by Marc Horne
Chapter 24
Admiral Woo was feeling queasy. He ran his fingers down the meter long-braid that descended from his chin to his thigh gap. The v area.
Death was nearby.
Death is not nothing. Woo knew that.
Once upon a time, some event had made life. And since then Death had to fight ceaselessly to stop it. A fuzzy void would not have the tools to do that. Death was a tiger. Death was an army of sword-faced ants. Death was a creepy sneaky man you knew since you were a kid who put a needle in you from behind all the same.
How long until other ships manifested and a space fighting started? How long until Boa Morte pulled some double-bluff and Woo's fleet dropped from the sky in silent flames?
But no. Those were real risks for sure, but not enough to make Woo feel so skittish. He walked across the round disk of the command deck. It had scaly texture and silver surface. As he moved it looked like snakes or black worms were writhing on it. He had special ordered the floor.
What was this feeling?
“Red alert. I want everyone on this ship in full armor and ready for infiltration!” he called out. The headnet picked it up and dished it out. Hundreds of exelcro straps silently clutched each other, looping through crotches, armpits and what have you and raised the pitch of the blood flow in the ship. Chest bumps happened. A couple of bullets were fired in plumage displays. Warriors ran around corridors, like kids. Almost everyone was smiling except Woo.
The paracopters eased down into their landing cradles. There was atmosphere in the landing deck, so as the engines revved down, the bleeping and beetle mumbling of the zombie cluster in copter two started to get right on the verge of being noticeable.
Xolo was stealing the best weapons from everyone on his own paracopter.
“No…you won’t need this. No. It’s nice isn’t it? Old tech is clean tech: no redundant systems, just great engineering. So light! No you won’t need it. You’re going to need big guns and you can steal them from dead Gukkool troops very soon.”
Big and tough, or wiry and tough, as they were, none of those soldiers were arguing much with Xolo. It couldn’t be the odds. They threw themselves against zombie armies or human cannibal hordes on the regular.
It was space. They had this feeling [this relatively correct feeling] that they were in a non-place where you could blow a hole in the shell and get washed away from life. That you could end up buried in nothingness, rotless. A speck of weird tides. Abstract and a toy.
“I’m coming with you,” said Gomez.
“Who said, I’m going anywhere?”
“Well are you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m coming.”
“I do have a little job for you.”
“I don’t do little jobs, old bean. I does big jobs!”
“It’s pretty big.”
…
Xolo’s feet beyond even a cat.
He headed for shadow.
The distraction of a lifetime. A fireball with chattering heads coming from it.
The troops of Gukkool were ready for almost anything.
One paracopter blowing up the other was unexpected.
Flaming laughing head rain was undreamt of.
A roaring savage jumped back in the remaining copter with his cannon still steaming like a sex cigarillo.
The troops fired fully at the copter. Its shields held, rippling in hexagonal measures.
Meantime, Xolo had killed three people and got a clue from each.
He ran down a long wooden corridor that slowly curled helically, snail like. He treasured his speed, which offered him rare perspectives and freedom from holes in his body.
Chak! Chak! Chak!, they were at it again. He rolled and replied: they groaned and they died.
He found the room he was looking for. Clues and stink mixed to get him there. He kicked the door in.
As expected, it was weird in there.
On the wall was a huge photograph of paradise with three ceramic flying ducks on it. The rest of the room was dominated by thick couches made of grime-polished acrylic that now glistened like biology.
There were charcoal streaked anti-macassars with boring back of the head Turin transfers.
Ten terrans sat in the room with eyephones, nip plugs, colonic divinators, fingernail ouijas: the full regalia of a high level exploited organism. Their full forest of nerves was engaged. The once mythical brain cells in the gut wall were drafted for the cause. For the men, the prostate plugs pinged like bass strings, allowing people elsewhere to see in the dark and generally adding intuitive flavors to the so-called headnet.
Of course they didn’t notice him. They barely noticed each other. One was singing. Xolo listened for a second. It was not appropriate for a human: it was signal leak. Sonic hologram.
“Disgusting,” muttered Xolo. He knew there were probably fifty cells like this on the space dragon.
Terran kidnappees, probably, snatched from their parents as they boiled slugs and acorns. Never missed. A baby who was never missed and who was put in this room soon after. Xolo imagined the job of wiring a child up and then the bigger job of building a society where that meant nothing.
He raised his gun.
He found the strongest looking young male and clubbed a nerve cluster in his neck.
On the floor he twitched as his load adjusted for sleep cycles and producing poetry or designing coastlines.
Restless work.
Xolo wrinkled his nose up and started unplugging various plugs until the human in front of him was revealed. Unconnected as the richest duke and like them a harmless pig or shrimp.
Xolo waved his glove around near the nest of shitty, pus-licked gadgets trying to cadge clues. Ripples and snowflakes resolved on the screen on the back of the glove. He would have liked to show this to Sunny. She was at a good age where she would maybe find it pretty [although she would never say] but could also maybe learn to read it and see that at least half of the Meseret fleet had just ceased to exist and was trying to argue its way to Earth.
So he had to keep Gukkool’s ships here for about half an hour. Hopefully Gomez had done a good job of not killing ALL the zombies.
…
Back in the hangar the noble but dirty earth savages fought alongside the Gukkool militia against the elastic and plastic spastic space squid head flesh muscle zombies coming out and going in and staggering even with a cape of fire and bullets and bullets and high fives. Humans together
…
Woo did not know what to do. His impulse was to scatter the fleet. Earth looked like a cold blue eye staring at his little ships.
There was no way that his dragon could flee though with this bizarre transmorphing obscenity in the hold. It fired black tentacles that snaked in every data port, so obviously trying to get his ship pregnant.
Woo was wondering how he had become a famous admiral. It was largely the way he walked with his cape on. The way he would push any fucker out an airlock. The attitude with which he told his space stories to the counselors and then eventually the sultan himself.
He had no tricks for unusual situations. No clever move.
He felt a fist in the underspace.
He had spent so much of his life in the underspace that he could sense its forms. Mitochondria moved and he could feel it.
Okay.
He got his gun, his sword, his shield, his three-headed dog.
He wanted to die with blood on his hands.
He and the dog ran baying through a corridor made of bamboo, twisting gentle, arterial.
One of the dog’s three heads was gentle and compassionate and looked at him sadly.
“Fuck off!!! Fuck off!!!” he yelled at that head.
Woo. Was coming through.
There is a universe.
There are planets.
There are space ships.
There are people.
There is blood.
There is no real death, because even death makes
things.
But life underperforms still.
This is the world of Xolo.
Xolo and Woo met. Mad inevitable.
Xolo would win this fight if he could deal with that damn dog.
“I’ve been to hell and back,” he said to the dog.
This was no mere stagecraft. Many dogs speak quite well in this century.
The dog whimpered.
But then it was on.
Each neck had a target.
Xolo squirreled back and left a vortex of air for them to nibble on. But then a bullet hit him, in the left testicle. It was gone suddenly in a flash of blood and surprising semen.
Xolo was a tough fucker but a hit like that isn’t forgotten in a second. Memories of emissions. Women. Fences clambered over. Hot baths. These things clung and slowed him.
The dog was on him. The mad dog, always mad at its shared muscles and its backaches was at him. All mouth. Legs flashing in the air like tails. Burrowing in, shrugging through blood vessels.
Woo got hypnotized maybe by the dervish rhythm of his hellhound. Otherwise a single shot from his service revolver could have ended this whole thing.
Instead Xolo shoved a directional grenade in the dog's lazy mouth, and Woo was blasted to the floor with a spray of blood, shit, bones and furry chunks of meat.
He screamed like a samurai (like a really loud growl) as he lay on the floor with a tibia in his left lung. Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! went Xolo’s gun. Woo was limbless now.
Xolo put a med pack on his crotch. Tiny androids and nanoids streamed out and then sort of shrugged their shoulders. But they eased the pain and bleeding.
“Woo, right?” said Xolo.
Woo nodded. He was proud of who he was. Had been.
“They can fix those limbs. You can live through this. I will save your life. I just need you to not order your ships to leave for another fifteen minutes.”
“Who...is coming?”
“Meseret.”
“They'll not attack us. My second in command...will tell her...we have you. For Boa Morte, we'll be excused...for breaking earth quarantine.”
“This is going to be awesome. I am not Boa Morte. Never have been. Never will be. He's dead, Jack.”
“Aww...shit.”