Camel Eaters
15-04-2005, 00:49
My God this is boring. I sit here all day and not a single goddamn thing to BLOW UP! I need coffee. No I need a new job. Well I would be able to quit and be back on Earth in the same day if the Nets weren’t down in this sector. Goddamn people need to fix those things. Hey wow I never knew the walls on the hallway were so white and shiny I’ll just stare at them for a few moments. Hmm. Maybe a little longer.
These are the thoughts of Un’dwa Batikkiko Member of the House of Greater Servitude, Pathfera of the Batikkiko Line, Rank Three Clearance Mac Cannon Operator, and a bored little man in the Universe. By the way I’m Haggis the Overseer nice to meet you.
A mass of chemicals and strange biologic rubbery substance stirred. Usually when something like this stirs it suggests an ominous presence but when Frank of the Nine Air Sacs stirs it just means he woke up. Frank looked around for a moment. The screens all read the same pitch-blackness that meant nothing was invading. Nothing was screaming towards them like a Seuss fighter wing. Nothing could be more boring. He melted out of the chair he was in. Gathering him on the floor before setting off towards the kitchen following one of his many friends onboard Un’dwa Batikkiko. He released an entire air sac’s worth of a sigh and looked at the somewhat packed mess hall. A man was talking with what looked to be a bird like centipede. Both were conversing in Trade Slang, which is wondrous mix of Japanese, Jamaican patois, and New Age Binary. Anyways. Frank spotted Un’dwa sitting down to a cold slab of tubeworm, algae, and some sort of bacterium developed in the thirties to clean the dirt off of clothes. “So Un’dwa how’s the pizza?” Frank inquired quickly pushing the air out as slithered onto the table.
“Twa baka it 34 like jah alwa’ be.”
“You’ve been brushing up on your Trade Slang I take it.” Frank shuddered for a moment and produced a somewhat audible growl as he ingested a passing fly.
“Yeah I have. Maxim helps me though it’s hard.” Un’dwa dug into his pizza slab again shaking his mane of red and green hair as he got up and dumped the rest into the ship compost container. Now I usually would’ve just skipped over the boring life of such a group of individuals and watched a war or something but these guys always make me feel a little less lonely in the Universe. Wait y’all get back to the story. Miss U.C.A and Miss Universe are having an eye opening experience in the shower.
Now you may be wondering what in the eighty are some odd hells is happening here. Well I assure you there is only seventy-four hells so don’t worry about that. You see this is a story about people in the future. What amazing things have happened in the future you may ask? Well go ahead ask them. All right you’re done asking aren’t you. Well to answer your first question it is the year 80,005. Several thousand years ago the original home world of humanity was subsumed into three great empires. The Irish, Wal-Mart, and Microsoft ruled ninety percent of the world. The Mexicans owned the rest and the French had garrisoned Paris into a super city that stretched the length of the country’s national borders, so in order to find freedom, liberty, and cheap software man took the stars.
While among the stars man became bored and created all sorts of stuff to entertain themselves with. Two of these creations were living Furbies and AI. The Furbies eventually were released into the wild and evolved into their feral surroundings quickly. Soon they had gained intelligence of that of a human. Don’t ask me how they just did it. The Barkers (as the Furbies now called themselves) began colonizing the outer edges of the human empire. Then there was the AI after a brief and unoriginal war between humanity and a super computer name Seuss, in which Seuss was eventually vanquished to the darkest depths of space for losing a riddle contest against Emperor Jacob Fischer the XXVIII, the Barkers and Seuss were destined to meet and after an even briefer war, in which the Barkers peed on Seuss’s casing and he shot one of them in the head with a warrior drone, they merged their forces and attacked High Jamaica, a military province in the Alpha Centauri system. It was owned by the Rastafarian Space Emirate of Zion, and won. After that they eventually took the entire planet. Costa Rica Dos fell in a matter of days. New Nippon fell followed by Birmingham and Shadow Wood, a giant suburb on the other side of the planet, they now had a home world. The Barkers and humans got along rather well. Most people just stayed where they were and greeted their new neighbors with mild hostility.
Seuss was another matter entirely. He wanted war and he wanted to take it to Earth. Except the Microsoftian Empire stood in his way. They purchased the dark side of the moon and were ready for war at all times. Their missile defense grid was feared, as was their militant support base of warrior-geeks. The only weakness that Microsoft exhibited was the small number of soldiers available to protect the Earth. A war was raging eight light-years away The Macintosh Rebellion and Liberation Army had attacked Microsoft’s holdings on Linux Prime. The locals had joined forces with them and the Unix Republican Militia was getting into the fray. Microsoft’s warrior-geeks were barely able to hold off the first Barker attack.
In frustration Microsoft turned to Wal-Mart and asked them to help hold the Barker’s off. They agreed and within three days senior warrior-representatives of the Army of Wal-Mart had swarmed the Barker attack fleets and drove them from the Solar System. Earth was saved. At least for now it was.
Weird story? I always thought it was. There’s a butt load of history to cover though. The Hawaiian Revolution for example. At about the same time that the Great Second Seuss Human War was raging around the moon a much less hostile thing was happening in Hawaii. Since the second thirteenth century organic data storage units have been in use worldwide. These globs of brain and skin tissues were in essence sentient organisms. And organisms like to evolve. These strange little organic computers were able to control most of their own genetic processes. To a certain point, beyond that was engineer territory. But a major advantage had been given to these organic machines. Spore reproduction and invasion. Well one odd day a lad assistant was being stupid and was invaded by trillions of tiny little brain cells that had managed to get into his skin. They attacked his brain and spread throughout him like a fungus. Soon he was an exact mental copy of one of the data units. He promptly marched into a control room. Killed the scientists within and began modifying his brothers genetically. They grew limbs and were able to move. Though weak and fleshy their spore invasion abilities gave them the edge in battle. Quickly taking over the building guards it was no problem to finish off the scientists. Then the scientist’s families were invaded and reduced to mental clones. Then the communities became mind slaves. Soon all of Hawaii was under the control of the organic data storage units that is when it all got interesting. You see the Cephalovivs, as they called themselves, realized that an invasion by the spores was impractical for spreading their people. So they realized that certain spore producing glands situated in certain reproductive areas in human mental clones could easily spread them across the face of the earth. The only Earth based empire that could find a way around this was Ireland. With a stake in Hawaii, owing to the fact that they conquered North America in the fourth world war, they worked quickly with advanced nanobots concocting a spore defense shield. They sent a delegate named Seansin O’Mashoney and then there was peace. Well of a fashion. Mass symbiosis followed. For seven generations the Irish Galactic Empire spread. No one could stop the spores. Then it spread to far and broke. The Brotherhood of Munster Space and the Cycle of Ulster’s Sun emerged among the warring Irish faction as the strongest. And then there was war.
The first Galactic wide war broke out. The Barkers and Seuss were dragged into it. Wal-Mart and Microsoft sent their warriors to the front. The Brotherhood fought the Cycle. No planet was untouched. No race unscarred. At the Battle of Alexis alone over a billion lives on both sides were lost. The Rape of Delhi-Berlin, The Suffocation of the Benjamin System, and The Destruction of Sol, each saw a massive and unnecessary loss of life, in a desperate move The Cycle allied with the Barkers and Seuss. Wal-Mart and Microsoft were quick to throw their power behind the Brotherhood. The war came to a head around Mercury. Cycle gas fields had been attacked by the Great 12th Column of Windows, and a Barker fleet had rushed to defend the precious fields. Wal-Mart caught wind and threw a spare army, The Third Aisle Marines, into the fray. Las beams sliced through thousands. Plasma guns melted their ashes and nuclear bombardment finished off their ghosts. The Barkers lost. Or so everyone thought until a rogue ship, which had yet to be captured, under the command of Holy General Abassa launched twelve volleys of Helios missiles. The Sun’s core overheated and gravity was thrown into hyper mode. Sol the thing that had given life to Earth for so long expanded and blew up. The initial blast stretched to Jupiter lighting the gas ball like a candle. The sheer scale of it threw the system out of whack. The empty space rippled with gravitational tides. Small-scale black holes formed and ate each other on the same day. The new sun, what was once Jupiter, blazed harshly as Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, and Pluto floated on odd patterns being pulled in and out of orbits as they circled this new star. Well at least it was pretty boom.
Let me see what else has happened. We found some alien critters a while before that. Some faster than light travel let the human race get a foot up on economic competition. The almost total destruction of our solar system got us some sympathy for a bit so we got like free ice cream and stuff. Oh yeah Sol Day. A galactic holiday to help us understand the uselessness of war, oh crap I forgot to mention that the humans terraformed Pluto and Neptune and then renamed them Earth. They circle in the same orbit now.
So the Universe is at a whole new level of fucked up at this point isn’t it? Well it’s about to get worse.
Seventy-five years after the destruction of half of the Sol system an alien race known as the Fredericks appeared on the scene. You see the Fredericks were 300 trillion clones of the same person, a lowly genetic tech that decided to play with his gene sequences, after that he began cloning himself en masse, secretly of course, The Fredericks were a force to be reckoned with. Each generation was more modified than the last. Any biological cure to the Fredericks problem was moot by the next generation. The Fredericks Empire spread through occupied human space like a disease. Eventually though, as in all empires, it began to fade. Generations that were trapped in campaigns in far-away systems become markedly different than the average Fred. Reproduction systems began breaking down in the far reaches of the empire forcing the first female Fredericks to be designed and made. A new race had spawned in the galaxy. Soon small splinter groups formed larger ones after those then competing Fredericks empires that spanned from one end of the Milky Way to the other. Fredericks Sapiens had established itself well. Now let’s get back to the tale at hand.
Several thousand light-years away Fredericks Damien Freak-Monk was enjoying his first command aboard the Escort Cruiser Orange Crème Soda. This was the newest vessel in the Fredericks Empire of the Reggae System. Damien Freak-Monk was a twentieth generation pure clone. He was an exact copy of the very first Freak-Monk. It was a double bladed sword though, the first Freak-Monk had been an escort captain onboard the ship Turtledove and pack of smokes. This was the same ship responsible for a huge war with sentient Elephants on Ganymede, since then each generation had been working to bring the status of the Freak-Monks to an acceptable level. Damien was ready to prove that Freak-Monks had what it took.
They were escorting a prison ship filled with Barkers. Soon to be slaves. There were at least twenty other escorts though. The enormous vessel dwarfed Damien’s own ship. Why they needed escorts he couldn’t figure, massive generators aboard the prison ship produced enough electricity to vaporize a Seuss fighter wing in one go. Not to mention swat every missile that could be fired at it. “Captain! A mighty swarm to the west!”
Damien turned the panel in front of him was glowing with the positions of close to three thousand enemies. He smirked and began issuing orders.
“Deploy camera swarm one,” an extremely loud swoosh greeted his order as hundreds of camera drones exited the ship and switched on, “incredible.” Damien gasped as the panel showed the collective images of the camera swarm.
The panel showed missiles two thousand of them alone with ships packed in the middle priming their weapons for an assault on the ship. “Turn to engage.” The ship tilted on its side pointing at the oncoming death. Those aboard, because of advanced grav-locks, didn’t feel a thing. “Engage.” The ship Orange Crème Soda shook as the Central Mass Cannon, the only truly powerful weapon onboard, began firing rounds the size of a man in succession. Explosions were to found all over as the escorts valiantly defended the prison ship. Another escort moved closer to the Orange Crème Soda three times larger it carried more pretty boom makers. Damien watched in awe as a slow moving missile array launched from the Big Blue Death Trap, how did Damien know that was the ship’s name? Well huge block letters pronounced it for the entire Galaxy to see. The missiles rotated slowly before rocketing into the coming storm. Even larger explosions greeted this as the shockwaves knocked the panel offline for a few moments. Just enough time to miss something really important, when the console shuddered to life Damien exited from his position on the floor to reveal that the prison ship, the other escorts, and the enemy swarm. They were all completely destroyed.
“Fuck.”
“Yes fuck is right Fredericks Damien Freak-Monk twentieth pure clone of the Freak-Monk line for your dishonorable actions in failing to defend your main objective to the death of yourself and your crew. We the Council of Reggae Fredericks find you guilty on all charges. And furthermore your punishment will be the de-activation of your failed line. No longer will the Freak-Monk name stain our Empire.”
Damien fell backwards from the verbal blow. He was the last pure Freak-Monk and now he would have to breed to continue his legacy. “Should you find the shame of mixing blood to unbearable you are allowed the choice to lead a suicide attack on an inferior Sapiens’s Mac Cannon, positioned near Earth this menace has long thwarted our attempts at gaining a foothold in the Sol System. Should you succeed we will consider reviving the Freak-Monk line.” Damien thanked the all-powerful Bob for showing him mercy in the council’s decision. He got up and walked out the door with guards on either side of him.
The hangar bay was cramped with so many young men that had once been under him staring as he approached the fighter wing that he would be leading to certain death. Nineteen other men, most young one old and grizzled his face showed the fact that he was a breeder. An original, too old to continue breeding other vermin like himself so he would go in a flame of glory Damien despised him immediately. The men bowed in short order as they climbed into their respective cockpits easing their fighters into secured airlocks as they were launched into space.
The journey was short only because of a rip-port that the Command had managed to pull. It got you there quick but had a huge energy signal attached to it. Damien took ten men under his control and barrel rolled out of the rip only to see a huge amount of debris that had been the preliminary attack wing.
“Frank got nine of them!” Un’dwa smirked as his best friend was congratulated throughout the station for nine straight kills in one shot. He’d aimed the Mac Cannon like a sniper rifle blowing the enemy out of the sky.
“Frank may be having nine but da baka be missing un.” The voice of Char’ Ears echoed over the com again as his display on the screen went black. The radio was silent for a moment as everyone realized something. Char’ had been taken out by the one fighter Frank had missed.
“Holy crap on high there’s ten more of those little bastards!” Un’dwa couldn’t pinpoint who said it but agreed with everyone else as their smaller less powerful turrets opened fire on the remaining fighters. Un’dwa’s eyes blurred with tears for a moment as he wiped the tears away and aimed his turret. Releasing a hurricane of plasma heated bolts into enemy ships. He traced a path of destruction into the dark void of space with the others. One ship always evaded him though it swooped and dived, rolled and fired. Un’dwa was starting to get pissed. His turret went silent for a moment. Blood slid down his fists from where he’d been gripping the firing handle. He fell back a cold clammy sweat pouring down his face. The blood on his hands was dry and his lungs were wheezing painfully. People were speaking gently to him over the CB. He realized something then. He’d been squeezing industrial steel hard enough to bend it, screaming loud enough to make each breath painful, and he was out of ammo.
His eyes were on fire. His vision blurring as he went blind. Lying on the cold floor of a defensive Mac platform the air smelled strange like fire. Rolling over onto his stomach Un’dwa crawled forward in his own darkness. “Someone! Please help me.” He began to cry as his head hit the airtight door to the turret room. He knew his eyes were wide open yet nothing greeted them. He cried louder slamming a fist against the door. A wet crunch greeted this followed by a sharp shearing pain that pierced the veil of darkness flashing hot and red. Still he kept pounding. With both hands and arms now. He heard his bones popping and twisting and shattering as he did so. Exhausted he keeled onto his side blood pooling from his arms and mouth as he finally received sweet release.
He moved quietly feeling bed sheets rustle against him as he did so. His eyes popped open and he saw. He saw. Sweet lord above he could see! His vision flickered for a moment and went dark though. He pouted and forced himself to see. Un’dwa stared at the ceiling of the med room. He moved his eyes and heard a slight whirring. “Goddamn mechanical eyes.” His nose itched so he moved his right hand up to scratch it. He was greeted with a concave metallic stump.
“Don’t worry neural reworking and implants will still allow you to feel, almost as well as organic flesh or so I hear. The arms you’ll be getting are mechanic but they attach and detach at will. All in all you were pretty lucky.” A tiny floating platform that was covered in tentacles appeared in his line of sight.
Un’dwa blinked with his new eyes. “Why was the door locked?” The platform swirled and lowered slowly revealing a blob like creature waving its appendages all over as it spoke.
“Well dark one the last ship decided to kamikaze your turret. Then door went air lock so you wouldn’t die. Actually we have him in possession….” Un’dwa grabbing him and asking him quite plainly in a most serious voice cut off the doctor.
“You said this new arm was detachable. Can I beat the prisoner to test it out?”
“Screw you inferior one!” A loud voice echoed through the infirmary. Un’dwa turned and stared into the eyes of Damien Freak-Monk.
“Tell me. Do you play chess?” Un’dwa asked in an expectant voice his throat burning with the pressure of speech.
“Yes inferior. I play chess.”
“All is forgiven.”
The sun beat down on a hot desert somewhere far away. A man stood out in the haze of the air though. A man one would usually step sideways to avoid on a crowded street. Or subway in which you were packed into the space where the door was supposed to be and decided to take a little trip down the third rail way. He was that creepy. Not to mention he was a god.
Steam bellowed from him as he stared at the sky and watched the rain beat down around him. Singeing the ground at each step this man stepped forward several hundred miles and appeared in the middle of the native town. He liked frontier worlds. People showed him the proper respect on frontier worlds. Not on those highly established ones though. Oh, no! They had ideas about a cowboy hat and a trench coat figure stalking the streets. Snapping up the crazed street preachers as his apostles.
Well there were only two things that redeemed core worlds. Brothels and crazed street preachers, after all a trickster of his proportion needed apostles to spread the insanity.
The natives stared. A mix of human and other they were an eclectic bunch outcasts, pirates, fortune seekers and farmers mingled together freely in a great mixing pot even if it was a rusty one. Samurai stepped forward eyeing him up slowly as they spoke in heavily Portuguese influenced Trade Slang. He adjusted his wide brim hat sparkling green eyes flashing for an instant as he responded casually running a clawed hand through his wild and tangled hair. The Samurai were quick in their response. It was a hostile one. Hands on their swords they spoke quicker.
The man sighed and turned around walking away from them whistling a song one of their mothers used to sing them. Though he couldn’t see it the god knew he had turned pale. The man laughed rather audibly before whirling and listing what each of the Samurai had done in his life. Sins and shortcomings alike the Samurai gulped as one asking quickly how he knew this. The man drew towards them his highs brogans stamping the dirt into nothingness as he leaned forward and whispered to them alone.
They dropped into kneeling position swords held aloft towards the god before them. They pledged themselves to him. Their lives and their honor and now their souls, were his. “Well gentlemen. Let us go forward and conquer in my name.”
Ah. So you’ve glanced him. Yes, in the cosmos there are many creatures with great power. Power to warp men to their wills and make themselves seem as gods. You see I have that power as well. I try not to abuse it being an Overseer and all. Though I doubt any warriors would fight for me. I’m like the librarian of the galaxy. Not the most glorious job but I like it. Actually that man you’ve just glanced is someone we should be familiar with. Formerly known as Emperor Jacob Fischer XXVIII. Well he’s a nice man. Most of the time, a good friend of mine he’s a trickster and a jester. Wait. I went to Jacob’s funeral. That thing you just saw is pure evil. Unless I’m wrong, goddamn I can’t remember right now. Anyways back to the story.
The Revelers Rousers Club was in full swing. Now you may be wondering what the Revelers Rousers Club did. Well once every few months every man in the village that the Revelers were from would mount their war rams and go raiding. Charging down on a rival village with spear guns at the ready they’d make crazed drunken lighting attacks on cow pens and latrines. Every village had a Club that the men would join. Every village also had two latrines in case one was captured. So the Revelers Rousers were barreling along a rather flat plain. Their guns were raised high in the air and their rams panting from brisk pace they were kept at.
Tan McHugh was in the back. His ram’s fur bounced heavily with each jerking jaunted run. It was hard keeping the binoculars up but he managed it. Sighting the tiny village before them he swept over it quickly mumbling a bit to himself. He snorted and leaned back on the rams hunched back. The massive curled horns that the reigns wrapped around stayed completely still as the rest of the beasts body jerked back a bit.
“It isn’t worth raiding! Next village!” The call was taken up as they kicked their rams ribs and plowed through the village afore them. A few of the boys got antsy and fired at some locals as the passed. Just a bunch of beggars and freaks so no one got mad. Tan looked up at the misty sky. His planet was unique like that. No real atmosphere just an unending mist that transitioned between the cold depths of space and the pleasantly warm folds of home. He’d heard of a few birds that got confused and flew right out into space. Shaking himself back to the present he pressed onwards. His ram was old and frail while the others were young and virile. Tan noticed that Jefferson, which is what he’d named the damn beast, was loosing the rest of the Club. He was too far behind the others to shout and a blast from the hunting horn round his neck would bring any Far Patrols of neighboring villages down on him afore his friends could come back to aid him. H
Tan was stuck deep in enemy lines with limited ammo and an old wheezing ram as his steed. He was also out of water. He knew the plains held none, all the villages had cropped up around water sources, and so he would have to do a raid on his own. Tugging slightly on Jefferson’s reigns he did a circle his eyes caught some light far off. The village he’d just come from would be no match for a trained Revelers Rousers member. Trotting Jefferson towards the village for a moment he did a sweep with his eyes the defenses they might posses. Though he knew from the fact he’d rode through not an hour ago that the village had no watch, they must have counted on the fact that they were too poor to be raided by a Club. But they weren’t poor enough to not be raided by one member; He rode at an easy pace until he was a few yards from where the torchlight ended. Kicking Jefferson in the ribs caused the ram to snort in anger. Tan imitated the sound and let a great war cry go as he pounded into the village on the back of an angry ram. A child was playing in the road in front of him but Tan leaned back in the saddle and raised a blackjack club from the depths of the saddlebags easily breaking the kid’s neck when he passed him. Tan quoted Rule Number One of the Revelers Rousers Club in his head. Terror makes for a great weapon in the search to part others with their property. Stowing the blackjack he rode from the town in a trail of dust, pulling his spear gun and wheeling Jefferson around to face the street where people had rushed from their homes and begun to cry over the loss of a future worker. Tan came back in fast. Firing the gun at whoever moved he’d speared four people between the eyes easily and trampled one more as he rode back out of the town. He reared Jefferson in and departed his back. Making quick low whistles that the ram knew by heart Tan pulled a knife from the saddlebags and crept towards town. The ram behind him, Tan was easy in his movements as he rested at the back of a run down mix between a house and a shack. Running a calloused hand over it quickly he found no back door. Standing silently he pulled a hook from of the bags on the ram. Twirling it in the air for a moment he hooked it on the top of the shack house. He tugged once and the mess fell backwards off its shaky foundations. Pulling the hook and chain it was attached to backwards. From the sounds of the other villagers there’d been a family in there. He stepped backward away from the light and got his spear gun from Jefferson’s bags. He walked forward and motioned at a boy. Throwing an empty water bladder he then motioned at the well in the somewhat center of the village.
Tan rode along in the dark water bladders full and abilities tested. Stretching on Jefferson’s back he patted the ram affectionately and rode towards the bright marker of a lighthouse, it signified civilized civilization; glancing behind him he noted that the slaves were walking in line on the chain. He made a note on a map that all raiders carried that that village was no longer there.
Above the planet wars were raging. The Yakuza Local Number 23 was fighting the Enemy. They had no other name for these things. Creatures that did not stop in their conquest they looked like men and spoke like men. But they fought like demons. They flew into battle with few ships and always beat back the Yakuza. The Daimyo realized that soon he’d have to call on other Yakuza Unions to save them from total destruction. Only one of the Enemy had been caught. She looked like the members of the Yakuza. Same heritage, slim almond eyes and dark hair she even spoke the same language. She was pure Japanese. She’d been the last of her wing. And yet she’d kept fighting. The men who had brought her in found a small Buddha, pictures of her boyfriend, and a Samurai sword all in the cockpit of her bulky fighter. After being “interviewed” for days she’d uttered one name. Shogun Jacob. Then she never spoke again. They still had her in a cell but she meditated and wrote poetry all day. Forsaking food they’d had to put an IV into her just to keep her alive.
The Yakuza Local Number 23 was fighting an unstoppable Enemy. And they knew it. All this was going threw the head of Daimyo Ku as he paced his room. Fake straw mats rested on the floor with several women sitting silently waiting for themselves to be of service. He was descended of a shamed line. Pure male all the way down. He wore the traditional obi and even wore two swords. But his hair was uncut and messy. His writing arm stiff and unused, he took in a breath of air and collapsed back into a large chair. The Enemy was at the gate. Quite literally, they’d boarded the capital ship of Yakuza Local Number 23 and had swept threw all levels except for the one he currently rested upon. His soldiers had brought back some of the Enemy dead. All races and genders were found among them. As well as all species, somehow some brilliant general had managed to unite them all. Every religion and cultural stigma swept aside to make the dreams of one man a reality. Daimyo Ku was scared. Standing up from the chair he walked to the sliding steel door of his master suite and stepped into the hall. His men bowed to him as pink slippers slid across the floor. He’d have to surrender. And he did.
Jacob liked his new title. Emperor had been so dull and boring. But Shogun that’s what truly suited him. He’d conquered the planet in record time. He’d established a new religion of warrior and Shogun worship. The Japanese culture was perfect for his new empire of empires. So that’s what he modeled it after. The people adored him as he was Divine in all ways. He’d made a few changes to the Bushido code. But not so many that it wasn’t recognizable. And now here he was. Sitting on another man’s throne enjoying another man’s wives savoring the taste of another man’s territory the Daimyo had willingly bowed to him so Jacob was going to keep him around. Jacob was now the proud owner of eleven systems and was funding insurgents in other empires. Each suicide bomb, every ambush, all fanatical riots and prayers of infidel blood filling the skies were carried out in his name. All in all he figured he’d done well for just coming back from the dead.
He had a few things to do. For one inspecting the new Turkish division and then worry about creating a buffer zone so that Wal-Mart couldn’t get a greedy hand into his economy. He thought for a moment. He’d use the Turkish division to create the buffer zone! Oh how smart he was. Moving quickly through his massive Citadel, the first ship of this design to reach the size of three old Earths stacked on top of each other, he moved into a gigantic domed room. Set off to the side for troop inspections it could serve, as hangar bay for two or even three capital ships should the need ever arise. The entire division was laid before him in full parade gala. Sweeping his eyes quickly he nodded once and the tanks bowed their collective muzzles in a show of respect. Each man and woman carried a small side sword, an assurance that they would never be captured, along with their regular gun and sidearm. He swept a hand to a man in front. General Al-Shekel Mohammed Kevin stepped forward and bowed briefly. “What need do you have of us Shogun?” Jacob smirked at the name and bowed back. The man’s cheeks flushed and his soldiers straightened even more after seeing their General receive a sign of such respect from a god.
“You are to attack a system for me. You will have no other resources than what you take and what you find. You have one month.” Jacob promptly turned and left as the men were mobilizing.
Damien lay in an intake valve. Someone poked him with a stick. Poke once, poke twice, poke thrice…….”Goddamn it I’m awake!” Damien leapt to his feet sweat pouring from his as he instinctively reached for the Hydro-Pipe that ran through the bowels of the station. He had been put to work down here. Damn inferior sapiens. At least his only friends on board, besides the numerous robots, aliens, and freaks that dwelt in the bowels, had been reassigned to make sure he didn’t try anything. Reacting quickly he jerked back as superheated water scalded his lips. “Damn inferior sapiens…….” Moving slowly over the grid-work floor of vents and pipes Damien sat on a raised platform from which he oversaw the surrounding bowels of the station. He still wondered who’d poked him with a stick. That someone poked him again. He swiveled in the chair his butt sliding off. He hit the floor and his leg slid through it.
A massive mutilated creature stood above him. Its skin was pulled tightly over the skull, easily seen were the large eye sockets and fangs the length of his hand, spiky bones poked through the thin veil of flesh on its four gargantuan arms. Bleached white along the entire length of its flesh the creature’s legs were the most impressive. Three clawed toes spread out with webbing and padded paws. It gripped a huge grey staff in its left upper hand. Damien grinned and smiled at his boyfriend. Reaching upwards he gripped Nahorrigi’s strong humanoid top hands. Easily lifted, though gingerly as his leg was still stuck, Damien winked and nodded towards the opening out of the pipe duct. Nahorrigi did his best to wink back. More of a half winks half eye flutter though Damien got the idea.
These are the thoughts of Un’dwa Batikkiko Member of the House of Greater Servitude, Pathfera of the Batikkiko Line, Rank Three Clearance Mac Cannon Operator, and a bored little man in the Universe. By the way I’m Haggis the Overseer nice to meet you.
A mass of chemicals and strange biologic rubbery substance stirred. Usually when something like this stirs it suggests an ominous presence but when Frank of the Nine Air Sacs stirs it just means he woke up. Frank looked around for a moment. The screens all read the same pitch-blackness that meant nothing was invading. Nothing was screaming towards them like a Seuss fighter wing. Nothing could be more boring. He melted out of the chair he was in. Gathering him on the floor before setting off towards the kitchen following one of his many friends onboard Un’dwa Batikkiko. He released an entire air sac’s worth of a sigh and looked at the somewhat packed mess hall. A man was talking with what looked to be a bird like centipede. Both were conversing in Trade Slang, which is wondrous mix of Japanese, Jamaican patois, and New Age Binary. Anyways. Frank spotted Un’dwa sitting down to a cold slab of tubeworm, algae, and some sort of bacterium developed in the thirties to clean the dirt off of clothes. “So Un’dwa how’s the pizza?” Frank inquired quickly pushing the air out as slithered onto the table.
“Twa baka it 34 like jah alwa’ be.”
“You’ve been brushing up on your Trade Slang I take it.” Frank shuddered for a moment and produced a somewhat audible growl as he ingested a passing fly.
“Yeah I have. Maxim helps me though it’s hard.” Un’dwa dug into his pizza slab again shaking his mane of red and green hair as he got up and dumped the rest into the ship compost container. Now I usually would’ve just skipped over the boring life of such a group of individuals and watched a war or something but these guys always make me feel a little less lonely in the Universe. Wait y’all get back to the story. Miss U.C.A and Miss Universe are having an eye opening experience in the shower.
Now you may be wondering what in the eighty are some odd hells is happening here. Well I assure you there is only seventy-four hells so don’t worry about that. You see this is a story about people in the future. What amazing things have happened in the future you may ask? Well go ahead ask them. All right you’re done asking aren’t you. Well to answer your first question it is the year 80,005. Several thousand years ago the original home world of humanity was subsumed into three great empires. The Irish, Wal-Mart, and Microsoft ruled ninety percent of the world. The Mexicans owned the rest and the French had garrisoned Paris into a super city that stretched the length of the country’s national borders, so in order to find freedom, liberty, and cheap software man took the stars.
While among the stars man became bored and created all sorts of stuff to entertain themselves with. Two of these creations were living Furbies and AI. The Furbies eventually were released into the wild and evolved into their feral surroundings quickly. Soon they had gained intelligence of that of a human. Don’t ask me how they just did it. The Barkers (as the Furbies now called themselves) began colonizing the outer edges of the human empire. Then there was the AI after a brief and unoriginal war between humanity and a super computer name Seuss, in which Seuss was eventually vanquished to the darkest depths of space for losing a riddle contest against Emperor Jacob Fischer the XXVIII, the Barkers and Seuss were destined to meet and after an even briefer war, in which the Barkers peed on Seuss’s casing and he shot one of them in the head with a warrior drone, they merged their forces and attacked High Jamaica, a military province in the Alpha Centauri system. It was owned by the Rastafarian Space Emirate of Zion, and won. After that they eventually took the entire planet. Costa Rica Dos fell in a matter of days. New Nippon fell followed by Birmingham and Shadow Wood, a giant suburb on the other side of the planet, they now had a home world. The Barkers and humans got along rather well. Most people just stayed where they were and greeted their new neighbors with mild hostility.
Seuss was another matter entirely. He wanted war and he wanted to take it to Earth. Except the Microsoftian Empire stood in his way. They purchased the dark side of the moon and were ready for war at all times. Their missile defense grid was feared, as was their militant support base of warrior-geeks. The only weakness that Microsoft exhibited was the small number of soldiers available to protect the Earth. A war was raging eight light-years away The Macintosh Rebellion and Liberation Army had attacked Microsoft’s holdings on Linux Prime. The locals had joined forces with them and the Unix Republican Militia was getting into the fray. Microsoft’s warrior-geeks were barely able to hold off the first Barker attack.
In frustration Microsoft turned to Wal-Mart and asked them to help hold the Barker’s off. They agreed and within three days senior warrior-representatives of the Army of Wal-Mart had swarmed the Barker attack fleets and drove them from the Solar System. Earth was saved. At least for now it was.
Weird story? I always thought it was. There’s a butt load of history to cover though. The Hawaiian Revolution for example. At about the same time that the Great Second Seuss Human War was raging around the moon a much less hostile thing was happening in Hawaii. Since the second thirteenth century organic data storage units have been in use worldwide. These globs of brain and skin tissues were in essence sentient organisms. And organisms like to evolve. These strange little organic computers were able to control most of their own genetic processes. To a certain point, beyond that was engineer territory. But a major advantage had been given to these organic machines. Spore reproduction and invasion. Well one odd day a lad assistant was being stupid and was invaded by trillions of tiny little brain cells that had managed to get into his skin. They attacked his brain and spread throughout him like a fungus. Soon he was an exact mental copy of one of the data units. He promptly marched into a control room. Killed the scientists within and began modifying his brothers genetically. They grew limbs and were able to move. Though weak and fleshy their spore invasion abilities gave them the edge in battle. Quickly taking over the building guards it was no problem to finish off the scientists. Then the scientist’s families were invaded and reduced to mental clones. Then the communities became mind slaves. Soon all of Hawaii was under the control of the organic data storage units that is when it all got interesting. You see the Cephalovivs, as they called themselves, realized that an invasion by the spores was impractical for spreading their people. So they realized that certain spore producing glands situated in certain reproductive areas in human mental clones could easily spread them across the face of the earth. The only Earth based empire that could find a way around this was Ireland. With a stake in Hawaii, owing to the fact that they conquered North America in the fourth world war, they worked quickly with advanced nanobots concocting a spore defense shield. They sent a delegate named Seansin O’Mashoney and then there was peace. Well of a fashion. Mass symbiosis followed. For seven generations the Irish Galactic Empire spread. No one could stop the spores. Then it spread to far and broke. The Brotherhood of Munster Space and the Cycle of Ulster’s Sun emerged among the warring Irish faction as the strongest. And then there was war.
The first Galactic wide war broke out. The Barkers and Seuss were dragged into it. Wal-Mart and Microsoft sent their warriors to the front. The Brotherhood fought the Cycle. No planet was untouched. No race unscarred. At the Battle of Alexis alone over a billion lives on both sides were lost. The Rape of Delhi-Berlin, The Suffocation of the Benjamin System, and The Destruction of Sol, each saw a massive and unnecessary loss of life, in a desperate move The Cycle allied with the Barkers and Seuss. Wal-Mart and Microsoft were quick to throw their power behind the Brotherhood. The war came to a head around Mercury. Cycle gas fields had been attacked by the Great 12th Column of Windows, and a Barker fleet had rushed to defend the precious fields. Wal-Mart caught wind and threw a spare army, The Third Aisle Marines, into the fray. Las beams sliced through thousands. Plasma guns melted their ashes and nuclear bombardment finished off their ghosts. The Barkers lost. Or so everyone thought until a rogue ship, which had yet to be captured, under the command of Holy General Abassa launched twelve volleys of Helios missiles. The Sun’s core overheated and gravity was thrown into hyper mode. Sol the thing that had given life to Earth for so long expanded and blew up. The initial blast stretched to Jupiter lighting the gas ball like a candle. The sheer scale of it threw the system out of whack. The empty space rippled with gravitational tides. Small-scale black holes formed and ate each other on the same day. The new sun, what was once Jupiter, blazed harshly as Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, and Pluto floated on odd patterns being pulled in and out of orbits as they circled this new star. Well at least it was pretty boom.
Let me see what else has happened. We found some alien critters a while before that. Some faster than light travel let the human race get a foot up on economic competition. The almost total destruction of our solar system got us some sympathy for a bit so we got like free ice cream and stuff. Oh yeah Sol Day. A galactic holiday to help us understand the uselessness of war, oh crap I forgot to mention that the humans terraformed Pluto and Neptune and then renamed them Earth. They circle in the same orbit now.
So the Universe is at a whole new level of fucked up at this point isn’t it? Well it’s about to get worse.
Seventy-five years after the destruction of half of the Sol system an alien race known as the Fredericks appeared on the scene. You see the Fredericks were 300 trillion clones of the same person, a lowly genetic tech that decided to play with his gene sequences, after that he began cloning himself en masse, secretly of course, The Fredericks were a force to be reckoned with. Each generation was more modified than the last. Any biological cure to the Fredericks problem was moot by the next generation. The Fredericks Empire spread through occupied human space like a disease. Eventually though, as in all empires, it began to fade. Generations that were trapped in campaigns in far-away systems become markedly different than the average Fred. Reproduction systems began breaking down in the far reaches of the empire forcing the first female Fredericks to be designed and made. A new race had spawned in the galaxy. Soon small splinter groups formed larger ones after those then competing Fredericks empires that spanned from one end of the Milky Way to the other. Fredericks Sapiens had established itself well. Now let’s get back to the tale at hand.
Several thousand light-years away Fredericks Damien Freak-Monk was enjoying his first command aboard the Escort Cruiser Orange Crème Soda. This was the newest vessel in the Fredericks Empire of the Reggae System. Damien Freak-Monk was a twentieth generation pure clone. He was an exact copy of the very first Freak-Monk. It was a double bladed sword though, the first Freak-Monk had been an escort captain onboard the ship Turtledove and pack of smokes. This was the same ship responsible for a huge war with sentient Elephants on Ganymede, since then each generation had been working to bring the status of the Freak-Monks to an acceptable level. Damien was ready to prove that Freak-Monks had what it took.
They were escorting a prison ship filled with Barkers. Soon to be slaves. There were at least twenty other escorts though. The enormous vessel dwarfed Damien’s own ship. Why they needed escorts he couldn’t figure, massive generators aboard the prison ship produced enough electricity to vaporize a Seuss fighter wing in one go. Not to mention swat every missile that could be fired at it. “Captain! A mighty swarm to the west!”
Damien turned the panel in front of him was glowing with the positions of close to three thousand enemies. He smirked and began issuing orders.
“Deploy camera swarm one,” an extremely loud swoosh greeted his order as hundreds of camera drones exited the ship and switched on, “incredible.” Damien gasped as the panel showed the collective images of the camera swarm.
The panel showed missiles two thousand of them alone with ships packed in the middle priming their weapons for an assault on the ship. “Turn to engage.” The ship tilted on its side pointing at the oncoming death. Those aboard, because of advanced grav-locks, didn’t feel a thing. “Engage.” The ship Orange Crème Soda shook as the Central Mass Cannon, the only truly powerful weapon onboard, began firing rounds the size of a man in succession. Explosions were to found all over as the escorts valiantly defended the prison ship. Another escort moved closer to the Orange Crème Soda three times larger it carried more pretty boom makers. Damien watched in awe as a slow moving missile array launched from the Big Blue Death Trap, how did Damien know that was the ship’s name? Well huge block letters pronounced it for the entire Galaxy to see. The missiles rotated slowly before rocketing into the coming storm. Even larger explosions greeted this as the shockwaves knocked the panel offline for a few moments. Just enough time to miss something really important, when the console shuddered to life Damien exited from his position on the floor to reveal that the prison ship, the other escorts, and the enemy swarm. They were all completely destroyed.
“Fuck.”
“Yes fuck is right Fredericks Damien Freak-Monk twentieth pure clone of the Freak-Monk line for your dishonorable actions in failing to defend your main objective to the death of yourself and your crew. We the Council of Reggae Fredericks find you guilty on all charges. And furthermore your punishment will be the de-activation of your failed line. No longer will the Freak-Monk name stain our Empire.”
Damien fell backwards from the verbal blow. He was the last pure Freak-Monk and now he would have to breed to continue his legacy. “Should you find the shame of mixing blood to unbearable you are allowed the choice to lead a suicide attack on an inferior Sapiens’s Mac Cannon, positioned near Earth this menace has long thwarted our attempts at gaining a foothold in the Sol System. Should you succeed we will consider reviving the Freak-Monk line.” Damien thanked the all-powerful Bob for showing him mercy in the council’s decision. He got up and walked out the door with guards on either side of him.
The hangar bay was cramped with so many young men that had once been under him staring as he approached the fighter wing that he would be leading to certain death. Nineteen other men, most young one old and grizzled his face showed the fact that he was a breeder. An original, too old to continue breeding other vermin like himself so he would go in a flame of glory Damien despised him immediately. The men bowed in short order as they climbed into their respective cockpits easing their fighters into secured airlocks as they were launched into space.
The journey was short only because of a rip-port that the Command had managed to pull. It got you there quick but had a huge energy signal attached to it. Damien took ten men under his control and barrel rolled out of the rip only to see a huge amount of debris that had been the preliminary attack wing.
“Frank got nine of them!” Un’dwa smirked as his best friend was congratulated throughout the station for nine straight kills in one shot. He’d aimed the Mac Cannon like a sniper rifle blowing the enemy out of the sky.
“Frank may be having nine but da baka be missing un.” The voice of Char’ Ears echoed over the com again as his display on the screen went black. The radio was silent for a moment as everyone realized something. Char’ had been taken out by the one fighter Frank had missed.
“Holy crap on high there’s ten more of those little bastards!” Un’dwa couldn’t pinpoint who said it but agreed with everyone else as their smaller less powerful turrets opened fire on the remaining fighters. Un’dwa’s eyes blurred with tears for a moment as he wiped the tears away and aimed his turret. Releasing a hurricane of plasma heated bolts into enemy ships. He traced a path of destruction into the dark void of space with the others. One ship always evaded him though it swooped and dived, rolled and fired. Un’dwa was starting to get pissed. His turret went silent for a moment. Blood slid down his fists from where he’d been gripping the firing handle. He fell back a cold clammy sweat pouring down his face. The blood on his hands was dry and his lungs were wheezing painfully. People were speaking gently to him over the CB. He realized something then. He’d been squeezing industrial steel hard enough to bend it, screaming loud enough to make each breath painful, and he was out of ammo.
His eyes were on fire. His vision blurring as he went blind. Lying on the cold floor of a defensive Mac platform the air smelled strange like fire. Rolling over onto his stomach Un’dwa crawled forward in his own darkness. “Someone! Please help me.” He began to cry as his head hit the airtight door to the turret room. He knew his eyes were wide open yet nothing greeted them. He cried louder slamming a fist against the door. A wet crunch greeted this followed by a sharp shearing pain that pierced the veil of darkness flashing hot and red. Still he kept pounding. With both hands and arms now. He heard his bones popping and twisting and shattering as he did so. Exhausted he keeled onto his side blood pooling from his arms and mouth as he finally received sweet release.
He moved quietly feeling bed sheets rustle against him as he did so. His eyes popped open and he saw. He saw. Sweet lord above he could see! His vision flickered for a moment and went dark though. He pouted and forced himself to see. Un’dwa stared at the ceiling of the med room. He moved his eyes and heard a slight whirring. “Goddamn mechanical eyes.” His nose itched so he moved his right hand up to scratch it. He was greeted with a concave metallic stump.
“Don’t worry neural reworking and implants will still allow you to feel, almost as well as organic flesh or so I hear. The arms you’ll be getting are mechanic but they attach and detach at will. All in all you were pretty lucky.” A tiny floating platform that was covered in tentacles appeared in his line of sight.
Un’dwa blinked with his new eyes. “Why was the door locked?” The platform swirled and lowered slowly revealing a blob like creature waving its appendages all over as it spoke.
“Well dark one the last ship decided to kamikaze your turret. Then door went air lock so you wouldn’t die. Actually we have him in possession….” Un’dwa grabbing him and asking him quite plainly in a most serious voice cut off the doctor.
“You said this new arm was detachable. Can I beat the prisoner to test it out?”
“Screw you inferior one!” A loud voice echoed through the infirmary. Un’dwa turned and stared into the eyes of Damien Freak-Monk.
“Tell me. Do you play chess?” Un’dwa asked in an expectant voice his throat burning with the pressure of speech.
“Yes inferior. I play chess.”
“All is forgiven.”
The sun beat down on a hot desert somewhere far away. A man stood out in the haze of the air though. A man one would usually step sideways to avoid on a crowded street. Or subway in which you were packed into the space where the door was supposed to be and decided to take a little trip down the third rail way. He was that creepy. Not to mention he was a god.
Steam bellowed from him as he stared at the sky and watched the rain beat down around him. Singeing the ground at each step this man stepped forward several hundred miles and appeared in the middle of the native town. He liked frontier worlds. People showed him the proper respect on frontier worlds. Not on those highly established ones though. Oh, no! They had ideas about a cowboy hat and a trench coat figure stalking the streets. Snapping up the crazed street preachers as his apostles.
Well there were only two things that redeemed core worlds. Brothels and crazed street preachers, after all a trickster of his proportion needed apostles to spread the insanity.
The natives stared. A mix of human and other they were an eclectic bunch outcasts, pirates, fortune seekers and farmers mingled together freely in a great mixing pot even if it was a rusty one. Samurai stepped forward eyeing him up slowly as they spoke in heavily Portuguese influenced Trade Slang. He adjusted his wide brim hat sparkling green eyes flashing for an instant as he responded casually running a clawed hand through his wild and tangled hair. The Samurai were quick in their response. It was a hostile one. Hands on their swords they spoke quicker.
The man sighed and turned around walking away from them whistling a song one of their mothers used to sing them. Though he couldn’t see it the god knew he had turned pale. The man laughed rather audibly before whirling and listing what each of the Samurai had done in his life. Sins and shortcomings alike the Samurai gulped as one asking quickly how he knew this. The man drew towards them his highs brogans stamping the dirt into nothingness as he leaned forward and whispered to them alone.
They dropped into kneeling position swords held aloft towards the god before them. They pledged themselves to him. Their lives and their honor and now their souls, were his. “Well gentlemen. Let us go forward and conquer in my name.”
Ah. So you’ve glanced him. Yes, in the cosmos there are many creatures with great power. Power to warp men to their wills and make themselves seem as gods. You see I have that power as well. I try not to abuse it being an Overseer and all. Though I doubt any warriors would fight for me. I’m like the librarian of the galaxy. Not the most glorious job but I like it. Actually that man you’ve just glanced is someone we should be familiar with. Formerly known as Emperor Jacob Fischer XXVIII. Well he’s a nice man. Most of the time, a good friend of mine he’s a trickster and a jester. Wait. I went to Jacob’s funeral. That thing you just saw is pure evil. Unless I’m wrong, goddamn I can’t remember right now. Anyways back to the story.
The Revelers Rousers Club was in full swing. Now you may be wondering what the Revelers Rousers Club did. Well once every few months every man in the village that the Revelers were from would mount their war rams and go raiding. Charging down on a rival village with spear guns at the ready they’d make crazed drunken lighting attacks on cow pens and latrines. Every village had a Club that the men would join. Every village also had two latrines in case one was captured. So the Revelers Rousers were barreling along a rather flat plain. Their guns were raised high in the air and their rams panting from brisk pace they were kept at.
Tan McHugh was in the back. His ram’s fur bounced heavily with each jerking jaunted run. It was hard keeping the binoculars up but he managed it. Sighting the tiny village before them he swept over it quickly mumbling a bit to himself. He snorted and leaned back on the rams hunched back. The massive curled horns that the reigns wrapped around stayed completely still as the rest of the beasts body jerked back a bit.
“It isn’t worth raiding! Next village!” The call was taken up as they kicked their rams ribs and plowed through the village afore them. A few of the boys got antsy and fired at some locals as the passed. Just a bunch of beggars and freaks so no one got mad. Tan looked up at the misty sky. His planet was unique like that. No real atmosphere just an unending mist that transitioned between the cold depths of space and the pleasantly warm folds of home. He’d heard of a few birds that got confused and flew right out into space. Shaking himself back to the present he pressed onwards. His ram was old and frail while the others were young and virile. Tan noticed that Jefferson, which is what he’d named the damn beast, was loosing the rest of the Club. He was too far behind the others to shout and a blast from the hunting horn round his neck would bring any Far Patrols of neighboring villages down on him afore his friends could come back to aid him. H
Tan was stuck deep in enemy lines with limited ammo and an old wheezing ram as his steed. He was also out of water. He knew the plains held none, all the villages had cropped up around water sources, and so he would have to do a raid on his own. Tugging slightly on Jefferson’s reigns he did a circle his eyes caught some light far off. The village he’d just come from would be no match for a trained Revelers Rousers member. Trotting Jefferson towards the village for a moment he did a sweep with his eyes the defenses they might posses. Though he knew from the fact he’d rode through not an hour ago that the village had no watch, they must have counted on the fact that they were too poor to be raided by a Club. But they weren’t poor enough to not be raided by one member; He rode at an easy pace until he was a few yards from where the torchlight ended. Kicking Jefferson in the ribs caused the ram to snort in anger. Tan imitated the sound and let a great war cry go as he pounded into the village on the back of an angry ram. A child was playing in the road in front of him but Tan leaned back in the saddle and raised a blackjack club from the depths of the saddlebags easily breaking the kid’s neck when he passed him. Tan quoted Rule Number One of the Revelers Rousers Club in his head. Terror makes for a great weapon in the search to part others with their property. Stowing the blackjack he rode from the town in a trail of dust, pulling his spear gun and wheeling Jefferson around to face the street where people had rushed from their homes and begun to cry over the loss of a future worker. Tan came back in fast. Firing the gun at whoever moved he’d speared four people between the eyes easily and trampled one more as he rode back out of the town. He reared Jefferson in and departed his back. Making quick low whistles that the ram knew by heart Tan pulled a knife from the saddlebags and crept towards town. The ram behind him, Tan was easy in his movements as he rested at the back of a run down mix between a house and a shack. Running a calloused hand over it quickly he found no back door. Standing silently he pulled a hook from of the bags on the ram. Twirling it in the air for a moment he hooked it on the top of the shack house. He tugged once and the mess fell backwards off its shaky foundations. Pulling the hook and chain it was attached to backwards. From the sounds of the other villagers there’d been a family in there. He stepped backward away from the light and got his spear gun from Jefferson’s bags. He walked forward and motioned at a boy. Throwing an empty water bladder he then motioned at the well in the somewhat center of the village.
Tan rode along in the dark water bladders full and abilities tested. Stretching on Jefferson’s back he patted the ram affectionately and rode towards the bright marker of a lighthouse, it signified civilized civilization; glancing behind him he noted that the slaves were walking in line on the chain. He made a note on a map that all raiders carried that that village was no longer there.
Above the planet wars were raging. The Yakuza Local Number 23 was fighting the Enemy. They had no other name for these things. Creatures that did not stop in their conquest they looked like men and spoke like men. But they fought like demons. They flew into battle with few ships and always beat back the Yakuza. The Daimyo realized that soon he’d have to call on other Yakuza Unions to save them from total destruction. Only one of the Enemy had been caught. She looked like the members of the Yakuza. Same heritage, slim almond eyes and dark hair she even spoke the same language. She was pure Japanese. She’d been the last of her wing. And yet she’d kept fighting. The men who had brought her in found a small Buddha, pictures of her boyfriend, and a Samurai sword all in the cockpit of her bulky fighter. After being “interviewed” for days she’d uttered one name. Shogun Jacob. Then she never spoke again. They still had her in a cell but she meditated and wrote poetry all day. Forsaking food they’d had to put an IV into her just to keep her alive.
The Yakuza Local Number 23 was fighting an unstoppable Enemy. And they knew it. All this was going threw the head of Daimyo Ku as he paced his room. Fake straw mats rested on the floor with several women sitting silently waiting for themselves to be of service. He was descended of a shamed line. Pure male all the way down. He wore the traditional obi and even wore two swords. But his hair was uncut and messy. His writing arm stiff and unused, he took in a breath of air and collapsed back into a large chair. The Enemy was at the gate. Quite literally, they’d boarded the capital ship of Yakuza Local Number 23 and had swept threw all levels except for the one he currently rested upon. His soldiers had brought back some of the Enemy dead. All races and genders were found among them. As well as all species, somehow some brilliant general had managed to unite them all. Every religion and cultural stigma swept aside to make the dreams of one man a reality. Daimyo Ku was scared. Standing up from the chair he walked to the sliding steel door of his master suite and stepped into the hall. His men bowed to him as pink slippers slid across the floor. He’d have to surrender. And he did.
Jacob liked his new title. Emperor had been so dull and boring. But Shogun that’s what truly suited him. He’d conquered the planet in record time. He’d established a new religion of warrior and Shogun worship. The Japanese culture was perfect for his new empire of empires. So that’s what he modeled it after. The people adored him as he was Divine in all ways. He’d made a few changes to the Bushido code. But not so many that it wasn’t recognizable. And now here he was. Sitting on another man’s throne enjoying another man’s wives savoring the taste of another man’s territory the Daimyo had willingly bowed to him so Jacob was going to keep him around. Jacob was now the proud owner of eleven systems and was funding insurgents in other empires. Each suicide bomb, every ambush, all fanatical riots and prayers of infidel blood filling the skies were carried out in his name. All in all he figured he’d done well for just coming back from the dead.
He had a few things to do. For one inspecting the new Turkish division and then worry about creating a buffer zone so that Wal-Mart couldn’t get a greedy hand into his economy. He thought for a moment. He’d use the Turkish division to create the buffer zone! Oh how smart he was. Moving quickly through his massive Citadel, the first ship of this design to reach the size of three old Earths stacked on top of each other, he moved into a gigantic domed room. Set off to the side for troop inspections it could serve, as hangar bay for two or even three capital ships should the need ever arise. The entire division was laid before him in full parade gala. Sweeping his eyes quickly he nodded once and the tanks bowed their collective muzzles in a show of respect. Each man and woman carried a small side sword, an assurance that they would never be captured, along with their regular gun and sidearm. He swept a hand to a man in front. General Al-Shekel Mohammed Kevin stepped forward and bowed briefly. “What need do you have of us Shogun?” Jacob smirked at the name and bowed back. The man’s cheeks flushed and his soldiers straightened even more after seeing their General receive a sign of such respect from a god.
“You are to attack a system for me. You will have no other resources than what you take and what you find. You have one month.” Jacob promptly turned and left as the men were mobilizing.
Damien lay in an intake valve. Someone poked him with a stick. Poke once, poke twice, poke thrice…….”Goddamn it I’m awake!” Damien leapt to his feet sweat pouring from his as he instinctively reached for the Hydro-Pipe that ran through the bowels of the station. He had been put to work down here. Damn inferior sapiens. At least his only friends on board, besides the numerous robots, aliens, and freaks that dwelt in the bowels, had been reassigned to make sure he didn’t try anything. Reacting quickly he jerked back as superheated water scalded his lips. “Damn inferior sapiens…….” Moving slowly over the grid-work floor of vents and pipes Damien sat on a raised platform from which he oversaw the surrounding bowels of the station. He still wondered who’d poked him with a stick. That someone poked him again. He swiveled in the chair his butt sliding off. He hit the floor and his leg slid through it.
A massive mutilated creature stood above him. Its skin was pulled tightly over the skull, easily seen were the large eye sockets and fangs the length of his hand, spiky bones poked through the thin veil of flesh on its four gargantuan arms. Bleached white along the entire length of its flesh the creature’s legs were the most impressive. Three clawed toes spread out with webbing and padded paws. It gripped a huge grey staff in its left upper hand. Damien grinned and smiled at his boyfriend. Reaching upwards he gripped Nahorrigi’s strong humanoid top hands. Easily lifted, though gingerly as his leg was still stuck, Damien winked and nodded towards the opening out of the pipe duct. Nahorrigi did his best to wink back. More of a half winks half eye flutter though Damien got the idea.