as it was, was more than a match for hers. Out of sheer joy for being alive he headbutted her and then used her moment of confusion to steal a passionate kiss, managing to draw back his tongue just in time to avoid losing it when her jaws closed with an audible snap. His face split by a wide grin, Sergei laughed loudly, then tossed her away almost negligently. There was a quotation that his father often used, and he couldn't think of a more appropriate time to say it.

"The Wheel of Fortune goes round and round.
What comes up, must come down."

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."

"We have power, sir, but it'll take us another half hour to bring the reactor online."

"Very well," Winthrop lied, glancing at instruments that registered the Gatekraken's gravitational pull on the Comet.

They were falling at a monster the size of a planet.

"Okay, Decados, I've stopped the door, now get talking or I'm gonna squish you like a bug." started Demuel.

"Well," replied Sergei, "it's all very simple, really. I don't actually have anything against you, it's the boy that I want."

"What boy?" replied Demuel, confused for a moment. And then it dawned on him. "Toast? You tried to kill us because you want Toast?"

"Err, yes, that's right. Even though he behaves like an eggplant, he is actually very important."

"Eggggplaaaaannt!" chimed Toast, eliciting a confused look from Demuel.

"Important? Look at him! How can he possibly be important?" snarled Demuel impatiently. "You had better be straight with me, or else..."

Sergei opened his mouth to speak, and then a tactical update flashed across his vision. He froze for a moment, and then a large grin spread across his face. Raising his hands, he pointed his fingertips towards the airlock door and activated the cutting lasers.

"Lima!" shouted Demuel. "Increase pressure on the airlock door!"

It was too late. The finger-mounted lasers had already done their job and a strong punch sent the door flying out of their frame. Demuel avoided them easily, swinging the bodymates' body into a combat position, but he already knew it wouldn't help much. If that weirdo really had cutting lasers in all his fingers...

Still grinning, Sergei stepped out of the door, pointing a negligent finger at the bodymates. "it's amazing how a couple of cybernetic upgrades can really make your day." he said.

"Anyway, I really ought to kill you, just on general principles, you understand, but since this ship really isn't fast enough to outrun that Void Kraken outside, and since it might so happen that I'll need a bit of help running that Galliot once I toss our dear boyard Atanasov out of the nearest airlock, I'm ready to let you live for now. Unless I'm really mistaken, there is a hull breach that those Marauders had made just behind the nearest bulkhead. It should lead directly to the Galliot that has attacked this ship. Once we get in that ship, we take it over and run away as fast as we can. Once we get near Vera Cruz, I might even let you board an escape pod. If you behave like a really good girl. Or boy. Or whatever."

Seeing their dangerous expression, Sergei stopped grinning, "Walk." he said, motioning them forward with his hand.

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.

Maddie rapped Lima's secret name for the mole above her left nipple in Morse code on the elevator door. Sergei was trying to figure out a way for himself to survive today. The train of thought activated a menu and flashed a particular choice.

As Lima stepped out of the elevator, Sergei, stunned by the notion of software offering to make him an honorable man, snapped "Integrity field? What in the Empyrean's name is an integrity field?"