Slide On The Run

Episode Twelve In Space, You Scream

The clear plexiglass helmet of Slide's space armor was locked down tight, and mercifully muffled him from some the cacophony that howled all round; the shrieking glossolalia of sexual depredation that fragmented the smoke-filled and still burning cortex of the biocraft as the Pirates of the Lower Quadrant exacted their savagely traditional tribute. He stepped back hurriedly as a bouncing sag-sack morphed into something quite unrecognizable; complicated, dripping, and obscene. The ugliness leaped high and then fell with a pornographic squelch on a pair of young Eloi, male and a female, hurling them to a deck that was already awash in loathsomely multicolored fluids, and wrenching furiously at their delicate protesting flesh. The helmet also preserved Slide from the overwhelming stench of secretion, distention, debasement, disgorgement, and bodily abuse, all around him, as Slime Things slathered any entity that came within range of their drool, and priapic molluscs rammed rampant appendages into orifices never designed to accommodate such calcium-based erections. Bodies heaved, mandibles snackered, limbs and tentacles waved and intertwined to the point of lewd and grossly indecent surrealism, and, all the time, protesting voices howled in the face of polymorphous violation. To his immediate left, a crew of quasi-amazons of Nardaz with cabalistic tattoos displayed under Lucite body armor, and sporting heinous strap-ons, slapped and sodomized more stripped and screaming Eloi, irrespective of gender, bending them over control consuls, forcing them spreadeagled against bulkheads, or simply taking the submissive casualties of onslaught on all fours on the befouled deck, hard-riding them like dogs amid the muck. And even Slide had to raise an eyebrow when one huge, chromadryn-soaked hot-for-the-lethal centurion dispatched her lust-object with a deathblast, execution-style, at the lustmorde moment of rapid-fire multi-orgasm. The Saphs of Nardaz prided themselves on knowing how to party, but Slide suspected the homicidal showing off as an attempt to exceed the extremes of excess, and a trying their damnedest to look the Baddest of Bad among Very Bad Company. Even in the confusion, and with smoke-impaired vision, Slide could see that the Saphs had their corruption cut out for them if they were to claim the dubious title they seemingly so desired. StormKlown Nialapods, with exposed ganglia seething in slop-sacs, locked cloud minds with random victims, and ripped the raw and glowing orgone-skeins of conscious energy straight from the brain. Meanwhile, the Corsairs of H'nad had secured a side ventricle of the cortex and were already setting up their ceremonial hempen devices, while Holy Rounders with electro-whips collected what they liked to call - while laughing nastily - their subjects for geometric stress experiments. The Treens simply killed. These were the crews from the x-quad Telezeros that Slide had watched performing in space, as the Pirates of the Lower Quadrant had swung into massed attack. As old-school Treens, they could do nothing else. All concepts of less drastic or more subtle sources of excitement had been bred out of them during the era of the Mekon. The zom that was with them had no such limitations. The indigenous and semi domesticated tusked tracker dog of Northern Venus had retained all of its physical instincts, plus a few additional and conditioned nasty cross-species conditioned habits. The Treens and their pet/mascot advanced down the one of cortex's radial access passages, fusing everything that moved with their raypistols, and soaking up the death-release energy shimmer in the horizontal flat-tubes of their purpose-modified gold band-wrap. Like the sag-sack, the Saphs, and the Corsairs, the majority of the invaders went after Eloi. The biocraft was, after all, the pirates' common-prize, and that made its inhabitants the designated victims. A few attackers, however, were not so discriminating. The Slime Things, the Nialapods, the suc-Grreeezz, and their ilk went after any creature, friend or foe that had an aperture that suited their purpose. The constant small arms fire also led Slide to suspect that, in the confusion, crew beefs and interspecies rivalries were also being settled, and when the butchers bill for the engagement was calculated, the reality would be that more pirates had been slaughtered by their own than by the pathetically inept Eloi defenders with their delicate bows and spears. What other reason could their be for the sudden attack by a motley crew of lipstick-lace pervo-humanoids on three Mk 1 Warrior Cylons except the yarons-old cry of "Remember the Galactica?" Slide was thinking of withdrawing from the cortex to some less active area of the ship, when Rosa Coote moved into his field of vision. Like him, she was still in full space armor with the helmet locked down. Her voice came over his helmet radio, like a throaty crackle. suggestive. "You're sitting this orgy out, Yancey Slide?" "I don't think the party needs my help." "I never took you for a voyeur, Slide." "I'm not here to watch." "And definitely not tempted to strip your suit and go carnal?" Slide shook his head. "I don't think so." "Not even after a couple of shots of mugwump juice?" "No way?" "Yellow-bug powder?"

"Get thee behind me, Coote."

Maybe a century or more earlier, Slide might have gone into full demon rut and given even the Saphs a run for their money in debauchery, but too much happenstance had been battering on him for full twelve episodes and more. Inclination to debauch was at low ebb, drained by cumulative circumstance. Also he had more than a passing concern with what might happen next. The Pirates of the Lower Quadrant were going at their riot of rapine as though there was no tomorrow. But tomorrow never knows, and Slide was interested in having a tale to tell beyond the moment, plus some guarantee of a future in which to tell it. He was far from certain how long the biocraft would stand up to this kind of treatment. The big Eloi ship was, after all, a living entity, self-aware, and if the now-missing Sternwood was to be believed, sensitive, maybe to the point of petulance. In a more conventional metal and electron vessel, the cortex would be the bridge, the nerve center of all ship-board operations. It the command center had fallen to the pirates with such ease, he could easily image that orgies of carnage that were going on in other, less crucial areas of the ship.

A one-eyed simian chud, with hideous dueling scars, came at Slide, with a keg o'grog under one arm and a brandishing a cutlass and pike in its second and third hands, clearly intending mischief. Suspecting a crude, blind-tiger morph, Slide shot the thing, and then spun his blaster back into its holster with deft nonchalance. Rosa Coote looked around and frowned. "How long do you think the craft, and whatever passes for it's nervous system, is going to tolerate all this looting, burning, and fornicating inside its essential mind?"

Clearly demons, no matter how diverse their origins, thought alike. Slide shrugged, but not without unease. "I have no idea, but I can imagine a bunch of really nasty scenarios should the ship get multilaterally pissed off."

Rosa gestured to the huge misshapen dermal ovoid that was centrepiece of the cortex. "If that's the ship's brain, there's serious neural-damage going on right now."

Rosa didn't exaggerate. Thirty meters above them, the tree-like gantry that surrounded the ovoid was on fire. Where selected Eloi had previously serviced the soft-ovoid's function, the primary fun was now recreational hanging. Except the hangings would clearly be a temporary recreation. A gang that called themselves the Pyros of the Caribbean hadn't been able to resist the dramatic temptation of an extensive but flimsy structure that proved to be highly flammable. They had zippoed the catwalks and fire licked along struts and spars, and up stairs and ladders. The Roy Bean Society of Erotic Asphyxiators were forced by the flames to take their ropes and go elsewhere in search of a high beam, a long drop, and some suitable sacrifices to dance orgasmic on the empty air. The outer sheath of the biocraft's "brain" that held the essential sentient ooze was blistered and scorched already, and, in a couple of places, burned away, exposing an inner and more sensitive membrane.

"If that thing's got any capacity for pain, that's gotta hurt."

"I could be enjoying the experience."

"You wanna bet your continuance on that?

Slide shook his head. "Not me, lady."

As if in confirmation of Rosa's first observation, the banks of Eloi-eating orchids along the outer walls of the cortex were waving nervously, except for a few, clearly sterner flora, who grabbed all the digestible attackers they could reach. Slide grimaced. "For all we know, it could go into eterna-pod in the next minute."

A small cropulid flattened itself wetly on the contour-curved chest plate of Rosa's armor with a slight thwack and immediately probed with pseudo-pods. She ripped the single-cell loose and crushed it in the palm of a servo-assisted gauntlet. It squealed happily as its nucleus died.

"I think they only do that to make you kill them." She dropped the crushed cropulid and wiped her hands. "What happened to the queen and the vampire?

Slide made a noncommital gesture. "I kinda lost track of them when the pirates broke in. Last time I saw Lupo he had his helmet off and his fangs in the neck of some Barbary princess."

"I thought vampires only fed on humans."

Slide nodded. "That's what I heard."

"Do Barbary princesses qualify as human?"

"Seemingly they are close enough for Lupo."

Rosa Coote spotted the ex-Queen Mina. "She seems to have struck up a friendship with the Saphs of Nardaz."

Slide grimaced. "Is she aware of what she's getting into?"

"Knowing Queen Mina as I do, the more appropriate question might be 'are the Nardaz are aware of what they're getting into?'"

In their commandeered ventricle, the Corsairs of H'nad who liked their force-fucking ecclesiastical, now had four Eloi up on the 3D X-cross, simultaneously running squirm current through them and flaying flesh with a plasma scourge, but even the Corsairs paused in their highly liturgical persecutions when the first massive and botanical groan of pain and anger shook the ship.

Slide looked askance. "Uh-oh."

Rosa agreed. "That's not good."

The sudden and grinding burst of telepathic fury that followed the groan made Slide glad his own mind-reading capacities were fairly limited. Those better tuned to the thoughts of plants clutched at their brain cases, and some even dropped to their knees, or an approximation thereof.

Rosa winced."That's even worse."

For Slide, the projected image was of unfocused, but vicious and all-encompassing, violent vegetable revenge. "The ships getting mad."

Rosa nodded. "And I don't want to be around when it gets even."

Slide hesitated, and within the bowl of her helmet Rosa arched an eyebrow. "What's the problem, boychick?"

"It seems like I arrive everyplace only to have to lam out before I've hardly had time to get acquainted."

"You want to get acquainted with this mess?"

"No, but…"

Rosa worked the eyebrow again. "But what?"

"If I blind-jump one more time I could wind up bare-ass discorporate."

Slide felt that he was admitting weakness to another demon, but Rosa's laugh crackled through his radio. "Is that all that's worrying you?"

"Isn't discorporation enough?"

"Your worries are over on that count, Yancey Slide."

"What?"

"I have a way out for us, but we have to hurry. Aside from what the ship might do, I also see something that you might consider bad news."

Slide turned. "Bad news?"

"You're on the lam from the IIA and the Pentecostals, right?"

"And Nuygen von Bulow, and fuck knows how many others."

"And the beef is time-crime?"

"That's supposed to be the story, except in my continuity, I don't remember having done a damn thing."

Rosa wasn't buying this. "Not a damn thing? Gimme a break."

"Not time-crime."

"Well, whether you remember it of not, you may have troubles."

Slide twitched. "Say what? Nuygen's here with the pirates?"

Rosa shook her head. "Not Nuygen, but I think I see two of IIA Black Concluders over on the far side of the cortex."

The area was now so filled with smoke that Slide could see very little. "Where?"

"Beyond that red membrane thing."

Rosa was right; two figures in black skin-suits, and skullcaps under goldfish bowl helmets, could only be Concluders in full field kit. "You'd better show me that way out."

"Just follow me, kid."

They grabbed each others gloves and stepped over an Eloi being ravished by a frenzy of small fat Simolians, but seemingly loving every minute of it. Loving it so much, in fact, that, when her attackers rapidly abandoned her, as was the way of Simolians, she lurched to her feet and screamed after them to finish her.

Rosa indicated one of the arterial tunnels that led out of the cortex and into the leafy depths of the ship. As they entered it, Slide saw a cluster of bouncing rubberoid spheres coming rapidly up behind them. In an instant of dislike, he spun, drew, and blasted three of them. The others rapidly changed course and bounced back the way they had come, bleating and squeaking. Rosa nodded approvingly. "You're really quite the pistoleer, aren't you?"

"That's what they used to say."

Slide and Rosa emerged from the arterial tunnel into a vault-like chamber filled with foliage where nothing overly dramatic was being acted, just some nude Eloi and naked pirates engaging in a sloppy but an apparently consensual leaf-mold yabyum orgy, although Slide did notice orchids stealthily closing in, as if intending to turn the fuck-fest into a botanic gourmet delight. Rosa seemed also to notice the danger, because she quickened her pace, and, at the same time scanned the surrounding undergrowth as though searching for something.

"There…" She pointed and Slide saw. A Howdy Hole surrounded by cute little flowers.

"How the fuck did that get there?"

Rosa spread her gloved hands. "Don't ask me. I discovered it in my wanderings before you arrived."

"And brought all the trouble with me?"

"I didn't say that."

"I sensed you think it."

Rosa Coote said nothing, but Slide still had a momentary need to explain. "I usually control the flow."

"Like, you run the action, Yancey?"

"You know it."

"But you've time looped and the actions running you?"

"You got it."

Rosa Coote smiled with a surprising sadness."That's the worst part of being on the run." She seemed about to say more but an deafening and protracted shriek vibrated their helmets. The noise was so intense that Slide ducked, feeling as though he on the inside of some tortured, galaxy spanning nerve. "Damn! The ship is doing something double plus ungood." The shriek was repeated. Rosa stepped briskly to the Howdy Hole. Even with the helmet radio, she had to shout to be heard above the ululating biocraft. "I think that's our exit line." But Slide suddenly didn't want to be on his own in limbo again. "Rosa…

Rosa laid the fingertips of a glove quickly to his lucite. "No tender goodbyes, Yancey Slide. We need to be out of here." And with that she had dropped from sight. Slide took a deep breath of canned, space armor air, and followed her. The reality of the Eloi biocraft winked out, but Slide found himself in a place that was no better, and perhaps actually worse. He was immediately assailed by machine gun and rapid cannon fire. He was in a burning, spinning flying machine of a kind he did not recognize. Someone was screaming in Hebrew that he should bail out. He knew it was only a first-shock Gantenbrink hallucination conjured by the sub-atomic foam, and that Howdy Holes were like that, but he still hurled himself through an open hatch and spun into thin air. He counted to ten and pulled the ripcord on his C20 style parachute, but at the first jerk of the opening chute the hallucination vanished and he was assaulted by disembodied, abstract, and wholly meaningless words.

CONSEQUENTIAL MANGLE OEDIPUS DIGRAM DIFFRACTOMETER REPENT ARIZONA PERVERSION TV FORGIVEN LIABLE GRIFFIN COMPETITION MONADIC CHAMFER CHLORINATE CONCEPTUAL ALEXANDER PEAL SEISMOGRAPHY SPATE ELITE CONVERSE LETHARGY PREFERENCE ANA FLASH COCO EUCRE BANBURY TIMON ESTES RADIUM PUNDIT SENT BRENDAN CLARET CHICKEN VENGEFUL AMERADA CERAMIC CLEANUP!

"What the fuck is this?"

"What did you expect? A vision of the Rapture?"

CLIMATOLOGY BEECHAM ABSTAIN KETOSIS SNARE ALTOGETHER COINCIDE TWICE ALEXIS IMPEACH DIVERT PLUMP BLOCKADE PLUTONIUM SLOPE BENNETT COS THREE DUTCHMAN INERTANCE CONSPICUOUS MILITATE KAZOO CAVEMAN AVOCET KRUSE WHITCOMB NEWBOLD ADULATE ANGSTROM COURAGE CHURCHWOMEN DETACH PYONGYANG ATAVISM DESIDERATA COOLHEADED UNIPROCESSOR MANOR THERE'LL ANONYMITY DISCOMFIT!

"Out, out, I want out. I had enough of the unintelligible."

CLEAVAGE AUTOMATA ALGORITHM ANGLOPHOBIA FISCHER MUSSEL ARID TACK TWINE ILLUSIVE SNAKELIKE SKYLIGHT FIREHOUSE REVOCABLE BEDEVIL GENTRY BITT KNURL HESPERUS BEREA ANGULAR BUCHANAN CROWBERRY BEGINNER ATTACHE AMBASSADOR OFTEN HARROW BMW MAYA CHENEY FETE SHATTERPROOF MULLEN CRAVAT DOMINGO ARMOUR ECONOMIC RESULT CURTAIN WORKMANLIKE TEAMSTER CRYPTANALYST EMPLACE FANG BOOKSHELVES COLA AMPERSAND AMESLAN APPREHENSIVE FRIEDMAN CINEMA UMBRA EXCAVATE ARK CURDLE CONCILIATORY DOSSIER CRANKCASE!

And no sooner had he asked than he was out. The Howdy Hole appeared obliging, but then revealed itself as ferociously tricky, because the first thing Slide discovered was that he was no longer human. He had massive muscular hind legs, and tiny hands and arms, with disproportionately large claws. His enormous mouth was full of sharp-pointed reptilian teeth, and his breath reeked of old blood and rotting flesh.

"I'm in the fucking Jurassic and, if I read the polish on the claws correctly, I'm in the body of a goddamned velociraptor."

He wanted to yell. "Fuck this prehistoric shit!"

But it just came out as thunderous lizard bellow.