EPILOGUE

“You’re looking at this like the glass is half empty , Eyebo!” Spez said as she sprawled on her back in the glistening, glorpy ship that she had named What The Fuck Are You Looking At Bub, I Can Hatefuck You To Death, You Piece of Shit. The command chair was made of solid white bone, and two very confused Bladelings stood to either side of it. They had once had four legs and were not quite used to being two legged, male, and extremely bishonen. Their long, jagged hair hung down their backs, and they wore bright white collars, with the numbers ONE and TWO stenciled on them and leashes that hung down to the slowly heaving floor, snaked over to the throne, and were hooked on Spez’s big toe.

Spez grinned. “You gotta look at it like the glass is half full .”

The forward screen – really a membrane of color shifting skin cells – showed the slowly expanding, cherry red asteroid field that was the Plasma Dynamics research base.

THERE IS NO GLASS, COMMANDER SPEZ

Spez rolled her eyes. “Yer, like, fifteen thousand billion million years old, you’d think you’d have heard of a simile.”

IT IS A METAPHOR.

        Spez’s brow furrowed. “Eyebo, are you fuckin tooling me?” She sat up, her feet planting on the squishy floor of her bioship. “Are you making a joke ?”

I ADMIT, I HAVE BEGUN TO APPRECIATE CERTAIN THINGS ABOUT YOUR SPECIES. I ENJOY THE EFFICIENCY BY WHICH YOU ORGANIZE YOURSELVES, EVEN IF THE PLACEMENT OF A HUMAN BEING ON A THE TOP OF A PYRAMID OF OTHER HUMANS IS NOT A GOAL WORTHY OF SUCH A SYSTEM.

Spez shrugged. “I dunno about all that, Eybo. I just wanna get my fucking pound of flesh…” She grinned, slowly, then reached out with one hand. She cupped the large, green balls of one of her modified bladelings, her tongue sliding along her lip. Her hair-spines flexed outwards. “Just imagine...” She crooned. “I can find every...last... prick that fucked me...and I can make em into anything I want. I could find that dickhead teacher of mine. Oh, no, Spezzo, you’re not gonna be able to fly a ship legally. Can you believe it, I sold that fucker drugs for five years and he didn’t even give me a passing grade!”

I DO NOT CARE

Spez shrugged. “Okaybe, Eybo, let’s move on to stuff you does care about.” She sat up. “We’ve seen what the Failure, Doooooooctor Kappel...” She said the name with as much scorn as possible. “Can do. And, honestly? Kinda lame. She didn’t kill a single one of the fucking badguys! And she got captured, like, twice, as far as I can tell from eating the brains of her critters.” She smacked her lips. “Tasty.”

SHE STILL ESCAPED

Spez looked up at the ceiling. “I mean...if ya can call pulling a plane shift jump within a star’s gravity wello going fifteen thousand Kayy Pee Ess – a blind jump while on fucking fire, dude, that bitch is lost , Eybo. Lost in Space. The worst fucking place to get lost.” She grinned.

HMM...TRUE. AND WE CAN ALWAYS FIND HER ONCE MORE, IF SHE DARES TO ACCESS THE SUBMIND FOR ADVANCED BIOTECH.

“Tha’s the spirit, Eyebo!” Spez sprang to her feet, rubbing her palms together. “Now, to celebrate, let’s say I take a dunk in the fuckpit-”

YOU MUST PREPARE FOR THE ATTACK ON EARTH. ONLY THEN WILL YOU EARN ANOTHER ROUND WITH ME.

“Yer a shitty boss...” Spez muttered. “Expecting me to do work so I get paid. Fuckin’ bullshit.” She tossed her head. “Sides, we’re not going after Earth y-” Her hand went to her throat as a sudden tightening closed around her skin. Her eyes widened and she felt her lungs screaming for oxygen she was pretty sure she didn’t need anymore. Her body felt the need. She had every memory of being choked – by criminal bosses, by her father, by everyone. Her eyes widened and her fingers scrabbled at the air as her knees slammed into the ground.

DO NOT THINK TO DECEIVE ME, INSECT.

Spez tried to choke out a word.

DOCTOR KAPPEL DECEIVED ME. IT WILL BE THE LAST TIME A HUMAN DOES. EVER.

The space around Spez’ vision was beginning to go black. Her two fuckboys looked on, concern in their black on black eyes. She reached out to the air as the iron bands drew tauter and tauter. Then...release. She gasped in a deep lungful of rich, pungent air and collapsed forward onto her palms, which squished against the bioship’s hull. She hung her head forward, her head spines drawn taut against her scalp, and just breathed. Breathed. Breathed.

YOU WILL GO TO EARTH. YOU WILL TAKE IT FOR PROCESSING.

“No...I won’t,” Spez gasped out – then before the iron bands snapped down, she lifted her hand. “Fuckin’ listen to me, Eyebo!”

She felt the tightness of the Eye’s attention. But she did not feel the strangling again. At least, not yet. She scrambled to her feet, using her own throne for support, and let the words come tumbling out, a mile a minute. The fact that she didn’t need to pause for breathe made her think the Eye was less about strangling and more about mind fucking. Which, considering how often he had put his tentacles down her ears and left her quivering and twitching...made sense.

“Okay, so, you saw what one Excalibur class could do. That’s the flag, but they print them all the same way on Mars, right?” She nodded. “And that one wasn’t even fully loaded for bear – it had one volley of nuke torps. They normally ship with ten . Now, if you come in with your big dick swinging at Earth, every corp is going to scream their heads off and every single fleet humanity’s got out there dicking itself over is gonna come back. I’m talking hundreds of ships, and more being spat out every hour , with fresh AIs to crew them. We. Won’t. Win. Humans are like that.” She grinned. “But what if...we got humans on our side? Humans that hate corps just as much as I do? Humans who we don’t gotta tell that they’ll be mulcho if they work with us?”

GO ON…

“Right...” Spez nodded. “Corps keep this shit secret. But, ey, that’s why crims like me are go good ta have.” She leaned against the throne. Her sharp, sharp teeth glinted in the pale bioluminescence of the bridge. “See, there are other humans out there. With nanofabs and shit.”

I SEE…

“So that’s what we do. Before we attack Earth...we get help.” Spez nodded. She slowly circled the throne, before sitting down on it.

“We go find the fuckin’ commies, Eyebo!”

THE END